Sour

by Tracey Miller

  There was a strong smell of cigarette smoke. And perfume.

  “Oi, we’ve got a new one!”

  “Y’alright, luv.”

  The voices came at once, everyone asking me the same question. None moved from where she was. They all stayed in their beds.

  “How old are you?”

  “Just turned 16.”

  “She’s a bleeding baby!”

  “She shouldn’t even be here, fucking animals.”

  “Oh my god, ain’t she cute?”

  I noticed they were all wearing their own tracksuits and pyjamas.

  “Babes, why are you in a fucking gown?”

  “Asked for a shower, innit.”

  “At reception?” asked the loudest of the group. “And you walked all the way here in that?”

  I nodded.

  They burst out laughing.

  “Aw, bless.”

  Klaire was in her 40s. She had a short fringe, with long, lank, brown hair down to her chest, and deep cigarette lines around thin lips. Yeah, she had a smoker’s voice, but there was something about her that gave her a hint of glamour. She’d probably been stunning when she was young.

  I wasn’t surprised that her bed was the one with all the products and perfumes around it. She had pots of Oil of Ulay and all the good stuff that white women use, as well as tweezers, emery boards and nail varnish. She even had an Imperial Leather soap. That was top soap.

  She was wearing a nice camisole, with trousers to match. Only people of decent calibre dress nice to go to bed. I reckoned she was a brand-name in her world, and I wasn’t wrong.

  The dorm had four beds. Mine was the empty one by the door.

  A Somalian woman was sitting cross-legged on the furthest one. She looked up and nodded at me, but didn’t say much.

  She wore her hair in cane rows and was super-slim. Looked like a bloody marathon runner in her white vest. She didn’t speak English too well, but she understood.

  She was the first to sleep and first awake. Liked her smokes. Yeah, Yasmin was cool. Didn’t trouble no one.

  Then there was Heather. Or Hevah, as she pronounced it. She was the oldest. In her 50s. She was like someone’s grandma, like some bloody granny activist. I never did find out what the hell she was doing in there. More than all the others, you always got the feeling she was the one you shouldn’t ask.

  “Who’s gonna make a cuppa tea?” she asked.

  Tea and fags, I would soon learn, were that woman’s world.

  Klaire gestured to the single bed.

  “Sit down, luv.”

  She looked at my checking-in bag and the collection of clothes I’d worn to court.

  “Is that all you’ve got?”

  I didn’t have deodorant. I didn’t even have a razor. I glanced at her Oil of Ulay, coveting the cosmetics, as I thought of my eyeliner sitting in my make-up bag at home.

  She chucked me a small bottle of Nivea moisturiser.

  “There, you can borrow that. Pay me back later.”

  “Thank you.”

  The cell had one sink, with a sponge and washing-up liquid, and one toilet with a door.

  Underneath the sink was a beige bucket. Excellent. Me and that bucket were going to be friends. I realised I’d be relying on the old Jamaican way of keeping clean, darling.

  This wasn’t somewhere to be shy. If I wanted to be clean, and damn right I did, then I knew I’d be spending a lot of time crouched over that bucket, dabbing my armpits and crotch with a flannel. It’s funny how quickly you get used to losing all inhibitions, in the name of personal hygiene.

  I was so tired, dog tired, but as I got under the thin covers it was clear that Klaire and Heather were in no mood for being quiet. They had fresh meat to mother.

  “Bloody disgrace, shouldn’t even be here in the first place,” tutted Heather.

  There was a warmth between the two of them. They were a unit. You could see they’d served a lot of time together, and they had information to impart.

  They spent the rest of the night telling me what I needed to know. First and most important was which screws were good and which were bad.

  “Be good with that one,” they warned me. “He sometimes brings things in if you’re nice to him. Chocolate, wine, y’know, minor contraband.

  “If you’re going out to exercise, you got to wait to be called,” she added. “It gets bloody cold out, but it’s the only hour you get to stretch your legs, so use it.”

  “You smoke baccy?”

