Chapter THREE
Prison Break
It was exactly one week after my twenty-first birthday when I got my first DUI. I haven’t gotten another one since, but I’m not
ruling anything out.
My friend Lydia and I were on our way home from a night of heavy drinking and were midway through the second chorus of Whitney Houston
’s “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” when she punched me in the shoulder and slurred, “I think you’re getting pulled over.”
“Huh?” I asked as I hurriedly readjusted my rearview mirror, which I had been using in place of a compact. I lowered the volume on
the radio and turned my head around for confirmation of what looked eerily similar to glaring red lights. Lydia was right. I was
getting pulled over. “F*ck.”
I’ve always had a fear of police officers, especially when their sirens are blaring and they’re behind me. “Don’t say anything,” I
ordered as I quickly slammed on the brakes and drove over the curb and into a stop sign.
Lydia slurs when she’s sober, never mind after seven vodkas with cranberry juice. She also has a tendency to offend people who can
help us. Earlier that evening we had gone to a seventies revival bar in Westwood where the bouncer wouldn’t let us in unless we were
on the list. “I’ll handle this,” she said, right before she laid into him. “What, do you think you’re special because you’re a
bouncer? Puh-lease. You’re not an authority figure. You know you’re just fat and stupid, right? Now, can we come in or what?”
“Pretend you’re sleeping,” I barked at her as I saw two police officers get out of the patrol car.
“You weren’t doing anything. Tell them you want proof!”
“I’m serious, Lydia, shut up. Do not say a word, and close your eyes! Go to sleep.”
A burly officer in his late thirties approached my side of the car while his partner tapped a flashlight on Lydia’s window, motioning
for her to roll it down as he shined the flashlight in her face.
Lydia had to open the door because the window didn’t roll down. For my twenty-first birthday a week earlier, my father had shipped me
a 1985 two-door Yugo with one working window. The year was 1996 and, as luck would have it, the window that worked was on the driver
side, in the backseat. Forgetting my window didn’t roll down, I had tried on several occasions to throw a cigarette out of it, only to
repeatedly slam my left hand into the glass. I had started physical therapy a few weeks prior in order to get some of the strength back
in my hand, but was having trouble making a full recovery because, as the therapist said, my injury was “highly unusual.”
“Hi, sir,” I said to the policeman as I opened my door. “Sorry, my windows don’t roll down.” I was trying to keep one eye on my
cop and one eye on Lydia, knowing that any chance I had of getting out of this situation was going to depend entirely on my
performance.
“License and registration” was his hello to me.
“Sure,” I slurred as I stood up, leaning one hand on my door. As I rifled through my purse for my license, I said to him as
articulately as I could, “Can you ask me why I pulled you over?”
The officer smirked at his partner, who was asking Lydia to remain seated in the car, and then looked back at me. “I’m going to need
you to step away from your vehicle, ma’am.”
“Ma’am?” I asked, trying to figure out how old I actually was since I had been lying about my age for some time in order to get into
bars. I couldn’t remember if I was legally or illegally drunk.
“Where are you coming from, Miss…Handler?”
“Baja Fresh!” Lydia yelled from inside the car.
My officer stared at me while I tried to think of anything that rhymed with Baja Fresh that would also be open at two o’clock in the
morning.
“Her cat died,” I told my cop. “She’s really tired.”
“Uh-huh, it says on your license…”
“Oh, shit,” I said, and grabbed the license I had given him to make sure it was mine and not the fake one that said I was my twenty-
six-year-old Mormon sister, Sloane. It was my license. I handed it back to him. “Sorry.”
“It says here that you live up the street,” he continued as he pointed in the direction behind us. I realized then that I had driven
past my own apartment.
“Tell him you want to make your phone call!” Lydia screamed.
“You haven’t even asked me if I’ve been drinking.” I paused. Then I leaned in with my index finger pointed at him. “Because I
haven’t been…if that’s what you’re getting at.”
“Really?” he asked.
“Nope, don’t like the taste,” I said matter-of-factly. “I had two drinks, that’s all…. Okay, three drinks.”
“Tell him about your cold,” Lydia crowed once more from the car, which was now twenty feet away from where we were standing.
“She has a cold,” I said, and then started again. “I mean, we both have colds. We’ve both taken a significant amount of Robitussin,
so if there’s anything on my breath, that’s what you’re smelling. I caught my cold from a homeless person at one of the shelters
downtown where I was volunteering.”
“Please stay in the car, ma’am,” I heard the other officer say to Lydia as she once again tried to get out.
“Go to sleep!” I yelled back at her.
