Small Great Things(62)

I knew better than to cross Mama when she got like this. So I took the book and ran to the room I shared with Rachel to find a clean white shirt. As I buttoned it, my gaze drifted toward the trivia book where it had fallen open on my bed.

The loneliest creature on earth is a whale that has spent more than twenty years calling out for a mate, I read, but whose voice is so different from those of other whales that none of them ever respond.

—

IN THE BEDROLL I am given are sheets, a blanket, shampoo, soap, toothpaste, and a toothbrush. I am entrusted to the custody of another inmate, who tells me important things: that from now on, all my personal hygiene items have to be purchased from the commissary, that if I want to watch Judge Judy in the rec room I have to get there early for a good seat; that halal meals are the only edible ones so I might want to say I’m Muslim; that someone named Wig gives the best tattoos, because her ink is mixed with urine, which means it’s more permanent.

As we pass by the cells I notice that two inmates occupy each one, and that the majority of the prisoners are Black, and that the officers are not. There is a part of me that feels the way I used to when my mother made my sister take me out with her friends in our neighborhood. The girls would make fun of me for being an Oreo—black on the outside, white on the inside. I’d wind up getting very quiet out of fear that I was going to make a fool of myself. What if a woman like that is my roommate? What could we possibly have in common?

The fact that we’re both in prison, for one.

I turn the corner, and the inmate sweeps her arm in a grand gesture. “Home sweet home,” she announces, and I peek inside to find a white woman sitting on a bunk.

I put my bedroll on the empty mattress and begin to pull free the sheets and blanket.

“Did I say you could sleep there?” the woman asks.

I freeze. “I…uh, no.”

“You know what happened to my last roommate?” She has frizzy red hair and eyes that do not quite look out in the same direction. I shake my head. She comes closer, until she is a breath away. “Neither does anyone else,” she whispers. Then she bursts out laughing. “Sorry, I’m just messing with your head. My name’s Wanda.”

My heart is beating in the back of my throat. “Ruth,” I manage. I gesture to the empty mattress. “So this is…”

“Yeah, whatever. I don’t give a shit, as long as you stay out of my stuff.”

I jerk my head, agreeing, and make the bed as Wanda watches. “You from around here?”

“East End.”

“I’m from Bantam. You ever been there?” I shake my head. “No one’s ever been to Bantam. This your first time?”

I glance up, confused. “In Bantam?”

“In prison.”

“Yes, but I won’t be here for long. I’m waiting for my bail to clear.”

Wanda laughs. “Okay, then.”

Slowly, I turn. “What?”

“I’ve been waiting for the same thing. Going on three weeks now.”

Three weeks. I feel my knees buckle, and I sink to the mattress. Three weeks? I tell myself that my situation is not Wanda’s. But all the same: three weeks.

“So what are you in for?” she asks.

“Nothing.”

“It’s amazing how nobody in here did anything illegal.” Wanda lies back on her bunk, stretching her arms up over her head. “They say I killed my husband. I say he ran into my knife.” She looks at me. “It was an accident. You know, like the way he broke my arm and gave me a black eye and pushed me down the stairs and those were accidents too.”

There are stones in her voice. I wonder if, in time, mine will sound that way, too. I think of Kennedy, telling me to keep to myself.

I think of Turk Bauer and picture the tattoo I saw in the courtroom, blazing across his shaved scalp. I wonder if he has spent time in prison. If this means we, too, have something in common.

Then I picture his baby, curled in my arms in the morgue, cold and blue as granite.

“I don’t believe in accidents,” I say, and I leave it at that.

—

THE COUNSELOR, OFFICER Ramirez, is a man with a face as round and soft as a donut, who is slurping his soup. He keeps spilling on his shirt, and I try not to look every time it happens. “Ruth Jefferson,” he says, reading my file. “You had a question about visitation?”

“Yes,” I reply. “My son, Edison. I need to get in touch with him, so that he knows how to get together the papers we need for bail. He’s only seventeen.”

Ramirez rummages in his desk. He takes out a magazine—Guns & Ammo—and a stack of flyers about depression, and then hands me a form. “Write down the name and address of the people you want on the visitor list.”

“And then what?”

“Then I mail it out and when they sign it and send it back, the form gets approved and you’re good to go.”

“But that could take weeks.”

“About ten days, usually,” Ramirez says. Slurrrrp.

Tears flood into my eyes. This is like a nightmare, the kind where someone shakes your shoulder as you are telling yourself this is a dream, and says, This isn’t a dream. “I can’t leave him alone that long.”

“I can contact child protective services—”