Hot Little Hands

by Abigail Ulman

  “You’ll have to take the laces out of those sneakers,” the male officer tells her.

  “Okay,” the girl says.

  “Is that your real hair?” the female officer asks her.

  “Yeah.” Half the girl’s head is shaved, the other half is in braids. She tugs on the braids. “They’re real.”

  Bobbi gets up and bangs on the door. “Hello? Hello!”

  The female officer looks in at us. “I’ll come back,” she says. A few minutes later, she opens the door and we flutter to it.

  “What we doing?” Bobbi asks her. “We sleep this?”

  “I don’t know,” the officer says. She’s short and black, and she’s smiling at us like she actually wants to help. “I’ll go find out.”

  “Thank you,” I say. “Also, I have to pee. Is it possible to do that somewhere a bit more private?”

  “Okay.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Nineteen’s empty now. You can use that one.”

  “Oh my God, I love you.”

  “No need for that. Come on out.”

  Cell nineteen is identical to cell seventeen, except for a few pieces of toilet paper that someone stuck in the air-conditioning vent. It’s not really that much more private in here; the officer stands outside the open door the whole time, keeping an eye on both cells. Three or four nights ago I was at a party in Istanbul, peeing in a doorless bathroom while a gay guy called Zeki kept watch for me, looking back every few seconds to see if I was done. I try to pretend this is exactly like that. I try to pretend this isn’t that weird.

  —

  The girl with the braids is sitting in the nurse’s office. She has her arm on the desk and her head down on her arm. She’s black and she’s wearing a pink tank top, and she has the word CAT tattooed above her right shoulder blade. On the desk in front of her, there’s a pile of orange prescription pill containers.

  “Catherine?” the processing officer says.

  “I have Catherine here,” the nurse calls out.

  “Okay.” He looks over to where Bobbi and I are sitting against the wall. “Claire?”

  I go and sit in the chair opposite him. He’s a middle-aged Latino man with hunched shoulders and a worry line across his forehead. On the wall behind him is a handwritten sign that reads: ALL NIKE X SHOES HAVE A HIDDEN COMPARTMENT IN THE SOLE. THEREFORE NIKE X SHOES ARE NOT PERMITTED TO BE WORN BY INMATES OR STAFF IN THIS FACILITY. On the wall to my left is a printed sign about sexual assault. There is a zero-tolerance policy toward sexual assault in this jail, it says, and inmates should report any incidents to the officer in charge.

  The processing officer asks for my birthdate, my eye color and hair color. He asks me where I’m from. “What did you do?” He leans back in his chair. “Overstay a visa? Work illegally?”

  “I don’t really know. They think I’m trying to immigrate here. I still don’t quite understand it.”

  “Ah, yes,” he says. “America isn’t the same place since September eleventh. There’s a dark side now. Okay, look in the camera.” Before I have a chance to locate the camera—a spherical ball on a stem sitting next to his computer—he’s taken my photo. He prints out a card with my details on it, and laminates it. CLAIRE OGLIND, it says, FEMALE, AGE 30. EYES BROWN HAIR BROWN. STATUS: NONRESIDENT ALIEN. In the photo, my head is bowed and I’m looking down into my lap. I have an expression on my face sadder than I knew I was capable of. Like, Mother Mary sad. “Can I get a copy of that?” I ask him.

  “No,” he says, “it’s for your cell door.”

  When it’s Bobbi’s turn to be processed, I go back and sit against the wall. Catherine is still leaning on the desk, and the nurse, a wan white woman with cropped red hair, keeps waking her up to ask her questions.

  “You’ll have your medical intake in the morning,” the processing officer tells Bobbi and me. He hands us each a Styrofoam cup of water and a small envelope with our pills in it. Bobbi puts her medication in her mouth and swallows. I slip my Klonopin into my pocket and drink the water.

