by Pip Adam
A Noisy Place
There were seven inmates at the AA meeting and three women from AA on the outside. The women from outside wore coats with keys in their pockets. They folded and unfolded their visitor’s slips around their driver’s licences. It wasn’t church. Church was on Wednesdays but one woman spoke at a time and none of the inmates spoke for long. The first AA woman talked about being in her own personal prison when she was drinking and how AA set her free. After she finished, Poppy asked to be excused to go to the toilet. The AA women smiled and nodded. There was one guard covering the whole wing and the AA people asked that they didn’t come into the room for head-counts because it was anonymous. The prison social worker agreed and the guards were instructed just to check from the window in the door occasionally – to make sure no one was hurting anyone else.
Poppy shut the half-door of the toilet stall and sat against it. She closed her eyes and listened to the hum of noise far enough away to be nothing. Prison was a noisy place. There was always talk – the shit women talk – over and over, for years and years: they didn’t do it, their kids, their kids being molested, their kids in CYFS care, their kids being molested in CYFS care, Jesus, dreams, standovers, TV, boyfriends, girlfriends, who’s holding, losing things, swapping things, parole, excuses, no parole.
‘Poppy?’ It was Slade, looking over the stall. ‘Poppy – all I’m saying is if she’s been transferred, why did she get sick so fast?’
‘And all I’m saying is stop saying it to me,’ said Poppy, standing up.
‘It makes sense.’
‘Slade – with respect and without any desire to get involved – it sounds paranoid.’
‘She’s a narc.’
‘She’s hanging out.’ Her voice began to whine.
‘She’s a cop,’ Slade said.
‘Then tell someone.’
‘I’m telling you.’
‘What do you want me to do about it?’
Slade didn’t know.
‘What do you think you should do about it?’ Slade said.
‘Nothing. I’m going back to AA.’
They were reading the book when Poppy and Slade got back. The meeting took an hour. At the end they all held hands, said a prayer and the AA women hugged everyone and left. The guard came to take Poppy and Slade back to their cell and lock them down for the night.
As they walked through the door of their cell Slade said, ‘You’re wrong,’ in a way that only Poppy could hear. Grace was lying on the camp stretcher.
The cell could fit one inmate comfortably, two at a pinch. Poppy had been in prison for ten years, five of them in this cell with Slade. Then, two weeks ago, the maintenance people brought a camp stretcher and Grace had arrived, carrying her plastic bag. She said she’d been transferred from a prison up north. She started sniffing and coughing and shaking about three days in. Slade watched a lot of TV. She didn’t believe Grace had been transferred from another prison. Slade was convinced Grace had the flu and if she’d been transferred from another prison she wouldn’t get the flu. ‘Institutional immunity,’ she said. It was straw-clutching to say the least. She’d been explaining it to Poppy for a week and each time she explained it Slade became more convinced of it. It was crazy. Neither Poppy nor Slade was anyone. Poppy had been someone but wasn’t now. Slade was someone on the outside but not here. Slade was mad and Poppy was tired.
Grace coughed.
‘You need to cover your mouth when you cough,’ Slade said. No one said anything else and the lights went out. In the dark, women shouted goodnights to each other across the wing. Someone sang. Someone cried. Toilets flushed. Grace covered her mouth and coughed.
The next day two jobs came up in the sewing room. Poppy was given a second chance and Slade was offered the other job. When the supervisor briefed them, she said Poppy would have to start on the screenprinting because she needed to build trust again after last time, with the machines and the scissors.
They made grey marl sweatshirts and pants for the men’s prisons. Poppy screened CORRECTIONS DEPT in black over and over again on the backs of the sweatshirts.
Lunch was one creamed corn sandwich and one luncheon sausage sandwich wrapped so tight in Glad Wrap the white bread was almost dough again. On the way back to the cells, Poppy swapped her luncheon for a corn with a woman who owed her money. That woman swapped it back for a corn with a woman who knew her mum. Slade caught her up.
‘Didn’t think you’d ever get back in the sewing room, eh?’ said Slade.
Poppy looked at her sandwiches.
‘Lucky,’ said Slade.
‘You want corn?’ said Poppy.
