The other pro added, ‘Yeah. And always look at their hands. If a trick says he’s a workin’ man, see if his hands are rough. That’s the tip-off. A lot of plainsclothes cops wear workin’ men’s outfits, but when it comes to their hands, they forget, so their hands are smooth.’
Time went neither slowly nor quickly. It was simply time. Tracy thought of St Augustine’s aphorism: ‘What is time? If no one asks me, I know. But if I have to explain it, I do not know.’
The routine of the prison never varied:
4:40 A.M. Warning bell
4:45 A.M. Rise and dress
5:00 A.M. Breakfast
5:30 A.M. Return to cell
5:55 A.M. Warning bell
6:00 A.M. Work detail lineup
10:00 A.M. Exercise yard
10:30 A.M. Lunch
11:00 A.M. Work detail lineup
3:30 P.M. Supper
4:00 P.M. Return to cell
5:00 P.M. Recreation room
6:00 P.M. Return to cell
8:45 P.M. Warning bell
9:00 P.M. Lights out
The rules were inflexible. All inmates had to go to meals, and no talking was permitted in the lines. No more than five cosmetic items could be kept in the small cell lockers. Beds had to be made prior to breakfast and kept neat during the day.
The penitentiary had a music all its own: the clanging bells, shuffle of feet on cement, slamming iron doors, day whispers and night screams … the hoarse crackle of the guards’ walkie-talkies, the clash of trays at mealtime. And always there was the barbed wire and the high walls and the loneliness and isolation and the pervading aura of hate.
Tracy became a model prisoner. Her body responded automatically to the sounds of prison routine: the bat sliding across her cell at count time and sliding back at wake-up time; the bell for reporting to work and the buzzer when work was finished.
Tracy’s body was a prisoner in this place, but her mind was free to plan her escape.
Prisoners could make no outside telephone calls, and they were permitted to receive two five-minute calls a month. Tracy received a call from Otto Schmidt.
‘I thought you’d want to know,’ he said awkwardly. ‘It was a real nice funeral. I took care of the bills, Tracy.’
‘Thank you, Otto. I – thank you.’ There was nothing more for either of them to say.
There were no more phone calls for her.
‘Girl, you best forget the outside world,’ Ernestine warned her. ‘There ain’t nobody out there for you.’
You’re wrong, Tracy thought grimly.
Joe Romano
Perry Pope
Judge Henry Lawrence
Anthony Orsatti
Charles Stanhope III
It was in the exercise yard that Tracy encountered Big Bertha again. The yard was a large outdoor rectangle bounded by the high outer prison wall on one side and the inner wall of the prison on the other. The inmates were allowed in the yard for thirty minutes each morning. It was one of the few places where talking was permitted, and clusters of prisoners gathered together exchanging the latest news and gossip before lunch. When Tracy walked into the yard for the first time, she felt a sudden sense of freedom, and she realized it was because she was in the open air. She could see the sun, high above, and cumulus clouds, and somewhere in the distant blue sky she heard the drone of a plane, soaring free.
‘You! I been lookin’ for you,’ a voice said.
Tracy turned to see the huge Swede who had brushed into her on Tracy’s first day in prison.
‘I hear you got yourself a nigger bull-dyke.’
Tracy started to brush past the woman. Big Bertha grabbed Tracy’s arm, with an iron grip. ‘Nobody walks away from me,’ she breathed. ‘Be nice, littbarn.’ She was backing Tracy towards the wall, pressing her huge body into Tracy’s.
‘Get away from me.’
‘What you need is a real good lickin’. You know what I mean? An’ I’m gonna give it to you. You’re gonna be all mine, alskade.’
A familiar voice behind Tracy rasped, ‘Get your fuckin’ hands off her, you asshole.’
Ernestine Littlechap stood there, big fists clenched, eyes blazing, the sun reflecting off her shiny shaved skull.
‘You ain’t man enough for her, Ernie.’
‘I’m man enough for you,’ the black woman exploded. ‘You bother her again, and I’ll have your ass for breakfast. Fried.’
The air was suddenly charged with electricity. The two amazons were eyeing each other with naked hatred. They’re ready to kill each other over me, Tracy thought. And then she realized it had very little to do with her. She remembered something Ernestine had told her: ‘In this place, you have to fight, fuck, or hit the fence. You gotta hold your mud, or you’re dead.’
It was Big Bertha who backed down. She gave Ernestine a contemptuous look. ‘I ain’t in no hurry.’ She leered at Tracy. ‘You’re gonna be here a long time, baby. So am I. I’ll be seein’ you.’
She turned and walked away.
Ernestine watched her go. ‘She’s a bad mother. ’Member that nurse in Chicago who killed off all them patients? Stuck ’em full of cyanide and stayed there an’ watched ’em die? Well, that angel of mercy is the one who got the hots for you, Whitney. Sheeet! You need a fuckin’ keeper. She ain’t gonna let up on you.’
‘Will you help me escape?’
A bell rang.
‘It’s chow time,’ Ernestine Littlechap said.
That night, lying in her bunk, Tracy thought about Ernestine.
Even though she had never tried to touch Tracy again, Tracy still did not trust her. She could never forget what Ernestine and her other cell mates had done to her. But she needed the black woman.
Each afternoon after supper, the inmates were allowed to spend one hour in the recreation room, where they could watch television or talk or read the latest magazines and newspapers. Tracy was thumbing through a copy of a magazine when a photograph caught her eye. It was a wedding picture of Charles Stanhope III and his new bride, coming out of a chapel, arm in arm, laughing. It hit Tracy like a blow. Seeing his photograph now, the happy smile on his face, she was filled with a pain that turned to cold fury. She had once planned to share her life with this man, and he had turned his back on her, let them destroy her, let their baby die. But that was another time, another place, another world. That was fantasy. This is reality.
Tracy slammed the magazine shut.
On visiting days it was easy to know which inmates had friends or relatives coming to see them. The prisoners would shower and put on fresh clothes and makeup. Ernestine usually returned from the visitors’ room smiling and cheerful.
‘My Al, he always comes to see me,’ she told Tracy. ‘He’ll be waitin’ for me when I get out. You know why? ’Cause I give him what no other woman gives him.’
Tracy could not hide her confusion. ‘You mean … sexually?’
‘You bet your ass. What goes on behind these walls has nothin’ to do with the outside. In here, sometimes we need a warm body