Insiders

Gwen could laugh about the nameplate now, but it was not the most dignified way to begin her tenure as the new warden. Fortunately, over time, Gwen had noticed that fewer and fewer of the women who were sent to Jennings even knew who Warren G. Harding was. She imagined that ‘The Prez’ would eventually be replaced with a new name – probably something even more offensive. Maybe it already had. The inmate population grew, changed, and became less educated and more troubled each year. She’d been shocked only last week when Flora, the middle-aged inmate in charge of the laundry detail, apparently didn’t know the difference between a city and a country. ‘When I get out of here, I’m going to Paris,’ Flora had said.

‘France?’ Gwen had asked her.

‘There, too!’ was Flora’s reply.

It would have been something to laugh about if it wasn’t so sad. But Gwen would’ve preferred that she and Flora had something to laugh about together. Jennings was such a sad place, she wished that all of them – the inmates, the officers, the staff – had something to laugh about. But, after all, it was a prison, wasn’t it? And she was the Warden – not a clown. And most certainly not a teacher, a nurse, or a mommy. The job wasn’t what she had once hoped for. Contrary to what she (and no one else) thought of as her ‘amusing public speaking anecdote’, being Warden had very little to do with nurturing, medicine, or motherhood. Increasingly, it was a purely administrative position that required an expertise in staff management, food preparation, health services, and custodial care, along with – quite obviously – criminal behavior. If she had to do it all over again, Gwen Harding would’ve gladly chosen to be a nurse, a teacher, or a mommy. But she didn’t and she couldn’t.

Gwen looked at the JRU International staff seated before her. She sighed. It was a big waste of time. As she tried to concentrate on the ongoing monotone monologue of the bald one, she realized that she wasn’t sure she knew what she was any longer; the thrust of her job had changed too much. She had more and more paperwork, less and less contact with the inmates, and virtually no programs in education and rehabilitation. The greatest focus of her work was on cost containment – especially since JRU had begun to explore the privatization of Jennings nearly a year ago.

Baldy finally stopped speaking and a member of his very young crew was now going on about a ‘facilities facilitator’, who would make the buildings better, stronger, cleaner, bigger, and more beautiful. It wasn’t clear to Gwen how this was going to be achieved without an immense infusion of money. The Jennings infrastructure hadn’t been invested in in decades. She couldn’t even find money for routine maintenance.

It was very difficult for Gwendolyn Harding to comprehend how an underfunded and crumbling government-controlled institution for the so-called ‘rehabilitation’ of women could suddenly be transformed into a profitable subsidiary of an international corporate conglomerate. Not only did Gwen have difficulty imagining how it could happen, she was also becoming unnervingly aware that these JRU fools seemed to believe it would be up to her to see that it did happen. Ha! Not even Warren G. Harding could do the job. The job Baldy had in mind for Gwen to do required an understanding of sales, marketing, and most aspects of the private sector. She had no experience or expertise in any of these areas – nor did she want any.

What if these bozos did succeed in getting a contract from the state? When it came to the state, anything was possible. What kind of havoc would ensue then? Gwen envisioned management so cruel and incompetent that an armed insurrection would not be altogether unlikely. She looked at the twentysomethings gathered before her. If each and every one of them were blown away in an Attica scenario she wouldn’t be sorry at all. She’d only regret that the inmates would be forced to serve more time. And as far as Gwen was concerned, it would be grossly unfair to serve time when you were just trying to perform a service for humanity.

Gwen was growing weary and angry at these jackals. What if the staff whom she had hired and trained over the years was fired so that some twenty-three-year-old ‘executive’ could take over? What if she herself was replaced by a ‘facilities facilitator’ or an ‘inmate output management specialist’? Jennings was a correctional facility for women, not one of those ‘country club’ joints for the white-collar crooks from Wall Street.

That reminded Gwen of the intake meeting that was scheduled for that afternoon. Jennifer Spencer – the Wall Street showboater who the papers said was ‘sentenced to three to five at a country club prison’ was due to arrive. A country club! Someday Gwen wanted to visit one of those fabled facilities for herself. Maybe they existed somewhere for male white-collar criminals, but to her knowledge – which was extensive – there wasn’t a correctional facility for women anywhere in the United States that was not miserably overcrowded, pathetically understaffed, and/or dangerously in need of major repairs. There was nothing at Jennings that even remotely resembled the amenities of a country club.