‘Us both – imagine that? Out of everyone here, we get a sewing job,’ Slade said.
‘Corn’s my favourite but you can have it,’ Poppy said.
‘Leaving Grace alone in the cell sniffing around.’
Poppy held out the sandwich and looked at Slade for the first time.
‘Oh – go on then.’ Slade took the sandwich. ‘You want luncheon?’ Poppy shook her head.
Back in the cell they watched Dr Phil and Grace looked sicker than yesterday. Slade didn’t say anything.
‘You been to the nurse, Grace?’ Poppy said.
‘Nah, I’m just hanging out.’ Grace looked at the TV.
Poppy looked at Slade to say, see, she’s not sick, she just needs drugs.
‘Yeah,’ Grace added, ‘one of you couldn’t put me right on that, could you?’
Slade looked at Poppy to say, see, she’s a narc pretending she needs drugs but she’s sick. Slade said to Grace, ‘We wouldn’t know anything about any of that.’
Grace shrugged. ‘Oh well, maybe I’ll come to AA with you fellas next week.’
‘Don’t ask again,’ Slade said.
The door opened, it was the twelve thirty muster.
‘Brown?’ the guard shouted.
‘Miss.’
‘Durham?’
‘Miss.’
‘Fields?’
‘Miss.’
‘Fields, you need to get those clothes off the floor.’
‘Yes, Miss,’ said Grace.
She hauled herself off the stretcher, picked up her clothes and put them in her drawer, saying ‘Fucking screws.’
Poppy laughed. ‘It’s not Bad Girls, Grace.’
‘It’s all right for you. It sucks here.’
‘It’s prison,’ Poppy said.
‘It’s boring.’ Grace coughed and coughed and spat and shut up.
‘I’m onto you,’ Slade said.
‘What?’ said Grace.
‘Nothing,’ said Poppy.
After lunch, a guard took Slade and Poppy back to the sewing room. Poppy wondered, by two o’clock, how many shirts would equal enough trust to get her back on a machine or cutting or anything that wasn’t screenprinting. She tried to listen closely to the noise of the sewing machines as they fell into a rhythm of distance; a sleeve, a neckline, a waist-band. She tried to follow enough of them for a continual hum. Then she tried to pick out just the high part so it stung her head. A woman bumped into her as she went past and said ‘Watch out, Poppy Tea,’ like she was looking for a fight. If she was, it was with the wrong person.
At four o’clock, everyone from the wing was let out in the yard for an hour. Poppy smoked and read a book in a corner away from everyone. Grace slapped hands and talked shit. Slade ran round and round the tiny yard surrounded by fencing and razor wire. When Poppy looked up from her book to see where the sun had gone she saw Slade talking to a woman. The woman was someone; Slade was shaking her head while she talked to her.
One of the guards organised a volleyball game in the gym. The gym echoed and banged. The guard’s keys rattled as she played and a couple of times her two-way radio fell out of its holster. Slade came over and raised her eyebrow to the woman standing next to Poppy on the court. The woman left and Slade took her place. When they rotated to the baseline, Poppy said, ‘What was that about?’
‘Taking care of busin
ess,’ said Slade.
The ball came to Poppy and she batted at it awkwardly. The woman in front of her dove and got it over the net.
‘Someone knew what to do,’ said Slade. The ball flew behind Poppy and bounced in. The diving woman yelled, ‘Fuck!’ and, ‘If you’re playing, Poppy, play. If you’re not, let Grace play.’ Grace heard her name and ran over, coughing. Poppy got the cigarette from behind her ear and walked to the door.
‘Please, Miss,’ she said, lifting the cigarette to indicate to the guard by the door. The guard let her back into the yard, shouting ‘Durham!’ behind her.
At dinner that night, Poppy and Slade sat at the same table in silence. They ate off their trays looking at their food all the time.
‘Something on your mind Poppy?’
‘Nah.’ Poppy shook her head.
Slade buttered a piece of white bread with a plastic knife.
‘Just,’ Poppy wiped her mouth with a serviette, ‘just, things have been quiet for us for a while now, eh?’
Slade nodded.
‘No trouble?’ said Poppy.
‘What’s your point?’
