Insiders

by Olivia Goldsmith

  ‘I love it when you talk legal,’ she told him bravely, but a betraying tear slipped down one of her cheeks.

  ‘Come on! We got a schedule to keep,’ the tall officer nearly barked.

  Tom looked down at Jennifer’s hand. There, on the fourth finger, she wore his ring. ‘Maybe you should leave the diamond with me,’ he said. ‘Just for safekeeping,’ he added with an apologetic smile.

  Jennifer was stunned. She loved her ring. When he’d put it on her finger she’d planned to never take it off. But … well, of course it was silly, insane really, to wear a three-carat diamond to … She tried not to think about what she was doing, but again, like a child, she did as she was told and slipped the gorgeous emerald-cut ring from her finger and gave it back to Tom.

  It was almost a relief when the van doors slid shut. As she looked out, hoping for a last glimpse of Tom, she saw nothing but photographers, and then, there in the crowd was Lenny’s stricken face. She lifted her ringless hand to wave good-bye through the wire mesh. ‘This Jennings place is like a country club,’ she reminded herself as the van lurched forward and took her away from her job, her luxurious home, her love. And her life.

  2

  Gwen Harding

  The law is the true embodiment

  of everything that’s excellent.

  It has no kind of fault or flaw,

  And I, my Lords, embody the law.

  W. S. Gilbert, Iolanthe

  Whenever Warden Gwendolyn Harding was asked to give the occasional speech to a group of young people or a women’s association, she would usually begin by telling those assembled, ‘When I was a little girl and people would ask me whether I wanted to be a nurse or a teacher or a mommy when I grew up, I’d answer that question by saying, “No, I want to be a prison warden, because then I’ll get to be all three of those things at once.”’ The story always got a laugh, and Gwen Harding liked to think that laughing helped people to relax a bit. If you can make someone laugh, aren’t you making his or her life a little better? Isn’t it giving him or her a small gift? That was why Gwen was often so disappointed with herself after a long day at Jennings. She couldn’t make the lives of the inmates much better, and she most certainly could not make them laugh. She wished that she could.

  She also wished that she could make the five representatives from JRU International laugh as well. They were all solemnly seated before her in her sunny but somewhat dusty office at Jennings. This wasn’t the first time she’d met with Jerome Lardner, the bald little man with the protruding Adam’s apple, but she didn’t recognize the rest of his staff. They seemed to be interchangeable in their little suits, their little haircuts, and their little ages. They looked like they ranged between ages twenty-four to twenty-eight. Gwen Harding was used to seeing young prisoners, but her staff were mature. Even Jerome Lardner, whom Gwen uncharitably – but only mentally – referred to as ‘Baldy’, was well under forty.

  ‘What we are hoping to achieve,’ Lardner was saying, ‘is not just a new level of productivity, but also a new level of profitability within a correctional facility.’

  ‘Well,’ Gwen pointed out with a smile, ‘any profitability would be a new level, wouldn’t it? Prisons have never made any money.’

  ‘Certainly,’ Jerome nodded, ‘certainly none of the public prisons make money, but the privatized ones do.’

  That word! Gwen decided yet again that she would not argue statistics with Jerome Lardner. Whenever she called any of his ‘facts’ into question, he was always ready with statistics. If figures didn’t lie, then liars like Jerome certainly didn’t figure out anything except how to protect their own position. ‘Inmate Output Management Specialists have been very effective in supervising the productivity of privatized facility workers,’ Baldy droned on.

  Sometimes it took Gwen as long as five minutes to figure out what the JRU terminology meant. They seemed to avoid using straightforward words like ‘prison’ or ‘forced labor’ when they could use their multisyllabic buzzwords instead. It might fool the politicians, but it didn’t fool Gwen. ‘Whatever you just said, I’m sure you are right,’ Gwen responded.

  At last! She got a bit of a chuckle and a few laughs from the JRU staff. That would be her little gift to them. Gwen suspected that they were probably laughing at her, not with her. She imagined that she was probably the butt of plenty of JRU jokes. But that was nothing new. She knew, for example, that at Jennings many of the women – both the inmates and the staff – referred to her as ‘The Prez’ – as in ‘The President’. This wasn’t because of her strong image or authoritative air, but rather because of her somewhat unfortunate name. When Gwen Harding first arrived at Jennings, her nameplate had been erroneously engraved to read: WARREN G. HARDING instead of WARDEN G. HARDING. She assumed that the error was an innocent one and not a purposeful attempt to make her look silly. She had had the sign redone, but she kept the original one at home and amused friends and relatives with it at dinner parties and family gatherings – back when she gave dinner parties and had a family to gather.

