Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing(47)

The groaning woman said that’s not how to ask. Then, to no one, to everyone, “White lady over here asking what I did. Shit.”

Another voice, a helpful voice, says to ask what someone’s in for, not what they did. Even if the deputies don’t hear, snitches are everywhere. Maybe I’m the snitch. I’m not the snitch. That’s what a snitch would say. I say if you ask a snitch if they’re a snitch, they have to tell you if they’re a snitch. It’s the law. The voices laugh. I kill in this club.

I ask right the next time, “What are you in for?” I add, “Sorry, I’m new at this.” First thing I learned. Acknowledge you don’t know shit. This is easy. I’m good at jail.

The voice gave the police a blow job. He arrested her anyway. Police are liars. Everyone knows that. Even I know that. Another voice says police always do that shit. Except sometimes they let you go. The voices agree. The police are not to be trusted with bargains.

“Jesus. That’s rape,” I say.

“I’ll be sure to pass that information to my attorney,” says the voice in mock white lady. The inmates laugh. I laugh. I’m an inmate. The voice says she’s a prostitute. She prefers call girl. No one cares. She’s an alcoholic. No one cares. Withdrawals can kill you. No one cares.

The voice with the kidney stone asks for a song. The voice who sings sings Aaliyah. She sounds better than anyone on the radio. I like it when she sings. I can close my eyes. Her voice feels like a warm hand on my chest.

   “Shut the fuck up.” Man’s voice. Deputy Day-Day is what everyone calls him. If you’re naming sheriff’s deputies after Friday characters, he’s more of a Deebo. But he’d probably like being named after a bully, so we don’t call him that. The other voices hate him. The inmates hate him. I’m an inmate. I hate him.

A voice asks, “What you gonna do, Day-Day?” Then, “You go on. He’s just mad no one sucked his dick.”

The voices agree he can’t find his own dick. The song changes. Something mournful. I don’t know this one. I don’t care. I hope the voice never stops singing.



* * *



—

The voice who sings Aaliyah is the only other inmate I’ve seen. That was the first day. I was being led from the nurse’s office, the skin on my forearm freshly lumped with a TB test. Me, still thinking the worst humiliation was a squat and cough when they took my clothes. When they handed me these green coveralls that smelled like ammonia. The woman who would sing Aaliyah stood in the hallway between two deputies. Her arms and face and legs more scabs than skin. Her hair wild and greasy and flecked with dust. Her eyes swollen. I nodded. She looked at nothing in front of her with nothing eyes that see nothing. She wore a blanket like the inmates sleep under, like the kind they hang in an elevator when someone’s moving. But hers is sewn into a tunic that closes with Velcro. She tried to kill herself. She failed.

I remember the tunic, and I wipe my blood off the wall with a wad of toilet paper and flush the wad. I look at my hand, at my mincemeat knuckles, and I’m afraid. The worst thing I can think of, a loss of freedom worse than this—no way to take my own life. I can’t let them see I’m losing my mind. Or I’ve lost it. I can’t tell anymore. They closed the asylums, too inhumane. Now they just watch and wait for the lunatics to commit a crime. This country’s a hell of a place to lose your mind.

   There’s no moment when you know you’ve lost your mind. That’s the upside. You slide into madness and the madness tells you you’re fine. The madness tells you to hit the wall. Pick a hole in your arm. Nothing better to do. The voices ask if you’re okay and you know you screamed, but you didn’t hear your own voice. The voices ask you to sing the “Angel” song again. The voices are getting on your goddamn nerves. But you sing the “Angel” song that John Prine wrote that Bonnie sang. The voices like the song. You understand the voices are trying to help. They feel bad for telling you to hit the wall. They feel bad for telling you to try again with your head. You sing the song about the angel from Montgomery to keep the voices happy.

The voices have no faces. That’s the goddamn problem. On the outside, you hear a voice and it’s attached to person with a face. Maybe it comes from a radio or a phone, or the neighbors in the toxic relationship. But the voices are attached to a face or a speaker, something made of carbon. In this cell, every voice comes from everywhere and nowhere. Some are farther away. They bounce around the walls and concrete with nothing to slow their journey. The voices closer in are still warm when they arrive. Those voices that travel with accents and stories and questions—they’re real. I know that. The voices who want me to do things, it’s getting harder to tell. I know they’re angry. I know they hate me. So I know they’re me. Most of the time.



* * *



—

   Day 3, maybe 4. I’ve been waiting for hours for the nice deputy. The deputy who, when I asked for tampons and she brought me pads and I said I wear boxers, fuck am I supposed to do with these, looked sad. I sat there all day on bloody pads, holding the pad in place when I paced my cell. The nice deputy, whose face is tired and chapped but kind. The nice deputy came back the next night with a pack of granny panties from Walmart and dropped them through the feed slot in my door. She’s all right. She’ll tell you what time it is when you ask.