Shampoo

Shampoo
October 1990
Deion and Jim were moving into the blue house. The kids were with their grandmother. Jim took the T-Bird to town and picked up a rented rug shampoo machine. Deion was at home and had started the day in the usual manner, drinking enough to get a buzz or smoking enough pot to get slightly lit. She was in adequate shape to arrange things in the house.
Jim had run into Walter and Lisa Smothers. Lisa had mentioned that she had used the machine and knew how to shampoo a carpet. Walter was always looking for free drugs so of course volunteered Lisa to help do the Harris’s rugs. They all arrived at the blue house and Lisa had her baby with them. People began calling Jim asking what was happening, in fact, looking for a “party.” By mid afternoon several couples had arrived, dropping in for drugs to buy or get free if Jim was so inclined.
Lisa set to work helping with the rug-cleaning machine. Walter began mooching marijuana and beer. Some of the couples brought their own beer or some chips to eat. Jim rolled a long “party joint” and passed it around to whoever was there. After providing drugs, Jim took a turn on the shampoo machine. Walter felt obliged to do the same. Most couples were only in the way. As evening came on Lisa had finished what work she was willing to do on the carpet. Her baby, still in diapers, was getting hungry and tired, unable to sleep with the commotion of the adults. Lisa told Walter that she wanted to go home and put the baby to bed. Walter, hoping for better dope, free of course, perhaps some cocaine, told Lisa to go home without him and he would follow later.
M. P. remained with his soon to be wife, as well as Donald P. Jim had passed out from some pills he took with his marijuana and beer. With Jim unconscious on the couch it became clear to all that no cocaine was forthcoming. Donald and Walter began looking for other diversions, preferably sex. Donald was not married and while Walter’s wife was at home, new conquests always interested him. Walter, known to be pushy and a bully, was a person savvy girls avoided. Deion, in Tee shirt and jeans, was actively scurrying around the house picking up empty bottles and cans as well as diligently cleaning after spilled drinks. Walter and Deion began to comment on Deion’s activity and observed that she should be doing something useful, like giving them sex in the bedroom. As they laughed at their jokes they began following Deion around the house invading her body space. Deion diligently avoided them and, staying fairly drunk most of the time, was unperturbed by their harassment and suggestive language. When Walter tried to “get one up” on Donald by following Deion into the bathroom Deion became slightly impatient. M. P., his girlfriend being close friends with Deion, was disgusted at the manner in which Walter and Donald were openly trying to trap Deion for sex. Perhaps the ingratitude toward their host and drug provider disturbed him. He left with his girl and Jim was still passed out on the couch.
Deion looked at the late hour, it was past midnight, and wondered how long the last two guests would stay. Donald and Walter said they were ready to go home but alleged they had no transportation what with everyone else gone. Deion saw that the only way to get rid of them was to take them home, much as she did not want to being that Walter was a person she feared and Donald a person she rather loathed.
They set out in the T-Bird, Deion concentrating on driving in her semi drunk state, Walter in the back seat, Donald in the front seat beside Deion. Donald, being the bachelor, took it as his part to continue trying to entice Deion into sex. He kept telling Deion they should continue the “party” at his house or somewhere else. Deion for her part would only insist that they were going home. Walter would tease Donald from the back seat that his efforts to get Deion were futile.
Arriving at the brown singlewide trailer off Renfroe road Deion pulled up next to it. Donald, seeing his last chance, told Deion he had a needle inside with some dope and if she wanted, she was welcome to it. Deion, in constant need of drugs, agreed to go inside. They entered the darkened mobile home. Donald’s father awoke to ask who was there and Donald responded it was okay since it was just he and a friend. They passed the parent’s bedroom in the semi-dark and entered Donald’s bedroom. He closed the door, turned on the light, and found the needle. Deion offered her right arm and, being that her veins were already damaged from needles, Donald roughly pushed the large needle into the back of her wrist. Deion cried out in pain. What was in the needle was uncertain to Deion, if in fact there was anything like dope in it. After pushing the syringe and setting aside the needle Donald, stung by the fact he’d just expended a $40 hit, unzipped his trousers to recover his investment. He pulled out his erect penis and sat down on the chair next to the bed. Even before Deion could get any rush from the needle, he grasped Deion’s head by her hair he pulled her face down forcing her mouth over his erection. The roughness of his grasp sent it’s message and Deion immediately complied.
Outside, Walter stood with his face to the bedroom window, a voyeur to the whole event. As Donald forced Deion’s mouth over his penis Walter became aroused by the sex in front of him. He was not one to watch another man get sex in front of him if he felt he could bully his way in first. Pounding on the window he shouted,
“Hey, what’s going on there? Cut it out! Deion, let’s go.”
Deion, unable to act on her own, was more than happy to have an excuse to end this activity. As Walter pounded loudly on the window she straightened up and mumbled dazedly “Okay, I’m coming.” Donald was irritated and disappointed. With Walter, whom he wished not to fight, pounding and looking in the window, he declined to force Deion to continue.
Deion quickly exited the mobile home and as she sat down in the car Walter began scolding her immediately.
“What the hell were you doing there?” Walter asked with planned indignation. “Why’d you do that?”
“I was just doing drugs,” said Deion.
“No you weren’t just doing drugs,” shouted Walter, "I saw what you were doing to him.”
Deion tried to avoid the sex part by pleading about the drugs.
“The needle hurt me, it hurt real bad when he stuck it in.”
“Well you deserved that,” said Walter in his still scolding voice.
Walter continued his verbal assault on Deion making it obvious that he considered her actions reprehensible. Deion, flushed with guilt began to cry. Walter, seeing that she was verbally subdued began suggesting Deion stop the car beside the isolated road. Deion shook her head and kept driving. Less than three-quarters of a mile from Donald’s house Walter made his move. He reached over the console and pulled the steering wheel from Deion hands. Simultaneously he stuck his foot over and pushed the car’s brake. They came to a halt in a left bend which offered a driveway and field entrance gravel for vehicles. Walter pushed the shirt lever to Park. He continued his assault on Deion’s guilt.
“I know what you were doing there” said Walter with great emphasis and implied innuendo. “I know what you want.”
Deion tried continue. Walter had turned of the ignition and Deion, recovering from her frustration, reached for the ignition to start the car. The keys were missing.
“You took the keys,” said Deion. She tried to assert herself. “Give me the goddamn keys.”
Her voice was weak and only the alcohol hid the tremble to her voice. She was scared being stopped beside an isolated road with a man she had never been alone with before. The subject on his mind was sex. In spite of the alcoholic buzz, Deion was scared.
