Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 76203 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 381(@200wpm)___ 305(@250wpm)___ 254(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76203 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 381(@200wpm)___ 305(@250wpm)___ 254(@300wpm)
Della had been right about the overcrowding issue.
The entire center of the common area had its tables pushed to the sides to accommodate several rows of bunkbeds where other women were sitting and lying.
Once we were free to move on our own, Della shouldered in beside me and led me over toward an empty bunk while the other women tried to decide who they could or should bunk with.
“Take the top,” she told me, nodding up at it.
“Don’t you—“ I started.
“You’ll feel safer up there,” she said, shaking her head as she started to make her bed.
She was right about that.
And I was suddenly so thankful to have a mentor like Della that I found myself blinking away tears again. The sounds of the women chatting filled my ears, making me feel immediately frazzled and overwhelmed as I climbed up to the bunk, and struggled to make my bed like all the other women were automatically doing.
I just had to follow Della’s lead, keep my head down, and try not to eat or drink anything, so I didn’t have to go to the bathroom.
I mean, yeah, that was completely irrational, and my bladder was already killing me, but the bathroom thing was the biggest mental hurdle for me, so I was saving it for last.
“What’s going on?” I asked a while later as many of the women started to gather in a line.
“Lunch in a few,” Della said, grabbing my arm, and pulling me with her.
“Where are we going? Won’t we get in trouble?” I asked, voice taking on a breathless hitch in my panic.
“Now is the time to go pee when no one will look at you, because their minds are on getting in line. Go,” she demanded, pushing me toward the open door.
Taking the cue, I rushed in, trying to think of anything else, to drift away, to just get through this.
Then I washed my hands and rushed back out to line up with Della.
If I thought the common area was overwhelming, the cafeteria—or as Della called it, the “mess hall”—was that times ten.
I guess the promise of hot food had invigorated these women who were all talking and laughing loudly in groups that suggested a certain sort of familiarity. I guess these were women who didn’t get, or couldn’t afford, bail. So they were staying in jail until their trials were over.
That could be me.
No.
No, damnit.
I wasn’t going to let my mind go there.
I had a lawyer.
A good one.
I was going to be going home. Then fixing this. And never, ever, ever seeing the inside of a jail again.
“Come on, over here,” Della said after we got our trays that, yes, were full of two compartments of a certain liquid mush that I couldn’t identify as any sort of soup or stew, though that seemed to be what they were aiming for.
Della led me over to a table full of other women that had a certain similarity to Della. A hardness in their eyes, but with warm smiles.
“She don’t look like one of us,” one of the women, with coppery-red hair, older than Della, declared as I sat down.
“She’s not. But we’re gonna be nice to her while she’s here,” Della said with a certain sort of authority that brooked no argument amongst the women.
One of us.
Did that possibly mean that all these women had been brought in for prostitution?
I didn’t know.
I sat there, trying to zone out, as I pushed the mush around on my tray before just eating the piece of bread. Yes, plain white bread. No butter. No nothing. And the salad, which had no dressing, just because I didn’t want my stomach growling at court if I would be going tomorrow.
One of the other women took the rest of my food, “No use wasting it because she’s got first-day-jitters,” she declared as she dug in.
The rest of the day was a blur in which I sat cross-legged on my bunk, watching the women around me.
At some point, two women who’d been having an amiable-seeming conversation suddenly got loud and angry, shoving at each other, and prompting an ear-splitting alarm to go off, and guards to rush into the space to break it off while simultaneously screaming at the rest of us who were doing nothing wrong.
I threw myself back on my bunk, pressing my hands to my ears, and humming softly to myself as my heart started to hammer out of my chest.
I couldn’t shake that feeling for the rest of the day, even after all the commotion died down, and everyone went back to normal.
I felt frayed and coming apart at my edges when it happened.
We were told it was bed time.
And the lights started clicking off.
I wasn’t afraid of the dark.
It didn’t go pitch black. At least not for those of us congregated in the common room. I had no idea what the cells were like, but they looked pretty dark. We had the glow of the observation deck on us, but it was still dark, and I had an irrational fear that people might be lurking in the shadows, wanting to hurt me. Despite Della assuring me all day that nothing like that was going to happen.