‘Why can’t it be me?’ I’d cry to Merc. ‘How much longer do you think it’ll be?’
My beautiful sister would always be positive, but she felt the same frustrations. How much longer did we all have to live this life for? I was so tired.
I often got lost in a world of my own, withdrawing into myself, no longer interested in getting to know the new prisoners being endlessly crammed into my cell. I didn’t know these girls, and often didn’t like them, but I spent fifteen hours a day just inches from them, usually getting tangled up at night when we slept. There were now fifteen of us jammed in. I no longer knew half their names. Many times I didn’t even realise a new prisoner had been put in our cage until I felt her staring at me. New girls would sit staring at me for days. I was Schapelle Corby!
I felt I was living under a permanent dark cloud of bad luck. After more than a year, I was still stuck in the primitive pre-sentencing cells. Renae had been moved after two days; Michelle Leslie didn’t spend a single night in one.
I woke at 4 a.m., wondering how long it will be before I can go home. I fell asleep amongst the chaotic noises of the girls getting up, banging pots and pans, dropping things, yelling. My head is aching. They speak so loud. This is how it is every morning, but some mornings it affects me more. I feel so, so heavy and so sad. I’ve felt this so long now that I can’t even cry about it any more. It just builds up inside and slowly releases the pressure of pain from my whole being during the day.
Diary entry, 5 December 2005
My cell was always so irritatingly noisy, with girls endlessly gossiping, chanting prayers and fighting over everything from cooking gas and money to bottled water. Whether it was 2 a.m. or 6 a.m., there was always someone awake making noise. Girls would often play cards until about five in the morning, squealing at the top of their lungs if they won, or screaming and fighting if someone cheated. Ironically, playing cards was why many of them were in here. Each night, I would try to go to sleep at about 8 p.m. I’d lie down and say a little prayer to myself: Please, God, please give me strength to get through this. Give me the heart of forgiveness so I can forgive the guards, because they know not what they do. Please protect my family, ease my father’s pain . . .
Then I’d lie there hopelessly trying to sleep for the next few hours, usually filling up with rage at the ceaseless yelling and screaming. Sometimes I’d picture myself walking around strangling them, smashing their heads against the walls, screaming ‘Shuttttupp!!’ in their faces. But I didn’t. Stop, Schapelle – stop! stop! stop! I kept telling myself. Breathe, breathe . . .
My heart would feel like it was going to explode. I’d bite my tongue, control myself, control my energy. But it was too easy to do the wrong thing. I did explode occasionally, jumping up and shouting: ‘Shut the fuck up!’ But it never did any good; it didn’t make them quiet. I always felt so ashamed at my outbursts that I’d spend the next day going around saying sorry.
With so many women, there were always bitter domestic politics. We had a cleaning roster, but most of the girls were lazy and no one stuck to it. Girls stole each other’s food, money, toothpaste, which caused screaming rows. No one took their turn to buy cleaning products but always expected someone else to do it – usually me.
And jealousy was rife. A girl having two visits a day, a new shirt, a good laugh or a delicious lunch always provoked vicious back stabbing. I didn’t replace my worn-out mattress, because I knew the knives would come out – also, I’d feel bad for all the girls sleeping on the bare concrete. My cooking gas often evaporated in a single day, and my shirts often walked past me on someone else’s back. But I tried to minimise the theft of my clothes by doing my washing on Sundays when I had no visits and could keep a close eye on the clothesline. If I put drinks in the ice cooler overnight, by morning they’d often be empty.
Whenever I came back from a visit with my mail and bags of shopping (which Dad often did and always went overboard with), I’d usually give the girls whatever they wanted. I shared all my things, but it wasn’t enough – they still had to steal. I couldn’t trust anyone. I wanted to, but I always got burned.
I’d become good friends with Dewi, sharing all my food with her, giving her whatever she wanted out of my packages and money whenever she needed it. I confided in her, I trusted her. But one day she spoke to the local media, saying some vile things about me. I’m sure she didn’t realise she was talking to a reporter, as they so often sidled up, pretending to be tourists. But it ended our friendship. We stopped talking. It hurt me deeply.
