Establishment (42 page)

The car pulled up in front of her place of exile, board buildings like army barracks, a ten-foot fence of heavy linked metal, and guard towers. Sadie Thomas pointed to a quadrangle of brick buildings. “The men's prison. Yours is better, dearie, believe me. We go in here, so just try to make a good impression right from the beginning. It pays off.”

They entered the building set between the woven wire walls. A matron-officer in a blue prison uniform signed Gedding's papers and signed a receipt for Barbara's purse. Then the two marshals left. Barbara never saw them again.

***

The officer behind the admissions desk emptied Barbara's purse and spread the contents. There was a billfold of money, which she counted carefully. She was a broad, solidly built woman in her middle years, with a thick neck and a small pug nose. “I'm Officer Hurley,” she said. “I'm counting the money in front of you, so pay attention. One hundred dollars. You can seal it for your release or you use it against your purchases in the commissary. Which do you want?”

“I'd like to use it while I'm here,” Barbara said softly.

“Speak up!”

“I'd like to use it while I'm here.”

“That's better.” She was studying the folder Gedding had left with her. “Barbara Cohen. Contempt of Congress, six months.” Her eyes examined Barbara from head to foot, the pale brown hair caught in a bun behind her head, the gray flannel suit, the white blouse. She fingered the purse. “You're one of a kind here, Mrs. Cohen. This is not exactly Alcatraz, but neither is it the Fairmont. Just mind your P's and Q's.” They were in a long, narrow room, a counter running its length, and behind the counter, cubbyholes in the wall.

“We'll begin with your fingerprints, Barbara,” Officer Hurley said. “Just step over here, and let's have your right hand.”

Barbara stepped to the counter. Officer Hurley rolled ink onto a glass plate, took Barbara's hand, and then, finger by finger, into the ink and onto a card.

“Left hand.”

Again, each finger was rolled in the ink and then rolled with the same motion onto a card. Then she gave Barbara a towel. “Wipe off the ink.”

The outside door opened, and a man in prison garb of shapeless blue entered, carrying a camera on a tripod.

“Set up,” Officer Hurley told him. “Be with you in a minute.” The photographer was staring at Barbara hungrily. He couldn't take his eyes off her as he set up his camera. Officer Hurley took a slate with a string attached to each corner and on it chalked Barbara's name and a number. She came around the counter and put the string around Barbara's neck so that the slate hung in front of her like a breastplate. “Stand right here,” she said, pushing Barbara back against the wall. “Eyes open. Look directly into the camera.” She said to the photographer, “What the devil are you waiting for, Sweeney?”

He squeezed his flash. The light blinded Barbara. “Don't move,” he said. “I need a second shot.”

Her eyes were clenched tight.

“Please open your eyes, miss.”

The camera flashed again.

“All right. Take it away, Sweeney.”

He departed reluctantly, his hunger and need trailing after him.

Hurley went behind the counter, found a meshwork metal tray, and pushed it toward Barbara.

“Take off your clothes, Barbara, and put them in here. They'll be cleaned, courtesy of the government, and they'll be held for you.”

Barbara stared at her.

“I said, take off your clothes.”

“Here?”

“That's right. Here.”

“I don't understand.”

“What do I have to do, draw you a diagram? Now you listen to me, Barbara. This is just the first step. But learn now. You do what you're told to do.”

“I'll be naked.”

“That's right. You won't die and you won't catch cold. You're in a federal House of Correction. You come in with those clothes and you go out with them, but while you're here, you wear what we give you. So sit down in that chair and strip down.”

Still Barbara stared at Officer Hurley, who nodded coldly. Barbara took off her jacket and handed it to her. Then her skirt, her blouse and her petticoat. For a long moment, she stood in her brassiere and girdle, feeling humiliated and ridiculous. Then she sighed, kicked off her shoes, pulled off girdle and stockings, unhooked her brassiere and stood naked.

“Pick up your clothes and put them in the tray.”

Barbara did so.

“Now go through that door and sit down in there and wait.”

