by Susanne Beck
That Missy was a beauty there is no doubt. Tall and thin, she had a shock of white blonde hair tumbling in glorious waves down her back and deep green eyes that seemed to melt you even as they looked into the depths of your soul before finding you wanting and moving on. She was also so hooked on the eight-balls that consumed her existence that her beauty paled in comparison to her ravenous need.
Warden Davis hooked her talons into Missy right quick, discovering the quickest path to the young beauty’s heart and trading drugs for sexual favors. At two months, the liaison lasted longer by far than any of Antonia’s past conquests had, but in the end, she found her concubine wanting and tossed her into the tank with her pet sharks, daring them to do their worst. The repeated beatings and rough sex didn’t do the young woman in. Rather, it was the abrupt loss of her drugs that cost her her life. She had turned up missing from the head count one evening, and by the next morning, was found in the laundry room, cold and stiff as the sheets which she had wrapped around her in an hallucinogenic nightmare of drug deprivation. The cause of death was easily discovered and Warden Antonia Davis, defiler of the innocent and guilty alike, went out in a blaze of glory, found at her desk with her service revolver, something she loved to use in her games of sexual power, gripped in a cold, dead fist.
As payment for not using his considerable influence in closing down the whole she-bang, Senator Gaelen was allowed to choose the next warden. And choose he did, bringing in a man who had as much experience in the administration of a prison system as I do in chicken farming. Which is to say none. What he did have, this man by the name of William Wesley Morrison, was the Pastorship of the largest Pentecostal church in Pittsburgh and its surrounding environs.
William Morrison is a man who wears his religion, like a badge of office, on his sleeve. He is also the man who, through his gifts of oration, was able to get the Senator over that final hump and into the State House with a few votes to spare. Morrison had always expressed a fervent desire to ‘minister’ to a group of ‘godless prisoners’ and so, patronage being what it is in this country, his back was scratched quite nicely by the Senator from Pittsburgh as payment for services rendered.
The new broom swept through the Bog with a passion. Gone were the trappings of individuality so prized by the inmates. Bright orange jumpsuits, designed to stand out from the rest of society like the proverbial ‘Scarlet A’, became the new uniform of the damned. Cells were turned out, personal items removed and replaced with crucifixes and bibles. A framed rendering of the Ten Commandments hung in each and every room in the prison, as if to make sure that we knew exactly which rules we were breaking. Cosmetics, jewelry, radios and televisions were confiscated. Mealtimes were preceded by prayers and on Sundays, chapel worship was mandatory no matter what God you did, or didn’t, believe in.
Lily white he isn’t, despite the most careful of appearances. William Morrison, almost immediately upon being instated in his high office, sunk his fingers into many of the prison pies and has, over the years if the rumors are to be believed, made himself a very rich man. Coveting his neighbor’s goods apparently isn’t a commandment Morrison needs to follow, and if the prison grapevine is any indication, he’ll soon be coming to a rude awakening. This too will be delved into later in this story, and with much satisfaction, I might add.
Beneath the Warden come the guards and unlike other prisons, our group is quite extraordinary. The Head Guard is a woman by the name of Sandra Pierce and to the prisoners, she’s a godsend. Tall and broad of body, with arms a bodybuilder would envy, her physical presence alone is enough to intimidate all but the most depraved inmate. Underneath it all, though, she carries a heart that is compassionate, caring and considerate. Her hazel eyes are always twinkling, as if laughing at a joke whose punch line only she knows. Her fellow guards follow her example well or risk expulsion or worse. But, cutbacks in the prison system being what they are, there simply aren’t enough people who are willing to risk daily danger for the meager pay they’re offered.
And so, when all is said and done, it’s the prisoners who rule the roost.
Prison gangs are a fact of life in most facilities across the world, and the Bog is no exception. The gangs are separated along racial lines, with the African Americans holding the top honors in terms of sheer size, followed closely by the whites, with the much smaller groups of Hispanics and Asians rounding out the top four.
