by Dawn Dumont
“I have my grade twelve.”
“Are you sure?”
“Grainfield High 1992.”
Julie even had a school jacket until one of her aunts stole it.
“Okay, well, we also have a carpentry course. No, wait, that’s full up. Oh here we go, I have an opening in substance abuse in three weeks.”
“I’m not much of a drinker and I don’t do drugs.”
“You sure?” The woman’s voice had a smile in it.
Julie took a deep breath and nodded. This bitch was getting on her last nerve.
“It says here that you were drinking when the fight occurred.”
“That was a lie. I was at home, I was watching TV. I was alone.” On my own for the first time in my life and this shit happens. Why don’t you move in with me, Nellie had asked her and Julie had laughed, “we’re too old to be roommates.” Because she couldn’t say that she wanted to be alone for once, wanted her own little place to decorate how she wanted, her own kitchen table to sit at and think.
“I’m going by the court record.” The woman tapped the document in front of her, like it was a Bible.
“It’s not true.”
“But that’s all I have. You see when you’re convicted — that means the court decided that this is the way it happened. And I know you think the other person lied but the judge believed them and not you. It may not be fair but that’s how it is.”
“I want to appeal — how do I do that?”
“You can talk about that with one of the guards — they have paperwork — ”
“But the guard says she ran out — ”
“Then you wait.” The woman’s voice was sharp. “In the meantime . . . ” The woman poked the edge of Julie’s file with a surprisingly beefy index finger. “You need to get in line for programming.”
Julie looked at the ceiling and caught her tears.
The woman looked back down at Julie’s folder. “You were in foster care for a while.”
“Yeah.”
“Ran away a few times.”
“I had some aunties who lived in the city. Sometimes they’d let me stay with them.”
“Is that when you started turning tricks?”
“What?” Julie sat forward.
“Says here you were ‘flirty with men and known to hang out in pick-up areas’.”
“Who wrote that?”
“Mrs. Wallace.”
“Who?”
“She was your social worker when you were thirteen.”
“I met that woman like once.”
“I guess you made an impression.”
“When I was thirteen, I was still playing with dolls.” Stolen dolls from Kmart, yeah, but dolls. “Why would you even have that file? I wasn’t charged with anything. I didn’t have a record. And I thought juvey files were sealed anyway?”
“Are you done interrupting me?”
Julie blinked.
“I’m going by what’s in the file. This is what I was sent. This is what I’m working with. Now you can get up and leave right now. But I’ll have to put it in your file that you didn’t want to cooperate.” She smiled. “Or, you can calm down.”
“It’s a fucking lie.”
The woman reached for the phone, “Are you gonna be calm?”
Her hand hovered above the phone.
“I’m calm.”
Julie sat up straight, she smoothed her pants with her hands before raising her eyes. “I’m not a hooker.”
“It doesn’t matter to me. I’m not here to judge, I’m here to help you get better.”
In her mind, Julie was dragging this bitch around the room banging her face into the radiator and the heavy metal desk.
“Julie?”
Julie stared at the fat wine jacket and watched the water slide down the seams. There was a dark red patch where the water had collected.
“I’m calm.” Julie could barely hear her own voice. Who is that answering for me?
“That’s better.”
“Write it down. Write it in the file.”
“All right. Inmate states that she is not a prostitute.” She wrote slowly with a smile on her face.
Julie looked at a point between the woman’s eyes. She and Nellie had taken a yoga class together once and she remembered how the instructor kept talking about that third eye. Julie focussed on the woman’s as her favourite rhyme bounced through her mind: “I am rubber you are glue, whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you.” Then her mind leapt to an image of herself sticking a chopstick through that third eye.
“Now which program do you want me to put you down for?”
“Carpentry.”
“It’s full. Do you have a second choice?”
Julie’s stomach rumbled. “Substance abuse.”
“Are you sure? You say you don’t have any addictions. How will this help you?”
Julie knew the kitchen was closing in ten minutes and she knew that it would be well past noon before she’d get anything to eat again. She gritted her teeth. “I think everyone can learn something from substance abuse training. Like how to control your emotions.”
The woman’s puffy cheeks swelled into a grin. “True.”
“Can I go now?”
The woman gestured towards the door.
Julie stood at the door. The woman reached under her desk and a buzzer sounded. Before she stepped through, Julie looked back. “What’s your name anyways?”
“Marguerite.” Her voice had a sing-song quality.
When Julie was a kid, she spent her time outdoors. Mostly that was in the city. But she spent time in a foster home that was on a farm. The family had a tree house that the dad had built for his daughters. They hated it, preferring to play video games inside, so Julie took it over. She spent one afternoon tying a rope to the branch next to it so she didn’t have to clamber down the tree all the time, she could just go down the rope, burning her hands every time she did. When the girls saw that she’d changed their tree house, they told her that she had to take it down or else they would tell. Instead of taking it down, she pulled the rope up and stayed there the rest of the day.
