The only other place to sit was on a toilet that was quite unlike anything Jennifer had ever seen before in her life. At first glance, the stainless steel creation reminded her of a metal miniature of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. On closer inspection she saw the faucets and realized with horror that it was a monument to prison efficiency. It served as both wash basin and commode, with the seat only inches from the lower bunks. She remembered a snippet of a song parody her mother used to sing: And my bunk is where the skunk is. Did someone actually sleep with her head virtually in the head? She set her shoulders and tried not to show her dismay. After all, she only had to sit there until Tom came and took her away. She wouldn’t be spending the night.
‘Home sweet home,’ Camry said as he rolled open the door in the fourth wall, which consisted completely of bars. The section slid open, and for a moment it doubled the bars on the left side of the cell. The shadow play they made passing reminded Jennifer of the sun through the windows of New York’s elevated trains. But there was no sunshine here. The cells were on a windowless hall, and although each one did have a window, it was so high in the wall that even from the top bunk you couldn’t peer through the chicken wire. Camry took Jennifer’s elbow and firmly guided her into her new home.
‘It’s only for a few hours,’ she told herself. Maybe now she could finally call Tom. She looked for a moment at Officer Camry, but decided not to ask.
‘Get comfortable,’ Camry instructed. ‘I’ll go get your cellmate so you two can get acquainted.’
‘Right,’ Jennifer said.
‘Pardon?’ Camry responded.
‘I wish,’ Jennifer said with a cynical sigh.
Only one of the four bunks was made up, and over it, taped to the walls, were six pictures. One was of a baby – obviously a snapshot – but the other five were clipped from magazines. There was an angel, a toddler on the beach building a sand castle, a fire engine, the Nike logo complete with Just Do It, and finally a picture of Jesus, looking a lot like Donny Osmond. Jennifer stood there for a moment, trying to imagine what kind of brain had arranged those particular images in that particular way.
She walked over to the desk. It was bare except for three books: the Bible, a copy of The Pokey Little Puppy, and a paperback Baby-Sitters Club book. Jennifer had read the Baby-Sitters Club when she was in fourth grade. Had they put her in a cell with a child or a simpleton?
On the lower bunk on the opposite wall, Jennifer found a rolled up mattress and a set of sheets. Hers, she wondered? She thought about making the bed, but was enraged at the thought of actually making herself ‘comfortable’ as dopey old Roger had suggested. This was no place to be comfortable. She would never sleep here, and she would most certainly never use the toilet. Anyone – even someone like Byrd – could look right through the bars and see everything that went on.
Jennifer sat on the solitary chair and wondered what time it was. Would Tom still be at home, on his way to the office, or was he already there? She knew his cell phone number by heart, but she wasn’t sure if a cell phone could accept a collect call. She stood up suddenly in a rage. Goddamnit! She wasn’t a convict. She had her own damn cell phone – and they had taken it. She had a Verizon credit card with no limits. Why couldn’t she use it? What harm would there be in that? It had rounded corners, too. She couldn’t kill anyone – or herself – with a fucking cell phone. The rage took its toll, and Jennifer wilted onto the made-up bunk. Tom had better get her out of here before the end of the day. This was worse than anything she’d imagined.
‘You’re sitting on my bed,’ Jennifer heard a timid voice say. She jumped up to see Officer Camry standing in the door of the cell with a very small and very pretty young blonde woman.
‘I’m sorry,’ Jennifer said sincerely.
‘It’s okay,’ the girl said timidly. She looked as if she was terrified of Jennifer, and she seemed to be almost clinging to the smiling Officer Camry.
‘Miss Spencer, this is Suki,’ Roger said as he gently guided the young girl into the cell. ‘You and her will be bunking together.’
Jennifer saw the girl looking at her still damp jumpsuit.
‘Were you the one who stuffed the toilet in Observation last night?’ Suki asked her. Then she went over to her bunk and looked at the wet spot Jennifer had left when she sat there.
‘You can use this bedding,’ Jennifer said, pointing to the roll on the bunk meant for her. ‘I won’t be using it.’
‘Why not?’ Suki asked her.