Walter held the keys in his lap suggestively. “You know where the keys are and you know what you have to do to get them.”
Deion tried to plead with assertiveness but Walter clearly saw his advantage. He crawled between the bucket seats of the T-Bird and sat in the back. He reached forward and pulled on Deion’s arm. She pulled back saying “No” but Walter increased the pressure of his grip causing the first level of pain to Deion. It was enough. Defeat was clear to her and she only wanted to survive. She allowed him to pull her to the back seat. He took of her jeans and panties. It was the end of her menstrual cycle and she had a tampon in. Walter encountered the tampon with his erection and accusingly said to Deion, “What’s this?" Deion’s guilt increased for her body offending him. He pulled the tampon and threw it to the floor. Then he forced himself in her. She gasped a low moan of hurt.
“I knew you wanted it,” said Walter. He began shoving in and out of Deion as she tried to blank out and go limp. “ I knew it, you like this don’t you.” He kept on and on telling her how good she felt until he ejaculated and stopped. Deion emerged from her black out and totally relieved it was over, began to put back on her clothes. She pulled on her jeans and, frightened of the dark, awkwardly climbed back to the front seat. Walter simply sat in the back seat supremely satisfied with his success. There was a full bottle of beer under the seat. Deion took the beer and quickly swallowed it down. The emotional fog preceded the alcohol’s impact and she felt okay. She had not been badly injured and best of all, it was over.
Deion took the keys from him and started down the road. She drove in a fog of relief. The worst was over. She was not badly injured. He had not beaten her. She could continue on now knowing she had endured the worst Walter had to offer that night.
Walter decided he didn’t want to go straight home. Perhaps he had convinced himself that Deion wanted him and was seeking to prolong and plan for future engagements. He directed Deion to drive down unfamiliar roads. She protested she would soon run out of gas. Walter directed her to a gas station at a four way stop in McKenzie. He told Deion to stay in the car and he would pump the gas. Deion complied and sat in her semi-stupor at the wheel. Walter pumped some gas, hung the pump nozzle. Deion looked up after she heard the nozzle click and Walter did not join her. Instead, he was hunched down over the rear bumper and, unbeknownst to Deion, was bending up the license plate so it could not be read. He sat in the front seat beside Deion and quickly instructed her to drive.
“Get going he commanded.” She started the car. “Go!” was Walter’s forceful demand. When she did not accelerate fast enough he reached his foot over and pushed the gas for her. Deion was flustered but managed to keep control. They wordlessly drove roads according to Walters’s commands. If he spoke of something she did not hear. She drove simply wishing she had more to drink. Empty bottles were all that were under the seat now.
She drove east on State route 70. At the auction house she turned left, down into the dip on Hebron Church Road. The T-Bird climbed out of the depression and crossed the single railroad track. Descending on the other side she noticed a mobile on the left, or perhaps there were four or five. A barn, a building, a series of randomly parked vehicles in fields. Climbing the next hill she threaded her way between the cemetery flanking both sides of the road next to the Hebron Methodist Church. A two step porch set twelve feet off the asphalt led to the double white front doors of the clapboard Church. Another slight depression and around the bend with its field and cows to the right. Past another mobile on the left. A white wood frame house. The car rose to a slight hump and the silver roof of a mobile home, the tops of three windows, was visible beyond the next rise. The sun was above the horizon in the October morning twilight.
“Keep going, keep going,” Walter commanded.
Deion drove past the driveway of the mobile home.
“Turn here,” said Walter and she turned around two hundred feet past the mobile home.
As they approached the mobile home from the opposite direction Walter commanded she stop in the roadway and forty feet from the mobile he left the car only saying “I hope Lisa ain’t up.”
Deion drove slowly west on Highway 70. She dreaded going home. She knew Jim would be angry. She had survived one ordeal for the night. She was tired and not up to a second fight. As she pulled in the driveway of the blue house Jim was on the porch to greet her.
“Where have you been all night?” shouted Jim.
Deion ignored his questions until he repeated them in a threatening voice. She merely answered, ”I drove around.”
Jim persisted against her excuses.
“Where did you go? Who were you with? You were with Walter. Lisa’s called here twice already looking for Walter.”
Deion stepped around him into the house. Jim followed her and continued his interrogation. Deion continued being evasive.
Jim went out to the car and found the tampax on the floor. Holding it aloft he came in the house.
“What’s this?”
Deion put up no defense to his line of questions. She admitted Walter had fucked her. Jim knew Walter well, he also knew Deion and he knew Walter had no drugs.
“Did you want to fuck him?” Jim asked.
“No,” said Deion, “But I couldn’t stop him.”
“He raped you didn’t he?” said Jim.
“I guess” was Deion’s only reply, “I’m tired, I want to sleep.”
Jim was not satisfied. He soon got sufficient details from Deion to fill in the story.
“How could you be so dumb? Why’d you even drive those guys home? You know what Walter’s like.” He harangued Deion putting blame on her.
Deion felt it was all her fault. She just wanted to rest. She wanted to forget the whole thing.
She had just showered when the phone rang.
It was Lisa Smothers
“Did you screw my husband?” Lisa demanded.
Deion was evasive. The answer was not clear.
“Not really,” she said.
“What do you mean?” demanded Lisa, “Did you or did you not screw my husband?”
“Yeah, I guess I did.” Said Deion.
“You guess you did. You fucking bitch did you screw my husband?” demanded Lisa.
“Well it’s not like I wanted to” replied Deion.
“What are you talking about” shouted Lisa, “Are you trying to say he raped you?”
Deion only wanted to get the conversation over. She knew what Lisa wanted to hear.
“No,” said Deion, “I’m not saying he raped me.”
“You bitch, I’ll see you in court.” Was Lisa’s final shout before she slammed down the phone.
Deion and Jim went to pick up Drew and Savannah. When they drove back to the house Lisa and Walter were waiting in their car across the road.
Deion had Savannah in her arms, Drew at her side. Lisa led the way as she and Walter walked across the road.
Lisa started the same shouting.
“You bitch, did you fuck my husband?”
Deion said nothing. Jim entered the argument.
“Leave her alone, it was Walter’s fault.”
“Shut up” shouted Lisa.
Lisa was five feet ten and over two hundred pounds. The former Lisa Simpson, class of ’85. Her step father was the Huntingdon police chief. She intended to bully Deion and continued to confront her in spite of Jim. Walter stood back disgustedly encouraging her to stop listening to them and leave.
Lisa spied the license plate and demanded to know why it was turned up. She knew it was a trick her husband used to steal gas. Deion was mystified and could not answer. Lisa persisted to find the truth of her husbands all night disappearance. Deion neither defended herself nor confirmed. She would not look at Walter. The children started to cry from the raised voices and the shouting. Deion and Jim decided to end the encounter by walking in the house. Lisa stood in the yard shouting. “You bitch, I’ll see you in court.”

