Miss Watts-Thompson said, “The mother is willing to sign for her daughter, however she does not feel sufficiently confident to put up her house as surety.”
Izaya started to object, but the judge hushed him with a raised hand. “Well, if her own mother doesn’t trust her, I can’t imagine why I should.”
Elaine could bear it no longer. She stood up and walked forward. She cleared her throat nervously. Before she could speak, she heard Izaya’s voice. “Olivia’s mother is perfectly willing to act as a surety for her daughter, your honor. The only problem is the house. She is in the process of getting a second mortgage in order to buy a vacation home. The surety bond would preclude that.”
“Ah. A vacation home,” the judge said, his eyebrows raised.
By now, Elaine stood at the little wooden gate directly behind the podium. Olivia’s back was rigid, and she refused to look at her mother.
“Excuse me,” Elaine whispered, tugging on Izaya’s jacket.
“Are you Miss Goodman’s mother?” the judge asked.
Elaine looked up. Her throat and mouth felt dry and thick. “Yes,” she croaked.
“Is this true? Are you unwilling to use your home as security for your daughter’s release?”
“No, sir. I mean, no, it’s not true. I didn’t realize…I mean, yes, I’ll put up my house.”
Izaya, looking over his shoulder, smiled at her.
“Your honor,” he said, “it’s my impression that Mrs. Goodman was simply not aware of the seriousness of this case. She was under the impression that a simple signature would be enough. Now that she understands what’s going on, it appears that she’s willing to act as a surety and use her home as security.”
The judge looked at Miss Watts-Thompson, his eyebrows raised.
The little woman’s breast heaved with indignation, and she shot Elaine a dirty look. “I fully explained all this to the mother, and she wasn’t interested.”
“Well, she seems to be interested now,” said the judge. “Does that influence your recommendation?”
She shook her head, her bouffant trembling, one of the clips holding it perilously close to falling out. “Not at all. Not at all. There’s still the criminal history, the lack of ties to the community.”
The judge looked back at Izaya who said, “Olivia was a student activist. A non-violent student activist. This supposed criminal history consists of getting arrested for sitting in at the dean’s office. Hugging trees. She’s lived her entire life in Berkeley and Oakland. Her mother lives here. What more ties to the community could Miss Watts-Thompson possibly require?”
“If I might, your honor?” the prosecutor spoke in a quiet, reasonable voice.
“By all means, Ms. Steele,” the judge said.
“The government might be satisfied with a surety bond secured by Mrs. Goodman’s house if there were some further limitations placed on the defendant to ensure her compliance with the requirements of pretrial services and her presence in court.”
“Continue.”
“We might consider a bond if the defendant were compelled to reside with her mother.”
“Would that be possible, Mrs. Goodman?” the judge asked.
Elaine looked away from the judge, down at her hands knotted in front of her. “Yes,” she whispered, and then, embarrassed at the tentative sound of her voice, she said it again, more firmly. “Yes, of course Olivia can live with me.”
“If the court is considering bond against the specific recommendation of pretrial services,” said Miss Watts-Thompson, her voice tight with anger, “we ask that at the very least the defendant be placed in an inpatient drug-treatment facility.”
“That’s absurd, your honor,” Izaya interjected, shaking his head, “There’s no reason whatsoever to think Miss Goodman is addicted to drugs.”
“She’s charged with drug dealing!” said Miss Watts-Thompson.
“First of all, she’s been charged, not found guilty, and second of all, that doesn’t mean she’s a drug user.”
The prosecutor’s voice was again calm and reasonable, and somehow more dangerous for all that. “The government would be satisfied with drug testing.”
“Fine,” the judge said. “I’m going to order a surety bond of one hundred thousand dollars, secured by fifty thousand dollars in real property, with the further condition that the defendant reside with her mother and undergo periodic, random drug testing.”
Izaya thanked the court and led Olivia back to her seat. As she passed by her mother, Olivia scowled and looked away. Elaine stood for a moment, facing her daughter, then turned and walked quickly down the aisle, back to her own seat.