The door Officer Hurley pointed to led into a small locker room with a single bench down the center. Two other naked women were sitting on the bench, and they looked at Barbara mutely as she entered. Neither of them spoke. One was a tall, well-built black woman. The other was a slight, skinny white girl, twenty-one at the most, who sat huddled over and shivering, trying to cover her pubic hair with one hand and her tiny breasts with the other. Barbara stood uncertainly, looking at them and trying not to look at them, conscious of their nakedness and her own nakedness in a way that she had never been conscious of nakedness before, until finally the black woman grinned and said, “Sit down, honey. There ain't no telling how long them motherfuckers will keep us here. And that goddamn stone floor is cold, cold.”

Barbara sat down next to the white girl, who shivered and cringed and whimpered softly.

“Are you sick?” Barbara asked.

“No, she ain't sick,” the black woman said. “She's a doper. She just started climbing the shitpile. Two, three hours from now, she be screaming like a lunatic.”

“Oh, God,” Barbara whispered. “Can't they do anything for her?”

“Here it is cold turkey, honey. You're not a doper?”

“Thank goodness, no.”

“You think those bastards would give us a little heat here. My name's Annie Lou Baker.”

“Mine is Barbara Cohen.”

“What brings you here, sister?”

“Something called contempt of Congress.”

“What?”

“Yes, it's a crime,” Barbara said.

“Shit, in the slammer for having contempt? Honey child, that would put me away two dozen times a week—”

Whatever else she might have said was interrupted by the opening of the door opposite to the one through which Barbara had entered. Past this door, Barbara saw a brightly lit, tiled shower room, and through the door came a woman in a bathing suit, a pail in one hand and a scrubbing brush in the other. “On your feet, girls,” she called out. “I'm Officer Davenport, and this here pail is filled with a solution of soapsuds and DDT. We welcome you, but not whatever bugs, maggots, or lice you bring with you. We run a clean and sanitary house. So get your backsides under those showers, and once you're wet, I'm going to wash your hair.”

“Ain't nobody going to wash my hair with DDT,” Annie Lou Baker said.

“No? Well, listen, child, either you get under that shower in ten seconds, or I call in a couple of male guards to hold you while I wash your hair. Now which is it?”

The black woman grinned. “Either way, it got points. Hell, what's the difference?”

She walked into the shower room. Barbara followed, hardly enthralled by the prospect of having her hair washed with DDT, yet falling into the realization that here one obeyed. There was no appeal. One obeyed. She was sure there were various punishments for disobedience, but the one single punishment that mattered was the loss of time off for good behavior. That she knew about. In her case, good behavior amounted to a reduction of her sentence by a day each month, six days out of the sentence; and even now she was determined that not one minute of those six days would be sacrificed.

The white girl held back, crouched and shivering.

“How long since you had a bath?” Officer Davenport demanded, grabbing her by the arm and pulling her under the shower. “Come on, kid. You're going to kick it no matter what, and a good shower won't make it any worse. Now all of you, use the soap and scrub.”

Ten minutes later the showers went off, and Barbara took the towel Officer Davenport handed her and dried her body and hair. Her hair was still damp and smelled of the soap and DDT concoction, but hair dryers had not yet made their appearance in federal prisons.

Davenport wrapped herself in a terry cloth robe and sang out, “All right, girls. Follow me, and we'll get some clothes on you.”

The women wrapped the towels around their waists and followed her into the next room. The prison clothes were stacked on a table, and two women prisoners did the dispensing. They each wore a shapeless gray wraparound dress that fell halfway between the knee and the ankle and flat-heeled black shoes.

“Give her your sizes,” Officer Davenport said. “Bust size, dress size, and shoe size.”

“Not that it matters,” one of the prisoners said.

“We'll do without your advice, Suzie.”

Barbara pulled on the gray dress and tied it at the waist. “You're a big girl,” Suzie said, “so we got problems.” She was a sharp-eyed, tight little woman of about forty. “What size shoe?”

“Nine.”

“Jesus God! I don't know if we got any nines.” She called to the other, “Billy, you got a nine?”

“Nine and a half?”

“They're kind of loose,” Barbara said apologetically.

“I got an eight, but that'll mortify the hell out of you.”

Barbara settled for the nine and a half. The three women dressed themselves, and Billy and Suzie stacked three piles of clothes and toiletries on the table.