Deion was later to meet Donald P. in Casey’s. Donald was a person to keep marijuana on hand. Some he would sell. He would use regularly.
Deion was likely living in the mobile with her parents since she relates she was ‘alone’ at the time. It was before noon that she went to Casey’s Bar and Grill. She sat at the bar drinking a beer and fending off men she did not know. Donald came in and said hello. He sat down to have a beer with her and eventually suggested they “go out and smoke a joint.” Donald did not own a car or truck and they left in Deion’s T-Bird. They went not far to find a deserted road and stop. They smoked pot and somehow Deion found herself in the back seat with Donald. He began taking off her pants and Deion knew she did not want sex with him. She had not had too much beer to drive and she never could smoke enough pot to prevent her from driving. Even so, she was not up to fighting off Donald. She went into her shell of self-hypnosis and endured until he was finished. Then she calmly opened the car door, got into the driver’s seat and drove back to the bar. She stayed there the rest of the day drinking beer and staying buzzed long after Donald left.
Some months later Donald encountered her under the same circumstances and she was experienced enough to insist they remain in the parking lot of Casey’s to smoke his joint. She escaped his persistent moves on her by leaving her car and joining Jeanne and David Bradley as they came by and drove her away. She came back the next day and got her car. She left her car often at places.
Last year Donald wrote Deion and recalled their sex. He was in prison and wanted her to write. He said it was the best night he ever had. Deion threw his letter away.