Neither Jorge nor the other man were granted bail. Their appearances lasted no more than a minute or two, and then the judge left the courtroom. The officer who had escorted Olivia led her back up the aisle. As she passed, Elaine called, “I’ll have you out in a minute, honey. Don’t worry.” Olivia said nothing.
Elaine went up to the front of the courtroom and found Izaya. “Can I sign the papers now and take her home?”
“I’m afraid it’s a little more complicated than that. Come up to my office and I’ll have a paralegal give you all the forms you’ll need to fill out. It’s going to take a couple of days to get it all together.”
Elaine was stunned. “A couple of days?” she said.
***
Olivia stood in the hallway outside the courtroom, tears of rage dripping down her cheeks, into the neck of her shirt. She reached up with her handcuffed hands and wiped her nose on her wrist. She tried to slow her breathing down, convinced she was beginning to hyperventilate. Why had she ever expected her mother to save her? Clearly, Elaine didn’t trust her. She didn’t want to put up the bail because she was afraid Olivia would abscond. And God knew the last thing Elaine wanted was to have her fuck-up of a daughter living in her house again.
Olivia wiped her tear-dampened wrists on her jeans and looked up to find Jorge being led out of the courtroom by two men in navy suits.
“Jorge!” she shouted. She’d never seen him look like this. His face was bloodless and one of his eyes looked puffy, as if he’d been punched. His hair, usually so meticulously tended, hung in greasy strings down his cheeks. His jeans were torn at the knee, and Olivia imagined that she could see blood staining the ragged fabric. She had tried to talk to him in the courtroom, but the guard shook his head at her in warning, and Jorge refused even to look at her. She assumed he was simply terrified. He had to be. The federales in Mexico would just as soon rob, beat, or kill you as arrest you. How was Jorge to know that things were different in the United States?
“Jorge, are you okay?”
“No talking!” said one of the blue-suited men, jerking Jorge’s arm and shoving him away down the hall. Jorge turned back to look at Olivia and mouthed something. She couldn’t make out what he said. She shook her head frantically to show him that she hadn’t understood, but by then he’d turned back around. Olivia’s own escort came over now, took her arm again, and led her down the hall in the opposite direction.
Olivia tried to figure out what it was that Jorge had been trying to say to her. Had he attempted to communicate something about what she should or should not tell the cops or her lawyer? Or had it been an apology, a simple “lo siento”? She was desperate to speak to him, and at the same time she wanted to slap him in the face for his stupidity. The nightmare into which his ridiculous machismo had forced them both enraged her. Why hadn’t he been satisfied with letting her work for the both of them? Why had he put them both in this terrifying position?
Olivia turned to her guard. “Where am I going now? When do I get out?”
He looked at her, his kindly face belying the gruffness in his tone. “It usually takes a couple of days to set up the bond. There are papers your mother’s going to have to collect and file with the court. Then the
judge has to review everything. While you’re waiting, you’ll be transferred over to the county jail in Martinez with the other female federal prisoners awaiting trial.”
Olivia nodded. She wasn’t surprised at the delay. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise her if her mother never came through at all. Doubtless, Elaine thought that it would teach Olivia a lesson to sit in jail until Izaya could get the charges against her dismissed.
Olivia told herself that she didn’t care; she could handle county jail. She’d done it before. She could do it again.
She had not counted, however, on the smell. She had remembered the interminable noise of several hundred women, all talking and fighting and breathing, of the guards’ boots clomping on the floor, of their keys jangling and the doors clanging. She had remembered the misery of trying to sleep in a cell that never got even remotely dark, the lights in the hallway intruding like the persistent reproach of a guilty conscience. She had remembered the suppressed fear that the woman in front of you might suddenly decide you’d disrespected her in some way and needed a schooling. But she had forgotten all about the smell. Or maybe, back in Santa Cruz and up in Humboldt, it hadn’t been so unbearably foul. Maybe there the vile stench of poorly washed bodies, of sewage and sour food, had been better concealed by the acrid fumes of disinfectant. She spent her first morning of confinement at the women’s facility in Martinez hunched over a reeking toilet, vomiting, until her dry heaves brought up nothing but a trickle of hot, yellow bile.
