Insiders
Olivia Goldsmith

To Jack Rapke

Because you always knew how good it would be

An imprisoned creature was out of the question – my mother would not have allowed a rat to be restrained of its liberty.

Mark Twain

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Epigraph

Book I

1 Jennifer Spencer

2 Gwen Harding

3 Jennifer Spencer

4 Movita Watson

5 Gwen Harding

6 Jennifer Spencer

7 Maggie Rafferty

8 Jennifer Spencer

9 Movita Watson

10 Jennifer Spencer

11 Gwen Harding

12 Jennifer Spencer

13 Jennifer Spencer

14 Gwen Harding

15 Cher McInnery

16 Jennifer Spencer

17 Maggie Rafferty

18 Jennifer Spencer

19 Movita Watson

20 Jennifer Spencer

Book II

21 Cher McInnery

22 Jennifer Spencer

23 Gwen Harding

24 Jennifer Spencer

25 Maggie Rafferty

26 Cher McInnery

27 Jennifer Spencer

28 Gwen Harding

29 Jennifer Spencer

30 Movita Watson

31 Maggie Rafferty

32 Jennifer Spencer

33 Gwen Harding

Book III

34 Jennifer Spencer

35 Gwen Harding

36 Movita Watson

37 Jennifer Spencer

38 Cher McInnery

39 Jennifer Spencer

40 Jennifer Spencer

41 Maggie Rafferty

42 Jennifer Spencer

43 Movita Watson

44 Maggie Rafferty

45 Jennifer Spencer

46 Gwen Harding

47 Jennifer Spencer

48 Jennifer Spencer

49 Jennifer Spencer

50 Jennifer Spencer

51 Jennifer Spencer

52 Movita Watson

53 Maggie Rafferty

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Recommended Reading

About the Author

Praise

Also by Olivia Goldsmith

Copyright

About the Publisher

Book I

1 Jennifer Spencer

What is now proved was once only imagined.

William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

‘All rise.’

Jennifer Anne Spencer watched as Judge Marian Levitt entered the courtroom, her black robes swinging loosely from her shoulders, not concealing her dumpiness, her white hair cut in a simple bob. She climbed the three steps to the bench holding Jennifer’s future in her hands.

Jennifer stood beside her lawyer and the rest of the legal team and faced Judge Levitt with what she hoped was a calm and honest gaze. She knew that the photographers would pay a great deal to have a picture of her at the time the verdict was given. But they were barred from the courtroom and for that, if nothing else, she was grateful.

Although she had been assured and reassured that the judge would see things ‘their way’, it was not an easy thing to stand before the woman as she leafed through her papers. In fact, although she doubted that she would be judged guilty, she was certain that even if she was, she would be given a suspended sentence or public service or a fine.

Jennifer had to admit that she felt sick to her stomach just standing there. That she had virtually volunteered to be there didn’t make it any easier. She felt a fluttering beside her and realized that Tom, her attorney, was reaching for her hand. She entwined her fingers in his and knew that he could feel her trembling. She hoped that the judge could see neither that nor the fact that they were holding hands. But she supposed it wouldn’t make any difference to the outcome of the trial.

For what seemed like an interminable time, Judge Levitt paged through the notes in front of her. She had on a pair of half-glasses that were perched at the very end of her long nose. Both Donald and Tom had strongly urged Jennifer to forgo a jury trial. ‘This is complicated law,’ Tom had said. ‘A judge would be more likely to understand the distinctions.’ Donald had laughed. ‘Let’s face it,’ he’d said. ‘Civilians hate us and would be only too happy to throw the book at you.’ Jennifer had nodded. ‘We’re the fat cats,’ Donald had continued. ‘We’re the Wall Street smart-asses. When they make money during a bull market they resent us for making more. When they lose money they blame us. You can’t win when you’re on the Street. You’d never get a jury of your peers unless they could get a dozen guys from the Street, and none of them have the time to sit on a jury.’ They had all laughed.

But now, looking up at Judge Levitt, Jennifer didn’t feel like laughing. She told herself it was all going to be all right. Donald and Tom would see to it. This was the worst of it, and after this she’d be so well rewarded that …

‘Jennifer Spencer. You have been accused of fraud. I find you guilty. On insider trading I find you guilty on all counts. On …’

A loud buzzing began in Jennifer’s ears. The word ‘guilty’ coming from Judge Levitt’s lips seemed to move from the bench to her and hit her like a blow. This wasn’t what was planned. She felt dizzy and she had to close her eyes for a moment to stop the room from spinning. Tom’s hand on her now clammy one did not feel comforting. She wanted to shake him off and wipe the sweat off herself. How could this be happening?

When she could hear again, the judge was intoning something about her sentence. A sentence? If she was found guilty, there wasn’t supposed to be a sentence. ‘… three to five years at Jennings Correctional Facility for Women.’ The judge paused, took off her glasses, and looked across the bench at Jennifer. ‘You are very young,’ she said. ‘It’s better that you learn now that this type of manipulation and illegal profiteering is unacceptable and that it could destroy your entire life.’

Jennifer couldn’t respond. Even on that horrible day when the Feds came into her posh office at the prestigious Wall Street firm of Hudson, Van Schaank & Michaels to take her away in cuffs, Jennifer didn’t believe that she would spend even one moment in a jail cell. The arrest made her a little nervous, of course, but that was only because she’d never been in trouble before with the law.

‘This is just a publicity stunt,’ her boss told her. ‘They’re firing shots over our heads to cool down this overheated market.’ That boss was the legendary Donald J. Michaels himself, and Jennifer never questioned his judgment or authority. ‘Believe me,’ Donald assured her, ‘these charges are going to be dropped. And even if you do go to trial, you aren’t going to be found guilty of anything. Trust me,’ he added with his reassuring smile.

Jennifer did trust him. After all, she wasn’t guilty of anything. She was just taking the heat for Donald in order to deflect any further investigations into his firm’s rather dubious business dealings. If the SEC – the Securities and Exchange Commission – had gone after Donald they would have thrown the book at him. ‘And they’ve got a damn big book,’ Donald had joked. ‘You know how jealous, how envious, people have been over our success in the last few years.’ Jennifer did know. During his Wall Street career Donald Michaels had made not only his own fortune, but had also made dozens, maybe scores – or even hundreds – of other millionaires. Jennifer herself was a millionaire at twenty-eight – but now she was a millionaire who was leaving for prison in less than an hour.

Standing in the courtroom, Jennifer cradled her right elbow in her left hand and her left in her right hand and shivered as she felt both her gooseflesh and nausea rise. How, she wondered, did it come to this? How had Tom, her lawyer, let it happen?

Thomas Philip Branston IV was the sharpest (and most handsome) young counsel on the Street. ‘Nothing is really at risk,’ he had told Jennifer, echoing Donald’s assurances. ‘It never is in cases like this. Even if you are convicted – which is virtually impossible – we’ll have an appeal before the judge can pound his gavel. Donald has good friends and deep pockets,’ Tom said with a knowing smile. Jennifer had no reason to doubt what he said. After all, Tom was not only a Harvard undergrad and Law Review at Yale, he was also much more than her brilliant attorney. He was her beloved fiancé.

‘Think of it, Jen,’ he had said days ago, ‘everyone here will be in your debt. You’ll not only have Donald’s gratitude, but also the gratitude of the partners and all of the employees, right down to the secretaries and the mail-room staff. They’ll all owe their fortunes and their jobs to you.’

‘I only regret that I have but one life to give for my firm,’ Jennifer had joked on that day when she, Tom, and Donald got together with Bob, the financial officer and Lenny, his assistant, to hatch their plan. There was plenty to drink and lots of laughter at that meeting as they discussed how Tom would prepare her statements, how they’d all sign them, and how Tom would ‘turn her in’ to the SEC. The Feds would be ripsnorting mad to miss their shot at Donald, but if she confessed they were scotched in their witchhunt, and Jennifer would be back at work within a week.

At the time their plan sounded solid; after all, Jennifer loved the heart-stopping thrill of high-risk deal-making. She loved the power of outleveraging any competitor in a buyout, and she loved the rush of watching one of their IPOs – Initial Public Offerings – burst onto the market to take the lucky or the gullible investor for the ride of his life. She loved it all – but most of all she loved the money and what it bought. She loved the Pratesi sheets on her bed, the silk Kirmans on her floor, and she loved every piece of Armani, Prada, Gucci, and Ferragamo that she kept neatly in her Biedermeier armoire. Even if her Tribeca condo was a little small, it was beautiful and in the best neighborhood in New York. (John Kennedy, Jr. had lived just around the corner.) With the very generous bonus that she was likely to get from pulling off this little charade, Jennifer was sure that she’d be able to move right on up to the penthouse.

‘Jennifer, I’m so, so sorry. It’s a mistake. Honestly. I thought we had Levitt in line,’ Tom said to her now. Jennifer just stared at him, speechless.

The court officer began to move toward her. ‘We’re going to have to go now,’ he said.

‘What?’ she asked. He must be joking. ‘Go where?’

Tom looked away from her, unable to meet her eyes. ‘To be transported,’ he said. ‘To go …’

‘To go to jail?’ she asked, and heard her voice rising. After the indictment she’d been out on bail before the desk sergeant could call the press and tip them off to her presence. ‘Ridiculous,’ she said, with more bravado than she felt, but the guard came at her relentlessly and when he reached her he pulled out handcuffs. Jennifer almost fainted. ‘No,’ she said, and it came out almost as a moan.

‘Surely handcuffs aren’t necessary …’ Tom began.

‘It’s procedure,’ the marshal said, and it was clear that there was no negotiating. He snapped the cuffs on Jennifer’s wrists, then had to stop and adjust them again and again because her wrists were so small. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Let’s go. We have transport waiting.’

‘We’re going to have to go out there,’ Tom told her. ‘There will be a lot of photographers and journalists.’ He paused. ‘Look, this is only a momentary setback,’ he said. ‘You’ll be there overnight. We’ll appeal or we’ll get a mistrial. Don’t worry about this.’

‘Let’s go,’ the marshal said again and took her, not gently, by the arm.

‘Um, could she fix herself for a moment?’ Tom asked.

Jennifer, dazed and confused, didn’t know what he was talking about, but Jane, one of the other attorneys, took out a comb and tissue and actually fussed with Jennifer’s face as if she were an actor about to go before the cameras. As she was being preened, Tom stood very close to her and she felt something drop into her pocket.

‘Call me sometime,’ he whispered into her ear. ‘Look undaunted,’ Tom continued as he stepped back, while she was marshaled out to face the exploding lights and equally unsettling questions. ‘Are you sorry now?’ a woman’s voice yelled.

‘What will you do in prison?’ she heard someone else shout.

‘Jenny, look over here!’ a husky voice intoned.

‘Jenny!’ echoed behind her.

‘Jenny! Jenny, here!’ was being chanted all around her.

Now she realized why people photographed for the newspapers always looked guilty. She, too, had to hang her head down to protect herself from being blinded by the flashbulbs and strobes. The marshal had been joined by several court officers who were pushing the media out of the way. Jennifer realized that she didn’t know if Tom was still with her or not, but when they walked through the double doors and she found herself at a loading dock, Tom was right behind her, though blessedly the wolf pack was stopped in their tracks.

But right now, the idea of prison gave Jennifer another roll of nausea. She tried to quiet her fears with the confidence that she had cut quite a deal with the firm. With Tom in charge of her appeal, and Howard McBane, senior partner of the white shoe firm of Swithmore, McBane pleading it, there was – she reminded herself – essentially no risk. When all the dust was settled, Donald Michaels was going to owe her big time. She may have left the firm in cuffs, but she was certain that she would return as a senior partner.

In the days following her initial arrest, Jennifer focused her energies on practicing her testimony with Tom and deciding what to wear to court. She was charged with investment fraud, so it seemed that she should try to look as unfraudulent as possible. She chose Armani over Yamaguchi, because who could appear fraudulent in Armani? And for shoes she opted for Louboutin over Manolo Blahnik. Only a classic Gucci purse would do, and with a new hairstyle and makeup done to perfection, Jennifer was sure that she was dressed not only for success, but for an acquittal.

What she hadn’t planned on, however, was the possibility of a female judge. For all of her success, Jennifer had never learned how to deal well with other women – especially the fat, dumpy types who prefer to cloak their femininity in the dark uniformity of robes. When Jennifer saw her judge it was like seeing the ghost of Sister Mary Margaret from St Bartholomew’s school. Jennifer had looked to Tom for encouragement.

But as clever and handsome as Tom was in his own impeccably tailored suit, he had no charm over this severe incarnation of Lady Justice. The grand jury hearing was a disaster. Jennifer was indicted and brought to trial amidst a media frenzy that made national headlines. Donald had warned her that the Feds were looking for a high-profile scapegoat. They found one in Jennifer Spencer. Her story kept the tabloids churning out edition after edition, and while the humiliation of the live television coverage was considerable, what really frustrated Jennifer was the judge’s inability to see that the charges against her were bogus.

At the van Jennifer cried as Tom held her close. ‘This is only a little setback,’ he told her. ‘It’s all going to blow over. We’ll get an appeal. You’ll get another judge. We’ll get Howard McBane for the appeal. McBane is an appellate genius and every judge in the state knows him. Your case will be decided on its merits.’ Jennifer tried to remind herself ‘No guts – no glory.’ The shame of the publicity and the shock of the verdict would be a small price to pay for a senior partnership in the firm – and a lifetime of wealth with her beloved Tom. She’d taken a gamble and if this was the downside of it, the upside was well worth a few days of a little discomfort. ‘I’ll call ahead,’ Tom told her. ‘I’ll pull a few strings and make sure that you get nothing but white-glove treatment.’