To Feel

I am a fifty-seven year old man. I do not know what a seven-year old girl feels when she is raped at her aunt’s house. I cannot tell you what a twelve-year-old girl feels when she is given liquor and coerced into multiple sex. I cannot feel the loss of hope which by high school will bring a suicide attempt. I cannot explain why trained counselors do not recognize drug, alcohol, and sexual abuse in children and adolescents. I cannot tell you why ministers and lawyers abuse their trust and regard their female client’s sex as the property of all men, something they share in common with far too many men. I can tell you tell you that there are two persons who hate Deion. One is a woman of self-issued prestige who is angry and jealous that Deion had far more men than she did. The other is a male who is angry that a woman, reportedly free with her sex, did not share sex with him. Both are angry for the sex they did not get.
This story was gently but persistently drawn from a woman in prison who had virtually no self-knowledge when I met her. I have spent over five hundred hours in her prison’s visitation room. As well, I spent many days in Carroll County, Tennessee, in Deion’s home. This was time with her children, parents, relatives, friends (the few that deserve that title) and community members who rightly or wrongly judged her.
Over two years ago I met a girl in need of becoming a woman. She had two children and struggled mostly just to be a good and supportive mother. She was 29 at that time and had spent the last seven years of her life in prison. I would know her almost one year before I realized she was not guilty of her crime. She intuitively knew that, but she could not verbalize her lack of legal guilt while, as always in her life, particularly when raped, she accepted guilt when handed it from overbearing males, rapists, judges, and prosecutors. Thus I suggested to her this story, which we both put together, in an effort to understand her life and suggest her innocence.
Understanding her own life was necessary for Deion to mature and be an adult mother. Establishing Deion’s innocence, for herself and myself initially, was to eliminate her own crippling guilt. Secondly it would allow her children some insight into how their mother became one of societies lowest, a convicted murderer. These children have a right to know that their mother is not the person the newspapers convicted. They also have a right to know the relatives and friends who took their mother down. Deion’s innocence will not necessarily get her out of prison since most of her appeals have been squandered by her less than competent lawyers. But understanding her innocence will definitely improve her emotional well being and the well being of her children, Drew, and Savannah, now 13 and 12.
This is a story about sex. It is how sex so quickly ruins a little girl and prevents her from maturing. This story is about the males who impose sex on little girls and the females who condone it. Drug and alcohol addictions do not exist without purpose. Deion’s life was so traumatic and futile that by age fourteen alcohol and drugs were her only escape from the harrowing reality of life in a small Tennessee town. Throughout this story I tried to determine what Deion felt as she went from trauma to tragedy in a self-destructive life. I regret that I never did, or haven’t yet, determined what she felt. I hope that as this story is told someone else will feel what she felt and give her the comfort that I, to my own dismay, cannot.
Deion and I are from the polar ends of the social class structure in America. Being of opposite sex makes it no easier to feel and understand each other. But we are both parents, and that single thread, parental concern for our children, became the common conversation through so many visitation hours. I’ll keep trying to feel what she felt. She will keep trying to tell me. She recently shrugged her shoulders and dropped head between them as a turtle does trying to escape danger, “You cannot feel what I do. You’ve never lost everything. You’ve never had everything taken away. My children, my life.” She emerged from her shell crying, one of the few times in that prison visitation room, and quickly went to the rest room before someone saw her. I can only despair at failure. I am the upper class. My life has been one of advantages. I might understand Deion, but will I ever feel what she feels? Listen to her tell her own story, then tell me what you hear.


THE SEX OF HURT

At sixteen Denise had a house, a husband, a one-year old baby, and a lot of friends to party with. Five years younger, Deion viewed her sister’s life as both mature and complete. It was more fun to be at her sister’s than to stay home where their invalid mother dominated the messy doublewide. “Being at Denise’s was cool,” said Deion years later.
She went on errands with her sister, the two young women riding in the car and waving to friends as they cruised to the store. All Denise’s in-laws and friends knew Deion. She had made herself visible and useful in a dozen ways not the least of which was cleaning Denise’s house and babysitting her little boy, Kurt. All this work had its reward as Deion gained entrance to her sister’s social life. Cigarettes were an assumed privilege not all fifth or sixth graders had. Even marijuana and alcohol were available, a glowing reward Deion felt quite proud to share with her own girl friends. All of this adult partaking seemed to bridge the age gap past adolescence and Deion felt quite grown-up and fortunate.
For Denise, being a housewife was more fun than school, even if the “house” was a bedroom in her in-law’s home. A year and a half after the wedding, Denise and Tony, with FFA assistance, built the small brick two bedroom they would live in for the next twenty years. Deion was there for all of it. Her sister’s life was interesting. Best of all, it was just one mile by gravel road, shorter through fields, from her parent’s home.
Unchangeability and relationships are everything to a stagnant rural life. Family reunions may bring a hundred. Relations walk in the door and don’t need to knock. Unless they have come from afar they needn’t say hello. They fit right in. Kin Folk relations are special. But the most intriguing relation to young people is the sexual relation. In spite of marriage at fifteen, Denise found the opportunities to experiment in extra-marital relations within the security of her nuptial bond.
Deion’s parents one mile away, felt comfortable knowing Deion was at her sister’s house in her adolescent years. She was also less of a burden to them. Deion looked forward to being at Denise’s on week-ends. Ten to twenty cars would park out front and the small house would fill with teenagers and youth of their early twenties. Deion was often the youngest partier and felt quite mature for it. On a winter’s evening in Deion’s seventh grade her sister, urged by her husband, declared “you’re not a real woman until you’ve slept with a man.” Twelve-year-old Deion, who had not started menstruating, was having a hard time deciding if she wanted sex. To help her with the decision, Denise and a few men gave her extra whiskey. With laughter, camaraderie, and coercion, Denise, Tony, and friends got Deion well intoxicated. Shortly before she passed out Billy M., a high school senior, gave her his drunken sex in Kurt’s bedroom. After he was done, Gary B., a young man in his twenties gave sex so painfully that even in her drunk state Deion cried out and tried to fight him off without success. A steady flow of persons went in and out of the Kurt’s bedroom to watch Deion’s sexual initiation. A third fellow climbed on but Deion fought him off before passing out from the whiskey.

