by Lauren Salem
“It looked like he was raping a dead body, so I made him stop.”
“How did you get him to stop?”
“I have five years of karate under my belt and a shiv. He has nothing but strength and nowhere to put it. He was no match for me. I found your clothes,” she said as she dropped them down to me, along with my shoes.
I put my uniform and shoes back on. “Thank you.”
“What were you doing with him? He’s a truck driver; why would he venture out into the forest?”
“I’d rather not talk about it,” I said as I looked around for his scan key and sunglasses. “Where is his stuff?”
“So you were stealing from him?”
“Yes,” I sighed.
“Tell me why, or I won’t give you back his stuff.”
I looked up in the tree and saw Amy holding his uniform, sunglasses, and scan key. “I can’t tell you why. It’s a secret, and there are other people involved.”
“I just saved your life,” Amy explained. “I deserve an explanation about what the hell you were trying to accomplish.”
“I really can’t tell you.”
“You want the goods or not?”
“Fine, my friends and I are trying to escape. I need to get this guy’s scan key and sunglasses, so my friend Collins can steal his identity. We already have his spare uniform.”
“So basically you led him on, and when he found out you were playing him, he raped you,” Amy said. “What a fantastic plan you guys must have. Where were your friends when this was happening to you? Did no one think that seducing the Hulk would be dangerous? Did they even think about sending backup in case something went wrong? Laura, these people don’t sound like friends to me. It sounds like they sent you on a suicide mission.”
What if Amy was right? I hardly knew the people I called my friends. Were we even really friends or just school acquaintances? I understood that only a woman could do this job, but there were two women available, and they all pointed to me instead of Veronica. Someone could have gone with me and hid in the background to make sure I was OK. I told them I didn’t want the task in the first place, but they insisted that I do it until they forced my agreement.
“Amy, I understand what you’re saying, but I don’t think they meant for this to happen,” I said. “It was a poorly planned way to get the items we needed, so things went wrong.”
“OK, say you’re right; say it’s just a hole in the plan. Do you really feel comfortable enough to trust that the rest of the plan will work? What if there are holes in other parts of the plan? Your life was already at risk once, would you really put it at risk again? Remember, if the government catches you escaping, you die. All of you will die. I’ve seen it happen before, and it’s not worth it. Whatever plan you have, I bet it’s not good enough for what you’re going up against.”
“Do you want to join us and help us make the plan more successful?”
“Are you not listening to what I’m saying? I’m telling you not to escape because it’s too dangerous, and none of you are smart enough to pull it off. Sorry if I’m being rude.”
“I can’t spend the rest of my life here. That’s all it really comes down to. I have to leave.”
“Well then, good luck to you,” Amy said as she handed me Darnell’s scan key and sunglasses. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” Amy climbed down from the tree and draped Darnell’s uniform over his body. She kicked his head a few more times to make sure he was really out, before she began to dig a hole with her bare hands.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to bury the body for you.”
I picked up a mango from Amy’s basket and stuffed it into Darnell’s mouth. “Can I help?”
After Amy nodded her approval, I got down on my hands and knees and helped her dig a grave. Dirt accumulated under my nails as we dug the hole in silence. Sweat dripped down my face, and I smeared it away with my dirty hands. It took about fifteen minutes to dig a hole that was deep enough to cover the body. We scrunched Darnell up into the fetal position and placed the body in the hole carefully before patching it up with dirt.
“Just think about what I said, OK?” Amy said before she picked up her basket of mangos and walked away.
I gave Vincent thirty pounds of mangos before lunch, and I called it a day. After I got out of the forest, I got my shower coin from my supervisor. Even though it wasn’t five yet, he still gave it to me anyway because I reached the minimum required weight. I took a shower and cleaned all the cuts with soap and water, which burned like hell. I cried in the shower alone. Luckily there was no one around to hear me. It was just me and my thoughts.
When these cuts healed and became scars, I would always be reminded about what happened to me. I was upset with myself for not being more careful, and I was angry with my so-called friends for not having my back. I was tired of people always seeing me as the slut that would do things for them. I was trying to change my ways, and somehow I kept getting trapped in the same old thing. I was being forced to work in a factory against my will, I had HIV, and I had been raped. What was next? Were there any more bad cards life could throw at me?
Even though Amy was not my friend, she was right. They should have been there for me, and if they were stupid enough to let me do that task alone, then maybe we shouldn’t escape together. Maybe I should spend the rest of my life here, traumatized and depressed but hopeful that I might learn to like it. Maybe I could prevent bad things from happening to me if I stopped fighting and learned to embrace this life.
After I dried myself off with a towel, I sunk into a bathroom stall with the medical supplies I stole yesterday. I put antiseptic cream on my feet, wrapped them up with the elastic bandage, and taped it closed before I put on a fresh pair of socks. The gash near my eye was pretty bad, so I put cream on it, but there was no way to wrap it up without looking like the victim of a car crash.
When I returned to my room, I took out the piece of paper with the list of medical supplies written on it and erased it. I wrote a note to everyone.