Gwen had all kinds at Jennings. She had women who had violently murdered, and she had a grandmother who had done nothing more criminal than to grow a little marijuana to help her grandson with his MS. And why? Because when the governor declared his war on drugs, and the legislators passed mandatory twenty-year sentences for even the most minor offense, everyone caught in the net – dolphin as well as tuna – eventually wound up on Gwen’s doorstep.

And when they did, it was up to her to take care of all of them. She fed them, housed them, put them to bed, and tried to attend to their medical needs. At the same time she did her best to maintain the discipline and decorum that kept the lid on the Jennings pressure cooker of anger, resentment, and – most perilous of all – boredom. In the meantime, there were no full-time medical professionals on staff, the educational and training programs were substandard, there were no special facilities for family visits or overnight stays with children, and while there were a few on her staff who were hardworking men and women, Gwen also had more than a few union-protected liars and sadists who she fervently hoped would eventually end up on the other side of the bars. A country club? Gwen hardly thought so. A profit center? That was even more ridiculous. Gwen actually snorted out loud.

Quickly she took the handkerchief that she kept tucked in her sleeve and wiped her nose as if she had sneezed. Well, she thought, as long as Warden Gwendolyn Harding was still at the helm of the Jennings Correctional Facility for Women it would be neither a country club nor a corporate headquarters. It would be a place where sad, damaged, and angry women were locked away from a society that required their removal. And if she had the courage and the stamina to make it happen, when these women were released, they would leave Jennings somewhat healed, more hopeful, and partially rehabilitated and acceptable to society. That was her modest dream.

She shifted in her seat and cleared her voice. As Warden she was used to being watched and obeyed by hundreds of people. Even the slightest narrowing of her eyes usually brought a response. But in this meeting she could probably set her hair afire and it wouldn’t stop the young woman who was now babbling on and on about telemarketing. Telemarketing?

Gwen glanced at her watch. She’d give them four more minutes and then they were out of there. She had to meet with today’s new prisoner, tell her the rules, and assign her to a cell. Jennifer Spencer was going to be a tough call for Gwen. She was coming in as a ‘celebrity’ inmate. Everyone in America had read all about her long before she had been sent to Jennings. Her story had been in all of the newspapers and magazines, and the photos of her and her handsome young lawyer looked like something right from the society pages. Even when she was led into the courthouse in handcuffs, she held her head high and kept her nose in the air as if she was going to a meeting of the board of directors.

Gwen Harding was afraid that Jennifer Spencer was coming to Jennings to cut herself a deal. In all of the stories that she read about the arrest, the trial, the conviction, and now her imminent incarceration, Jennifer Spencer looked and sounded like a thoroughbred who always came in in first place. Jennifer Spencer was accustomed to being treated like a winner. And that meant that there were probably a lot of losers who were fashioning a knife out of a contraband piece of metal wrenched off a window frame just so they could slash the face of a woman like Jennifer Spencer. Unprovoked violence wasn’t epidemic at Jennings, but it did occur and it was a constant worry to Gwen Harding. But she took her mind off it and tried to focus on the snip of a girl in front of her.

‘So, in effect,’ the young woman was saying, ‘the telemarketing personnel could be monitored by only three shifts of management, which would give twenty-four-hour coverage of an operation that could sell nonstop, guaranteeing a –’

That was enough. These people were only visitors. She didn’t report to them – yet. Gwen stood up, looked at Jerome and nodded her head. ‘Well, thank you,’ she said briskly. ‘This has been most informative.’

Informative and beyond Gwen’s grasp. The JRU people began to shuffle their papers and regroup. They had no idea what they’d be dealing with. Who was going to train the women? And more importantly, what was going to motivate them? All of Gwen’s staffers and all of Gwen’s guards couldn’t get them to do the laundry with any care, or even to prepare meals that were anything better than slop. Many of the inmates were content to live in squalor, and few took any pride in their appearance or personal hygiene.