  Gwen could laugh about the nameplate now, but it was not the most dignified way to begin her tenure as the new warden. Fortunately, over time, Gwen had noticed that fewer and fewer of the women who were sent to Jennings even knew who Warren G. Harding was. She imagined that ‘The Prez’ would eventually be replaced with a new name – probably something even more offensive. Maybe it already had. The inmate population grew, changed, and became less educated and more troubled each year. She’d been shocked only last week when Flora, the middle-aged inmate in charge of the laundry detail, apparently didn’t know the difference between a city and a country. ‘When I get out of here, I’m going to Paris,’ Flora had said.

  ‘France?’ Gwen had asked her.

  ‘There, too!’ was Flora’s reply.

  It would have been something to laugh about if it wasn’t so sad. But Gwen would’ve preferred that she and Flora had something to laugh about together. Jennings was such a sad place, she wished that all of them – the inmates, the officers, the staff – had something to laugh about. But, after all, it was a prison, wasn’t it? And she was the Warden – not a clown. And most certainly not a teacher, a nurse, or a mommy. The job wasn’t what she had once hoped for. Contrary to what she (and no one else) thought of as her ‘amusing public speaking anecdote’, being Warden had very little to do with nurturing, medicine, or motherhood. Increasingly, it was a purely administrative position that required an expertise in staff management, food preparation, health services, and custodial care, along with – quite obviously – criminal behavior. If she had to do it all over again, Gwen Harding would’ve gladly chosen to be a nurse, a teacher, or a mommy. But she didn’t and she couldn’t.

  Gwen looked at the JRU International staff seated before her. She sighed. It was a big waste of time. As she tried to concentrate on the ongoing monotone monologue of the bald one, she realized that she wasn’t sure she knew what she was any longer; the thrust of her job had changed too much. She had more and more paperwork, less and less contact with the inmates, and virtually no programs in education and rehabilitation. The greatest focus of her work was on cost containment – especially since JRU had begun to explore the privatization of Jennings nearly a year ago.

  Baldy finally stopped speaking and a member of his very young crew was now going on about a ‘facilities facilitator’, who would make the buildings better, stronger, cleaner, bigger, and more beautiful. It wasn’t clear to Gwen how this was going to be achieved without an immense infusion of money. The Jennings infrastructure hadn’t been invested in in decades. She couldn’t even find money for routine maintenance.

  It was very difficult for Gwendolyn Harding to comprehend how an underfunded and crumbling government-controlled institution for the so-called ‘rehabilitation’ of women could suddenly be transformed into a profitable subsidiary of an international corporate conglomerate. Not only did Gwen have difficulty imagining how it could happen, she was also becoming u
nnervingly aware that these JRU fools seemed to believe it would be up to her to see that it did happen. Ha! Not even Warren G. Harding could do the job. The job Baldy had in mind for Gwen to do required an understanding of sales, marketing, and most aspects of the private sector. She had no experience or expertise in any of these areas – nor did she want any.

  What if these bozos did succeed in getting a contract from the state? When it came to the state, anything was possible. What kind of havoc would ensue then? Gwen envisioned management so cruel and incompetent that an armed insurrection would not be altogether unlikely. She looked at the twentysomethings gathered before her. If each and every one of them were blown away in an Attica scenario she wouldn’t be sorry at all. She’d only regret that the inmates would be forced to serve more time. And as far as Gwen was concerned, it would be grossly unfair to serve time when you were just trying to perform a service for humanity.

  Gwen was growing weary and angry at these jackals. What if the staff whom she had hired and trained over the years was fired so that some twenty-three-year-old ‘executive’ could take over? What if she herself was replaced by a ‘facilities facilitator’ or an ‘inmate output management specialist’? Jennings was a correctional facility for women, not one of those ‘country club’ joints for the white-collar crooks from Wall Street.

  That reminded Gwen of the intake meeting that was scheduled for that afternoon. Jennifer Spencer – the Wall Street showboater who the papers said was ‘sentenced to three to five at a country club prison’ was due to arrive. A country club! Someday Gwen wanted to visit one of those fabled facilities for herself. Maybe they existed somewhere for male white-collar criminals, but to her knowledge – which was extensive – there wasn’t a correctional facility for women anywhere in the United States that was not miserably overcrowded, pathetically understaffed, and/or dangerously in need of major repairs. There was nothing at Jennings that even remotely resembled the amenities of a country club.

  Gwen had all kinds at Jennings. She had women who had violently murdered, and she had a grandmother who had done nothing more criminal than to grow a little marijuana to help her grandson with his MS. And why? Because when the governor declared his war on drugs, and the legislators passed mandatory twenty-year sentences for even the most minor offense, everyone caught in the net – dolphin as well as tuna – eventually wound up on Gwen’s doorstep.