Jennifer nodded as yet another horrible wave of fear, anger, and shame washed over her. She was leaving for prison! She wished Donald Michaels, the author of all this, had come to see her off, but that thought had barely registered when they moved through the doors and, as if out of nowhere, the prison transport van pulled up and two armed officers got out.

The shorter officer carried a clipboard on which various papers were signed and exchanged. Then the taller one opened the doors of the cold parking bay in which they stood. Immediately a second horde of photographers swarmed into the loading area, and in the frenzy and noise Jennifer searched their faces, hoping that Donald might be among them. He wasn’t there, but Lenny Benson was. There, in the back of the crowd, Jennifer spotted good old Lenny standing all alone. He gave her a small wave good-bye just as she was told to get into the van.

‘I guess I have to go,’ Jennifer whispered to Tom. She felt her throat close and her eyes tear up.

‘Don’t worry. This is nothing,’ Tom said, though he looked as pale as she must have. ‘It’s going to be okay, Jen. Trust me.’

‘I do,’ she told him, and only later thought about saying those two words in this awful context.

‘Come on,’ the tall officer urged.

Tom bent to kiss her, but not on the lips – only on the forehead. It made Jennifer feel like the dutiful child she had behaved as. She did trust Tom, but so far he had been wrong when he said that she wouldn’t be indicted, wouldn’t be tried, and then that she would get off. She looked up and tried to smile into his handsome face. ‘Are you sure you’re going to want to marry an ex-con?’ she asked, heroically trying to joke.

Tom stared at her intently, then took her face in his hands. ‘You are so beautiful,’ he said in the husky voice he used when they made love. ‘You know that?’ he asked her. ‘Think of this as just an ugly business trip. I’ll take care of all the legal aspects. There will be an appeal, we’ll win and it’ll all be over soon. This will be completely expunged from your record when you’re exonerated.’

‘I love it when you talk legal,’ she told him bravely, but a betraying tear slipped down one of her cheeks.

‘Come on! We got a schedule to keep,’ the tall officer nearly barked.

Tom looked down at Jennifer’s hand. There, on the fourth finger, she wore his ring. ‘Maybe you should leave the diamond with me,’ he said. ‘Just for safekeeping,’ he added with an apologetic smile.

Jennifer was stunned. She loved her ring. When he’d put it on her finger she’d planned to never take it off. But … well, of course it was silly, insane really, to wear a three-carat diamond to … She tried not to think about what she was doing, but again, like a child, she did as she was told and slipped the gorgeous emerald-cut ring from her finger and gave it back to Tom.

It was almost a relief when the van doors slid shut. As she looked out, hoping for a last glimpse of Tom, she saw nothing but photographers, and then, there in the crowd was Lenny’s stricken face. She lifted her ringless hand to wave good-bye through the wire mesh. ‘This Jennings place is like a country club,’ she reminded herself as the van lurched forward and took her away from her job, her luxurious home, her love. And her life.

2 Gwen Harding

The law is the true embodiment

of everything that’s excellent.

It has no kind of fault or flaw,

And I, my Lords, embody the law.

W. S. Gilbert, Iolanthe

Whenever Warden Gwendolyn Harding was asked to give the occasional speech to a group of young people or a women’s association, she would usually begin by telling those assembled, ‘When I was a little girl and people would ask me whether I wanted to be a nurse or a teacher or a mommy when I grew up, I’d answer that question by saying, “No, I want to be a prison warden, because then I’ll get to be all three of those things at once.”’ The story always got a laugh, and Gwen Harding liked to think that laughing helped people to relax a bit. If you can make someone laugh, aren’t you making his or her life a little better? Isn’t it giving him or her a small gift? That was why Gwen was often so disappointed with herself after a long day at Jennings. She couldn’t make the lives of the inmates much better, and she most certainly could not make them laugh. She wished that she could.

She also wished that she could make the five representatives from JRU International laugh as well. They were all solemnly seated before her in her sunny but somewhat dusty office at Jennings. This wasn’t the first time she’d met with Jerome Lardner, the bald little man with the protruding Adam’s apple, but she didn’t recognize the rest of his staff. They seemed to be interchangeable in their little suits, their little haircuts, and their little ages. They looked like they ranged between ages twenty-four to twenty-eight. Gwen Harding was used to seeing young prisoners, but her staff were mature. Even Jerome Lardner, whom Gwen uncharitably – but only mentally – referred to as ‘Baldy’, was well under forty.

‘What we are hoping to achieve,’ Lardner was saying, ‘is not just a new level of productivity, but also a new level of profitability within a correctional facility.’

‘Well,’ Gwen pointed out with a smile, ‘any profitability would be a new level, wouldn’t it? Prisons have never made any money.’

‘Certainly,’ Jerome nodded, ‘certainly none of the public prisons make money, but the privatized ones do.’

That word! Gwen decided yet again that she would not argue statistics with Jerome Lardner. Whenever she called any of his ‘facts’ into question, he was always ready with statistics. If figures didn’t lie, then liars like Jerome certainly didn’t figure out anything except how to protect their own position. ‘Inmate Output Management Specialists have been very effective in supervising the productivity of privatized facility workers,’ Baldy droned on.

Sometimes it took Gwen as long as five minutes to figure out what the JRU terminology meant. They seemed to avoid using straightforward words like ‘prison’ or ‘forced labor’ when they could use their multisyllabic buzzwords instead. It might fool the politicians, but it didn’t fool Gwen. ‘Whatever you just said, I’m sure you are right,’ Gwen responded.

At last! She got a bit of a chuckle and a few laughs from the JRU staff. That would be her little gift to them. Gwen suspected that they were probably laughing at her, not with her. She imagined that she was probably the butt of plenty of JRU jokes. But that was nothing new. She knew, for example, that at Jennings many of the women – both the inmates and the staff – referred to her as ‘The Prez’ – as in ‘The President’. This wasn’t because of her strong image or authoritative air, but rather because of her somewhat unfortunate name. When Gwen Harding first arrived at Jennings, her nameplate had been erroneously engraved to read: WARREN G. HARDING instead of WARDEN G. HARDING. She assumed that the error was an innocent one and not a purposeful attempt to make her look silly. She had had the sign redone, but she kept the original one at home and amused friends and relatives with it at dinner parties and family gatherings – back when she gave dinner parties and had a family to gather.

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.

‘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.

‘Well, what’s wrong with that one?’ Cher asked, not that she really wanted to know.

‘Maybe she’s having her time of the month,’ I answered, though I was afraid I knew the answer and it wasn’t that.

‘Well, you know what they say about women living together in prison and their periods, don’t you?’ asked Theresa.

‘Theresa, if we all got our periods at the very same time,’ I laughed, ‘this ol’ building would vibrate so hard from the tension that the cement blocks would all collapse and we’d be able to just walk on outta here.’

Just then old Springtime, who tends the flower gardens, was passing the table and overheard what I said. ‘Is someone planning a breakout?’ she asked, her voice hushed but all excited.

‘Nah, old sista’,’ I told her gently. She’s tried to escape fifty or sixty times by now. ‘We’re just waiting for the place to fall down on its own so you can hop your withered old ass right over the pile of rubble and get out.’ I smiled at her and she grinned back.

The whole room looked our way as old Springtime’s cackle echoed off the steel and cinder blocks.

5 Gwen Harding

Some people think that law enforcement officers are inhumane or uninteresting. Personally, if I became personally involved with every person sitting there crying, I couldn’t function in my job. I’m not inhumane – I’m just removed from the emotion.

Georgia Walton, deputy sheriff at Sybil Brand Institute.

Kathryn Watterson, Women in Prison

‘Good morning, sir,’ the new inmate began briskly as she was ushered into the Warden’s office by Officers Camry and Byrd.

Gwen Harding didn’t get many chances to laugh during an Intake meeting, but the dumbstruck look on Jennifer Spencer’s face when she got her first look at ‘sir’ was almost comical. Like so many other women, Spencer obviously assumed that Warden Harding would be a man with whom she might flirt. The girl was clearly more than just a little rattled by her discovery.

Spencer was thin, taller than average, with big dark eyes and lots of dark hair. Staring at the Warden, those eyes went from registering surprise to embarrassment, and then quickly to something closer to … manipulation. Oh yes, Gwen Harding thought, this girl was capable of causing trouble. ‘Too smart for her own good’ was the phrase that Gwen’s father would’ve used to describe Jennifer Spencer. ‘Take a seat,’ Gwen told her and pointed to the chair that sat directly in front of her desk.

There were two chairs for visitors in the Warden’s office. The one beside the desk was rarely offered to inmates or even coworkers. The other chair – which was known as the ‘hot seat’ – was the chair intended for Jennifer’s butt. But Miss Spencer seemed to be past any discomfiture, and, ignoring the ‘hot seat’, she slipped quite easily into the chair beside Gwen’s desk. Officer Camry moved to stop her, but the Warden shook her head. She’d see how this all played out. ‘You may go,’ she told the officers, and they turned and left, closing the door behind them.

Gwen looked the girl over. There was no doubt that she was going to be a problem. Deciding where to put these high-profile types was always a tough call. She had to get it right the first time, because there was no good way of changing it later. Gwen thought she was a pretty good judge of character, however, and while Spencer might be high profile, Gwen didn’t think she’d end up being high maintenance. Number 71036 was too proud for that.

‘I trust that your trip here and your processing at Intake was not too difficult,’ Gwen began. Gwen realized as she said it that it had been very difficult for this young woman. She could tell at a glance that Jennifer Spencer never expected to be stuck in a prison. Jennifer Spencer would’ve been far more comfortable heading up the JRU meeting than coping with what she was about to experience at Jennings.

‘Miss Spencer,’ the Warden continued as she opened her desk drawer and took out the inmate manual. ‘You’ll find this booklet to be indispensable during your stay here.’ She handed the bright yellow pamphlet to Jennifer, who took it, set it on her lap, and folded both hands on top of it.

‘Thank you,’ Jennifer said. ‘I –’

‘You must read it completely later, but now I’d like you to turn to page three. It’s headed Inmate Responsibilities.’

As instructed, Inmate 71036 opened the book, but only glanced at the page before she began to speak. ‘It’s important –’

‘It’s important that we read this page together,’ Gwen interrupted. ‘I want to touch on a few items listed here.’ The Warden began to read: ‘You are responsible for your behavior, actions, and attitude.’ Gwen saw the girl shift in her seat.

‘Warden Harding,’ Jennifer said. ‘May I speak frankly?’

‘Please do,’ Gwen said dryly, waiting for the inevitable. Often Gwen found that if she let a new inmate ramble on long enough, she would catch some pertinent detail, some insight into her personality that would enlighten Gwen on how she might help the woman to help herself. Gwen believed in rehabilitation, not punishment. But she could almost bet that Jennifer Spencer was going to put this belief to the test.

‘I guess you’ve probably already heard from Attorney Howard McBane of Swithmore, McBane, or from Thomas Branston at Hudson, Van Schaank & Michaels,’ Jennifer began. ‘Or maybe Mr Michaels himself called.’ Before Gwen had a chance to respond, Jennifer crossed her legs, leaned in toward Gwen, and continued. ‘This situation has gotten a little out of control, I’m afraid. I wasn’t meant to come here at all, and I certainly should not have had a rectal or pelvic exam. When I speak with my attorney I’m going to have to mention it and see if legal action should be taken.’

‘Legal action?’ Gwen asked. She was getting more than just annoyed with this woman.

‘Yes,’ Jennifer said flatly, ‘I am neither a drug offender nor a smuggler. The invasive examination wasn’t needed. And your intake officer didn’t seem to have any medical education.’ She took a deep breath, and Gwen saw that, in spite of her bravado, the girl was trembling. Gwen felt a stab of pity for the girl as she watched her toss her head back and continue. ‘Anyway, I’d like to talk about Attorney Branston’s arrangements for my special needs while my appeal is being heard.’

‘Special needs?’ Gwen echoed.

‘Did he tell you that I would like a sunny room? And I can’t have a roommate because I’ll be keeping late hours. If desks and laptops are not standard issue then I’ll need to get one of each.’

Gwen merely blinked.

‘Also, I’ll need access to a copier and hopefully some secretarial help. I don’t know if you have a trained staff, but I’d be more than willing to pay for someone to come in.’

Gwendolyn Harding sat in a state of stunned disbelief as 71036 enumerated her expectations of ‘white-glove treatment’ and ‘special considerations’. This wasn’t the standard protestation of innocence, but rather a list of demands from the kind of young woman who was used to giving orders – and having them carried out. Not even when women like Margaret Rafferty – someone from a very high social position – were taken in had Gwen run into this lack of reality and misguided arrogance. Did Spencer really think Jennings would revolve around her? Who had led her to think such a thing? Her boss? Her success on Wall Street? Spencer’s file indicated that she was clearly not from the kind of social background that would justify such an astonishing sense of self-importance.

Gwen took a deep breath. Whatever the reason for it, this was not an attitude that would allow Spencer to survive within the prison population. And it certainly was not endearing her to Gwen, either. The longer Gwen listened, the tighter the muscles cramped in her neck, jaw, and throat. All of her life she had fought a debilitating stammer when confronted with ignorance and pride. Years of speech therapy had taught her to modulate her breathing, focus her thoughts, and to speak in a rhythmic pattern that allowed no time for a stutter. She had managed to control it throughout the horrible JRU meeting, but now she felt that the stammer would return and it angered her. When she was certain that she had mastered her own emotions, Gwen placed her hands on her desk and leaned her face close to 71036. ‘Your opinion to the contrary, Miss Spencer, you are not – in charge – here.’

