LINDSAY CHUDZIK
Jailface
I’ve read the first night in prison
is the worst, but I’m optimistic. I adopt jailface, another thing I’ve read
about. Jailface means putting on an appearance that says I’m dead inside,
projecting that nothing or no one can break me because I’ve already been
broken. Criminals are drawn to rosy cheeks and upturned grins, to clutched
purses and quickened steps. Criminals are drawn to people who seem like they
have something to lose.
“Last night Ron set my hair on fire. My boyfriend,” my cellie, Tess, explains when she notices my staring. Hair’s dead by definition, the cells within each strand no longer living once they reach the skin’s surface, but her hair looks charred. Tess resembles a bartender I knew once, terrible tattoos she sketched herself covering her arms and calves. I feel bad, critiquing her tattoos this way, but it’s easier than thinking about her burnt ponytail and what her strawberry blonde hair might have looked like before it was set ablaze. Before she met her boyfriend. Before she dropped out of high school. Before she had to attend one of the worst schools in the state.
“Sorry,” I say.
“For what?” Tess asks. She shoves her head under the sink’s spigot in the corner of our holding cell. Rusty water mixed with ash pools in its metallic bowl. Our other two cellies don’t comment.
“It’s sad about your hair,” I say. I think of how I chopped off all of my hair in the eleventh grade so I could change its color and style with the switch of a wig when leaving school. A black beehive. A cotton candy pink bob. Dirty blonde dreadlocks. I hate how Tess has been pushed into her new hair, though, and I wish I had my box of wigs to offer.
I examine the bottoms of my feet. Black. The guards made us leave our shoes outside our cell. “The laces could be used for hangings,” the guard said. “And those heels could be used as weapons.” He pointed to my brand new BCGB pumps, then tugged at strands of his Fu Manchu. If I were going to gouge someone’s eyes out with my shoes, I probably wouldn’t have spent so much time searching for designer brands on clearance racks. But that would entail premeditation and the guards seem to understand that most of these women act on impulse, rather than weighing their options. It seemed even more than that. These women didn’t have options to weigh. Their lives were a game of action and reaction. Things were done to them. They did things back. Somewhere along the way, perhaps at birth, the word choice was removed from their vocabularies.
“Send me an angel,” Tess sings while ringing out what’s left of her hair. Her voice is gravely and she hits just one note. “That’s my favorite song. I love 80’s shit.”
“I remember roller skating to that song,” I say. Tess nods. I think of the rink’s dj, some guy named Johnny who my friends and I thought was the coolest. It occurs to me now that he was a guy in his thirties who pedaled glow-in-the-dark necklaces to children. A guy in his thirties who wore a Michael Jackson glove and only stepped out of his booth to demonstrate his fancy footwork on the rink during power ballads.
It also occurs to me that, although Tess looks much older, she’s probably about my age. If we grew up in the same town I might have hung out with her friends or she might have hung out with mine. We might’ve drooled over Johnny together and helped each other reapply our apricot-flavored lip-gloss in front of the dingy bathroom mirror.
“I deserved it,” Tess says, more to herself. She rolls up the sleeves of her stained Virginia Tech sweatshirt. Since we’re in a holding cell, we don’t get orange jumpsuits yet. Even though it’s sleeting outside, inside it feels like the worst part of summer.
“I stole his car. He loves that Mazda more than anyone. What you in for?”
“Theft,” another cellie, Desiree, answers instead. She jumps from the top bunk. She tells us she’s a cosmetologist and that she wanted to apply make-up one last time before turning herself in. The foundation, rouge, lip and eyeliner might last until she’s forced to take her first shower. I’m told that could be days. She resembles a drag queen, though I’m not sure if this is because of her muscular stature or because of the way her make-up is applied. My mother would call it “war paint” and talk badly about the types of girls who used cosmetics this way.
I push my back against the cinderblock wall, then slide down it until my bottom meets my feet. My gold-speckled cocktail dress is short so I have to be careful how I cross my legs. Since I know I’ll eventually have to pee in front of these strangers, I find myself grasping at the few elements of etiquette I can control.
I consider how the backs of my legs will likely be just as black as the bottoms of my feet now, sitting on the concrete floor. I look towards the bunks, but they’re only covered with thin, soiled-looking sheets.
“You can ask a guard for a blanket,” Tess says, following my gaze. “To sit on. I asked for a book yesterday.” She slides me a beaten-up romance novel, though someone scratched out its title. I used to read my mother’s Daniel Steeles during summer vacations. The prose was so simple, the situations so predictable, I was certain I could mimic the author’s career. I even titled my first novel—Throbbing Manhood. Since I was in the fourth grade and didn’t know a great deal about manhood, throbbing or otherwise, I didn’t get much further than the title.
I open the book and read, trying to ignore the doodles in the margin. Fuck Officer Kingsley. Petersberg Posse. Ronald 4eva. I doubt these readers were ever taught how to annotate a text despite their obvious desire to talk back. Pages 13-34 are ripped from the binding, leaving a sizeable hole in the plot.
“You in for prostitution,” Desiree says, locking eyes with me while she guesses my crime. “And you in for drug possession.” This time she points to our fourth cellie, a woman I nearly forgot was here. She sits on the other top bunk, rocking, otherwise silent.
“This is crap,” Tess says. “I’m gonna miss three weeks of work all ‘cause Ron’s got a cousin who’s a cop.”
“Your boyfriend’s cousin arrested you?” I ask.
“Ron called him to tell him I was driving his car,” Tess says. “On a suspended. But I was just trying to get away from him. To stop fighting, ya know?”
“Will you lose your job?” I ask.
Tess looks at me like this is a stupid question. She never answers it. Instead, she says, “Just have to sleep with that dishwasher at work now. He offered $200 and looks clean. Besides, he can’t speak English too well so he can’t tell Ron what we do.”
“You bilingual?” Desiree asks. Tess shakes her head. “How you know he wants to have sex then?”
“Hand gestures,” she says, making a circle with her index finger and thumb, then pushing the middle finger from her other hand through it.
“Then he could use hand gestures to tell Ron,” Desiree says.