“Okay, Miss Handler, I’m going to need you to stand with your legs apart, your hands out, and your eyes closed.” This sounded
exactly as I had imagined my first DUI to sound: very authoritative and just like in the movies. I got into position and knew there was
no chance I’d be arrested. I had practiced this procedure many times with Lydia late at night in our apartment.
“Let me guess what’s next.” I giggled. “Touch my nose with my index finger, I suppose.”
“That’s exactly right,” he said. “Have you done this before?”
“Yeah,” I told him. “Plenty of times.”
Had they not come up with any new sobriety test moves in recent years? I actually felt bad for him for a minute. It was a shame that
the police weren’t smarter. I did what was asked of me and then he told me to walk in a straight line with one foot in front of the
other.
“My heels are too high,” I told him. “I wouldn’t be able to do that sober.”
“Well, you can either take them off or take a Breathalyzer.”
“You’re turning into a real nightmare,” I said as I leaned one hand on his large shoulder and took my heels off. “Okay, you know
what? I had one drink. One very small drink.”
This is when Lydia decided to slide over to the driver’s side of the car and climb out. “Ma’am, I told you to stay in the car, and
if you don’t listen, I’m going to have to handcuff you and read you your rights,” her officer said.
“Lydia, stop it!” I yelled. “Sit down!”
“Faggot!” was her next attempt at mollifying the situation.
“All right, miss,” said her officer as he whipped out his handcuffs. “You’ve been warned, and now I’m placing you under arrest and
taking you to jail.” Upon hearing that, I immediately fell over and hit the pavement with one heel on and one heel off.
I looked up at my officer, knowing this was not going the way I had planned. “She always gets like this when she has a cold, plus with
her dog dying and everything, please don’t arrest—”
He interrupted me as he helped me to my feet. “I thought it was her cat.”
“It’s a hybrid,” I mumbled as I looked down at my freshly pedicured toes, wondering why they couldn’t all just be the same length.
“Miss, you can either take a Breathalyzer here, or we can test your urine down at the station. Which would you prefer?”
“That depends,” I said. “Is there any way to detect marijuana through a Breathalyzer?”
Lydia was now sobbing heavily while also screaming obscenities at her cop as she was being escorted into their squad car.
“Let’s go,” he said. “We’ll take you downtown for a urine test.”
“No,” I said. “I don’t even have to go to the bathroom.”
“Fine,” he said, and went to retrieve the invention I now feel immense hatred for—the Breathalyzer is second only to the answering
machine, which has led to three separate breakups.
It turned out that I was, in fact, intoxicated. I blew a 2.4, which far exceeds the legal limit of 0.8.
Once handcuffed in the squad car next to Lydia, my blood really began to boil. “So this is how it’s gonna go down, huh? You can’t
just turn around, drive the fifty yards back to my house, and drop us off? NO! Of course not, because I fought the law and the law won!
”
After a pause I murmured “racist” under my breath, loud enough for both of them to hear.
The cop in the passenger seat turned around with a confused look on his face. “We’re all white.”
“Whatever,” I said.
“Well…still” was Lydia’s comeback.
“I’m Jewish,” I told them. No response. “Did you hear me?” I said. “This is racial profiling, and I won’t be a party to it. Let
me out!”
“Anti-Samoans!” Lydia yelled.
“You girls will be released when you sober up. You’ll be charged with a DUI, Miss Handler, and your friend will be charged with being
drunk and disorderly. Would you like us to add obstruction of justice to those charges, or would you two like to be quiet until we get
down to the station?”
“There better be air-conditioning there,” I mumbled.
“We’re going to prison!” Lydia bawled. She was still sobbing heavily.
“Don’t worry. Just calm down. My father’s an attorney.”
“No, he’s not,” Lydia replied.
“Shut up,” I growled. “What’s going to happen to my car?” I asked the officers.
“It will be impounded,” the officer said.
“More great news,” I huffed. “Is this going to be an overnight thing?”
“We’ll release you girls when you sober up,” replied the cop who was driving.
“Well, then, can we at least stop by my apartment so I can get my contact solution?” I asked him.
Once again both officers ignored me, and Lydia was now moaning like she had been mauled by a grizzly bear. As ridiculous and
belligerent as Lydia was, I still felt bad for her. I have a very hard time maintaining my composure when I see anyone cry. It only
takes a few seconds for me to start crying too, which has ruled out any chance of me becoming a rape crisis counselor.
“Okay, girls, let’s get you booked,” my cop said as we pulled up to the police station. He got out of the car and opened my door.
Finally, some chivalry.
We went through the motions of the fingerprints, photo shoot, and paperwork. Then we were thrown into a holding cell with one other
woman who looked like Courtney Love’s twin sister.