  I shook my head, but she paid no attention.

  “You gotta plug it up.”

  “What?”

  “You just got to shove it up there, babe. Plug it up.”

  Slowly, it dawned on me what she was saying.

  “But be careful, yeah, coz if they suspect for a single second you’ve got something, they’ll de-crutch you.”

  Yasmin snorted.

  “Don’t like.”

  “Fat Sandra,” Heather nodded, solemnly. “Look what happened to her.”

  “Yeah, just a couple days ago.”

  I was curious.

  “So, what exactly do they do?”

  Klaire laughed.

  “What do you think they do, babes?”

  I looked at her blankly.

  Heather stepped in.

  “They hold you down, spread your legs and take it down. Bastards are rough too.”

  Klaire nodded.

  “Gotta plug it up hard.”

  Number one, I don’t smoke. Number two, even if I did, I ain’t got no intention of plugging anything anywhere. I thanked them for the advice anyway.

  After a while, Heather’s advice turned to snores, leaving only Klaire to natter away. She talked and talked till I was wide awake once more.

  Turned out she wasn’t too bothered about being in prison. She and her husband had a big house in Essex with cars and double garages, and she knew she was going back to it soon. Her husband was in prison too. Dodgy business deals. He’d be out soon too. The nest egg they’d both built up was safe somewhere else, she hinted. Worth doing the time for, I guessed. Within a year she’d be back enjoying her comfortable life.

  She talked about her son, who was going to take over the family business, and her Alsatians.

  Yeah, Klaire would teach me a lot over those few months. She taught me how the words “no comment” are my friend, and to always think about DNA. She taught me that drugs meant money, and that it’s always better to get mules to swallow than to carry. Above all, her chat about her swimming pool and her home gym and her three holidays a year taught me that crime pays far more richly and more frequently than I had ever imagined.

  I fell asleep that night listening to the snores and steady breathing of the drug dealer, the drug mule and the grandma whose crime was never discussed. The prison was completely quiet. There were no sirens, no screaming, no pressure. I closed my eyes and drifted off, numbed by a strange sense of calm.

  It felt natural to walk out into the landing to the shower rooms, but those doors weren’t opening till the screws felt like it.

  Yasmin was already sitting up in bed. She looked like she had been awake for hours. Heather yawned and stretched as Klaire brushed her teeth in the sink, washed her face, and dabbed her various lotions on Costa-leathered skin.

  I was glad I’d remembered to wash my underwear in the bucket before going to sleep. It was still slightly damp, but at least it was clean.

  The heavy door lurched open, allowing in a flood of light and the clatter of morning activity. Night-time had been so quiet. But with daylight came noise and chaos. I could hear cackles and laughter and cheerful shouts as the women greeted each other on the way to the showers.

  A whole new world awaited, outside on the landing.

  “Morning!”

  A stream of tired, puffy, smiling, growling, thin and fat faces filed past. It was supervised chaos.

  I wondered if Holloway did baths. I moved to follow the loud, lairy exodus, but K
laire shook her head.

  “Uh-huh, babes. Them first, then us.”

  It felt as if I was surrounded by caged animals and I was the cub.

  Unlocking times, I learned, was 8.15 to 12.30 and 13.45 to 19.30; less on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. Or at least it was meant to be. “Sometimes you just get an hour, depending on how many screws are around.”

  Prison robs you of lots of things, but worst of all it robs you of long-lies.

  Breakfast began at 8.15.

  I followed the exodus to the canteen, bleary-eyed and wishing I’d worn better clothes to court. None of the women seemed to be wearing a prison uniform, which was a bonus until I realised how rubbish my own wardrobe options were.

  Whatever was being cooked, it smelled hideous. I knew before I’d even reached it that there was nothing there I’d want to eat.

  “I ain’t even hungry,” I whispered.

  “You will be,” said Klaire. “Take what you can get.”

  Inmates stood behind vats of gunk, wielding their serving ladles. I did what Klaire did, and picked up my plate at the beginning of the line.