  And when they did, it was up to her to take care of all of them. She fed them, housed them, put them to bed, and tried to attend to their medical needs. At the same time she did her best to maintain the discipline and decorum that kept the lid on the Jennings pressure cooker of anger, resentment, and – most perilous of all – boredom. In the meantime, there were no full-time medical professionals on staff, the educational and training programs were substandard, there were no special facilities for family visits or overnight stays with children, and while there were a few on her staff who were hardworking men and women, Gwen also had more than a few union-protected liars and sadists who she fervently hoped would eventually end up on the other side of the bars. A country club? Gwen hardly thought so. A profit center? That was even more ridiculous. Gwen actually snorted out loud.

  Quickly she took the handkerchief that she kept tucked in her sleeve and wiped her nose as if she had sneezed. Well, she thought, as long as Warden Gwendolyn Harding was still at the helm of the Jennings Correctional Facility for Women it would be neither a country club nor a corporate headquarters. It would be a place where sad, damaged, and angry women were locked away from a society that required their removal. And if she had the courage and the stamina to make it happen, when these women were released, they would leave Jennings somewhat healed, more hopeful, and partially rehabilitated and acceptable to society. That was her modest dream.

  She shifted in her seat and cleared her voice. As Warden she was used to being watched and obeyed by hundreds of people. Even the slightest narrowing of her eyes usually brought a response. But in this meeting she could probably set her hair afire and it wouldn’t stop the young woman who was now babbling on and on about telemarketing. Telemarketing?

  Gwen glanced at her watch. She’d give them four more minutes and then they were out of there. She had to meet with today’s new prisoner, tell her the rules, and assign her to a cell. Jennifer Spencer was going to be a tough call for Gwen. She was coming in as a ‘celebrity’ inmate. Everyone in America had read all about her long before she had been sent to Jennings. Her story had been in all of the newspapers and magazines, and the photos of her and her handsome young lawyer looked like something right from the society pages. Even when she was led into the courthouse in handcuffs, she held her head high and kept her nose in the air as if she was going to a meeting of the board of directors.

  Gwen Harding was afraid that Jennifer Spencer was coming to Jennings to cut herself a deal. In all of the stories that she read about the arrest, the trial, the conviction, and now her imminent incarceration, Jennifer Spencer looked and sounded like a thoroughbred who always came in in first place. Jennifer Spencer was accustomed to being treated like a winner. And that meant that there were probably a lot of losers who were fashioning a knife out of a contraband piece of metal wrenched off a window frame just so they could slash the face of a woman like Jennifer Spencer. Unprovoked violence wasn’t epidemic at Jennings, but it did occur and it was a constant worry to Gwen Harding. But she took her mind off it and tried to focus on the snip of a girl in front of her.

  ‘So, in effect,’ the young woman was saying, ‘the telemarketing personnel could be monitored by only three shifts of management, which would give twenty-four-hour coverage of an operation that could sell nonstop, guaranteeing a –’

  That was enough. These people were only visitors. She didn’t report to them – yet. Gwen stood up, looked at Jerome and nodded her head. ‘Well, thank you,’ she said briskly. ‘This has been most informative.’

  Informative and beyond Gwen’s grasp. The JRU people began to shuffle their papers and regroup. They had no idea what they’d be dealing with. Who was going to train the women? And more importantly, what was going to motivate them? All of Gwen’s staffers and all of Gwen’s guards couldn’t get them to do the laundry with any care, or even to prepare meals that were anything better than slop. Many of the inmates were content to live in squalor, and few took any pride in their appearance or personal hygiene.

  Gwen stood, opened the door of her office, and bid the fools from JRU good-bye. They all walked out without so much as a glance toward Gwen’s receptionist, Miss Ringling, or Movita Watson, the inmate assigned to Gwen’s office from the prisoner population. Movita was the notable exception among the inmates at Jennings. Gwen knew she shouldn’t – really couldn’t – afford to have favorites, but Movita was … well, she was one of a kind. She was more competent, more clever, more stylish, with more attitude, intelligence, and tricks up her sleeve than anyone Gwen had even known. Movita ran the tightest crew in the prison, and perhaps ran the prison as well. Her crewmates loved and respected her in a way that Gwen – in her more perversely ironic moods – almost envied.

  If the fools from JRU had any sense at all, Gwen thought, they’d be talking to Movita rather than me.

  3

  Jennifer Spencer

  They try to strip you from the very first minute … When they brought me in county jail, the first thing they did was take my wedding ring and my earrings. Then they stripped me stark naked and made me jump up and down on the floor in a squat position – while they all stood around watching. They have to forget we’re human beings to treat us that way.

  A woman prisoner. Kathryn Watterson, Women in Prison

  As the prison van moved past the crowd at the courthouse and into the city streets, Jennifer put her face up to the smeared, barred window. As the van lumbered through the tunnel and then through poor suburban streets it was as if Jen was traveling back in time. She watched overworked women lugging laundry and groceries through the littered b
locks, the kind of low-rent neighborhood in which she had grown up. Tears filled her eyes for a moment. Every one of those women reminded her of her late mother. And every staggering drunk looked like her stepfather.

  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.