Crimwife (23 page)

Freedom means different things to people. One inmate insisted that the outside world where they make you work and play their game and keep their rules was no version of freedom. Doing what you want to do, being who you are, regardless of consequence, now
that
is freedom.

Does it sound like the ravings of a lunatic when that consequence is being locked in a jail cell? Maybe it’s a pride thing. Maybe it’s the final point before despair in the chronically depressed. For me, I’ll stay ignorant of that freedom, if it means anything to do with the things Jimmy told me about.

That freedom to be whoever you want to be, no matter what it takes, is an appealing quality in someone, even if it is a bit Charles Manson. It doesn’t make sense to fall in love with a freedom fighter who is so zealous that they get themselves killed all the time. But that sincere belief that the world doesn’t own you is thrilling to the uninitiated and even to some old-timers. It’s only as the rollercoaster plummets into the subsequent depths of nowhere that you realise your own true freedom went flying off with them and all their thrills.

The two lines in the hardware store both moved slowly. While the cashiers re-installed their ink rolls, I recognised a man waiting in front of me as an old neighbour’s ex-boyfriend. It had been a screamer of a relationship. Not long after I moved in, she had moved away with her kids. They said he’d hit the drugs hard and ended up in Long Bay jail after a botched armed robbery. He wasn’t a young man and he’d been to jail before. By now, the two or three years he got for a Liquorland hold-up, involving a gun, would have passed. Seeing him unnerved me, especially as I had no clue if he considered me friend or foe.

He’d caught my eye, which meant if he remembered me, I’d better be on the ball. As the lines kept dragging, it became more obvious. To anyone else he might look like a quiet man, keeping to himself, waiting to buy some sandpaper on a Saturday afternoon. But as I watched him pretending, straining to be patient with the delay, he showed all the signs of someone who had just got out.

He stood tensely with his left hand holding onto his right wrist. His eyes darted around the room but only when he thought no one could see. Every few moments he would glance to a shoulder, checking that no one was coming from behind. He was well presented, organised and ready to spin 180 degrees and fight for his life. He purchased his sandpaper and as he walked with his back to me, I called his name.

“Steven,” I said, and a few seconds later he turned around, and recognition came cautiously into his eyes.

“I’m Tanya, Jodi’s friend from ages back. I didn’t know if that was you.”

We shook hands.

“Her? Nothing but a psycho, that one,” he smiled. “See ya round,” he said, and calmly walked away.

*

So what if hindsight is 20/20? Love is blind.

There I was, terrified that as soon as he was released, Jimmy would grab the nearest kitchen knife and go on a crime spree. There would be some horrible implication for me that the courts would never understand, and I would end up in jail like my wise old mate, Officer Max, had said all along. How wrong I was.

The things that drove us apart in the end were not that special, not that shocking, not even profitable. I always seem to meet men at the wrong time in their lives, when they’ve blown their youth, money or trust on someone else. There were no high-speed vehicle chases or hostage situations. Jimmy found being in the car in traffic overwhelming, anyway.

It was not a case of drinking or gambling or having annoying mates. He did none of those things. There were much worse complaints made at my workplace than mine. The other girls had men who sounded like far more trouble.

Still, it became obvious that I had made a horrible, horrible mistake. I had picked the wrong option in the Choose Your Own Adventure story that was my life and it was too late to flick back and pick again. When we tell our partners we love them, what do we think that it means?

Jimmy and I were as incompatible as it gets. The army and the jail had woken him at 5 am for the last twenty years, and he’d had no choice but to bounce out of bed. While I’m willing to wake up at 7 or 8, I need to prepare to face the world, and this process can take anywhere up to twelve hours. Which is exhausting for me and anyone around me.

Post-incarceration traumatic stress syndrome left me with someone who could not function outside for long. He wouldn’t go out. He didn’t want people in the house. Especially children. He hated my lack of routine, a routine, I might add, that has taken me years to chuck together.

And me, well, it takes two to tango. I am clingy and neurotic and moody. I cry at the drop of a hat, and I get carried away with a story. I don’t really know what I want to be in life, but every day I’ll have a stab at something. I don’t like people telling me what to do, or implying that my ten-year-old needs correction, when clearly he’s perfect. And yes, the last time Jimmy was out of jail for more than six days, people did smoke inside. But now they don’t. And if they must, they open the windows. People must also always rinse the dishes when they wash up. I’m no party to live with. Which is why the only people who live here have no choice. The child, the cats, the hermit crabs. I never promised anyone a rose garden.

