“Get those cakes on the griddle, Walker,” the kitchen manager, O’Brien, barked from across the room. She was an imposing woman of Native American and Irish descent, almost six feet tall and lithe. Her thick, black hair was lopped off just beneath her jawline, and her green eyes were set like emeralds above sharply drawn cheekbones. In another life, she might have been a model. In this one, she was a convicted cocaine dealer serving twenty years. She was also my boss.
“I’m on it,” I said, turning off the industrial mixer. I unhooked the large bowl and hefted it to the counter next to the stove, where I began spooning half-cup portions onto the already greased and hot griddle. We had less than an hour to get breakfast done; the first wave of inmates would line up at six, expecting to be fed by six fifteen, ready to threaten us with bodily harm if they weren’t. I’d been useless in the kitchen at first, having never used more than a toaster, but O’Brien believed in baptism by fire. My first week on breakfast duty she made me solely responsible for the production of scrambled eggs and banana muffins, and within a few hours, even with her screaming at me about everything I was doing wrong, I’d all but mastered the stove and the ill-tempered oven. I found I actually liked cooking; it was one of the few things that forced me to focus on something other than where Brooke and Natalie might be, and if they’d ever find a way to forgive me for letting them go. They’re better off without me, I told myself, so often that it became my mantra. They won’t even remember me. They deserve so much more than I could give them.
“Walker!” a man’s rough-edged voice called, yanking me out of my thoughts, surprising me enough to cause me to drop the ladle I held into the vat of batter.
“Shit,” I muttered, reaching into the sticky mixture to fish out the utensil. Once I’d grabbed it and set it on the counter, I turned toward where the voice came. One of the guards, a large black man with a belly that hung well over his belt, stood in the kitchen’s entryway with his thick arms crossed over his chest. I raised my hand and waved. “Here,” I said, keeping one eye on the pancakes already on the stove. If I couldn’t flip them, they’d burn, and we’d have to serve them anyway. There was not enough time or enough supplies to make more.
“Report to Myer’s office as soon as you’re done with your shift,” he instructed. “Eleven o’clock. Don’t make me come find you.”
“I won’t.” I grabbed a spatula and started flipping the pancakes, relieved they were only just on the cusp of turning black. Donald Myer was my assigned counselor, who was supposedly part of my rehabilitation process, but in reality, I’d only seen a couple of times. I doubted he could match my face with my name.
As I continued to cook, O’Brien sidled up next to me. “What the hell was that about?” she asked. Her breath was stale and laced with the instant coffee she purchased at the commissary and drank almost constantly. A few months before, she had broken a woman’s nose when she caught her trying to steal her stash of Folgers, a stunt that had landed her in solitary confinement for two weeks.
I shrugged. “No idea.” I was lucky, I knew, to work with O’Brien, and that she liked me. Most of the other inmates respected her, and as long as I was part of her crew, they left me alone. I quickly learned who the most dangerous women were, and made it a point to serve them extra-large portions and two desserts whenever I could. Food was a powerful presence inside the prison’s walls, and I used it to my advantage.
“You do anything wrong?”
“Not that I know of,” I said, though I knew that didn’t necessarily matter. I’d seen other women punished, their privileges taken away, for so much as looking at one of the guards in what was interpreted as a disrespectful manner, so it was possible I’d screwed up and didn’t know it. Other than my work in the kitchen, I made it a point to keep to myself; to not get in anyone else’s way. My belly clenched, wondering why he wanted to see me. Was I being assigned to another job? The laundry or, even worse, custodial?
“You keeping anything illegal in your bunk?”
“No,” I said. “Now let me get these goddamn pancakes cooked.” I shoved my hip against her in a playful movement, and she swatted my butt as she walked away.
“Make sure you get your lunch prep done before you leave,” she said, looking back at me over her shoulder.
“Yeah, yeah,” I said, waving her off. After I finished serving breakfast and cleaning the stove, I spent the next few hours mixing together canned tuna and cold, already-boiled noodles with cream of celery soup and shredded cheese, then poured the casseroles into shallow baking pans. I popped them into the oven to warm, and the next shift, responsible for serving lunch and prepping dinner, showed up a little before eleven. I headed out of the kitchen, down a long hallway to Myer’s office. I thought about showering first, so I wouldn’t smell like grease and tuna fish, but was too afraid of being late.