Insiders

Jennifer followed without question. Maybe she could find a phone in the laundromat.

9 Movita Watson (#ulink_694794b7-1118-5188-af64-56c4f98e2e34)

Here I am and here I stay.

Patrice de Mac Mahon

I did alotta work in the office that no inmate should be trusted with, but that was because of Miss Ringling. She was one of those state employees who felt the main function of her job was cashing her paycheck. Most work that required any intelligence was given directly to me by the Warden. The rest of it was given to me by Miss Ringling. But now I was finally shuttin’ down the PC and gettin’ ready to go to dinner, when Warden Harding strolled outta her office in that casual-like way that says she’s got something to tell me.

‘Movita?’ she asked.

‘Mmmm,’ I kinda murmured back. You can’t really diss the Warden, but by now her and me know each other good enough for me to voice a certain kind of awareness.

‘I’ve assigned Spencer to Conrad. Do you think Suki will mind having her as a cellmate?’ the Warden asked me.

Since when did The Woman worry about what I thought? ‘Why do I care what Suki minds?’ I answered back. It sounded kinda snotty so I softened it a bit with, ‘She’ll do fine. NBD. Spencer’s no suicide, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

‘I just thought that you might have a better sense of who would be the best to match the new inmate with. You are the – uh – main person for the crew. I just don’t want to add a problem to an already sensitive situation.’

‘Hey, my policy is just like that old president’s,’ I told her. ‘“Don’t ask, don’t tell.” That works for me, too.’ I knew what she was angling for. The Warden wanted me to take that little white witch to my lovin’ black bosom. That’s one of the deadly things about prison; you show weakness just once and everyone is ready to prey on ya’. Just ‘cause I unreasonably, uncharacteristically, and maybe unfortunately ‘adopted’ Suki Conrad into my crew doesn’t mean I’m gonna do it for every sorrowful new piece of meat that comes to Jennings. It bugged me that The Woman even asked me.

I don’t know if the others wanted to take Suki in, but I insisted. And when I insist, they don’t have much choice. It wasn’t like anybody really hated her, and face it, girls, Movita rules. Anyway, the very first day I saw Suki Conrad draggin’ her pitiful little butt through Intake, I just took to her. Maybe it was that baby-fine blonde hair or the lost look in her eyes. I got me a pink-skinned baby doll with yellow hair and blue eyes for Christmas once. Didn’t I love that dolly! Whatever. Sometimes, though, someone like that just tugs at your heart or some shit like that. I guess I just plain felt sorry for the little thing, and that’s the truth. Just ‘cause I’m in prison don’t mean I got no human feelings. And I felt like we needed a baby in our crew.

Women need family. Don’t matter if it’s blood or not. In the crew we’re like mother and daughters sometimes, and sometimes we’re like sisters, and sometimes we’re like other family members, too. That don’t mean we don’t fight and argue and stuff. But when you’re in a crew you just try to keep all that to a minimum.

‘Please let me know if there’s any trouble with the match-up, okay?’ the Warden asked me. She was lookin’ me right in the eye and I knew she wanted more than a trouble report. She knew how to get at me. ‘That’s it for today, Movita. You better go to dinner.’ She paused for a second. ‘What do you and your girls have planned tonight?’

I switched off the monitor and neatened up some stacks of papers on my desk. ‘Well, it’s Theresa’s turn to cook,’ I said, ‘so it’s gonna be a surprise.’ Sometimes I get the oddest feeling that the Warden is kinda – well – envious of us in the crew. It’s like she’d rather come and eat with us instead of goin’ to her own house. I don’t know much about her life Outside, ‘cept that she’s divorced and that she works all the time. I doubt she’s got much of a life.

When I got back to my house, Theresa was already chopping the carrots that Suki was washin’. ‘You want the salad dressing sweet or you want it tart?’ Theresa asked.

‘I don’t care as long as you’re making it,’ Cher told her. She was loungin’ her sassy ass on the bunk, readin’ a magazine, and just waitin’ to eat.

If prison is the place where society thinks they can make us cons eat shit, they do a damn good job of it. Even though the Warden keeps fightin’ with Ben Norton down in Food Services, the food at Jennings never gets any better. No one – and I mean no one – wants to eat the shit old Ben serves up in the cafeteria. It’s nothin’ but starch, grease, and real bad meat. People eat it, but only if they have to.

