The slot closed once more. And that was it. Breakfast. Afterward nothing happened. Nothing was going to happen, Caxton realized, until lunchtime. She imagined that meals were going to become the high points of her day.
Clearly conversation with Stimson wasn’t going to provide much in the way of entertainment. All Stimson wanted to talk about was what she was going to do when she was released. “Babies,” she said, and her eyes blazed with excitement. “I’m going to have some more babies. Babies are what life’s all about. You know how they smell? Babies smell good. I love playing with babies. I love the noises they make. Even when they cry.”
Caxton had never wanted children. It had just never occurred to her to think that might be a good use of her life. She tried to steer the conversation into another arena. She considered asking what Stimson had done to get sent to Marcy, but she had an idea that it was impolite to ask. Instead, she tried, “How long are you in for?”
“A good jolt. Twenty years,” Stimson said.
Caxton frowned. “Won’t you be too old to have babies then?”
Stimson wasn’t about to be brought down. “I’ll be forty-two, that’s not too old. And if it is, I can adopt. I know it’s hard to adopt when you’ve got a record, but when they see how much I want a baby, and what a good mother I can be, they’ll have to give me one. They’ll have to give me a baby.”
Caxton nodded politely and climbed back onto her bunk. Stimson kept talking, even after Caxton stopped listening. It seemed she was happy enough chattering away to herself.
Lunchtime came, eventually. A cold chicken sandwich and a cup of apple juice. They had ten minutes to eat it. Then nothing happened, again, for a while. Then the command to wall up came again and Caxton realized it was exercise time. The one chance she would have all day to get out of the cell.
A smile actually crept onto her face. She ran her fingers through her hair and tried to smooth the wrinkles out of her jumpsuit. She knew she was overreacting, but it was something, something different. Something to look forward to.
She waited for what felt like far too long and then finally, magically, the cell door was opened. A CO stood in the doorway and gestured for the two of them to step forward. Another CO was waiting with two pairs of shackles. Caxton’s feet were bound together. Then the CO did the same for Stimson. The whole time a third CO was always hovering over them with a stun gun.
They were made to shuffle forward until they were standing on the red line that ran around the circumference of the special housing unit. In his glass watch post, a CO eyed them carefully. He reached for a microphone and his voice was amplified until it squalled off the glaring white walls. “It’s raining outside, so exercise is indoors today.”
Caxton heard an angry moan go up from somewhere on the far side of the guard post. She glanced around the side of the post and saw four inmates over there, all of them shackled as she was. If every cell was full to capacity, there would be forty-eight women in the SHU, Caxton figured. Apparently only six were allowed to take exercise at any given time, with three COs supervising. Nothing in the SHU was ever allowed to get out of control. Nothing was ever left to chance. As a law enforcement officer, or rather, an ex–law enforcement officer, she had to admire the efficiency of the system. As an inmate she felt like she was being ground down, all her humanity scraped out of her one indignity at a time.