“Why’s it a surprise?” Rashida asks.
“It tastes like split pea,” I answer. “Angel figures it was some kind of mistake with the dye at the soup factory. But it’s my favorite.”
“I thought your favorite was Puce with Pumpkin?”
“They never give me Puce with Pumpkin anymore.”
“Are you guys, like, friends?” Rashida interrupts.
“What’s that mean?” I ask.
“Some people been talking, is all.”
My cheeks start to turn pink, but Angel rolls her eyes, like she’s heard it all before. “Let people talk, Rashida,” she says. “I’d hate to deprive anyone of talk. Some of these girls might die if they couldn’t talk, and I don’t want another life sentence.”
“You is so fucking weird, Angel,” Rashida says. “Don’t you care that they’re saying you two cross scissors at night?”
“If I liked to cross scissors, I wouldn’t care if anybody knew.”
Rashida shrugs, as though she’s lost interest. “So why’d you get thrown in here, Minnie? Some people say you killed your old man or something.”
“I didn’t kill anybody,” I mutter. Some of the girls talk about their crimes like it’s something to hold over the rest of us. The handful of murderers usually don’t let anyone forget it, and the girls who committed light drug offenses always try to make it seem like there was fifty years’ worth of charges they didn’t get caught for.
“I got high and crashed a car,” Rashida says. “The judge was really sure I did it, and I asked him how he knew so much when I didn’t even remember nothing, and then he was like ‘Don’t roll your eyes at me, young lady!’ but then I was like ‘That’s just what my eyes do,’ and he was all ‘You don’t speak to a judge with a raised voice,’ and I said ‘That’s just the way my voice is!’ and he got really pissed and threw me out. And I was like ‘Seriously? You’re not my dad!’”
I nod.
“What about you, Angel?” Rashida asks. “I know you killed someone, but I never heard the details.”
Angel’s chewing on her bottom lip, dipping her spoon in and out of her pot of tapioca pudding, as though she hasn’t been listening.
“So, what did you do?” Rashida asks again.
Angel clamps her hand on her forehead. “Do you ever shut the fuck up, Rashida? Maybe I killed you. You’re obviously a ghost come back to haunt me.”
Rashida laughs and chews the last part of her corn dog from the wooden stick while Angel mumbles something and props up her book in front of her. To get Rashida to stop talking, Angel fills the rest of the meal with the details of the book she’s reading, something about how if you could drive your car straight up, you’d arrive in space in an hour, but there are 60,000 miles of blood vessels in the human body, which would take you longer than a month to drive, which to Angel means something.
The electric tone sounds, signaling lunch is over, and we stand as a unit, each walking slowly in single file to place our dirty dishes on a conveyor belt that feeds back into the kitchen.
Officer Prosser watches us as we exit, arms crossed over the cushion of her chest.
? ? ?
Some days, I stare out the bars of my cell and wonder at how I managed to exchange one prison for another. But I would take this cell with the constant hoots of girls and the bleary fluorescent lighting and the juddering steps of guards on the skyway at all hours over the maidenhood room any day.
I don’t know how long they kept me in the maidenhood room after I lost my hands, a week, maybe more. I slept every moment that I could, but there were always a few wakeful hours when I would stew in the certainty that I would be married to the Prophet before the winter thawed. He would stand above me on a wooden chair, and I would stand below with my head bowed, barefoot in snow. And he would kiss me in front of everyone, his graying beard like brambles against my face.
The only way to distract myself from the thought of my wedding was to close my eyes, listen hard, and paint a picture of what transpired downstairs. In the bedrooms, someone was sweeping, and a toddler was running on small, heavy feet. Wives clinked dishes in soapy water while they talked.
“What did Miss Holy-Holy-Holy have to say for herself?” I heard Donna Jo ask.
“Just a lot of noise,” Vivienne replied. “Putting on.”
“She did lose her hands,” said Mabel weakly. “There was a lot of blood.”
“She was clearly in need of a little bloodletting!” Vivienne said. “What with the way she spat in the Prophet’s face.”
“She didn’t.”
“Oh, Mabel, not literally, but she did how it counts, with her smart mouth.”
“I think she should be grateful,” someone said in a small, sweet voice. “She’s been given a second chance at righteousness.” The pink-walled room of my diaphragm went pinched and strange shaped at the sound of that voice.