You can eat for free in the cafeteria. So if you’re destitute, or spend whatever you got on contraband, or if you can’t make even one friend, then you’re stuck in the cafeteria eatin’ one of Ben’s blue plate specials.

But if you got some sense, a little social grace, or any initiative at all, you can buy things from the prison canteen and cook ‘em up yourself. You just need to save a little money and get pots and pans and all. There’s no real kitchens in our houses, but Harding lets us have a hot plate or an electric skillet. Of course, the canteen doesn’t have much variety – maybe only seven or eight kinds of things. You can usually get a chicken, or sometimes beef. They always got a little lettuce or some vegetable. There’s potatoes and sometimes rice. And now and then some fruit like apples or bananas or even oranges. Theresa works down in the dispensary, so she always knows what’s comin’ in. She stashes the best for the crew, and with the money Cher gets from sellin’ some of the stuff she steals from Intake we can buy a whole lot of good stuff. Problem is, we don’t got refrigeration, and that’s why we need plenty of ice. Frances was the lucky one to get to deliver it. Ice is like gold in prison. Without it, lots of our good stuff goes to waste. If we buy a chicken on our own, by the time we eat half of it the other half is no damn good and we’re so sick of chicken that we’re cluckin’. We don’t wanna see no bird ever again.

‘Hand me that pot of water, Suki,’ Theresa said as I sat down to listen to the day’s bulletins. I wanted to know if anyone had any more news on Spencer. I thought Suki might speak up, but Cher was the first one to sound off, as usual.

‘I hear she’s already sashaying round here like she owns the place.’ Cher smirked. ‘Byrd told old Cranston down in Intake that he’s gonna toss Spencer into solitary if she demands to use the phone one more damn time.’

‘Well, you know what they say about asking and receiving, don’t you?’ Theresa said as she opened the Tupperware and measured out some pasta into the boiling water.

‘Yeah, well this ain’t Sunday school,’ Cher shot back. ‘And it ain’t the movies either. You don’t automatically get one call when you get here.’

‘It’s tough on you white girls when you don’t get your way, ain’t it?’ I said, givin’ Cher a look. She was copping some pretty amazing attitude.

‘That’s not very nice,’ Suki said with hurt feelings.

‘Movita wasn’t referrin’ to you, sweetie,’ Cher reassured her. She got up and gave Suki a pat on the shoulder.

That was for my benefit. Back when I first took Suki in, Cher made quite a fuss. ‘She can’t cook, she can’t steal, she can’t do nothin’ but cry,’ Cher bitched. ‘She’s dumb as dirt. That’s why she drove the car for her boyfriend.’

I guess Suki actually believed her boyfriend when he said he was goin’ into that 7-Eleven for cigarettes. He came out with the contents of the cash register, and little Suki thought she was guilty of nothin’ more than keepin’ the heater running.

Theresa, on the other hand, was more understanding. ‘But she lost her baby,’ she said to Cher. ‘She’s never going to stop crying about that. You know what they say about mothers when someone takes away their babies, don’t you?’

Well, nobody answered Theresa’s question. It got real quiet for a moment. You see, I don’t like talkin’ about children. I never talk about my little girls. Their granny is raisin’ them, and that’s all I can bear to say about it.

‘Just what in heaven’s name are you makin’ there, Theresa?’ I asked to break the tension. ‘You trying to kill us all before Cher gets a chance to get outta here?’

‘Get out of my way, Movita,’ Theresa warned. ‘You know what they say about too many cooks, don’t you?’

I just laughed and backed off. Havin’ a conversation with Theresa was like talkin’ to a refrigerator door loaded with sayings. I respected that girl. The goin’ never got so tough that Theresa didn’t get up and go. ‘People say I’m an optimist,’ she’d say, lookin’ all serious and stuff. ‘But I don’t think that’s necessarily true. And do you wanna know why? I’m gonna tell you why. Because – you know what they say about pessimism and optimism, don’t you?’

Theresa never really wanted you to answer her questions, ‘cause she had all the answers herself.