“Good point,” I say. “I’ve known you for less than an hour and I know your boyfriend set your hair on fire. I don’t think you’re the best judge of character.” I stay glued to my spot on the floor and try to look tough, certain Tess will punch or kick me, glad I didn’t take it a step further and call her stupid for even considering Ron at this point.
“You’re probably right,” Tess says instead. “What do you do?”
“I told you,” Desiree says. “She a prostitute.” Looking around I realize it’s probably unusual for women to wear cocktail dresses and tiaras in Southside Virginia, especially women who land themselves in jail. I doubt most prostitutes dress much differently from the women in my cell and decide these women are just buying into Hollywood stereotypes. I realize I’ve bought into this myth, too. I think of the pregnant prostitute who used to work the corner of a block where I lived in Philadelphia as an undergraduate. She usually wore spandex and an Eagles sweatshirt. It upset me at the time how little pride she took in her work, how little she looked like Julia Roberts, so much so I almost bought her a pair of fishnets.
“I teach college,” I say.
“What you teach?” Desiree asks.
“Writing,” I say.
“Then you can help me write an alibi,” Desiree says.
“Or she can fill in the missing pages of that book,” Tess says to Desiree, pointing to the novel.
“Read the first few pages out loud,” Desiree says, speaking to just me as she scoops up the book. “I forget what happens.”
“She can’t read,” Tess tells me.
“Can too,” Desiree says. “I’m just lazy.”
“I’ve seen her trying to sound out words,” Tess says in a way that sounds more concerned than antagonistic. This makes me like her.
We form a reading semi-circle on the ground, our fourth cellie remaining on the top bunk, sitting Indian-style with her head between her knees. I take it from the top, then start filling in details like a Choose Your Own Adventure book. Tess and Desiree ooh and aah at my authorial decisions. I feel accomplished, like I’ve finally found the audience for that romance novel I started to pen in the fourth grade.
“Why doesn’t someone else take over?” I ask.
I pass the novel to Desiree, but she turns from me. “Nah,” she says. “You more charismatic. Charismatic, the way an expert can be.”
FIRST
Blues and reds flash in my rearview. I know I was speeding—I’m always speeding—and hope the cop makes this exchange quick because I want to go to bed. I’m on my way home from a trip to Chapel Hill and I’m almost to Richmond, yet far enough to be in the middle of nowhere.
“Any idea how fast you were traveling?” the cop asks. He wears a State Trooper’s hat and its large brim casts a shadow over his face making it impossible for me to make out anything other than his mouth. It’s 3 am.
“Sure,” I say. “I have an idea.”
“Eighty in a sixty-five,” the officer says. “In Virginia, that’s reckless.”
“I thought the speed limit was seventy,” I say.
“Step out of the vehicle,” he says, dismissing my comment. The cop tells me I’m going to have to perform a series of roadside sobriety tests—walk a straight line in six-inch heels while blinded by oncoming traffic, say the alphabet backwards from n to a, name at least four Civil War Generals that fought on the Confederate side. Balance isn’t my strong suit, plus I’m a Yankee here on loan for graduate school.
“Can I take off my heels?” I ask.
“No,” the officer says. “Too much trash and glass on the shoulder.” Since I can’t walk in stilettos too well as is, especially brand new stilettos that haven’t adjusted to the shapes of my feet and have left blisters on their backs, I teeter and wobble.
“Can I name Revolutionary War heroes instead?” I ask. “Major players in the Vietnam War? A timeline for World War I or II?”
“Confederates,” the officer says.
“Robert E. Lee,” I say. “Stonewall Jackson. Beauregard.” I feel proud of that last one because I seem to pull it out of thin air, recalling a bar called General Beauregard’s in Athens, Georgia and how my friend and I joked that someone should open a place called Sherman’s right across the street, giant torches book-ending its doors.
“That’s three,” the officer says.
“Sherman,” I say. I know he’s a Yankee. I know he burned Atlanta to the ground, but I don’t know anything else to say.
“How much have you had to drink?” the officer asks, forgetting the alphabet bit.
“Just one,” I say, a stock response that isn’t even true. Since this situation is so unfamiliar, I find myself grasping at clichés.
“Blow into this,” the officer says, shoving a device that smells medicinal into my face. After a few seconds, it beeps and he backs away. “Close enough to .08 to take you to the station. Roadside Breathalyzers are crap.”
I assume .08 is past the legal limit in Virginia and, even though I feel perfectly sober and capable, I fear this newfangled machine at the station might produce that magic number. He must be certain it will because he shackles my ankles and cuffs my wrists, before pushing me into the back seat of his cruiser. As he snakes through country roads marked by the occasional clapboard shack or trailer, he explains he has to transport me to the jail in the next county over because there are no holding cells for women where we’re at. As an afterthought he decides to read me my Miranda rights from the front seat and, as he goes through each, I have a feeling most of these rights will be violated.
LATER
The guards slide four metal trays through the door. Breakfast. I don’t get up, but Tess brings me my meal—runny eggs, white bread, an empty cup to fill with tinny water from the sink in our cell, and an apple with skin that’s more brown than green. I pocket the fruit in case lunch is worse, then position the tray by the door.
“You gonna eat those eggs?” Tess asks. “They always give me gas, but if you’re not gonna eat them I want your share.” I look towards the toilet a few feet away but, before I can object, Tess is spooning my eggs onto her plate and Desiree descends on our fourth cellie’s tray. They don’t sample this, then that, dipping their bread into the yolks of their eggs, but instead eat directionally, moving from right to left like the sun moves across the sky. They don’t say a word while eating.
“You can’t save that apple,” Tess says once she’s finished, reaching into my pocket. “Sorry,” she says when she notices me flinch. “But that’s considering smuggling contraband. Depending on a guard’s mood, saving an apple can add four weeks to your sentence. You better eat it now.” I wonder how many times she’s been here. Then. it’s almost like she reads my mind as she starts in on a list, comparing and contrasting all of the jails and prisons in the region much like I might compare restaurants or rate hotels on Yelp. She explains which have the best and worst food, guards, and showers. She swears this jail is the worst in every category.
The guards corral the trays in five minutes, whether inmates are finished or not.