Around suppertime, their dad walked over to the tree house.He checked the knot and told Julie to be careful.But she didn’t need to be; outside was always safer than inside.
When she thought about it, she couldn’t remember a single day when she didn’t go outside at least once in her life. Now there were several strung together.
The doors buzzed open at 7:30 AM and Julie dragged herself off the top bunk. Shelley or Shells as she liked to be called, had been there first.
“Besides,” Shells joked, “you’re so goddamned tall, you could just step up there.” They lined up at the front of the cell. Sometimes leaning, sometimes standing straight. Shells said morning to the women on her left and the women on her right. She made jokes about wet dreams and waking up with her pillow between her legs. She teased others about moaning in their sleep. She told them that Julie was a champion farter: “Nearly tore a hole through the mattress — better check your panties later!” No mistake about it, Shells was a morning person.
After they were counted, the ladies marched towards the cafeteria where they picked up their trays and lined up again for breakfast. After that everyone headed off to their jobs, Julie and Shells working in the laundry, which was hot and damp. So you had to watch out — once you got damp, if you got hit by a draft, you were shivering for the rest of the day. It would have been unbearable if it wasn’t for Shells who joked all the time and made the hours pass quickly.
“So what did the white lady tell you, Bambi?” Shells asked. She coined the nickname because she said that Julie’s eyelashes reminded her of a baby deer.
“No programs for what I got.”
“What’s your problem?”
“I don’t have any problems.”
Shells laughed. “That’s worst motherfucking problem you can have in this joint. Now get your bony ass over here and h
elp me load these sheets. Can’t believe this is an institution for women with all these goddamned shit stains!”
Julie spent her evening in the TV room, sitting in the second row of couches, nearest to the phones. She leafed through a decades old version of Chatelaine. She liked knowing how people were decorating their houses back then. They probably thought they had them all done to perfection and then now they were finding out that their style looked like shit.
She kept her eye on the phones. They were allowed one call per day but with four phones and a hundred women, they were always tied up. Shells said it was because once the women got on the phone with their kids, they wouldn’t get off. “Fucking sad bitches mope around for the rest of the night too,” Shells added. It was the first time Julie was grateful that she didn’t have any kids.
Julie heard Shells’ big laugh and turned to see what she was laughing at. Shells was playing cards with a bunch of other women. They were all older women (compared to the other inmates). Mostly in their thirties and forties, they were Native with a couple of dirty blonde white women mixed into the bunch. This was Shells’ court and she presided over it with her loud voice and dirty jokes.
“Bambi! Come play this hand for me?”
Julie looked around the table. The ladies didn’t look scary.
“Don’t let them cheat you,” Shells handed her cards to Julie. “I’ll start you out with three smokes.”
Julie balanced them in her hand.
“Good night you pack of dumb bitches.”
Then to a chorus of women telling her to go fuck herself, Shells sauntered out of the room.
“She’s got a date,” a woman with one side of her head shaved said as she dealt out the cards.
“Did that start up again?” Another commented.
“Never learns.”
“Girl’s got needs.”
Julie studied her cards trying to figure out what game they were playing.
“So what are you in for?” The blonde lady — Julie thought her name might be Carrie — asked.
“Assault.”
“I thought you were a working girl.”
Julie wanted to get mad but felt this wasn’t the right time surrounded by a bunch of women she didn’t know.
“Just a waitress.”
“Too bad, you could make some decent coin.”
“Sometimes I make them buy me a beer first.”
The women laughed.
There was a banging on the door behind her to the lady’s lavatory. Two young girls, with fresh skin and dark eye makeup, were leaning against the door and laughing.
Shaved head tsked. “Little shits.”
The banging continued and the girls kept laughing.
“They got their friend locked in there,” Carrie said. “They won’t listen to me. Someone yell at them.”
One of the women at the table obliged. The girls gave her the finger.
“Ain’t listening to nobody.”
The banging continued and the women ignored it. Julie won a hand of what she figured out was a type of poker. Her pile grew to ten. Shells would be happy.
Two guards, a man and a woman, showed up at the door. “What’s going on?” the woman demanded.
The women looked in the direction of the bathroom. The guards marched over.
Julie didn’t get to make her phone call that night.
Three days later, Julie was back in Marguerite’s office. “I can’t call out,” Julie said.
Marguerite shook her head ruefully. “That’s what happens when people don’t follow rules.”
“But I didn’t do anything.”
“But you were there.”
“What was I supposed to do?”
“You were supposed to report them.”
Nobody told me that. Julie could say that but then Marguerite would reply that ignorance of the law is blah blah blah.
“Can I use your phone?”
“My phone is not for inmate use. There is a phone in the rec area and just outside the kitchen.”
“But they’re both locked down. I told you that.”
“There’s also the phone outside the guard’s office on the second floor — ”
“It’s not a real phone, it’s restricted — ”
“You can call your lawyer or you can call the ombudsman and report a complaint. Any time of the day while you are out of your cell.”