“What about our phone call?” I asked the female officer who brought us two blankets.
“Would you like to make one?” she asked.
I looked at Lydia, who was already sleeping in the fetal position on her blanket.
“Yes…no, just forget it!” I yelled, realizing no one we knew would be sober enough to pick us up.
I looked at Courtney Love’s doppelg?nger biting her nails. She had no shoes on and her feet were filthy. She was wearing a white
pleather miniskirt and sitting with her legs wide open.
I smiled at her.
“F*ck off” was her response.
“Roger that,” I said, and turned to lie down.
I don’t remember falling asleep, but I do remember an officer coming into our cell a couple of hours later when it was light out.
“Okay, Lydia Davis. You can go now. You’re being released. Chelsea—who’s Chelsea?” I sat up and raised my hand. “Okay, yes, you’
re going to be transported downtown to Sybil Brand.”
“Huh? What’s that?”
“That’s the Los Angeles County women’s prison,” Courtney Love chimed in.
“What? Why?”
The female officer looked down at some paperwork in her hand. “We ran your name in our computer and there seems to be an outstanding
warrant for your arrest, for fraud. Something about using your sister’s identification. Someone reported you to the Federal Bureau of
Investigation, and you have been on the government’s watch list for a year and a half.”
“The government’s watch list? Don’t you think that’s a little dramatic? I was using it to get into bars!” I exclaimed, now in
tears. “She gave it to me,” I lied, trying to pin the blame on my sister.
“Well, it says here that she was the one who filed the complaint,” the officer informed me.
“What?”
I couldn’t believe what a nightmare my sister was. My own sister. How could she be so stupid? What was her problem, anyway? It’s not
like I was using her license to rent apartments or apply for credit cards. All I wanted to do was get a little buzz going.
“There’s a bus that comes down here after picking up the inmates in Malibu, and it will take you to Sybil Brand, where they will put
you into the system and you’ll stay there until someone posts your bail.”
“Bail?” I asked. This was turning into a bad episode of Law & Order. “How much is my bail?”
“Ten percent of $100,000, which is $10,000,” she told me.
“That’s not bad,” Courtney Love chimed in. “Mine’s $15,000.”
“Don’t worry, Chels, I’ll figure it out,” Lydia said.
Now I was crying, and Lydia hugged me. “I’m not leaving you. I’ll go to prison with you.”
“You can’t stay with me,” I sniffled.
“Okay,” she said, and walked out.
The policewoman shut the gate to our cell, and Lydia peered through two of the bars. “We’ll figure it out, Chels. Do you want me to
call your dad?”
“No!” I did kind of want her to call my father because I wanted him to hit my sister, but I definitely didn’t want him to know I had
gotten a DUI. My aunt and uncle were lushes and lived in Bel-Air with their nine children. They’d be far more understanding.
“Call my aunt,” I said to Lydia, as my mind shifted back and forth from how I was going to brush my teeth to whether or not I would
have access to the Internet in prison. There was much planning to be done if I truly was going to prison: My first priority was to
start thinking about what kind of gang I would join.
I hoped my uncle wasn’t still mad at me for choosing to have sex with a family friend instead of him when my cousins and I were
playing the “Who Would You Rather Have Sex With?” game. The premise of the game is you have to choose between two people who you
would rather have sex with—sober—or your entire family is killed. Usually, the choice is between two real winners like David
Hasselhoff and Gary Coleman. A couple of weeks prior, when my fourteen-year-old cousin Madison asked me if I would rather have sex with
her dad (my uncle) or their family friend Rusty, I of course chose Rusty, because he was not a relative. My uncle didn’t take kindly
to this when Madison told him. He took it as a personal insult that I would rather have sex with someone I barely knew. “We are
related!” I told him.
“That’s really shitty, Chelsea,” he replied as he took another sip of his double vodka and grapefruit. “I’ve been like an uncle to
you.”
“You are my uncle,” I reminded him.
“Not by blood,” he replied.
A couple hours later a female officer came in and handcuffed me. “The bus is here to take you to Sybil Brand.”
“I hope you realize that you’re making a big mistake,” I told her. “My father works for the Department of Sanitation.”
“Well, then, you should have no problem getting released.” She smiled. She walked me on the bus and sat me down next to a Hispanic
woman with two gold front teeth who looked like she was in her nineties. Then the female officer shackled our ankles together.
“Are you being serious?” I asked her. “Do you really think ankle cuffs are necessary? I am not an outlaw.”
“Standard operating procedure,” she replied.
I looked around the bus at all the other prisoners. There were close to twenty women altogether. The only race not represented was
Asian, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Mandarin and Cantonese are two dialects I knew wouldn’t be easy to pick up, not to mention the
pressure that would come with joining an Asian gang. This was years before the release of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and my
martial arts weren’t anywhere near the level they are today.