It has been forty-five years since I was in seventh grade. It was a Catholic School in Eugene, Oregon and girls did not wear make-up, not even lipstick. No one smoked anything. I was in my twenties before I could imagine events such as Deion went through at twelve. What did she feel? I can only reconstruct events. Did she give consent for the sex? “No, it just happened,” said Deion nineteen years later. Did she like the sex? “No, but it was part of being a woman. That’s what I was told anyway. I loved the parties. But not the sex. I was taught girls are supposed to give sex to guys, it’s what they’re supposed to do.”

The next day’s hangover was tempered by Denise and Tony’s congratulations. It had been a great party and Deion had given a good performance. Deion felt physically sick and emotionally confused. If sex was so much fun why did it hurt and why did everyone laugh at her? Monday morning she rode the school bus with all the other seventh graders.
Sitting at her desk in school, her mind was solely on her education in her sister’s house. Classroom learning had no relevancy anymore.
A few days later, hoping to choose her boyfriends rather than have Denise choose, Deion went flirting. She took a beer in her pocket (proof of maturity) and a few cigarettes. She walked a short distance up the road to “KC” E.’s house. The sixteen-year-old fellow was working on his car when Deion arrived. She hung around talking of nothing, smoking, nursing the beer bottle and feeling cool. That weekend as couples began arriving at the Taylor’s, Deion commented to Denise that KC “was cute” and wondered if he was coming. Tony Taylor heard this and was immediately on the phone to KC. Her brother-in-law’s words remain etched in Deion’s memory; “Deion’s here and wants to fuck your brains out,” said Tony into the telephone. Embarrassment and fear gripped Deion.
The party added one more as KC soon arrived for his promised sexual encounter. He sat at the kitchen table having a beer with Denise, Deion and some others. Deion was scared and unable to look at him. She said little and tried to remain calm. She knew everyone had heard Tony. She knew she was expected to perform. “Somehow I was again in the bedroom,” related Deion at this later date. KC immediately pulled her pants down to her ankles, her shirt and bra remained in place. There was no kissing, fondling, nor thought of lubricant. He simply dropped his own pants to his ankles and mounted Deion. He forced his way in and Deion cried in pain. “He didn’t care that he was hurting me. He just kept at it saying ‘relax, relax and it won’t hurt as much.’” The pain was terrible and all Deion could do was endure and wait for it to end. When he ejaculated he was happy to announce, “feel that?” Deion felt a fluid warmness but did not know what it was. She could only think, “He hurt me, he didn’t care.” When it was over she had to return to the party a spectacle trying to hide the pain. Rooster proud, KC had little to say. There was no affection involved.
The next day Deion consulted her older sister about the pain. “He must have a big penis,” was Denise’s admiring comment. She happily asked Deion if she had measured his penis. It was all a grand time for Denise. It was painful and humiliating for twelve year old Deion.
Years later, in high school, Deion and a girlfriend, Lenette, were searching for marijuana. Lenette’s uncle suggested they try to get some from KC, a fellow Deion had avoided for several years. Lenette dropped Deion at KC’s and went to town on an errand. Deion soon found herself in the bedroom with KC, in the bed, with all their clothes off. This time she was fully aware of what was happening. “I knew before I stopped there it would happen, he was that kind of guy.” Deion was fortified by “eight or ten beers” and she mounted KC herself on top. Without emotion she pumped on him until he ejaculated. Then she rolled over and went to sleep. She woke up to the sound of Lenette at the door. “Deion’s not here,” said KC. Lenette cursed and called him a liar. Deion hurriedly dressed and as KC came to the bedroom she remembered her mission had been to get marijuana. “Got any pot?” said Deion. When KC said no Deion wordlessly passed by him and joined Lenette.