‘Well, things are good like that – aren’t they?’
‘Are they?’ said Slade.
Poppy shrugged.
‘From the days of John the Baptist until now,’ Slade looked around as she spoke, ‘the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, Poppy, and the violent bear it away.’
Poppy rearranged the plastic cutlery on her plate.
‘They are bringing this to me,’ said Slade. ‘I can hear them – at night. This is just the last thing in a long-time test of me.’ She lowered her voice. ‘When I was out there they were everywhere. They put things in my teeth, they can monitor me everywhere. Grace is one of them and enough is enough.’ Slade stared at Poppy. ‘He told me I needed to deal with it.’
‘Jesus?’ said Poppy.
‘Yes, Poppy – Jesus.’ Slade leaned back and looked around again.
It was no use.
‘I see your dilemma,’ said Poppy.
‘Do you?’ Slade put down her knife. ‘Because to be honest, Poppy, you’ve been a little disparaging.’
‘No disrespect intended,’ Poppy said.
Slade looked at her for a moment, ‘None taken.’
Dinner was over. All the plastic knives were counted, all the trays were counted, and all the inmates were counted and walked back to their cells.
It happened in the gym a couple of days later. One guard was playing volleyball. The other was outside, sorting something out. Someone smuggled in hairspray, someone else had a lighter. Grace went up quickly. The fire alarms went off, then the sprinklers started. Grace screamed and screamed. Guards came running from everywhere as the sprinklers rained down. No one saw anything and Slade was someone.
The wing was locked down and loss of privileges continued into the weekend. On Monday during lunch Poppy was taken from her cell by a guard who watched her put on a pair of orange overalls over her clothes then led her to the visiting lounge. In the middle of the huge empty room sat her mother and her lawyer, Warren. She hugged her mother and sat down. The guard stood behind them with her back to the wall.
‘I told them we wouldn’t leave without seeing you,’ her mother said. ‘It’s ridiculous – it’s a long drive.’
‘It’s prison,’ said Poppy.
‘Warren has some questions to ask and some papers for you to sign,’ her mother said.
Warren asked some questions and she signed some papers then he excused himself. The guard radioed for another guard and Warren waited by the door.
‘How’s Brendon?’ Poppy asked.
‘Good. I had some photos.’ Her mother patted her jacket pockets. ‘I’ll send them.’
‘Cool.’
‘Your father put some money in your account. Have you got enough cigarettes?’
‘Yes, thanks,’ said Poppy. ‘Are you going away for Queen’s Birthday?’
‘No.’ Her mother looked around the room. ‘Well, maybe, up to Taupo.’
‘Nice.’
‘Warren said you’re back in the sewing room.’
‘Yeah,’ said Poppy, ‘yeah. It’s good.’
‘You’re lucky.’ Her mother looked at her nails. ‘After last time.’
‘Yeah,’ Poppy said. ‘Unexpected.’
‘Well, that’ll be good for the money.’
Poppy nodded.
‘And the boredom. Idle hands and all that.’
Poppy nodded again.
They sat in silence.
‘I’d better go,’ her mother said.
They both got up.
‘Yeah,’ Poppy said. ‘Thanks for coming.’
‘I’ll send the photos.’
‘Cool.’
‘Might see you for Christmas,’ her mother said.
‘Cool,’ said Poppy. ‘Drive carefully. Say “hi” to everyone.’
Her mother sat down as the guard took Poppy to the door, unlocked it and another guard took her back to her cell. She took off the orange overalls and handed them to the guard. The guard closed and locked the door of her cell.
Slade was lying on her bed watching Dr Ken Agnew. Poppy said, ‘Second opinion?’
Slade smiled and nodded, tapping the remote control on her chin. The camp stretcher was gone.
A month after Grace, Poppy was allowed back on the machines. She made her own mechanical whining to drown out the talk. Two new women started in the sewing room. One of them held the door shut while the other took Slade’s eye out with the handle of a plastic spoon sharpened to a point. As the guards broke down the door, the one with the spoon threw Slade on the floor, looked at Poppy, and said, ‘Don’t think we’ve forgotten about you, Poppy Tea.’ The sewing room was shut for the afternoon.