‘I’m not staying,’ Jennifer replied.
‘Where are you going?’
Jennifer thought she was going to scream. ‘Can I just make a phone call?’ she asked, looking past this Suki and talking to Roger.
‘Not until after work,’ Suki told her.
‘But I have to make the call now.’
‘Miss Spencer – Jennifer – will be working with you in the laundry,’ Camry told the young girl. ‘Will you see that she gets there this afternoon?’ he asked with a smile.
‘You bet Rog – uh, sir,’ Suki said, blushing.
Roger stood there as awkward as a teenager on a front porch after a first date. Was he going to kiss this girl? Jennifer wondered. But Camry finally turned and walked away. Suki watched him go until he turned for a moment and waved good-bye.
Jennifer didn’t know what that was all about, and she didn’t need to know. A deafening bell clanged loudly and echoed off the concrete.
‘Time to go back to work,’ Suki chirped brightly. ‘Come on, I’ll show you the way.’
Jennifer followed without question. Maybe she could find a phone in the laundromat.
9
Movita Watson
Here I am and here I stay.
Patrice de Mac Mahon
I did alotta work in the office that no inmate should be trusted with, but that was because of Miss Ringling. She was one of those state employees who felt the main function of her job was cashing her paycheck. Most work that required any intelligence was given directly to me by the Warden. The rest of it was given to me by Miss Ringling. But now I was finally shuttin’ down the PC and gettin’ ready to go to dinner, when Warden Harding strolled outta her office in that casual-like way that says she’s got something to tell me.
‘Movita?’ she asked.
‘Mmmm,’ I kinda murmured back. You can’t really diss the Warden, but by now her and me know each other good enough for me to voice a certain kind of awareness.
‘I’ve assigned Spencer to Conrad. Do you think Suki will mind having her as a cellmate?’ the Warden asked me.
Since when did The Woman worry about what I thought? ‘Why do I care what Suki minds?’ I answered back. It sounded kinda snotty so I softened it a bit with, ‘She’ll do fine. NBD. Spencer’s no suicide, if that’s what you’re thinking.’
‘I just thought that you might have a better sense of who would be the best to match the new inmate with. You are the – uh – main person for the crew. I just don’t want to add a problem to an already sensitive situation.’
‘Hey, my policy is just like that old president’s,’ I told her. ‘“Don’t ask, don’t tell.” That works for me, too.’ I knew what she was angling for. The Warden wanted me to take that little white witch to my lovin’ black bosom. That’s one of the deadly things about prison; you show weakness just once and everyone is ready to prey on ya’. Just ‘cause I unreasonably, uncharacteristically, and maybe unfortunately ‘adopted’ Suki Conrad into my crew doesn’t mean I’m gonna do it for every sorrowful new piece of meat that comes to Jennings. It bugged me that The Woman even asked me.
I don’t know if the others wanted to take Suki in, but I insisted. And when I insist, they don’t have much choice. It wasn’t like anybody really hated her, and face it, girls, Movita rules. Anyway, the very first day I saw Suki Conrad draggin’ her pitiful little butt through Intake, I just took to her. Maybe it was that baby-fine blonde hair or the lost look in her eyes. I got me a pink-skinned baby doll
with yellow hair and blue eyes for Christmas once. Didn’t I love that dolly! Whatever. Sometimes, though, someone like that just tugs at your heart or some shit like that. I guess I just plain felt sorry for the little thing, and that’s the truth. Just ‘cause I’m in prison don’t mean I got no human feelings. And I felt like we needed a baby in our crew.
Women need family. Don’t matter if it’s blood or not. In the crew we’re like mother and daughters sometimes, and sometimes we’re like sisters, and sometimes we’re like other family members, too. That don’t mean we don’t fight and argue and stuff. But when you’re in a crew you just try to keep all that to a minimum.
‘Please let me know if there’s any trouble with the match-up, okay?’ the Warden asked me. She was lookin’ me right in the eye and I knew she wanted more than a trouble report. She knew how to get at me. ‘That’s it for today, Movita. You better go to dinner.’ She paused for a second. ‘What do you and your girls have planned tonight?’