One of the older women in my cell saw how upset I was. ‘Schapelle, don’t ever forget where you are,’ she told me. ‘You are living among liars and cheats – you can’t trust anybody.’
It was the best bit of advice anyone’s given me. I instinctively wanted to trust people and make friends, but I couldn’t, I wasn’t living in normal society. After Dewi hurt me, I withdrew further and started fading more into black. Sometimes I’d go three weeks without speaking to anyone in my cell. It was as if I’d taken a vow of silence, or a vow of silence had taken me. Some new girls probably wondered what my voice sounded like. It was easier to live in fairyland. Sweet insanity.
But I did care about other people, and I’d often come back to reality with a thud. I’d see something horrible, like a poor girl boiling up filthy tap water and tipping it into a bottle. ‘What are you doing?’ She couldn’t afford to buy bottled water and no one would let her drink theirs. I couldn’t believe it had been going on for weeks. This was water: a necessity, not some luxury item like chocolate. I felt so ashamed. I’d become so self-centred that I hadn’t noticed what was going on around me. I bought the girl some bottled water and told her to be sure to tell me when she needed more.
I felt sorry for the poorer girls, as they were usually treated badly by those with more money. There was a real class system in the cells. The poor girls, who had no visits, no money and often no self-esteem, were used as lackeys by the richer girls. They’d order them to wash and massage their feet. Sometimes they gave them money, but often they’d just order them about because they could.
One girl, Murna, was taken full advantage of during her six months in Hotel K. She’d stolen a mobile phone. She had no visits, no money and was quite shy, with no self-confidence; she would run around slaving for girls who gave her nothing in return, knowing she never stood up for herself. Murna wasn’t a pretty girl; actually, to be truthful, she was awful to look at, and I had a feeling she thought ‘pretty’ people had the right of way. I spoke to her often, as she could speak English fluently. I helped her out by giving her toiletries, food, clothes, bottled water and hugs. I occasionally asked her to massage my feet, so she wouldn’t feel like she was just taking from me.
Her profession on the outside was prostitution. She got her clients through the Internet, where she advertised herself. Foreign men would hire her online and pay her flight from Jakarta, where she lived with her parents, to wherever they were staying – usually the tourist island of Bali. Her last client had her arrested. He told her to fly to Bali and that he’d reimburse her for the ticket when she arrived. So she borrowed money from her mum and flew to meet this man at his hotel room. He was an animal. After hours of rough sex, she was so tired and sore that she pleaded with him to stop, even for a short rest to get some food. He refused and kept at it. A little later she was crying in pain. He told her he’d ease it with anal sex. But she refused. She stood up, feeling weak and crying, got dressed and asked for her pay. He just laughed. She grabbed his phone and left. The man then called down to reception and had her arrested on her way out. He gave a statement to the police before flying home to Australia to his wife and kids.
Murna was thirty-two years old and had been working as a prostitute for more than ten years. Being in Hotel K, where AIDS was rife, heightened her awareness of it and she began to confide in me her fears that she may have contracted the virus. She’d never had any tests done in all her working years, and she w
as scared. Eventually, I talked her into going to the prison clinic. I knew if she didn’t have tests done here, she’d never have them. We arranged for an appointment, and I waited outside for her. Then we had to wait a couple of weeks for the results. She was very tense, living on the edge until finally she was called to the clinic and given two envelopes. One contained HIV results, the other STD results. The doctor told her to take them away and open them in her own time.
She left it another week. In that time, she became a walking time bomb, a complete wreck, falling down crying and screaming. The fact that she was sharing a cell with Sonia didn’t help her stress. I’d sit with Murna, hold her tight with her head on my shoulder, rocking her like a baby until she calmed down, usually using one of my hands to shoo away all the onlookers. Murna finally opened the envelopes. HIV: negative. STD: syphilis positive.