Poppy was alone in the cell that night. She sat on her bed watching television and listening for the nothing behind the babble. As the lights went out and the television lit the room she thought about her disappointed mother making a cup of tea for her disappointed father. Her brother’s birthday was in a couple of weeks. Her mother would make dinner. Poppy had no idea what they would eat or where anyone would sit at the table. She tried to remember the sound of her mother laughing.
Hank Nigel Coolidge
This time it’s mist. The woman in the fruit shop calls it ‘Scotch mist’ because it’s ‘too cheap to rain’. My grandmother said it was rude to call Scottish people Scotch and for girls to eat on the streets. She said it’s unladylike to whistle. Once, I said to her, ‘What about giving head?’ She pretended not to hear me and I walked away humming something.
I’m walking in the mist, in the morning. I have to walk into it to get wet and the wet sits on me in tiny bubbles so that every time I touch part of me I get wet all over again. I’m also sick. A draining, hacking sick; like the wet parts in my chest are turning to sand. I think I’m dying, but it’s nothing serious. Someone’s dying – somewhere, someone is really dying, but not me. On the way up the hill I see a huge earthworm. They come out in the rain. I measure it and it’s as long as one of my feet and then up to where the stitching starts on the toe of my other boot. It’s as thick as my ring finger. It’s huge and fat and phallic. I ask it what a nice girl like her is doing in a place like this – on the path in the mist, lying there. I ask if I can buy her a drink. She’s coy. I put her in my pocket with some mud and grass, in case she gets hungry. I have to sort of fold her back on herself to make her fit, but I’m gentle, like I’m pulling loose skin off the inside of my mouth. I call her Hank – Hank Nigel Coolidge. I tell her, ‘We won’t make a habit of this but today you can come to work with me.’
I work in a call centre. I get to my desk, take off my jacket and hang it carefully on the back of my chair. It drips on the floor. Drip. Drip. Drip. I log into my computer, put on my headset and start answering stupid questions – politely. All morning I write, over and over, on my desk pad: ‘Mrs Coolidge. Ms Coolidge. Mrs Hank Nigel Coolidge. Dr Coolid
ge.’ I check her every now and then and say things like ‘What an idiot’ about the people who ring up. They get angry a lot. Our manager gives a prize every week for the best telephone face. The call centre workers stand up sometimes and make claws with their hands and show their teeth at their phones – and talk politely. Our manager tells us people can tell whether we’re smiling from the sound of our voices. People come to visit the call centre, clients and our manager’s managers, which is why we have to wear corporate casual and be careful when we’re making obscene gestures at our phones. As my manager walks past, I ask, ‘Are we having “Bring your daughter to work day” any day soon?’ He says he doesn’t think so and I say, ‘Oh, okay, just checking.’ He says, great, and there’s no such thing as a dumb question.
Hank doesn’t eat much at lunch – we go out. She’s starting to dry out. I try to be livelier in my conversation. I talk about the weather and I talk about politics and then I tell her about a TV show I watched the other night about this guy and this other guy and how one of them got smallpox and the other one didn’t. I swear I can see a tiny smile on her little wormy face and I feel better.
We get statistics at the end of each day: average time on a call, average unavailable time and any complaints. After lunch my manager calls me into his office. My statistics are down where they should be up and up where they should be down. I say, ‘A computer does these – it’s all quantitative. You can’t judge my performance on that.’ My manager shows me a couple of complaints: a lady who said she couldn’t understand me, and a man who said he didn’t think I was concentrating. I say, ‘People take the time to complain. No one takes the time to ring up and praise people. It’s human nature.’ He shows me the results from my last customer satisfaction survey. There are a lot of numbers and charts, but basically people are not satisfied. My manager explains that the call centre rings these people up. I look through the charts and comments and say, ‘This guy thinks I’m okay.’ I hold out the paper to show my manager. ‘Oh, yeah, there you go,’ he says. I tell him I’m having personal problems – that I’ve started a new relationship and it’s not without its challenges. He says, ‘That’s great’ and tells me to forget about all this, he just has to write down that he told me about my performance. Can I sign this thing to say he’s told me? I sign the thing. Outside it’s stopped raining, it’s just grey.