To Vincent, Johnny, Collins, and Veronica:
I’m staying here. Your items are now in Vincent’s sleeping bag. Stay alive.
Your friend,
Laura
I slid the note under Collins’s and Johnny’s door with the sketch side up and the note facedown. I wasn’t going to dinner tonight. I didn’t feel like having to explain myself to anybody. I went back into my room, got into my sleeping bag, and cuddled my pillow.
* * *
At the end of the day, most girls who went to Sonoran Correctional hid the money they earned at lunch under their mattress covers. Next, they covered it up with a sheet, followed by a blanket. In the crowded dormitory that I slept in, there weren’t that many concealed places for a girl to hide her nest egg of ones and fives. The twin-sized bed on the top bunk was really the only thing I could call my own that I didn’t have to share with anybody else.
Beside every bunk bed, there was a dresser with six drawers. I got the top three drawers, and Nancy, who slept below me, got the bottom three. I would never hide anything in the dressers because sometimes I found that even my clothes went missing. Everyone knew that if the money wasn’t in your pocket, it was under the mattress cover, so when a girl’s bed stayed unattended for too long, rats came out to nibble on the cheese.
The trick to stealing another girl’s money was to take no more than a single bill. There were forty girls per room, so if thirty-nine girls took thirty-nine bills from different sides of the bed, then the girl who got robbed would not feel the loss unless she recounted her money. Some girls like me set their money out on the bed in folded patterns, so it would be easier to tell if something was taken. I always folded mine into diamond shapes and laid it out so that each point touched another.
Every girl knew that stealing was common in the dorms, but the girls were less likely to steal when they didn’t realize they had been stolen from. If someone took from me, it was pre
tty obvious, so I stole what I lost from someone else. I hadn’t been in school for nearly a week, so my nest egg was probably gone because the girls thought I wouldn’t return. Without that money, I’d have nowhere to go except the soup kitchen when I graduated high school. Living in a town that didn’t use money was actually kind of nice because I didn’t have to worry about people stealing it.
When Vincent, Johnny, Collins, and Veronica saw my note, they visited me individually with one goal in mind: to persuade me to leave Walnut Cherryville. I told them about what happened to me, my concerns about escaping, and that I was disappointed in all of them.
Vincent took the observant approach.
“Laura, your unhappiness didn’t surface until you were brought to Walnut Cherryville. When something bad happens to you, I notice that you get upset with everyone else, even though they had nothing to do with the problem you’re facing. It’s not our fault that you’re here, that you have HIV, or that you got raped. If you wanted backup for your task, you should have asked for it. Any one of us would have been willing to help you, but no one knew you needed help. You were careless, you didn’t observe Darnell, you didn’t plan out how you would achieve your task, and you didn’t bring anything to protect yourself with in case something went wrong. You look irritated; did I say something wrong?”
“So saying everything was my fault is how you’re convincing me to continue with the escape?” I asked.
“I will not push you one way or another; it’s up to you to decide,” Vincent said as he gave me a long hug.
Johnny took the apologetic approach.
“Laura, I’m really sorry that I wasn’t there for you when you needed me most. I promise that we will look over the rest of the escape plan and make sure things like that don’t happen again. Despite my mistake, I still feel that you should to come with us. We can’t leave without you because that’s not right. If you’re not coming with us, then none of us will leave; we will all stay here with you. I don’t like leaving my friends behind.”
Collins took a selfish approach.
“Now you listen to me, girl; I’m not going to let you and your emotional problems stand in the way of my career! I need to get out of here, and I will get out of here whether you come with us or not! I’ve worked hard to ensure a good future for myself back home, and I’m not going to let you ruin that for me! Also, you’ve been a real bitch to me, so I have no sympathy for you.”
Veronica took a spiritual approach.
“Laura, God wouldn’t send you challenges that he didn’t think you could handle. I don’t know you that well, but I know that you have to have faith in people and faith in yourself to succeed. You shouldn’t give up hope just because something bad happened to you. Trust me, I’ve lived here for years, and I know you don’t want a life in Walnut Cherryville. It’s not much of a life at all. Laura, have you spoken to God lately? Join hands with me, and let’s pray together.”
Should I go? Should I stay? Maybe I would let them know tomorrow.
Chapter 14: Collins
The air was fresh with freedom. I felt pumped, ready to go. It was my time to shine. The most important part of the escape would fall on my shoulders. I knew the others doubted whether or not I was reliable enough for the task, but I was going to prove to them that I was a valuable member of this team. They had singled me out, so if the truck driver wasn’t black, then I wouldn’t have been assigned any tasks at all. Their reasoning made them foolish, but that was their fault. A TEAM (together, everyone, achieves, more) cannot operate efficiently with weak or useless links. Who would know that better than a basketball player?
* * *
The final game of last year’s season was the most epic game that the Phoenix Banded Gila Monsters had ever played. Our name, suggested by Johnny, took after a venomous lizard that lives in the Sonoran desert. The Banded Gila Monster was one of two types of venomous lizards in the world, which represented our team’s rare diversity of players. We were murderers, carjackers, thieves, drug dealers, rapists, and addicts morphed into basketball players. We played games against normal high schools, who would sometimes fear us because we came from a correctional school. Like the Banded Gila Monster, we struck our opponents quickly with painful results. Our uniforms were bright orange with bold black text to represent the most dominant colors of the Banded Gila Monster.