I think of returning to the romance novel, then consider some of the games my family played on road trips. I don’t want to lead in with “I went on vacation and packed something that starts with the letter a” or “I went to the grocery store and bought something that starts with the letter q.” I know we’re all hungry to be somewhere else, to taste something better after that wretched prison breakfast. I can’t believe after backpacking through Europe and South America, I’m longing for a simple trip to the Piggy Wiggly.
“Let’s play word association,” I say.
“Word association?” Desiree asks.
“You say a word, then the next person says whatever word comes to mind,” Tess explains. “It’s easy. My mom made me play in the car during the summer to try to make me forget how hot I was. She refused to put on the ac because she needed the windows down to smoke. Anyhow, rainbow,” Tess starts, jumping to her feet, anxious. She tells me she was prescribed Lithium on the outside, but here they make people come off of everything, just like that. She says it feels okay to feel manic and lack focus at times, but that she’s encountered some real crazies forced to forfeit their anti-psychotic meds, a prison rule that sometimes leads to things getting pretty dicey. It seems most of the prison rules are designed to make people get worse instead of better. Even though Tess excludes herself from the ways these policies affect her, she tells me how she tried to commit suicide the last time she was incarcerated. She decides she probably just missed her boyfriend too much and couldn’t think clearly because of it. She decides the prison psychologist was right, too—that she just wanted attention.
“Grill,” Desiree says, bringing us back to our game.
“How you get grill from rainbow?” Tess asks.
“Pot of motherfucking gold,” Desiree says. I feel embarrassed because I’d almost blurted George Forman, picturing lean burgers and infomercials instead of blinged out teeth.
“Kanye West,” I say instead. I’d read an article about him wanting to replace his teeth with diamonds.
We look to our fourth cellie who’s still on the top bunk. “Crack,” she says. Tess tries to keep the game going, offering “Whitney Houston,” but once we reach our fourth cellie she offers the same word again, the only image her mind is capable of conjuring.
The guards interrupt our game. They’re transferring Desiree to gen pop and she’s happy about the move. The tiers have board games, cable TV, and commissary stores, rackets that get poor families to support the prison system. Tess told me these stores even have their own channels to advertise their wares to inmates. She knows it’s a scam, but also knows there’s nothing else to do here.
“Don’t get cable,” Tess says to Desiree as she’s leaving. “They want you to get the cable, but I got my GED instead last time.”
I hand Desiree the tattered romance novel. “Sound out the words. You’ll get the hang off it.” I hope they’ll assign her a reading tutor, put her in some sort of class or workshop. Somehow I convince myself they will because it’s easier for this to be my last image of Desiree. Who exactly is stealing from whom is all muddled in my mind and I’m starting to feel like it’s the wrong people who end up on the inside.
“That’s non-transferable,” the guard says, scooping the book out of Desiree’s hands as she leaves us.
Our other cellie’s withdraw intensifies. She sprawls in front of the toilet, her face resting on its seat while she dry heaves. Tess and I take turns holding back her hair and rubbing her back.
“Can I make my call?” I scream at a passing guard. Initially, they thought I had to stay for eight hours to sober up. Then they thought I was waiting for a bondsman to post my bail. At one point they thought I was Desiree, that I was being charged for stealing from a grocery store.
“Right,” he says. “We finally found your file. Not sure why we kept you.”
He leads me to a front desk, then I tell him which numbers to dial. “Scottie!” I say too quickly as he hands me the phone. It’s still ringing. He answers after four rings. “I was supposed to pick up my dry cleaning,” I say, wanting to start the conversation with something small, something familiar. “Could you pick it up? I won’t be back to Richmond before five?”
“Where are you?” he asks. When I tell him, he freaks out and says he’s on his way.
“We’ll come get you when he’s here,” the guard says, taking away the phone before I’ve even said goodbye. I’m confused why they don’t set me free, but I don’t press the issue. If I were permitted to walk out of this jail now, I wouldn’t know where to go. I suppose that’s the point—isolating inmates from the outside world and from any familial connections as much as possible so that all they know is jail, so that their points of comparison become more and more distant the longer they’re here.
“You leaving or what?” Tess asks as the door locks behind me. She barely looks up from the romance novel she’s reading again.
“How can you get so into that book?” I ask.
“These people have money and they don’t get beat up.” I don’t know what to say, but luckily she starts talking again. “Your parents must be proud, you being a fancy college teacher and all,” she says. My thoughts flash to how disappointed my parents would be right now, though, and how disappointing studying to be a “fancy college teacher” could be as well. Tess and I were saddled with different kinds of debt. Her criminal record would likely hold her back from getting an education, while the debts I incurred from getting an education would likely hold me back from ever living much beyond hand-to-mouth. Still, I recognize paying my student loan officers just means not eating out as much or not buying a house anytime soon. My debts hold less weight.
“I want my kids to be proud of me,” Tess says. “That’s why I told them I’d be away for job training.”
I consider what she’s going to tell her kids if she’s fired. I figure most restaurants don’t hold jobs for people while they’re incarcerated. Then I recall my first job in high school. I answered an ad for a waitress and later found out I’d be filling in for a girl while she finished her stint in prison. I trained with a sixteen-year-old whose boyfriend dropped off their two children during her shift because he couldn’t find a sitter. I alternated between bringing them coloring books and Shirley Temples. They raced each other to the bottoms of their Shirley Temples, certain the drinks were alcoholic, giddy because they felt let into some secret world and didn’t want some adult swiping it away, just like that. They played MASH on the backs of their placemats, fantasizing about living in Los Angles and getting jobs as models or sports agents. At the time I told myself those kids didn’t stand a chance at getting any decent jobs. Feeling bad for them, I convinced the bartender to put the Cartoon Network on the big screen television. I walked outside for a cigarette during my break, then kept walking to my car, leaving my nametag and apron in the parking space beside mine, these artifacts waiting to get rained on or run over by a customer anxious to devour some ribs.
“Maybe I’ll take some classes at the community college when I get out,” Tess says. “You’ve got me thinking. I can’t be a waitress forever, right?
For some reason I believe Tess has a shot, unlike the two kids I chaperoned that afternoon in high school. I can’t explain my change in attitude. Perhaps it came with age or perhaps I’m just as bad as most people, incapable of empathizing until I’m forced to because I don’t have the choice to walk away. I’m also left with the sinking feeling that, as much as I’ve wanted to get out of here as quickly as possible, now I wish I had more time with Tess.
