The AlaLitCom - 2012

sippi Delta I would frequently have a nosebleed. My nose never bled any other time. I think it was caused by nerves. I missed my big brother and wanted to see him but I hated going there.

In those days Parchman was still a working farm and the inmates chopped or picked cotton all day every day except Sundays. Inmates were frequently beaten for the smallest infraction, or none at all. Cowboy was interned at Camp 5, which was home to some pretty rough characters.

We would go in to visit, everyone together in the great big dining hall.

Sitting at tables scarred with hundreds of names and initials, some still legible under so many coats of paint it is a wonder the table didn’t collapse from the weight of it. I never understood why anyone would want to be immortalized in such a place as that.

I heard some stories I should never have heard. I guess the adults thought I was too young or too busy playing with my doll (a female guard had kindly allowed me to keep) and didn’t hear. I heard. Never once have I written or spoken aloud some of the things I heard and probably never will.

I finally reached an age I refused to go back. Twelve or thirteen I think. I felt angry toward Cowboy. Angry at the choices he made that took him from my life and made me have to spend so many bright sunny days locked up with him.

Looking back I realize this was a pivotal age in our household.

Cowboy had started running away at this age. My next older brother started having juvenile offender issues at about this time. I suspect just trying to copy his older brother. Never so dramatic as Cowboy, though he did eventually end up in prison as well.

Though we didn’t know at the time, later I would come to realize our mother was bi-polar, something they knew very little about at that time. Now I see that we probably all inherited a tendency toward this sort of erratic behavior, or maybe just learned from growing up with it. So about the time I began to rebel against going to Parchman to visit 118