Free Assata: An Autobiography by Assata Shakur Page B

judge was gonna help me in any way? But it was the superior-sounding tinge to her voice that really ticked me off.
    "Butterworth, is it?" i asked. "What's your first name?" "Why, I never tell my girls my first name.”
    "I'm not one of your girls. I'm a grown woman. Why don't you tell people your first name? Are you ashamed of it?”
    "No, JoAnne, I'm not ashamed of my name. It's a matter of respect. I am the warden here. My girls call me Mrs. Butterworth and I call them by their first names."
    "Well, you haven't done anything for me to respect you for. I give people respect only when they earn it. Since you won't tell me your first name, then i want you to call me by my last name. You can either call me Ms. Shakur or Ms. Chesimard."
    "I'm not going to call you by your last name. I'm going to continue calling you JoAnne."
    "Well, that's okay by me, if you can stand me calling you Miss Bitch whenever i see you. I don't give anybody respect when they don't respect me."
    "Lock the door," she told the guard and walked away.
    Days passed. Evelyn called the sheriff, the warden (there were two wardens in that jail: Butterworth and a man named Cahill. Cahill had all the power, though. Butterworth was only a figurehead) and everybody else. Nothing more could be done outside of going to kourt.
    I had little or no feeling in my right arm. I knew i needed physical therapy if i was ever to use it again. I had learned to write with my left hand, but that was no substitute. I needed a more specific diagnosis of exactly what had been damaged before i would know whether or not i would ever use it again, even with physical therapy.
    Isolation was driving me up the walls. I needed materials to write and to draw, paint, or sketch. All my requests went unheeded. I was permitted nothing, including peanut oil and a small ball to aid movement in my arm.
    When the jail doctor examined me i asked him about my arm. "Why, we doctors aren't gods, you know. There's nothing anyone can do when someone is paralyzed.”
    "But they said i might get better," I protested. "Oh, yes, and the physical therapist at Roosevelt Hospital said that some peanut oil might help."
    "Peanut oil?" he asked, laughing. "That's a good one. I can't write a prescription for that now, can I? My advice to you is to forget about all of that stuff. You don't need any of it. Sometimes in life we just have to accept things that are unpleasant. You still have one good arm."
    I kept talking but i could see i was wasting my time. He had no intention of even trying to help me. "Well, would you at least prescribe some vitamin B?"
    "All right, but you really don't need it."
    Every time they called me to see the doctor after that, i went reluctantly. He would take my arm out of the sling and move it back and forth about two inches. "Oh, yes, you're getting better," he would say. I always asked about physical therapy and he always said there was nothing he could do.
    Finally, Evelyn went to court. Some of the items we petitioned for were ridiculous. In addition to physical therapy and nerve tests, we asked for peanut oil, a rubber ball, a rubber grip, books, and stuff to draw or paint with. The kourt finally granted a physical therapist if we would find one and pay the bill, but i never got one. It seems that no physical therapist in Middlesex County was will ing to come to the prison to treat me, and only a physical therapist from Middlesex County was permitted.
    But i did get the peanut oil and the grip. And in a short time i had a whole physical therapy program worked out.
    I was receiving a lot of mail from all over the country. Most of it came from people i didn't know, mostly militant Black people, either in the streets or in prison. I got some hate mail, though, and some letters from religious people who were trying to save my soul. I wasn't able to answer all of those letters because the prison permitted us to write only two letters a week, subject to inspection and censorship by the