True Friends

A love letter.

True friends are a gift from God.

That's what I believe, anyway. Real, true friends - not your work buddies or your social media connections, but the kind of friends who change you just by knowing them. A true friend, I think, will save your life. Then you will save theirs, just so they can save yours again, and on and on it goes. That's a true friend.

This is what I was thinking on my way to adopt a dog at age 28. I was nervous to meet my new dog. Would he like me? Am I really ready to take care of him, or am I being selfish? Will he like his new name? Because, of course, I had already picked the name a long time ago.

As I'm hitching a ride to the shelter, I can't help flashing back to twenty years earlier: to the day I met my childhood companion, Mercedes.

I think I was eight years old when my dad brought home this cute little golden retriever mutt. I remember Mercedes being small enough to fit in my dad's open palms. My uncle sold used cars back then, that's where the name "Mercedes" came from. I fell in love with the name, and I fell in love with the cute little golden retriever mutt who could fit in my dad's open palms.

Time went on, Mercedes grew bigger, and so did my family. In 1994 my parents brought home my baby brother. I wasn't sure about having another kid in the house, and I kinda liked being an only child, so I did not like this new baby. Mercedes, however, loved him. She would grab him by the feet of his little onesies and drag him across the linoleum floor. The baby loved it too, and he kept trying to crawl to his escape no matter how many times he was dragged back to the kitchen. What a dumb game, I thought. What a dumb baby.

But if Mercedes thought the baby was cool, I was obligated to give him a chance. Eventually my brother would grow on me and even become a true friend, but not until later in our lives. In the meantime, I made sure everyone understood that Mercedes belonged to me.

With a new brother in the picture, I started to feel overlooked. Everyone was so excited about the baby that they seemed to forget about me. "Isn't it great being a big brother?" they would ask me. "Yes," I lied. "Are you being a good example to your little brother?" "Yes," I lied again. I was getting very good at lying by now.

In fact, there was only one friend I was completely honest with. I never lied to her. She slept at the foot of my bed every night and listened quietly as I let my guard down and told the truth about everything.

I started puberty earlier than normal, and my dad was there to answer all my questions. He would draw pictures to help me understand how the body worked. He let me look at Playboy magazines, which I appreciated at the time. We kept it a secret from my mom, of course, but I was a pretty good liar by now. I thought my dad was pretty cool in those early days, when the abuse was still relatively tame.

But by the time I was twelve, sexual assault was a daily occurrence. My dad got a lot meaner, too. He threatened to tear my family apart if I ever spoke the truth. He knew I would never tell, because he taught me everything I know about lying.

But there was still one girl I never lied to. She knew the truth about everything because I never stopped talking to her, and she never stopped quietly listening from the foot of my bed. That was my loophole.

The nightmare of living with my dad finally ended when I was fourteen. My mom walked into the room at the wrong time and caught him in the act. He tried to lie, just like we always practiced. But she saw what she saw.

By now my brother was six years old, and we had just welcomed my baby sister into the family. My dad went to prison for his crimes against me, which meant that I was promoted to a new role in the family. This time I was ready to be a big brother.

Now there were five of us: myself, trying to be a good example to my fatherless siblings; my brother, who was now quickly becoming my friend; my baby sister, the reason we all smiled so often; my mom, the only constant in my life; and Mercedes, the glue that held us all together.

Sometimes I wonder if Mercedes was a guardian angel sent to keep us safe. That's what she did one morning when my two-year-old sister walked out the open front door of our house, out into the neighborhood. While the family was asleep, Mercedes instinctually followed her down the street, up a hill, and to the front lawn of some strange house. My sister, realizing she was lost, sat in the grass and cried. Mercedes sat calmly beside her, assuring her that help would arrive if she stayed in one place. This is how we found them, hours later.

Mercedes died suddenly when she darted into the street and was hit by a car. I wasn't there to see it, but I imagined she died without pain. I felt guilty and wondered if the weight of my secrets drove her to suicide. Mercedes had saved my life, but I was unable to do the same for her.

This is why I was feeling so nervous as we walked into that pet shelter. My new dog had some big shoes to fill. I couldn't expect him to be a guardian angel, or to protect my baby sister, or to hold my family together. That would be unfair.

The name I picked for my new dog, weeks in advance, was "Marjo." As it would turn out, Marjo was a pitbull/boxer, and she was skinny enough that you could count her ribs. Marjo's tail was long and thin and it smacked into walls and people when she got excited. Marjo was a spattering of red and white, except for her paws and legs, which were pure white as if she were wearing elbow-length princess gloves. Oh yeah, that's the other crazy thing about Marjo. She was a she.

Since "Marjo" was a combination of the names Mary and Joseph, I decided it was unisex. I kept the name and took her home that day, even though I came looking for a male dog. That was the day I saved her life.

We did not get along at all. Unlike Mercedes, Marjo was a terrible listener. Also unlike Mercedes, Marjo pooped on the carpet and barked angrily at the neighborhood dogs. And unlike Mercedes, who would calmly roam the house all day, Marjo couldn't be left out of my sight. Marjo was completely unlike Mercedes.

After a few weeks I noticed Marjo had some bite marks and scars on her back legs, and she got aggressive when I touched that area. The shelter had mentioned that Marjo came from the "Second Chance Program" in Pendleton, Oregon. They didn't have any other information about her. She didn't even have a name.

Based on her behavior, I assumed she was abused in the past. We made a pact one day: that even though I didn't know her past, and she definitely didn't know mine, and even though she was nothing like Mercedes, and even though she didn't know my secrets, we would give each other a chance. On that day I was promoted from a victim of abuse to a protector of victims. That was the day Marjo saved my life.

She helped me to cope with the trauma of my childhood. She never tried to replace Mercedes. She didn't fix me, either—I was still acting out in horrible ways, still trying to grasp for the sense of control that I lacked as a child—but she was there for me. She listened as I started opening up to her, and I rewarded her with peanut butter and wet food until I couldn't count her ribs anymore.

I was still making big mistakes as an adult. I didn't consider how others felt. I was selfish. I eventually landed in prison, leaving Marjo in the care of my mom. When the time came to say goodbye to Marjo, I cried - not because I was going to miss her, but because I knew I was letting her down.

And that's where I am right now: sitting on the top bunk of a two-man cell, writing this with a golf pencil. I'm looking out my cell window, where I can see inmates walking their dogs along the grass in the mornings. You see, this prison has something called the Second Chance Program, where they take dogs who have been beaten and abused and place them in the care of prison inmates like me, who are struggling with depression and trauma. In this program, the inmate trains the dog and prepares it to be adopted, and the dog keeps the inmate from killing himself. That's what happened to Marjo years ago, on that fateful day when she met some prison inmate and saved his life, and he saved her from a life of dog fighting & starvation.

How do I know this? Because last Tuesday I met the guy who runs the Second Chance Program for all the prisons in the area. He seems to remember a scrappy pitbull/boxer with ribs on the outside of her body and princess gloves, who went through the program at a prison in Pendleton, Oregon. Last Tuesday was the day Marjo saved my life for the second time, because she reminded me that some people and some dogs are special enough to get two guardian angels, and that some people and some dogs deserve second chances.

Now I can't wait until my release day, when I’ll hear that skinny tail slapping against the wall and crack open a fresh jar of peanut butter. Even though we don't speak the same language, I now know the truth about her past. And maybe someday soon I'll tell her the truth about my past. Then I'll probably save her life, so that she can save mine, and on and on it'll go, because that's a true friend.

[Written April 2018]

Marjo The Dog.