VOX Press‘ book, Prison Narratives, features personal stories written by prisoners at Parchman Farm. The book can be bought here.
Gergory Frazier is a Parchman inmate serving a 20 year sentence for aggravated assault.
Snake Creek
The Toddler Years
1.
I lived the first couple of years of my life in Snake Creek. Snake Creek was an area of land with a long twisting creek running through it. The land was located in between Cleveland, Mississippi and Pace, Mississippi in the part of Mississippi known as The Delta.
There were only a few houses on Snake Creek. These houses were occupied by other members of my family.
The houses were old unpainted wooden framed homes that were built in a style called Shotgun.
All the rooms in a Shotgun house are in a straight line. Such as, there is a porch with the front entrance to the main part of the house located at the back of the porch. At the rear of the living room was a door that led to a bedroom with two doors. One led to the kitchen and the other one to a room that was used as a toilet. At the rear of the kitchen was a door that led to another bedroom, and at the rear of that bedroom was another door that led to another bedroom.
Snake Creek was very rough terrain, covered by dirt, small pebbles, and surrounded by thick woods.
There was a pathway that led from our house down to the creek where Mom would go fishing. I can remember Mom walking down the pathway with her large straw hat on, and carrying her long tan cane poles in her hand. My brother was pulling me in a small metal red wagon. Every time he would start to pull the wagon I would yell. The vibration of the wagon being pulled across the rough terrain would painfully irritate my ears. It was horrifying for me, and at my young age. I didn’t know what was happening, but every time the wagon would start to move I would start to yell. At some point someone must have figured out why I wasyelling, because my brother, who is 15 years older than me, lifted me up out the wagon and carried me the rest of the way on his on his shoulders.
2.
Summer days in the Mississippi Delta are extremely hot and humid. On this particular day, the sun was even more cruel and unapologetic. Its fierce rays gave our little Shotgun house a vicious beating.
In places where the ground had started to crack from the intense heat it appeared to me that the earth was trying to provide the Shotgun a hiding place from the brutal sun, until the rain came to its rescue. The heat waves that came from the pavement made it appear that Highway 8 West was mourning the abuse of the Little Shotgun at the hands of the relentless sun. In simpler words, “It was too damn hot.”
I was sitting in my play pen. It was a four by four feet wooden framed pen surrounded by four feet tall wooden bars that were spaced only far enough for a toddler my size to get his head stuck in between them. The play pen was no less than a four by four prison cell for toddlers.
I wasn’t wearing anything but a white cloth diaper that clung to my sweaty little bottom. The extreme heat and the lack of any kind of air circulation made the diaper feel like an overcoat. I was hot and agitated, so out of frustration I took off the diaper and flung it over the bars. I then flung the powder blue pacifier over the bars. Finally I flung the matching blue plastic bottle over the bars.
I laid back in the pen and gave a deep sigh. I grabbed the yellow plastic baby bottle, the only thing that I hadn’t thrown out of the pen, and popped its tan rubber nipple in my mouth. As soon as it was registered to my taste buds that it was milk and not apple juice in the bottle, I spit the milk and nipple out, all in one motion.
Dang!
I had flung the wrong bottle out of the pen!
I had intended to throw the milk bottle out, but instead I had thrown my beloved apple juice bottle over the bars.
I became as irate as a toddler was allowed to become. “It was too hot for milk! What kind of kid don’t know the difference between his milk bottle and his juice bottle! A stupid kid like me. That’s who!”
The bottle had landed about three feet from the play pen.
I got down on my stomach and stuck my hand in between the bars in an attempt to retrieve the juice bottle. My arm was not long enough to reach it, but I was determined to retrieve my juice bottle.
I reasoned that if I could get my head between the bars that I may be able to reach the bottle. So I went for it. I grabbed a hold on two of the bars and pulled my body as hard as I could towards them. This caused my head to move between the bars, but I still couldn’t reach my juice bottle. I had to try something else. I tried to pull my head back through the bars.
“Uh Oh!”
This was not good. My head was stuck between the bars.
I felt something warm trickled out of my nose and dropped to the floor just beneath where my head was hanging out of the pen. The fluid rapidly started to flow at a more constant pace. This couldn’t be a good thing. I’d learned when stuff came out of my body it needed an adult’s attention.
I hadn’t yet learned to speak adult language, but I knew if I cried someone would usually pay attention to me. However I didn’t want to cry. I reasoned that I could handle this on my own.
I needed to figure out what the stuff was that was coming out of my nose, and how to stop it. I had to figure out how to get my head out of the bars and how to get my juice bottle.
My sister Zet is seventeen years older than I am. She’d taught me many things, so I went through the motion of trying to remember what stuff she said came out what places of my body.
Shit? No. This was not shit. Shit was either brown, yellow, or green. Most, but not all the time, it was shaped in lumpy balls. It was really stinking and it came from the hole in the bottom of my body that Zet called my “booboo”. This definitely wasn’t shit!
Piss? No. It was not piss either. Piss was a yellow liquid that came out of the hose in the front of my body that Zet called my “peepee”. Piss burned like hell. Nope. This was not piss.
Snot? Maybe. Snot was thick slimy yellow stuff that came out of what Zet called my nose. It was my nose that the stuff was coming out of, but it was the wrong color. This was not snot.