  They said it was porridge, but it looked and smelled more like glue. I didn’t touch a drop and went for some toast instead.

  Heather and Klaire talked between themselves. They could probably tell I wasn’t in the mood for chatting.

  I glanced around the canteen, but couldn’t see no one the same age. They all seemed so much older. It was as if I’d got the wrong room and wandered into some hard-as-nails coffee morning. I wasn’t meant to be here. It felt like there had been some mistake.

  “Remember your VOs, yeah?”

  Klaire was speaking to me.

  “What?”

  “Your Visiting Orders. Make sure you get them. You’re allowed three or four a month, depending.”

  I realised Mum wouldn’t know where the hell I was. Who was going to tell her? Didn’t trust that bloody lawyer to sort out shit.

  Maybe she hadn’t even noticed yet?

  Still, I was in no hurry to see Mum cussing and howling inside here.

  “Thanks, but think I’ll leave it a while. Gonna get used to things myself, innit.”

  Klaire looked impressed.

  “Smart gel.”

  I left the rest of my toast and got up with the others, leaving my plate on the trolley.

  Heather stayed in the canteen, while Klaire and I walked back across the landing. You couldn’t see up nor down. It was just one straight corridor after another, like a hospital ward. The place smelled like a hospital too, of chemicals and mopped floors. There were at least 30 doors on our landing. Grim and grey. The walls were magnolia with green lino floors.

  We passed a straggle of women, lined up along the corridor.

  “What are they queuing for?”

  “Education block.”

  Lord have mercy, people were so bored they were queuing for school. Probably ain’t as much fun as Dick Shits, I thought. I’d already decided I wouldn’t be going back after the summer holidays. I’d passed my mock exams – and done well too – and only my history teacher seemed sad I wouldn’t be coming back.

  I’d liked Mr Wilson. He used to write nice things in some of my essays, not that I paid much attention.

  That headmistress, though. She could fuck off and keep her school. Little did I know that by the time the next term came around I wouldn’t have much choice.

  Klaire talked me through the different areas of the prison. There was a wing for pregnant women, and a mother and baby unit, as well as special units for lifers and women on remand. I told her I still ain’t seeing no wing for cute little black girls.

  Her laughter spiralled into a smoker’s cough.

  “Word of advice, babes. If one of these dirty bitches asks you to go to the library, they ain’t wanting to read you poetry, yeah.”

  The library, she explained, was a bit of a lovers’ lane.

  I vowed there and then never to set eyes on a single book.

  “Don’t be doing anything stupid, either,” she said, as we passed another cell door. “Silly bitch in there, covered herself in toilet paper and set herself alight. Ran down the landing like a screaming banshee.”

  “What happened to her?”

  Klaire shrugged.

  “Stupid cow died, innit.”

  “No way, man. Is that a gym?”

  I peered inside. It looked good. But my excitement soon evaporated. My heart sank. I knew a claimed territory when I saw one. Ain’t no space for no newcomers in there. Each machine was taken. Pumped-up women sweated at every station, pressing and pushing and punching away like they owned the place.

  I had heart, but I ain’t stupid. Oh well. Judging from the vats of glue, I wasn’t expecting to be eating much in here anyways.

  It was a long-arsed walk to the exercise yard. It looked a bit like the Pen in Roupell Park – like a basketball court without the nets.

  There wasn’t much exercising going on. A couple were power-walking back and forth, but the rest leaned against the walls, smoking and chatting.

  I surveyed the crowd. Something was odd. Then I realised – there were men in here too.

  Maybe some of the Man Dem were about as well? I started scouting the crowd for faces I recognised.

  “I thought this was a women’s prison?”

  Klaire’s frown softened.

  “How come there’s a dude over there?”

  He was wearing a string vest that showed muscular arms, and his baggy trousers were deliberately pulled down to reveal the tops of his boxer shorts.

  Klaire raised her over-plucked eyebrows and smiled.

  “Ssh,” she said. “You’ll hurt Marcia’s feelings.”