FINALLY
It’s the third time my case is on the docket. The first time the officer was a no show, the second my public defender, but today I can account for all parties. It’s also the third morning of spending hours in front of the mirror, tossing aside countless dresses that hinted at recklessness, finally deciding on an outfit that I hoped screamed innocence. Today that outfit’s a plaid jumper, cardigan, Mary Jane flats, and a pearl necklace. I even fashioned my hair into a bun.
The courthouse is packed, so much so the guards rely on walkie-talkies to seat people. Initially, there is only space in the courtroom for those whose cases are being heard. All wives, cousins, and grandmothers are instructed to wait outside. As time passes spots free up and the guards approach this horde, saying things like they can seat a party of four or just one up front. It takes hours before they deem seating to be general admission.
Since my public defender suggested I accept a plea bargain for a twelve-month license suspension, use of a restricted after the first three, I doubt she understands the logistics of my case. I have a clean driving record, a clean criminal background, and, most importantly, I’m only facing reckless speeding charges since I initially blew a .07. I don’t trust her credibility. Her suit needs ironing and she props open a book on her lap that looks like DUI for Dummies. I’ve heard of defendants accusing cops of having faulty radar guns or detectors, but never of a cop insisting his case should by won because his roadside equipment was shoddy.
“I want to testify,” I say lowly, elbowing my public defender while another case is being heard.
“I can ask the officer questions to trip him up maybe,” she says. “He didn’t record the time of your arrest which invalidates the results of your Breathalyzer.”
“But results of my Breathalyzer should invalidate this case,” I say.
“If we lose we can take this to the higher court,” she says.
“Appeal to Virginia’s Supreme Court?” I ask.
“No,” she says, confused. “The court on the second floor of this building. If you testify you’ll have to be sworn in. On a Bible.”
“I’ll take my chances,” I say. I quickly learned that, when calling attorneys to potentially hire, they would answer anywhere from one to three questions before asking me to set up an appointment. Since I had no cash to hire a better attorney, I used what I did have—time. I compiled a list of every question I needed answered and telephoned every attorney in the yellow pages until I’d covered each, free of charge. I knew I would have to essentially defend myself and, sitting in the courtroom now, I’m glad I made that decision as I watch other incompetent or burnt-out public defenders allow their clients to be handed far steeper sentences than they deserve. It reminds me of how Tess’ boyfriend was never punished for nearly killing her, yet she went to jail for driving his car.
The judge calls me to the stand and starts in on a series of questions for the trooper and me. Neither of us is sworn in. The judge examines my driving record despite the plaintiff’s objection. Since it is out-of-state, the cop’s lawyer argues its validity.
“So you’ve never had a run in with the law,” the judge says more than asks. “Do you have job? One that pays, I mean?”
“Yes, your honor,” I say. “I’m in graduate school full-time. Also, I teach at two colleges. Also, since this experience I’ve started teaching writing workshops to at-risk youth.”
“That’s enough,” the judge interrupts. “You say she was cooperative during the arrest?”
“Yes, your honor,” the trooper says.
“Let’s reduce this reckless to speeding then,” the judge says.
“I ask that you require this young lady to complete a driver’s safety class,” the cop’s lawyer says.
“Is this agreeable?” the judge asks.
It’s not agreeable to me, but my public defender shouts an affirmative. The judge tells me where to pick up my paperwork and, just like that, he moves onto the next case. “I can’t believe we won,” my public defender says while walking back to our chairs to retrieve our belongings. “It’s the first time I’ve won a case like this.”
NOW
I know the probability is low that Tess still works here with all the restaurants and bars in this world. Still, I dismiss mathematics and come here because I’m a writer and that’s what most writers do.
I’ve been thinking a lot about Tess lately. At the start of each semester at the community college, I’d scan my rosters for her name even though I knew ex-convicts couldn’t get student loans from the government and Tess couldn’t afford school without financial assistance. Still, I kept looking. I never came across her name. I wasn’t even sure what her name was short for or even if it was short for anything. Then, I took a full-time job teaching at a four-year college out-of-state and I knew I’d never find her name on its rosters.
Tess is nowhere in sight. I picture her in a college classroom, wildly raising her hand, eager to answer any and all questions her professor asks. Then, I picture her back in prison. Since I won’t let myself imagine her kids, bereft, motherless, I think instead of Tess being reunited with Desiree, teaching the woman how to read.
I want to ask the waitress for a refill on my water, but when I attempt to flag her down I notice she’s crying at the bar, her feet propped on the stool next to where she sits. The manager—I assume he’s the manager because he’s wearing a button-down shirt and tie that look inexpensive but still stand out here—rubs her back and neck. I decide they aren’t dating and that this is probably some sort of sexual harassment. In this moment it’s almost as if she’s Tess, as if she has the same types of problems with the same types of men. I’m in the process of splitting with my first bad boyfriend, too, one who’s been manipulative and controlling, one who’s taken advantage of knowing that I care and, so, I could understand a little better what Tess went through. I could see how my relationship could have turned darker, uglier, if I hadn’t had the education to piece together what was happening and the self-confidence and options that came along with that education.
When I’d asked my boyfriend to help me find Tess, he declined. He couldn’t imagine being seen in a chain restaurant. He also couldn’t imagine my wanting to listen to and potentially help a person who I barely knew and whom he thought could do nothing for me in return. Suddenly, I see what he must be like out in the world and he is just like me that day in high school, observing my co-worker’s kids at the bar and walking out when shit got too real.
“Does Tess work here?” I ask the waitress as she returns from her crying jag to check on me.
“Never heard of her,” the waitress says. “I’m new here, though. Filling in for someone, I guess.”
A song that sounds like “Send Me An Angel” blares and, even though it isn’t it, I pretend like it is. I think of Tess singing the way she had in our cell that morning, but her voice sounds better the way I chose to remember it.
I tear up thinking about her and where she might or might not be. Jailface isn’t possible on the outside. What we each have to lose is much tougher than anything we could pretend to be and, when I think about all Tess has already lost, unfairly, a feeling of smallness almost swallows me up.