‘They say the pessimist says the glass is half empty, but the optimist says it’s half full. Well, you know what I say to that? I don’t say that glass is half anything, I say you’re using the wrong damn glass. It’s obviously too big. That’s what I say.’ Then old Theresa always waited a little and let it all sink in before she’d wind up for her big finale. ‘And you know what that makes me?’ she’d ask. ‘That makes me a pragmatist! That is someone who has a practical, matter-of-fact way of solving problems. That’s a pragmatist and that’s what I am – a practical, matter-of-fact problem solver. If you got a problem with how much is in your glass, well then maybe you’re just using the wrong glass. You understand what I’m saying here? It just doesn’t matter if you think it’s half empty or half full, what matters is what you do about it. Get off your ass and get yourself a different glass is what I say. Always remember this: Answer is also a verb. You understand what I’m saying here? The door to success is labeled PUSH! You can’t leave footprints in the sands of time if you’re not wearin’ work boots.’

I don’t know why, but I could listen to Theresa talk for hours. I loved those speeches.

‘Get up off your butt, Cher, and grab that plastic strainer for me,’ Theresa told Cher, and Cher did it. ‘Hold it over the bowl.’

Cher was laughing as Theresa strained her pasta and let the water go down the john. ‘You think there’s any symbolism here with your cookin’ right next to the toilet?’ Cher teased.

Theresa’s specialty is her pasta. That’s somethin’ the canteen don’t carry, but Theresa’s sister sends her a lot of it. That’s another thing about who you pick for crew. You want the girls who get lots of packages from the Outside. Theresa gets pasta and salamis and Italian shit like that. And you can’t get better packages than Cher gets. Theft runs in her family, so they’re always sendin’ her stuff. Lots of it is contraband and gets taken out and sent back, but the boxes always have hand creams and shampoos and stuff like that. And now and then she’ll get a big ol’ canned ham with some spices. The chips and dips and stuff come in on a regular basis. Both girls are real good about sharin’ with the crew.

Suki never gets a damned thing. She ain’t got a family. Her little girl is in foster care. I don’t care, though – we had to take her in. But if we have to take in this Spencer bitch, then that girl better be prepared to do her part.

Dinner was almost ready. Besides the pasta we were having some lettuce and some bananas for dessert. ‘All the ice is gone,’ Theresa said, ‘and there won’t be any more until tomorrow afternoon, so get prepared to eat. I don’t want anything to go to waste.’

‘Speakin’ of waste,’ I said. ‘I hear Miss Spencer had herself quite a night in Observation.’

‘Did Karl Byrd give her any trouble?’ Theresa asked, all concerned.

‘Karl can do better than get a piece of that sorry ass,’ Cher snarled.

‘That’s not very nice,’ Suki piped up. ‘I think she seems kind of nice. She’s my bunkmate. But she says she’s not gonna be here very long.’

Cher was laughing. ‘Oh, let me guess,’ she said. ‘She’s just another innocent victim, put in the slammer by mistake.’

‘That’s what she says,’ Suki told us, all sincere. Suki doesn’t get irony – you might say she has an irony deficiency. ‘Jennifer says her boyfriend is coming to get her out.’

‘Yeah, just like my knight in shining armor is comin’ for me,’ Cher snorted.

Havin’ Cher as a cellmate helps the time pass. When she first hit Jennings, I couldn’t imagine how I’d ever survive being locked up with a wild white woman. But she can be so damned funny. And she’s honest – for a thief. She never pretends to be nobody ‘ceptin’ who she is. For her, everything she sees is just ripe for the pickin’. She always has her eyes wide open and on the lookout for the next chance to take what she wants. And not just for herself, either. Soon as she got here she stole me a Sony Walkman and a feather pillow, and damn it – that hillbilly girl just stole my heart. I never understood how it happened, but I was glad that it did. I love Cher. Now it isn’t like we’re lesbians. No one in my crew is a lesbian. I know lots of women couple up for a little sex and comfort while they’re here, but nothin’ like that goes on between me and Cher. But we do love each other. When I think of how I felt for Earl I almost laugh. My feelings for him were pretty shallow and pathetic when I compare ‘em with the love I feel for Cher. And even for Theresa and Suki.