I looked over at the woman shackled to my ankle and made the peace sign.
She didn’t respond, so I had no choice but to vocalize it. “Peace,” I said, leaning in to make sure she could hear me.
“Peace,” she responded without looking in my direction.
I turned around to look at the two black women sitting directly behind me. One looked like she’d only be a voice if she lost any more
weight, and the other was about four hundred pounds and looked like she was very close to eating the woman sitting next to her.
I lifted my chin and jutted it in their direction. “Word.”
A cold stare met my eyes from Fat Albert’s sister, and the skinny woman kept staring out the window, shaking. “You wanna get bitch-
slapped, Barbie?” was the next thing I heard from a black woman sitting behind Fat Albert’s sister.
I was tempted to let Foxy Brown know that it wasn’t really possible for anyone to bitch-slap me with handcuffs on, but decided to keep
a low profile. I turned around and wondered when Malibu had become so heavily integrated.
The bus ride lasted for about forty-five minutes, and I kept to myself the rest of the trip. It became clear that this wasn’t my crowd
and that once I got to prison I would have to find the girls with good teeth and run with them.
Once we got to Sybil Brand, all twenty of us were put into a holding cell with benches, while they would call us out one by one to be
booked and fingerprinted again. They unshackled us, and the minute Goldfinger was separated from me, she walked over to a corner of the
room, pulled her pants down, and peed on the floor.
It was quickly becoming apparent to me that this situation was much more serious than I had realized. This was turning into a full-
blown episode of Survivor: Women of the Outback. Not only were some of these woman behaving like wild Indians, but looking around the
room, I knew that if I had any hopes of blending in here, I would have no choice but to get a tattoo.
Soon after we arrived, an officer came in with a bunch of sandwiches covered in Saran Wrap. You would have thought these women were
getting food airlifted in a war zone. One woman was knocked to the ground as others ran to the officer bearing sandwiches.
How anyone could have a sandwich at a time like this was beyond my imagination. I stayed seated on my bench and watched this
pandemonium in disgust. I avoided further eye contact with any of the women until finally my name was called.
I was taken in to be booked and fingerprinted. Again, I tried explaining to the officer taking my picture that this was a huge mistake,
and that they shouldn’t bother booking me, as I was going to be bailed out at any minute.
“That’s what they all say, sweetie,” she replied.
“I’m serious,” I said as I turned my head to the side for my profile shot. “My father is black.”
She told me it didn’t matter what race my father was, and that even if my bail had already been posted, I couldn’t be released until
I was entered into the system.
Next up was a strip search, or what I now refer to as anal rape. They took us in groups of eight into another holding area, where we
were instructed to undress and stand a few feet away from each other in the buff. This news, of course, threw me into a hissy fit, as I
tried to piece together when I had last had a bikini wax. It had been at least a month, and I knew it was not going to be pretty. Even
though I am not an extremely unkempt girl, I make it a personal rule to never allow others the displeasure of seeing my beaver in an
unruly state.
Turns out that I had nothing to worry about. Once we were all undressed, I realized the true meaning of “unruly.” There were women in
there who clearly had never heard of a razor, never mind a bikini wax. Hedge trimmers would have been a more appropriate tool for the
situations going on in between some of these women’s legs. One woman looked like she had Buckwheat stuck in a leglock.
As each woman bent over and spread her ass cheeks, I wondered what the officers thought they would find. “I’m sorry,” I blurted out.
“I can tell you right now that I do not have anything inside my brown eye. You do not have to check it.”
“Ma’am, please turn around and bend over,” the female officer said to me.
“I just don’t understand what you think you’re going to find in there,” I said, standing upright with both hands covering my
a*shole.
“You’d be surprised, ma’am—drugs, pills, money. Yesterday someone had a Game Boy up in there.”
“A Game Boy?” I asked, horrified. I turned around and tried to relax my butt cheeks. “Were the batteries in it?”
“Uh-huh,” she replied as she motioned for me to get into position.
“I guess that gives new meaning to the term ‘junk in your trunk.’” No one responded to my joke, which I thought was extremely
clever. I turned around and bent over. It wasn’t as unpleasant as I had expected, but I would have been much less inclined to put up a
fight if the officer were male.
Afterward we were each given a bright orange two-piece prison suit and open-toed slippers. Fortunately the slippers really showed off
my pedicure, but the orange prison garb was a total nightmare for my skin tone. I had found out years earlier that I was a “summer”
and the best colors for me were pastels. I looked at the clock and saw that it was 7:30 p.m. If I wasn’t here, I would be leaving
happy hour this very minute, most likely with someone of South American descent.