Still, you hope. Love is about hope and faith. Proof comes later. That’s why love is emotional and not rational, which is why it’s precious and exciting and special and stupid.

I told Jimmy I had made a horrible mistake. I had taken Tarzan out of the jungle and demanded to know which cufflinks he wanted to wear to dinner. He nodded. Jimmy took six months to order coffee on his own at a café, so overwhelming were the choices and the crowds. He never reaccted without thinking.

Institutionalisation can make people passive. Having had all power taken away from them, inmates can lose the ability to ask for help or to tell anyone what’s wrong.

I wish the ending had come less predictably. As the months counted down towards his parole ending, he started to change. I asked him what he thought it would do to him, knowing that he could finally be anywhere by choice, never having to report in, going anywhere he wanted.

He told me that he was always there by choice, that this life was what he’d always wanted, that parole wouldn’t make a difference. He said it would be nice to go somewhere else, though, and we should take a holiday together. He was awfully convincing. He was so settled in the spare room with the computer. He wanted it as a smoking room, which should have been a sign. I had all this writing to do, but it was inconsequential next to his joy at the idea of a smoking room. We settled on a shared study.

Most of all, the post-traumatic stress that he was suffering made me wonder if he’d ever make it alone. Not long before his parole ended, he told me that he now believed it would take him about five years before he was ready to interact with the community. My heart sank deep as my nerves lit up on fire. This meant five years more of virtual jail for me. Five years of going nowhere, supporting this family unit and accepting Jimmy’s behaviour as gold star, whatever it was, because he was doing his best.

Max had always said that jail wasn’t hard. Anyone can do jail. It’s being on the outside that’s hard, turning up to work, paying the bills, looking after your kids, not following whims or passions at the expense of others. Now that’s hard.

Sometime after my new five-year sentence had been handed down, I think I gave up. It had taken two and a half years for Jimmy to be let out the first time. And while it had been a long-term gamble, at least I got my way in the end. He ended up meeting the cat before she died.

But then he was locked up again, after eight months, and the stakes were raised. Don’t forget, I had assured everyone, me included, that if Jimmy went back to jail, the show was over. So then there was another twelve months of wondering if I was truly the village idiot or whether we could still live happily ever after.

When he announced that after five years together, it would take him five more years before he could go out, work, or essentially before he would try very hard at all, that was a lot of time to contemplate.

From where I see it, we did not end because of the life of crime, more so because of the life of jail. Perhaps it was not fair of me to expect so much from him, he who did not like to leave the house. But then, there were exceptions: when his computer broke, and when his best mate called. In both situations, Jimmy was out the door like a shot, running on instinct, he told me, full of fear still, but having to attend to a task. But grocery shopping, he said, was unbearable. So was cleaning the bathroom. Since the depictions of domestic lives he’d seen were on TV, he knew that only women did those things. And while he was smiling, I was the one left holding the Domestos.

The clincher came in the month his parole ended. We started fighting way more. And those arguments grew uglier. Two weeks after he was finally free, we had a cracker of a fight. I started it over some small thing and it got messy and cruel fast. We’d fought before, sometimes all day, but this time everything changed.

We had a vicious exchange and then, within moments, Jimmy had gone to pack. Not in a rush, not throwing things together, but neatly organising all of his possessions. Was this a jail habit, the sign of premeditation, or both? It was as if he had finished this, both our relationship and parole, once and for all.

Shocked and still crying, I left with my son to buy a birthday present for a party he was attending. Then I went to a friend’s house, drank coffee and talked to her. We returned to the front door wide open and a dark house. Jimmy had taken almost everything he owned, which was not much, and left.

In the forests of letters he had written, he’d guaranteed this would never happen. And there, it had happened. Was I any different to my family friend who married a woman from the other side of the world, only to have her leave him two weeks after her visa was approved? Did I mention that I hate falling in love? I hate falling out of it more. And this one hurt a lot. But I guess you learn
something
along the way. There’s always a cost, though, with the bad boys.

I’ve finally realised that what Godzilla said was right. In life and love, I am not suitable for the jail environment.

This book is very white. Most of the interviewees have Anglo Aussie backgrounds.

These stories do not begin to capture the experiences of Indigenous women and men who support partners in jail. I never felt qualified to write about these, nor was I able to capture the experiences of so many different cultures.

The catastrophically high rate of Indigenous deaths in custody, examined by a royal commission in the late 1980s, means that incarceration for the Aboriginal people of Australia is way more likely to mean a death sentence than it does for other inmates. Despite their being only 2 per cent of the national population, Indigenous people make up 26 per cent of the prison population.

