I Don't Know Anything About Lisa Edwards
For Cameron "C-Grimey" Williams
[Trigger warning: Depiction of police interaction with Lisa Edwards, who died in Knoxville Police Department custody on Feb. 6, following her arrest on Feb. 5 of this year. As far as I can find from the reporting, the footage depicts her last hour or so of consciousness.]
I want to write about Lisa Edwards the 60-year-old woman who died in police custody in Knoxville, Tennessee this month. I want to write about Lisa Edwards who was discharged from Fort Sanders Regional Medical Center who did not wish to leave perhaps had nowhere to go perhaps had no one to call. I want to write about Lisa Edwards of whom the security guard told the police he’d given her 30 minutes to call someone but she did not and when the police asked her why don’t you call someone she said “Can you call my preacher?” and when they asked for her preacher’s number she did not know.
I want to write about Lisa Edwards a woman who did not know or did not then remember how to use her cell phone. I want to write about Lisa Edwards a woman who did not know or did not then remember her preacher’s number.
I don’t know anything about Lisa Edwards.
I don’t know anything about Lisa Edwards but I know about the rest of us we of course know how to use a cell phone and remember all our preachers’ phone numbers at all times, especially when police are telling us we need to GIT or else we’re going to jail.
I want to write about Lisa Edwards who sat in a blue patient transport chair belonging to Fort Sanders Regional Medical Center at the very end of the ambulance turnaround, out of the wind which was 20-some degrees, just where the entranceway meets the avenue.
I don’t know anything about Lisa Edwards but I do know about blue patient transport chairs. They are not wheelchairs the wheels are tiny and the handles are up in back they are meant for someone to push you. You cannot wheel yourself maybe a little by shuffling but you aren’t meant to no you cannot push yourself.
One time I interviewed the designer of the Stryker Prime TC Patient Transport Chair his name is Michael Graves he died in 2015 only a year after I spoke with him he was an architect and a designer he invented useful and beautiful hospital furnishings for disabled people he was a gentleman and generous with his time but he did not imagine someone sitting on the edge of a February Sunday morning in his chair with no one to push them forward or help them go back.
I don’t know anything about Lisa Edwards but I know about architects they are humane folks who imagine their creations as lived environment that’s the jargon “the lived environment” but all that imagination didn’t help Lisa Edwards.
Besides, Fort Sanders Regional Medical Center wanted its chair back.
I don’t think that chair was a Stryker Prime TC after all the armrests were straight without that lovely little ergonomic lift to help patients grab at an angle and not slide off the chair.
Lisa Edwards did not slide off the chair though she almost did but when the officers got her to the police wagon the Paddy Wagon the Black Maria white shower stall of a wagon she slid on the smooth plastic down to the concrete and there she lay.
There she lay. There she lay. It was a Sunday February morning and there she lay.
The security guard said she inconvenienced the hospital, “a big pain in the ass” to be precise he did not use the word “inconvenienced,” because she she got “shit all over herself shit all over the place” and in the morning they discharged her.
I don’t know anything about Lisa Edwards but I do know about shit my grandma who had dementia used to lay a big turd on the floor when she was mad at us and no one kicked her out of a hospital no one put her in a police wagon no one wrassled her into the back of a patrol car and when she was dying no one picked her head up by the hair to see if she was dead yet.
I don’t know anything about Lisa Edwards but I do know about shit I shat myself when my first son was born my babydaddy shat himself when he was sick one time it happens when my gramps shat himself in the hospice my granny said to him, very gently, “Don’t be embarrassed we don’t notice that sort of thing at all” why did no one say to Lisa Edwards, very gently, “Don’t be embarrassed we don’t notice that sort of thing at all”?
I don’t know anything about Lisa Edwards but I do know about officers and security guards my son is a security guard my folks are officers and gentlemen and that’s how the first responding officer greeted those security guards: “Gentlemen?”
I do know gentlemen are so helpful especially to women in distress Lisa Edwards was in distress they did not beat her they did not choke her they just left her lie on the sidewalk with her pants down and her whole ass hanging out and there she lay. There she lay. They more they tried to poke her into that wagon the more she slid out the more her hospital pants worked their way down but gentlemen don’t help ladies when their pants are down it’s all too much.
They did not beat her they did not choke her they just told her about how her asthmatic breathing her calls for help “I can’t breathe” were all her fault because first she did not have her inhaler second because when they finally found her inhaler where she told them it was she could not figure out how to use it. There was a hospital beside them full of people who knew how to use an inhaler but the officers didn’t go ask for help no they didn’t go for help they just made fun of Lisa Edwards’ cigarettes, “Want a smoke?” because they were clever people they could see it was all her fault.
The officers were clever people they read Lisa Edwards’ hospital discharge orders to her to prove she wasn’t ill they offered her a cigarette out of a pack she had in her purse to prove she could breathe just fine they reminded her about all the chances they were giving her to let her know this was all something she was choosing all the time.
Lisa Edwards made a choice she saw a man walking toward the hospital she chose to call out to him “Doctor! Help” but she had no breath he didn’t hear her and probably he wasn’t a doctor at all.
I don’t know anything about Lisa Edwards but I know about myself when I watched that video the first time I said to the folks in my house “if I ever get like that just shoot me” the cops probably said to their wives “if I ever get like that just shoot me” Jesus probably shat himself on the cross did you think about that?
I don’t know anything about Lisa Edwards I saw the video in the police car a terrified vague face lifting again and again into the field of vision, then just the shadow of her hand in that lucid spill of sun through the patrol car windshield, the officer was driving I think into the sun. I heard her gasp for help saying again again “help me up,” breathing breathing breathing each breath a growl a hiss a squeak until you couldn’t hear her breathing any more.