Jennifer shivered again and rubbed the flesh of her arms vigorously. She hated being in this van, she hated these streets, and she hated the memories she was having of living in streets like them. It had taken motivation, intelligence, and hard work to climb out of the place they were driving through. Ironically, it now seemed as if that same motivation, intelligence, and hard work was bringing her right back, or to a place even worse. Prison! She wouldn’t let her tears fall. She reminded herself that this was only a temporary setback. But she was glad that her mother hadn’t lived long enough to know about her trial or see her riding in a prison van.
Jennifer turned away from the window. She couldn’t worry about the women on the street; she had her own problems. She’d dressed so carefully that morning – as she did every morning – but now the bench that she was sitting on was speckled with God only knew what kind of dirt. The rubber-matted floor smelled as if unspeakable things had been deposited there, and she was afraid to lean against the wall because of the nasty graffiti that was written in – what? Blood? Snot? Magic Marker? Jen thought ruefully of all the taxes that she had paid over the years. She wondered why some of it wasn’t spent on keeping prison vans a little cleaner. Well, the horrible interior was probably just a show for the press. As Tom said, they were making an example of her. Things would be a lot better once she actually got to the prison. What had Tom said? It was a country club. Fine. She could handle that for a day or even two. Right now, though, the filth and the stench were permeating her hair and her clothes. Worse, Jennifer felt too tired to sit erect any longer. She gave up and leaned back. What does it matter? she thought. She would take her suit to Chris French Cleaners back on Ninth Street in a couple of days and they would work their magic on it. They would remove the smells and stains, just as Tom was working to make her personal record spotless once again. She thought of pulling out her hidden Nokia and calling him, but the driver might hear and surely he couldn’t have accomplished anything this soon. She should just zone out and wait.
Just as Jennifer relaxed into the ride, the driver sped up and recklessly rounded a corner. She was thrown from the steel bench onto the filthy floor. Jen struggled to get back on the bench and, in her surprise, she forgot for a moment just exactly what her situation was. ‘Excuse me,’ she shouted to the driver through the wire cage, ‘but don’t you think we’re going just a little too fast in a residential neighborhood?’
His head spun around. ‘I don’t need no driving lessons from a convict,’ he sneered. Then he looked straight ahead and drove on even faster.
Jennifer was angry and ashamed of her outburst, but still she insisted, ‘It’s dangerous. Your driving threw me onto this filthy floor.’
‘I don’t care if you fall on your ass. You ain’t riding in a limo anymore, convict.’
Convict! He kept calling her a convict. She climbed back on the bench and tried to brace herself against the walls of the van. The handcuffs jangled and cut into her wrists. How in the hell had it come to this? Jennifer always followed the rules. She never smoked pot or had unprotected sex. She never took shortcuts; she never had an overdue book from the library. Hell, she never even left dirty dishes in the sink. And he’d called her a convict. Well, Jennifer thought with a shock, she was a convict. For a moment the reality – the smell, the dirt, the ugliness – broke over her in a wave. What was she doing here?
The ride continued endlessly. Jennifer went from nauseated to sleepy to hungry and then back to nauseated again. Through it all she was frightened. At last the driver made another sharp right turn, and as Jennifer held on as best she could, the brakes screeched and the van came to an abrupt stop. Jennifer peered out the window. The prison gates were opening, and slowly the van pulled into the yard.
This wasn’t like any kind of country club that Jennifer had ever seen – and the crazy-looking woman who was squatting in the flower bed was no greenskeeper. Jennifer had no way of knowing her name at the time – nor could she have ever guessed it – but ‘Springtime’ was the first inmate to greet her with a smile. The old woman’s birth name was long lost, as was her youth. Her dark, leathery skin was pulled so tight over her skull that her death-head’s grin reminded Jennifer of the cheap skeleton masks all the kids in her old neighborhood used to wear on Halloween. That grin and those loony eyes were Jennifer’s first spooky glimpse of prison life. As the van continued forward, the old woman pointed to the flower bed. Jennifer couldn’t see what it was that she was pointing to until they were farther away. There, in a withered garden, bright orange marigolds and faded blue argretum spelled out Welcome to Jennings.
Beyond the flowers Jennifer saw the terrible glint of razor wire coiled across the top of the chain-link fence. Ten feet behind it was a twin fence, also topped with the same wire. The sight stopped Jennifer’s breath for a moment. What was happening to her? It looked as if she were in a Kurt Russell movie. The van approached a high concrete-block wall with garage doors that slowly opened to let them in. The doors closed behind them, the engine was turned off, and they sat in total silence. A burning bile rose in Jennifer’s throat and she swallowed hard. She was soaked with sweat. What were they doing? Nobody moved or said a word. Why were they just sitting there in the dark stench of this disgusting van? It was all so unnerving. She needed air – fresh air. ‘Excuse me,’ she said softly, ‘but what happens now?’
‘Jesus Christ!’ the driver sneered. ‘Are you really in such a hurry to get Inside?’
Before Jennifer could answer, an alarm sounded and, as if in response, overhead lights went on. The driver and guard got out of the van, slid open the doors, and reached in to pull her from her seat. Two prison officers had come from somewhere and stood on the tarmac. ‘Right this way, Miss Spencer,’ the shorter officer said.
‘Welcome to Jennings,’ the taller one said with a leer.
Jennifer lost her footing as she made the big step down from the prison van and she nearly fell onto the slippery concrete of the Jennings garage. She blinked her eyes against the harsh fluorescent lights and tried her best to regain her balance and maintain her composure. Dizzy, she teetered on her heels.
‘Can you walk on your own?’ the shorter of the two officers asked Jennifer with what sounded like real concern. Although they were dressed in identical uniforms, the two men couldn’t have been more different in their demeanor. While the short one seemed calm and almost caring in his work, it was clear to Jen that the taller officer was wound tight as a spring and seemed ready to explode into violence at any moment. Good cop – bad cop, thought Jennifer. She was studying the faces of her captors when she felt the tall guard’s grip tighten firmly on her arm. ‘You were asked if you can walk,’ he sneered into her face. ‘What’s your answer?’
Jennifer looked at him. Who was this guy? His nameplate read KARL BYRD, but he was no bird. He was a six foot, six inch, two hundred pound hyena. ‘What’s your answer?’ he repeated. ‘Can you walk on your own?’ Jennifer only nodded in response, and the officers flanked her on either side and walked her toward the prison door.
Byrd reached up to his shoulder with his free hand and snarled, ‘Open One Oh Nine,’ into his shoulder-mounted radio. A buzzer sounded and he pushed the door. As Jennifer twisted in an attempt to see the good cop’s nameplate, she noticed that he was locking a contraption on the wall that looked like a night depository at a bank.
‘It’s for our weapons,’ he told her, answering her unasked question. ‘No guns are allowed inside Jennings.’ His name was Roger Camry. Jennifer decided that she liked Roger Camry. He wasn’t some vengeful sadist. He was just a short civil servant with a job to do. For the first time since she left home, Jennifer smiled. Well, this was better. The hallway didn’t stink and the officers were unarmed, and one of them was even kind of nice. Maybe this was a country club after all.
But then she stepped further inside. What was that smell? It wasn’t clinical, nor was it sterile. Before Jennifer could take another sniff, the heavy door slammed behind her with a loud and resounding clank of metal against metal. It made her jump, and Byrd laughed. It sounded far too final.
Jennifer looked ahead down the long, empty hallway before her. She froze. Even with Byrd’s