The doctor immediately started her on a course of shots, telling her that if she’d left it any longer, her body would have broken out in sores. Because she was regularly off at the clinic, Murna became the hot topic of gossip. Rumours flew around that she had AIDS. People were so rude and ignorant, staying well away from her and humiliating her by blurting out in conversation, ‘She’s got AIDS.’ It made me furious, but I’d calm myself and tell them: ‘Stop gossiping – educate yourselves. She doesn’t have what you say, anyway. I know, I went with her to the clinic.’
I asked the gossip girls if they’d ever have an AIDS test. They all answered no. My response to them was they should shut up then, because this girl was brave enough to get tested, to make sure that, if she had been HIV positive, she wouldn’t pass the virus on.
Although time was stagnant, it also seemed to fly. I spent my time reading, writing letters, lying in my pool listening to my iPod, giving myself facials, cooking up curries and stir-fries on my little gas cooker, or just sitting on my mattress people-watching or daydreaming about going home. I’d often imagine my future dream home, picturing myself lazing back on a cosy couch in my large lounge room, watching a pub-size flat-screen TV or cooking in my big kitchen. Upstairs would be my big bedroom(which maybe would turn into a parents’ retreat, with any luck!), while outside there’d be a quality vegetable garden, an in-ground swimming pool and a barbecue – not forgetting a puppy picked up and rescued from the pound and a granny flat for Dad.
I enjoyed playing with my fantasies of life outside, but I still couldn’t look at photos of beaches, my friends or my home, or read contemporary books about girls my age shopping, going to parties or the movies, and having love affairs. It would only hurt too much and sharply remind me of what I was missing. I preferred books set in ancient history and to remain numb to the life stolen from me.
The guards weren’t making life in hell any easier. I still couldn’t play tennis. If I stood at the door of the women’s block longingly watching the men play, the guards would enjoy slamming it shut in my face. I’d uselessly scream, ‘I was just watching . . .’, but they’d just smirk, relishing their pathetic power. Often I’d go to pick up the hose to fill my pool and a guard would snatch it away, claiming she needed it that very instant. They all found it amusing when my pool was slashed by a prisoner or nicked by a careless gardener.
They were always using and abusing their power, demanding cash, food, cigarettes or anything else that caught their eye. We had to give them cash to leave the block, in fact. And I was blatantly told to buy cartons of cigarettes for the guards so that I could get my mail, even though I paid a hefty fee to collect it anyway.
They’d come into my cell, pointing at my shopping or parcels, and screech: ‘I want! Gimme! Gimme!’ It was pathetic, but it wasn’t worth fighting. I’d usually give them what they wanted, although sometimes I’d rebelliously make them wait a few days. I lived in hope that one day they’d give something back or somehow come around, maybe let me play a bit of tennis. But I soon learnt to expect nothing back.
I felt they were always trying to beat me down, break my spirit and turn me into a zombie. I wasn’t going to let them; I might be physically caged, but my mind and spirit were free to fly. But they did something that really hurt me when they moved my friend Eddie to another jail. Eddie and I had become close – definitely nothing sexual, but he was a real support, helping to take the edge off my loneliness. They moved him before I was unlocked, so we didn’t even get the chance to say goodbye. I felt so vulnerable, so frightened and alone. Eddie had been my rock. Now he was gone. I felt deeply depressed and didn’t eat for a couple of days, until Renae walked into my cell one afternoon with a bowl of vegetable soup she’d chopped up and cooked. It was such a nice gesture, as Renae didn’t cook. I ate it and realised I had to stop feeling sorry for myself.
All I had control over at this point were my emotions and my mind, but I’d even lose control of those during my down times. Sometimes I’d start to believe I had early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. I often felt so terribly vague, forgetful, my mind coddled and foggy as if I was losing my grip on reality. But I’d snap out of it and put it down to stress, trauma and my groundhog-day existence: nowhere to go, nothing to do, no mental stimulation, trapped in hell. I was trying desperately to stay positive, make the best of it, spend my time improving my character – learning to be patient, trying to help others as I watched the hurt and damage the bitchy gossip girls caused.
