what gives ‘em the thrill. I keep ‘em way off me by never showin’ any fear and askin’ him if he’s got a hard three inches ready for me. Once I made the redneck bastard blush. Made my day, I tell ya’.
I just sat there on my bunk and looked at my crew. Maybe we could take Spencer in. But the thought of it made me feel like I was somehow cheatin’ on Cher. Cher was gonna get paroled soon, if she kept her nose clean and didn’t get caught stealin’ from Intake. Even if she did, Cher had herself a good lawyer on the Outside.
It all made me feel sorta sad and cold. I didn’t really resent Cher leavin’ Jennings. It’s just that it was gonna be a damned lonely and borin’ place once she was gone. Maybe we needed to take another woman in.
Windows on buildings and vehicles were smashed one day after all the women in the dining room had been ‘searched’ for tacos as they left the cafeteria. Later the women referred to the incident as ‘The Great Taco Shake’.
Kathryn Watterson, Women in Prison
‘Mealtime,’ the officer announced from the control room. ‘Stay in single file and follow the brown line.’
Jennifer had absolutely no interest in eating dinner in the cafeteria, but Suki pointed in the direction that she should go and Jennifer had no choice but to follow the others. She had to admit that she was starving, but God only knew what kind of food was being served. She turned to ask Suki if she might know, but Suki seemed to have someplace else to go. Jennifer turned back and followed the woman in front of her.
As the line moved down the corridor it approached a door that was being held open by yet another officer. ‘Single file, ladies, single file. Something good today. Officer Summit says it’s Reubens since we had ham salad for lunch today.’
‘It’s about time,’ spoke one inmate.
‘Now you’re talking,’ said another.
Off to the side, a woman was having a loud argument with a doorpost. ‘You no good, muthafukka,’ she yelled, then paused. ‘You got no right,’ she answered the mute doorway. No one seemed to notice or mind.
As Jennifer finally stepped inside the cafeteria, what she saw was worse than what she had imagined. Yellow-painted concrete blocks, horrible fluorescent lights hung high from metal rafters, cold air blowing from the air-conditioning unit, and a floor that was a solid slab of poured concrete that angled down in the middle with a covered water drain grate at the center. It reminded her of the old meat market her mother used to take her to in her old neighborhood. It was like a slaughterhouse.
Jennifer mechanically imitated the inmate in front of her so that she would be sure not to mess up in mess hall. There were three drink machines: one with grape something or other, one with orange something or other, and then a much less desirable lemonade mixture that was certain to taste more like water than lemon. She took a metal cup from the inverted stack, selected the orange drink, then stepped down the line a little further only to be presented with a plastic tray covered in a clear plastic lid.
‘Hey, where’s the Reuben?’ an inmate asked.
‘Yeah, I thought someone said we were having Reubens,’ another inmate intoned.
‘Well, Officer Summit must have been misinformed,’ the officer at the head of the line said.
Oh man, was there going to be a riot over what was served? Jennifer had been through enough already and she couldn’t take any more disruption. She’d never felt so out of control in a controlled environment in her life. She took her tray and followed the woman in front of her to the table.
Jennifer stared down at her tray. She watched the other woman at the table dismantle the lid, carefully slide it under the bottom tray, and then unwrap a utensil from a napkin and let it fall in her hand. It was an abbreviated spoon – a shortened bowl with three equally short prongs extending briefly from the center. She stared at the micro landscape of food in front of her. There was a hill of instant potatoes, a wide river of grease, a dying forest of cabbage greens beside a toxic dump of gristle and gray meat. A week ago, Jennifer would have scraped something like this off her shoe in disgust. She was hungry, but eating this would be a challenge, even without the bizarre implement.
A large woman of indeterminate race with light skin, freckles, and kinky red hair pulled back into a knot at the top of her head sat down opposite and gave Jennifer a smile that lacked intelligence and the left bicuspid. ‘I’m Big Red,’ she said, then lowered her voice. ‘You want some brew, you call Big Red.’
‘What do you call this?’ Jennifer asked her dinner companion, holding up her utensil.
‘A spork,’ Big Red told her, as if Jennifer was the stupid one. ‘You never seen no spork before? Used to get them all the time at Kentucky Fried.’
‘Are all the forks and spoons gone?’ Jennifer asked.
‘Get outta here, girl,’ Big Red said. ‘They don’t give us no knives, no forks, no nothing. Don’t want us to make weapons out of ‘em.’
Jennifer used the spork to scoop up a little potato and gravy, but the gravy ran through the space between the two tines. ‘Couldn’t they give us just a spoon?’ she asked in exasperation. ‘You can’t hurt someone with a spoon.’
‘Oh, say what?’ Big Red spoke up. ‘Lottie J. took out Sabrina’s eye with a spoon.’ She was sporking up her food with the kind of relish Jennifer had rarely seen at three star restaurants. ‘Lottie J. faked being sick and went to the dispensary and she got herself a spoon there and sharpened it and then when she came back and that Sabrina be botherin’ her again, she just scooped out her eye like a melon ball.’
Jennifer put her spork down. The greasy taste of the gravy sat on her tongue like oil on a driveway. Her hunger turned to nausea. The glutinous gray-brown mass that passed as meat couldn’t possibly be cut by the spork. ‘You finished with that?’ Big Red asked, eyeing Jennifer’s tray.
Jennifer picked up a plastic cup of pudding and nodded. Before she could get her arm out of the way Big Red grabbed the tray and pulled it over to her, placing it on top of her first tray. She dug in and Jennifer realized that the niceties of cutting the meat were not an issue here; Big Red sporked the entire piece into her mouth and Jennifer watched as she masticated in a bovine manner for a lot longer than it took Jennifer to down the watery tapioca. This was definitely not the Four Seasons and there was no cotton candy cake with sugared violets and a candle on top for dessert.
To help calm her nausea, Jennifer tried to see what the other women were doing to get through their meals. Most of them were talking amongst themselves; some were even laughing. Then, to her absolute horror, Jennifer saw a grown woman trying to make herself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich using a spork. It would’ve been easier if she’d just used her fingers.
This was humiliation, not rehabilitation! Jennifer couldn’t get beyond it no matter how she tried. She wondered if the population was really so dangerous that they couldn’t be trusted with real eating utensils. She looked at Big Red, now mopping up the last of the food, and wondered if the story about the spoon was even true. Maybe it was one of those things they told a newcomer to scare her, like the camp story of the parked couple and the bloody hook hanging off the door of their car.
