by Mary Monroe
“Brrrrr! I don’t blame him much, m’dear. Muck should be left among the muckers,” the grim-looking female officer said, folding her thick arms across her lumpy bosom. Like a lot of the women on the island, she was a combination of Spanish and African. She had jet-black hair that was bone straight, and her skin was almost as black as the telephone that I’d just held in my hands. She looked like so many of the sisters I knew back home in Ohio.
“Sister, you don’t have to talk to me like that. You don’t know me,” I wailed.
“Ow!” she yelled, screwing up her face and rubbing her arm like I’d pinched her. “And I don’t want to know you,” she continued, wagging a thick, gnarled finger in my face.
I couldn’t remember the last time somebody had looked at me with such contempt. In addition to everything else that I had to worry about, now I was concerned about this woman, or one of the other guards, getting violent with me. I promptly removed the smile from my face and replaced it with a look of fear.
The big woman cleared her throat, reared back on her ashy legs, and then slapped her hands on her hips. She moved closer to me, her nose almost touching mine. Her sour breath almost made me choke on my own breath. I flinched as the words spewed out of her mouth like bile. “You American women think too highly of yourselves, anyway! Always did and always will. Sister? How dare you call me sister! You are no sister of mine. I wouldn’t claim you if you came gift wrapped,” she yelled, waving her arms. With a grunt that sounded like it came from her bowels, the woman snatched a pair of handcuffs from a wide leather belt hanging from her massive waistline. “Hands back behind your back. Now!”
After she’d cuffed me and spun me around by my shoulders to face her, she smiled for the first time.
CHAPTER 3
I was back in the same cell where I’d spent part of the night before, and most of this morning, staring at the concrete floor. Suspended from one wall by a chain at each end was a narrow cot with a mattress that felt like a slab of cement. A stiff gray blanket was on the cot, but there was no pillow. A large iron pot to piss in sat in a corner, on the floor. There was no lid for the pot and no toilet paper. But there was a roll of brown paper next to the pot, like the kind that butchers used to wrap raw meat. The paper was stiff enough for me to make a lid to cover the pot. There was no window, no sink, and no fan.
I was in the third of four side-by-side cells. In one was a woman who had been moaning and groaning in Spanish the night before. She was silent now. In the other cell next to me was another woman, another foreigner, who was just as dazed as I was. From what I’d picked up from the guards, she was British and had been caught trying to smuggle drugs out of the country. I didn’t know what kinds of drugs or how she had tried to get them out of the country. But I felt sorry for her. One thing I did know was that getting caught with drugs could get you executed in some countries.
I didn’t know how harsh the foreign laws were when it came to prostitution. I could barely bring myself to think the word, let alone say it. Saying it to my husband had been the most difficult thing I’d ever said to him.
The only reason I was not climbing the walls in my cell was because I truly believed that when Leon cooled off, he’d get one of his lawyer friends, do whatever he had to do, and bring me home.
I was so deep in thought that I didn’t hear the door to my dreary cell open. I looked up into the last face I wanted to see: another scowling, husky female officer, jiggling like a float made of jelly. Her humongous breasts looked like torpedoes.
“Come with me!” she barked, snapping her fingers.
I didn’t have time to say or do anything. She clamped my shoulder with one of her massive hands and marched me from the musty corridor that contained the four cells into another musty corridor.
We went through several doors and down a darkened hallway before we entered a room that contained a bamboo desk and two metal folding chairs.
“Sit! Sit down now!” the guard ordered nastily, helping me into one of the seats, with a shove so strong, the chair almost rocked over.
“What happens now?” I asked in the same meek voice that I’d been using since my arrest.
“You wait here!” was all the surly woman said before she left the room, locking it from the outside.
Before I could have myself a good cry, another big, husky woman joined me in the depressing little room. She was a hard-looking woman in her forties, but she didn’t look like a local. Her skin was a chalky white, and her thick blond hair, twisted into a loosely braided knot on top of her head, was streaked with gray. She had a briefcase in her hand, and she wore a drab gray dress, similar to the uniforms that the officers wore. I was pleased to see that this woman did not have a weapon or a pair of handcuffs hanging off her hip, too.
“Renee Webb?” she asked, with a smile. I was able to relax when she extended her hand to shake mine. “I’m Debra Retner.” I let out a sigh of relief when I realized she had an American accent.
“Yes, ma’am,” I mumbled, my limp hand still in hers. “Are you from the American Embassy, or something like that?”
“Something like that,” the Debra woman drawled, plopping down in the other chair so hard that the tail of her voluminous dress fluttered like a flag on a pole. She let out a loud breath as she flipped open the briefcase, pulling out a few sheets of paper. “Let’s see…hmmm….” She paused, a disturbing frown on her face. Debra pursed her thin lips and looked at me with pity. Then she fished a pair of glasses from her breast pocket and held them up to her eyes. She looked at the papers again, shaking her head. She let out an ominous groan, blinking rapidly and hard.
“Hmmm,” Debra started, scratching her horseshoe-shaped chin. “Looks like you’ve gotten yourself into a fine mess, huh?” she said, with a chuckle. She parted her thin lips with a grin so wide, it almost divided her face in two. The fact that this woman was able to make light of my situation gave me hope.
