‘Lockdown,’ Officer Camry cried. ‘Let’s go. Show’s over. Nothin’ to see.’
Ha! Cher wouldn’t have been surprised to see Spencer foaming at the mouth like old Betty did when she got rabies and daddy finally shot the bitch dog.
‘Man, she’s in trouble now,’ Suki said.
‘You will be too if you ain’t in your cell in forty seconds,’ Movita told her. ‘You, too Cher.’
‘Lockdown.’ The cry went up and was announced over the intercom. All the sheep began moving back to their pens.
Cher wasn’t going to admit it to Movita, but she was impressed with the debutante. It took all four of the officers to hold her down and she was giving them plenty of trouble. And the noise! She could have rented out her lungs to an ambulance. It didn’t seem like she ever had to stop to take a breath.
Warden Harding was already waiting at the other side of the bars at the end of the unit. ‘Back to your houses, back to your houses,’ Officer Camry was still telling them. Cher didn’t want a write up – she was too close to parole to take any chances – but she sure did want to see what happened when the debutante passed the Warden. Cher also wondered if Spencer had anything worthwhile to steal in her footlocker. Now would be a good opportunity to go through it, since Spencer would surely get at least forty-eight hours, maybe more, in the SHU for this kind of infraction.
The inmates began moving toward their houses, but Cher tried to move as slowly as she reasonably could. She watched them carry the debutante out past the bars and up to the Warden, who ordered the officers to ‘put her on her feet’. They held the panting and nearly spent Jennifer upright as the Warden firmly, but without malice, spoke to her. Cher entered her cell, luckily close to the end of the unit. She wondered if old Gwen would get to stammering but the Warden was completely in control.
‘You are an inmate at the Jennings Correctional Facility for Women, Miss Spencer,’ the Warden began. ‘Can you get control of yourself?’
Spencer made some kind of noise, but Cher couldn’t hear it.
‘Show’s over,’ Officer Camry repeated and the bars closed on all the cells. But Cher thought the show wasn’t quite over yet. Neither Spencer nor the fat lady had sung. Still, she had to be cautious. A lockdown infraction was serious.
Slowly, Cher inched her way over to the bars. Camry – no boy genius – didn’t notice because he was talking with Suki. Cher cupped a hand to her ear, but it wasn’t necessary. The Warden’s voice carried. ‘You are here to be rehabilitated for your crime and we certainly cannot accept this kind of behavior from you or from any inmate in this facility. Do you understand me, Miss Spencer?’
Cher actually heard Spencer say yes and from her tone of voice knew there wouldn’t be any more kung fu fighting. She sighed, a little disappointed. But it had been an impressive performance. She had to give Movita credit: There was more to Spencer than she had given her credit for.
The warden was speaking again. ‘You are financially responsible for any of the damage to state property that you have done. And you will be spending the next two nights in the Special Holding Unit.’
22
Jennifer Spencer
I guess it used to be a whole lot worse in here. Miss Riley, the warden before Miss Wheeler, would shave your head bald for walking on the grass and put you in maximum security for no less than six months.
Becky Careway, an inmate at the Ohio Reformatory for Women.
Kathryn Watterson, Women in Prison
‘Step back, Spencer.’
Jennifer lay sprawled on the concrete floor. ‘Back, I said,’ the voice barked. ‘Or I’ll move ya’ back.’ There was real menace in the voice. Despite her overwhelming lethargy Jennifer forced herself to rise to a crouching position and then managed to stand and move off to the corner of the bare concrete space. ‘That’s better,’ the voice on the other side of the door said. ‘Good girl.’ She recognized his voice, though she couldn’t see him. It was Byrd, the creep. Even in her dazed state, Jen could hear the sexual menace in his voice. As if reading her mind he continued, ‘Watch your slot, Spencer. Comin’ through.’