“I don’t have a lawyer. That’s why I’m in here. When can I use the phone?”
“You say you saw the girls?”
“Yeah, like every other person in the room.”
Marguerite pulled a paper from her drawer. “You wanna sign something saying that?”
“Can I use a phone then?”
“I always help people who are trying to help themselves.”
Julie signed the paper. Marguerite handed her the phone. Julie felt her fingers shaking as she dialled. The phone was busy.
“I gotta dial again.”
“Sorry kiddo, I got another appointment coming in.”
“But I didn’t get to make my call!”
“The Director says that she’ll let people start making phone calls as of Monday. As long as you all behave yourselves.”
Julie’s head pounded.
Julie folded sheets. She tried to beat her number from the day before. She hated it when they made her switch from sheets to clothes because then her count was wrong.
Shells poked her in the side. Julie looked at her impatiently. Shells was leaning on the shoulder of a large Black woman. Nobody touched people as much as Shells did, probably because they’d get a fist in the face. But for some reason when Shells did it, it was okay.
“This is Adrienne.”
“Yeah,” Julie didn’t stop folding.
“Adrienne says there’s a class tonight. Creative writing.”
Adrienne nodded.
“I’m not a writer,” Julie said.
“It’s taught by this stone cold hottie. Fucking line-up to get into this bitch a mile long. Fucking idiots here sign up just so they have something to bone themselves to.” Shells paused, “But I see you doing some writing in this class.”
“I’m not a writer.”
Shells looked at Adrienne, “I told you she ain’t too bright. God rarely gives brains and beauty — except in rare cases.” Shells slapped her hand on the sheet, stopping Julie’s motion. “It’s a writing class with a civilian. Who comes here and then leaves here. Get it? Adrienne, here, handles the sign up sheet.”
“Five,” Adrienne said.
Shells poked Julie in the ribs, “Pay the woman you heathen.”
Julie’s hands shook as she counted out the smokes and handed them to Adrienne.
The creative writing class was taught by Mrs. Dixon who was pushing seventy. She stood so straight she looked like she ironed her bras. She read them some poems by a woman named Emily Dickinson — “she kept to herself most of her life,” Mrs. Dixon explained and Julie envied that — what she would give to have a room to herself for ten minutes. After her readings, Mrs. Dixon gave them some time to write a poem.
Julie had written a poem once, about a bird she saw that was eaten by a cat. One of the lines had been “its guts sprayed out all over the sidewalk.” This time, she spent the writing period drawing a picture of a cat.
The ladies read their poetry at the end of the class while Mrs. Dixon stood at the front of the class with her arms folded and her eyes closed. Some of the women really got into it. One woman even cried as she read her poem about how much she missed her kids. Julie got kind of misty too so she made herself focus on the mole between Mrs. Dixon’s eyes that looked like a knot of wood.
At the end of the class, Mrs. Dixon told them she wouldn’t be back for a few weeks. Julie looked for the guard but she was talking to an inmate.She moved fast but not too fast that she would scare the old lady.
“Hey.”
“Yes?”
“Just this.” Julie handed her a piece of p
aper folded up seven times.
“What is it?”
“I can’t call out of here and my friend is the only person who can help me get out.”
“Do you know how much trouble I could get into?”
The guard popped her head in. “What’s going on?”
“Just asking her about poetry.” Julie tried to sound casual even though she could feel a vein poking out on her forehead.
The guard raised her eyebrows. “Let’s go Papaquash.”
Julie walked out without looking back.
Julie was cut from her laundry job. The guards said that they were all talking too much so everyone got reassigned. Julie was one of the newcomers so there was no place for her to go. She sat in her cell with a book on her lap wishing that she liked reading.
She prayed. She remembered that one time she saw this documentary on an Indian family — not Canadian or American — East Indians — and they were praying. They really got into it. They kneeled and bowed and sang. Maybe that’s why her prayers never came true, she never threw herself into it. She got her knees and clasped her hands in front of her. The hard cement was punishing on her bony knees. She whispered into her hands, “please, please, please . . . ”
She would have continued that way indefinitely but she heard the heavy step of a guard and quickly got up and sat down on the bed. People would think she was some crazy religious chick.
As the guards footsteps got nearer to her, Julie held her book closer to her face. So she was surprised when the guard stopped at her door. “You have a visitor.”
Nellie was sitting at a table when Julie saw her.
One time when Julie was little and her mom and her got separated in a store, she actually ran into her mom’s arms when she saw her and her mom had said, “Ch, as if.”
Julie never did that again.
Julie crossed the floor and sat down at the table. She looked at the guard station, the cameras, the other tables . . . She didn’t know what to do with her hands. When her eyes found Nellie’s face, she saw that it was pink with fury. She almost smiled.
“They took my fucking phone!” Nellie hissed. “Checked my ID twice. Fucking gave me a pat down. My boss told me to wear a suit so that wouldn’t happen and it still happened. I feel like I’m visiting Pablo Escobar — what are you in for anyways?”