  On our way through the jail, we pass a bunch of other cells. Some of them still have the lights on, and I catch sight of the people locked inside. One woman is standing with her hands on her hips. She’s wincing and rotating one of her ankles like it’s injured. In another cell, two women are sitting on opposite ends of the bench, heads leaned back against the wall, staring at nothing. One of them looks about fifteen. Everyone seems bored, miserable, and calm—either they’re done freaking out about being in here, or they didn’t freak out to begin with. We must be in a women-only section, because all the inmates are female. And though I’ve heard the statistics, and I thought I understood the crisis, I’m still stunned to realize that every woman in here is black.

  —

  Cell twenty-three is the same size as the other cells, but it has two concrete benches in it, running along adjacent walls, with a flat rubber mattress on each one. Next to each mattress is a pile of sheets, a thin gray blanket, and a mini toothbrush and tube of toothpaste.

  “Make your beds,” the processing officer tells us from the doorway. My mattress has a huge rip down the middle with stuffing coming out, but I don’t care. I’m so relieved to finally be going to bed.

  “Okay,” he says when we’re done. “Go to sleep.”

  I slip my feet out of my shoes and lie down. “Do you know what time they’re coming to get us in the morning?” I ask him.

  “Early. Maybe six o’clock.”

  “What time is it now?”

  He checks his watch. “Ten of four. Go to sleep now.” He leaves the cell. The lights go out and the door slides shut.

  “We have two hours to sleep,” I tell Bobbi.

  “Two hour? Only two?”

  “Apparently.”

  The room is dim now, with a slant of light coming in from the hallway. “I have to pipi,” Bobbi says.

  “Okay.” I turn over and face the wall while she goes. When she’s done, I get up and brush my teeth. Then I get back into bed. I look around at the benches, the toilet, the sink.

  “I don’t believe it,” Bobbi says. “Why? Why they taking me?”

  “Hey, what’s your daughter’s name?”

  “My daughter? Jadviga.”

  “That’s a nice name,” I say.

  “Thank you.”

  “What town do you come from in Poland? Warsaw? Krakow? Where’s your home?”

  “My town? Is Lubin.”

  “I’ve never heard of it. Is it nice there?”

  “Why I no going Los Angeles?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why? Why they not let me go?”

  “Bobbi, I’m gonna go to sleep now,” I say. She doesn’t answer. “Good night.”

  After a long pause she says, “Good night.”

  I pull my hood onto my head, pull my sleeves down over my hands, and yank the blanket tighter around me. I reach into my pocket, pull out the pill, bite into it, and swallow half. I lay my head down and, with a camera behind plastic in the high corner of the room filming me, I fall asleep.

  —

  There are voices in the corridor and they wake me. I go to the door. I can see three other cell doors from here, but I can’t see inside. I see shadows moving in all three windows, though; inmates hovering around their doors. I sit on my bed and wrap the blanket around me. About ten minutes later, the lights blink on and the young officer with glasses opens the door.

  “Time to wake up,” he says. Bobbi lifts her head.

  “Are we going back to the airport now?” I ask.

  “No,” he says. “You’re seeing the nurse for an intake.”

  “But we’re leaving today.”

  “Everyone has to see the nurse.”

  —

  This morning’s nurse is a black woman in her thirties, with blue scrubs and a tattoo of a kite on her left forearm. She asks me a bunch of questions about my medical history. I tell her I’m allergic to bee stings, I’ve been a vegetarian for
fourteen years, and I used to smoke cigarettes but I quit a couple of years ago.

  There’s a note stuck to the side of the PC that says the rules have changed and female inmates now have to discard their own pregnancy samples. I’m wondering what that means when the nurse hands me a small plastic cup, and tells me to go into the bathroom and pee in it.

  “Why?”

  “For a pregnancy test.”

  “I don’t need that. I know I’m not pregnant.”

  “Everyone has to do it.”

  The bathroom door locks from the outside so after I pee I stand inside, holding the cup and knocking, until Bobbi finally lets me out. The nurse takes the cup and puts a pregnancy test stick in it. Then we move onto the psychological part of the exam.

