Juvie

by Steve Watkins

  Mrs. Simper stops the video, then starts it up again on the slowest setting. “Now look at this part. That’s the girl who started everything. Chantrelle Jones. She hits the floor there. That must have been where she got a concussion. And that’s you. I had the hardest time figuring out what you were doing. The officers said you attacked her when she was down and they had to pull you off. But what it looks like to me is you were trying to help her. Is that accurate?”

  I nod. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I see,” says Mrs. Simper.

  Not “Thanks,” or “Now I understand,” or “So sorry the officers put you in restraints.”

  Just “I see.”

  Mrs. Simper isn’t through with the videos. There are two others, shot from other angles in the unit, and she studies them over and over as well. I just sit there next to her and she hits PLAY and REWIND, PLAY and REWIND, jotting notes on a legal pad, and only occasionally stopping to ask me questions.

  “What’s going on right there?” she asks at one point, tapping her pen on the monitor at Fefu, sitting on the floor as the fights rage around her, and then being dragged by me under the table.

  I tell her.

  “I see,” she says again.

  Someone calls. Mrs. Simper pauses the video to answer the phone, but her side of the conversation doesn’t reveal much, and neither does her face.

  “I see,” she says to whoever called.

  “And the officer’s husband?”

  “And the prisoners?”

  “No arterial damage?”

  “Good.”

  “And the other one?”

  “I see.”

  “We’ll fax over the orders in the morning.”

  “Yes, that’s procedure.”

  “Yes, shackles and van.”

  “Yes, Snowden.”

  That reference I do understand. Snowden is where they put mental patients, next to the hospital. I assume they’re talking about Cell Seven.

  When Mrs. Simper hangs up, I ask if everybody is OK.

  She looks at me as if I’ve spoken in an unfamiliar language. “Do you know why any of these other girls are in here, Sadie?” she asks.

  I shrug. “I know what some of them told me. Chantrelle said they had the wrong Chantrelle for grand-theft auto. She said Good Gina shot her boyfriend in the hand, and the Jelly Sisters stole some checks.”

  It occurs to me that Mrs. Simper might not know the nicknames, but if she’s confused she doesn’t let on. “Nothing is ever what it seems to be in here,” she says. “No one is ever who they present themselves to be. That’s a given. So the first thing you give up when you walk through these doors is trust. I know your story, or the version of it in your file. But that’s not the full story, is it?”

  “No, ma’am,” I say.

  Mrs. Simper nods. “Do you know why we make things so severe in here, Sadie?”

  I shrug. “Like scared straight? That sort of thing?”

  “No,” she says. “The young people we see in here — most of those you’ll meet — they’ve been here before, and we expect to see them again.”

  “Then, why?” I ask, though I suppose I already know the answer. Didn’t I just see why, in the explosion of violence with Chantrelle, and what followed with the Jelly Sisters, and then Cell Seven, all of it happening in a minute, a couple of minutes, followed by hours studying the security tapes to try to figure everything out?

  “There is a little girl,” Mrs. Simper says, “the youngest we have at the moment, who is ten years old. She’s here because she wanted a bicycle and so she took one from a young man who happened to be riding by. She beat him with a metal pipe. He was in a coma for three days.”

  This knocks the air out of me. “You mean Fefu? The Hispanic girl on our unit? You mean her?”

  “I mean,” Mrs. Simper says, articulating her words carefully, “that as noble as your instincts may be to help, it is not your job to help. It is your job to follow orders. For you, for everyone incarcerated, there is nothing else. You were ordered to get down on the floor. That is what you should have done, and that is all you should have done. That is all you will do in the future. You will not rescue, or help, or save.” She pauses. “You will do what you are told to do.”

  My face burns with anger and embarrassment.

  “Is that clear?” she asks quietly.

  I can’t speak, afraid that the voice that comes out of my throat won’t be mine.

  “Is that clear?”

  On the way back to my cell, C. Miller tells me she went by Friendly’s to see Carla.