Contrary to popular belief, not all prisoners are gang members. The top third of each gang is filled with predators, sexual and otherwise. Most of the rest are hero-worshippers and hangers on who use the gangs to give them a sort of status that they otherwise would not have. The bottom rung is comprised by ‘prey’. By this, I mean young women who haven’t been able, for whatever reason, to find a niche in prison society and so are preyed upon daily by the other inmates. Many of these women turn to the gang for protection against this systemic abuse and so are swallowed up, never realizing that their protectors often turn out to be worse than their nightmares ever were. These hollow-eyed women, resembling nothing so much as World War Two concentration camp victims, shuffle through prison life, merely existing day to day, subjected to the basest depravities their so called protectors see fit to heap upon them.
Young, innocent, naïve and on the verge of an all out suicidal depression, I was destined to become one of those women. Only a chance encounter with an extraordinary woman saved me from my fate. Though it was five years ago now, I remember the facts as if the scene had only played out earlier this morning.
I was running. Running as if my life depended on it, which in a way, I suppose it did. The remains of my breakfast tray were soggy on my cotton scrubs and my lungs were heaving with the need to draw a full breath. I had always been quick, but the heavy tread of my three pursuers told me I didn’t have long to seek escape.
"We’re gonna get you, bitch!"
"He-ee-ere, fishy, fishy, fishy!"
The taunting shouts echoed down the deserted hallways, making me want to burst my eardrums just to stop the vibrations from pounding in my panicked brain.
My jittering eyes spied a soft spill of light coming from a doorway just up ahead, and I made it my beacon, running toward it for all I was worth. The door was finally in sight and I plunged through it, tripping over a mop handle and skidding across the polished floor on my knees, still gasping for breath. "Please," I sobbed to the gray-haired figure seated behind the desk, "you’ve got to help me. They’re gonna kill me."
The woman looked up from her reading and her face creased into a friendly smile. "What’s wrong, child? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost."
"They’re gonna kill me. Please, you’ve gotta help me. Please, I beg you. I’ll do anything."
The sounds of running footsteps and heaving breaths came closer, then stopped right outside the door of my sanctuary. The largest of my pursuers, a women by the incongruous name of Mouse, stepped through the door, advancing on me with a predatory grin. "Gotcha now, fish."
The gray-haired woman stood up slowly from her desk, all evidence of her smile gone from her rounded cheeks. "Get out of here, Mouse. Your friends too, or you’ll find out just what it’s like to be hunted down."
The grin fell from Mouse’s face. I almost smiled at the sudden look of fear I saw there. Still, she squared her shoulders and thrust her chin out defiantly. "You can’t hurt me, old woman."
"No? Try me."
I could have sworn I saw my rescuer grow fangs. I blinked, then rubbed my eyes, finally dismissing the illusion as a trick of the light.
Mouse’s deep voice showed a sudden hint of petulance. "She was ours first. We saw her. We got dibs."
I felt a thrill of fear work its way through my guts, wondering if I had just jumped from the frying pan and into the fire. I kept my eyes steadily upon the rotund form of the gray-haired woman.
"She’s in my home now, Mouse. You’ll do well to remember which boundaries you can and cannot cross. Now go and take your friends wit
h you."
After a long stare-down, Mouse finally capitulated, but not without a last parting shot at me. "You can’t hide behind her skirts forever, little fish. One day you’re gonna have to come outta hiding. And we’ll be waiting." Flashing me an evil grin, she spun on her heel and collected her cronies with a jerk of her head.
I couldn’t help the gasp of relief that expelled from between my lips and, upon hearing it, the friendly grin once again graced the face of my rescuer. Walking from her place behind her desk, she wrapped her black shawl more tightly about her shoulders, then reached down a soft hand to help pull me to my feet. I accepted the help gratefully. "Thank you," I said with all the heartfelt gratitude I had in me.