“Now this is yours,” Officer Davenport said to Barbara and the others. “It's government issue, so you don't mess it up. You're responsible for your possessions. Now here each of you has pajamas, bathrobe, uniform, underwear, toothbrush, tooth powder, comb, brush, deodorant, shower cap, and jacket. Take care of it.”

Another woman entered the room while she was speaking, a tall, thin, gray-haired woman of fifty or so wearing the uniform of a prison officer.

“This is Officer Skeffington,” Davenport told them. “She'll take you to the isolation cells, where you'll spend tonight and some of tomorrow. This is only for your isolation period, so don't get too nervous. You won't be living there.” She nodded at Rosalie. “She's the doper.”

Trembling, Rosalie pleaded, “Help me, help me, please.”

“We're helping you more than anyone ever helped you, so just pull yourself together. Now come along, girls,” Officer Skeffington said. “Pick up your stuff and bring it with you.”

“Do we get fed?” Annie Lou demanded. “Lady, I'm starving.”

“You address me as Officer Skeffington. If you don't know the officer's name, you will address him as ‘sir' or her as ‘madam.' And nobody starves in here. You will be fed.”

She led them down a corridor, around a corner, and then into another corridor, where there were five wooden doors. Officer Skeffington unsnapped a ring of keys from her belt and opened the first door.

“In here,” she said to Barbara.

“Could I have a pencil and some writing paper?” Barbara asked.

“You'll have all that tomorrow when you're assigned to your quarters. I can't give you any here.”

Barbara nodded and walked into the cell. The door closed behind her and the key turned in the lock. She looked around the room. There was an overhead light with a pull cord, an iron cot of army issue, a bottom sheet, a pillow and pillowcase, two blankets, a wooden chair, a sink, and a toilet. The floor was concrete and the room smelled strongly of disinfectant. There was also a small table.

Barbara put her possessions on the table and sat down on the chair. Happily, there was no mirror in the room. She had no desire to look at herself. Her hair was still a damp mass, lying moist and uncomfortable on her neck and shoulders. She took one of the two cotton towels that were folded on the sink and tied it around her damp head like a turban. It helped.

So this is it
, she said to herself.
I am finally in jail. If I had only come here when I walked out of the courthouse in Washington it would be over now, long over. Too late now. I have six long, dreary months of this wretched place, of being submissive, of being ordered around, of being bored and humiliated, and for the life of me I still can't put my finger on what kind of a crime I have committed.

A key turned in the lock. The door opened, and a pretty little black woman carrying a tray entered the cell. She wore an inmate's uniform, the same shapeless gray smock, but she carried it with style, and she wore a colorful hand-embroidered belt. “Got you some eating food, sister. It ain't soul food, but it ain't bad either. This here's just pickup. You be eating better tomorrow. My name's Ellie. Why don't you just stack your junk in the corner and I put this on the table?”

Barbara cleared the table and Ellie put down the tray. “I pick up tomorrow,” she said. “So you take your time, sister. See you in jail.”

“Thank you,” Barbara said.

The black lady left, locking the door behind her. There had been something so kind, so gentle, so endearing in her manner that it brought tears to Barbara's eyes. She had now been in prison for almost three hours, and nothing that had happened had been in any way like what she might have expected; but then, she realized, prison, like war, can be neither imagined nor anticipated. It can only be experienced, and during the three hours she had been here she had learned more of the nature of prison and prisoners than in a lifetime of reading. Well, someday, she told herself, she would write of all this, and at least she would know whereof she wrote.

She turned to the tray. Until this moment she had felt no pangs of hunger. They had taken away her watch with her other possessions, but she guessed it was almost nine o'clock. She had not eaten since seven in the morning, and then it had been only dry toast and coffee. Now, suddenly, she was ravenously hungry. The tray contained two thick sandwiches of ham and cheese on white bread, a dish of coleslaw, a piece of brown cake, and a mug of coffee. There was evaporated milk in the coffee and it had been sweetened. She ate everything—the sandwiches, the coleslaw, and the cake. The single utensil on the tray was a spoon, and she found herself licking it clean.