“Disgusting bitch. What’s your problem?” a groggy voice asked, not entirely unpleasantly.
Olivia wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and stood up, leaning a palm against the sticky white tile wall to steady herself.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s the smell, I guess.”
The woman snorted. “Get used to it, girl.” She was lying on her stomach, her chin propped in her hands, a large woman with dark brown, heavily freckled skin. Her kinky hair was dyed a bright maroon and hung over one of her shoulders—a mass of braids tied with black thread. Her lips were thick and perfectly shaped, her broad nose was pierced with a tiny gold stud, and her manicured fingernails were painted metallic blue with flecks of silver—all except the right index finger, which was torn and ragged. As she gazed at Olivia she chewed on the cuticle of that finger. She licked away the bead of dark red blood that appeared at the corner of the nail.
Olivia gagged again and ran for the bowl.
“Tell you what,” the woman laughed. “You pregnant.”
“No!” Olivia said, almost in a shout. “It’s just the smell. It makes me sick.”
“You pregnant, girl.” She nodded. “That why you so sensitive to the smell. It might smell like a sack of granddaddies in here, but if you puking, you pregnant.”
Could it be true? When had she last gotten her period? Olivia started doing frantic calculations in her head and realized with a sinking feeling that she’d missed it altogether this month. But she and Jorge had been careful—the few times they’d failed to use birth control she’d been sure it was safe. She couldn’t be pregnant.
Before Olivia had left him in San Miguel de Allende, she and Jorge had played with the idea of the sweet little baby they could make together. They had compiled a list of names that would work in both English and Spanish: Carla, Sofia, and Isabel, Pablo, Roberto, and Ezekiel. It was a kind of flirtation, with only the faintest blush of possibility, enough to make it entertaining but not so much as to alarm her. On the plane home, when she’d assumed she would never see Jorge again, Olivia had found herself, to her surprise, longing for a baby. She had fantasized about stepping off the plane, a round, brown bundle hanging in a brightly colored sling from her shoulder. She had enjoyed the thought of her mother’s shocked and horrified face, at how Elaine would have tried to pretend that the idea of a half-Mexican grandchild didn’t dismay her. When Jorge had shown up at Olivia’s door in Oakland, they’d both become too immersed in the brutal practicalities of earning a living to allow themselves even the illusory expenditures of an imaginary baby. Now, sitting in the long narrow cell surrounded by strange women, Olivia was sickened by the revived image of that fantasy child, smiling from the nest of a sling woven from rainbow-colored campesino fabric.
“I’m not pregnant,” she said firmly.
“Shut the fuck up!” shouted an angry voice from one of the other bunks. The tiny cell held six, three against either wall. All were occupied by women huddled under light-blue blankets. Whenever one of them rolled over, or even turned her head, her vinyl-covered mattress creaked in protest. Olivia’s scratchy polyester sheet had slipped off the corner of her mattress, and the discovered smell of urine from the soiled vinyl was what had first sent her tumbling off the bunk and running to the toilet.
Olivia closed her mouth, sick with fear at angering the others trying to sleep.
“What your name, girl?” The woman with the braids said, loudly.
“I said shut the fuck up!” bellowed one of the pale-blue lumps.
A chorus of groans filled the cell, and Olivia felt the gorge rise in her throat. She covered her mouth with her hand and tried to swallow the saliva that filled her mouth. Suddenly, with a clang, the cell door sprung open to let the women know that it was time to get up and out. Olivia heard howls of protest coming from the cells up and down the long hallway. A few of the women in her cell woke up, sitting up on their bunks and rubbing the sleep from their eyes. Nobody looked at her except the woman with the braids.
“Are you deaf?” the woman asked.
Olivia jumped and answered, “No. Sorry. My name is Olivia.”