“Last night Ron set my hair on fire. My boyfriend,” my cellie, Tess, explains when she notices my staring. Hair’s dead by definition, the cells within each strand no longer living once they reach the skin’s surface, but her hair looks charred. Tess resembles a bartender I knew once, terrible tattoos she sketched herself covering her arms and calves. I feel bad, critiquing her tattoos this way, but it’s easier than thinking about her burnt ponytail and what her strawberry blonde hair might have looked like before it was set ablaze. Before she met her boyfriend. Before she dropped out of high school. Before she had to attend one of the worst schools in the state.
“Sorry,” I say.
“For what?” Tess asks. She shoves her head under the sink’s spigot in the corner of our holding cell. Rusty water mixed with ash pools in its metallic bowl. Our other two cellies don’t comment.
“It’s sad about your hair,” I say. I think of how I chopped off all of my hair in the eleventh grade so I could change its color and style with the switch of a wig when leaving school. A black beehive. A cotton candy pink bob. Dirty blonde dreadlocks. I hate how Tess has been pushed into her new hair, though, and I wish I had my box of wigs to offer.
I examine the bottoms of my feet. Black. The guards made us leave our shoes outside our cell. “The laces could be used for hangings,” the guard said. “And those heels could be used as weapons.” He pointed to my brand new BCGB pumps, then tugged at strands of his Fu Manchu. If I were going to gouge someone’s eyes out with my shoes, I probably wouldn’t have spent so much time searching for designer brands on clearance racks. But that would entail premeditation and the guards seem to understand that most of these women act on impulse, rather than weighing their options. It seemed even more than that. These women didn’t have options to weigh. Their lives were a game of action and reaction. Things were done to them. They did things back. Somewhere along the way, perhaps at birth, the word choice was removed from their vocabularies.
“Send me an angel,” Tess sings while ringing out what’s left of her hair. Her voice is gravely and she hits just one note. “That’s my favorite song. I love 80’s shit.”
“I remember roller skating to that song,” I say. Tess nods. I think of the rink’s dj, some guy named Johnny who my friends and I thought was the coolest. It occurs to me now that he was a guy in his thirties who pedaled glow-in-the-dark necklaces to children. A guy in his thirties who wore a Michael Jackson glove and only stepped out of his booth to demonstrate his fancy footwork on the rink during power ballads.
It also occurs to me that, although Tess looks much older, she’s probably about my age. If we grew up in the same town I might have hung out with her friends or she might have hung out with mine. We might’ve drooled over Johnny together and helped each other reapply our apricot-flavored lip-gloss in front of the dingy bathroom mirror.
“I deserved it,” Tess says, more to herself. She rolls up the sleeves of her stained Virginia Tech sweatshirt. Since we’re in a holding cell, we don’t get orange jumpsuits yet. Even though it’s sleeting outside, inside it feels like the worst part of summer.
“I stole his car. He loves that Mazda more than anyone. What you in for?”
“Theft,” another cellie, Desiree, answers instead. She jumps from the top bunk. She tells us she’s a cosmetologist and that she wanted to apply make-up one last time before turning herself in. The foundation, rouge, lip and eyeliner might last until she’s forced to take her first shower. I’m told that could be days. She resembles a drag queen, though I’m not sure if this is because of her muscular stature or because of the way her make-up is applied. My mother would call it “war paint” and talk badly about the types of girls who used cosmetics this way.
I push my back against the cinderblock wall, then slide down it until my bottom meets my feet. My gold-speckled cocktail dress is short so I have to be careful how I cross my legs. Since I know I’ll eventually have to pee in front of these strangers, I find myself grasping at the few elements of etiquette I can control.
I consider how the backs of my legs will likely be just as black as the bottoms of my feet now, sitting on the concrete floor. I look towards the bunks, but they’re only covered with thin, soiled-looking sheets.
“You can ask a guard for a blanket,” Tess says, following my gaze. “To sit on. I asked for a book yesterday.” She slides me a beaten-up romance novel, though someone scratched out its title. I used to read my mother’s Daniel Steeles during summer vacations. The prose was so simple, the situations so predictable, I was certain I could mimic the author’s career. I even titled my first novel—Throbbing Manhood. Since I was in the fourth grade and didn’t know a great deal about manhood, throbbing or otherwise, I didn’t get much further than the title.
I open the book and read, trying to ignore the doodles in the margin. Fuck Officer Kingsley. Petersberg Posse. Ronald 4eva. I doubt these readers were ever taught how to annotate a text despite their obvious desire to talk back. Pages 13-34 are ripped from the binding, leaving a sizeable hole in the plot.
“You in for prostitution,” Desiree says, locking eyes with me while she guesses my crime. “And you in for drug possession.” This time she points to our fourth cellie, a woman I nearly forgot was here. She sits on the other top bunk, rocking, otherwise silent.
“This is crap,” Tess says. “I’m gonna miss three weeks of work all ‘cause Ron’s got a cousin who’s a cop.”
“Your boyfriend’s cousin arrested you?” I ask.
“Ron called him to tell him I was driving his car,” Tess says. “On a suspended. But I was just trying to get away from him. To stop fighting, ya know?”
“Will you lose your job?” I ask.
Tess looks at me like this is a stupid question. She never answers it. Instead, she says, “Just have to sleep with that dishwasher at work now. He offered $200 and looks clean. Besides, he can’t speak English too well so he can’t tell Ron what we do.”
“You bilingual?” Desiree asks. Tess shakes her head. “How you know he wants to have sex then?”
“Hand gestures,” she says, making a circle with her index finger and thumb, then pushing the middle finger from her other hand through it.
“Then he could use hand gestures to tell Ron,” Desiree says.
“Good point,” I say. “I’ve known you for less than an hour and I know your boyfriend set your hair on fire. I don’t think you’re the best judge of character.” I stay glued to my spot on the floor and try to look tough, certain Tess will punch or kick me, glad I didn’t take it a step further and call her stupid for even considering Ron at this point.
“You’re probably right,” Tess says instead. “What do you do?”
