“You know, when you’re in jail at home you have to wear them.”
No, I didn’t know, but found out later from Lori that they were ankle cuffs that monitored the girls in home jail and beeped loudly when they left the prescribed space. Kaylee had worn them because she had broken her curfew too many times.
The dark room felt alive now, coursing with words and feelings and hands waving for recognition. I was reminded of my first teaching job, of the ineptness I’d felt in the unfamiliar land of a cavernous inner-city school. But I also remembered the surges of delight and connection I’d experienced in those classrooms stuffed full of restless adolescents in blue jumpers and white blouses.
Now, everything in me yearned to stay with these hurting, tough girls— to give them whatever I could. I hoped the staff and director would want me to come back. I hoped some more girls would want to join the group.
I’d been there almost three hours. It was 5:45 when I left, and all the way home I felt filled to my edges with a warmth and recognition in a way I hadn’t in so very long.
And it wasn’t only my experiences with my previous students that the young women at Touchstone called forth. It was my adolescent self, though that would take a long time to grasp. I’d always been a disciplined person; I’d spent my adolescence in what had felt like a kind of jail, a convent school in West Hartford, Connecticut. The strict limits of my Catholic life had been so confining that outside exploration had seemed impossible. Clothed and shod each day in a baggy navy dress and blue-and-white saddle shoes, I’d studied religion and French, English and Latin, getting top grades. I’d been editor of the school paper, had had a leading role in the senior play, sung in the glee club, been a Foreign Policy representative and debate club president, written essays that won Scholastic writing awards. I’d gone to a Catholic girls’ camp every summer where I’d been captain of my team, received awards for leadership, camp spirit, and mountaineering.
That’s who I thought I was.
But these girls showed me the stranger within me, the locked-up one who’d longed to spring free of the confines and limitations of my upbringing. I’d never done anything more forbidden than smoking in the woods behind my cabin at camp or wearing lipstick before I was sixteen. I’d wanted to, but had been too afraid of sin and punishment, the disapproval of my parents and teachers, of what breaking out would mean to my regimented life. So they were a fascination, “the other,” these at-risk girls labeled “bad” by the world, who would soon become the definition of real to me.
“Miss, you dress in style for an old lady,” said Kaylee when we gathered for our first meeting a week later. “Look at those shoes!”
“You’re going to read us a story today, aren’t you?” she said with eager excitement. “I really liked that story you read us about Pal. I couldn’t stop thinking about it.”
“Yes, I’m going to read you a story each time we meet,” I said. I’d gone through my books at home searching for stories these girls might connect with, and could see I’d have a large task ahead of me—to find books and poetry relevant to their lives instead of the lives of the middle-class white women I’d been teaching— instead of my own.
Six of them decided they wanted to be in my first group. Lori called to tell me, and set a regular time for me to come in, Mondays at 3:15. She came down to the dorm basement with them that first day, giving each girl a notebook. Nia, stunning and beautifully dressed, with an hourglass figure; Mayra, who would write almost every week about her mother, in an agony of desire to be seen by a woman who had never been there for her; Brisa, who would write little and talk less; and Ana, who would sleep through most of our sessions, were seated along with mature-looking, sensual La Toya, and Kaylee, the girl who cut her bracelets and the only Caucasian.
I had a piece today from Ophelia Speaks, about a girl’s fantasy of love—her boyfriend had died from shooting up drugs. I’d hoped it would resonate, and asked them to write a girl-boy story. Mayra looked around the room before she read her piece—“This is confidential, right?” I assured her it was, and reminded the group of the importance of keeping what was said in the room stays in the room.
Shit Is Happening
weed was my girl
Mary Jane was my girl
if I had a problem
I couldn’t understand
we all need Mary to lean on
she was my main thang
she made my heart sing
that’s what I thought about the ganja
used to wake up smoking
go to bed smoking
five blunts to the head
to go to a party
before I left
had to smoke
when I got there
I had to smoke
couldn’t even sell weed
’cause I would smoke it all
so I sold crack
go to NY with my boy
get some kilos
smoking by myself
taking a shit smoking
smoking with my man
turning into a monster
if you didn’t have my money
you was getting hurt
always remember my mom saying
where you getting all that money?
my brothers, my man
didn’t know I was selling crack
they always asking
where you getting all that money?
how you getting all
that money?
me leaving my house
didn’t come back four or five days
then at 5:00 in the morning
Ma stressed out, worried
police chasing me
my boyz called me fugitive
got into a fight every time
I smoked weed
used to drive my boyz
when they was drunk
used to go to a motel
my girl and me always
at the club
my girl got raped
we slashed that nigga’s tires
messed up his car
he couldn’t go nowhere
me and my boy chilled with blunts
like they was cigarettes
we watch Flubber
was rolling off that movie
day later they raided my boyz
my man TJ
all went to jail
same day my boy scared
shot this dude because
he gave him five dollars instead of twenty
I was out
my girls went to her crib
ten minutes later somebody do a drive-by
we was all on the floor
shit just happenin’ tonight
In jeans and the usual tight tank top, she looked at all of us with satisfaction. “He tried to break my neck, but I