The rhythm of the statement echoed ‘On your mark – get set – go.’ But the intention was not to start a race, but to stop Jennifer Spencer dead in her tracks. It worked. Spencer shut up and paled. This result pleased Gwen, and consequently she felt the spasm of anger release its grip from her throat. She would not be intimidated by this young woman, nor would she let her forget why they were both here. Jennifer Spencer needed Gwendolyn Harding’s help.

‘You are here – to get – help,’ Gwen told her, continuing with the steady rhythm of pa-dum, pa-dum, pa-dum. ‘I am here – to help – you.’ With her anger under control, Gwen took a cleansing breath and continued in a more relaxed tone. ‘You will not be given an office or a laptop, nor will you – be assigned – a desk. Or a secretary. You will work on prison work for which you will be paid. Every woman – at Jennings – works. There are no – special favors – here. Have I made – myself – clear?’

The pa-dum, pa-dum, pa-dum achieved the desired effect. The new inmate dumbly opened and closed her mouth a few times – kind of like a guppy – uncrossed her legs, and nodded her head with a robotlike rhythm that matched the cadence of Gwen’s speech.

Fine, Gwen thought. She looked closely at Spencer’s face. She had originally thought of assigning this new inmate to the library, but now she could see that Jennifer Spencer was going to need something very different than the cool and gentle hand of librarian Margaret Rafferty. This girl needed to learn values, cooperation, and probably some humility if she was going to survive incarceration.

The warden relaxed a bit, rose from her chair, sat on the edge of her desk, and continued. Jennifer in turn adjusted her attitude and sat and listened as if she were attending a lesson in the Baltimore catechism.

‘First, you have to be passed through Observation for a night,’ the Warden told Jennifer. This was SOP – Standard Operating Procedure. It probably wasn’t needed in Spencer’s case, but it was just possible that under that bravado, she was suicidal or drugged. Gwen knew Spencer wouldn’t tolerate Observation well. It was an extremely dehumanizing but necessary evil. However, the real question was, after she was finished with that, where would inmate 71036 fit in?

‘Miss Spencer – I assume – that you know that here – at Jennings – we all work. In addition – to the jobs – such as maintenance – there is work – to be done – in the shops.’ Gwen stopped and waited to see if any of this was sinking in. She saw the girl nod.

‘The pay is next to nothing. You work to help defray your cost to the taxpayer.’

‘Yes,’ Jennifer said calmly, ‘I know. I’m in a very high tax bracket myself.’

Gwendolyn looked to see if there was any attitude or irony in the comment. It was then that she knew exactly where Jennifer Spencer needed to work. ‘You will start in the laundry – for now,’ the Warden told her. ‘I believe that will be for the best. In due time, you may be promoted,’ she added with a smile of encouragement. And then, with a deep and meaningful intake of air, Warden Gwendolyn Harding prepared for her big finale. It was a speech she had given often, to each and every new inmate that she welcomed to Jennings.

While she recited the words, she was simultaneously deciding where to put Spencer after Observation. She concluded that she must go right into the middle of Movita Watson’s crew. With a good teacher like Movita, Spencer would eventually settle in and learn how to take care of herself. Gwen knew that Movita was fascinated with Jennifer Spencer. She had seen her take the papers and magazines from the library cart that was available to the inmates and read every article that was written about her.

The Warden paused for a moment, then continued both speaking and thinking. There was structure in Movita’s crew. She was a good leader with an eye for talent. Of course, no one in that group had ever known the kind of wealth and privilege that Spencer knew, and if that girl looked down her nose at Movita like she had with Gwen – well, she was likely to have that nose put out of joint. She studied Spencer’s face intently. Movita would either take Spencer in – or Movita would take her out. Only time would tell. If she did take her in it would take time.

The Warden’s speech was at an end, and she told Jennifer that their meeting was over. She called for Camry and Byrd to take her away to Observation.

Later, all alone in her office, Gwen couldn’t help but feel disappointed with the turn of events that day. Jennifer Spencer had actually shaken her self-confidence. Or maybe it was the JRU people who had done that. Why had they all rattled her so? Gwen had seen both Spencer and the women from JRU scrutinizing every inch of her person and her clothing. They all looked like those haughty store clerks at Saks. Except with Jennifer Spencer it was even worse. She walked into Gwen’s office like she was coming in for the quarterly earnings report. Gwen didn’t know who made her feel the most insignificant, Spencer or Baldy from JRU.

Gwen had kept a daily journal from the first day she began at Jennings. She kept it carefully locked in the bottom left drawer of her desk – where she also kept a bottle of gin, a glass, and a jar of olives.

Most often by the time Gwen finished her journal entry for the day it was deep into the evening. She’d write and sip, sip and read. Night after night she told herself that she found both solace and inspiration in recording her thoughts and observations, but in her heart she knew that it was really the gin that kept her at the office a little later each evening. The gin and the emptiness of her house. So far, she had sternly refused to drink at home. But with her mother dead, her beloved Yorkie gone almost two years, and her husband gone for far longer than that, there was little reason for Gwendolyn Harding to rush home at night.

6 Jennifer Spencer

A cat pent up becomes a lion.

Italian proverb

When Jennifer was escorted out of the Warden’s office – sandwiched between the two guards – she was flooded with a feeling of such terror that she had to sink the nails of her fingers deep into her own palms just to keep from screaming or running.

But there was nowhere to run to. Jennifer Spencer couldn’t believe that she was actually being incarcerated at the Jennings Correctional Facility for Women. People like Jennifer Spencer didn’t go to prison. So she’d been told by Donald and Tom and so she’d believed.

There had been only one person who had warned her not to participate in the deal with Donald Michaels. That was Leonard Benson. He was the financial officer involved, and had always seemed less than enthusiastic about the plan. As the assistant to George Gross, the CFO – Chief Financial Officer – Lenny was privy to a lot, but not all, of the machinations at Hudson, Van Schaank & Michaels. ‘Don’t do this, Jennifer,’ he had pleaded to her. ‘When you play with the SEC, you play for keeps.’

But Jennifer was not only under the influence of too many drinks that particular night; she was also drunk on the praise and the promises that Donald had been lavishing on her. She had turned on Lenny and demanded, ‘Hasn’t Donald Michaels made you rich, too?’

‘Yes,’ Lenny admitted, ‘but …’

‘He took me straight from school when I had nothing – nothing but loans to pay off, and now – well, you know my net worth.’

Lenny had nodded. He prepared Jennifer’s taxes and helped her keep as much of her income as the law would allow. He certainly knew how much she was worth. ‘But you earned all of that,’ he insisted. ‘You worked hard for Don. There’s no reason now to take this kind of risk.’

‘But it’s such a small risk,’ Jennifer retorted. ‘And it will save Donald. I owe him something.’ She grew adamant. ‘He’s made you rich, Lenny. Aren’t you grateful?’

‘I work my guts out for that guy,’ Lenny had protested. ‘I’m available twenty-four-seven. And I am grateful. But that doesn’t mean that I’d take the rap for him.’

‘Hey, that’s the point,’ Jennifer had explained, as if Lenny was stupid, deaf, or not even present. ‘There is no rap. Donald doesn’t do anything that the boys at Salomon Smith Barney or Morgan Stanley or Lazard Frere don’t do every day of the week.’ She, who had never worked at any of those places, was only parroting back what she’d heard. ‘They’re envious.’

‘You don’t know what Donald has done,’ Lenny had shot back. ‘Nor do I. None of us do. That guy is the most compartmentalized person I’ve ever met. He doesn’t even let his left hand know what the right one is up to.’

Jennifer put her hand on Lenny’s narrow shoulder. ‘Thanks for trying to look out for me,’ she said. ‘But you forget that I like taking risks. No guts – no glory.’

The grip on Jennifer’s left arm grew tighter and she was snapped out of her reverie. Now every step she took away from the Warden’s office put Jennifer deeper into the hideous nightmare of the Jennings Correctional Facility. As she was marched off to Observation – whatever the hell that was – she felt that if she didn’t get some fresh air to clear her head and her lungs she might actually fall to the floor. The meeting with the Warden had been catastrophic. How had it gone so wrong? Was it her fault? Hadn’t Warden Harding been contacted? If not, why not? Donald Michaels was powerful enough to get the governor on the phone in a heartbeat at any time of the day or night. She knew that. Why hadn’t he reached the Warden? The answer had to be because he didn’t want to. So whom had he reached instead? Perhaps, just this once, Donald had made a mistake and aimed too high. If he started with the governor, or even the State Attorney General’s Office, how long might it take for the trickle-down effect to take effect?

‘This way,’ Officer Camry instructed. Jennifer thought she saw a look of pity on his bland, round face. The idea that this thirty-eight-thousand-dollar-a-year civil servant with the thinning brown hair, the flat brown eyes, and the plain brown uniform – the idea that this pathetic excuse for a man whose IQ probably wasn’t one hundred and one in the shade had reason to pity her made her feel both furious and pitiable. She wondered whether Roger’s life at home was any better than his life in prison. Who would choose to do a job like this? You had to be nuts, stupid, or very, very limited. She glanced at Roger Camry out of the corner of her eye. He looked like he was probably all three. Officer Byrd, on the other hand, wasn’t even that qualified. But he obviously received another kind of compensation – women to frighten or even hurt.

Jennifer tried to keep her head as they passed from the administration wing into the prison itself. It all looked oddly familiar, and Jennifer was reminded of how she felt whenever she saw a famous landmark. There’s no surprise when you finally see the Eiffel Tower – it looks just like all the pictures. The same was true for Big Ben and the Statue of Liberty. But, despite the familiarity, the same was not true with prison. Sure, it looked just like every jail photo and movie she’d ever seen. But the enormous surprise was the horror that she felt at being here herself. Jen couldn’t control the shakes in her hands, so she clenched her fists again. It won’t be for long, she reminded herself. What had Tom said? A day. Two at the most. Not long.

The three of them – Jennifer, Roger, and Byrd – walked through one more set of doors, buzzed in this time by an observer in a glass booth, and entered the Observation Wing – at least that’s what it said in chipped gray paint over the door.

Jennifer suddenly realized just how tired she was. She would’ve been grateful to lie down somewhere – anywhere – in the dark and just sleep. If she couldn’t have fresh air, then at least give her unconsciousness. But the place she entered almost took her breath away. The room was a kind of office/reception area. It was hard to tell if the stench was more urine than ammonia, but the underscents of vomit and sweat were still strong. For a moment Jennifer thought again of Donald Michaels – this time of his penchant for his costly, custom-blended Floris aftershave and soaps – each bar close to a hundred dollars. She wondered bitterly if one of Donald’s scented Floris candles would cover this odor.

All right, she told herself. Someday next week, she and Tom and Donald would laugh at this story. She imagined them at Fraunces Tavern or Delmonico’s. Donald would laugh and shake his leonine head and wipe the corner of his eyes the way he always did and order another bottle of Veuve Clicquot.

But that would be later. Now she was steeped in this squalor and the noise would not let her mind wander. The sound of another correctional officer’s heavy steps, the gruesome static and squawking of his and Camry’s and Byrd’s walkie-talkies, and the harsh grinding of the gates as they closed behind her chilled her more than she wanted to admit. But the noise and stench weren’t the worst things. The light was so harsh it was merciless. Exhausted as she was, if she closed her eyes she could still feel the fluorescence burning through her eyelids. Sleep in this room would be impossible.

There was a lot of paperwork in triplicate and some ribald talk between Byrd and the new officer, a huge black woman. Then she was taken, at last, to Observation.

‘Spencer, here,’ the huge female officer told the big uniformed woman in a booth at the end of a long catwalk.

‘Fourteen,’ was all she said in response.

The fat woman nodded. ‘How’s the other freshman adjusting?’ she asked.

‘Just about how you’d expect a withdrawing crack whore to adjust,’ the woman in the booth snapped. ‘But she’ll be fine in another thirty hours or so.’ The woman officer motioned with her head, took Jennifer by her orange-plastic-coated shoulder, and turned her to the left into one of the cubicles.

‘Let’s go,’ he said.

The space was one of perhaps a dozen concrete cabinets. Jesus, she thought, wasn’t Hannibal Lecter confined to something like this? It was achingly bare. A blanket, a mattress, and a commode. Not that she could use the latter, since the entire outside wall of the cell was made of thick Plexiglas and she could be seen, not just from there but also from overhead. There was no ceiling to the cubicle, and as she looked up she could see an officer patrolling along the catwalk that allowed him to look down into each cell.

‘Wait!’ Jennifer said, and it wasn’t a ploy or a power trip; she was truly terrified to be left here. ‘Can I please make a phone call?’

The big woman officer laughed out loud, a guttural haw-haw. ‘Look, this is jail, girl, and you don’t have a quarter. You’re in prison now,’ she said. Then she softened. ‘Observation is tough, but it’s usually only for a day,’ she added almost apologetically to Jennifer. ‘After you get out of Observation you can make collect calls from your unit.’

She had barely finished speaking, when someone – or something – began to screech in a subhuman wail. It was a noise of pure rage and despair. ‘I’m sorry about the noise,’ the officer said. ‘She’s going off. But you won’t be here long. Maybe twenty-four hours. So try to make the best of it.’

‘Oh my God!’ Jennifer wailed, then fought and won control of herself. The officer handed her a black booklet to go with the yellow one she still clutched under her arm. ‘Maybe this will help,’ she said, and Jennifer took it, imagining it must be some religious tract. Only a saint, a sadist, or a cult member would voluntarily work here with this stink and noise. She stepped into the cell. ‘You’ll get used to it,’ the big woman said, and for some reason that was the thing that filled Jennifer’s eyes to almost overflowing. She turned her head away. God, she certainly hoped not!

She looked over at the stained mattress and paper sheets. It was only last night – in her own home – that she’d slept in a bed made with Pratesi sheets.