Finally, they led the eight of us into a room the size of a football field filled with rows of bunk beds. There were hundreds of women
everywhere, and none of them looked Jewish. I was assigned to a top bunk in the middle of the room. The bottom bunk, I had to assume,
was occupied by the large muscular woman doing one-armed push-ups next to it. I was given a bag of toiletries, and when I looked inside
and didn’t find a pair of eyeshades, I nearly hit the roof.
The situation was growing worse by the minute. I looked at G.I. Jane and asked her if there was a manager around.
“Huh?” she asked.
“Hi, sorry, I’m Chelsea,” I said, putting out my hand. When she didn’t meet my hand for a handshake, I asked her who was in charge
around here.
“Depends. What are you looking for?”
“Well, I’m not supposed to be here, so I need to talk to whoever’s in charge.”
“Go to the window up front; the guards don’t know nothin’.”
“Thanks,” I said, and walked over to the glass partition at the front of the room, only to be stared at by every woman I passed.
“She looks yummy,” I heard someone say as I sped up and stared at the ground. I was in no mood to fight off a sexual abuser. Normally
I would never be one to report a rape, unless, of course, it ended badly. But if my attacker was a woman, that opened up an entirely
new playing field.
When I got to the booth, there were about fifteen women in line ahead of me waiting to speak with the two women behind the large glass
partition. It struck me that this was exactly like the DMV, except we were all wearing the same jumpsuits. There was a large Mexican
woman in front of me with a shaved head and tattoos covering both of her arms. She turned around to look at me and didn’t drop her
stare for thirty seconds. I had already learned through trial and error that the conventional “hello” or “word up” didn’t work
here, so to break the awkward silence I had to try something new. “I like your head.”
She said something in Spanish and spit on my feet. Then she looked at me again for an uncomfortably long time. I gave her a closed-
mouth smile to let her know I was totally cool with her spitting on me, until she turned back around. She had two large knots above the
roll of fat that connected her head to her shoulders, and her back was the size of a suitcase. This was the type of woman you’d want
on your side if you were up against a crocodile.
I looked around at all the inmates milling about. Some were in groups talking, one woman was rapping loudly with headphones on, and
there was some sort of frenzy ensuing in the far corner of the room about fifty yards away. Then I heard yelling. “Ham-and-cheese
sandwiches!” Again, I saw all the women flocking to one area as sandwiches flew through the air, some landing on beds, some landing in
people’s outstretched hands. Everyone in line in front of me scattered and ran toward the sandwiches. It was a complete madhouse and
gave whole new meaning to the word “picnic.”
I, of course, seized this opportunity to get to the front of the line and get some answers. “Hello,” I said to the officer sitting
behind the partition. “I’m supposed to get bailed out shortly, so how exactly does that work?”
The officer was a pretty black woman who didn’t appear nearly as annoyed with me as everyone else seemed to be. “Well, someone needs
to post your bail, and then we will be notified, and you’ll be released.”
“Well, I’m positive that my bail has already been posted, so can you check in the system and see?”
“Name?” she asked as she wheeled the chair she was sitting in closer to her computer.
“Chelsea Handler.”
“No bail has been posted,” she told me after a couple of minutes. “That doesn’t mean it hasn’t been paid, but it’s not in the
system yet.”
“Well, how long does it take from being posted to get in the system?”
“Sometimes a couple of hours, sometimes overnight. The system looks like it’s down. You’re definitely not getting out tonight. You
better get yourself a sandwich before they run out.”
I was unsuccessfully trying to fight back tears. I turned to leave and then walked back to the window. “Do you know where I can get
some eyeshades?” I asked her.
“Eyeshades?”
“Yes. I need them to sleep. I am extremely sensitive to light.”
“I don’t know if they sell them at the commissary, but you can try. You need to have money in your account, which you don’t have.
Once you start working, you will be able to purchase stuff from the commissary.”
That’s where she lost me. I turned and walked toward the pay phone.
One woman was on the phone while another was yelling at her, “Get off that goddamned phone, you f*cking bitch! Your five minutes is
up!” The officer with the sandwich cart was passing by and threw three sandwiches in our direction. I caught one thrown in my
direction, took one look at the white bread with thumbprints on it, and tossed it in the trash bin next to me.
“What the f*ck you thinking?” asked the woman in front of me waiting for the phone as she ran over and retrieved my sandwich from the
trash. “You can trade that for something.” Then she handed it back to me.
“What can I trade it for?”
“Candy, soda, pills, whatever,” she said. Finally, someone was speaking my language.
“What kind of pills?” I asked.