  “Was she high?” I ask, almost weak with gratitude to have C. Miller be nice again.

  “No,” C. Miller says. “Just busy. I was only planning on checking her out, but we started talking and I told her I knew you. She was pretty suspicious. Kept looking around like she thought I was there to arrest her.”

  “Sounds like Carla,” I say.

  We stop so C. Miller can radio to have a set of doors opened.

  “We got past it,” she says. “She said to tell you she has an application in at Victoria’s Secret.”

  I laugh. “She can clean up pretty well if she puts her mind to it,” I say, remembering how nice she looked in court and the first time she visited me in juvie.

  We’re standing outside the door to Unit Three, but C. Miller doesn’t radio for the door just yet. “I probably shouldn’t have done it,” she says, “but we’re having a playdate on Saturday, just going to the park.”

  “You and Carla?”

  She laughs again. “No, stupid. Me and Carla and her little girl and my little girl. LaNisha.”

  “You have a kid?” I say. “You never told me that.”

  She sniffs. “You think you’re the only one with a life? Anyway, like I said, I probably shouldn’t have, but we just got talking about our daughters and they’re both the same age and everything and then we made the playdate. I don’t know too many moms my age. It was kind of nice to talk to somebody else that’s a single parent.”

  “Huh,” I say, taking it all in.

  C. Miller gets on her walkie-talkie, and the door buzzes and clicks. She holds it open, but pauses before ushering me through.

  “She asked me if you’re still mad at her. She didn’t say about what. Anyway, I didn’t know what to tell her about that.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Me neither.”

  I’m exhausted but can’t fall asleep. I lie on my bunk, staring up at the ceiling and that stuttering fluorescent light. My stomach rumbles — I haven’t eaten since lunch, and not very much then — and I have my own videos playing over and over in my head: of Chantrelle, the chair, the officers, the violence and the blood, the Jelly Sisters, the way one kept hitting a defenseless Weeze, the unshakable feeling I have that Bad Gina was responsible for what happened. When I close my eyes, I see her winking at me, as if I’m somehow responsible, too — only how can that be? I didn’t do anything except try to help Chantrelle, and only for a few seconds, before they pulled me away from her and put me in the restraint chair.

  I sit up on my bunk and bang the back of my head on the wall, though nowhere near as hard as Summer did the day she came onto Unit Three. I do it again, as if just like that I can banish all these thoughts. I expect it to make a noise, but the thick wall absorbs the sound. And that’s when I realize something is different: I no longer hear Cell Seven’s crying, that terrible lullaby she’s sung half the nights since I’ve been in juvie.

  Now that it’s gone, I almost miss it.

  Mom didn’t even wait until we got to the car before she started in on Carla. “What have you done? God damn it! This was not supposed to happen!”

  Carla was already bawling so hard that she couldn’t have answered if she wanted to.

  Mom had already chewed out the lawyer, Mr. Ferrell, who couldn’t stop apologizing and blaming the substitute judge and backing away until he was trapped against a wall and the bailiff had to come over and pull Mom away.

/>   I didn’t say a word. Just signed something they gave me to sign at the clerk’s window. Mom stuffed a copy in her purse and stormed out the door past the deputy on his stool, past the metal detector. I thought I was going to have to stop her from storming into traffic.

  Mom kept raging at Carla. Carla kept sobbing. I wanted to jump out of the car. Six months! It felt like somebody had just died. Like when Dad moved out. Like when we buried Granny.

  The streets blurred past. Mom kept yelling. Carla kept crying. I kept thinking about Kevin, about why he hadn’t come like he’d promised. The car felt claustrophobic, so I rolled down the window, but it still wasn’t enough air. I panicked at the thought of being locked up in a cell. Six months …

  “Shut up!” I screamed suddenly, startling us all. “Carla, stop your stupid crying! And Mom, leave Carla alone! We told you what happened! Blame the judge! Blame me! Just shut up, both of you!”

  Mom turned in the driver’s seat and slapped me, swerving onto the shoulder of the road.

