Insiders

‘Have I received any messages?’ Jennifer repeated. ‘I’m expecting a call from my lawyer.’

‘Oh my Lord,’ the woman laughed, ‘she’s one of those.’ And both officers – even the nice one – laughed right along with Morticia. Jennifer cursed herself for her foolish gaffe. Her head was swimming. But she was so accustomed to hotel check-ins, where the faxes and messages were always waiting, that only now did she realize that the jumpsuit the woman was wearing was in fact a prison uniform – she was just another inmate. Jennifer felt her face color.

Officer Camry pulled out a key chain packed more densely than the A train at rush hour and unlocked a door on the wall next to the counter. ‘Please step right through here and turn to your left,’ Officer Camry said.

Jennifer obliged his courteous request, and found herself in a room with nothing in it but a chair that had a bright orange jumpsuit folded neatly on the seat. She took a step closer to the chair and heard the door slam behind her just as yet another door in the far wall burst open. Jennifer spun around to see that she was alone, then she spun again to see who was about to enter. In her dizzy state she lost her balance, almost fell to the floor, and watched as her expensive shoes slid across the polished surface and into the feet of a tall, severe woman dressed in a long white lab coat.

‘You’ll need to strip down,’ the woman said firmly. ‘It’s time for your exam.’ Her voice was deep – as deep as her waist was wide. She wasn’t really fat, but any niceties like a waistline or hips – if she’d ever had them – were long gone. ‘Get on your feet, strip, and fold your clothes,’ the baritone in white instructed.

‘Are you a doctor?’ Jennifer asked without standing.

‘I’m the intake officer,’ came the reply, which Jen noted was not exactly an answer but, it seemed, was all she was going to get. The intake officer pointed to a sign that read, in both English and Spanish: REMOVE ALL CLOTHING, JEWELRY, AND OTHER PERSONAL EFFECTS, INCLUDING CONTRABAND. HANG YOUR CLOTHES ON THE PEGS OR PLACE THEM IN THE PLASTIC BAG YOU’LL FIND UNDER THE GOWN. WHEN YOUR FINISHED, RING THE BUZZER.

‘Can you read?’ she asked in her neutral tone.

Jennifer looked at her as if she were crazy. ‘Yes, I can read,’ she shot back. ‘I can read well enough to see the typo.’

‘What typo?’ the officer asked.

‘The second your,’ Jennifer told her.

‘It’s not mine,’ the officer sighed.

‘That’s the point. The your isn’t the personal possessive. It should be the contraction,’ Jennifer continued.

‘Do you understand what the sign means?’

‘Yes,’ Jennifer admitted.

‘Fine,’ the officer said. ‘Then forget the spelling and do what you’re told.’ Then she turned and left Jennifer alone in the room.

Jennifer read the sign again. It might as well have read, ‘Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.’ God. What could she do? On the other side of the door she could hear the guards laughing. This was no country club and so far she certainly wasn’t receiving the special treatment that Donald and Tom had promised she would get. This all had to be some kind of mistake. She must be in the wrong department. That must be it. There was probably some other area, some VIP lounge where decent people were waiting for her. She stood up, gave the buzzer a push, then lifted the jumpsuit and plastic bag off the chair and sat down to wait, mindlessly stroking the nasty synthetic texture of the jumpsuit as if it were a kitten she held on her lap.

The door was suddenly pulled open and Officer Camry walked in. ‘Do you have a problem, Miss Spencer?’

Jennifer smiled at him as if she were a debutante who had found herself at the wrong cotillion. ‘Well,’ she began, ‘I don’t think it’s really a problem. I just realized there’s probably been a mistake. I don’t think I’m supposed to be here. Is there someone besides the … intake officer you could take me to speak with?’

Camry took a deep breath, then shook his head. ‘Miss Spencer, you were told to follow the directions on this sign, and while you’re here at Jennings, you will not be told anything twice.’ God! Even the good cop was turning nasty on her. ‘Do you understand that?’ he asked. Before Jen could nod she heard Byrd yell.

‘She need help pulling off her panties? I’m available for a strip search,’ he said and laughed.

Jennifer shuddered, then stood up. She didn’t want to lose the only friend she had in the place, but she tried one more time. ‘Yes,’ she told Camry as calmly as she could, ‘I do understand. But do you understand what I’m saying? I’m not supposed to even be here. I’m supposed to be in some other wing, or department, or whatever it is you call it. You’ve brought me to the wrong place.’