Gwen stood, opened the door of her office, and bid the fools from JRU good-bye. They all walked out without so much as a glance toward Gwen’s receptionist, Miss Ringling, or Movita Watson, the inmate assigned to Gwen’s office from the prisoner population. Movita was the notable exception among the inmates at Jennings. Gwen knew she shouldn’t – really couldn’t – afford to have favorites, but Movita was … well, she was one of a kind. She was more competent, more clever, more stylish, with more attitude, intelligence, and tricks up her sleeve than anyone Gwen had even known. Movita ran the tightest crew in the prison, and perhaps ran the prison as well. Her crewmates loved and respected her in a way that Gwen – in her more perversely ironic moods – almost envied.

If the fools from JRU had any sense at all, Gwen thought, they’d be talking to Movita rather than me.

3 Jennifer Spencer

They try to strip you from the very first minute … When they brought me in county jail, the first thing they did was take my wedding ring and my earrings. Then they stripped me stark naked and made me jump up and down on the floor in a squat position – while they all stood around watching. They have to forget we’re human beings to treat us that way.

A woman prisoner. Kathryn Watterson, Women in Prison

As the prison van moved past the crowd at the courthouse and into the city streets, Jennifer put her face up to the smeared, barred window. As the van lumbered through the tunnel and then through poor suburban streets it was as if Jen was traveling back in time. She watched overworked women lugging laundry and groceries through the littered blocks, the kind of low-rent neighborhood in which she had grown up. Tears filled her eyes for a moment. Every one of those women reminded her of her late mother. And every staggering drunk looked like her stepfather.

Jennifer shivered again and rubbed the flesh of her arms vigorously. She hated being in this van, she hated these streets, and she hated the memories she was having of living in streets like them. It had taken motivation, intelligence, and hard work to climb out of the place they were driving through. Ironically, it now seemed as if that same motivation, intelligence, and hard work was bringing her right back, or to a place even worse. Prison! She wouldn’t let her tears fall. She reminded herself that this was only a temporary setback. But she was glad that her mother hadn’t lived long enough to know about her trial or see her riding in a prison van.

Jennifer turned away from the window. She couldn’t worry about the women on the street; she had her own problems. She’d dressed so carefully that morning – as she did every morning – but now the bench that she was sitting on was speckled with God only knew what kind of dirt. The rubber-matted floor smelled as if unspeakable things had been deposited there, and she was afraid to lean against the wall because of the nasty graffiti that was written in – what? Blood? Snot? Magic Marker? Jen thought ruefully of all the taxes that she had paid over the years. She wondered why some of it wasn’t spent on keeping prison vans a little cleaner. Well, the horrible interior was probably just a show for the press. As Tom said, they were making an example of her. Things would be a lot better once she actually got to the prison. What had Tom said? It was a country club. Fine. She could handle that for a day or even two. Right now, though, the filth and the stench were permeating her hair and her clothes. Worse, Jennifer felt too tired to sit erect any longer. She gave up and leaned back. What does it matter? she thought. She would take her suit to Chris French Cleaners back on Ninth Street in a couple of days and they would work their magic on it. They would remove the smells and stains, just as Tom was working to make her personal record spotless once again. She thought of pulling out her hidden Nokia and calling him, but the driver might hear and surely he couldn’t have accomplished anything this soon. She should just zone out and wait.

Just as Jennifer relaxed into the ride, the driver sped up and recklessly rounded a corner. She was thrown from the steel bench onto the filthy floor. Jen struggled to get back on the bench and, in her surprise, she forgot for a moment just exactly what her situation was. ‘Excuse me,’ she shouted to the driver through the wire cage, ‘but don’t you think we’re going just a little too fast in a residential neighborhood?’

His head spun around. ‘I don’t need no driving lessons from a convict,’ he sneered. Then he looked straight ahead and drove on even faster.

Jennifer was angry and ashamed of her outburst, but still she insisted, ‘It’s dangerous. Your driving threw me onto this filthy floor.’

‘I don’t care if you fall on your ass. You ain’t riding in a limo anymore, convict.’