“Uh, so they tell me. It’s all a big misunderstanding, though. I am not a prostitute,” I insisted, holding up my hand. “I have a husband and a child. I’m a schoolteacher. I’ve never been arrested before in my life, Mrs. Retner.”
“Please call me Debra. And is it all right with you if I call you Renee? There is no need for us to be so formal here,” the woman said gently, offering me a sympathetic nod.
I nodded back.
“So, Renee, you had a sexual encounter with a man, and then you accepted money for it?” Debra asked, with one eyebrow raised. She tilted her head to the side so that she was looking at me out of the corner of her eye. This gesture of suspicion was universal. My mother, my husband, and even some of the second graders who’d passed through my classroom had given me this look before. “Is that not the case?”
“Well, yes, that is the case. But I—”
“That’s prostitution, ma’am. And in this country, it is a very serious charge.” Debra removed her glasses and rubbed her eyes. When she put her glasses back on, she gave me a look that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” I asked.
“Renee, I’ve heard your account of what happened from the officers. And, for the record, I believe you. However, the man involved tells a decidedly different story.”
“What did he say?” All of the trembling that I was doing was probably making mincemeat out of my insides.
“He insists that you propositioned him in the bar, quoted a price, and wouldn’t take no for an answer even after he had rejected you more than once. You accompanied him to a rented room, where you demanded two hundred dollars to perform various sex acts.”
“That’s a goddamned lie! I went up to him in the club, but I didn’t say anything to him about having sex with him for money! I just wanted to dance…and…have a few drinks.” I didn’t dare tell Debra that I had gone to the club looking for more than a dance and a few drinks.
“He has three witnesses from the club who will back up his story,” Debra said, her
own anger rising.
“They are all bare-assed liars, too!” I hollered, almost stripping the gears in my throat.
“I know that this man is lying, but I can’t prove it. Can you?”
“How would I prove he’s lying?”
“Then you can’t?”
I shook my head. I gave Debra a hopeless look, and then I started talking out of the side of my mouth. “What happens if my husband refuses to come down here and pay my fine?” I asked, with my teeth clicking together, my lips quivering.
“Excuse me?” Debra said, looking at me with her eyes narrowed into such an extreme squint that for a split second it looked like she’d gone to sleep.
“My husband was really mad when I called my house and told him what had happened. Uh, what I’d done,” I said, my face burning with shame.
“I would imagine so,” Debra remarked, with a weak sigh.
“Well”—I shifted in my seat and looked Debra straight in the eyes—he was so mad that he said he wasn’t going to pay my fine. But, I am sure that he will give in…and do it. He’ll probably divorce me later on, though,” I decided. My voice was fading in and out.
There was a worried look on Debra’s face.
“If my husband meant what he said, and I can’t pay my fine, what will I do?” I whispered, leaning toward Debra. She looked even more worried. Her shoulders were so wide that when she shrugged, it looked like she had on shoulder pads.
“You will appear in court tomorrow morning to enter your plea, guilty or not guilty,” Debra explained.
“But I am not guilty!” I said quickly, almost coming out of my seat. Debra motioned for me to sit back down. “I know I had sex with a man, and he gave me money, but it wasn’t…it wasn’t.” I couldn’t even finish my sentence.
“No matter what you say, it won’t change anything.” Debra tapped my hand, then squeezed it. Every little gesture that this woman made seemed sincere. It made me feel hopeful.
“Well, can I plead not guilty and fight this charge? I can explain everything. I was drunk and upset with the woman I came down here with. I thought this man was nice. I’d seen him around, and he seemed like such a nice man. He even paid for my dinner and drinks one evening, before I even knew who he was. Isn’t that something like entrapment? He was setting me up from the get-go!” I hollered, groping for words. I couldn’t tell what Debra was thinking. “In the club that night, he bought me more drinks, and he listened to me bitch and moan about the fight that I’d had with my friend. I was not in that place looking to sell my body. You have got to believe that. It just…it just happened.”
“You can plead not guilty and take this to trial. But please be aware of the fact that you can still be held in jail until your trial date, for…up to a year.”
CHAPTER 4
“A year? What the hell do you mean?” I asked, my lips twisted like a stroke victim’s. “You can’t be serious! Are you telling me that these people can keep me in jail, awaiting trial, for a year? A whole fucking year?” I looked in Debra’s eyes again, blinking so hard, I could barely see her. But I could still see the hopeless look on her face, and that didn’t go over too well with me. Debra gave me a hesitant nod.
“Well, if they keep me in jail for a year, that would be punishment enough, wouldn’t it? Why would I even need a trial if they keep me in jail for a year? I was told that if I didn’t pay the fine and got convicted, the most time I’d have to spend in jail is three months. I know enough about the law to know that locking me up for a year, until they can sentence me to three months afterwards, makes no sense at all.”
I looked at the floor. Debra and I remained silent for a full minute before I looked up again, saying the first thing that came to my mind. “The woman that I came down here with, she can be a character witness for me.” Now I was really talking crazy. As big a whore as Inez was, even a weak prosecutor could shoot so many holes in her credibility that she’d probably get thrown in jail, too!
