What Is Left

I spent twelve years in the state penitentiary for crimes imagined by children and believed by adults. For those twelve years, my body became my enemy and my commodity — I let the inmates hurt me so I could live. Besides the common abuses, they also broke my fingers and thumbs and sometimes the little bones in my hands. Once, they shattered a wrist. They’d wait until I healed, then find me again, often working both hands so I couldn’t feed myself. If I fought or resisted, they said they’d cut off my fingers. They pinned my arm between their bodies, and sometimes I wished they had cut off the fingers so we could have been done with it. I’d wait for the shock of pain and tell myself they didn’t hate me so much as hate themselves.

I was put in isolation to let my hands heal. I don’t remember much from these periods. I know at first I felt relieved to be safe, but within a few days I felt numb, and under that a horrible loneliness, as if I’d been abandoned and forgotten. I couldn’t read. I couldn’t focus my thoughts. I tried to sleep as much as possible. I felt myself growing lighter, as if becoming transparent. When I spoke, my voice sounded thin and hollow. Sometimes I thought I was dying.

I remember Ray, one of the guards, feeding me when I couldn’t feed myself. He gave me four minutes of his time, then left; if I wasn’t finished eating, I had to cup my plate between the casts on my hands and eat like an animal. Sometimes, depending on the meal, I talked to Ray for the four minutes while he cut up my food, but he was a stern man, as conservative with words as he was with time, and he mostly just listened to me. Still, it was a relief. He stopped coming after my casts were removed, but I was held in isolation for an extra two weeks; I pleaded to return to the others, where I’d at least be part of something. It didn’t matter that the inmates would come for me again — that was inevitable.

Out of isolation I mostly kept to myself, looking forward only to the big yard, where I sprinted back and forth along the fence, running until I couldn’t breathe or until my legs cramped or I vomited. But after a minute of rest, I’d start running again. This was pain, but it was my own doing. Each day they didn’t break my toes or my feet, I was grateful.

Over the years the inmates came to handle me with a sense of routine and duty. It wasn’t always necessary to strike me or treat me roughly, though one or two of them occasionally did. In time, after both pinkies and a ring finger had been amputated above the bottom joint, after pins had been drilled into an index finger and both middle fingers, after nearly a dozen casts, they seemed to tire of me.

And then, after twelve years, I was released, the convictions overturned. I had been a victim of the moral panic that had swept the country over sex abuse in day-care centers. I remember reading about similar cases — one in California, two in the Midwest — where they couldn’t get convictions, where the authorities were found to have coerced the kids. My lawyers told me that the prosecution had destroyed and buried evidence, that the children’s testimonies were no longer credible. Thirty-two counts of first-degree sexual offense, six counts of first-degree rape, thirty counts of taking indecent liberties with children, and eighteen counts of crimes against nature. Nine life sentences. All dropped. If you read the indictments, they say my wife and I and two of our employees engaged in ritualistic satanic child abuse; that we sodomized, raped, and molested half of the children at our day-care center one fall.

The fact that I’m innocent is still something only I know for certain. I am not an evil man; deep down the children must grasp this. That is the stubborn nature of truth: only the players know it. After my wife and I were both incarcerated, we were rarely able to phone each other. We still talk every now and then, but at times I wonder if I hear the cast of doubt in her voice — her innocence does not ensure mine. Or maybe it’s not doubt so much as weariness and disinterest. We have never been a strong couple. It’s as if we’ve lost a child: in the aftermath, some couples are able to feel a greater bond, to turn to each other. I’ve tried being selfless, tried feeling her misery, but, in the end, her misery is hers alone, as mine is only mine. Perhaps that is the most honest thing we give each other. When she calls, I’m pleased to speak with her, but we keep the calls short and begin our goodbyes before the stillness sets in.

I don’t blame the children for what they said. They are no more guilty than I am. But I don’t understand where or how the rumors started and why everyone believed them so readily. It seemed once the first child claimed we’d touched him, others were already making claims of their own. Everything piled on top of us. We couldn’t catch our breath, and when we tried to say this was all impossible, no one listened.

I’ve come to accept what people did to me — first the parents, the police, and the social workers; then the inmates. I used to think I needed to forgive them: the parents who were protecting their kids, the inmates who knew only cruelty. But forgiveness isn’t helpful to me. I don’t think I can forgive, and anger has become too exhausting. I used to feel a catharsis when angry; now I just feel angry. I’d rather let it go. What I really want is for people to accept me again. I want them to see me and think I might be someone they wouldn’t mind talking to.

A Good Deal. A Great Gift. Give The Sun as a holiday gift and save up to 30%.

PRINT

E-MAIL

SHARE

PDF

WRITE TO THE EDITOR

SUBSCRIBE