“Why did you have sex with him that second time?” I asked Deion now fifteen years later. With determination she replied, “I wanted to prove he couldn’t hurt me. I wanted to show him he had no more power to hurt me. I’d had so much sex by then he couldn’t hurt me. I had to show him.” Then she stopped and looked thoughtful; “You’ve always asked me why I had so much sex. Is that why? To prove to myself, and them, that they couldn’t hurt me?” I couldn’t answer. I could only suggest “Deion, that was a very sick culture you grew up in. You were wounded badly as a child. Only now are the wounds becoming evident. Perhaps now you can begin to heal.”

RAPE IS A SOUTHERN RURAL PEROGATIVE

Nothing in my life has prepared me to understand these events in Deion’s life. They are so far from my own experience that I can only try to relive them through the maximum detail I can get Deion to reveal. Even at that, our lives have so little in common that I miss many significant things simply because I do not know enough to ask. The early revelation of this abuse, and I am the one who first used the word abuse in regard this activity, came on November 11th, 2000. It was my fourth visit with Deion and we discussed sex since it had come up before. She recalled sex with dozens and dozens of men and could not remember when it started. I asked her how many times she had been raped. Tony, her brother-in-law's rape of her had been related early to me since she was especially bitter about it and it was in public record. She confided her rape in the Carroll County jail and I asked her when else it had happened. Three rapes was the final number she gave at that time. It was how she kept insisting that she did not know how much sex she had due to her drinking and blackouts that caused me to probe this area. Both the events and their chronology were vague in Deion’s mind but I insisted something was wrong here and I asked her to try her best to remember. In December she wrote a letter and gave the following account:
My mom confronted me about this once and I couldn't stand the thought of it and refused to believe it happened. She told me she heard I was getting drunk at Tony and Denise's, so drunk I would pass out and they would let people have sex with me for money while I was passed out. I got real mad at mom for saying such a thing! Even though I couldn't remember what happened because I was passed out, I refused to believe such a thing happened! I felt so betrayed by my own sister, even though I refused to believe it!
Until one night my cousin, (Joe F.) and I were out partying and he kept hitting on me and trying to touch me. I told him to stop that he was my cousin and that it was not right. He looked at me so cold with his drunken eyes and laughed and said "I've already fucked you once! Why won't you let me again!" I looked at him crazy and said "No you haven't fucked me! You're fucking crazy if you think you have!" He said "Yes I have fucked you and it was good but you don't remember it. I fucked you one night while you were passed out at Tony and Denise's along with two other guys!"
Even though I couldn't remember, after him saying this I knew it must have happened. It felt like someone punched me right in the face. Even with the embarrassment and feeling of disgust I looked at him and said, "No, you didn't. I don't believe you." I felt so dirty. The thought of having sex with him disgusted me. I felt like a child who had been made fun of because he didn't wear nice clothes like other kids in school. I felt so alone, sad, angry, betrayed. I couldn't believe my sister let this happen.
In our visit over the New Years week-end the story of this event came forth. Deion had been at Denise’s and they were playing quarters. In this game you bounce a quarter off the table into a glass of beer. If you miss you must drink the beer but if you succeed you choose who drinks the beer. Seated around the table with Deion were her cousin, Joe F., Fred N., “Junior” K., Denise and Tony Taylor. The table soon had a conspiracy to get Deion drunk which she did. Deion does not remember what happened because she blacked out while drinking. She awoke the next morning naked in the bedroom and remembers an empty whiskey bottle next to her. She put something on and went to the front room. She asked Denise what had happened the night before. Denise cursed at her and pointed to a spot on the floor. Deion had vomited from the alcohol and Denise accused her of almost throwing up on the toddler, Curt. Deion felt very bad and didn’t recall the event until her mother confronted her sometime later. She definitely remembers this as the first time she blacked out. After this blackouts would be common and most all her friends have seen her in this walking blacked out state.
The revelation of this story became a turning point in my relationship with Deion. She insisted to me that her sex while blacked out was her fault since, in the words of Denise, “It wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t got drunk.” I sent Deion copies of Tennessee State law as well as Washington and other states. All listed sex with person’s unable to give consent, for any reason be it drugs, alcohol, or mental retardation, as rape. I further sent Deion all the state statues on rape and the definitions for their application. Of particular interest is the age of Deion when these events took place, and the age of the perpetrators. By mid January 2001 it was clear to me that Deion had been raped dozens if not hundreds of times from age twelve onward. The difficulty was in sorting out the ones she remembered and the one’s she only heard about from others. In her own mind she had yet to even begin to deal with all that rape. She was in denial.
It was at this time that I noticed my own emotional crisis set in. I was suffering the trauma of a person who is close to a rape victim. I called various rape crisis centers and hospitals in Washington. Fortunately, I live in a state where rape is taken seriously. I visited several centers and soon began learning the subject. I bought books on rape and sent a copy of each one I bought to Deion. Upon the advice of a counselor I sought treatment for Deion even though she did not ask for it. When we talked of a counselor she refused group counseling and refused the paid staff of the prison. None of it was effective she felt. Good fortune was ours for the prison chaplain set Deion a one to one appointment with a volunteer. This wonderful woman, Carolyn L., would play a major part in Deion’s recovery. For myself, I had to be content with self-help books.
It a late January, 2001, visit, while talking around the subject of Deion’s sex life, she relayed the story of Gary B., the uncle of her good friend Lenette. This story must have surfaced due to her recent awareness that sex without consent is rape. It seems that Deion and Lenette had gone to Arkansas with Gary. The young girls had partied often at Gary and his wife Arlene at their double-wide mobile home. Gary naturally bought the fifteen year old girls wine coolers on the trip to Arkansas and pot was smoked as well. Deion and Lenette were dropped at Garys sister’s house in Osceola while he went on to visit relatives further upstate. Gary returned and spent only one night at his sisters before returning to Huntingdon. It was during that night, while Deion was sleeping on the couch, that Gary silently came to her. She woke up to her P.J. bottoms being pulled down and Gary spreading her legs. He said nothing but only pushed his sex on her and when he was done he pulled out and left. There was no kissing, petting, foreplay, or talk. He didn’t even pull her P.J.s back up. When they left the next day Deion felt very sick. She sat in the back of the crew cab pickup and said nothing the whole way home. She obviously suffered post rape trauma. Deion did not want sex with him but she did nothing. She lay there inert while he raped her. I asked carefully and persistantly, “why didn’t you fight him off, call out for help, report him when you got home.” Deion looked at me puzzled and confused. “What could I do? What was I supposed to do?” she said. It was clearly beyond her to understand resistance to a man she partied with. At home she understood and avoided Gary’s further advances. She felt terrible around Arlene because she like Arlene so much. “Why did you feel guilty around Arlene?” I asked. “Because I’d had sex with her husband,” was Deion’s reply. She was unable to understand she was raped. Subsequent investigation located this episode at the summer of 1986. Deion was 15 and Gary was over thirty. It was statutory rape as well as 3rd degree rape. Yet Deion did not understand the crime. The event of unwanted sex had become such a common part of Deion’s life that she could not see reality or law.
Contributing to her confusion was the rural attitudes about rape. Her Nashville lawyer reports that rape convictions in rural areas are not common. “They are easy to fight, the court is always against the woman.” It seems that only class differences will produce a rape conviction. That is, if a lower class male rapes an upper class woman there might be a conviction. It a black man rapes a white woman there might be a conviction. But if the woman is of the lower classes, and Deion lived in a trailer, or if she is known to have had sex with others, a charge of rape will seldom be pursued by the prosecutor’s office. This gives a fertile environment for males to continue forcing sex on selective women and girls. The women and girls themselves have surrendered to the inevitable and stop fighting back. But the character harm enlarges as generation after generation of women are born and raised without self-respect.