The slot at the bottom of the door rattled and a tray was pushed inches beyond the door. Though she felt empty inside, she was anything but hungry. She had either fallen asleep or passed out from exhaustion on the bare cement, and now she had no idea how long she’d been unconscious. The muscles in her lower back and between her shoulder blades ached and one of her legs – the right one – felt sore from the knee to the upper thigh. She reached down to rub it. It was very tender to the touch. Had she been injured in the melee?
She couldn’t remember much of what had happened after her attempted phone call to Don. But now, after unknown hours of screaming in rage and sorrow, followed by a deep and disorienting sleep, she just wanted to know what time it was. She took a step toward the tray. Perhaps she could figure out which meal it was by its content. But it was something she couldn’t identify, perhaps lunch, perhaps dinner, or even some new brown invention for breakfast. The tray didn’t have dishes or implements. It was a single piece of molded plastic with two depressions in it, one filled with the brown substance and the other filled with something that might once have been a green vegetable. But maybe not. She heard the noise of the CO moving away and called out to him. ‘What time is it?’ she shouted through the door.
‘Not time for you to talk, unless you enjoy being in here,’ the voice said, laughed, and moved away.
She looked around. No natural light, no clocks, no lights-out, no good morning. In the relentless twenty-four-hour-a-day fluorescent glare of the Special Holding Unit deep in the underground passages of Jennings, Jennifer’s hands began to shake uncontrollably. Frightened, she used whatever mind she had left to try to stop them but she couldn’t. She left the disgusting meal where it was and walked back to the corner, where she leaned against the wall and slowly, like a deflating pool toy with a leak, slithered down the wall into a squatting position in the corner.
After a time she heard a tiny noise, a kind of scraping. She looked up. Nothing. She heard it again. She looked carefully. And then she saw the roach, big as a waterbug, actually trying to push the plate of slop across the floor. Oh God. From across the cell the bug looked the size of a Chihuahua. She couldn’t bear bugs. She felt as if she’d vomit. And then there was a noise in the hall and the bug skittered away.
Her hands kept trembling and she felt as if she couldn’t get a breath into her lungs. The air in the cell was incredibly stale. It actually felt as if it were solid, some kind of gel made up in equal parts of body odor, mildew, and the spent exhalations of hundreds of previous inmates.
She still couldn’t believe that she had been so unceremoniously dumped by Tom. Their relationship had been so intense, so important to her. Wasn’t it true for him? How could he just let it all go? How could he walk away from the love they shared? She had never enjoyed holding, and being held by, any man the way she had enjoyed Tom. Just lying in bed with him, his left arm slid under her pillow, his right arm snaked up between her breasts, cupping one gently in his hand, was an exquisite pleasure. In response she would slide her left hand under the pillow and make a fist, lay it in his palm, and he’d curl his fingers around hers. Jennifer’s head would rest just against his chin and he would lift his head a little so that his mouth rested on her ear. His whispers of ‘I love you’ would make her melt into his body even more.
Even now, after his dismissal of her, as she crouched here in the corner like an abandoned orphan, Jennifer could feel Tom’s body. She could feel her body burn as if his skin were pressed against her own. It was so real it made her whole body tremble. How could he give that up? How would she go on without it? What had happened to Tom since she’d been put in here? Did he fall out of love with her before all of this and just couldn’t tell her? No, that couldn’t be. Maybe it was pressure from Donald? Maybe it was his family and the hounding of the media. After all, she was locked up and had no idea what kind of
hell he was going through on the Outside.
Why did he do it? It couldn’t have been the publicity and trial because he had been as loving to her as usual throughout all of that. Did his parents only object once the verdict came in? She had met them only three times but they seemed to have liked her. Maybe that was an excuse. Did he see her on visiting day with the Suki hair, the cheap lipstick, and garish eye makeup and get scared away by her transformation? Did she really look like such a monster to him? How could someone who had professed eternal love, who had given her a diamond – her first – which meant ‘forever’, give her up so quickly and completely?