  “What? That’s a Marcia?!” I looked over again, my eyes not believing what my ears were telling me. “You’re shitting me? She looks more like a Marlon.” Turns out the Holloway Woman Dem were deceptive.

  I’d been exempt from all that lesbian shit. I’d grown up in an Islamic household. I knew robbers and dealers and much, much worse. But I’d never met anyone I knew was gay.

  Klaire chuckled.

  “Yeah, she’s cool. She’s got girlfriends in here. They all fight over her. Loves the attention, that gel. Better hope she doesn’t take a liking to you, or you’ll make them all jealous.”

  The screws did a head count. I breathed in the air, and looked up at the overcast sky as dull and grey as old knickers that got stuck in the wash.

  You’ll be alright, I told myself. All you gotta do is keep your head low and keep to yourself.

  After half an hour, we were herded back inside and sent back to our cells for lock-up. Dinner, if that’s what you call the rubbery reheated chicken in a fluorescent sauce masquerading as “curry”, was over by 5.30pm. My God, the food! I wouldn’t have fed that shit to a cat.

  I’d never seen chicken and rice look like that. Also, something else troubled me. The inmates did everything. That was plain to see. Screws were there to open and close doors but the inmates did all the donkey work – the washing, the cleaning and the thing that troubled me the most, the food. I remembered the faces of the women wielding those ladles, preparing the food that evening, and made a mental note not to piss any of them off.

  What if they didn’t like you? What if they did something to your food? I vowed to eat as little as possible. It wasn’t going to be hard.

  The screws supervised the loud, jeering mass of women back across the landing. “Evening association” was over. The cell door thudded shut.

  I lay back on my narrow bed and stared at the ceiling, trying to process my first disorientating day. For the first time in a long time, I felt … safe. No threats, no stress, no Mum. Prison ain’t so bad, y’know. I smiled inside. Who knows, I thought, I might even like it here.

  Safe Haven

  Over the weeks that followed, I found myself settling into life at Her Majesty’s Pleasure with considerable ease.

  Don’t get me wrong. Fights erupted.
Junkies wailed and gnashed as they went cold turkey. Every now and then you’d see or hear of an inmate being rushed to the medical wing in another failed suicide attempt.

  It was tedious having to tell your story 100 times, and it was hard to tell which was more disgusting – the buckets or the food. On the bad days, mental cases would throw tampons and clumps of hair around until they were sedated. On good days, you’d manage to clean your crotch, crouched over a bucket with a rag and soap, while somehow keeping your dignity with the strategic placement of towels.

  It wasn’t easy, but for the most part the girls looked out for me. I was the baby after all. Something about me seemed to bring out the mothering instinct in them all.

  Klaire and Heather kept me right. Even Yasmin was a calming presence. They knew when I felt like being sociable. They accepted the days when all they got was a nod and grunt.

  One night, lying in bed while the rest were sleeping, I told Klaire about life on the road. I told her about all the crazy stuff and how I was tired of it all.

  “That ain’t the way, love,” she agreed. “You should move forward. You need to try something new when you get outta here, get a steady income.

  “If you were my daughter, that’s what I’d be telling you. Ever thought about drugs?

  “Girls like that,” she whispered, gesturing over to the sleeping Somalian, “that ain’t the way to do it. I don’t mean none of that mule shit. I’m talking about business, making real money …”

  I listened with interest.

  I didn’t fill out a Visiting Order that week, or the week after. In fact, I didn’t want to see anyone and I didn’t want them to see me. Each night I listened to Klaire’s advice.

  Truth was, I was enjoying the time-out. Inside that cramped dormitory that smelled of fags and hand cream, I’d found space. In prison I could be myself. I didn’t have to survive on the streets. I didn’t have to act top dog no more. There were no boys to betray me, no liars to lock their doors and pin me down. The Man Dem were a distant memory.

  I never did find the courage to venture into the library. Or the gym. Most days I was happy just lying on my bed. The days began to blur into each other.

  Until one day I came back from lunch to find a white form waiting for me on my bed.