by A.R. Rivera
27
-Angel
The lights wake me with their morning buzz.
I sit up just as my breakfast tray slides through the door. Oatmeal, canned peaches, a pat of butter, packet of sugar, a cold piece of toast, two sausage links and a box of orange juice.
No wonder most of the prisoners are fat.
I shove the food away, disgusted. The morning dose of meds will make me puke but I'd rather suffer that than touch the slop they serve. That lime gelatin gave me nightmares.
Back at Canyon View, after breakfast it was shower time. Here, one of the regular guards comes to escort me to the prison library. He says I'll be taken for a shower around ten.
I'm not allowed to mingle among the regular inmates. They keep me separated at all times, for my safety, they say. From everyone except Avery. She always seems to locate me, goes out of her way to bother me. If I'm in my cell, on the toilet, or even out for exercise, she'll find me wherever I am and try to talk. But I won't listen.
The prison library is small and plain. Well, comparatively small. Canyon View, the place I'll be going back to once I'm done with this formal rejection, is a much larger facility and has a library at least twice this size. They have reading groups and a section where you can listen to music.
In this library, my task is to take the books from the return carts, mark them as returned inside the log book, and set them aside to be re-shelved by someone else. It's not interesting, but it keeps me busy.
Everything is done before my shift is up, so they let me leave early.
Just as I am about to get thankful that Avery didn't show up, I spot her walking out of the hall that leads to the showers and nearly jump out of my skin. She walks quickly past, wearing her orange jumpsuit and towel-turban. The bile is rising in my throat and I can't avert my eyes-maybe because she doesn't say anything to me or even look my way.
After my own shower, I'm taken back to the small plain room before the review board. With lights gently flickering, the cameras are already recording as I'm led inside by an orderly and two guards.
The woman has her hair back, still just as tight as yesterday and it makes me wonder if she ever gets headaches. I can't wear my hair like that without feeling a thump, bump, thump, in my brain.
The quiet man is not as quiet today. He's not particularly chatty, either, but I do get to hear his voice at full volume when he knocks on the one way glass that covers the back wall, asking a question to someone he must know. "Hey! You getting it, or what?" I don't see an earpiece, but he nods, as if he's heard something from beyond the glass and then turns to face me.
My fingers brace the scratchy arms of the chair, turning white, going numb with anxiety. Now that I'm in here and thinking about what I need to say . . . . Cold trickles through me as I try to think. I've been dreading this part of my confession, putting so much energy into the idea of telling that I hadn't really considered the actual words to use.
Shaking my head, I say the only thing that comes to mind. "You have no idea how much I hate her."
"Who?" Tight Bun asks.
Me. Avery. "That doe-eyed girl in the trailer. Serving up spaghetti and smiles."
"Why?"
"Because she's an idiot." I was. "She had no idea what was really going on." I didn't. "She had everything and let it slip right through her fingers." I did.
"Could you elaborate, please?" Quiet man asks, adjusting himself in his chair when I meet his eyes. "We are attempting to understand."
I nod, gesturing to the chains that keep me bound. "Most people think they know what it's like to be this way because they read about sorry's and bullshit. They can study and imagine, fixate on the demons; but at the end of the day, they get to go home. They don't know anything." I'm being passive-aggressive. They know I'm talking about them.
"But I know. I understand everything now."
"Understand what?" My lawyer asks and I notice he's wearing that chicken frying white jacket again.
I roll my eyes. The point I'm trying to make is far too serious to be distracted. "The more love you give a person, the more power they have to hurt you." I sigh, aiming to disengage myself and explain. "When you look at . . . a painting," I'm struggling for an image. "If you keep your eyes wide open and still don't see the whole picture, what does that say about your ability to interpret its' meaning? What if I see a sailboat and someone else looks at the same painting and sees a lighthouse?"
I could not see what was happening. I think I literally blinded my own eyes to maintain sanity.
"Sorry. That's a shitty metaphor. What I mean is, with my specific . . . situation-being in the midst of something that is so glaringly obvious to you-it probably seems like a lie when I say I didn't know, but it's the truth. I had no idea what I was up against."
"Tell them what you were up against, Miss Patel." My lawyer directs.
This is what happens to me every freaking time: I get flustered. Embarrassed-humiliated might be a better word-that I can't find a way to express myself. This is the point where I have to say the hardest hard shit.
I sense the sheen of sweat coating the back of my neck and building up on my temples. My mouth feels so dry. My throat is swelling. I don't want to say anything, and worse, I don't know if I can. I wonder briefly if it's possible to skip over it and try to think up something else to offer.
Nothing comes to mind and I think: maybe I won't say anything at all. Maybe I'll just sit here and pretend to be invisible and after a while they'll move on.
I want to tell them what Avery was doing. I want to shake my fist at them all and spew the filthy details, but they already know. Studying me as they have, it's been obvious from the beginning. Still doesn't make any easier to say.
I bite my lip, aiming to think every word before I speak it, so they will understand. "All any of us knows is the information that our brains take in. It processes our surroundings. Right?"
I sound like an idiot.
The one thing I shouldn't do is the one thing I want to do-shrink into a tiny ball.
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