“I told you,” Desiree says. “She a prostitute.” Looking around I realize it’s probably unusual for women to wear cocktail dresses and tiaras in Southside Virginia, especially women who land themselves in jail. I doubt most prostitutes dress much differently from the women in my cell and decide these women are just buying into Hollywood stereotypes. I realize I’ve bought into this myth, too. I think of the pregnant prostitute who used to work the corner of a block where I lived in Philadelphia as an undergraduate. She usually wore spandex and an Eagles sweatshirt. It upset me at the time how little pride she took in her work, how little she looked like Julia Roberts, so much so I almost bought her a pair of fishnets.
“I teach college,” I say.
“What you teach?” Desiree asks.
“Writing,” I say.
“Then you can help me write an alibi,” Desiree says.
“Or she can fill in the missing pages of that book,” Tess says to Desiree, pointing to the novel.
“Read the first few pages out loud,” Desiree says, speaking to just me as she scoops up the book. “I forget what happens.”
“She can’t read,” Tess tells me.
“Can too,” Desiree says. “I’m just lazy.”
“I’ve seen her trying to sound out words,” Tess says in a way that sounds more concerned than antagonistic. This makes me like her.
We form a reading semi-circle on the ground, our fourth cellie remaining on the top bunk, sitting Indian-style with her head between her knees. I take it from the top, then start filling in details like a Choose Your Own Adventure book. Tess and Desiree ooh and aah at my authorial decisions. I feel accomplished, like I’ve finally found the audience for that romance novel I started to pen in the fourth grade.
“Why doesn’t someone else take over?” I ask.
I pass the novel to Desiree, but she turns from me. “Nah,” she says. “You more charismatic. Charismatic, the way an expert can be.”
FIRST
Blues and reds flash in my rearview. I know I was speeding—I’m always speeding—and hope the cop makes this exchange quick because I want to go to bed. I’m on my way home from a trip to Chapel Hill and I’m almost to Richmond, yet far enough to be in the middle of nowhere.
“Any idea how fast you were traveling?” the cop asks. He wears a State Trooper’s hat and its large brim casts a shadow over his face making it impossible for me to make out anything other than his mouth. It’s 3 am.
“Sure,” I say. “I have an idea.”
“Eighty in a sixty-five,” the officer says. “In Virginia, that’s reckless.”
“I thought the speed limit was seventy,” I say.
“Step out of the vehicle,” he says, dismissing my comment. The cop tells me I’m going to have to perform a series of roadside sobriety tests—walk a straight line in six-inch heels while blinded by oncoming traffic, say the alphabet backwards from n to a, name at least four Civil War Generals that fought on the Confederate side. Balance isn’t my strong suit, plus I’m a Yankee here on loan for graduate school.
“Can I take off my heels?” I ask.
“No,” the officer says. “Too much trash and glass on the shoulder.” Since I can’t walk in stilettos too well as is, especially brand new stilettos that haven’t adjusted to the shapes of my feet and have left blisters on their backs, I teeter and wobble.
“Can I name Revolutionary War heroes instead?” I ask. “Major players in the Vietnam War? A timeline for World War I or II?”
“Confederates,” the officer says.
“Robert E. Lee,” I say. “Stonewall Jackson. Beauregard.” I feel proud of that last one because I seem to pull it out of thin air, recalling a bar called General Beauregard’s in Athens, Georgia and how my friend and I joked that someone should open a place called Sherman’s right across the street, giant torches book-ending its doors.
“That’s three,” the officer says.
“Sherman,” I say. I know he’s a Yankee. I know he burned Atlanta to the ground, but I don’t know anything else to say.
“How much have you had to drink?” the officer asks, forgetting the alphabet bit.
“Just one,” I say, a stock response that isn’t even true. Since this situation is so unfamiliar, I find myself grasping at clichés.
“Blow into this,” the officer says, shoving a device that smells medicinal into my face. After a few seconds, it beeps and he backs away. “Close enough to .08 to take you to the station. Roadside Breathalyzers are crap.”
I assume .08 is past the legal limit in Virginia and, even though I feel perfectly sober and capable, I fear this newfangled machine at the station might produce that magic number. He must be certain it will because he shackles my ankles and cuffs my wrists, before pushing me into the back seat of his cruiser. As he snakes through country roads marked by the occasional clapboard shack or trailer, he explains he has to transport me to the jail in the next county over because there are no holding cells for women where we’re at. As an afterthought he decides to read me my Miranda rights from the front seat and, as he goes through each, I have a feeling most of these rights will be violated.
LATER
The guards slide four metal trays through the door. Breakfast. I don’t get up, but Tess brings me my meal—runny eggs, white bread, an empty cup to fill with tinny water from the sink in our cell, and an apple with skin that’s more brown than green. I pocket the fruit in case lunch is worse, then position the tray by the door.
“You gonna eat those eggs?” Tess asks. “They always give me gas, but if you’re not gonna eat them I want your share.” I look towards the toilet a few feet away but, before I can object, Tess is spooning my eggs onto her plate and Desiree descends on our fourth cellie’s tray. They don’t sample this, then that, dipping their bread into the yolks of their eggs, but instead eat directionally, moving from right to left like the sun moves across the sky. They don’t say a word while eating.
“You can’t save that apple,” Tess says once she’s finished, reaching into my pocket. “Sorry,” she says when she notices me flinch. “But that’s considering smuggling contraband. Depending on a guard’s mood, saving an apple can add four weeks to your sentence. You better eat it now.” I wonder how many times she’s been here. Then. it’s almost like she reads my mind as she starts in on a list, comparing and contrasting all of the jails and prisons in the region much like I might compare restaurants or rate hotels on Yelp. She explains which have the best and worst food, guards, and showers. She swears this jail is the worst in every category.
The guards corral the trays in five minutes, whether inmates are finished or not.
I think of returning to the romance novel, then consider some of the games my family played on road trips. I don’t want to lead in with “I went on vacation and packed something that starts with the letter a” or “I went to the grocery store and bought something that starts with the letter q.” I know we’re all hungry to be somewhere else, to taste something better after that wretched prison breakfast. I can’t believe after backpacking through Europe and South America, I’m longing for a simple trip to the Piggy Wiggly.
“Let’s play word association,” I say.
“Word association?” Desiree asks.