The woman on the phone hung up and the woman in front of me almost caught air lunging toward the phone. She picked it up and started
dialing. I leaned forward and tapped her on the shoulder. “What kind of pills?” I asked again. She looked at her shoulder where I
touched it and gave me a look that said any more contact with her would not be rewarded.
When it was finally my turn to use the phone, I made a collect call to my aunt. My cousin Madison answered the phone, accepted the
charges, and handed it to my aunt. I immediately started bawling. Being in jail was similar to being in a hospital bed: You’re fine
until you see or speak to someone from your family, and then you completely lose your shit.
“When are you getting me out?” I asked her.
“We’re working on it. We had to put a lien on the house to get the money.”
“What’s a lien?”
“It’s a loan, dipshit, against our mortgage,” she explained.
“Oh, shit.”
“It’s fine, don’t worry, we should have you out by the morning.” Hearing for the second time in ten minutes that I would be
spending the night caused the same sting that I felt hearing it from the officer behind the window, and a new rupture of tears
exploded.
“Chelsea, are you okay?” my aunt demanded.
“No!” I wailed. “There are gangs here and people are trading sandwiches for tampons! It’s complete chaos, and…” I took a deep
breath. “And…,” I continued, “I’m sleeping in a bunk bed.”
“Chelsea, just try and get some sleep. We will get you out of there as soon as we can. Dan’s going to the bail bondsman first thing
in the morning.”
I used the sandwich I was holding to wipe the tears off my face. “Do not tell my father,” I told her.
“He already knows,” she told me. “He’s fuming.”
“Oh, no.”
“Yeah, he’s livid. He can’t believe your sister is such a jackass.”
“Oh, really?” I asked, comforted by this development.
“Yeah, he said he won’t speak to her until she starts taking medication.”
“Oh, wow.”
“Hey, Smurfette! Get off the f*cking phone!” a woman behind me yelled. I was so startled, I didn’t even say good-bye or hang up. I
dropped the phone, took my sandwich, and hightailed it back to my bunk. I was much taller than Smurfette and preferred the Barbie
nickname from earlier in the afternoon. It wasn’t going to be easy to get any of these lunatics to take me seriously, but I was hell-
bent on trying.
I climbed up on my bed and put my head down on the pillow, which had the consistency of a pancake. I placed my sandwich under it for
extra support.
“You not gonna eat that?” asked a frosted blond-haired white woman in the top bunk next to mine, her mouth full of the sandwich she
was already gnawing on.
“Do you want it?” I asked, jumping at the opportunity to make a friend.
“Shit, I’ll take it,” she said, and put out her hand. Her name was Lucille.
“What are you in for?” I asked her.
“Murder.”
The notion that someone who used a fake I.D. was put in a bed next to a killer was not lost on me. What kind of operation were they
running here? I suddenly realized that this was what people were referring to with the phrase “hard time.”
I searched my mind for the correct lingo to converse with a murderer. “Who’d you knock off?” I asked nonchalantly, trying to hide my
fear by picking in between my toes and then smelling my fingers.
“My sister, the cunt,” she said.
“Really? I’m thinking about killing mine,” I told her as coolly as I could.
“Yeah, sister was a cunt, slept with my man.”
“Did you kill the guy?”
“Nah, didn’t get the chance, would’ve though,” she said as she piled my whole sandwich into her mouth in one sweep.
“Right.” I nodded. I didn’t want to pry, yet I wanted to know how this frosted-blond petite woman murdered her sister and where in
her body she was storing the two sandwiches she had just demolished. She couldn’t have weighed more than one hundred pounds and she
was about five-foot-six. This woman/ killer was a testament to my theory that the crazier you are, the more calories you burn. That’s
why psychos are always so skinny.
“The best sandwiches are around Thanksgiving. That’s when they use the real shit,” she said.
“Yeah, well, I’m not going to be here over Thanksgiving.”
“Yeah, that’s what they all say,” she told me.
“No, really.” I told her. “I’m Jewish.”
“Lights out in ten minutes. Lights out in ten minutes!” someone announced over the loudspeaker. I hadn’t gone to the bathroom since
that morning before I got on the bus, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to hold it in much longer. I had seen an open area that looked
like a bathroom near the information booth, which I had made a personal pact with myself to try and avoid. I thought I could hold it if
I didn’t ingest any liquids.
“Do you want to go to the bathroom together?” I asked Lucille.
“Sure.” She smiled. “I’ll go to the bathroom with you. Ain’t nobody gonna bother you.”
“Oh, I’m not worried about that,” I lied. “I play karate. I’m a black belt.” I wanted to trust Lucille, but knew if she had
turned on her own sister, the chances of her turning on me were pretty strong. I wanted her to know that if it came down to it, I could
protect myself. “I’ve done time before,” I added as we headed toward the bathroom.
