In the Community, I woke up early each morning to milk goats and punish the earth with a trowel to fill it with seeds or dig grown things out. I’m used to waking up before dawn, so every day, without thought, my eyes open at exactly the same time, when the air is the bruised color of winter mornings and everyone in the jail is still sleeping. Sometimes, the echoed weeping of a girl winds through the scaffolding, but most mornings the place is quiet and still, and it’s possible to imagine the bars and the guards and the razor wire away, imagine there’s nothing surrounding you but your own soul.
Until six, when every fluorescent bulb in the place spasms to life, the light like a punch to the face. The noise starts a moment later, talking and shouting and girls using the toilet and trudging down to the showers.
During showers, I have no choice but to strip down in front of the others, their eyes taking in the parts of me I was taught to keep hidden.
Here, the scars usually shielded beneath yards of orange cotton are on display, the whip marks scoring my back from countless childhood punishments, the thick bands of red scar tissue cuffing both ankles. But, when I cast my eyes at the other bodies, I see skin tarnished with small holes of cigarette burns and pink puckered knife wounds and white lines like hash marks on forearms. Here, my scars are the only part of me that could be called normal. It seems like every girl here has had their own personal Prophet.
And then it’s breakfast, and runny oatmeal and juice with a straw, and after that, the pill line.
There’s a long corridor beside the cafeteria by the nurse’s office. From a small window in the door, white paper cups are passed to each girl. Every ten seconds or so a new girl approaches the window, picks up her cup, and slams the tiny white and blue and red circles down her throat.
Angel sidles up to the window. Her cup is heavy with pills. She upturns it over her mouth and chews.
“Why don’t you just swallow them?” I ask.
“Makes them work faster,” she says. “Plus, the Adderall tastes like Skittles.”
They give me only one pill, a giant speckled one shaped like a bird’s egg.
Angel’s asked me a hundred times what it is. “It’s not Ritalin. It’s not Xanax. It might be Thorazine, but why’d they be giving you that?”
I never respond. I don’t want her to know. The woman doctor who saw me when I was locked up only said it was very important I take it every day.
“Don’t let anyone try to buy this pill from you,” she said firmly.
She explained that my growth had been severely stunted, probably from malnutrition. She instructed me to eat everything that’s put in front of me and take the high-dose multivitamin every morning, even though it rakes my throat on the way down.
We arrive back at the cell and I can tell the pills are starting to work because Angel’s talking to me, her voice higher and faster than when she’s unmedicated.
“I think it’s time I educated you,” Angel says.
“In what?”
“Prison life.” She flops down opposite me on the floor. “First thing you gotta know, there’s cliques here worse than on the outs. Girls stick together and the alliances mean something. The Mexicans are okay. If you ever got nail polish to trade, they’ll be your best friend. Don’t mess with the meth girls. Most of them had their brains turned mushy from it, still talk about finding more meth, like they can just buy it at the commissary. And when you remind them nicely that they’re in jail, they scratch. Crazy bitches.”
“Which one are you in?”
“Don’t really got one. The lezzes can be all right. Mostly just stick to themselves, and sometimes I talk to the smart girls, the ones who always go to class and study and stuff. Really trying to make their lives better. But they can be so damn serious. I don’t know. Ain’t no one here really just to talk to.”
“What about me?”
She shakes her head. “You’re a trial run. I’m still feeling you out.”
“Not like you could get rid of me if you decide you don’t like me.”
“I can. You be here as long as me, you start calling the shots.”
“How long’s your sentence?”
“Nunyo.”
“What?”
“Nunyo business. That’s personal.”
“Ha, real personal,” I snort.
“What’s that sposta mean?”
“Godseyes, I can hear you pee at night,” I say. “Not like we got much personal stuff, anyway.”
“That’s why I like to keep private what I can. Not all of us are little blab mouths like you.”
“Have your secrets, then, Splashy,” I say. “That’s my nickname for you. Because of the pee.”
Angel’s eyes narrow and she looks like she’s thinking about smiling, but the muscles in her face tighten just as quickly. “Couple things you should know,” she continues. “You gotta lose the way you talk.”