“You say a word, then the next person says whatever word comes to mind,” Tess explains. “It’s easy. My mom made me play in the car during the summer to try to make me forget how hot I was. She refused to put on the ac because she needed the windows down to smoke. Anyhow, rainbow,” Tess starts, jumping to her feet, anxious. She tells me she was prescribed Lithium on the outside, but here they make people come off of everything, just like that. She says it feels okay to feel manic and lack focus at times, but that she’s encountered some real crazies forced to forfeit their anti-psychotic meds, a prison rule that sometimes leads to things getting pretty dicey. It seems most of the prison rules are designed to make people get worse instead of better. Even though Tess excludes herself from the ways these policies affect her, she tells me how she tried to commit suicide the last time she was incarcerated. She decides she probably just missed her boyfriend too much and couldn’t think clearly because of it. She decides the prison psychologist was right, too—that she just wanted attention.
“Grill,” Desiree says, bringing us back to our game.
“How you get grill from rainbow?” Tess asks.
“Pot of motherfucking gold,” Desiree says. I feel embarrassed because I’d almost blurted George Forman, picturing lean burgers and infomercials instead of blinged out teeth.
“Kanye West,” I say instead. I’d read an article about him wanting to replace his teeth with diamonds.
We look to our fourth cellie who’s still on the top bunk. “Crack,” she says. Tess tries to keep the game going, offering “Whitney Houston,” but once we reach our fourth cellie she offers the same word again, the only image her mind is capable of conjuring.
The guards interrupt our game. They’re transferring Desiree to gen pop and she’s happy about the move. The tiers have board games, cable TV, and commissary stores, rackets that get poor families to support the prison system. Tess told me these stores even have their own channels to advertise their wares to inmates. She knows it’s a scam, but also knows there’s nothing else to do here.
“Don’t get cable,” Tess says to Desiree as she’s leaving. “They want you to get the cable, but I got my GED instead last time.”
I hand Desiree the tattered romance novel. “Sound out the words. You’ll get the hang off it.” I hope they’ll assign her a reading tutor, put her in some sort of class or workshop. Somehow I convince myself they will because it’s easier for this to be my last image of Desiree. Who exactly is stealing from whom is all muddled in my mind and I’m starting to feel like it’s the wrong people who end up on the inside.
“That’s non-transferable,” the guard says, scooping the book out of Desiree’s hands as she leaves us.
Our other cellie’s withdraw intensifies. She sprawls in front of the toilet, her face resting on its seat while she dry heaves. Tess and I take turns holding back her hair and rubbing her back.
“Can I make my call?” I scream at a passing guard. Initially, they thought I had to stay for eight hours to sober up. Then they thought I was waiting for a bondsman to post my bail. At one point they thought I was Desiree, that I was being charged for stealing from a grocery store.
“Right,” he says. “We finally found your file. Not sure why we kept you.”
He leads me to a front desk, then I tell him which numbers to dial. “Scottie!” I say too quickly as he hands me the phone. It’s still ringing. He answers after four rings. “I was supposed to pick up my dry cleaning,” I say, wanting to start the conversation with something small, something familiar. “Could you pick it up? I won’t be back to Richmond before five?”
“Where are you?” he asks. When I tell him, he freaks out and says he’s on his way.
“We’ll come get you when he’s here,” the guard says, taking away the phone before I’ve even said goodbye. I’m confused why they don’t set me free, but I don’t press the issue. If I were permitted to walk out of this jail now, I wouldn’t know where to go. I suppose that’s the point—isolating inmates from the outside world and from any familial connections as much as possible so that all they know is jail, so that their points of comparison become more and more distant the longer they’re here.
“You leaving or what?” Tess asks as the door locks behind me. She barely looks up from the romance novel she’s reading again.
“How can you get so into that book?” I ask.
“These people have money and they don’t get beat up.” I don’t know what to say, but luckily she starts talking again. “Your parents must be proud, you being a fancy college teacher and all,” she says. My thoughts flash to how disappointed my parents would be right now, though, and how disappointing studying to be a “fancy college teacher” could be as well. Tess and I were saddled with different kinds of debt. Her criminal record would likely hold her back from getting an education, while the debts I incurred from getting an education would likely hold me back from ever living much beyond hand-to-mouth. Still, I recognize paying my student loan officers just means not eating out as much or not buying a house anytime soon. My debts hold less weight.
“I want my kids to be proud of me,” Tess says. “That’s why I told them I’d be away for job training.”
I consider what she’s going to tell her kids if she’s fired. I figure most restaurants don’t hold jobs for people while they’re incarcerated. Then I recall my first job in high school. I answered an ad for a waitress and later found out I’d be filling in for a girl while she finished her stint in prison. I trained with a sixteen-year-old whose boyfriend dropped off their two children during her shift because he couldn’t find a sitter. I alternated between bringing them coloring books and Shirley Temples. They raced each other to the bottoms of their Shirley Temples, certain the drinks were alcoholic, giddy because they felt let into some secret world and didn’t want some adult swiping it away, just like that. They played MASH on the backs of their placemats, fantasizing about living in Los Angles and getting jobs as models or sports agents. At the time I told myself those kids didn’t stand a chance at getting any decent jobs. Feeling bad for them, I convinced the bartender to put the Cartoon Network on the big screen television. I walked outside for a cigarette during my break, then kept walking to my car, leaving my nametag and apron in the parking space beside mine, these artifacts waiting to get rained on or run over by a customer anxious to devour some ribs.
“Maybe I’ll take some classes at the community college when I get out,” Tess says. “You’ve got me thinking. I can’t be a waitress forever, right?
For some reason I believe Tess has a shot, unlike the two kids I chaperoned that afternoon in high school. I can’t explain my change in attitude. Perhaps it came with age or perhaps I’m just as bad as most people, incapable of empathizing until I’m forced to because I don’t have the choice to walk away. I’m also left with the sinking feeling that, as much as I’ve wanted to get out of here as quickly as possible, now I wish I had more time with Tess.
FINALLY
It’s the third time my case is on the docket. The first time the officer was a no show, the second my public defender, but today I can account for all parties. It’s also the third morning of spending hours in front of the mirror, tossing aside countless dresses that hinted at recklessness, finally deciding on an outfit that I hoped screamed innocence. Today that outfit’s a plaid jumper, cardigan, Mary Jane flats, and a pearl necklace. I even fashioned my hair into a bun.