It was something familiar about this liquid. I had seen it before. Then I remembered. It was called blood, and that’s what the hogs did just before they died after my brothers would shoot them in between the eyes with the old rifle.
I quickly reasoned that I was going to die like the hogs, because I sure was bleeding like one. I panicked and tried to cry as I’d learned to do when I wanted the attention of an adult, but for reasons I can’t explain I yelled, “Shit!” Everyone in the house came running to my rescue. I guess I handled the situation like an adult when they got in trouble. I panicked and cursed.
3.
At some point the man who owned Snake Creek died.
His son inherited the land and ordered all the occupants of Snake Creek to vacate the land.
Gone was the sound of the flowing creek and the night creatures that formed its orchestra. Gone was the sight of the large trees that danced to the beats of the spring winds. Gone was the serenity of the country sky. Gone were our livestock and freshly grown vegetables. Gone was that innocent little boy who had gotten his head stuck in between the play pen bars. All that remained were the wonderful memories of my life on the creek.
Town: The Teen Years
4.
We moved to Cleveland, Mississippi. A place that we referred to only as “Town”.
Town life was not kind to me and my family. Moving from Snake Creek to Town was like falling from a mountain top and landing on quicksand. To say that we didn’t adjust well would be the understatement of the millennium. We went from abundance to poverty in one swift motion.
Poverty travels with an entourage including, but not limited to: Tragedy, Crime, Shame, Pain and Death. All of which I have gotten to know on a first name basis.
My mom was fifty years old when she had me, therefore all of my siblings were grown and had children of their own when I was born.
My oldest brother killed a man during a gambling dispute. To avoid arrest he left town. His wife, along with my two older twin sisters, Red and Black, robbed and killed a local business owner. As a result, the three of them were sentenced to prison for manslaughter.
That left my mom to raise me, my six nephews, and my niece, and she had to do this on the minimum wage income of a maid, food stamps, and welfare.
The total income was only a fraction of what it took to raise eight children. The stamps were issued only once a month, and Mom always had to sell some of them to the bootleg preacher for half their face value, to get cash to help pay some of the utilities and the rent on the many condemned houses that we were constantly moving into, because we just couldn’t afford any better.
As a result of Mom selling the food stamps we were always short on food. In fact, we were always short on something! Short on toilet paper. Short on soap. Short on detergent. Short on utilities. Short on clothes and sometimes even short on life. But we were never short on love.
5.
The winter of 1979 was one of the coldest on record for the Mississippi Delta. Unfortunately, we lived at 501 Ruby Street, Cleveland, Mississippi.
The house had a single coat of old yellow dingy paint that was peeling away. It was a two bedroom, boxed shaped, wooden framed structure. The walls and ceiling were not insulated; the roof had holes in it the size of pennies; the exterior doors had at least an one inch space in between them and their seals, and we had to stuff many of the windows with cardboards and old rags, because of missing window panes.
The gas company refused to turn the gas on at 501 Ruby Street, because the old metal gas lines had corroded and leaked. Therefore, the only source of heat that we had was two small electrical heaters and an electrical hot plate that we also used to cook on.
Old man winter pimp slapped the small heaters around like a drunken abusive stepfather slaps his wife and stepson around. Likewise our bodies, shivered and ached from his heavy hand. We all had on several layers of clothes. We cuddled up close together and wrapped ourselves in blankets and homemade quilts that Mom had made when we lived on the creek, but we could still feel the lashing old man winter dealt to us.
My nephew, Toby, was the baby of the bunch. He was only two years old. He had developed a very rough, dry cough. He was no longer breathing, but rather gasping for air. His little frail body was burning with fever, and it was pouring with sweat.
Mom was still at work. We knew that this was no ordinary cold virus that would just go away on its own. We had to get the baby to the doctor.
We didn’t have a telephone, but there was one in the corner store across the street from our house. I reached under the top bunk mattress and retrieved the two .38 revolvers Mom had kept from our days on the creek. I took one and stuffed in my jeans and pulled my long plaid short over it. I gave the other one to my nephew, Kick, who was two years older than me.
“Me and Kick are going to the Corner Store to call Mom and an ambulance,” I announced to the others. I had armed us because the store owner didn’t like my nephews, because he had caught them stealing on several occasions. However, he and I got along well. I didn’t know if he would let me use his phone or not. All I knew was that I was willing to do whatever it took for me to call an ambulance and my mom. The calls were necessary to do something that could be construed as evil to make those calls, then it would be a necessary evil.
Mr. Wong, the store’s owner, ran the store with his wife. As soon as Kick and I entered the store Mr. Wong’s eyes locked on us suspiciously. There were no other customers in the store. Mr. Wong was standing at the counter. As I walked up to the counter Mr. Wong appeared as if he was about to say something, but I interrupted him before he could get any words out.
Mr. Wong was a short, small framed oriental man in his midfifties. He didn’t speak good English, but he spoke it well enough to communicate.
“Mr. Wong, my youngest nephew is very sick. May I please use your phone to call an ambulance and my mom?” I asked as politely as I could.
“You talk about little one?” He asked in his best English.
“Yes,” I replied.
“No problem.” He replied back as he passed me the phone from behind the counter.
After I had made the calls I assured Mr. Wong that my nephews wouldn’t steal from him again. Toby died on his way to the hospital from pneumonia complications. His death set in motion many necessary evils. My nephews and I had gotten short on tolerance.