“Bite me.”
“God, why do you take everything so personally?”
Jen didn’t answer.
Lolly turned off the state road and drove down the long winding road that led to nowhere but the prison. Jen soon saw the turrets and the shining silvery gleam of the fences. A thick bank of purple and black clouds hung over the prison but gold fingers of sunlight snuck around and under the clouds. The parking lot was in full sun.
“One of the women once told me that it rains right on top of them,” Lolly said. “She said, ‘You can see the sun shining just on the other side of the fence while we’re standing in the durn rain.’”
The heat rose up from the tar of the parking lot in waves.
“Let’s go,” Lolly said. She grabbed her satchel and headed toward the Control Room. Jen followed. “Be ready to smile. You always smile at the guards. And they never smile back. But if you don’t smile, you’re likely to stand in between fences forever: prison’s purgatory. Or else they’ll decide you need to be searched. Every time the protocol is different.”
They stood at the window and Jen noticed a big barrel of sand beside the gate. A sign said it was for “spent casings.” She wasn’t sure the logistics of the barrel and the spent casings (from shotguns?) but it held a violent significance. Perhaps there was reassurance in that—you knew you were entering a world where you were powerless, completely at the mercy of those who wore guns and pushed buttons that swung open the steel gates. You always knew where you stood. Lolly slid her driver’s license through the metal slot toward a woman dressed in a brown uniform, and Jen followed suit with her faculty I.D. since she didn’t have a license for the time being.
“Lolly Johanssen with the Department of Corrections Wellness Program. This is Jen Johanssen. We’re scheduled to give a workshop today,” Lolly explained. “We should be on your list.”
The woman looked at Lolly’s driver’s license, then pushed a button, and Lolly and Jen walked through the first gate. It clanged shut behind them. They now stood in a six-foot square area between two locked gates, looking out at a few pink buildings with flowers planted in front of them. Lolly pointed to the buildings
“That area is called Zone One,” Lolly said. “There’s a library, the drug treatment center where my classes always take place and a few classrooms for GED students. Just beyond that other fence down there is the compound.”
Jen noticed that prisoners, identifiable by their shapeless gold shifts or their blue jeans and blue workshirts, all walked right along the edge of the road. She asked Lolly about it.
“See that yellow line about a foot from the edge of the road? The women have to walk in that one-foot area or they’ll get written up. After three ‘write ups’ they could wind up in the box or lose their gain-time. On the other hand, we are allowed to walk all over the road.”
“It seems an odd and arbitrary means of control,” Jen said. “And what is ‘gain-time’?”
“Like time off for good behavior.”
They stood at the second gate waiting for it to open. Thunder drummed in the distance. A group of women in blue began strolling up from the compound. A tall African-American woman was in front.
“There’s Lucille,” Lolly said.
Lucille waved, and Lolly waved back from behind the gate at the other end of the road.
“She’s wonderful. A little boisterous, but very warm. When I had her for poetry, she used to write about fishing and cooking and a life far in her past. Nicole is with her. Now, there’s a diamond in the rough.”
“Is she the one you mentioned before?” Jen asked.
Lolly nodded and then said impatiently, “When are the guards going to open the damn gate and let us through?”
“You’re probably the only person in the world who actually wants to get inside a prison.”
The gate finally opened and they stepped through. Jen jumped as the gate clanked behind her, but Lolly didn’t even seem to hear it. She was intent on the crowd of women in blue work shirts and jeans standing in front of the low cinder block building to the right. She marched toward them with Jen following.
“Hey, Ms. Lolly,” a short cute young woman with caramel-colored skin said.
“Hey, Nicole. Hey, everybody,” Lolly smiled big and waved.
“We’re so glad to see you,” the tall woman said.
“I’m glad to see y’all, too, Lucille,” Lolly said.
Jen felt an odd curiosity. She was used to being the center of attention. Hadn’t she craved attention all her life? Some goddamn dimestore psychologist said it stemmed from the birth of Lolly which was followed shortly thereafter by the desertion of their father. Of course, Jen could barely remember when their father lived with them. But there had been a few sporadic visits that ended when she was eleven. “Some men aren’t cut out for fatherhood,” her mother said and left it at that. But what, Jen had wondered, would he have done if there’d only been one little girl to take care of, not two.
All of it, of course, had been aggravated by Lolly’s cancer. Well, maybe the therapist was on to something. Nothing made Jen happier than to be looked at and fawned over. That was how Lyle and Irv had persuaded her to take off her clothes and have sex in front of a camera crew. But she found that it wasn’t the same as an audience’s applause. It wasn’t the same thing at all.
Now she was not the center of attention. Once again it was Lolly. She wondered what these women saw in her goofy younger sister. They were watching her with sharp, inquisitive eyes.
“This is Dr. Jen, everybody,” Lolly said. Lolly had warned Jen that she had to use some sort of title, but Jen didn’t like it. The whole ‘doctor’ thing felt pretentious, especially since she hadn’t technically gotten the degree. But one of the women—the tall one who had big freckles across her reddish-toned face, the one Lolly had addressed as “Lucille”–solved the problem.
“Hey, Doc,” she said with a big grin.
Jen grinned back. “Doc. I like that.”
Jen was swept up in impressions of faces. As she walked in, a woman who was distinctly Native American with thick black hair and large brown eyes said, “Welcome.”
“Thank you,” Jen said.
“Oh, Alice,” Lolly said. “I’m so glad you signed up for the class.”
“Well, I’m not much for acting, but I thought I could help with the sets and stuff like that,” Alice answered with a sort of humility that made Jen suspect she had gifts beyond the ordinary.
“Oh, Lolly,” the short woman said. “We missed you all week long. I’ve been writing some poems and I want you to see them.”
“Nicole be always with her face in that journal of hers, Ms. Lolly,” another woman chimed in. This woman had very dark black skin and large teeth in an enormous smile.
“Shut up, Daffy,” Nicole said. Now the one with the killer smile had a name. A very quiet brown-skinned woman, who looked like a librarian, followed them. And a short blond white girl with a swagger came behind her. Then a couple of Spanish women and a slightly aloof woman who looked Middle European. There was something so ordinary looking about them all that Jen felt ashamed about any misgivings she’d had.
They filed into the room. Jen felt as if she were following Lolly’s entourage as the women crowded around her, talking about what kind of week they had.
Lolly was clearly in control as she sat in the circle of women.
“We’re