Jen crouched down in the corner of the observation cell and closed her eyes. The light still beat on her eyelids but she tried to transcend to another consciousness. She could stand anything for twenty-four hours, she told herself. She thought of the nights of endless study at college and business school. She’d pulled plenty of all-nighters at Hudson, Van Schaank & Michaels, too, when she was more tired than this. So she’d pull one more now. Maybe her last. All she had to do was concentrate. But on what? Concentrating on her situation was unbearable, and without her cell phone, she couldn’t check on deals, her portfolio, or her apartment. Then she thought of it: She’d spend the night concentrating on her closet and every garment in it.

Jennifer didn’t have a lot of clothes; when the interior designer had discussed the bedroom Jennifer insisted that she didn’t want a built-in closet, just the antique armoire. ‘But it’s only twenty-seven inches of hanger space,’ he’d protested. She’d shrugged.

Now she sat in the corner like a child ordered to take a time out. She remembered what she’d said: ‘Twenty-seven inches ought to be more than enough for any woman.’ And it was. She’d always longed not for quantity but quality. Now she had it, hanging in her armoire back at home. Aside from the one she had foolishly worn today and doubted she’d ever see again, she had three other Armani suits – one black twill, one black and brown tweed and one dark brown heavy silk. Each one had been well over two thousand dollars, but she’d bought them as an investment, and every time she slipped into one she felt like a million bucks. Next she thought of the two Yamaguchi suits that made the Armanis seem cheap in comparison. She’d considered one for more than a month before she’d bought it, hoping it wouldn’t be sold. That was the black one with an asymmetrical jacket; a lapel and a hem were higher on one side than the other. Jennifer couldn’t wear it for a meeting that included middle managers or conservative CEOs, but it went over big with high-tech and advertising types. The other, even more costly Yamaguchi was in a neutral gray-beige miracle fiber that she could fold into her purse if she had to and it would unpack as if it had been pressed by Sister Mary Margaret herself.

Jennifer sighed. Thinking was difficult sitting on the cold concrete floor. She began a mental inventory of her drawers. When she was home she wore cashmere sweats that she’d bought at TSE. They’d been very expensive, but nothing was softer against the skin – except perhaps silk. She had a tall lingerie chest, and when she wanted to spend money foolishly she indulged herself in La Perla lace bras and matching underpants or silk wisps from any one of a dozen French and Italian stores on Madison Avenue. She moved her fingers against the tough fabric of her jumpsuit and almost shuddered. Her underwear made her feel special and secretly feminine, and she thought Tom, her fiancé, enjoyed wondering what she was wearing under the sophisticated suit when he saw her at work. Like any good girl, Jennifer washed her panties out by hand at night – she never threw them in the machine on the delicate cycle because they were too fine for that kind of treatment.

Jen’s knees and ankles and butt hurt, but she wouldn’t lie on that disgusting mattress, she wouldn’t use the cardboard blanket. She wouldn’t eat and she wouldn’t sleep. Not until she got out of this place. If there was one thing Jennifer Spencer knew about herself it was that she had a strong will. She thought back to the Cooper Corp. deal and the prolonged negotiations at the airport Marriott. Despite the grimness around her now, she almost smiled. Back then – and it seemed like years ago although it was only five months – she remembered how she had complained to Donald about having to stay in a Marriott. ‘What a hell hole!’ she’d told him. ‘This could drag on for days, or even weeks. Couldn’t we arrange for a Hyatt at least?’

‘Hey, rough it,’ Donald had replied. ‘It’s their corporate culture. Cooper executives travel coach. Even old man Cooper travels coach.’ He laughed. ‘If it wasn’t for me, you’d probably be having this meeting in a Days Inn, so stop bitching and get your ass to sit down at the table. This is all going to be about stamina, Jennifer. I know you can outlast them, but I’m not saying it’s going to be easy.’ He had paused and laughed again. ‘Goddamnit!’ he said, ‘No one ever makes it easy for you to make five hundred million dollars.’

And, to the credit of her personality and her checkbook, Jennifer and her team had outlasted old man Cooper and his whole lot of Midwestern lawyers. She had sat at that table virtually unmoving, almost unblinking, for hours and hours. Thank God for Cooper’s inflamed prostate or she might have never closed the deal. But the fifteen or twenty trips to the men’s room he made each day while she sat there, coolly waiting for his return, had certainly contributed to his loss of faith and confidence. Then, when she called Donald in for the kill, it had gone fairly smoothly.

And was this her reward? She opened her eyes.

The shrieking in the next cell or down the hall or wherever it was reached an inhuman crescendo but finally, mercifully stopped. For a moment Jennifer wondered if they’d killed the inmate that had been making the noise. In the blessed peace she didn’t care if they had. It wasn’t that she didn’t feel sorry for the woman – this was a place where misery was not just natural but required and she knew everyone didn’t have the self-control that she did – but this wasn’t The Oprah Winfrey Show and there was no need to share your pain so loudly.

That thought and the relative silence strengthened Jennifer’s resolve. She would sit here, the lights burning into her eyes. Let them observe that! She wouldn’t move. She wouldn’t speak. And she wouldn’t sleep. It was the only way she could bring some control back to her ravaged sense of self. And then, hopefully very soon, they would take her out of here and she would call Tom and they would send a stretch limo and whatever else it took to get her the fuck out of here.

And when she returned to Hudson, Van Schaank she’d have a hero’s welcome. Jennifer closed her eyes again against the unbearable glare and tried to imagine that. Tom, so tall, would be at her side, maybe just lightly holding her elbow as she entered the double-wide glass doors to the floor. She’d buy something new to wear – maybe that suit she’d seen in the window of Walter Steiger, no matter how obscenely expensive it was. Yes, and shoes to match. And when she walked into the reception area the secretaries and support staff would be there, and they’d all stare and smile. Susan, her top secretary, would give her a big bouquet and say, ‘This is from all of us. We admire you so much.’ And then she and Tom would walk into the main office area and all the traders, attorneys, partners – all of them, even Dave Jacobs, who hated her – would stand up and they’d begin to clap, and the clapping would rise to a roar and then, the way they did it in European circuses, the clapping would become rhythmic, each pair of hands in perfect unison with the others. And Donald would open his office door and walk toward her and Tom. And Tom, because he was sensitive and wouldn’t want to detract from her moment, would give her elbow a little push. ‘Go to him,’ he’d say, and she would, in front of everybody. And Donald would lift his head and say …

She felt wet. Jennifer opened her eyes, back to the gruesome reality of the observation cell, and jumped to her feet. Water was oozing from under the wall behind her! She looked around. In fact, all along the wall where the mattress lay, the water lapped in, much of it already absorbed by the mattress but plenty spreading across her floor. Surely this wasn’t part of the punishment, some bizarre test? She ran to the door. There were roaches floating in the water! Worse, they were alive, and trying to find a perch or a nest. ‘Hey!’ she yelled. ‘Hey, someone. What’s going on? There’s a flood in here.’

The sadistic Officer Byrd was at her door in a moment. He looked in at her, shook his head and yelled, ‘Jesus H. Christ! Nine must have wadded the toilet.’

Then, instead of helping her or explaining, he ran off down the hall. Jennifer leaned against the Plexiglas of her door but couldn’t see what was going on. She could, however, hear – and in the next moment the howls began again, this time, if anything, even louder and more ferocious than before. Jennifer kept watching, her head pressed against the glass, the water running at her feet, wondering if any of the horror was real. She’d lose her mind if the hideous noise went on for another minute. Then, after one last fiendish screech, the stranger’s voice was stilled. Jennifer could still hear curses and grunts. She imagined the officers were making them and, sure enough, in another moment three burly guys were in the corridor, attempting to drag off a big black woman. She was dressed in a shameful orange jumpsuit but now it was partially obscured by the restraint jacket she had on. Though she couldn’t move her arms, she was kicking out with both legs, moving her head from side to side, and furiously screaming despite the taped gag that muffled her. Her hair was wild but her face was more so.

The woman was pushed back into a hard black plastic chair that sat as low to the ground as a beach chair. Officer Byrd obstructed Jennifer’s view for a few moments but, when he finally moved, Jennifer was horrified to see that the woman had been strapped into the chair at the legs. Then the straitjacket was slowly removed from the woman’s body, and the straps were brought over her shoulders in much the same way that an astronaut would be strapped to his seat.

Jennifer, terrified but unable to move, watched as they struggled to wheel the woman past her window. For a moment the startling blue eyes of the African American woman gave Jennifer an intimate look, certainly not one of apology. She winked at Jennifer. Then she was gone.

Jennifer, shocked, didn’t know how long she had stood there. There was a drain in the cement floor that gurgled.

She waited for a little while, hoping that the guard would return so she could demand some better conditions. But no one came. Finally she balanced on one leg and peeled off first one drenched sock, then the other. She squeezed them out over the drain. At least half a cup of water ran into the sewage hole, but Jennifer’s problem wasn’t solved. Now, without socks, her feet were frozen. She couldn’t sit on the mattress because it was also disgustingly wet. She didn’t know what the correction officer had done with the troublesome woman. Did they have a firing squad here at Jennings? Could she scream for help or attention? She found she couldn’t do it. The woman’s blue, blue eye winking at her, as if they were … together or … bonded somehow had really shaken her. Then she saw, with relief, that Officer Byrd was at the end of the hall about to pass by. Finally she knocked on the glass and he turned to her.

‘I’m wet,’ she said. ‘This whole room has been ruined. You have to help me.’ The fear in her voice only made her more frightened.

But Byrd didn’t have a clue. He turned his mouth to his squawk box and said something. He stepped into the room and turned around.

‘Tsk, tsk,’ he said. ‘You got more than you bargained for.’ Jennifer decided not to even respond. Then he looked her over. It was a sexual leer, and she could tell that he wanted her to be uncomfortable. ‘I’m alone up here now,’ he explained. ‘They had to take that one down to the hold. It was her first day in.’

Jennifer actually shivered. ‘They’ll be back soon,’ she said in a flat voice. What kind of man took a job in a women’s prison and then tried to …

‘Well,’ said Byrd, ‘I could take you down to a cell below six. That’s where the nigger was. She used her towel to stop up the toilet and caused a major flood.’ Jennifer recoiled both at the word he’d used and because he’d moved toward her. His voice insinuated that … Just then his walkie-talkie spoke.

Roughly Byrd took her under her right arm and moved her out of her little glass box. He was rubbing up against her as they walked past the place where the mad woman had been imprisoned, then moved her to number four, a cell exactly like her previous one.

‘Chow will be in a minute,’ he said as he slowly released his grip and ran his hand down her arm.

‘Food?’ Jennifer cried. ‘I can’t even breathe.’ Then she remembered her outfit. ‘And I need a new jumpsuit. This one is wet.’

‘We’ll have supper for you right away,’ Byrd said. ‘But we can’t issue another uniform. Laundry’s closed.’ Then he moved a little closer. ‘Of course,’ he almost whispered, ‘you could take it off and hang it up. There’s nobody here to see you.’

Jennifer looked around at the observation windows, the open ceiling, and the catwalk above. Now she was grateful for them. She wanted someone to keep their eyes on Byrd – or Vulture. But she had a creepy feeling that most of those eyes would get a big kick out of her standing around naked. And would they intervene if Vulture touched her?

‘Maybe I could get you something else to wear,’ he said now, ‘if you wanted to be friendly,’ he added.

She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. It was a sexual innuendo, wasn’t it? ‘Forget about that,’ she told Byrd.

He shrugged. Had he just offered her something in return for sex? She kept her face calm but swore to herself that she’d have him reported to the governor by tomorrow afternoon. ‘Too bad. You’ll have to wear the damp one until morning,’ he said. He locked the door on the new cubicle and left.

Jennifer was deeply grateful for that. She would have spent some time examining the cell if it hadn’t been quite so obviously identical to the previous one. She’d even be willing to swear in a court of law that the stains in this mattress were shaped identically to the one on the other. Hadn’t there been that blot that looked like the state of Florida on the upper left corner of the previous mattress? The wetness against her ankles was terribly cold and the rough polyester chafed, but otherwise all was the same. Except that this time, when she sat down in her corner, her stomach rumbled loudly enough for her to hear, and maybe loudly enough for the woman in the next room – if there was a woman in the next room – to hear as well.

But she was still determined that she wouldn’t eat anything. And she wouldn’t lie down. Even though the day seemed a hundred hours long, she wouldn’t allow her hunger or fatigue to get the better of her.

She leaned her back against the wall, pulled her knees up to her chest, wrapped her arms around her cold ankles and tried, once again, to close her eyes and imagine what treats would come her way when she went back to her real life. Donald had better be especially generous with her bonus. In fact, she might not have to wait until the end of the fiscal year. Of course, after December there would be the full partnership and the big office. She took a deeper breath of the fatal air. Concentrate on it, she told herself. Think how beautiful that place will be compared with this one. She knew each partner got a generous budget to furnish and decorate his or her office, but now she thought that she might move her reproduction Beidermeyer desk from home into the office. She’d bill Hudson, Van Schaank and use the money for the dressing table she’d admired in the antique shop on upper Lexington Avenue. She’d … she tried once again to get into the reverie but it wasn’t working.

She opened her eyes. She couldn’t really imagine anything but this room, her freezing feet, the unbearable light and the hunger gnawing at her belly. She tried to remind herself that she was the hero of the Vareen takeover and the heavy lifter in the Cooper Corp. scenario, but she hadn’t been cold and wet and humiliated then. Jennifer may have managed not to drink and not to use the ladies’ room, but if she had had to pee then, she wouldn’t have had to do it in front of a dozen pairs of eyes.