  “Great!” I yelled as she righted the car. “Thanks. That felt great. Want to do it again? Huh?” I slapped myself. “There! Saved you the trouble.” I slapped myself again, hard. Mom grabbed my arm and held it, but at least she shut up. And Carla stopped crying. A powerful silence took over the car. I couldn’t see. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t feel anything.

  Mom drove us home, one hand on my arm the entire way.

  I was the first one out of the car, and practically sprinted inside, into my room. I tore off my blue sundress and threw it on the bed. Pulled on jeans and boots and a sweatshirt. Grabbed my helmet and key and tore out of the side door so I wouldn’t have to see Mom and Carla in the kitchen. I threw the blue tarp off my bike, jammed on my helmet, and jumped up to bring my full weight onto the kick-starter. It caught the first time. Seconds later, I roared out onto Clearview — a gray sedan had to hit the brakes — and took off in the direction of Route 1.

  My rear tire fishtailed through gravel a couple of miles later when I turned off Route 1 onto Mountain View Parkway. I nearly lost the road but managed to straighten out by the time I hit the first curve. I knew exactly where I was going: to the soccer field behind the high school.

  I spotted Kevin’s car in student parking and squealed to a stop, then hopped off my bike and kicked the driver’s-side door of his stupid, smelly Fiesta until it was good and dented.

  I didn’t bother to turn off my motorcycle when I got to the soccer field. I just sat on the sideline and watched Kevin trying to pretend he was so totally into their scrimmage that he didn’t know I was there. He was distracted and kept screwing up. His coach kept yelling at him. Even his teammates got on him. I couldn’t hear what they were saying over the engine, but I could guess.

  Finally he just stopped playing. He stood in the middle of the field, arms dropped by his sides, with that dumb, helpless look on his face that was supposed to be so endearing but now just pissed me off.

  I sat and waited. Kevin walked off the field slowly, toward me — his coach yelling the whole time from the other sideline — until he was close enough that I could see his eyes were red. As if that made all the difference.

  “Where were you,” I said. It wasn’t a question, because I knew he didn’t have an answer — not one that would do.

  He started to say he was sorry — I saw it coming — so I revved the engine to drown out the words.

  He tried again: “Sadie —” But I revved the engine again, and every time after that if I thought the words were about to come out of his mouth.

  “Where were you,” I said again.

  His eyes got redder. “My parents found out,” he said. “They wouldn’t let me.”

  “You said you’d be there.”

  “I know, I know.” He was practically whimpering. “But what happened? You got probation, right? Everything’s OK? This will just blow over with my folks. I’m —”

  I revved the engine yet again before he got to the “sorry.”

  Then I squeezed the clutch, tapped the Kawasaki into gear, and took off. Kevin didn’t try to stop me or anything. He just stood there, looking sad. I almost felt sorry for him. Almost.

  Five minutes later, my cell phone vibrated in my pocket. I knew it was him. I was well on my way to Government Island by then. I didn’t stop to answer or see what he might be texting. I just kept riding until I got to Coal Landing Road, and that copse of trees where I always hid my bike. I stashed everything, left Mom a message that I’d be home before dark, then tossed the phone as far as I could, deep into the swamp, and went to find that outcropping of freestone where I always sat overlooking Aquia Creek. Last time with Kevin.

  Now just me.

  It’s just me, Fefu, New Nikki, and the Ginas at breakfast the morning after the fight. I can’t eat. Good Gina can’t seem to, either. The others don’t seem to have any problem. Nobody talks.

  Guards I’ve never seen before come onto the unit with restraints. They go in the Jelly Sisters’ cells, and five minutes later lead both girls off in shackles. Wanda stares straight ahead the whole time. Nell keeps her head down. Neither of them says anything, the same as Chantrelle the evening before when they came for her in the restraint chair. I wonder if we’ll ever see any of them again — the Jelly Sisters, Chantrelle, Cell Seven, Weeze. Officer Emroch.

  Bad Gina is the first to speak.

  “They’re probably going to get, like, felony assault,” she says.