Last season, we played the championship game against the Tucson Bobcats, which was a very close game. With only thirty seconds left in the fourth quarter, the Bobcats had sixty-four points and the Monsters sixty-two points. The Bobcats had a strong defense, making it nearly impossible to pass the ball. Johnson was close to the net, but the defense blocked him so well that he couldn’t score a basket, so he passed it to me at the three-point line. Once I got the ball, I had to act fast. A Bobcat was stampeding over to block me. I quickly took a shot at the net from the three-point line, hoping and praying that it would go in. That shot was our last chance at winning the championship. Luckily, the ball left my hands right before the buzzer went off.
“Collins Greene, number seven, point guard, scored three points, which ends the game, giving the championship to the Phoenix Banded Gila Monsters,” the announcer said.
We won the game by one point—thanks to me. My team crowded around me, cheering me on, and saying, “Greene, Greene, Greene” as they picked me up with excitement. This was the first championship we had ever won, and I was proud of myself and my team. We had no weak or useless links that day.
* * *
Though basketball had taught me some important teamwork skills, it hadn’t taught me how to regain trust with a team that didn’t believe in me before the game. Johnny was my closest friend, but even he couldn’t contain the fearsome rumors Vincent had spread to the rest of the group. Vincent claimed he was my friend, but he didn’t always encourage and support me during a crisis. Instead, he shot me down in front of the rest of the group with what he called observations. He told me not to take it personal, but how could I not? He told everyone that I was unreliable and a weak link in the chain. If he thought I was a weak link, then what did he call Laura? She bailed on us, so I called her a quitter. It was time to save my integrity and prove all of them wrong!
I zipped down my sleeping bag, got dressed, and washed up in the bathroom. At breakfast, I served myself a meal of pure protein: eggs, bacon, and sausage. Veronica caught up with me at the end of the buffet line.
“I got you a plate of food, but it looks like you don’t need it,” Veronica said. “That looks like a good meal to have for the big day, so I’ll eat this one.”
Veronica and I took our trays and met Johnny and Vincent at the table.
“So, any news from Laura?” Johnny asked, but no one answered. “I’m particularly asking Vincent since you live with her.”
“She didn’t talk to me all night,” Vincent responded.
“That’s not what I saw,” I said. “You two were cuddling all night. I don’t know any woman who cuddles silently.”
Veronica gave me a judgmental glance.
“Oh, sorry, Veronica; I’m just trying to say that it’s impossible that they didn’t speak all night.”
“Well, I asked her if she wanted to talk, and she didn’t. I don’t think she likes when I talk to her…It seems to make her more upset.”
“So how did you end up cuddling?”
“I just do it because it makes her feel better,” Vincent said.
“Is she coming down to breakfast?” Johnny asked. “We really need to discuss this because we need a decision before we start work.”
“Oh, look, there she is,” Veronica announced.
Laura made herself a tray of eggs, mixed fruit, and toast before she sat down at our table. She must have been hungry, because she started eating right away and ignored the fact that everyone was silent as they listened intently for her decision. It was OK; we could wait. Just take your sweet time. We only had to start work in twenty minutes.
“Good m
orning, Laura,” Johnny said. “I hope you had a good night. Did you sleep well?”
“OK, I’m just going to cut right to the chase,” I said. “We don’t need to drag this out longer than it needs to be; it’s a simple decision. Are you leaving or not?”
“I’m staying here, but that doesn’t mean you guys can’t leave,” Laura said.
“Well, it’s settled then, we’re leaving.”
“Collins, calm down,” Johnny said. “Don’t be so antsy.”
“That won’t work,” Veronica responded. “If we escape and leave Laura here, that wouldn’t be good for any of us. Once the government knew we were gone, they’d torture Laura to find out where we went, and she would be forced to tell them. We can’t split up.”
“Well, we shouldn’t tell Laura where we’re going then,” I suggested.
“Your friend will die, Collins; do you care about that?” Veronica asked.
“She’s not my friend.”
“You should care and have more compassion for other people. Your attitude is really unhealthy. I want to leave just as badly as you do, but right now you need to focus all your energy on getting Laura to come with us.”
“She’s right, Collins,” Johnny added. “Don’t be a dick.”
I laughed. “I can’t help it. I’m so frustrated with her.”
“Laura, would you step outside the cafeteria with me for a moment?” Vincent asked.
“Sure,” Laura said, as they both stood up from the table. They left the table and walked out of the cafeteria.
From where I was sitting, I could still see them conversing through the glass. Based on their facial expressions and body movements, I imagined their conversation went something like this:
“Baby, I really need you to come with me,” Vincent said, looking deep into Laura’s eyes. He took her hand and held it in his. “Before you, I didn’t have a heart. I didn’t care about anything, but now, I can’t live without you.”