I switched off the monitor and neatened up some stacks of papers on my desk. ‘Well, it’s Theresa’s turn to cook,’ I said, ‘so it’s gonna be a surprise.’ Sometimes I get the oddest feeling that the Warden is kinda – well – envious of us in the crew. It’s like she’d rather come and eat with us instead of goin’ to her own house. I don’t know much about her life Outside, ‘cept that she’s divorced and that she works all the time. I doubt she’s got much of a life.
When I got back to my house, Theresa was already chopping the carrots that Suki was washin’. ‘You want the salad dressing sweet or you want it tart?’ Theresa asked.
‘I don’t care as long as you’re making it,’ Cher told her. She was loungin’ her sassy ass on the bunk, readin’ a magazine, and just waitin’ to eat.
If prison is the place where society thinks they can make us cons eat shit, they do a damn good job of it. Even though the Warden keeps fightin’ with Ben Norton down in Food Services, the food at Jennings never gets any better. No one – and I mean no one – wants to eat the shit old Ben serves up in the cafeteria. It’s nothin’ but starch, grease, and real bad meat. People eat it, but only if they have to.
You can eat for free in the cafeteria. So if you’re destitute, or spend whatever you got on contraband, or if you can’t make even one friend, then you’re stuck in the cafeteria eatin’ one of Ben’s blue plate specials.
But if you got some sense, a little social grace, or any initiative at all, you can buy things from the prison canteen and cook ‘em up yourself. You just need to save a little money and get pots and pans and all. There’s no real kitchens in our houses, but Harding lets us have a hot plate or an electric skillet. Of course, the canteen doesn’t have much variety – maybe only seven or eight kinds of things. You can usually get a chicken, or sometimes beef. They always got a little lettuce or some vegetable. There’s potatoes and sometimes rice. And now and then some fruit like apples or bananas or even oranges. Theresa works down in the dispensary, so she always knows what’s comin’ in. She stashes the best for the crew, and with the money Cher gets from sellin’ some of the stuff she steals from Intake we can buy a whole lot of good stuff. Problem is, we don’t got refrigeration, and that’s why we need plenty of ice. Frances was the lucky one to get to deliver it. Ice is like gold in prison. Without it, lots of our good stuff goes to waste. If we buy a chicken on our own, by the time we eat half of it the other half is no damn good and we’re so sick of chicken that we’re cluckin’. We don’t wanna see no bird ever again.
‘Hand me that pot of water, Suki,’ Theresa said as I sat down to listen to the day’s bulletins. I wanted to know if anyone had any more news on Spencer. I thought Suki might speak up, but Cher was the first one to sound off, as usual.
‘I hear she’s already sashaying round here like she owns the place.’ Cher smirked. ‘Byrd told old Cranston down in Intake that he’s gonna toss Spencer into solitary if she demands to use the phone one more damn time.’
‘Well, you know what they say about asking and receiving, don’t you?’ Theresa said as she opened the Tupperware and measured out some pasta into the boiling water.
‘Yeah, well this ain’t Sunday school,’ Cher shot back. ‘And it ain’t the movies either. You don’t automatically get one call when you get here.’
‘It’s tough on you white girls when you don’t get your way, ain’t it?’ I said, givin’ Cher a look. She was copping some pretty amazing attitude.
‘That’s not very nice,’ Suki said with hurt feelings.
‘Movita wasn’t referrin’ to you, sweetie,’ Cher reassured her. She got up and gave Suki a pat on the shoulder.
That was for my benefit. Back when I first took Suki in, Cher made quite a fuss. ‘She can’t cook, she can’t steal, she can’t do nothin’ but cry,’ Cher bitched. ‘She’s dumb as dirt. That’s why she drove the car for her boyfriend.’
I guess Suki actually believed her boyfriend when he said he was goin’ into that 7-Eleven for cigarettes. He came out with the contents of the cash register, and little Suki thought she was guilty of nothin’ more than keepin’ the heater running.