She felt her eyes begin to get wet and forced herself to stand up. Just then a noise outside the cell brought her to the front. Another guard was wheeling a trolley down the corridor. When he reached her, he didn’t even look up. He merely bent toward her, his face forward, and slipped a plastic tray through the slot. It almost looked like an airplane meal.

‘No,’ she told herself firmly one more time. But her cold feet walked, without her permission, over to the tray. She bent and picked it up. Something green. Something brown. And something that looked like it had tomato sauce on it. Whatever it was, she took it to the bed, sat down crosslegged on the filthy mattress, and ravenously wolfed it down.

7 Maggie Rafferty

I was a prisoner long before I was an inmate.

Bonnie Foreshaw, inmate. Andi Rierden, The Farm

I know that it will seem a truism, but I must say that shooting your husband, accidentally or otherwise – and even more – having him die from the bullet wound, totally changes your life. The chief benefit is, of course, that he is gone, but there are other benefits, which I’ll get to later. The main drawback, however, is that in most cases you’re deprived of your liberty and might have to live in a place with a library that has only one hundred and sixteen books. That is the exact number of books in the library here at Jennings.

But back to my husband. He could have lived; he died just to spite me. The bullet only grazed his aorta. Serious? Yes – but with his will power, he might have lingered long enough for the paramedics to stabilize him. But no. He always had to get his way in the end. He could turn any situation to his advantage. This was, of course, only one of the many reasons why I hated him so fully and completely, and why the gun I was holding went off while it was pointed in his direction. At the time, I had meant to kill myself. How foolish of me.

My husband was the famous Richard Rafferty, Riff to his friends. At the very minute the bullet was nicking his deceitful heart, his latest book, The Life of the Heart, was being talked about on the six o’clock news. A book? On the evening news? How can that be? Easy. Richard was sleeping with the woman who produced the show.

And speaking of the evening news, I understand that the new arrival, this Miss Jennifer Spencer, is up in observation hell. She’s certainly been news. I’ve been following her story with some interest, since one needs such pastimes in prison, and because both of my sons are in the same type of business as she is … or was. From the beginning I could see that she was taking the fall for someone else, probably a man. The only question that remained in my mind was, did she know what was going on? Was she complicitous? I was actually looking forward to seeing her in person, because then I would know.

How would I know? Well, let me explain another result of happening to murder your husband: It turns your brain inside out. Although this is terribly painful at the time and for a long while afterward, in the end it is a good thing. I know this sounds totally insane, but I am a better person for having killed my husband. For instance, I’ve become nearly as good as a dog at reading people.

Lest anyone think that I am advocating murder as a method of self-improvement, let me correct that impression at once. Yes, I am a better person, but I was a good enough person before. Riff wasn’t; he wasn’t worth dirtying my hands for. What he deserved from me was the indifference that I only now feel toward him. Trading life and liberty for well-deserved revenge and an enlightened mind is a very hard deal to accept. Jennings, have I said it before, is a kind of hell.

When I arrived here, I fell into despair at once. The trial, Grand Guignol though it had been, was a reason to get up, get dressed, and perform. Here there was nothing. I wanted to die. Imagine. I had been headmistress of one of the most prestigious private girls’ schools on the East Coast, and had lived among the very rich and instructed their daughters. On my first day at Jennings, I was told to ‘get my fuckin’ ass movin’.’ I had been in Who’s Who In American Education. Here I was referred to as ‘the old bitch’.

Somehow I got used to the vulgarity. It was the deprivation of every sensory pleasure that was the hardest thing for me to bear. My marriage had not been happy, but I had lived in a beautiful home, traveled to Paris and London nearly every year, spent summers in Tuscany, was a connoisseur of wines and fine foods, collected rare books and Herend, drove an immaculate ‘62 Mercedes Gullwing, subscribed to the ballet, shopped at Neiman Marcus.

And suddenly I was confined to one of the ugliest places on the face of the earth, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. I assure you, no bleaker, duller, more visually offensive place can exist. I’d rather be in Craigmore Prison, dank dark dungeon that it is. It at least has some architecture to boast of. Jennings is the kind of dull, featureless maze they put rats into when they’re trying to see if they can stunt their brain development. Even crumbling ceilings or walls would add interest, but here there is no crumbling, just ugly, 1960s efficiency. Jennings was built when there was a soul-sickness plaguing the earth, probably an aftereffect of the war. Buildings were built to last, but beauty in architecture was eschewed. The style could be called ‘Plainness with a Vengeance’, ‘Ugly is Fine’, or ‘Death in Life’. And I have to stay here for the rest of mine. There are no aesthetic pardons.

So I wondered how Jennifer Spencer was faring in Observation. She had a lower-middle-class youth, upper-middle-class adulthood. A transition to Jennings wasn’t going to be easy for her, to say the least. But my interest in the fate and character of Jennifer Spencer was going to be limited compared to the keen interest I have in women like Movita Watson and her ‘sidekick’, Cher. I had never met women like them before my incarceration and I am fascinated by their unschooled intelligence.

Movita, for example, is someone I pegged as decent the minute I saw her despite her hellfire exterior. She plays tough, and sometimes dumb, but she’s generous and clever, too, and has her own eye for ‘attitude’ in others. She will tell you that when she entered Jennings, I had no ‘attitude’ at all. This was why we became friends fairly quickly. She was, in her words, ‘curious ‘bout that weird ol’ bitch’. Well, attitude is one of the petty attributes that I lost as a result of my husband dying at my hands, or more literally, at my feet. When I came in, I’ve been told by Movita, I had the look of a ‘schoolteacher who’d been wiped out by a nuclear bomb’. Change ‘schoolteacher’ to ‘schoolmistress’ and her assessment was pretty much accurate.

But those credentials as a schoolteacher secured my position as the prison librarian. And since that time I have been preoccupied with thinking of ways to acquire more books. Books were always important to me. Well, they are my life’s blood really. Before and after my crime.

The Life of the Heart (of which, ironically, we had two copies in the library) was Richard’s sixth book. It was supposed to be about the stunning and liberated life that can be ours if we give in to our feelings of love. He’d put me and my two sons through hell while he was trying to write it, just as he had, come to think of it, when he wrote his fourth and fifth. The children were ‘distractions’. Somehow I was always doing something ‘stupid’. He once accused me of turning pages too loudly. Bryce and Tyler, despite their initial business success, were ‘disappointments’ to him. But that I could understand. How disappointing it must be for a false, humorless, and arrogant man to have two sons who could see through him and laugh. I, on the other hand – raised to be a right-minded woman – supported the bastard throughout. I fed him, excused him, pampered him, read his drafts, corrected his grammar, gave him ideas, typed his corrections, and hated his editor with him. I did it for thirty-four years. Why stop now, when he needed me more than ever?

It is only now, seven years later, that I can look back at the situation without anger. As I said above, I am a better person now.

I knew that Jennifer Spencer would be given the orientation that included a tour of the facility, a bed assignment, and a work detail. I know what’s what here on my own, though I do appreciate the heads up I get when Frances delivers the ice with kites. I had to chuckle at the ‘kites on ice’. There is no work here in the library. The prison population consists of very few readers and what they would read doesn’t exist in the library. Needless to say, I would welcome Miss Spencer to Jennings when she came by later in the day. Lest you think otherwise, this would not be some warmhearted Shawshank Redemption nonsense where I take the girl under my wing. If I had wings, I assure you I’d fly the fuck out of here. Besides, I already have two sons – I don’t need a daughter. After a quarter century of girls’ schools, I know how much trouble they are.

Jennifer finally came to the library, with that Officer Camry, at about three-thirty, the time I usually fade out, having worked in schools all my life. She had the air of a young woman who was in trouble, there was no mistaking that. Her face was pale and drawn, her eyelids were swollen, and the eyes peering out from between them looked as if they’d glimpsed something horrific, but at the same time she still looked like someone whose car and driver were waiting for her. She had heavy attitude, Movita would say. But I could see right through that. The press, as usual, had gotten it wrong: Thanks to my twenty-seven years of working with schoolgirls, I could see that Jennifer had been a scholarship student. Determination to overcome obstacles was written all over her, so there had to have been obstacles. I could see that she had real strength to her, and that when the realization that she was going to be in here for some real time hit her, she would survive the shock.

‘Hello,’ I said. ‘I’m Maggie.’ I sounded ridiculous to myself, as if we were in some kind of meeting.

‘Hi,’ she answered. She was so not present that I was driven to speak to her again. ‘This is our library, such as it is.’

She blinked at me, as if she didn’t understand why I was talking to her. ‘We have the space,’ I went on, ‘but we have very few books.’

‘It doesn’t matter to me. Don’t worry about it,’ she said, a little sharply. Then her expression changed. She was looking at me, wondering who I was, I expect. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said then. ‘I don’t mean to be rude. It’s just that I’m not going to be living here. But this guard has been very nice.’ I saw Officer Camry stiffen. It’s funny about how prison guards refuse to be called prison guards.

‘He’s an officer, dear,’ I said in a voice drier than the paper of my books. ‘Not a guard. You call them officers or COs.’

‘Correction officer,’ Camry the fool added. He was harmless enough and I nodded at him.

‘Oh. Thank you,’ the girl said.

Jennifer Spencer surprised me in one way. I, who have met such a wide cross section of women when you consider both my students, my social circle, and my present comrades, could not tell if the girl was essentially good or bad. It’s the kind of thing I almost always know at a glance yet I didn’t know it then, although I do now. I could see that she was honest.

8 Jennifer Spencer

With keen, discriminating sight, Black’s not so black, – nor white so very white.

George Canning, New Morality

After the night in Observation, Jennifer was ready for assignment to a cell. Though it was the relatively benign Officer Camry, rather than the brutal Byrd, who came to take her away, the relentless gloom of the institution put Jennifer into a state bordering on catatonia. If Observation had been hell for her, it was clear that the rest of the place was purgatory. It was all so grim that it was appalling to imagine that women actually lived in this hopeless drabness day after day.

‘I need to make a phone call,’ she managed to say to Officer Camry. Her head was pounding and she desperately needed some Tylenol – and maybe a Valium – but calling Tom was the most important thing to do right now. ‘I have to make a call,’ she said again. ‘Is there a phone near here?’

Camry stepped back and looked at her intently. ‘If there was, you couldn’t use it,’ he told her. ‘I’m scheduled to give you your house assignment. You can only make calls on your own time.’

Jennifer clenched her jaw and the headache intensified. She wasn’t prepared for any of this. She admitted that now. How could Donald and Tom abandon her to this experience? She couldn’t imagine the elegant Mr Michaels in a jumpsuit, or Ivy League Tom in the filthy hole. But that didn’t matter. She squared her shoulders behind Camry’s rounded ones and followed as she was instructed. She would not cry nor would she fuss. This whole ordeal was a punishment; not for the nonsense with the SEC, but for the terrible error in judgment that she had made.

‘Right this way,’ Camry said, leading her down a long narrow corridor. Then he stopped abruptly and opened a door. ‘While we’re here, this is the athletic facility,’ he said.

Jennifer looked in to see a small room with a couple of flabby volleyballs and a few exercise mats that were so soiled that she had to avert her eyes. So this was the gym. She almost laughed. It was nothing at all like the Vertical Club where she and Tom worked out. Well, she’d be out of there before she needed to go to the gym. But what about the women who had to use the place? God almighty.

‘You can use the athletic facility in your free time, but not during lockdown or after eight p.m.,’ Camry told her.

Jennifer sighed. As if. Once again she turned to Camry and said with great urgency, ‘Are you certain I can’t use a phone? It is imperative that I get in touch with my lawyer.’

Camry lifted his eyebrows and looked up at the ceiling. He shook his head as if to say, No, you crazy bitch, no!

Jennifer knew then that she had made a terrible error. For the first time in her life she had been so confident that she knew everything that she needed to know that she had gone into a test completely unprepared. Prison wasn’t like life on the Outside. In here, there was no multiple choice to guess at, and there was no essay that she could bluff her way through. This was all true or false – black and white. This was the test of her life, and she’d willingly come into it unprepared and ignorant.

Tom and Donald had told her that it would be easy. She didn’t know why she had believed them – except that they’d never lied to her before. Christ, there was no way this could’ve been easy. She should’ve known that. Life had taught her that nothing came easy – it all took work, it all took discipline, and above everything else, it all took a willful determination not to fail. She knew that. She had always been prepared, always one step ahead of the rest.

Jennifer hung her head and looked at the orange jumpsuit that she was wearing. When she was a kid she used to lay out her school clothes before going to bed. She hated uniforms so much that she spent hours figuring out ways to make a plaid jumper and a navy blazer look like something out of Vogue. But she did it. She stood out from all the rest.

It was that kind of preparation and thinking ahead that were the big secrets to her success. She got into State on scholarship, and her grades there earned her a free ride into the MBA program at Wharton. When it was time to go out and get a job, Jennifer’s research landed her an interview with the already legendary Donald J. Michaels. She walked into his office, clearly a girl from the working class, and she started to talk about his Gulbenkian porcelain. Donald lifted his eyebrows. He knew she was faking it, but he also knew she was really good at faking it. Preparation and a poker face were exactly what she needed to succeed in his Wall Street firm. Donald Michaels not only hired Jennifer on the spot, he put her on his own team. They were known as the smartest and the most aggressive of all the Wall Street shark pool. They specialized in the highest-risk/ highest-reward IPOs and some very leveraged buyouts. They didn’t miss a trick. They were invincible.

‘We go down from here,’ Camry told her, and Jennifer preceded him down the stairs. She was glad she wasn’t with Byrd as they made their way down the dark and damp stairwell.

