I stand there until a nurse bustles in, chastising me for getting out of bed without crutches. I feel dazed. I’m not sure if it’s the drugs or the loss of blood or pure exhaustion, but I’m fairly sure it’s the sky. If I ever get out, I think, I’m never going to take that for granted again. Not that. Not anything.
The following morning, a nurse fits a plastic sleeve around my cast and rattles off a set of instructions for the shower. Noticeably absent are a set of crutches. I assume that was a security decision, to keep me slow and hobbled. I hop to the bathroom and turn on the water, which flies out blazing hot from the showerhead. I grimace, but then realize I have the choice to adjust the temperature. That is a luxury I could get used to.
A bathroom in which I am alone. A closed door. Privacy. I shrug out of my hospital gown and ease into the little cubicle. The bruises are plentiful and dark purple, ringed in an angry red, and they hurt now that my painkillers have been cut back. At the prison I normally shower in my underwear, as most of us do, to wash it and also to create an extra barrier against vulnerability and exposure. But here I stand beneath the water completely naked and vulnerable to nothing except the slippery floor. I hold up my face to the hot and needling water and, hesitantly at first, close my eyes. The feeling is one of overwhelming bliss. I wish I could stand here all day, but my supporting leg is getting tired.
After twenty minutes—the maximum allowed for the waterproof sleeve, and a decadent length of time by my accounting—I step out, towel off, and slip into a fresh gown. A nurse is waiting for me when I open the door, and behind her, Mona. She has a sheaf of papers beneath her arm, and a voice recorder tucked into her palm.
“You survived,” the nurse congratulates me. “In a little while the physical therapist will be here to take you on a walk around the floor. If you don’t show signs of internal bleeding, you’re going home in a few hours. Or—” She shoots a nervous glance at the guard. “Well, you’re going back.”
The nurse helps me to the bed and then steps out of the room, leaving me alone with my lawyer. Just before she closes the door I see the C.O. standing outside it, on guard against my possible escape. His presence doesn’t seem quite as much like artifice now. After twenty-four hours of better food, quiet, television, hot private showers and panoramic sky views, I know that if I were in better shape, it’s not out of the question that I’d try to slip out.
“Good Lord, Clara,” Mona says, taking in the sight of me on crutches in my hospital gown. “Who did you piss off to get in here?”
“The white women. How’s that for irony? I live in fear that the Latina women will come after me if they take Janny away, but instead it’s the white ones who put me in the hospital.” I ease myself onto the bed and rest my crutches against its side.
“No honor among thieves, after all.”
I make a wry face. “Speaking of which.”
“Yes.” She turns on the voice recorder. “What did Penelope tell you?”
I pull in a deep breath, then tell her everything—about the mother and her landscaper, the reason why, the trust fund and the apartment. “I hope that won’t make things worse for Penelope,” I say haltingly. “Maybe she could be offered a deal, too. She’s just trying to protect her mother. It’s not so different from what I did—covering up one person’s crime so my mother could live peacefully.”
Mona purses her mouth a bit and pauses from scribbling down her notes. “But your mother wasn’t the one to allegedly commit the crime.”
“No, but one’s mother is still one’s mother. It’s the nature of being a daughter—to try to protect her from suffering.”
“Well, I don’t have any control over what charges they bring against her. I’m your advocate, not Penelope’s. What I’ll do is get in touch with the Attorney General’s office and let them know you’re willing to offer substantial assistance in exchange for a sentence reduction. They’ll follow through on the tips, and if they find evidence and make an arrest, you’ll probably get a deal.”
“But that isn’t for sure?”
“Nothing is for sure, and it’s too bad she didn’t give you much concrete information—the location of the gun, for example. But I’ll talk to people. I’ll make the case that a significant sentence reduction is appropriate.”
Given my past experiences with judges, that isn’t very reassuring. “All right. How long will it take?”
“A couple of months, if all goes well. In the meantime, they’ve already decided to put you in Medical Segregation because of your injuries. Were it not for that, I’d encourage you to go back in and see if she reveals more, but you won’t have that chance now.”
I nod and, through my nose, breathe out a slow breath. That’s the end of my job at the Braille workshop, creating the drawings Shirley depends on me to do. No more Sunday mornings at Mass, crocheting classes and library visits, meals in the chow hall, time in the sun. No more afternoons spent with Clementine on my lap, if she’s even survived this ordeal. But it could be worse. It could be the Hole.
“Could they put me with Janny, at least?” I ask.
“I don’t think so, Clara, but I’ll see what I can do.”
The sign above the prison wing reads Medical Segregation Unit, and the mere sight of those words is enough to make my stomach clench. It hasn’t changed at all in the twenty-some years since I’ve been here. The walls are the same shade of maize, the smell still that of roach powder and urine, and the high ceiling and open staircases offer the same acoustic qualities that cause the shouts and screams of the mentally ill to echo from one wall to its opposite one. It’s just past the clinic, and though the nurse is kind to me—guiding my ungainly steps with the crutches, offering soothing encouragement—I still feel nauseated as I make my way down the hall. This will be my home for the next two months or more, and if Penelope lied to me or the investigation hits a dead end, my next housing options are even worse.
I’m led to a cell at the far end, which will probably be quieter. All my things are already here, thrown haphazardly into cardboard boxes. There is a single bed against the wall, no bunk.
“You can’t bunk me with Janny Hernandez?” I ask, my disappointment compounding. “My lawyer was supposed to ask about it.”
“She did, but we don’t have any bunked cells available. We’ll try to make arrangements for you to visit her. She asks about you often.”
“She does?”
The nurse nods just before the C.O. shuts the door with a sonorous clang. The cell doors are different here—solid, with a small window and a slot for food, rather than the bars of D-Block where I lived before. That means my built-in ballet barre is gone now, but that hardly matters. My ankle was fractured and one of the bones in my calf broken in the attack, so I’m not sure if I’ll ever go on pointe again. I try not to think about that very much.
I write to Forrest on the day I arrive, but three weeks pass before he receives my letter telling him about the fight and my new location. I receive a hasty reply from him the day before he visits, and when I’m brought down to the windowed visiting booths, moving slowly on my crutches, his expression looks as abject and broken as the words of his letter made him sound.