Defending Children

To the Editor March 24, 2003
Carroll County News-Leader
P.O. Box 888
Huntingdon, TN 38344,

I’m writing in regard to the corporal punishment used on in our schools. I was utterly astonished when I was informed that my daughter received corporal punishment for turning in homework late! The school file report states, “chose licks instead of detention.” My daughter isn’t old enough to decide if she can get her ears pierced or go to a school function without the consent of a parent. Why should she be allowed to choose corporal punishment without the same approval?
I clearly remember my 7th grade school year at Huntingdon Jr. High. I was removed from the classroom and led to a little room where my teacher told me to bend over and grab my ankles. He then proceeded to give me 3 licks with a large paddle. Would you like to know what’s going through an adolescent girl’s mind when this is happening? It is degrading and humiliating for an adult male to tell a twelve-year old girl to bend over and grab her ankles or knees! As she’s bent over all her self worth and respect is stolen. The little girl asks herself, “Do all men get to do this to me?” “What did I do so bad to deserve this?” With what little dignity she has left she uses it to hold back the tears before she walks back into the classroom. Please tell me what good corporal punishment has done this little girl?
My daughter spends many days representing the school on the cheer squad. She works hard and struggles to keep her grades above average. Most children don’t learn at the same pace as others. Have the teachers thought about taking a little extra time to help the student who doesn’t comprehend as quickly as the others? I guess that’s what corporal punishment is for! The bruises on her buttocks will remind her that she’s a bad girl for not learning as quick as the other kids and turning her homework in late. Maybe next time she’ll turn her homework in whether she understands it or not.
My daughter isn’t the only girl in our school who’s received corporal punishment that left bruises. On any morning ten students will be lined up for licks in the office.
Beating our children isn’t helping them learn in school. It’s doing more harm than good. I do understand children’s need to be disciplined. Our schools need to learn to work with parents on discipline and homework problems. Please don’t let this happen to our children any longer. Stop corporal punishment before it does any more damage!
But who am I to ask this of you? I’m just a concerned mother in prison doing life without parole because I was molested, raped, physically and mentally abused, and controlled by men as a child up through adulthood.
Will my cry of help to protect our children be heard?