“Yeah, where?” Lucille asked.
I searched my mind trying to think of another prison. “Alcatraz.”
“F*ck.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” I told her. There were a few stalls in the bathroom as well as some open seating, but I opted for
some privacy. The first stall I walked into looked like someone had just had a miscarriage. I walked out and chose the next one. I peed
for about three minutes straight and when I came out of the stall, Lucille was sitting on a toilet taking a dump.
“Hold on,” she said with her teeth clenched. “I’m just finishing up.” This was obviously how she stayed so thin: She immediately
shit out any food she consumed.
“Hand me some toilet paper.”
I grabbed some tissue and handed it to my new best friend.
After she wiped her ass, she pulled up her pants and headed back out to the main room. I wanted her to wash her hands, but didn’t want
to be bossy. “I’m just gonna wash my hands,” I said, hoping she would take the hint. Instead, she took a menthol cigarette out of
her pocket and lit it.
We walked back to our respective bunks and hopped in. I laid my head down facing Lucille, wondering if she was my prison soul mate. I
was starting to understand the tales of lesbianism you hear on the outside. It made perfect sense that without any men around, women
had only two options: weight-lifting or other women. I wondered if Lucille and I would have a wedding ceremony by our bunk beds or in
the cafeteria. I would be so skinny by that time from all this self-starvation that I could probably fit into any gown my heart
desired. Maybe Lucille and I could even fit into the same gown.
I wasn’t really attracted to her, but I had on occasion slept with guys I wasn’t attracted to, and figured there wouldn’t be a huge
difference. I stared at her as she mashed her cigarette out on the side of her bedpost. “So, how did you kill your sister?” I asked,
trying to make small-talk with my future bride.
“With a hammer,” she replied. “Took the bitch a good forty minutes to finally die.”
I was not prepared for that response. My body immediately went into shock. It was everything I could do not to vomit. The only other
time my body had this reaction was when I was ten years old and my next door neighbor pulled down his pants and showed me his penis.
But even then, I was less taken aback. I leaned my head over the edge of my bed gagging, but nothing was coming out. I knew this was
not the appropriate reaction to Lucille’s declaration. I put my hand up to say I was okay until moments later, when I finally stopped
heaving.
Lucille was sitting on her bed looking at me. I racked my brain trying to come up with an excuse for my reaction, but was so thrown
off-guard, I just put my head back down on my pillow and said, “We should definitely keep in touch after I leave tomorrow.” Then I
rolled over and cried myself to sleep. I thought about how lucky my sister was that Lucille wasn’t in our family. I wanted to hug
Sloane tightly and tell her, “You stupid, stupid girl, do you know that under no circumstance would I ever hammer you?”
I woke up very early the next morning and opened my eyes. I looked around the room trying to think of a situation that could be any
worse than this, and decided that the only thing that could be worse than prison was the navy. I looked over and Lucille wasn’t in her
bed. I grabbed my bag of toiletries and went straight to the bathroom. I had to pee and I desperately needed to floss.
Once I was done washing my hands, I heard my name being called over the loudspeaker along with five or six others. “Finally!” I
exclaimed, and ran over to the glass booth, where a guard was waiting with a clipboard. I stood there while we waited for the other
girls called to find their way over, thinking about how thin I felt. One more day of this, and my stomach would officially be concave.
I loved it. Once the others arrived, the guard led us out a door, down a hall, and down two flights of stairs into what looked like a
principal’s office.
My name was called rather quickly and I went into the office, sitting down across from a Latino woman in her forties.
“Hi,” I said, with a bounce in my step.
“Hi, Miss…Handler?” she said, looking up at me with what I took to be sympathy. Finally.
“Yup, that’s me,” I said, shaking my head at the injustice of it all.
“Okay, there are a couple of options. Do you have any special skills?”
“Skills? Not really, no. I’m good at reading, I can type pretty fast…. I’m not sure what you’re asking me?” I asked, confused.
“Well, you’re here for work placement, so there are different things to choose from: You could work in the kitchen, or you could work
in the industrial shop, where you could make anything from license plates to wooden wind chimes, or you can enroll in school and get
your GED.”
“What are you talking about? No, no, no…I’m not working here, you don’t seem to understand. First of all, I am supposed to be
getting bailed out this morning. I do not want a job making wood chimes or fixing cars, and I already graduated from high school…
barely, but I did, so I don’t need a GED! I want to go home! I just want to go home! What exactly is the problem with you people?”
