A Map of the World - Jane Hamilton [149]
“My boyfriend, he’s black like you,” I heard Debbie scream from under Dyshett. Sherry grabbed my shoulder, “What she say?”
“I didn’t hear,” I replied, certain that the news of Jesse O’Leary’s racial composition was not going to provide the sudden spark of camaraderie and affection Debbie hoped for, that Dyshett wasn’t going to make peace because they liked the same sort of man. I slipped to the window of our pod and beat on it, so that the guards, a hall and a window away in their control room, who were standing with their backs to me, might come and rescue my white sister. Two of them came running in a flat-footed vertical way that didn’t gather much speed. By the time they opened the door another girl, Rita, was on the pile, all of them grunting and clawing. The fight was broken up and the girls were handcuffed and taken off to solitary confinement. Debbie’s nose was bleeding and we were given surgical gloves and towels and told to wipe up her trail.
Sherry turned to me as we swabbed the floor. “How much time we got without Dyshett?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“That’s how much time we got to breathe easy. Any time without that girl is easy time.”
We were more like rats, than hamsters, to tell the truth. Sometimes I don’t think it would have much mattered who we were; we would have fought in the end because we, unlike the cows, did not have comfort stalls. At 6 A.M. the cell doors were opened and the lights were turned up in the day room. The guard, from her panel of switches in the control room, also turned on the television to the channel of her choice. We never knew if we were going to wake up to the CBS morning news, or “To Life! Yoga with Priscilla,” or “Woody Woodpecker.” There was always noise and sickness, and always light, so that it was impossible to sleep deeply. We stumbled about as if we were perpetually hung over. Because the jail had not been remodeled to accommodate the multitudes of unoccupied and dangerous citizens of Racine county, we did not have double bunks. I slept on my mat, which was on top of a cement block, and Debbie had her mat on the floor of our cell. When there were more people than cells they slapped down mats out in the day room.
I tried at first to find some sort of routine so I wouldn’t so easily lose track of time. It seemed of the utmost importance to mark time, to keep my place so I’d know where I was when, like a shade, I came back to the world. I did sit-ups on my mat first thing every morning. There was no outside courtyard for fresh air, no exercise room, no place except the day room to run in small circles. I read after breakfast and wrote letters after lunch, like a scholar might. I read the books I’d brought along with me. I had thought in those moments while the officer stood by in our living room that I’d need books I loved, books to keep my mind alive, books to let me escape and not think, books I’d always wanted to read. I had handed my full bag to the police that Tuesday morning when they came to the farm, imagining the quiescence and time before me like a wide road that narrows and narrows until it is nothing but a dot forever going into the distance.
In the jail I was often so tired I’d fall asleep mid-sentence and then wake up feeling drugged and wrenched. I read