They also wanted to know how old I was, and when I told them, the one with the ribbons in her braids exclaimed I couldn’t be, her mother wasn’t that old and I looked younger than her mother. I realized with a jolt that the women around me were terribly young. Only a handful could have been my age, let alone as old as Miss Ruby. Many didn’t seem to be out of their teens, certainly not over twenty–five. They probably yearned desperately for their mothers, or some mother: no wonder they clung to Miss Ruby and argued jealously about who she favored and what she was doing.
I couldn’t see Miss Ruby in the dining hall, but they put us through in three shifts of three hundred. Even if she’d been in my shift I might not have been able to spot her in the throng. When I asked after her, they told me she was probably eating in her room: women with enough money or status could buy special food from the commissary. They said it was so expensive most of them did it only for their birthdays, but there was almost always someone wanting to buy a meal for Miss Ruby.
My cellmate ate on the shift after mine, so I had the room to myself for forty–five smoke–free minutes. When she came in, I saw my prowess against Angie had affected her: she accorded me a nervous respect, and when I asked her not to smoke after lights out, she didn’t wait for us to be locked in for the night but quickly stubbed her cigarette out on the floor.
Her nervousness made me aware that I was big enough and strong enough to seem menacing. It took me back uncomfortably to the year after my mother died, when I went wild on the streets of South Chicago. I had always been big for my age and I had learned early—partly from my hockey–playing cousin Boom–Boom, partly from experience—how to defend myself in the rough neighborhood where we grew up. But the year I was sixteen I roamed the streets looking for fights. It seemed as though after Gabriella died, I couldn’t feel anything unless I was feeling physical pain. After a while even the biggest boys stayed away from me: I was too crazy, I fought with too much insanity. And then I was picked up, and Tony found out and somehow helped me get over it. But I’d felt that same surge of maniac rage on the court with Angie, and I didn’t want it taking me over: I might be able to terrorize my jailmates, but I didn’t like what it would do to me in the process.
I leaned over the top bunk and asked my roommate her name and whether she had a trial date. Solina, and no trial date yet. With a patient interest I wasn’t really feeling, I pried her story out of her, got her to relax over the narrative of her babies, her mother, the father of the children, how she knew she shouldn’t be doing crack but it gets hold of you, it’s hard to let go of it, and all she wanted was a good life for her children.
At nine the loudspeaker interrupted us. It was time for the day’s final count. We stood in our cells next to our beds while the CO’s looked in, asked our names, checked them on a board, and locked us in for the night. Once again the hiss of the magnetic lock made my stomach turn over. I climbed to the upper bunk as the lights went out and prayed that Freeman would get a message from Mr. Contreras, track me down, and be waiting for me first thing in the morning with a check for my bail.
Fatigue finally pushed me into an uneasy sleep, in which I kept feeling roaches on my face and hands. Sometime in the night the slamming of a door jerked me awake. I heard a woman scream. My heart began to race again: I was locked up and could do nothing, for myself or anyone around me in peril.
I thought of Nicola Aguinaldo, lying in a bunk like mine on the prison side of Coolis. How much more helpless even than I she must have felt, with no lawyer to bail her out, no powerful friends, alone in a strange country, getting commands in a language she barely understood. At least in her last letter to her mother she had said that—I sat up in bed. Nicola had told Abuelita Mercedes not to worry, that Se?ora Ruby was taking care of her. Miss Ruby, the powerful protector of young inmates.
I’d been a fool to howl over the injustice of being sent to Coolis. I was right where I needed to be: in the heart of Carnifice territory, where Nicola Aguinaldo had last been seen alive. I turned on my side on the narrow bunk and fell deeply asleep.
36 Bail? Why Leave Such Cool Quarters?
When Freeman Carter arrived Tuesday morning, he was appalled at my decision not to post bail. “I agree two–fifty is outrageously high: that’s because it’s Baladine and Carnifice. I couldn’t get the judge to lower it. But Vic, there is every reason to post it and no reason to stay in here. Frankly, you smell awful and you look worse. That makes a hell of a bad impression on a jury.”
“I won’t smell so bad when you’ve deposited money into an account for me here and I can buy soap and shampoo,” I said. “And I’m not going to stay in here until my trial—only until I find out what I want to know.”