“Is this the same woman that you had the argument with?” Debra wanted to know.
I nodded.
“And if it’s not too personal, may I ask what you fought with her about?”
My throat was lined with bile, and the rumbling pain in my stomach was almost as bad as labor. “She told me that she’d slept with my husband,” I mumbled.
“I see. And where is this woman now?”
“I don’t even know,” I muttered, with a heavy shrug, a scared look on my face. “After I slapped her, she checked into a different hotel. I can’t believe what is happening to me. This was supposed to be the vacation of a lifetime,” I said, with a profound shudder. “Women have vacation flings all the time, and they don’t get arrested for it!” I yelled. “What is wrong with these people down here? Don’t they have enough drug dealers, murderers, and thieves to keep them busy? Why are they making such a big deal out of what I did?” I sobbed.
Debra squeezed my hand again. “Mrs. Webb, let me remind you, you are not in the United States. These little islands are not as idyllic as the travel ads make them seem. If you stay out of trouble, you can really have a wonderful time down here, and in other locations outside of the States. But down here, the laws vary from one island to another. Now if you’d been arrested in Jamaica or Martinique, you’d probably be back home by now.” Debra shook her head so hard, a lock of hair fell across her eye. “You picked the wrong island. It’s as simple as that,” she told me, pushing her hair back off of her face.
“Are you here to help me?” The meek tone had returned to my voice.
“I’m going to try.”
“Can I borrow the ten thousand dollars from you? I swear to God, I’ll pay you back as soon as I get back to Ohio,” I said, so excited I squeezed Debra’s hand so hard, she pulled it away.
“I wish things were that simple. I barely make enough to live on as it is,” Debra said, with an embarrassed look on her face.
“Can you get me out of this mess, anyway? A woman in your position must have a lot of friends. Can you borrow from them? I have a five-year-old daughter that I need to get home to. School starts in a couple of weeks.” I stopped when I realized it was doing me no good to ramble. Despite his flaws, Leon was a good father to our daughter, Cheryl. And both our mothers doted on that child. My daughter was the last thing I needed to be worrying about.
“I am afraid I can’t get you out of this,” Debra reluctantly admitted, her eyes unable to meet mine.
“Then what the hell are you here for?” I asked, rising again.
Debra motioned for me to sit back down. “I can’t get you out of this, but I can make things a little easier for you. You’re not the first American I’ve come to assist, and I doubt you’ll be the last. Here is what I can do for you.” She paused and sucked in a long, loud breath. Her gray eyes were flat and beady. Like the eyes on a dead fish. “I can speak to the court on your behalf.”
“Like a lawyer?”
“If you can afford a lawyer, I can help you find one.”
“If I had money, I could pay my fine. I wouldn’t need a lawyer. They told me that if I paid ten thousand dollars, they would release me.”
“True. But you don’t have ten thousand dollars. And that’s why I am here.”
“What happens if I plead guilty?”
“As grim as it sounds, that would be my recommendation. In your case, as you’ve already been advised, the penalty would be three-months confinement.”
“I see,” I muttered, looking at the floor. I started talking out of the side of my mouth again. “Why did this have to happen to me?”
“Don’t beat yourself up, Renee. It won’t help you at all. You just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Twelve other women were arrested for the same crime within hours of you; most had been tailed from that same bar. And, by the way, that nice local man who’d been so interested in your tale of woe, he works for the police. Several local women are now serving time because of Jose Garcia, and other men like him.”
Jose. The very name sounded obscene to me now. I saw red in more ways than one: his red hair, his red shirt, my red-hot anger. One of the more sympathetic officers had already told me Jose’s story. Jose, and other men like him, made money by helping the cops identify prostitutes and get them off the streets. It showed the world that this tiny island was doing its part to fight crime. After the disappearance in nearby Aruba of that pretty White schoolgirl from Alabama, and the shabby investigation, all eyes around the world were on the Caribbean. Some island officials had decided to flex what little muscle they had by making as many arrests for as many different crimes as possible. And I was part of the crime wave.
“That motherfucker. Jose’s the one who should be in jail. He had sex with me. I thought that all undercover vice cops were supposed to do was get you to quote a price. They are not supposed to actually fuck you!” I shouted.
“Let me remind you again, Mrs. Webb, you are not in the United States. You are on foreign soil, and I am sorry, but you just might be here longer than you want to be.”
CHAPTER 5
Before they returned me to my cell, I was ushered down yet another dim hallway into a communal shower, along with two other women. By now my legs felt like rubber. It had been a while since I’d felt my butt. I was surprised that under these extreme circumstances, I was still able to walk and function.
I had seen a lot of large female guards in the compound, but the one who escorted me to the showers, then accosted me with a rubber hose, was the most strapping one I’d seen so far. She was not that much taller than me, but she weighed at least three hundred pounds. A short, severe Afro covered her moon-shaped head like a stocking cap.
Without saying a word, the hefty woman strapped on some kind of a surgical gauze mask and then proceeded to hose me and the other two women down with icy cold water, like cattle. The other two women squealed like injured mice and cursed in Spanish.