  “Have you ever hurt yourself or had thoughts about hurting yourself?”

  “No.”

  “Have you ever threatened to hurt yourself or others?”

  “No.”

  “Do you ever feel like life is a roller coaster of ups and downs?”

  “Yes, sometimes I do.”

  “Do you ever get angry or irritated that people you know are talking to you about their problems?”

  I sneak a look back at Bobbi. “I try to be patient but occasionally it can get overwhelming, yes.”

  “You’re not pregnant,” the nurse says, and even though I wasn’t worrying about it, I exhale with relief. “Take the test and throw it out in the bathroom.” She rolls her chair over to a dispenser of hand sanitizer on the wall and pumps some onto her palm.

  When I get back from the bathroom, I keep staring at the dispenser. Eventually I ask, “Would I be able to use some hand sanitizer?”

  She glances at it. “Okay.”

  “Really?”

  She nods.

  “Oh my God, thank you.” I go over and pump some gel onto my hands and rub them together. I feel so sticky, I wish I could rub it all over my arms and face. I wish I could dive into a pool of hand sanitizer right now.

  When I sit back down, the nurse is holding a syringe. “Have you ever had a tuberculosis test?” she asks me.

  I have no idea, but I stare at the needle and say I have.

  “When?” she asks.

  “Like, two months ago.”

  “Well, I have to give you another one. It’s an airborne disease, so you might have contracted it since then. I’ll inject this into your forearm and you keep an eye on it. If it gets swollen or hard in the next few days, go see a doctor.”

  “I really don’t want to have that test.”

  “I have to give it to you.”

  “But I’m leaving this morning.”

  “Everyone has to be tested.”

  “Why does it even matter if I have TB? I’m leaving the country. I’m not gonna spread it to any of your citizens.”

  “It’s mandatory procedure,” she says.

  “I know you’re just doing your job and I don’t want to make it harder, but I really don’t want to have an injection.”

  “If you don’t let me give you the shot, I’ll have to get someone else to do it by force.”

  She puts on surgical gloves and comes around the desk and sits beside me. She holds my forearm with one of her hands. “It’ll just be a quick prick,” she says, “and then it’ll be over.”

  I squint my eyes closed and wait for it to happen. But nothing happens. She runs a gloved finger along my forearm, probably looking for a vein. “When did you get these marks?” she asks.

  I open my eyes and look. There are tiny red bumps on my skin, three on my hand, and around seven on my arm. “I don’t know,” I say. “They weren’t there yesterday.”

  “Do they itch?”

  As soon as she asks me that, they start to itch. “Yes.” I scratch at them. “They really do.”

  “I think you may have contracted bedbugs.”

  “Oh my God. Please don’t tell me that.”

  “Which cell were you in?”

  “Oh my God. Twenty-three. And seventeen and nineteen.”

  “Okay. There’s nothing we can really do about this here. When you go home, put all your clothes and everything you have with you in the dryer or in the freezer straight away. Take a shower, and don’t scratch the bites.”

  “Maybe they’re just from mosquitoes?” I say, examining them.

  “No, they’re lined up like that,” she says. “I’m pretty sure it’s bedbugs.”

  “I can’t believe this,” I say. “Can I please at least not have the TB test now?”

  “You still have to have it. It’ll just take a second.” She holds the needle just above my forearm. “And then you can go back to your cell.” Then she presses it in.

  —

  “Why you crying?” Bobbi asks me when she gets to our cell. She shows me the plaster on her arm. “Why I having this?”

  “I don’t know.” She sits down next to me.

  “You should stay away from me, Bobbi, and my bed, and probably yours, too.”

  “Why I having pregnancy test? I too old.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I fifty-nine. I sixty!” She gets up, goes to the door, and looks out. “Why they taking me? I go Los Angeles, I come back. I not doing nothing.”

  “I didn’t do anything, either,” I say. But I’m starting to doubt if that’s true. Would all these people go to the trouble of putting me through all these steps and systems if I hadn’t done anything wrong? Would those airport officers have questioned and fingerprinted me and interviewed me and interviewed me again and cuffed and escorted me to jail if they hadn’t looked at the details of my life and seen that something wasn’t right?