  Good Gina blinks at her. “What about Chantrelle?”

  Bad Gina blinks back. “What about her? She attacked two guards and put one in the hospital. That’s a whole lot of felonies. They’ll probably charge her as an adult. Wouldn’t surprise me if they already hauled her over to the regional jail last night to be with the real criminals.”

  Good Gina starts crying. It’s a silent, shuddering sort of cry. She doesn’t bother to cover her eyes, so tears splash onto her breakfast.

  Bad Gina turns her attention to the rest of us.

  “I bet they give us reduced sentences for what happened,” she says. “Or maybe at least work release. I just hope they don’t send us to work at the homeless shelter. They don’t make people take showers or anything, and the whole place stinks from their BO. That’s what I heard.”

  I’ve had about enough of Bad Gina already this morning, and we’ve only been out of our cells for an hour.

  “Aren’t you just a little concerned about your friend?” I ask.

  She frowns as if having a hard time figuring out who I mean.

  “Weeze,” I say. “Remember her?”

  Bad Gina’s face sags, but it almost looks willful, as if she’s doing it for effect. “Yeah, I know, right? Those bitches. I don’t think Weeze even knew how to fight or anything, or knew how to defend herself. But she was conscious and all when she left. I tried to get close to her, when they had her on the gurney, but the guards wouldn’t let me. I was going to tell her to milk it for all she can at the hospital, and they’ll probably reduce her sentence, too, all the way down to probation or community service or something. The worse you get hurt in juvie, the lighter they make your sentence. It’s practically a law.”

  “And you know this how?” I ask.

  She lifts a clot of gray eggs on her spork, waggles it at me, then chews it thoughtfully. “Because it just makes sense. What they don’t want in juvie, more than anything, is trouble. If there’s trouble, they make it go away, whatever it takes. Mrs. Simper, she’s like a genius at it. I’ve seen them come and go like you wouldn’t believe.”

  I close the lid on my Styrofoam box, wishing I could make Bad Gina go away.

  She picks the conversation back up again during first class that morning, which is GED prep.

  “Hey, Sadie,” she whispers, her face half-hidden behind her workbook from Mr. Pettigrew. “Look. About Weeze. It’s not like I don’t care about what happened to her and all of that. It’s just that I’m happy for her that she’s probably out of here. And she kind of
had a girl-crush on me or something, so I was a little uncomfortable with that. That’s all. I just didn’t want you to think that I was being insensitive earlier. I mean, Weeze was my friend and all, but you have to get kind of hard in here about stuff like that.”

  “You said you’ve only been here a couple of weeks longer than me,” I say.

  “Yeah. Only I wouldn’t call it only since it doesn’t feel like only so much as it feels like I’ve been in here since about the time I was born.”

  She is actually tearing up, which surprises me. New Nikki, sitting on the other side of Bad Gina, doesn’t bother to hide the fact that she’s listening in.

  “OK,” I say. “Sorry.”

  Bad Gina sniffs. “Thanks. Anyway, I’m kind of jealous of her, if you want to know the truth.”

  “Jealous of Weeze?”

  “Yeah. Her and Cell Seven.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, they’re out of here, aren’t they?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “But Weeze got beaten unconscious, and who knows how bad she might be hurt. And Cell Seven slashed her wrist again. How messed up is that?”

  Bad Gina leans closer to me and lowers her voice, I guess so New Nikki can’t hear. “If I tell you something, you swear you won’t repeat it?”

  “What?” I ask warily.

  “I told Cell Seven to do that.”

  “You told her to cut her wrist?”

  Bad Gina nods. “She was freaking out from the minute she came on the unit. Sobbing and carrying on every night, keeping everybody awake. Girls were threatening her and everything. But I told her to keep doing it. Keep crying and stuff. And I told her how if she really, really wanted out of here, she might try cutting herself. Only I showed her how you do it if you don’t really want to hit a vein, but just freak everybody out and make them think you’re suicidal.”

  I recoil. “I don’t think I want to hear any more.”