She thought back to when they first met. It was about two months after she joined Hudson, Van Schaank that she had started working on a huge deal – one that would turn out to be one of the most profitable in the history of the firm – and Tom was the lawyer assigned. They spent many nights working late, ate dinners together, even breakfasts on Saturdays and Sundays as the project neared its close. She tried not to be too attracted to him. Office romances never worked out. But this felt different. He wasn’t the usual infatuation, though he was a serious person, and she wasn’t a giddy girl. She wondered at first if her growing crush was mutual and began to watch him for signs. First she noticed him looking at her during her presentations to Donald and the other partners. And then there were times when they would finish each other’s sentences. ‘Great minds think alike,’ Tom would tell her.
They were discreet with their affair for several months and were even more careful about not letting Donald know they were an item until they were sure of the seriousness of their feelings. Generally, Donald saw fraternization as a distraction from work. But he didn’t have a problem with them breaking the rule. When they announced their engagement he was thrilled for them. ‘I’ll give the bride away,’ he said, ‘and you can honeymoon in my villa in Umbria.’
How, she wondered again, could Tom just give her up? She felt dizzy. She couldn’t bear to think of it anymore. She looked around the cell for distraction. There was nothing to look at, not even graffiti. The light never changed. There was nothing to read, nothing to do, nothing to capture her imagination except her thoughts, which were unbearable. She was, for the first time she could ever remember, completely alone with herself, a self that was soul-sick, frightened, and with hands that would not stop trembling.
She sat and sat and sat. After some time – she’d never know how much – she felt herself undergoing a kind of sea change. The sensory deprivation that left her emotionally numb and staring dumbly at her hands moved her into an altered state. Her fear and anger, all her anguish, seemed to go away, and she saw her hands as if for the first time. Slowly she opened and closed her fists. They were something. They could go from giving the softest caress to the hardest punch. Jennifer opened and closed them again and thought of the marvel of human anatomy that enabled her to perform this simple task. She tried to remember high school biology and the number of bones in the hands but couldn’t, though she remembered the names: carpals, metacarpals, and phalanges. She wondered if each of the phalanges had a different name. Perhaps they had numbers.
She was alive; that was all that she felt. Her love for Tom was a physical pain in her chest but all of her emotions were washed away. Maybe this was why they used the SHU. It took away your feelings and left you empty, only partly human. Because, she realized as she sat there staring at her hand, we are not our bodies or our brains. We are our feelings. Without feelings we are not human. She felt as if her humanity had waned. Her anger was spent. Her sorrow was pushed out like an ebbing tide.
Was it possible that Tom had overreacted, that he would regret what he had said and write her an apology? Would he ask to visit again? If he did, what would she do? A man who abandoned a woman in need was not a man who could be trusted. She thought of how her father had run out and what her mother went through. Jennifer had thought that she would escape from the bad luck that plagued her family. She had thought she would have money, position, a husband, and, eventually, a family. But she didn’t think any of that would be possible now.
Oddly, at that moment, her hands stopped trembling. She had no more hopes, no more delusions of a quick release. She was simply alive in a Special Holding Unit of a prison.
There was no way for Jennifer to know how much time was passing – she could only try to mark the passing of the hours by the delivery of her meals. She counted back the meals that had been delivered. She could remember at least three, though she hadn’t eaten any of them. The supper was still there, as was the breakfast and the lunch. She probably had less than twenty-four hours to go. Now, hungry and tired, she crawled over to the trays and was eating what she could when she heard the key in the door. Like a caged animal she quickly retreated to the farthest corner, pulled her knees up to her chest, and stared intently at the heavy iron door.
The door opened very slowly, and Jennifer held her breath. Then, very softly she heard someone whisper her name. ‘Jennifa’?’
Jennifer did not answer, but remained frozen in abstract fear. ‘Jennifa’?’ the voice sounded again.
‘Movita?’ Jennifer whispered in response. ‘Movita, is that you?’ Jennifer jumped to her feet and nearly shouted for joy when she saw Movita quickly slip into the cell. ‘What are you doing here? How do you get in here?’
Movita held up her hand for Jennifer to be quiet. ‘I wasn’t sure which of these holes they put ya’ in.’