For a moment Camry looked confused. ‘And just where do you think you’re supposed to be, Miss Spencer?’ he asked.

Jennifer used her most intimate and ingratiating smile. ‘You can call me Jennifer,’ she said as pleasantly as she could. ‘May I call you Roger?’

The officer gave her that same look and then said, ‘Just follow the rules, Spencer. Put on the smock and let the intake officer get on with her job. You’ve already wasted too much time. Trust me, you don’t want to keep the Warden waiting.’

The Warden! Of course. The Warden. That must be it, Jennifer thought. She just had to get through these formalities and then her white-glove treatment would begin. She smiled again at Officer Camry and said, ‘Fine. If I could have some privacy, then.’

Camry nodded and turned to leave, but just as he reached for his keys, the door flew open again and the looming hulk of Officer Byrd strode in. ‘What in the hell is going on in here?’ he wanted to know. ‘What is taking so long?’ Jennifer quickly stood and both the jumpsuit and plastic bag fell to the floor.

‘Pick that up and put it on,’ Byrd shouted at her. ‘And leave it unbuttoned.’

‘Now wait just a minute!’ Jennifer said. ‘I think you’ll find if you check with the Warden that my lawyer has called ahead, and he has made …’ Jennifer stopped. She could hear more than a hint of hysteria rising in her voice and she didn’t want to lose control.

‘Check with the Warden? Ha! I’ll let you do that. You think your lawyer called ahead and he made what?’ Byrd asked. He was leering at Jennifer. ‘Do you think you just checked into a friggin’ hotel? Do you think you have special reservations? A room with a view? A table for two?’

‘Sarcasm won’t get us anywhere,’ Jennifer said as calmly as she could.

‘That’s right,’ Byrd agreed. ‘You’re not getting anywhere until you strip naked. And that is the end of this discussion.’ He looked hard at Jennifer. And Jennifer looked right back.

‘Fine,’ she said. ‘I’m not here to make trouble. I won’t be here for long, anyway.’

Officer Camry chimed in, clearly trying to make peace. ‘Please just follow the directions and ring the buzzer when you are finished.’

Jennifer looked around the room again. ‘Do you have any hangers?’

Byrd laughed aloud. ‘Use the pegs,’ he said as he exited. ‘And don’t hurt yourself.’

Both Byrd and Camry left the room and Jennifer proceeded with the ridiculous drill. Right, she thought. Roger Camry was right. She was wasting valuable time. Tom would’ve made the necessary arrangements directly with the Warden. These low-level functionaries knew nothing. The sooner Jennifer got through this Intake stuff the sooner she’d be Exhausted. She took off her Armani suit and the matching silk blouse, wincing as she hung them on the pegs. When she had removed her slacks she hung them with the jacket, only to see both pieces fall onto the floor. She stooped, picked up the clothes, and tried again. And again. The peg gave way and the clothes fell in a heap. With a shiver, Jennifer realized that the pegs were not an April Fool’s joke – they were designed to swivel under weight so that no one could hang herself from them.

Not likely, Jennifer thought with a toss of her head. She hung each piece of her outfit on its own peg, then put on the nasty orange jumpsuit. The fabric was harsh against her body – probably Tercel or Herculon or something worse. And it was enormous – probably a ‘one size fits all’ kind of thing. She didn’t want to have to meet the Warden like this. There wasn’t a mirror in the room, but Jennifer did the best she could. For years she had managed to make even the drabbest Catholic school uniform look a little stylish. She slipped the alligator belt from her slacks and cinched it around her waist. After just a few tucks and a little flouncing, Jennifer rang the buzzer. She kept the phone in her bra. She was ready to meet the warden.

When Camry returned, Morticia was with him. Jennifer couldn’t help but notice that her jumpsuit fit as though it had been made to measure. And Morticia was giving Jennifer a good looking-over, too. They both stood there, glaring at each other as only two women who have come to the party wearing the same dress can. When Morticia caught sight of Jennifer’s belt, she covered her mouth to stifle a laugh. ‘You ready for your close-up, Miss DeMille?’ she asked. Jennifer didn’t say a word.

‘Cut the crap, Cher,’ Camry said firmly to the woman. ‘Just bag her personal effects. And Miss Spencer,’ he turned to Jennifer, ‘please take off the belt. It’s against regulations.’

‘He’s afraid you’re going to hang yourself,’ Morticia smirked, further betraying her hillbilly origins with her accent. ‘Also the brassiere and underpants if you have them.’

‘What?’ Jennifer asked.