Convict! He kept calling her a convict. She climbed back on the bench and tried to brace herself against the walls of the van. The handcuffs jangled and cut into her wrists. How in the hell had it come to this? Jennifer always followed the rules. She never smoked pot or had unprotected sex. She never took shortcuts; she never had an overdue book from the library. Hell, she never even left dirty dishes in the sink. And he’d called her a convict. Well, Jennifer thought with a shock, she was a convict. For a moment the reality – the smell, the dirt, the ugliness – broke over her in a wave. What was she doing here?

The ride continued endlessly. Jennifer went from nauseated to sleepy to hungry and then back to nauseated again. Through it all she was frightened. At last the driver made another sharp right turn, and as Jennifer held on as best she could, the brakes screeched and the van came to an abrupt stop. Jennifer peered out the window. The prison gates were opening, and slowly the van pulled into the yard.

This wasn’t like any kind of country club that Jennifer had ever seen – and the crazy-looking woman who was squatting in the flower bed was no greenskeeper. Jennifer had no way of knowing her name at the time – nor could she have ever guessed it – but ‘Springtime’ was the first inmate to greet her with a smile. The old woman’s birth name was long lost, as was her youth. Her dark, leathery skin was pulled so tight over her skull that her death-head’s grin reminded Jennifer of the cheap skeleton masks all the kids in her old neighborhood used to wear on Halloween. That grin and those loony eyes were Jennifer’s first spooky glimpse of prison life. As the van continued forward, the old woman pointed to the flower bed. Jennifer couldn’t see what it was that she was pointing to until they were farther away. There, in a withered garden, bright orange marigolds and faded blue argretum spelled out Welcome to Jennings.

Beyond the flowers Jennifer saw the terrible glint of razor wire coiled across the top of the chain-link fence. Ten feet behind it was a twin fence, also topped with the same wire. The sight stopped Jennifer’s breath for a moment. What was happening to her? It looked as if she were in a Kurt Russell movie. The van approached a high concrete-block wall with garage doors that slowly opened to let them in. The doors closed behind them, the engine was turned off, and they sat in total silence. A burning bile rose in Jennifer’s throat and she swallowed hard. She was soaked with sweat. What were they doing? Nobody moved or said a word. Why were they just sitting there in the dark stench of this disgusting van? It was all so unnerving. She needed air – fresh air. ‘Excuse me,’ she said softly, ‘but what happens now?’

‘Jesus Christ!’ the driver sneered. ‘Are you really in such a hurry to get Inside?’

Before Jennifer could answer, an alarm sounded and, as if in response, overhead lights went on. The driver and guard got out of the van, slid open the doors, and reached in to pull her from her seat. Two prison officers had come from somewhere and stood on the tarmac. ‘Right this way, Miss Spencer,’ the shorter officer said.

‘Welcome to Jennings,’ the taller one said with a leer.

Jennifer lost her footing as she made the big step down from the prison van and she nearly fell onto the slippery concrete of the Jennings garage. She blinked her eyes against the harsh fluorescent lights and tried her best to regain her balance and maintain her composure. Dizzy, she teetered on her heels.

‘Can you walk on your own?’ the shorter of the two officers asked Jennifer with what sounded like real concern. Although they were dressed in identical uniforms, the two men couldn’t have been more different in their demeanor. While the short one seemed calm and almost caring in his work, it was clear to Jen that the taller officer was wound tight as a spring and seemed ready to explode into violence at any moment. Good cop – bad cop, thought Jennifer. She was studying the faces of her captors when she felt the tall guard’s grip tighten firmly on her arm. ‘You were asked if you can walk,’ he sneered into her face. ‘What’s your answer?’

Jennifer looked at him. Who was this guy? His nameplate read KARL BYRD, but he was no bird. He was a six foot, six inch, two hundred pound hyena. ‘What’s your answer?’ he repeated. ‘Can you walk on your own?’ Jennifer only nodded in response, and the officers flanked her on either side and walked her toward the prison door.

Byrd reached up to his shoulder with his free hand and snarled, ‘Open One Oh Nine,’ into his shoulder-mounted radio. A buzzer sounded and he pushed the door. As Jennifer twisted in an attempt to see the good cop’s nameplate, she noticed that he was locking a contraption on the wall that looked like a night depository at a bank.