  Would Lars write scathing songs about me if I hadn’t been careless and selfish, and hurt him without even considering that I might?

  Would Luke suggest that one day I tell this as a crazy story, if I didn’t always view my life as something detached from me, reducing everything to a series of funny anecdotes to tell a group of tipsy couples at a Friday-night dinner or a Sunday lunch?

  I know I didn’t have an intention to immigrate. I always assumed that I’d take all my stuff and say goodbye and leave San Francisco permanently one day, just like all my academic friends had already done. But I never made plans to actually do that. I didn’t have an intention to immigrate, I just didn’t not have one. And maybe, in the end, it equals the same thing.

  —

  Breakfast is a brown tray separated into sections like a TV dinner. There’s a slop of porridge, a piece of dried-up French toast, a sachet of table syrup, a small carton of milk, and a carton of orange drink with, the box says, up to 2 percent real juice in it. Bobbi drinks her milk and then her juice. “You can have mine, too,” I tell her.

  “You don’t have?” she asks me.

  “I know it’s a waste of taxpayer money, but I really don’t want any.” I sit on the bench next to my bed and try not to scratch my bites.

  “Bobbi,” I say, “at the airport, did they ask you how much money you have?”

  “Yes. I showing them.”

  “What did you show them?”

  “I having three hundred dollar. I showing them.”

  “Maybe that’s why they wouldn’t let you in? Because they didn’t think you had enough money to cover your time here.”

  “Why I need money?” she says. “I not eating much. I just taking sometimes fruit.”

  “If you don’t have enough money, they’re probably worried you’ll work or do something illegal.”

  “My friend Los Angeles, she pays me food. Why it’s their business? We go vacation Las Vegas. She pay everything. What I need? Nothing.”

  She gets up to pee. I look the other way.

  “America,” she says when she’s done. “This is America. Ha!”

  “Would this kind of thing happen in Poland?” I ask.

  “Yes,” she concedes, “happening most place.”

  —

  Apparently the officers from the airport usually trans
port deportees to and from jail but, starting today, the Department of Homeland Security is outsourcing its transportation services—to the jail. The young officer with the glasses comes and gets us and takes us out to the entrance area, where the Olympics enthusiast from last night is waiting with a table covered in chains and handcuffs.

  “Well blimey, mate,” he says in a fake British accent. “If it isn’t the Spice Girls.” He looks from Bobbi to me, waiting for a response.

  “Yep,” I say. “Here we are.”

  It turns out the guy with the glasses is a new employee, and the Olympics guy is training him. He instructs him on how to fasten the big leather belt around my waist, while another guy leans in the doorway of an empty cell and watches.

  “We going this airport?” Bobbi asks.

  “Will we be taken through the airport in handcuffs?” I ask them.

  “That’s up to Homeland Security,” Olympics says. “They won’t be taking our cuffs, though. This equipment’s expensive.”

  The rookie tightens the cuffs around my wrists, and then Olympics instructs him to put the leg shackles on me.

  “We going this airport?” Bobbi asks again.

  “They don’t know,” I tell her.

  “No. With this?”

  “She just told you she didn’t know,” says the guy in the doorway.

  The officers glance at him and look away, but I can’t help grinning. He’s young—eighteen, nineteen years old. A black kid in red shorts and a green Eagles T-shirt, with a layer of teenage baby fat he hasn’t lost yet. “Do you work here?” I ask him.

  He shakes his head. “I’m just waiting to go upstairs.”

  “Is that, like, the guys section?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What are you in for?” Rookie asks him.

  “I didn’t show up in court,” the guy says.

  “Failure to appear?” Rookie stands up. “So, what, you’re here for the weekend?”

  “Yeah. Three days.”

  “It’ll be okay,” Rookie says. “You’ll just be here for a few days and then you can go home.”