‘I’ll have to pat you down,’ Morticia said. ‘Then Ms Cranston’s goin’ to give you an internal.’

Jennifer groaned and did what Roger Camry told her to do, but as she removed the belt she noticed that Morticia had picked up her shoes and was stroking one of them as if it were the Holy Grail. Jennifer guessed that she’d probably never seen a Louboutin before in her poor trash life. Then she turned her back and tried to carefully remove her bra without dropping the cell phone. Just as she was about to secret the phone into the sleeve of her jumpsuit she felt someone standing beside her.

‘What is this?’ Morticia asked as she grabbed the phone and held it up in the air for the officer to see.

‘Where’d you get that?’ Camry asked. ‘That’s what contraband is, Spencer, and it can get you into big trouble here at Jennings. Lucky for you it was found now and not later.’ He tilted his head toward the personal effects bag and Morticia went over and slid the phone into the bag.

The white-coated intake officer returned and asked, ‘Are we about ready to get on with this?’

‘Miss Spencer is ready,’ Officer Camry said, and he took hold of Jennifer’s elbow. As he steered her toward the door, Jennifer saw that Cher was slipping one of the shoes onto her foot.

‘Hey!’ Jennifer protested. But Cher quickly pulled the shoe off and put it back on the counter before anyone could catch her.

Camry turned to look at Cher. She met his glare with the blandest look on her face. ‘Get busy with that, Cher,’ he said. ‘Catalogue every piece of clothing and put it all away.’

‘Where is she taking my things?’ Jennifer asked, but she didn’t get an answer from either Camry or the intake officer. Jennifer looked down at the jumpsuit she was wearing. Well, if that Cher person stole her clothes, she’d just have to ask Tom to bring something else for her to wear when he came tomorrow to take her home. She could trust Tom to select something appropriate. He had great taste in clothes and sometimes looked better in his Prada suits than Jennifer did in hers!

‘All right then, let’s get started,’ the intake officer said in the deep voice that gave Jennifer chills.

The rest of the processing was like some kind of surreal out-of-body experience. It was almost as if Jennifer wasn’t there. She became just another woman in a prison uniform, and this disassociation actually made it all a little easier to take. She was weighed, measured, and photographed. When the officer fingerprinted her she calmly watched as her fingers were rolled in the ink and then onto the paper. As her prints were being made, Jennifer asked, ‘Do you have any suggestions on how to get this ink off your fingers? It’s almost impossible to wash it off with just plain soap and water.’

‘Well, Spencer,’ the officer opined, ‘maybe you might try Estée Lauder’s Youth Dew.’

The sarcasm wasn’t pointed or funny enough for Jennifer to laugh, but she did respond. ‘I just thought that, since you worked with the stuff all the time, you might know. I’ll make a note to tell our clients at Chesebrough-Ponds to develop some sort of cleansing cream for fingerprint ink.’

The intake officer threw back her head and roared with laughter. ‘Yeah,’ she chortled, ‘you can call it Out Damn Spot! Now get up on the table.’

Reluctantly Jennifer climbed onto the stainless steel bench. As soon as this monster was done poking and prodding, she would call Tom. He was probably already well on his way to getting her out of this place. Jennifer knew that everything was going to be all right. And then the officer told her to stand up.

‘Bend over and open your jumpsuit,’ she said matter-of-factly. She picked up a thin latex rubber glove and began to slowly and deliberately pull it over her hand. When she snapped it against her wrist, the sound sent a shiver down Jennifer’s spine. ‘Cavity check,’ the intake officer said, and Jennifer felt her stomach start to rise.

‘Why?’ Jennifer whispered. This was too much. She certainly didn’t have a prostate to examine. ‘Why do I need a cavity check?’ she demanded more loudly. ‘I’m not in here for drugs or on a weapons charge.’

‘C’mon,’ the officer sighed, ‘it’ll be over before you know it. It’s a lot worse when we have to hold you down.’

4 Movita Watson

Rich women have the Betty Ford clinic; poor women have prison.

A prison commentator. Kathryn Watterson, Women in Prison

I declared that until I said different, this candy – a name on the Inside for a new inmate – would be known to my crew as Number 71036. ‘She’s just another piece of snotty white meat,’ I told ‘em. ‘It’s not like we all have to sit up and take notice just because she dragged her sorry ass into this joint. She don’t mean nothin’ to us.’ I’m queen bee at Jennings. And while I know that might not mean much on the Outside, when you’re on the Inside it’s important to stay on top. Nobody wants to be on the bottom. Not the bottom bunk, not the bottom of the crew, not the bottom of nothing in a prison. I’ve always been on top, and I plan on staying there.

