 | JAIL?. GOODIE JACKSON kept thinking about that rich little white girl on TV, her big house surrounded in green, her toys, that nice school she attended on the river. Goodie just stared out into the “yard” which was just hard packed Georgia red clay with not a blade of grass growing on its cracked concrete-hard crust. She gazed at the heat mirages wafting upwards making her view of her everlasting world a shimmering nightmare. Besides the TV it was all she had to pass the endless years, always looking through the bars of her unit.
She always held onto iron bars three and eight of the ten, the perfect spacing for her short frame, noting how comfortable it was to have such a convenient hand hold.
She warily watched the construction crew far off, maybe
nine hundred feet away, their iridescent figures barely visible, silhouetted against the setting Sun adding the ninth tier of
cinder blocks to the new outer perimeter wall, bringing its
height up to about three feet, inexorably on its way up to nine
feet. Some government wards said they were going to put
razor wire on top too.
Looking out now, she dreamed of “going over” herself
but couldn’t--or was it “wouldn’t.” Yes her weight was one
thing, but even more dreadful was that they would grab her
and beat her just for spite before she even reached the perimeter.
It was July 18th, just past the Summer Solstice, so it stayed
light well past 9:00pm in the dog-days of Atlanta’s Summer,
the thermometer still at 90 degrees, the fetid air permeated
with the foulness pouring out of the Moore’s Mill Sewage
Treatment Plant—way worse than fresh crap; it was certainly,
indescribably more insidious.
But the scary thing about this filth in the air was that one
could actually kind of get used to it, but one could never “fix”
it. At least fresh shit could be seen, and one could either move
away from it, clean it up, yes, just “fix” it somehow. But not
this repulsive, nauseating odor. Worst yet, mentally, a person
could get used to it, but every nine hours (yes, nine hours)
one had a pang, knowing it was there—forever. It never let
you forget.
Still another hour until nautical twilight, it was abysmally
hot in her “unit” as they were politely called. Unless a miracle
happened, she would serve out her life sentence here.
All around her happiness was nonexistent. There was only
the debilitating despair that brought on desperation making one just a predatory, surviving animal.
There were three murders each month in and around this
government facility. But assaults, maiming and raping and drug
deals were a daily event. The worst of the wailing and shrieking
cranked up at 1:17 am.
Just last week, out over the wall, a kid shot a bottle rocket
through the window of a tanker truck, hitting the driver in the
face, seriously injuring him. The driver understandably lost
control of the truck that was carrying 9,000 gallons of diesel
fuel after his face caught on fire. The kids pulled him out of
the truck, not to save his life but to beat him and then pelted
him with rocks while he prayed out loud that they wouldn’t
kill him. They then danced on top of the massive tanker that
could have blown up the whole place. Kids shouldn’t be firing
bottle rockets into people’s faces turning over fuel tankers
because they were bored. But that was normal.
She heard that special TV beeping again and had to look
for the tenth time. There was the Amber Alert Signal again for
the missing little white girl. She called over to Tanisia telling
her to wake up. At only eighteen she already had three children,
by three different, long-gone fathers, just one more female
out of 2,178 sentenced here for life too. If the system
was one thing—it was capricious.
“Tanisia! Come here girl! Be checking this mess out! On
it go. Look at that! Ever show I be watching, the POlice be
putting that poor little white girl’s face on there. Look where
they’s looking for her—‘round this place! Bolton Road? Now,
what’s up with that mess? Can’t be no mo’ than a mile from
here.The TV showed what objectively had to be the prettiest
nine year old girl to ever activate the phosphors on a television
screen.
“Look! Look. There her picture come again. Look at
that little blond angel—nine year old too! Now you tell me,
there ain’t no purty little white girl like that living ‘round here!
They say she been kidnapped or something and I know that
be right—she don‘t live near here for sho’!”
Tanisia look closely, nodding her head. “I heard dat! Poor
thang. Look how blond she be! Dat baby’s daddy ain’t no
black man, that‘s for sure. She too damn white!”
Goodie studied her closely. “Un hum. Um hum. You
KNOW dat’s right girl.”
Goodie went back to her iron bars with a view.
Yet again, she strained her neck to the left to see the men
building the wall. Then out of the corner of her eye, she saw
something bobbing up and down behind the cinder block wall
right in front of her bars. She looked straight ahead now—the
wall not one hundred feet away in this section.
At first she thought it might be a pit bull. Goodie Jackson
was scared of dogs—especially those vicious things. She
stared in amazement.
Look! It ain’t no dog!
She saw a leg, a little white leg get over the top and
then… it wasn’t a dog. A white person was trying to break in!
Oh my! Look at that! Please help me Jesus!
There, now standing on top of the wall was a little white
girl shrieking, “Help! Help! Help me someone--he’s trying to
get me!”
Oh Jesus, help me! No, Jesus! Be helping that little girl!
A little four foot tall white girl was on top of the wall,
completely naked--screaming for her very life, whipping her
head back and forth like a crazed animal—no like a hunted
animal.
My lord, Jesus! It dat little girl on da TV!
The nude, hunted girl jumped down easy as a mountain
goat and squatted against the wall, palms in the dirt, hiding in
the lengthening shadows panting, for air, resting.
My lord, Jesus! It be her. The Amber Child on da’ TV!
