Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing(49)

   I finger the thin plastic on my oatmeal cream cookie. We get one with our cheese sandwich at lunch. The plastic bread somehow both stale and damp. Like they spread the slices on a counter to harden a few days before spritzing them with dishwater. I want to taste the cookie. Just an edge. Something different. The cellophane wrapper means the cookie won’t taste like jail. I wonder how long I have, once I pull the wrapper open, before the cookie absorbs the smell of this place where the air and the food and the water all taste the same, like the inside of a dumpster outside a hospital where you stand to smoke.

I’ve never eaten one of these little oatmeal cream pies. My mom put carrot sticks in our lunch boxes, not Twinkies, not Ho Hos. Oatmeal cookies on occasion, dotted with raisins or carob. Try trading anything with raisins for a Zebra Cake. I’ve never tasted anything by Hostess. But I’m scared to even pierce the wrapper for one sniff of something different, scared the damage will decrease the value. The cookie’s worth something in here. The cookie’s worth a magazine.

The voice who hid food has magazines. One cookie for one magazine. I have two cookies now. But I need the nice deputy. The nice deputy will make the trade. The voices warned me not to trust anyone else. I wonder if I can trust the voices.

The voice who’s a call girl asks if the other voice is gonna pass that thing. There’s no answer.

Another voice says, “She prob’ly dead.” We laugh. Everyone’s funny here.

Keys in the hallway. “I hear another fucking word out this block, you’re all going on loaf.” No one laughs.

It’s time for a bath. You watch movies or TV shows about jail and you’ll get some funny ideas. You’ll think there’ll be things like showers, pillows, an hour in a yard, a TV to fight over, books, pens, paper, photographs to stick on walls, cigarettes, toothbrushes, toothpaste, soap. I have none of these things. I have two socks. I use one for a washcloth. Press the button for water. Soak the dirty sock in the cold metal sink. Wash. Soak again. Wash. Wring. Sop up the water. Wring. I hang the sock on the side of the sink to dry. I use my other dirty sock as something like a toothbrush. Stretch the ankle over my index finger. Wash my teeth. Rinse the sock. I feel no cleaner. I can still smell the acidic, vaguely animal scent under my arms. There’s a smell in these halls, in my cell, the smell of caged humans, the smell of fear. Of madness. I’m glad I have my socks.

   The voice with the kidney stone’s crying now. She’s alive. “Ah, dios mío.” Over and over again. She doesn’t belong in a cell.



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My first day, after my first night in intake, I spoke to a guy with an expensive haircut and Ralph Lauren frames. He asked what the Wellbutrin and Prozac were for, the meds I listed on the form. He said he was a counselor. I said I was a veteran. I said I have PTSD. He asked me if I was suicidal—trick question no matter who asks. I said no. He said, “You look tired.” I said, “Yeah, I can’t sleep here.” I wonder later if I’d told him I grew up in a cult, if I told him they used to lock me in rooms, if that would’ve changed anything.

That’s when I was still in the fishbowl holding cell where you sit before you’re processed. They process humans here. In the fishbowl, everyone does the same thing when the door shuts behind them.

   They look around. They don’t know if the movies are real, if they’ll have to fight. They see the phone on the wall, and someone who’s been there longer says to use your inmate number off your intake sheet. You can’t call long distance. You can’t call a number you don’t know. The inmates tell you, for future reference, to always write a number on your arm before you go out. The new inmates make a phone call; then they cry. Every time. Someone tells them it’s okay. Every time. For me, the someone who told me how to make a call was a college student, in for a gram of weed. She said, “It’ll be okay. It’s not as bad as you think.” I faced the wall to cry.

The shrink said, “Well, let’s put you somewhere you can get some rest.”

I was grateful. That’s still funny to me. I didn’t know that somewhere was the SHU, the punishment cells. When I tell the other inmates how I ended up in the SHU, they laugh. It is pretty funny. I asked for this.

“Honey, you think you’re Paris Hilton,” a voice says. She says I’m white but not rich. Paris Hilton is rich. Paris Hilton got released early because jail is ugly and we don’t like the rich to suffer. The voice says white will keep me from getting pulled over. She says I’m in the system now. I’m just too dumb to know it. Like a baby. The voices laugh. She’s killing in this club.

I’m still convinced I’ve been wronged. I’m not supposed to be here. She accepts this as part of life. I’m a tourist and she’s the local giving me directions. She asks what I’m in for. I’ve already told the story. But this is what people talk about in jail.

   I say assault. I add misdemeanor because I think it matters.

She asks if I fought back. She means against a boyfriend or husband. It’s a fair question. Women go to jail because of men. Deputy Day-Day comes through and tells us anyone who talks gets the loaf. Story time will wait. We’re not going anywhere.



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Day 4 or maybe it’s 5. The voice who sings Aaliyah doesn’t sing anymore. I think the voice is mad at me. The other voices say she’s dead. I say she got released. She told me so. She got released and she moved somewhere warm with no walls. The voices tell me to sing a Family song. The one from Psalm 121. Then the voices tell me to shut the fuck up. The voices say if I bite my wrist I can go to a warm place where there are no walls. I tell the voices to shut up. I know they’re not real, not all of them. They can’t be real. I’ve heard some of them before. The voices come, but you read to make them quiet. I don’t have anything to read. I quote the verses I know. I quote the poems. This is what I know them for. I tell myself the story of the March girls in Concord. But the voices won’t quiet. They’re older now too.