Respectfully,


Teresa Deion Smith Harris 233590
T.P.W, Unit 2 North B-62
Nashville, TN 37218-3302

Of Mothers Of Children of Razor Topped Fences

OF MOTHERS, OF CHILDREN, OF RAZOR TOPPED FENCES

Excited greetings surround the five. The man and wife in their sixties are parents of the attractive thirty-year old woman. The boy twelve, the girl eleven, of different fathers are obviously children to the young mother in blue denim trousers and jacket. The shortened hugs and kisses dodge around the grandmother who is in a wheel chair. The blond young mother is the center of attention. It is she who's trouser legs state in white letters: TN DEPT OF CORRECTIONS, the standard uniform for inmates.
There are sixteen tables and four are empty. It is twelve-thirty and past second count. Thirteen women of near four hundred will have visitors today. A table is selected and additional chairs brought up. Drew and Savannah are seated on each side of their mother. They shout the word "Mom" with pent-up ecstasy. It is a common endearment denied these children except for this monthly week-end pilgrimage, now in its seventh year.
"Deion," says Grandpa as he produces the institutional debit card, "The kids have been real good." With this mom takes the kids to the vending machines. The Correctional Officer's gaze is only slightly interested as they slowly cross the worn gymnasium floor. A certain touching, finger hair-combing, is tacitly allowed mom as she waits for the snacks and soda to vend. She may try to linger and prolong the moment but eventually they must sit back down. A holiday air sets in as Pepsi cans open and Baby Ruths are unwrapped. The plastic table's poor fare could pass for a King's feast given the joy it brings.
Mom begins rituals by giving praise to each child in turn for their school grades. Each sibling excitedly reviews the minute detail of tests, schoolmates, and episodes since their last visit. The children's incautious voices contrast to the careful words of their mother as the C.O.s look on or listen as they choose.
Grandma inquires about Deion's roommate whom she regards as another daughter in spite of never seeing her in the free world. Deion lowers her voice to confirm that Tammy's gall bladder is still painful. Wilma nods and accepts the idea of misery and helplessness as life's entitlement for some people. Tammy is promised a separate visit when the weather warms up. Wilma apologizes for her crippling arthritis then obliquely comments on the absence of heat in the gym. She echoes Billy's praise for children and states that "Drew fixes me breakfast near every day."
The good behavior of the children paves the path for their aspirations. The Queenly inmate presides over hearings as each child's goal, hope, and petition is brought forth. Deion asks questions of her parents and mediates discussion between children and grandparents. Soon Drew's bowling and sports schedule is outlined. Equipment will have to be purchased. Next comes Savannah's hopes for cheerleader. Baton lessons and gymnastics enter the conversation. There is always the subject of money and "Who'll take them to their practice?" The boy sees fit to exert his superior age and size by commenting on any detail he can. Grandparents accept mom's superior role and defer to her judgment while silently knowing it is they who must execute her plans. As the discussion of the kid's activities deepens mom's brow becomes furrowed and her voice demanding as she fights for her children's needs. Savannah’s lessons will cost her a week’s prison wages. There will be less money for clothes. Finally resolution is reached, Deion relaxes, and the children turn to her for games and play.
The gymnasium visitation area is not well stocked with playthings. Mother and son begin playing scissors, rock, paper. The petit blond girl swings her feet on the plastic lawn chair and contemplates her future on the rally squad. Soon Deion directs her attention to Savannah and the burly Drew wanders over to visit a family at another table. He is no stranger here and there are friends of common bond for this unique group of citizens. The C.O.s overlook the forbidden shift of tables for a boy of twelve. Without her brother's competition the shy girl turns bubbly and playful as mom's poking hands elicit giggles and squeals.
As visitation closing draws near the three-hour family bonding takes a melancholy tinge. Deion's hands, never in her lap, always rubbing her children, grow greedy for more touching. Grandparents look on thoughtfully, pleased to have given life once more to their own imprisoned girl. Only the children's joy eases the pain and remorse. When the guard calls out, "visitation's over" a small girl's eyes fill with tears. She bravely holds them back. The gregarious boy is oblivious to pain. In a manful stance he holds his head high, shunning his own feelings. Mom gives a parting hug and kiss which is allowed if conforming to public standards. Furtively, Deion makes a quick last minute demand; "Who loves who the most." Drew and Savannah reply dutifully "I love you the most." "No, I love you more," quips mom. Then the spell is broken and the Queen resumes her lifelong role as society's lowest. She joins her fellow prisoners against the cinderblock wall.
All smiles and waves, the women in denim with that white stripe begin filing into the departure room to be stripped naked and searched for contraband. The guard radio's the front security station, "Four freeworlds coming over," and motions the family to leave. Deion's father pushes his wife's wheelchair through the aging gymnasium door. Virtually out of habit he muses self-consciously "If we could have afforded a lawyer," and the children pass between razor topped fences to silently exit their mother's home.