The trek seemed to take forever, and through it all Jennifer mentally beat herself up. From the first moment she had gotten into the van, things had been out of her control. She tried to control the rising tide of panic that was threatening to overtake her. Why didn’t the Warden know who she was? If Tom had called, whom did he talk to? And if she didn’t find out, how would she be cushioned and protected from this nightmare? Who was the Warden’s boss? Could she go over the stolid Warden Harding’s head? She would just have to wait until this ridiculous process was over. Then she would call Tom. Or Don. Or both of them.

At long last, she and Camry entered the cellblock, and Jennifer was taken to her cell. She thought she’d seen the worst of Jennings, but no – they had saved the worst for last.

‘This is your house assignment,’ Camry told her.

House? This wasn’t a house; it wasn’t even a dormitory – and it most certainly was not a country club. It was a prison cell, plain and simple. The concrete walls were painted a color that a decorator might claim to be Dusty Rose, but to Jennifer’s eyes it was a hideous Battleship Pink. The beds – four of them – were bunked and bolted against the side walls with only about ten square feet of floor space in between. There was no furniture except a tiny desk that was suspended from the wall, and, beneath it, a single chair. Jennifer wondered if she would have three cellmates, and if the four of them were supposed to share that chair.

The only other place to sit was on a toilet that was quite unlike anything Jennifer had ever seen before in her life. At first glance, the stainless steel creation reminded her of a metal miniature of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. On closer inspection she saw the faucets and realized with horror that it was a monument to prison efficiency. It served as both wash basin and commode, with the seat only inches from the lower bunks. She remembered a snippet of a song parody her mother used to sing: And my bunk is where the skunk is. Did someone actually sleep with her head virtually in the head? She set her shoulders and tried not to show her dismay. After all, she only had to sit there until Tom came and took her away. She wouldn’t be spending the night.

‘Home sweet home,’ Camry said as he rolled open the door in the fourth wall, which consisted completely of bars. The section slid open, and for a moment it doubled the bars on the left side of the cell. The shadow play they made passing reminded Jennifer of the sun through the windows of New York’s elevated trains. But there was no sunshine here. The cells were on a windowless hall, and although each one did have a window, it was so high in the wall that even from the top bunk you couldn’t peer through the chicken wire. Camry took Jennifer’s elbow and firmly guided her into her new home.

‘It’s only for a few hours,’ she told herself. Maybe now she could finally call Tom. She looked for a moment at Officer Camry, but decided not to ask.

‘Get comfortable,’ Camry instructed. ‘I’ll go get your cellmate so you two can get acquainted.’

‘Right,’ Jennifer said.

‘Pardon?’ Camry responded.

‘I wish,’ Jennifer said with a cynical sigh.

Only one of the four bunks was made up, and over it, taped to the walls, were six pictures. One was of a baby – obviously a snapshot – but the other five were clipped from magazines. There was an angel, a toddler on the beach building a sand castle, a fire engine, the Nike logo complete with Just Do It, and finally a picture of Jesus, looking a lot like Donny Osmond. Jennifer stood there for a moment, trying to imagine what kind of brain had arranged those particular images in that particular way.

She walked over to the desk. It was bare except for three books: the Bible, a copy of The Pokey Little Puppy, and a paperback Baby-Sitters Club book. Jennifer had read the Baby-Sitters Club when she was in fourth grade. Had they put her in a cell with a child or a simpleton?

On the lower bunk on the opposite wall, Jennifer found a rolled up mattress and a set of sheets. Hers, she wondered? She thought about making the bed, but was enraged at the thought of actually making herself ‘comfortable’ as dopey old Roger had suggested. This was no place to be comfortable. She would never sleep here, and she would most certainly never use the toilet. Anyone – even someone like Byrd – could look right through the bars and see everything that went on.

Jennifer sat on the solitary chair and wondered what time it was. Would Tom still be at home, on his way to the office, or was he already there? She knew his cell phone number by heart, but she wasn’t sure if a cell phone could accept a collect call. She stood up suddenly in a rage. Goddamnit! She wasn’t a convict. She had her own damn cell phone – and they had taken it. She had a Verizon credit card with no limits. Why couldn’t she use it? What harm would there be in that? It had rounded corners, too. She couldn’t kill anyone – or herself – with a fucking cell phone. The rage took its toll, and Jennifer wilted onto the made-up bunk. Tom had better get her out of here before the end of the day. This was worse than anything she’d imagined.

‘You’re sitting on my bed,’ Jennifer heard a timid voice say. She jumped up to see Officer Camry standing in the door of the cell with a very small and very pretty young blonde woman.

‘I’m sorry,’ Jennifer said sincerely.

‘It’s okay,’ the girl said timidly. She looked as if she was terrified of Jennifer, and she seemed to be almost clinging to the smiling Officer Camry.

‘Miss Spencer, this is Suki,’ Roger said as he gently guided the young girl into the cell. ‘You and her will be bunking together.’

Jennifer saw the girl looking at her still damp jumpsuit.

‘Were you the one who stuffed the toilet in Observation last night?’ Suki asked her. Then she went over to her bunk and looked at the wet spot Jennifer had left when she sat there.

‘You can use this bedding,’ Jennifer said, pointing to the roll on the bunk meant for her. ‘I won’t be using it.’

‘Why not?’ Suki asked her.

‘I’m not staying,’ Jennifer replied.

‘Where are you going?’

Jennifer thought she was going to scream. ‘Can I just make a phone call?’ she asked, looking past this Suki and talking to Roger.

‘Not until after work,’ Suki told her.

‘But I have to make the call now.’

‘Miss Spencer – Jennifer – will be working with you in the laundry,’ Camry told the young girl. ‘Will you see that she gets there this afternoon?’ he asked with a smile.

‘You bet Rog – uh, sir,’ Suki said, blushing.

Roger stood there as awkward as a teenager on a front porch after a first date. Was he going to kiss this girl? Jennifer wondered. But Camry finally turned and walked away. Suki watched him go until he turned for a moment and waved good-bye.

Jennifer didn’t know what that was all about, and she didn’t need to know. A deafening bell clanged loudly and echoed off the concrete.

‘Time to go back to work,’ Suki chirped brightly. ‘Come on, I’ll show you the way.’

Jennifer followed without question. Maybe she could find a phone in the laundromat.

9 Movita Watson

Here I am and here I stay.

Patrice de Mac Mahon

I did alotta work in the office that no inmate should be trusted with, but that was because of Miss Ringling. She was one of those state employees who felt the main function of her job was cashing her paycheck. Most work that required any intelligence was given directly to me by the Warden. The rest of it was given to me by Miss Ringling. But now I was finally shuttin’ down the PC and gettin’ ready to go to dinner, when Warden Harding strolled outta her office in that casual-like way that says she’s got something to tell me.

‘Movita?’ she asked.

‘Mmmm,’ I kinda murmured back. You can’t really diss the Warden, but by now her and me know each other good enough for me to voice a certain kind of awareness.

‘I’ve assigned Spencer to Conrad. Do you think Suki will mind having her as a cellmate?’ the Warden asked me.

Since when did The Woman worry about what I thought? ‘Why do I care what Suki minds?’ I answered back. It sounded kinda snotty so I softened it a bit with, ‘She’ll do fine. NBD. Spencer’s no suicide, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

‘I just thought that you might have a better sense of who would be the best to match the new inmate with. You are the – uh – main person for the crew. I just don’t want to add a problem to an already sensitive situation.’

‘Hey, my policy is just like that old president’s,’ I told her. ‘“Don’t ask, don’t tell.” That works for me, too.’ I knew what she was angling for. The Warden wanted me to take that little white witch to my lovin’ black bosom. That’s one of the deadly things about prison; you show weakness just once and everyone is ready to prey on ya’. Just ‘cause I unreasonably, uncharacteristically, and maybe unfortunately ‘adopted’ Suki Conrad into my crew doesn’t mean I’m gonna do it for every sorrowful new piece of meat that comes to Jennings. It bugged me that The Woman even asked me.

I don’t know if the others wanted to take Suki in, but I insisted. And when I insist, they don’t have much choice. It wasn’t like anybody really hated her, and face it, girls, Movita rules. Anyway, the very first day I saw Suki Conrad draggin’ her pitiful little butt through Intake, I just took to her. Maybe it was that baby-fine blonde hair or the lost look in her eyes. I got me a pink-skinned baby doll with yellow hair and blue eyes for Christmas once. Didn’t I love that dolly! Whatever. Sometimes, though, someone like that just tugs at your heart or some shit like that. I guess I just plain felt sorry for the little thing, and that’s the truth. Just ‘cause I’m in prison don’t mean I got no human feelings. And I felt like we needed a baby in our crew.

Women need family. Don’t matter if it’s blood or not. In the crew we’re like mother and daughters sometimes, and sometimes we’re like sisters, and sometimes we’re like other family members, too. That don’t mean we don’t fight and argue and stuff. But when you’re in a crew you just try to keep all that to a minimum.

‘Please let me know if there’s any trouble with the match-up, okay?’ the Warden asked me. She was lookin’ me right in the eye and I knew she wanted more than a trouble report. She knew how to get at me. ‘That’s it for today, Movita. You better go to dinner.’ She paused for a second. ‘What do you and your girls have planned tonight?’

I switched off the monitor and neatened up some stacks of papers on my desk. ‘Well, it’s Theresa’s turn to cook,’ I said, ‘so it’s gonna be a surprise.’ Sometimes I get the oddest feeling that the Warden is kinda – well – envious of us in the crew. It’s like she’d rather come and eat with us instead of goin’ to her own house. I don’t know much about her life Outside, ‘cept that she’s divorced and that she works all the time. I doubt she’s got much of a life.

When I got back to my house, Theresa was already chopping the carrots that Suki was washin’. ‘You want the salad dressing sweet or you want it tart?’ Theresa asked.

‘I don’t care as long as you’re making it,’ Cher told her. She was loungin’ her sassy ass on the bunk, readin’ a magazine, and just waitin’ to eat.

If prison is the place where society thinks they can make us cons eat shit, they do a damn good job of it. Even though the Warden keeps fightin’ with Ben Norton down in Food Services, the food at Jennings never gets any better. No one – and I mean no one – wants to eat the shit old Ben serves up in the cafeteria. It’s nothin’ but starch, grease, and real bad meat. People eat it, but only if they have to.

You can eat for free in the cafeteria. So if you’re destitute, or spend whatever you got on contraband, or if you can’t make even one friend, then you’re stuck in the cafeteria eatin’ one of Ben’s blue plate specials.

But if you got some sense, a little social grace, or any initiative at all, you can buy things from the prison canteen and cook ‘em up yourself. You just need to save a little money and get pots and pans and all. There’s no real kitchens in our houses, but Harding lets us have a hot plate or an electric skillet. Of course, the canteen doesn’t have much variety – maybe only seven or eight kinds of things. You can usually get a chicken, or sometimes beef. They always got a little lettuce or some vegetable. There’s potatoes and sometimes rice. And now and then some fruit like apples or bananas or even oranges. Theresa works down in the dispensary, so she always knows what’s comin’ in. She stashes the best for the crew, and with the money Cher gets from sellin’ some of the stuff she steals from Intake we can buy a whole lot of good stuff. Problem is, we don’t got refrigeration, and that’s why we need plenty of ice. Frances was the lucky one to get to deliver it. Ice is like gold in prison. Without it, lots of our good stuff goes to waste. If we buy a chicken on our own, by the time we eat half of it the other half is no damn good and we’re so sick of chicken that we’re cluckin’. We don’t wanna see no bird ever again.

‘Hand me that pot of water, Suki,’ Theresa said as I sat down to listen to the day’s bulletins. I wanted to know if anyone had any more news on Spencer. I thought Suki might speak up, but Cher was the first one to sound off, as usual.

‘I hear she’s already sashaying round here like she owns the place.’ Cher smirked. ‘Byrd told old Cranston down in Intake that he’s gonna toss Spencer into solitary if she demands to use the phone one more damn time.’

‘Well, you know what they say about asking and receiving, don’t you?’ Theresa said as she opened the Tupperware and measured out some pasta into the boiling water.

‘Yeah, well this ain’t Sunday school,’ Cher shot back. ‘And it ain’t the movies either. You don’t automatically get one call when you get here.’

‘It’s tough on you white girls when you don’t get your way, ain’t it?’ I said, givin’ Cher a look. She was copping some pretty amazing attitude.

‘That’s not very nice,’ Suki said with hurt feelings.

‘Movita wasn’t referrin’ to you, sweetie,’ Cher reassured her. She got up and gave Suki a pat on the shoulder.

That was for my benefit. Back when I first took Suki in, Cher made quite a fuss. ‘She can’t cook, she can’t steal, she can’t do nothin’ but cry,’ Cher bitched. ‘She’s dumb as dirt. That’s why she drove the car for her boyfriend.’

I guess Suki actually believed her boyfriend when he said he was goin’ into that 7-Eleven for cigarettes. He came out with the contents of the cash register, and little Suki thought she was guilty of nothin’ more than keepin’ the heater running.

Theresa, on the other hand, was more understanding. ‘But she lost her baby,’ she said to Cher. ‘She’s never going to stop crying about that. You know what they say about mothers when someone takes away their babies, don’t you?’

Well, nobody answered Theresa’s question. It got real quiet for a moment. You see, I don’t like talkin’ about children. I never talk about my little girls. Their granny is raisin’ them, and that’s all I can bear to say about it.

‘Just what in heaven’s name are you makin’ there, Theresa?’ I asked to break the tension. ‘You trying to kill us all before Cher gets a chance to get outta here?’

‘Get out of my way, Movita,’ Theresa warned. ‘You know what they say about too many cooks, don’t you?’