The courthouse is packed, so much so the guards rely on walkie-talkies to seat people. Initially, there is only space in the courtroom for those whose cases are being heard. All wives, cousins, and grandmothers are instructed to wait outside. As time passes spots free up and the guards approach this horde, saying things like they can seat a party of four or just one up front. It takes hours before they deem seating to be general admission.
Since my public defender suggested I accept a plea bargain for a twelve-month license suspension, use of a restricted after the first three, I doubt she understands the logistics of my case. I have a clean driving record, a clean criminal background, and, most importantly, I’m only facing reckless speeding charges since I initially blew a .07. I don’t trust her credibility. Her suit needs ironing and she props open a book on her lap that looks like DUI for Dummies. I’ve heard of defendants accusing cops of having faulty radar guns or detectors, but never of a cop insisting his case should by won because his roadside equipment was shoddy.
“I want to testify,” I say lowly, elbowing my public defender while another case is being heard.
“I can ask the officer questions to trip him up maybe,” she says. “He didn’t record the time of your arrest which invalidates the results of your Breathalyzer.”
“But results of my Breathalyzer should invalidate this case,” I say.
“If we lose we can take this to the higher court,” she says.
“Appeal to Virginia’s Supreme Court?” I ask.
“No,” she says, confused. “The court on the second floor of this building. If you testify you’ll have to be sworn in. On a Bible.”
“I’ll take my chances,” I say. I quickly learned that, when calling attorneys to potentially hire, they would answer anywhere from one to three questions before asking me to set up an appointment. Since I had no cash to hire a better attorney, I used what I did have—time. I compiled a list of every question I needed answered and telephoned every attorney in the yellow pages until I’d covered each, free of charge. I knew I would have to essentially defend myself and, sitting in the courtroom now, I’m glad I made that decision as I watch other incompetent or burnt-out public defenders allow their clients to be handed far steeper sentences than they deserve. It reminds me of how Tess’ boyfriend was never punished for nearly killing her, yet she went to jail for driving his car.
The judge calls me to the stand and starts in on a series of questions for the trooper and me. Neither of us is sworn in. The judge examines my driving record despite the plaintiff’s objection. Since it is out-of-state, the cop’s lawyer argues its validity.
“So you’ve never had a run in with the law,” the judge says more than asks. “Do you have job? One that pays, I mean?”
“Yes, your honor,” I say. “I’m in graduate school full-time. Also, I teach at two colleges. Also, since this experience I’ve started teaching writing workshops to at-risk youth.”
“That’s enough,” the judge interrupts. “You say she was cooperative during the arrest?”
“Yes, your honor,” the trooper says.
“Let’s reduce this reckless to speeding then,” the judge says.
“I ask that you require this young lady to complete a driver’s safety class,” the cop’s lawyer says.
“Is this agreeable?” the judge asks.
It’s not agreeable to me, but my public defender shouts an affirmative. The judge tells me where to pick up my paperwork and, just like that, he moves onto the next case. “I can’t believe we won,” my public defender says while walking back to our chairs to retrieve our belongings. “It’s the first time I’ve won a case like this.”
NOW
I know the probability is low that Tess still works here with all the restaurants and bars in this world. Still, I dismiss mathematics and come here because I’m a writer and that’s what most writers do.
I’ve been thinking a lot about Tess lately. At the start of each semester at the community college, I’d scan my rosters for her name even though I knew ex-convicts couldn’t get student loans from the government and Tess couldn’t afford school without financial assistance. Still, I kept looking. I never came across her name. I wasn’t even sure what her name was short for or even if it was short for anything. Then, I took a full-time job teaching at a four-year college out-of-state and I knew I’d never find her name on its rosters.
Tess is nowhere in sight. I picture her in a college classroom, wildly raising her hand, eager to answer any and all questions her professor asks. Then, I picture her back in prison. Since I won’t let myself imagine her kids, bereft, motherless, I think instead of Tess being reunited with Desiree, teaching the woman how to read.
I want to ask the waitress for a refill on my water, but when I attempt to flag her down I notice she’s crying at the bar, her feet propped on the stool next to where she sits. The manager—I assume he’s the manager because he’s wearing a button-down shirt and tie that look inexpensive but still stand out here—rubs her back and neck. I decide they aren’t dating and that this is probably some sort of sexual harassment. In this moment it’s almost as if she’s Tess, as if she has the same types of problems with the same types of men. I’m in the process of splitting with my first bad boyfriend, too, one who’s been manipulative and controlling, one who’s taken advantage of knowing that I care and, so, I could understand a little better what Tess went through. I could see how my relationship could have turned darker, uglier, if I hadn’t had the education to piece together what was happening and the self-confidence and options that came along with that education.
When I’d asked my boyfriend to help me find Tess, he declined. He couldn’t imagine being seen in a chain restaurant. He also couldn’t imagine my wanting to listen to and potentially help a person who I barely knew and whom he thought could do nothing for me in return. Suddenly, I see what he must be like out in the world and he is just like me that day in high school, observing my co-worker’s kids at the bar and walking out when shit got too real.
“Does Tess work here?” I ask the waitress as she returns from her crying jag to check on me.
“Never heard of her,” the waitress says. “I’m new here, though. Filling in for someone, I guess.”
A song that sounds like “Send Me An Angel” blares and, even though it isn’t it, I pretend like it is. I think of Tess singing the way she had in our cell that morning, but her voice sounds better the way I chose to remember it.
I tear up thinking about her and where she might or might not be. Jailface isn’t possible on the outside. What we each have to lose is much tougher than anything we could pretend to be and, when I think about all Tess has already lost, unfairly, a feeling of smallness almost swallows me up.
Lindsay A. Chudzik received her MFA in Creative Writing from Virginia Commonwealth University. Her one-act plays have appeared in a number of festivals and Lindsay's short stories and critical work have appeared in Ghost Town Literary Magazine, All Things Girl, and Texts of Consequence, among others. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor of Writing at Virginia Commonwealth University and a contributing writer for Maxwell's Playbook.