Cher’s the funniest, smartest, and baddest in our sisterhood, and she said to me, ‘Well let me tell you, that Number 71036’s sorry ass was dressed in the best damn silk underwear I’ve ever seen.’

My crew was sitting at our usual table in the cafeteria eating lunch. Dinner is always at one of our houses but lunch is quick and gotta be in from food service. When you first see us, you might think we’re kind of an unlikely group. I’m a proud and beautiful black woman, but all the rest of the women in my crew are white. Unlike men in prison, where black and white rarely mix, women inmates tend to group up based on whether or not they like each other, and what they can do to help each other out. My women make up the most organized, efficient and tight-knit crew in the joint. We’re a family.

Like I said, I’m the boss. As the Warden’s secretary, I hold a position of power (and opportunity) at Jennings that few, if any, can challenge. Cher McInnery works Intake, and that means that all sorts of nice things flow like a river over the desk in that room where the new inmates strip and leave all their possessions behind. Some of that river of riches, maybe just a small stream, gets diverted in Cher’s direction – and some of that gets passed on to my crew.

Right now Cher had an advantage over the others in the crew. She was the only other of us who had actually seen Jennifer Spencer. Even though I insisted that she was ‘no big fuckin’ deal’ to me, we had all heard and read plenty about Number 71036 in the news – the fall of ‘the Wall Street Princess’ – and we were all anxious to talk about her.

You see, inside a prison nothing ever changes. That’s probably the worst damn thing about living Inside. Everyone’s in the same uniform, Christmas looks just like the Fourth of July, the windows are too high to see out of, and the exercise yard doesn’t have a blade of grass that hasn’t been examined by four hundred pairs of eyes. There just isn’t much to look at except the walls and each other, and women, we like to look at things. I read once in one of the Warden’s magazines that the experts call it ‘sensory deprivation’. I call it goddamn hard.

‘What was she wearing?’ Theresa LaBianco wanted to know. She’s into ‘How was her hair styled? Does she know how to put on makeup?’ Theresa used to be at the very top of one of those big makeup sales pyramids. Had a couple of hundred housewives sellin’ mascara. I could just imagine what the kites – secreted notes – would say about this new candy.

Theresa worked in the canteen and could always manage to buy us the freshest produce or the best chicken when we got to shop. It wasn’t until her husband was caught cooking the books that she found herself on the Inside at Jennings. But Theresa never lost her love for life or blusher. And the bitch could dish. She especially loved to hear Cher talk about all of the new inmates. ‘It’s kinda like window shopping,’ she would say.

‘Well,’ Cher began, because she knew what was expected of her, ‘her shoes were the softest damn leather I ever felt.’ Cher shook her head. ‘Shoes like that must go for four hundred bucks if they go for a dime.’

‘Well, you know what they say about shoes, don’t you?’ Theresa asked. ‘They say, you can’t know someone’s sorrows until you’ve walked a mile in her shoes. That’s what they say about shoes.’ Theresa had a damn saying for everything. She lived by sayings. She said that was how she had motivated her sales force, but they drove me nuts.

‘Well, I don’t think 71036 has ever had too many problems walking in those shoes,’ Cher sneered. ‘And I plan to walk more than a mile in ‘em,’ she told us and laughed.

‘Did you take ‘em, Cher?’ Suki asked, all wide-eyed. Suki Conrad was our crew’s innocent – our baby. She worked in the laundry and in Suki’s case it wasn’t so much what she could do for the rest of us, but what we could do for Suki. I think Suki made us all better women.

‘Damn right I took ‘em,’ Cher said proudly. ‘When I saw that those shoes were a size eight, I took that for a sign.’ Cher lived by signs and omens like Theresa lived by sayings. ‘My parole date is comin’ up, and I figure those pointy shoes were pointing directly to my getting outta here.’

‘Girl,’ I said with a sigh, ‘you can’t just keep stealin’. You’re gonna get caught, lose your chance at parole and damn it, it’s wrong.’

‘You know what they say about stealing, don’t you?’ Theresa chimed in. ‘They say that God helps those that help themselves. That’s what they say about stealing.’

I was never sure with Theresa if she meant to support me or sass me when she said somethin’ like that.

‘That’s not what God meant,’ Suki protested. ‘God said, “Thou shalt not steal.”’