"Think nothing of it, child. I’m always happy to chase off those bullies." Adjusting her half glasses, she looked down at my food-spattered top. "What did you do that caused you to be wearing breakfast so early in the morning?"
I knew my cheeks flushed, I could feel the heat all the way down to my toes. "I . . .um . . .I guess I picked the wrong table to sit at this morning."
I had only been in the Bog for two weeks, and just four days out of the segregation unit that all new inmates are placed in upon first entering the prison. Since I had no friends to tell me the rules, I went down to breakfast with the rest and, after filling my tray with tasteless food, found an empty table tucked into a shadowed corner, figuring to both eat and observe quietly. Mouse and her friends had quickly changed my notion that anything in the Bog could ever be that easy.
My protector looked down at me with a knowing grin. "Happened to me a time or two. This place should come with an instruction manual." Her grin widened. "Maybe I’ll write one. Sure to make me the darling of the new ones." Reaching out, she again took my hand in a gentle, warm clasp and led me over to a long, battle-scarred table, pulling out a wobbly seat and gently pushing me down into it. "Sit here and I’ll get us some tea. Then we can talk like civilized adults. And believe you me, young one, that’ll be a pleasant change."
As the older woman left, walking to a well hidden and highly illegal hot-plate, I took my first look around the room that was my haven. For the first time, I realized that I had somehow stumbled into the prison library. Three of the four walls in the small room were covered with floor to ceiling book cases, which were crammed with all manner of reading material, most of which were dog-eared and tattered, with broken spines and missing covers. Taking in a deep breath, I let the comforting scent of printer’s ink and musty paper enter my lungs, calming my racing heart. I’d always loved the library, even as a small girl. I used to spend most of my free time there when I was younger, caught up in fantasies no self respecting small town girl would dare to have.
Returning to the table, her hands clasping steaming mugs of fragrant tea, the old woman set down the mugs, pulled out her own chair, and settled her corpulent frame down next to me. "What’s your name, child?"
When I told her, a twinkle came into her dark eyes. "Here for killing your husband with a baseball bat, right?"
My eyes must have widened to the size of saucers. "Yes. How did you know?"
"Nothing’s kept a secret for long in here, child. You’ll learn soon enough that the prison grapevine is one of the most accurate sources of information in the Bog. Much better than the paper." She smiled again, placing a hand on top of my own. "We’re kindred spirits then. I buried four of my own husbands and was working on a fifth before they caught me."
I let out a gasp, beyond horrified that five men would take to abusing such a sweet old lady. She looked to me like someone who should be sitting in a rocking chair in a big old home with a litter of happy grandchildren begging her for just one more story, their faces and hands smeared with homemade cookie crumbs. My second lesson came quickly that day. Looks can be deceiving.
The woman’s smile turned hard. "I’m afraid I wasn’t quite as bold about it as you were. Arsenic was my weapon of choice. Not quite so quick, but satisfyingly effective nevertheless."
The look of horror must have shown on my face, because the woman lost her smile. Her eyes took on a calculating look. "Don’t get any notions in your head that you’re better than me, child. I’ve heard the stories that you didn’t mean to kill your beau. Just because I did doesn’t make you any better than me. We’re both stuck here for the duration, isn’t that so?"
In a weird sort of way, the woman’s words made sense and, after a moment, I let my revulsion drain from me, turning a weak smile to my benefactor before lifting my mug to sip my tea. Halfway to my lips, my hand paused, trembling.
The woman threw back her head and laughed, long and loud. "Don’t worry, love. I’m not out to add you to my tally." Reaching up, she used a corner of her woolen shawl to dab at her tearing eyes. "Besides, you’re much easier on the eyes than any of my husbands ever were."
And that’s how I met the infamous Corinne Weaver, known as the Black Widow; a woman who married for money and killed for fun.
