The Education of "Babyface"
Receiving Teaching On the Inside
By G. Melesaine

What one determines as education plays a role in how one chooses to live, whether they were receiving their lessons from a Yale professor or an addict in jail. It comes in all forms, unnoticed until you've applied it, and once you've applied it, you've realized why it seemed that God was laughing while you were planning your future. Someone told me I had a problem with being open and I figured because I've been disappointed too many times by people it left me closed. I met a woman awhile back who told me something that I'll always remember, and recently I saw her again downtown with a little changes, changes that disappointed me.

I could feel the sun penetrating through my pores as I walk to the yard, the heat reminds me of summer and an Ocean Beach that is a wet dream to me. Quickly, reality beats me in my head 30 minutes in the same place, with the same people, in the same clothes, at the same time. We are all locked up together in this jail.

I choose an empty bench, where only an older white woman sits, swaying her head back and forth silently humming music I can't recognize. Years of drug use have stolen her smile, the wrinkles on her face move down causing her to look deeply saddened, but her eyes are gloss like a newborn whom anticipates to see something new to wonder about. I keep eye contact with her and imagine her as a child still, innocent, still waiting to be tainted by the world. Her wrinkles suddenly disappear and her lip gestures hide her unfinished smile, "Babyface, what you in here for?"
Things I've begun to notice are I have too many nick names in here and there are three frequently asked questions while in jail, one; what are you in for?, two; How much time do you have? and three; Do you like women? "To clean up my life", I reply.

"How much time they give you?" she has a sort of southern accent pronouncing give like "gev."
"Tried to give me 10 months but I talked it down to 4"
"you look too young for a place like this, you got a babyface.”
"What are you Hawaiian?"
I clear my head of all the hoodrats that I've met throughout my life, "I'm mixed, Samoan, Chinese,German,Tongan,Fijian,and Maori"
"Damn!,how old are you?"
"21 today."
"Happy Birthday," she says, "You should be home, this your first time in here?"
"No, the second time, but I plan on it being my last."
She begins to laugh, "life's unpredictable, God laughs when make plans. You know why people hate being in here?"

I reply sarcastically, "yeah, because its jail".

"No! Because they're tired of living the same day twice, knowing whats in store for them tomorrow,” She pauses, "but...at least we know we're forced to live like that. Some people out there make themselves miserable with their freedom. They jail themselves. Do something different everyday to change it then if you don't like it." For the next 15 minutes I sat there listening to her heroine rendezvous with "The Who" before its interrupted by a woman's voice over the loudspeakers, "Ladies return to your dorms, the yard is now closed."

As we walk back she says, "Babyface, see you tomorrow, same time, different conversation". "OK," I say.
The best education is how one analyzes their own experiences. I've come across bureaucratic and over zealous teachers, preachers, and the like. What's ironic is ultimately, people who don't own that label in society are always the ones that I seem to get that from and I thank god for that.

A few months after I was released I've seen this woman twice. The first time she was clean and sober conversating with me at Starbucks. The second time, smiling, and relapsed on Santa Clara street. Hopefully next time I see her, drugs would have nothing to do with the reason she's smiling.