But as my second Christmas loomed, it was hard to keep my spirits up. I’d had a severe ear infection for weeks, with all my requests to go outside to a specialist refused. I had excruciating conjunctivitis in both eyes, and my longing to go home was agonising. On Christmas Eve, I lay on my mattress with tears pouring down my face as I visualised my mum running around her kitchen, preparing all the food, trifles and cheesecakes, as my little sister Mele frantically wrapped last-minute presents in the bedroom while outside someone cut the lawn in preparation for all the guests.
Mum would be wearing my white Haviana flip-flops, which she’d taken on her last visit to feel closer to her baby. I knew I would be on her mind almost every minute, even more than usual, and it hurt me that she’d be hurting. This was painful for us all. My family wasn’t physically locked up, but mentally and emotionally they were caged in here with me. We all thought I’d be home by Christmas 2004; then we thought I’d be home for my twenty-eighth birthday in July; then we thought I’d be home for this Christmas. But I was still here.
When I turned twenty-eight, I kept it quiet from the other prisoners. I didn’t want a fuss and a reminder of where I was. Only Dewi knew, and I asked her not to tell anyone. I spent it sitting alone under the banana trees at the back of the cells near the clothesline. My pool was unusable, a bit of useless plastic strewn on the ground after a girl had slashed it with a knife the day before. It was jail – there was no point getting upset. I improvised by using a bucket of water and ladle to sporadically splash water over myself to cool down in the scorching heat. I tried not to think too much about spending a birthday in prison. It was painful and also embarrassing. I ate some Japanese food that Merc had dropped off, although as it was Sunday we didn’t get to see each other.
But Christmas was a bit harder to ignore, as everyone tried to get into the Christmas spirit, even loudly singing Christmas carols in the cells. I couldn’t believe it when I heard a musical voice singing carols in English, endlessly, one after the other – almost every carol I knew. This sweet voice echoed around all our cells. I discovered it was Renae. She seemed to know all the words to all the carols, and she could really sing. (Maybe I should call Ron!) In the morning, all the girls in the cell went around to each other giving hugs, but I excused myself, not wanting to start the day in tears.
Many of the Bali Nine parents were in Bali for the trials and came in bearing armfuls of Christmas presents and food. I was invited to join a few groups but ended up just popping out to Scott Rush’s parents’ little party wearing my fake pink Chanel sunglasses to hide my red, infected eyes. They had brought decorations and had done a good job of making things feel Chri
stmassy. In the afternoon, Dad, Merc, Wayan and the kids came in laden with food and presents. Merc had gone to so much trouble organising a feast of hams, chickens, rolls, chocolates and beer. She’d even organised little presents for me to give to the kids. We all tried to be upbeat, but the undertone was unmistakably pain. Having to lay out Christmas dinner on a filthy concrete floor in jail, with male prisoners staring at us through a window, wasn’t much of a celebration.
Back in the women’s block, Renae came into my cell and handed me a present: a new pair of sneakers. She didn’t like me skipping or exercising in my flip-flops. I gave her a big juicy steak and some mushrooms.
By New Year’s Eve, my eyes were better, but I had no hearing in my infected ear and was extremely worried about permanent deafness. I was living on painkillers but still couldn’t get out to see a specialist.
I wanted to end my most horrible year imaginable by fasting for forty-eight hours, thinking pure thoughts, and praying. My plan was to rid myself of the past year and start the new one with fresh body, mind and spirit. But I fell to temptation early, eating when I got really hungry and later having a couple of shots of arak, a potent Indonesian spirit.
The year before, I had a sleepover in Salma’s cell on New Year’s Eve for what I thought was going to be a bit of fun. It wasn’t. She didn’t speak much English and, to my embarrassment, refused to let the other two girls share a glass of beer with us. I was also stressed about girls in my cell rifling through all my things – which was exactly what they did.
This year we were told our monkey cages would be left open until midnight, a special treat that cost each cell 70,000 rupiah. But unsurprisingly they slammed us away at 5.30 p.m. Why did I expect anything else? I sat on my mattress, refusing to let my mind think about what my friends were doing. It hurt too much; it was better to block, suppress and stay numb.
No More Tomorrows Page 27