‘It’s for our weapons,’ he told her, answering her unasked question. ‘No guns are allowed inside Jennings.’ His name was Roger Camry. Jennifer decided that she liked Roger Camry. He wasn’t some vengeful sadist. He was just a short civil servant with a job to do. For the first time since she left home, Jennifer smiled. Well, this was better. The hallway didn’t stink and the officers were unarmed, and one of them was even kind of nice. Maybe this was a country club after all.

But then she stepped further inside. What was that smell? It wasn’t clinical, nor was it sterile. Before Jennifer could take another sniff, the heavy door slammed behind her with a loud and resounding clank of metal against metal. It made her jump, and Byrd laughed. It sounded far too final.

Jennifer looked ahead down the long, empty hallway before her. She froze. Even with Byrd’s menacing ‘Let’s go,’ she literally could not take a step. The linoleum glinted an anemic lime green. The green mile. She told herself that she wasn’t going to the electric chair, but her legs were actually trembling. She needed some air. She needed just a few more minutes. Her legs were shaking so badly she couldn’t walk and she didn’t want to let them see. ‘So, uh,’ she stammered, ‘I see your names are Roger and Karl.’ She tried to sound casual. ‘I’m Jennifer Spencer,’ she said, and extended her hand.

‘We know who you are,’ Byrd said with a snort that made him sound like a horse. ‘Your face has been splashed across every newspaper and TV screen in the country.’ But he didn’t shake Jennifer’s hand as if she were a celebrity. Instead, he grabbed her elbow and jerked her forward.

Jennifer hated it when people did that. It reminded her of being herded along by Sister Imogene John back in parochial school. Byrd’s touch made Jennifer flinch, and that was enough to provoke him to tighten his grip even more. Her legs were still weak. She would have paid a thousand – no ten thousand – dollars for just a few moments of fresh air. But it wasn’t going to happen. She was locked inside. There was no way out. She took a deep breath of what foul air there was, and she knew now what she smelled. It was despair.

The guard pulled her by her upper arm. ‘Please don’t shove me,’ Jennifer said defiantly to Byrd. He said nothing in response, but continued to shove her just the same. ‘We’re not getting off to a good start here,’ Jennifer said, stumbling once again on the highly polished floors.

‘You better take off the heels,’ the officer named Roger told her, not unkindly. ‘Why don’t you take them off and carry them? That will help. We don’t want you to fall.’

Jennifer looked down at her Louboutins and then at the long hallway before her. She didn’t want to go barefoot, but Byrd drew his face right up to Jennifer’s, and she could smell the hot, unpleasant combination of tobacco, chewing gum, and … With real venom he rephrased Roger’s suggestion into an order and barked, ‘Get rid of the shoes. Do you understand?’ His breath withered Jennifer’s anger. She took off the shoes, and then, with one in each hand and a guard on each elbow, she took her first steps into the prison. Maybe it was a defense mechanism, but at that moment, all Jennifer could think about was how much those shoes had cost.

The hall seemed endless. When at last they stopped in front of a closed door, Jennifer suddenly panicked. She actually didn’t want the guards to let go of her arms. She was afraid that she might collapse in fear. The sign on the door read INMATE INTAKE. With false bravado she asked Officer Camry, ‘Is there another door for Inmate Exhaust?’

‘In here,’ Byrd ordered as he opened the door. Jennifer walked ahead of them and into the room alone.

Inside, a counter cut the small, gray-green space in half. Behind the check-in counter was an open door, and in that doorway lounged a tall, attractive woman. She had the palest skin and the blackest hair that Jennifer had ever seen – a sort of jailhouse Morticia Addams. If she had had a better haircut, she would’ve been stunning. But even here, in that ugly jumpsuit and in the hideous fluorescent lighting, she was striking. She had the high cheekbones, the long straight nose, and the pale blue eyes of a better-looking Celtic hillbilly. Well, at least now Jennifer could begin the process of getting out of this place. Without hesitation, she strode up to the counter where the desk clerk stood and asked, ‘Have I received any messages?’

‘Have you what!’ Morticia asked in amused disbelief.