In her mid-sixties, Corinne had been behind bars for more than thirty years when we first met, making her both the oldest and longest incarcerated inmate in the Bog. She also had the distinction of being the first prisoner transferred after the prison was changed to female from male back in the late forties. Corrine was a cool and calculating woman who never expressed regret or remorse for her crimes. Indeed, she was known to say, and that often, that if she had the chance, she’d do it all over again. She enjoyed killing and the money it earned her.
But she could also be gentle, considerate, kind and extremely loyal. Though she would cheerfully admit that reformation was a lost cause on one such as her, she was a zealot when it came to the reforming of others. Most of the inmates in the Bog weren’t murderers. Rather they were young women who had made stupid mistakes with their lives. Their short sentences would either reform them or make them worse than they ever were. That was the inmate’s choice. And Corrine made it her sacred duty to set out and find as many as she could, to make sure they made the right choice.
Every day, the library would see at least two or three young women studying for their GED amidst the musty papers and the yelling inmates. There were even a few, like myself, who studied for college courses. Yes, as of this writing, yours truly is the proud owner of a Bachelor of Arts in American Literature and is only six credits shy of obtaining her MBA. Now, before you ask what possible use a killer like myself would have for an MBA, let me remind you of what I’ve said earlier. I’m an optimist. And one day, I’m going to get out of this place. Now, given that I’ve already lived off of the generosity of your tax dollars for five long years now, which would you rather have? Me, an able bodied, intelligent young female spending the rest of her life on state aid, or me, an able bodied, intelligent young female contributing to your local economy? Thought as much.
Corinne was a favorite of the guards, always able to lend a willing ear when troubles with husbands, lovers, children or finances abounded. Though she had killed her own husbands, she was a firm believer in the power of love and was known to give sage advice where matters of the heart were concerned. Her advice actually saved a number of marriages. She was also a financial wizard, somehow managing to retain the fortune obtained with the murder of her husbands. That fortune grew from behind bars, making her one of the richest women in Pittsburgh, a thought that brought her wild glee over the years. To Corinne, it didn’t matter that she couldn’t spend her money. All that mattered was that she was playing the system, and coming out ahead.
Though growing ever older and tending toward frailty, despite her rather rotund stature, Corinne was considered an untouchable inmate. Her library was inviolate and all within were under her protection for as long as they stayed within the safety of those four walls. Aside from earning the respect of most of the prisoners and all of the guards, it was also said (and I have since, to my joy, confirmed this to be truth) that she had the full protection of a prison legend who, though she wasn’t in the prison at the time, had her finger firmly
on the pulse of inmate life. To touch Corinne was to die slowly and no one wanted to risk that.
Though I was somewhat under her own protection, that blanket didn’t extend far enough to cover me completely. What I’m absolutely sure of is that I got nowhere near the amount of abuse I was destined for, but even ‘light’ pummeling is no picnic, as I’m sure you’ve guessed.
It was the day after I had first met Corinne, and I was making my way back from a day spent in her pleasant company. I had even taken my lunch within the warm confines of the library. The tuna sandwich and tea she offered was the best meal I’d eaten in months and I licked every crumb and drank every drop offered, much to my new friend’s amusement.
I had spent a long winter’s day wrapped up in the wonderful world of Wuthering Heights, a book I’d never gotten to read in High School, and was thinking about what I’d read. That meant that I was missing what was going on around me and thus breaking another sacred prison rule: "Always be aware."
I made it back to my cell, oblivious of the knowing, sneering looks being cast my way by my fellow inmates. To my great surprise, the cell was empty. My cellmate, a young woman who had earned five years tax free housing for using an iron bar to beat up a fellow street walker who had invaded her ‘corner’, was usually camped out on her bunk, her nose glued to the television we used to be able to keep. In the past four days, I’d been told far more about the plots of various soap operas than I had ever wanted to learn. Checking the ever ticking clock above the head of my bunk, I noted that it was time for her favorite show, and spared a brief moment to wonder where she’d gotten off to. Not wanting to leave the fantasy world I’d created for myself in the library, I simply shrugged the mystery off and prepared to get into my bunk and take a brief nap before the trial of dinner.
