High-pitched giggling wakes me up. There’s a woman a couple of bunks away cackling insanely. The other women are telling her to shut the fuck up, but she just keeps on in a way that makes my skin crawl.

“Shut the fuck up, Lisa ‘ya fucking bitch!”

“What the hell’s wrong with her?”

“Fuckin’ tweaker.”

All of this drama plays in the background as I fade in and out of sleep with no concept of time. Lisa’s laughing that crazy laugh and the women are still trying to get her to stop. In the morning she’s gone. I’ve slept through breakfast, and the others are back at their bunks talking loudly or pacing back and forth across the length of the dorm. I sit up and listen without looking at anyone. I found out a long time ago that listening provides me far more information than if I were to ask questions. I hear that the guards have taken the laughing girl to the psych ward early this morning. I discover that many of these women have been here for months awaiting either trial or transport to prison. Many of them are young but there are women here who look as if they’re in their 50s or 60s.

In jail there’s no makeup allowed. Nor are hairdryers, curling irons or tweezers. It’s easy to tell which ones are in here on drug charges. They’re skinny, with sucked-in, scarred faces, sores on their arms and rotting teeth. They twitch and jerk because of damage to their nervous systems and pace back and forth like animals in cages. Eighty percent of the population incarcerated is here for drug-related crimes.

With some it’s more difficult to guess why they’re here. They look normal. I overhear one of them talking about her impending deportation back to Czechoslovakia.
There’s a woman in the bunk next to me who looks like she’s in her sixties. She keeps mostly to herself reading a tattered Harlequin Romance-–the only type of book available other than the Bible and the Alcoholics Anonymous handbook.

Eventually, someone else asks my name.

“Kim,” I say.

“Wadja do?”

“Possession of meth with intent, possession of paraphernalia and possession of marijuana.”

“Cool. How much did they get?”

“Just two rocks–my personal stash–my pipe and a little hash. I think they were disappointed they didn’t get more.”

A guard yells my name and takes me down to booking. Jill’s there on the other side of the glass waiting for me. I pick up the phone so we can talk.

“What happened?” she asks.

“Squat and cough,” she says. This series of routine procedures is more humiliating than the arrest. I’m stripped of all my dignity-–all my identity. As a bail bondsman I’m well known around the jail. I have status in the underworld, too. All kinds of people know me and I have power, but standing here naked, it’s just me and I hate myself. I’m ashamed of my nakedness and ashamed that I’m crying. Stripped of all facades, all the outer layers that protect me, I’m vulnerable and exposed. The officer looks at me as if I’m a slug–something she’d rather not see, but here I am anyway.

When I finally get my blue jail uniform I stop crying, grateful to be covered again. A guard leads me and two other women down a long hall. One of them is talking non-stop to the guard. She’s obviously been here before. The guard leads us through locked doors and down corridors glaring obscenely from the overhead fluorescents. I have no idea what to expect in county jail. I’ve worked for Jill–writing bail bonds–for three years, so I know my way around, but it’s different on this side. Walking down the concrete corridor feels like walking into the abyss.

“Do not show fear,” I tell myself. “And for fuck’s sake, don’t cry.” Jesus. I can’t cry. That would be even more humiliating than being strip-searched.

We stop at a door, and a guard, on the inside, buzzes us in. The lights are dim in the dormitory. It’s the middle of the night, but everyone is awake. There are two levels of double bunk beds. I have no idea how many women are here. I can feel their eyes sizing me up. I look past the sea of faces. I know some of them recognize me either from bonding them out or because I’ve sold meth to them.

The guard is male, and he’s telling the three of us the rules, though I barely hear his voice. We each get a plastic cup with a toothbrush, trial size bar of soap, plastic spoon, sweatshirt, blanket and a sheet. He assigns us a bunk and points me to mine.

“Jesus. This is even worse than I imagined,” I think looking down at the skeleton of metal that is my bed. I start to put my sheet on it, when a woman comes over and stops me.

“This is it,” I think. “I just got here and I already have to deal with a bull-dyke.”

“You need to get your mattress,” she says. “Hey!” She yells at the guard. “She didn’t get no mattress!”

“It’s okay,” I tell her. “I can get it.” But she’s already dragging a thin, worn mattress up the stairs. She smiles at me and I can see she’s only got one front tooth. Great. Now I’m probably in debt to her.

She shows me how to slip the mattress into the sheet the same way I’d slide a sandwich into a baggie, and before retreating to her bunk a few feet away tells me if I need anything just ask her. Despite the guard’s intermittent warnings to shut up and go to sleep, the hushed chatter is constant. I take off my oversized Keds sneakers. They’ve removed the laces: they don’t want anyone hanging herself in here, although I don’t know how it would be possible. There’s absolutely no privacy. Even the toilet is exposed with only a half wall on one side so the male guards can’t watch the women drop their pants and squat down on the cold plastic.

I fold the sweatshirt into a makeshift pillow and lie down. I’m still in shock from the arrest. I can’t get my mind around the fact that I’m actually in jail. Lying there with my face in my arms, all I can think about is my son. I wish I were at home. I wish I could crawl into bed with him until morning. It’s so cold here, and I feel so alone. How easy it would be to get lost in the system–erased from the outside world, forgotten with no one to remember me and no home ever again. Home. The word has never sounded so sweet. My tears flow silently into my make-shift pillow, and I drift into sleep thinking, “My God. What have I done?”

…to be continued…

Right up until the night of my arrest, I guess I thought everything was just fine–that I was fine. But deep down I wasn’t happy, and I was far from being all right. It’s strange how calm it is in the eye of a tornado: all the mayhem swirling and roaring around, and you’re smack dab in the middle of it all thinking, “How nice…How serene and still.” No one watching would ever describe it that way. When you’re in the eye of the storm, though, it’s hard to look at things objectively.

“Kirby, you need to clean house. Get rid of everything. And call Jill.” It’s my one phone call from booking after I’ve been fingerprinted, photographed and processed.

“You want me to wake her up?”

“Yes! I’m on call and someone has to take the phones. Will you make sure Andy gets ready in time for the bus?”

“Yeah. Are you okay?”

Of course I’m not okay! Why can’t you take care of me for a change?

I don’t expect him to say, “I love you.” He never has, but it would mean everything to me just now.

As I hang up, the desk sergeant calls my name. I can’t believe this is happening to me. I’m thirty-eight years old, and I’ve just been arrested for a felony: possession of meth with intent to distribute. I’m embarrassed. I want to tell the officers I’m different. I’m not like the other people in here. I’m educated, own a home and pay taxes. I’m a bail bondsman. I don’t belong here. I should get to go home.

A female guard takes me to a room and tells me to strip. This is the worst part for me. I’m completely humiliated. Standing naked in the cold room, ashamed of being on display in front of this woman, I’m sobbing. It’s the first time I’ve cried since the police pulled me over. Everything I’m facing, everything I’ve been through tonight, and this is what undoes me. With my stretch marks showing and thirty-eight-year-old breasts hanging unsupported, the guard tells me to turn around and bend over.  

to be continued…