Theresa, on the other hand, was more understanding. ‘But she lost her baby,’ she said to Cher. ‘She’s never going to stop crying about that. You know what they say about mothers when someone takes away their babies, don’t you?’
Well, nobody answered Theresa’s question. It got real quiet for a moment. You see, I don’t like talkin’ about children. I never talk about my little girls. Their granny is raisin’ them, and that’s all I can bear to say about it.
‘Just what in heaven’s name are you makin’ there, Theresa?’ I asked to break the tension. ‘You trying to kill us all before Cher gets a chance to get outta here?’
‘Get out of my way, Movita,’ Theresa warned. ‘You know what they say about too many cooks, don’t you?’
I just laughed and backed off. Havin’ a conversation with Theresa was like talkin’ to a refrigerator door loaded with sayings. I respected that girl. The goin’ never got so tough that Theresa didn’t get up and go. ‘People say I’m an optimist,’ she’d say, lookin’ all serious and stuff. ‘But I don’t think that’s necessarily true. And do you wanna know why? I’m gonna tell you why. Because – you know what they say about pessimism and optimism, don’t you?’
Theresa never really wanted you to answer her questions, ‘cause she had all the answers herself.
‘They say the pessimist says the glass is half empty, but the optimist says it’s half full. Well, you know what I say to that? I don’t say that glass is half anything, I say you’re using the wrong damn glass. It’s obviously too big. That’s what I say.’ Then old Theresa always waited a little and let it all sink in before she’d wind up for her big finale. ‘And you know what that makes me?’ she’d ask. ‘That makes me a pragmatist! That is someone who has a practical, matter-of-fact way of solving problems. That’s a pragmatist and that’s what I am – a practical, matter-of-fact problem solver. If you got a problem with how much is in your glass, well then maybe you’re just using the wrong glass. You understand what I’m saying here? It just doesn’t matter if you think it’s half empty or half full, what matters is what you do about it. Get off your ass and get yourself a different glass is what I say. Always remember this: Answer is also a verb. You understand what I’m saying here? The door to success is labeled PUSH! You can’t leave footprints in the sands of time if you’re not wearin’ work boots.’
I don’t know why, but I could listen to Theresa talk for hours. I loved those speeches.
‘Get up off your butt, Cher, and grab that plastic strainer for me,’ Theresa told Cher, and Cher did it. ‘Hold it over the bowl.’
Cher was laughing as Theresa strained her pasta and let the water go down the john. ‘You think there’s any symbolism here with your cookin’ right next to the toilet?’ Cher teased.
Theresa’s specialty is her pasta. That’s somethin’ the canteen don’t carry, but Theresa’s sister sends h
er a lot of it. That’s another thing about who you pick for crew. You want the girls who get lots of packages from the Outside. Theresa gets pasta and salamis and Italian shit like that. And you can’t get better packages than Cher gets. Theft runs in her family, so they’re always sendin’ her stuff. Lots of it is contraband and gets taken out and sent back, but the boxes always have hand creams and shampoos and stuff like that. And now and then she’ll get a big ol’ canned ham with some spices. The chips and dips and stuff come in on a regular basis. Both girls are real good about sharin’ with the crew.
Suki never gets a damned thing. She ain’t got a family. Her little girl is in foster care. I don’t care, though – we had to take her in. But if we have to take in this Spencer bitch, then that girl better be prepared to do her part.
Dinner was almost ready. Besides the pasta we were having some lettuce and some bananas for dessert. ‘All the ice is gone,’ Theresa said, ‘and there won’t be any more until tomorrow afternoon, so get prepared to eat. I don’t want anything to go to waste.’
‘Speakin’ of waste,’ I said. ‘I hear Miss Spencer had herself quite a night in Observation.’
‘Did Karl Byrd give her any trouble?’ Theresa asked, all concerned.
‘Karl can do better than get a piece of that sorry ass,’ Cher snarled.
‘That’s not very nice,’ Suki piped up. ‘I think she seems kind of nice. She’s my bunkmate. But she says she’s not gonna be here very long.’
Cher was laughing. ‘Oh, let me guess,’ she said. ‘She’s just another innocent victim, put in the slammer by mistake.’
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