“Listen, Miss Handler, everyone thinks they are going home. But the reality of the situation is that eighty-five percent of the
inmates booked end up spending a minimum of six months here, and if you want to start earning money, the best thing for you to do is
get a job.”
That was it. I stood up and placed my hands on her desk. “Listen up, miracle ear,” I told her. “I spoke to my aunt last night, and
she has already paid the money to get me out, okay? I am waiting for them to release me any minute. That is the situation. So for all I
care, you can put my name down to plant prison flowers, or style inmates’ hair, or head up the women’s f*cking field hockey team. I
am not staying here!”
“Next,” she said as she shuffled some paperwork. I walked outside her office and sat down. I was incensed and I also really wanted my
mommy. Why wasn’t anyone getting the fact that I would not be taking up permanent residence in a women’s prison?
I looked up at the ceiling. “Are you there, vodka? It’s me, Chelsea. Please get me out of jail and I promise I will never drink
again. Drink and drive. I will never drink and drive again. I may even start my own group fashioned after MADD, Mothers Against Drunk
Driving, but I’ll call it AWLTDASH, Alcoholics Who Like to Drink and Stay Home.”
When we were taken back to the main room, there weren’t many women there. Apparently it was breakfast time, but I opted to go back to
bed. As I climbed back into my bunk, I wondered how much weight I had lost already. Would people even recognize me when I was released?
I daydreamed about what it would be like when my father finally saw what my body had been reduced to; I even considered shaving my head
for a more dramatic effect. “You have no idea what it was like, Dad. Some of the stuff…I just can’t even say….” I would take long
pauses while looking down and shaking my head. I would imply that there was penetration, possibly sodomy, if not only to play the
sympathy card for years to come, but also to remind everyone that my sister was an alien and needed to be excommunicated from our
family.
I dozed off and was awakened moments later by Lucille smacking me in the face. “No! Noooooo!” I screamed.
“Your name. They’re calling your name to be released.”
My eyes lit up bigger than the first time I had seen Jon Bon Jovi perform live. I jumped off the bed and started to run toward the
booth.
“Wait!” Lucille yelled. “Aren’t you even going to say good-bye?”
I turned and ran back to give her a hug, but was dumbstruck when she planted her lips directly on top of mine and held them. My arms
fell to my side and I waited for her to finish kissing me. There were hoots and hollers coming from the women around us, and one of
them yelled out, “Hammertime’s got a girlfriend! Hammertime’s got a girlfriend!”
“I’ll e-mail you,” I said as I slowly backed away.
“Barbie’s going home to her daddy,” a large black woman with dreadlocks yelled as I was taken by an officer out of the room and
downstairs to an outbooking room, where I was handed a bag filled with the clothes I had come in wearing.
Twenty minutes later I walked out the doors of Los Angeles County Women’s Prison, otherwise known as Sybil Brand Correctional
Facility, into the bright sunlight. I wondered who exactly Sybil Brand was and who she had pissed off in order to have an entire women
’s prison named after her. I made a mental note to google her later.
I saw Lydia’s car parked at the far end of a circular driveway. Upon seeing me, she and my friend Ivory jumped out and started running
toward me with their arms outstretched, like a scene out of Chariots of Fire. “Thank God I’m alive!” I cried. “Thank God I’m
alive.”
The whole way to the car, Lydia and Ivory were telling me how horrible the past thirty-six hours had been for them and how they both
had to call in sick to the restaurant where we all worked.
“Does everyone know I was in jail?” I asked.
“Yeah, Chelsea,” Ivory said. “We got together a fund and everyone chipped in. Even Hermano the busboy. We were worried your aunt
wasn’t going to get the money fast enough, so we started asking everyone.”
“How much did you get?” I asked her.
“Fifty-five dollars.”
“None of us are ever driving drunk again,” Lydia said. “We are all taking taxis from now on…well, for a while anyway.”
“I don’t want you guys to be jealous,” I told them, trying to distract myself from the fact that they could only raise fifty-five
dollars on my behalf, “but I’ve made a new friend and her name is Lucille. We’ve already kissed on the mouth.”
“Oh my God,” Lydia exclaimed looking back at me. “Were you raped?”
“Face raped,” I proclaimed as I got in the passenger seat of Lydia’s car. I wanted to get home as soon as possible and weigh myself.
I went to court about three months later, when I was given my sentence: five hundred hours of community service, a fine of twenty-five
hundred dollars, and three months of DUI school.
My favorite of the three was DUI school. The instructor was a small Asian man who repeated one thing at the beginning and end of each
class: Under no circumstances, when being pulled over by the police, do you admit to having had anything to drink. Advice I would have
valued much more had I received it months prior to getting my DUI. But still I valued it all the same.