The Warden
One
Nene
“Benedicta Alejandra Cruz, you are found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to…” I stopped listening when the verdict was read. I’d never experienced depression, but I was sure my parents had to be rolling in their graves. Their only daughter, their hope for the future, was about to be shackled in silver, skin biting cuffs and sent to prison.
In all of this chaos, the reading of the verdict was the first time I lost my last shred of hope. The grain striations of the wooden table where I sat looked more interesting than the man in robes yammering on about my debt to society. What about the debt society owed me? This wasn’t a fair trial. It was a speedy trial with an easy conviction because I fit the bill, not because I was guilty.
Circumstantial evidence, my ass.
The judge continued speaking to me, but my eyes had glazed over. “…at least five years in prison and not more than ten as per the Texas statute. Given your youth and the likelihood that this act was committed out of provocation for your safety, I have no choice but to remand you to the state correctional unit in Colby. You will stay there for the duration of your incarceration until your parole hearing. Since your arrest, you have accumulated four months of time served.”
And then there was my lazy ass lawyer who was more interested in trying to bone me in the back of his powder blue 1991 Caddy Seville than getting the evidence to prove I didn’t do it. My anger simmered and with it my jaw clamped shut. Freaking out now would only give the entire courtroom justification for the sentence. No need to show them my crazy Latina side.
I clasped my hands together to keep from punching my thighs or slapping the table in anger while the judge droned on. “That time will be credited to your remaining sentence. Do you have anything you wish to say?” The judge graced me with a fatherly glance before giving a deep sigh that marred his weathered face with a frown. He was gruff, and no nonsense, looking me over as if he waited for my meltdown and only hesitated a moment for my response, which wasn’t forthcoming.
My face flamed, hot and shamed, but not with guilt for the crime I’d been charged with and found guilty of, but because there was nothing for me to say. People who knew me would have said I was full of fire, but today, it felt like a torrential rain had beaten me down to sputtering smoke and ash.
“May she burn in hell! Puta!” Damp air speckled my cheek from the spittle that flew in my direction from just a dozen feet away.
“I make her suffer too! An eye for an eye is my vengeance!” A pencil hit my cheek, grazing the skin, and I ducked down to avoid further abuse. The prosecutor stood up defensively as I sat there numbly taking the verbal insults. My hands were high over my head in surrender.
“”Enough! Sit down, Mrs. Espina, or I’ll hold you in contempt! Bailiff!” the judge fired back, because hey, what’s a blanket threat when I’ve already been convicted? Bailiffs standing against the wall took one step forward in a languid attempt to hold her back from the first lunge at me. She managed to knock papers and glasses of water over, spilling the liquid on my lawyer in her effort to hit and slap me. I knew better than to touch her when the judge slammed his gavel down repeatedly urging those lazy guards to break it up. She got lose able to reach me and my cheek rung with the violence of her backhand. I nearly toppled from my chair, my shoulder and arm up to protect me from a second strike.
Anything I did now would have been self-defense, not that this court understood that at all. After all, she was the mother of the man I’d supposedly killed almost five months earlier. Grant’s mother thought I deserved what I got. It’s kind of hard to convince the world you’re innocent when your fingerprints are all over the tire-iron that bashed his head to smithereens.
My lawyer, Zeke Walls, Esquire, is a smug shit for brains public defender who tried to grope me the last time I saw him two months ago. He promised I wouldn’t get any time for the crime. I could see he really worked hard to save me since I turned him down cold. His greasy hair looked like a puddle of motor oil, and the first time he spoke to me it was in broken Spanish. Apparently, he thought all Hispanic looking people speak Spanish. I hadn’t been back to Mexico since my grandmother died a decade earlier.
Dad insisted we become American and banned speaking it inside the house. Even my poor mother had to do without her beloved soap operas in the native tongue she loved. This farce of a trial was over and done with and this was the consequence a woman with no financial means faced when nobody gave a shit. My parents brought me here as a precocious three-year-old, enrolling me in every state funded program they could until I got my citizenship while they worked four jobs between them. All that effort wasted because it was obvious I would never be treated equally. The irony wasn’t lost me.
Lies.
All of it had been lies, and now I was on my way to a woman’s prison that would make the television show look like the Hilton. My tender ass would be fucked six ways to Sunday, no doubt about it, as
my county cellmate often remarked cruelly.
The judge, a man in his seventies who’d likely heard and seen it all gave me one last look before taking in the negative shake of my head. The uncontrollable cries from Grant’s mother echoed as she fought the restraining guards waiting for the formal sentence.
“Very well Ms. Cruz, you are now property of the state of Texas, and will be given an inmate identification number upon your intake at the Colby Meyers Unit.” I mean, really, what could I have said? Thanks for letting her not kill me? Thanks for assigning me the public defender who barely graduated law school with pot dust and cocaine under his nose, but still ended up with a law degree to practice? Yeah, thanks were wasted around here.
The bailiff came and clasped a large hand around my arm, pinching the lean muscle to bone, leading me away through a set of reinforced metal doors to a holding cell. Mr. Wells followed behind me, crudely adjusting his cock more than once looking me over. He shoved wet papers into his briefcase, as he smoothed down his stained jacket and crooked tie.
He shuffled my file around on the holding cell table, making small talk. They gave me a new set of clothes to change into and a paper bag for my belongings that would transfer with me. Orange and black block letters identified me as an inmate of the Texas prison system. The next four years and eight months—if I was lucky—were sure to be a blast.
My period was due to come, and I was afraid to ask Zeke the Creep about getting a box of tampons or pads; heck–I’d take anything sanitary or rolled up toilet paper like I had the past four months in county. I figured if I bled everywhere, maybe the guards would take me to the medical unit and out of my crowded bunk room with strange new roommates. I learned pretty quickly I was more alone inside here than I ever was on my own outside.
More paperwork was filled out and my stomach cramped waiting for the first, but probably not the last, drop of my blood to be spilled. My skin felt tight, and my mind was jumpy while waiting and handcuffed to a hard bench seat. I wondered what would happen to the alley cats I fed scraps and dry bits to behind my shitty apartment building while I was gone. Who would fill in at the bar where I waitressed? How would I finish my college courses behind bars? My mind was going to have a lot of free time to wonder and wait. I leaned my head back against the window, likely the last time I’d be this close to the outside world as I breathed the hot humid air through the cramping pain that threatened to bend my body to the floor. Right now, I would have taken anything for a chance at oblivion, but an over-the-counter pain reliever would have graciously fit the bill.
My thoughts were interrupted when a woman with long, ropey dreadlocks sat down across from me. “Hey, so what the fuck you do to get in here?”
Dark brows slashed her forehead while a colorful tattoo peppered her neck against smooth ebony skin. She was a contradiction in beauty and rough patches that made her unapproachable at first glance. Taking a breath, I thought about my answer, there was another woman on the bus. She was quiet, eye fucking me up and down as I’d heard other county inmates describe the particular look. A shiver coursed through me wondering what had her looking so pissed, nothing good came out of being a target. I wondered if the rumor that Grant’s mother had paid someone inside to get me was true or another scare tactic to torture me.