The partners of Aboriginal men in jail told me different things. Some said that to visit their man in jail was safe for them, because it could not end in violence. Some saw it as a kind of work factory for their people: “White men have always taken our men away, through slavery, cattle stations, pearling and jail.” Most were resigned to jail being a part of everyday life. Jail does not carry the same stigma as in other communities. Prison is a routine part of being Indigenous in this country. And because so many Indigenous people live rurally, the partner who is expected to visit, and put money in the account, has to travel far from home, and the expense is impossible to contain.

I hold in the highest respect of all the Indigenous women who are left to keep life together while their men are locked up. I hope your stories will follow the ones here onto the public record.

This project could never have happened without those who believed in it and in me. There are also those who contributed knowingly or otherwise in a million ways to make it happen.

Eternal thanks to Black Inc. Books, the finest publisher in all the land. A thousand thank-yous to Chris Feik for your vision and excellence and to Nikola Lusk for unwavering belief and endless generosity of time and understanding. Without you,
Crimwife
could never have seen the light of day. Thanks to Nina Kenwood and Elisabeth Young for bringing all the style and for hand holding.

Thanks a billion to my family, especially my parents, for ensuring I got over the finish line. I know it has been a marathon for us all and I couldn’t have done it without you.

Kim Bridge for the love, support and hip hop. You’re a great kid.

There was reassurance and advice from some heroes of mine. I am grateful for the brilliance of David Marr, Benjamin Law, Adam Shand and Ruth Pollard.

Thank you to Dr Ann Aungles for invaluable wisdom and fine coffee, and Dr Eileen Baldry for academic support and research.

Thank you to Maxine for being wiser than any guru and for being real; Veronica, Heather, Adrian, Samara and Susie, my apologies for not explaining earlier; Samantha Hill for pushing me out of the valley of indecision; Samantha Wegner for thirty years of laughs and so much love; Kim Robin for reading and visiting the cave; Lyn Roseman for opening the envelope; Lorna and Keiran for feeling my pain; Therese Rouse for fixing my face; Paully Wall for sending Kennedy postcards and fostering kittens; Angela Bosslady for laughing at my jokes and risking the wrath to get this out there; Kaz and Fred for showing me how it ends for the best; Bec and Trace for being legendary; the Burford family for helping right when it was so needed; Nic and Nelly Beth for telling me to keep going; Ruqayah K, for so much help; Leighanne Anderson for the love of Thaao Penghlis, and for making me giggle; Aidy, just for the record; Jane Kennedy for being Jane Kennedy; Tanya Riches for sunshine and light; Heather Rothwell for never changing; Sarah-Jane for being so gracious, I can never forget; Delores Theodore, my mentor; Jodi Bailey for insisting it’s them not us; Mark Howe, for being a true believer; Melissa Holmes for making an exception to the rules and taking me on; MT for being so strong and sharing so much with me; Leigh and Bronwyn for being tops; Melissa Kennedy for being herself; Kathy Moon for art, madness and geckos; Christine Borg for staying staunch to Tony; Ilona for persevering, and teaching me worlds about life (I miss you so much); Tina Murray for insisting things would improve; Nick the Greek for talking for all those hours and keeping me sane during the big wait; Shelly Gale Robertson, Janis Schindler and Rowena Lawrie; Rebecca H, for opening the door to a thousand doors; Jill Holz, Danielle Jolliffe and Mrs H; Noah Fischel for reassurance, inappropriate questions, long-distance fashion advice and
Real Housewives
explanations; Blizzard Entertainment and Microsoft Live for reasons only a parent understands; Tyla Kenzie for believing; The Queen of Purim, for encouraging me and for all the crazy times. You’re one of a kind; Jonesy, how I miss ya. Where did you go? Bob de Graaff’s mother for being herself and for sharing her heart; Emma Goroncy from CRC; Greg from Lakeside Computers for saving lives and hard drives; Dave from East Corrimal Automotive; Michael K from Dlisted.com for still being there every day of my life after so, so long. You are the future of comedy; Candice Walker and Etched Photography for their talent and professionalism; Dean for being a hire-a-hubby; Ted Skott for the love of Britney.

Thanks also for support from Chrys Stevenson, Warren Bonnett, Embiggen Books, Jasmine Reid, Karen Alexander, Erik Pedersen, Richie, Domo Nation, and also Frogen.