Goodie Jackson did not think—she reacted like the
mother of nine fatherless kids that she was. With no thought
of herself, she smashed her unit door open and ran into the
feared yard—the war zone. The short woman, very overweight,
full of adrenaline, ran like a protective Georgia Brown Bear
to snatch the child, and scooped her up with one arm. The
Amber Child screamed in fear as Goodie, the momma bear
ran back just as fast, carrying the girl to safety, back behind
her unit’s bars.
Tanisia stood wide-eyed, looking as Goodie Jackson, hyperventilating
for air, tossed the pale white girl onto the
loveseat and screamed.
“Now lef’ out! Lock the doe’ and find a woman what’s
got a cell phone!”
Tanisia took a quick look at the little girl and ran. The
Amber Alert Child, seeing no man present, figured it out in
nine seconds. Safety.
Bravely, just nine years old, she covered herself with a
dusty pillow, adjusted her white hair, and politely sat straight up. It was over.
In minutes three helicopters were hunting overhead, like
birds of prey. They hunted for the perpetrator, not for Carolyn
Pemberton. The Amber Child was safe now with Goodie Jackson.
The choppers hunted, not “seeking” or “trying to find,”
they hunted for him as one would a vicious, rabid wolf.
The news vans beat some of the cops to the scene. No
less than eighteen police cars swarmed in. Half the number of
news vans arrived as well--nine.
They were on the hunt for the heroine, Goodie Jackson.
Many were shocked at the deplorable conditions of this “housing
project.”
In a way, her unit in the Perry Homes Government Housing
Project, arguably the most wretched one in Atlanta was
worse than a prison—at least safety wise.
After all the heroine questions and answers, came the
“why” of the horrible place.
The perimeter wall was being built to keep unauthorized
men: the pimps, drug dealers, rapists, muggers, and gang members
out, not to keep the single A.F.D.C. women in.
The government disgustingly used the word families in
their acronym but if a man was part of the family they would
cut the woman’s welfare off. This way, with no father around,
another generation of male muggers was all but assured.
One TV reporter stuck his mic at random in one man’s
face out in the dusty war-zone--only nonlethal now because
of the theory of safety in numbers. Then the “man” began.
“My daddy, before the Mexicans kilt him in prison, used to say to us all the time, “that if you can survive on the streets around here, you can survive anywhere in the worl’.”
“He‘d say, that if you take a guy off these streets and put
him in the center of Baghdad and take a U.S. trained soldier in
the United States military and if he had to bet who would
survive he is putting his money on his street-wise homey.”
Egging him on the reporter asked, “What is your name
sir?”
“Shit, holmes, my name is Lotto. All the cats knows me.
I hit the million.”
“Yes sir. Don’t tell me. You wasted all your money on
the lottery and finally won ‘a million.’ You’re so smart you
don’t know the government scammed you. You got a million-
-NOT. You got a lousy $50,000 per year for twenty years,
worse than a regular job, something you would know nothing
about.
“Then you were an inpatient zero and borrowed against
it. Now you’re broke, you fucking pimp.”
Lotto’s eyes boiled yellow...
“It’s like the joke Mr. Lotto.”
“WHAT HAS THREE BALLS AND FUCKS NIGGERS?
LIKE YOU?
Lotto’s hands went to his waist band feeling for his nine.
The reporter turned his mic off and said to the thug—
”Fuck you, and your tricked out Oldsmobile car and your
crown air-freshener you have on the dashboard. You are just a
my baby’s daddy, a mother-beating pimp. We want a real lady,
not a grown-up boy still playing gang-banger.”
The reporter shoved Lotto. Hard.
“Now go mug some old lady for her welfare check!”
“Oh yeah. The punchline!”
“CASH THREE!”
Good thing for safety in numbers. The reporter whistled
for a cop. Lotto was hauled off.
_____________________________________
Well, Atlanta got together, pooled some money, and
Jimmy Carter personally helped build Goodie Jackson, the
heroine, a new house.
Mr. Carter, said, “There it is, Miss Goodie. I did some of
the back deck. What do you like best?”
Goodie started crying. “Massa President, I love the deck
and everything about it, but the best part is what it don’t got.
I looking up there and I don’t see not one burglar bar.”
Carter himself wiped away a tear, pretending something
was in his eye.
Sure Carolyn was home safe. But the true hero and news
star was Goodie Jackson. Who had the best day? It was a toss
up.
The arrest had been too simple. The next day, without a
single chopper, they drove nine year old Carolyn Pemberton
back to the area and she said, “turn here, now here—OK, left
here.”
Pointing at a shack with three ragged-out ski-boats in
front, three motor homes and three pimp-mobiles in back she
hissed and said, “There.”
The cops used the most brutal technique allowed, a felony
take-down using a swat team, hurting twenty seven year old Brendon Paroubek severely. Using as much force as necessary
(none was really, because he was such a pussy) up to but
not including lethal force, they tortured geeky little Brendon,
already labeled as America’s Most Hated Child Molester, as
much as possible to “protect” the safety of the officers involved.
He did make one “aggressive” move. He dared to even
open his pedophile mouth to ask a question. A cop carrying a
huge pepper spray bottle the size of a fire extinguisher obligingly
filled little Brendon’s mouth with the caustic red fluid.
The cops loved it, seeing it almost killed him. Carolyn
liked it more.
As a present to her--and she wanted it bad--they let her
see eighteen seconds of their Command and Control Technique
as they treated him as brutally as possible.
Then they drove the little girl away so she would not
have to see him ever again.
And she wouldn’t. The physical evidence they found in his parents’ house, especially the pool cue, was so over overwhelming
Carolyn Pemberton would never see the inside of a courtroom. |  |
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