‘But you have a key?’ Jennifer asked.
‘Don’t be crazy. Let’s just say a guard owes me a favor.’ She raised her hand. ‘We’ll talk about that later. I don’t have much time and if I get caught doin’ this they’ll transfer my tired black ass outta here.’
‘What are you doing here, then?’ Jen asked.
‘I came to see if you’re okay,’ Movita answered. She looked around the cell. ‘No fun, huh?’ Jennifer shook her head in agreement. ‘This place can break ya’ forever. Or it can make ya’ stronger. Which ya’ think it’s gonna do for you, girl?’
‘I just want to get back to my cell,’ Jennifer said, and realized that it was true. How pathetic. She didn’t even say she wanted out of jail. She didn’t say she wanted to go home. She said, with absolute sincerity, that she wanted to go back to her cell.
‘Ya’ certainly acted up enough to warrant bein’ here,’ Movita said. ‘Girl, you were fierce.’
Jen nodded and flushed. ‘He dumped me.’
‘I guessed,’ Movita shrugged. ‘Ain’t the end of the world. There’s lots more lawyers.’
‘He was my fiancé.’
Movita shrugged again, then made a noise like a sigh. ‘Ain’t a woman in the joint who hasn’t been dumped by the man Outside.’ She looked at Jennifer and, despite the hard words, her face was kind. Her deep brown eyes, virtually the same color as her skin, radiated warmth. ‘Ya’ still got a day and a half to do nothin’ but think in here. I’m goin’ to suggest that you think about others as well as yourself.’ She handed Jennifer a large manila envelope. ‘Since ya’ probably figured out by now that you’re going to be in here for a while I think ya’ should read this.’
Jennifer looked down at the envelope. ‘What is it?’ she asked.
‘It’s bidness. Somethin’ I don’t know enough about, but I think you do. There’s something goin’ down here. It involves a company called JRU. You hear of them?’
Jennifer shook her head. Whatever Movita Watson wanted, Jen didn’t care. And she certainly didn’t want to be caught breaking a rule and ending up with more time in the SHU. ‘I don’t care about JRU,’ Jennifer told Movita, handing the envelope back. ‘Anyway, I may not be engaged to Tom, but he’s still my lawyer. I’m not going to be in here that much longer.’
‘Goddamnit, woman, face the facts,’ Movita spat with a sudden vehemence, ‘you are gonna be in here. Ya’ still think you’re different? Ya’ still think you’re a special case? You’ve been fucked over like almost everyone else in this place and you are
gonna be here.’ She shook her head and lowered her voice. ‘Ya’ have to accept that or this place will destroy ya’.’
Jennifer remained silent in the wake of Movita’s passion. The words landed like blows to her gut. ‘That’s not true,’ she said, but for the first time she was afraid maybe it might be. ‘I don’t mean I’m better than everyone else, I just …’
‘Oh, yes ya’ do. Ya’ think someone’s gonna pull strings and ya’ ain’t gonna do time. Ya’ think Suki is stupid, and Theresa is a joke, and I’m a gansta. Uh-uh. We’re women just like you who fucked up.’ She looked Jen up and down. ‘Accept it,’ she said. ‘Live it minute by minute.’
‘I can’t,’ Jen said, trembling. ‘I can’t take any more of this. I’ll die.’
‘Then you’re gonna have to die,’ Movita said simply. Jennifer’s head shot up in terror. Was this woman threatening her? Was she trying to force her to do something?
Movita laughed gently at Jen’s frightened response. ‘Don’t worry baby, I ain’t here to kill ya’. I’m here to make sure ya’ live.’
Jen took a deep breath. ‘I don’t understand what you’re trying to say to me,’ she said softly. ‘I can’t stay here. I can’t stay in this place for another day. I can’t.’ She began sobbing quietly.
‘It ain’t just ‘bout you,’ Movita said. ‘That’s what I’m trying to tell ya’. Ya’ ain’t the only woman in this place.’
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