I just laughed and backed off. Havin’ a conversation with Theresa was like talkin’ to a refrigerator door loaded with sayings. I respected that girl. The goin’ never got so tough that Theresa didn’t get up and go. ‘People say I’m an optimist,’ she’d say, lookin’ all serious and stuff. ‘But I don’t think that’s necessarily true. And do you wanna know why? I’m gonna tell you why. Because – you know what they say about pessimism and optimism, don’t you?’

Theresa never really wanted you to answer her questions, ‘cause she had all the answers herself.

‘They say the pessimist says the glass is half empty, but the optimist says it’s half full. Well, you know what I say to that? I don’t say that glass is half anything, I say you’re using the wrong damn glass. It’s obviously too big. That’s what I say.’ Then old Theresa always waited a little and let it all sink in before she’d wind up for her big finale. ‘And you know what that makes me?’ she’d ask. ‘That makes me a pragmatist! That is someone who has a practical, matter-of-fact way of solving problems. That’s a pragmatist and that’s what I am – a practical, matter-of-fact problem solver. If you got a problem with how much is in your glass, well then maybe you’re just using the wrong glass. You understand what I’m saying here? It just doesn’t matter if you think it’s half empty or half full, what matters is what you do about it. Get off your ass and get yourself a different glass is what I say. Always remember this: Answer is also a verb. You understand what I’m saying here? The door to success is labeled PUSH! You can’t leave footprints in the sands of time if you’re not wearin’ work boots.’

I don’t know why, but I could listen to Theresa talk for hours. I loved those speeches.

‘Get up off your butt, Cher, and grab that plastic strainer for me,’ Theresa told Cher, and Cher did it. ‘Hold it over the bowl.’

Cher was laughing as Theresa strained her pasta and let the water go down the john. ‘You think there’s any symbolism here with your cookin’ right next to the toilet?’ Cher teased.

Theresa’s specialty is her pasta. That’s somethin’ the canteen don’t carry, but Theresa’s sister sends her a lot of it. That’s another thing about who you pick for crew. You want the girls who get lots of packages from the Outside. Theresa gets pasta and salamis and Italian shit like that. And you can’t get better packages than Cher gets. Theft runs in her family, so they’re always sendin’ her stuff. Lots of it is contraband and gets taken out and sent back, but the boxes always have hand creams and shampoos and stuff like that. And now and then she’ll get a big ol’ canned ham with some spices. The chips and dips and stuff come in on a regular basis. Both girls are real good about sharin’ with the crew.

Suki never gets a damned thing. She ain’t got a family. Her little girl is in foster care. I don’t care, though – we had to take her in. But if we have to take in this Spencer bitch, then that girl better be prepared to do her part.

Dinner was almost ready. Besides the pasta we were having some lettuce and some bananas for dessert. ‘All the ice is gone,’ Theresa said, ‘and there won’t be any more until tomorrow afternoon, so get prepared to eat. I don’t want anything to go to waste.’

‘Speakin’ of waste,’ I said. ‘I hear Miss Spencer had herself quite a night in Observation.’

‘Did Karl Byrd give her any trouble?’ Theresa asked, all concerned.

‘Karl can do better than get a piece of that sorry ass,’ Cher snarled.

‘That’s not very nice,’ Suki piped up. ‘I think she seems kind of nice. She’s my bunkmate. But she says she’s not gonna be here very long.’

Cher was laughing. ‘Oh, let me guess,’ she said. ‘She’s just another innocent victim, put in the slammer by mistake.’

‘That’s what she says,’ Suki told us, all sincere. Suki doesn’t get irony – you might say she has an irony deficiency. ‘Jennifer says her boyfriend is coming to get her out.’

‘Yeah, just like my knight in shining armor is comin’ for me,’ Cher snorted.

Havin’ Cher as a cellmate helps the time pass. When she first hit Jennings, I couldn’t imagine how I’d ever survive being locked up with a wild white woman. But she can be so damned funny. And she’s honest – for a thief. She never pretends to be nobody ‘ceptin’ who she is. For her, everything she sees is just ripe for the pickin’. She always has her eyes wide open and on the lookout for the next chance to take what she wants. And not just for herself, either. Soon as she got here she stole me a Sony Walkman and a feather pillow, and damn it – that hillbilly girl just stole my heart. I never understood how it happened, but I was glad that it did. I love Cher. Now it isn’t like we’re lesbians. No one in my crew is a lesbian. I know lots of women couple up for a little sex and comfort while they’re here, but nothin’ like that goes on between me and Cher. But we do love each other. When I think of how I felt for Earl I almost laugh. My feelings for him were pretty shallow and pathetic when I compare ‘em with the love I feel for Cher. And even for Theresa and Suki.

About the only action I get from men is from that mother Byrd. He would jump a ladybug or a polliwog as long as they were unwilling. That’s what gives ‘em the thrill. I keep ‘em way off me by never showin’ any fear and askin’ him if he’s got a hard three inches ready for me. Once I made the redneck bastard blush. Made my day, I tell ya’.

I just sat there on my bunk and looked at my crew. Maybe we could take Spencer in. But the thought of it made me feel like I was somehow cheatin’ on Cher. Cher was gonna get paroled soon, if she kept her nose clean and didn’t get caught stealin’ from Intake. Even if she did, Cher had herself a good lawyer on the Outside.

It all made me feel sorta sad and cold. I didn’t really resent Cher leavin’ Jennings. It’s just that it was gonna be a damned lonely and borin’ place once she was gone. Maybe we needed to take another woman in.

10 Jennifer Spencer

Windows on buildings and vehicles were smashed one day after all the women in the dining room had been ‘searched’ for tacos as they left the cafeteria. Later the women referred to the incident as ‘The Great Taco Shake’.

Kathryn Watterson, Women in Prison

‘Mealtime,’ the officer announced from the control room. ‘Stay in single file and follow the brown line.’

Jennifer had absolutely no interest in eating dinner in the cafeteria, but Suki pointed in the direction that she should go and Jennifer had no choice but to follow the others. She had to admit that she was starving, but God only knew what kind of food was being served. She turned to ask Suki if she might know, but Suki seemed to have someplace else to go. Jennifer turned back and followed the woman in front of her.

As the line moved down the corridor it approached a door that was being held open by yet another officer. ‘Single file, ladies, single file. Something good today. Officer Summit says it’s Reubens since we had ham salad for lunch today.’

‘It’s about time,’ spoke one inmate.

‘Now you’re talking,’ said another.

Off to the side, a woman was having a loud argument with a doorpost. ‘You no good, muthafukka,’ she yelled, then paused. ‘You got no right,’ she answered the mute doorway. No one seemed to notice or mind.

As Jennifer finally stepped inside the cafeteria, what she saw was worse than what she had imagined. Yellow-painted concrete blocks, horrible fluorescent lights hung high from metal rafters, cold air blowing from the air-conditioning unit, and a floor that was a solid slab of poured concrete that angled down in the middle with a covered water drain grate at the center. It reminded her of the old meat market her mother used to take her to in her old neighborhood. It was like a slaughterhouse.

Jennifer mechanically imitated the inmate in front of her so that she would be sure not to mess up in mess hall. There were three drink machines: one with grape something or other, one with orange something or other, and then a much less desirable lemonade mixture that was certain to taste more like water than lemon. She took a metal cup from the inverted stack, selected the orange drink, then stepped down the line a little further only to be presented with a plastic tray covered in a clear plastic lid.

‘Hey, where’s the Reuben?’ an inmate asked.

‘Yeah, I thought someone said we were having Reubens,’ another inmate intoned.

‘Well, Officer Summit must have been misinformed,’ the officer at the head of the line said.

Oh man, was there going to be a riot over what was served? Jennifer had been through enough already and she couldn’t take any more disruption. She’d never felt so out of control in a controlled environment in her life. She took her tray and followed the woman in front of her to the table.

Jennifer stared down at her tray. She watched the other woman at the table dismantle the lid, carefully slide it under the bottom tray, and then unwrap a utensil from a napkin and let it fall in her hand. It was an abbreviated spoon – a shortened bowl with three equally short prongs extending briefly from the center. She stared at the micro landscape of food in front of her. There was a hill of instant potatoes, a wide river of grease, a dying forest of cabbage greens beside a toxic dump of gristle and gray meat. A week ago, Jennifer would have scraped something like this off her shoe in disgust. She was hungry, but eating this would be a challenge, even without the bizarre implement.

A large woman of indeterminate race with light skin, freckles, and kinky red hair pulled back into a knot at the top of her head sat down opposite and gave Jennifer a smile that lacked intelligence and the left bicuspid. ‘I’m Big Red,’ she said, then lowered her voice. ‘You want some brew, you call Big Red.’

‘What do you call this?’ Jennifer asked her dinner companion, holding up her utensil.

‘A spork,’ Big Red told her, as if Jennifer was the stupid one. ‘You never seen no spork before? Used to get them all the time at Kentucky Fried.’

‘Are all the forks and spoons gone?’ Jennifer asked.

‘Get outta here, girl,’ Big Red said. ‘They don’t give us no knives, no forks, no nothing. Don’t want us to make weapons out of ‘em.’

Jennifer used the spork to scoop up a little potato and gravy, but the gravy ran through the space between the two tines. ‘Couldn’t they give us just a spoon?’ she asked in exasperation. ‘You can’t hurt someone with a spoon.’

‘Oh, say what?’ Big Red spoke up. ‘Lottie J. took out Sabrina’s eye with a spoon.’ She was sporking up her food with the kind of relish Jennifer had rarely seen at three star restaurants. ‘Lottie J. faked being sick and went to the dispensary and she got herself a spoon there and sharpened it and then when she came back and that Sabrina be botherin’ her again, she just scooped out her eye like a melon ball.’

Jennifer put her spork down. The greasy taste of the gravy sat on her tongue like oil on a driveway. Her hunger turned to nausea. The glutinous gray-brown mass that passed as meat couldn’t possibly be cut by the spork. ‘You finished with that?’ Big Red asked, eyeing Jennifer’s tray.

Jennifer picked up a plastic cup of pudding and nodded. Before she could get her arm out of the way Big Red grabbed the tray and pulled it over to her, placing it on top of her first tray. She dug in and Jennifer realized that the niceties of cutting the meat were not an issue here; Big Red sporked the entire piece into her mouth and Jennifer watched as she masticated in a bovine manner for a lot longer than it took Jennifer to down the watery tapioca. This was definitely not the Four Seasons and there was no cotton candy cake with sugared violets and a candle on top for dessert.

To help calm her nausea, Jennifer tried to see what the other women were doing to get through their meals. Most of them were talking amongst themselves; some were even laughing. Then, to her absolute horror, Jennifer saw a grown woman trying to make herself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich using a spork. It would’ve been easier if she’d just used her fingers.

This was humiliation, not rehabilitation! Jennifer couldn’t get beyond it no matter how she tried. She wondered if the population was really so dangerous that they couldn’t be trusted with real eating utensils. She looked at Big Red, now mopping up the last of the food, and wondered if the story about the spoon was even true. Maybe it was one of those things they told a newcomer to scare her, like the camp story of the parked couple and the bloody hook hanging off the door of their car.

Then, even as she put the thought away, two women began screeching. In less than a second, Big Red jumped up and stood on the table, narrowly missing Jennifer’s hand. ‘Kill the bitch!’ Big Red screamed. Jennifer wasn’t sure that even in her exalted position Red could see anything. The imbroglio seemed to be on the floor, on the other side of the table, near the wall. Correction officers were on the two fighting women in an instant, and, although Jennifer didn’t want to look, she couldn’t help but see one of the officers – she thought it was Byrd – throw a vicious kick at an inmate who was rolling on the floor.

Just then, louder noise and movement broke out to the right. Jennifer looked over, but before she could see what was going on, she noticed a pay phone out in the corridor. This is it, she thought.

As the two women continued to shout, and as several officers rushed their table, Jennifer calmly started to walk backward to the exit. She’d walked against a crowd that way many times in New York’s movie theaters when she wanted to get in to a popular show. As she made her way out, she watched the activity in front of her, but also glanced behind her to make sure she didn’t disturb anyone by bumping into them. The last thing she needed was to be in a jailhouse brawl. Though she was known as the ‘Warrior of Words’ at Hudson, Van Schaank, the one thing she didn’t know how to do was fight physically. Her path was clear – only another twelve steps before she’d be at the phone! It seemed that no one had noticed her, but her heart was thumping so loudly that she was certain that everyone could hear it, even over the ruckus.

Jennifer looked behind her again; in two more steps she reached the phone. She picked up the receiver and started to dial. She could hear the tones of the numbers in her ears and they drowned out the increasing noise from the room behind her. She dialed collect, and when the automated operator’s voice asked for it she gave her name. At the other end of the line, in another world altogether, she heard the phone ring. She imagined Tom’s apartment in Battery Park City overlooking New York Harbor and the Statue of Liberty. She’d looked out at the view a hundred times. She heard the phone ring again. Women were screaming and shouting from every corner of the room. It was worse than a snake pit. Jennifer couldn’t help it: She instinctively put her hands over her ears, but still the noise penetrated despite her resolution. A tear began to drip from the corner of her right eye along her nose and down to her nostril. But she couldn’t take her hands off her ears to wipe it away because the noise was so overwhelming.

Suddenly a squadron of guards surrounding someone was coming her way. Jennifer was bumped into by another woman who was struggling against three officers. ‘Lockdown!’ she heard an officer shout from the far side of the cafeteria. But Jennifer stayed where she was, listening to the distant ringing. Answer, damnit!

A shuffling line of women approached the exit, and one woman stood directly in front of Jennifer and smiled. She was almost certain that this was the creature she had seen tending the marigolds on her way into Jennings. The black face split into a skeletal grin. ‘Trying to escape this place?’ the old woman asked.