“I’m Queenie.”
“You ain’t no queen, bitch. You just a ugly old skank.” The speaker jumped down from her upper bunk and towered over Olivia. Her skin was the yellow of burnt milk, and her hair stood up from her head in twisted little peaks. Her arms were covered in thick ropy scars and open sores, the bright pink color of which was the only thing that looked alive on her sallow skin. Her open mouth revealed broken brown teeth, and the stench of her breath sent Olivia scrambling toward the toilet once more.
“Get yo’ ugly white face out my toilet,” the angry woman said, pushing Olivia out of her way. She sat down, screwed her face up, and with a grunt let loose a raucous, trumpeting series of farts.
Queenie snorted in disgust and leapt out of bed. “You best get out of here before that smell kill your baby.”
Olivia followed the line of women to the row of sinks. She had no toothbrush, so she rinsed her mouth and scrubbed a shaking finger across her teeth. The women were talking and laughing. No one spoke to her. No one looked at her. In fact, the only time she hadn’t felt like a shadow was when Queenie had spoken to her. Then, and when she had first arrived at the jail. In the intake room, she had bent over in response to the female guard’s order and, gripping a buttock in either hand, spread herself open. The guard had stared at her silently, the seconds crawling by. Olivia felt her secret, soft wrinkled parts shrinking and cringing under the glare of the fluorescent lights. Finally, the guard grunted, “Squat down and cough.” Olivia sank to the ground, her anus sore from the unfamiliar sensation of being stretched. When she had finally been given permission to dress, she had done so with clumsy, disgusted fingers, trying not to touch any part of herself that the guard had seen.
Olivia splashed her face, thrilling to the shock of the cold clean water. She trudged along in the line of women to the cafeteria and gagged at the sight of the mound of pale gelatinous eggs giving way to the metal spoon of the cafeteria worker with a sickening slurp. She shook her head at the offered portion and again when presented with a clot of mucilaginous grey oatmeal. She took only a piece of cold, hard toast, slick with margarine. The smell of the scorched coffee made her stomach roil, so she left her plastic mug empty. She saw Queenie sit down and almost put her tray down next to hers, but the angry woman from their cell
slid quickly into the empty seat. Olivia sat alone at a long Formica table, hunched over her plate, chewing on each bite of toast for so long that it turned to thin paste in her mouth.
After a while, she followed the line of women out of the cafeteria to a large room furnished with a few rows of plastic chairs hitched together with thick metal bars. Olivia sat in a chair at the end of a row. She fixed her eyes on the television set. Sally Jesse Raphael was interviewing an obese mother and daughter who had agreed to undergo gastric bypass together on television. Olivia wished, harder than she had ever wished for anything in her life, that she were a grotesquely fat girl in an Enrique Iglesias T-shirt with lank brown hair sitting in a TV studio. She wished that she and her mother could embark together on something no more horrible than the irrevocable mutilation of their internal organs. She wished she were anybody other than herself. For hour after hour, Olivia watched television shows chosen by the other women in the room. She did not speak. She did not move. She tried to breathe as silently as possible.
***
When Elaine arrived home from Olivia’s bail hearing, she found Arthur waiting for her in the kitchen. He had made a pitcher of margaritas and had chicken breasts marinating on the counter. Elaine buried her head in his chest for a moment, and then sat down on a stool. She gulped down her drink.
“What in God’s name is going on?” he asked. “I played your message, like, ten times. Livvy got arrested for selling drugs? I can’t believe it. I mean, blowing up the Federal Building, maybe, but drug dealing? That doesn’t sound like her.”
Elaine wiped the salt from her lips and launched into the story. When she got to the part about the security bond and the house, Arthur stood up. He crossed the room and pulled a pile of papers out from under the telephone. He looked at them for a moment, and then, suddenly, tore them down the middle. Elaine jumped and felt the tequila rise up to the back of her throat. She covered her mouth with her hand.
“So much for Tahoe,” Arthur said, and crumpled up the torn pieces of the mortgage refinancing documents.
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