‘NBD – No Big Deal – I haven’t stolen from God since I used to swipe money out of the collection plate at Sunday school,’ Cher laughed. ‘And I never take nothin’ from people who can’t spare it. Won’t steal from the simple minded, neither,’ she added.

Cher was a thief and she didn’t mind saying so. She didn’t see anything wrong with what she did. What was wrong to Cher was that everyone else had more than she did, and the only way to make up the difference was for her to take what she needed. That’s what she’d done to get herself incarcerated and what she did every time a new inmate was processed into Jennings. She just put the things she didn’t want into a bag with the new inmate’s name and number on it, and she put the good stuff into another bag with a different name and number. No one would ever reclaim the second bag, because the name and number on that bag belonged to a dead or released inmate. Cher had perfected the system, and now had plenty of bags hidden right out in plain sight.

‘What was she wearing?’ Theresa wanted to know.

‘Armani!’ Cher giggled. ‘I’ve never managed to steal Armani before. It’s so damned expensive that the stores usually have it wired to the rack.’

‘Well, I don’t think 71036 ever had to steal anything,’ Suki said. ‘It said in the papers that she’s really rich.’

‘Yeah. And greedy, too. She got busted for stealing that money on Wall Street,’ Cher shot back. ‘That makes her a thief just like me.’

‘But did you see her on the TV news?’ Suki asked. ‘She looks just like a movie star.’

‘Well, you know what they say about pictures, don’t you?’ Theresa began.

‘Yeah, we all know what they say about pictures, Theresa,’ I said in exasperation. ‘You all act like we never had us a celebrity prisoner before. What about Jackie James, the sick little twist from Montgomery who killed her two babies on a tourist trip to New York, then said they’d been kidnapped by a black brotha’? That was in all the papers.’

‘Nobody likes baby killers,’ Cher said.

‘Or baby rapers,’ Theresa added. ‘Whatever happened to that teacher, Camille Lazzaro, who decided to teach one of her boy students more than geography? Didn’t she just give a whole new meaning to the term “teacher’s pet”? She had the baby and the daddy wasn’t even thirteen years old yet.’

‘Or that Carole Waters over in Unit Three?’ Cher added. ‘She got her boyfriend to murder both her husband and her mother-in-law just for the insurance and the inheritance. She was in all the papers, too.’

‘I steer clear of anyone who kills for money.’ Theresa shook her head. ‘It’s one thing if you catch your man screwin’ your sister or your daughter. I say shoot ‘em. But to kill someone just for money, that’s cold.’

‘That reminds me,’ Cher said, laughing, ‘any of you heard that Dixie Chicks song on the radio called “Goodbye Earl”? It reminded me of you, Movita.’

As soon as Cher said that, it got real quiet. ‘We ain’t gonna talk about Earl,’ I said – and I meant it. Cher didn’t say another word. She didn’t dare to. It’s an unspoken but well enforced rule that you don’t never talk about anyone’s life on the Outside. You specially don’t never mention no one’s family or her man unless you’re invited to.

Most of the women on the Inside are here, one way or another, because of a man. Either she got involved in one of his illegal schemes, or he beat her until one day she fought back and killed him. It’s safe to say that most of the women in Jennings wouldn’t be here at all if they hadn’t been hooked up with low-life no-goods like my Earl. Men are a weakness, like drinking or drugs. I know I was weak willed with my Earl, and fact is I don’t like to be reminded of it.

Suki was the first one to speak up again after the silence. ‘You think this Jennifer Spencer got in trouble because of her boyfriend, too?’ she asked.

‘I wouldn’t be surprised,’ I said. ‘I know about bookkeeping, and it doesn’t matter if it’s a dental office in Kew Gardens or investment banking on Wall Street. It all comes down to shifting the books and what you’re allowed to get away with. Men still make the rules about that and they probably always will.’

‘Well, 71036 seems to be pretty comfortable around men,’ Cher said. ‘You shoulda seen her flirtin’ with dumb ol’ Roger Camry. He was all “Miss Spencer” this and “Miss Spencer” that. It was enough to make ya’ sick.’

‘What about Byrd?’ I asked her. ‘Was that prick hittin’ on her?’

‘Not yet,’ Cher said with a smirk. ‘He’ll get her eventually, but right now it looked like he was gonna let Roger have first crack at her.’

As soon as Cher said that, Suki stood up, took her tray from the table, all angry like, and said, ‘I’m not gonna sit here and listen to this dirty talk. I gotta get back to the laundry.’ She took her tray to the dirty dish window and left.