At that same moment, a hand reached over and yanked the receiver away from Jennifer. ‘You can’t use the phone now,’ a woman officer said, obviously agitated. ‘Damn freshman!’ She grabbed Jennifer and pushed her into line. ‘Face forward!’ the officer snapped. ‘You too, Springtime. Step lively! Go to your houses,’ the officer shouted.

Jennifer thought that she might just scream, break and run, even though the barred doors visibly truncated the long hallway ahead of her. She had to do something. She had to get through to Tom. He and Donald couldn’t have known that this place was such a madhouse. Even one more day would be too long for her to keep her sanity. If Observation wasn’t enough to make her want to kill herself, another meal like this would be.

11 Gwen Harding

Many laws as certainly make bad men, as bad men make many laws.

Walter Savage Landor

Gwen Harding tightened the sash of her bathrobe, retied the bow, and studied the papers spread before her. In her office at Jennings she was kept busy from moment to moment simply trying to deal with the administrative load, employee problems, staffing, and management. Now for the first time she looked at the JRU International information package and the charts spread out on her dining table. JRU had completed their proposal to the state and Warden Harding, along with half a dozen other state correction professionals, was being asked to write up her opinion of their plan.

She took a preliminary look at the proposal. ‘Fact: The private sector consistently saves government money. In the past decade, at least fourteen separate independent studies have compared the costs of operating private and public institutions. Twelve of those studies demonstrated that the cost of privately managed prisons is from two to twenty-nine percent less than that of government-managed facilities.’ Gwen wondered how they managed to cut costs. Perhaps by firing outdated wardens.

She rose from her chair and passed the counter that was the only demarcation of where the dining room ended and the kitchen began. The kitchen was spotless. She crossed the blue and white tile floor to the stove, where a kettle – the only cooking implement she ever used in this kitchen anymore – sat on the one burner that she ever turned on. She took a mug from the cabinet. It had been a gift from a social-worker friend years ago. It was one of those ready-made but unpainted objects that children and women with time on their hands paint in shops set up expressly for that purpose. On it, Gwen’s friend Lisa Anderson had painted BECAUSE I’M THE WARDEN, THAT’S WHY.

When she was given the gift, she and Lisa laughed over the reactions the mug stirred up among the other women at the shop where Lisa had painted it. Now Gwen filled it with hot water and dunked a tea bag into it. She was actually longing for a glass of gin, and the olives in the refrigerator seemed to be calling out to her, but she knew she had to keep a clear head. JRU was waiting and JRU came first. She crossed to the sink holding the steaming mug, opened the under-cabinet and dropped the wet tea bag into the empty trash bag. She didn’t even make trash anymore. Gwen sighed. There was a different time and a different place where she used to cook and give dinner parties on a regular basis. And she’d been good – everyone praised her coq au vin. ‘Jesus,’ she thought, walking back to the dining table, ‘do people even make coq au vin nowadays?’ She hadn’t seen it on a menu or at a dinner party in years. But then … she tried to think of the last dinner party she had attended and couldn’t remember one. That couldn’t be! She stood still, one hand resting on the back of a dining chair, the other clenched around her mug. There was the dinner at the restaurant at the close of the Eastern States Correction Officers Association. And of course, there was always the rubber chicken at local civic functions. But actual dinner parties – just social time at someone’s home, seemed to be a bit thin on the ground.

Gwen took a sip of tea and wondered where her friend Lisa Anderson was now. She smiled. They had had a lot of fun together. Gwen had been divorced and Lisa had been in the process of separating from her husband. The two of them went out at least once a week, but that was … Gwen put down the mug and tried to think whether it was six or seven years ago. Could it be that long? She tried to think it out. It had to be. It was just after she got the job at Jennings.

At Jennings Gwen was too busy to see old friends or to make new ones, at least in the beginning. Then, when she had settled in, it seemed as if there were no friends to be made. Certainly she couldn’t count any of the Jennings staff as friends. Perhaps her initial conscious distancing had put people off, but she’d only done it because she’d been frightened and overly sensitive about her new position and its required authority. She supposed that by the time she felt secure and was ready to unbend a little, no one else seemed to be so inclined. Well, that was understandable. She took another sip of tea and reminded herself that she’d never been a natural extrovert.

Gwen sat down at the shining waxed dining table, only sullied by the JRU report. She wouldn’t think about anything else right now. Thinking about the emptiness of her life would surely drive her to the olives and she had to begin her response to this proposal. She looked at the inscription once again and smiled ruefully. When she first began working in the Department of Corrections it seemed to her that wardens had enormous power. Perhaps she’d been wrong or had exaggerated what she’d seen, but the position’s power had certainly eroded since then. A warden’s powers today were so limited, while her accountability was so vast, that Gwen often felt as trussed as a turkey before being shoved into the oven. And now this move to privatize prisons was sure to usurp whatever power she had remaining.

Privatization was a bastard trend that had been born – mothered – by Wall Street out of the incredible need for more prisons and taxpayers yelping at the costs of incarceration. If an aging population voted against school-board bond issues and preferred not to spend its tax dollars on educating their own grandchildren, Gwen knew all too well how they felt about spending public funds on strangers in the ‘criminal population’. And yet, that population continued to grow. The only solution most agencies saw was building more places to incarcerate offenders. The ineffectual ‘war on drugs’, mandatory sentences, and a judiciary frightened that they might be perceived as ‘soft on crime’ had all contributed to a huge increase in prisoners in general, and an even larger increase in female prison statistics.

In fact, Gwen knew that women were the fastest growing sector of the prison population. Since 1980, the female inmate population nationwide had increased by more than five hundred percent. And this was not because women were involved in more violent crimes. It was because, nationwide, people were being imprisoned much more frequently for nonviolent crimes. In 1979, women convicted of nonviolent crimes were sent to prison roughly forty-nine percent of the time. By 1999, they were being sent to prison for nonviolent crimes nearly eighty percent of the time.

So privatization seemed a neat and simple answer to all these problems. Big business claimed it was ready to step in, take the risk, bear the expense, and turn prisons into moneymaking operations. Gwen of course knew that there were two major private prison corporations in the U.S. One of them, Wackenhut Corrections, owned fifty-two prisons ‘employing’ more than twenty-six thousand prisoners. The other, CCA – Corrections Corporation of America – had control over almost three times as many prisoners in eightyone prisons. At the last conference for prison wardens that Gwen had attended, there had been a heated discussion over the privatization of prisons. Someone pointed out how large corporations had the incentive and the political clout to encourage the creation of a larger and larger prison population – a larger and larger cheap labor pool. This meant increased sentences and the increasing incarceration of men and women (usually from communities of color). Gwen wondered if this would turn into a new form of slavery.

She shook her head, turned another page of the proposal, and wondered what JRU International stood for. Justice Regulatory Underwriters? Jesus Really Understands? Jails ‘R’ Us? Jammed Rats Unlimited? Why not be honest and call it PFP: Prisons for Profit? She turned another page of the proposal before her and began to take notes in her small, neat handwriting.

There was no way this plan was going to work! Gwen looked down at the dozen pages of notations she’d already compiled. Most were written in capital letters and underlined several times. They looked like mad ravings, and weren’t far from it. She’d have to somehow turn these blistering observations into cool bureaucratic reportage. She shook her head at the daunting task. What was the state thinking of?

She knew, of course, that her burgeoning budget presented nothing but trouble to them. Gwen knew that while her costs of maintaining one prisoner – including her bed, board, security, and the very limited health and education services that Jennings offered – was increasing to more than fifty-five dollars a day, private prisons claimed they could maintain prisoners at only forty-three dollars a day. She knew she couldn’t compete with that.

But how was JRU going to deliver what they were promising? How were they possibly going to reduce medical staff? As it was, she had reluctantly cut the staff dramatically. When she looked at the ‘Facilities Management Report’ she was actually shocked. They proposed turning the visiting room into a space for a profit-making telemarketing operation. Where would the women visit with their families? They were also proposing to expand the prison itself and enclose the U of the courtyard, to provide additional housing. That meant darkening all the units facing the courtyard. Where would the women exercise? Where would Springtime plant flowers?

She had to be missing something in this ridiculous proposal. After all, though they weren’t pleasant, the JRU staff didn’t seem to be insane or particularly cruel. Yet the more Gwen studied the details, the more horrifying the plan seemed. It appeared that they expected to house and feed more than two hundred and thirty new inmates, who would be transferred from other facilities, facilities they would later close or would subsume into the JRU empire. Surely there must be a typo, Gwen thought as she looked at the numbers. Then she realized that the current, badly designed cells (which had four bunks but held only two prisoners) were actually going to be used to house four. The additional cells, those built in the courtyard space, would hold the balance.

Gwen did some quick calculations. It was unbelievable! Had those JRU jaspers ever read about Telgrin’s experiment with rats? Decent, normal rats from good nests turned vicious – even cannibalistic – when they were overcrowded in their cages. Did they know Amnesty International’s position on U.S. prison conditions? Were they so inexperienced that they didn’t realize that the four bunk spaces were an error, far too small a space even for two? Clearly, JRU saw the inmates not as human beings or even rats but as a captive labor force. And based on their projection, a profitable force at that. How did they hope to transform this angry and sullen population of criminal inmates into chipper and cheerful telemarketers?

Gwen dropped her pen and began pacing around the dining table. This was never going to work. All of her years of experience, not just at Jennings and not just as a warden, but in social work, halfway houses, and other correctional facilities, told Gwen Harding that the plan was bound to fail. And what would happen then? Would there be protests? An uprising? And if there was violence – and with this plan there was bound to be plenty – would the inmates be blamed? Or would it be her head on the chopping block? If it all went up in flames – figuratively or literally – could JRU just abandon the project, leaving the state to clean it up?

She knew very little about businesses and how they operated. She had spent her life working in the public sector. So had her father, who had been a cop, and her mother, who had been a teacher. In fact, aside from an uncle (who had run a dry goods store that failed), she couldn’t think of anyone in her extended family who had any real business experience. The corporate world, with its financial realities and its politics, was a complete mystery to her. The one thing that she was sure of was that the executives who had toured her facility had been arrogant and much more prone to talk than to listen. But she’d noticed, of course, how little they wanted to hear from her. It was clear that they already felt she was an advocate of the ‘prisoners’. When these people took over – if they did take over – how long would she even get to retain her job?

This situation was awful. Gwen felt the call of the olives in her refrigerator. She had to convince the Department of Corrections that this proposal should – must – be turned down. But Gwen had no idea how she was going to convince them that the JRU proposal was not only unrealistic, but also a recipe for failure – or for something much, much worse. She looked at the tea mug, now cold on the table, with its inscription: BECAUSE I’M THE WARDEN, THAT’S WHY. What a joke! No one at the State Department of Corrections listened to what a warden said. Especially a female warden.

She would have to sit down and put together a brilliant counterargument, complete with her own charts and graphs and projections that would not only explain why this plan was flawed but would refute JRU’s assumptions. She’d also have to give the state some longer-range alternative strategy for cost-effectively handling an ever-growing prison population. She sighed and picked up the cold cup. How could she possibly do it? Gwen closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose to ease the tension in her brow. In her mind she heard cries of Attica! Attica! Attica! Jesus Christ! This was all too much for her. She wasn’t young anymore. Who was she kidding? They’d roll right over her. Gwen put the mug down, stood up and walked toward the refrigerator, only stopping on the way to grab a glass and the gin bottle.

12 Jennifer Spencer

Remember that you are always in a better position to ask for a job transfer if you have a good record on the job you already have. Failure to do well on a job may result in demotion or punishment.

‘Rules for Inmates’ at the Ohio Reformatory for Women in Marysville, Ohio. Kathryn Watterson, Women in Prison

Jennifer Spencer survived yet another night in prison, only to awaken to another day of working in the laundry.

Nobody wanted the laundry detail. Undoubtedly that was why Jennifer had been assigned to it. The laundry was a long room in the basement with a low ceiling. Between the steam and the pervasive smell of chlorine bleach and dirty clothes, the place reminded Jennifer of nothing so much as a cheap health club back in what she was beginning to think of as her ‘other life’.

There was nothing healthy about this place; the work was heavy and dangerous. All of the prison’s dirty laundry – everything from the polyester jumpsuits to regular uniforms to underpants, socks, sheets, and blankets – came through this laundry. So did washrags and blood-soaked pillowcases.

In addition to the stuff that was supposed to be washed, there were two other categories: detritus and contraband. Detritus included bloody gauze pads that had been accidentally wrapped in a towel and thrown into a cart, or the speculum that had been entangled in a dispensary johnny. There were hair clippings from the barbers, stale and rotting food in garment pockets, puzzle pieces, and every possible piece of unbreakable plastic dinnerware (including sporks, pepper shakers, and plastic ketchup squeezers). Jennifer had been issued heavy-gauge rubber gloves and an apron, but it wasn’t enough. About the only thing she figured the gloves could protect her from were the roaches she was constantly finding in pockets, socks, or accumulated at the bottom of the bucket.

The laundry at Jennings reminded Jennifer of a blue flannel suit: it attracted everything but men and money. Only two days ago Suki had pulled out a speculum and on another day Jennifer herself had felt a lump inside the tied leg of a pair of slacks. When she untied the bottom the meticulously taped package of cocaine dropped like an iced plum into her hands. ‘One day we found a scalpel,’ Suki told her.

Laundry came in on industrial rolling carts that, for some reason, Jennifer kept tripping over again and again. The carts were heavy to push, and because the sheets and clothing were often water-soaked, simply untangling the garments and putting her gloved-sheathed hand into the mix seemed almost more than she could bear. The smell of sweating women, the industrial-strength liquid detergent, the cheap perfumes, and the mildew were intolerable to her. I’ll call Tom and get him to charter a helicopter, she told herself.

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