Nobody seemed to care at all whether or not she was guilty of killing her husband. But when they heard about her son… well, it got real to them. She could tell, and she couldn't blame them. Everything, though, still seemed unreal to her.
The night before, after her older money-hungry lawyer had gone away with the nicer young one, she had cried on the top bunk of her cell for hours. At 3:00 p.m. they locked everybody back in the cells and had what they called count to make sure no one was missing. That took the better part of the hour, and then they brought the food.
By then Jennifer thought she was all cried out. Without really thinking about it, she took her tray and her plastic utensils and followed some of the other women out to the large common room, the tank. She set herself down at one of the tables under the television set.
She couldn't eat any of it – meatloaf, gravy, fake mashed potatoes, peas, three slices of bread. Larry would have thrown the plate across the room, especially with the gravy slopping over into the peas and the bread. She found herself crying again.
"You best eat up, honey. They's worse shit than this." It was a tall, almost stately black woman. "This your first time?"
Jennifer hadn't even been sure what she was talking about. First time she'd had meatloaf? First time she'd cried. She hung her head, shaking it from side to side. "I don't know, I just don't know…"
The other woman, Clara, didn't pursue it. Whatever Jennifer didn't know, it was all right with her. She sat down next to her, even asked permission, and started to eat, saying she was in – again – for thieving. "What you in for?"
Jennifer put a fork into the meat and brought it to her mouth. There was no taste, good or bad. "They think I killed my husband."
Clara nodded, unimpressed. "Shit, prob'ly deserved it, am I right? How bad he beat you up?"
"I didn't say that. He was a good man, a doctor, and I didn't kill him."
"Course you didn't." Clara went back to her plate. "Don't worry. Say he beat you, they let you go. You see. Get out of here, no problem. Things work out. Nothing to cry about."
Jennifer didn't mean it, but it came out. "I miss my son."
Clara put down her fork. "I know. I miss my baby too – Rodney just two, but he be some beauty. They don't give me more than a year, so I do five months and twenty days and Rodney stay with Else, my sister. She good to Rodney. Sometime he too much for me, so this be maybe some kind of vacation. For us both. May be that's God's plan."
Jennifer shook her head again. "My baby's gone," she said. "He's dead." She felt Clara stop eating next to her. She put a hand on Jennifer's shoulders, her black eyes liquid and soft. "Oh, child."
"They think I killed him too. It's crazy… They say he came in while Larry and I were fighting over the gun, or something like that. It's so stupid, crazy… And there's no bail."
Clara took her hand away. Her voice was hoarse and low. "I never heard of no bail."
Jennifer told her she'd heard of it now.
"You sure? The done the hearing? Yeah, 'course they have. Oh, honey, I'm so sorry. How old your boy?"
"Matt. He was seven. They tell me they're going to ask for the death penalty."
"For you? Well, you lucky there." The news seemed to pluck her up. Jennifer stared at her, uncomprehending, and Clara explained. "You the wrong color for that, girl. The don't give no gas to no white woman look like you."
At breakfast there was Clara and the other new white woman, Rhea (grand theft). And Mercedes (murder) and Rosie (aggravated assault) and Jennifer. All of the men and women on the seventh floor were either awaiting trial or, convicted, waiting for their trip to state prison or another facility.
Mercedes was going to trial in a couple of weeks and had been in jail for four months. She had finally stabbed her no good husband because he'd been running around on her. Rosie, who had beaten her boyfriend with a rolling pin, didn't have two thousand dollars for bail. Her trial was in six days and she was sure no jury would convict her.
Rhea was about Jennifer's age, size, hair color, but all the beauty had been used out of her. She was telling them how her husband had been pimping her out and they'd gotten lucky (or unlucky) with a john who'd lost his wallet with nearly a thousand dollars in it. "That's why they went for the grand theft."
"They always lookin'," Clara said.
"What's you bail?" Jennifer asked. She had been giving more thought to bail lately. If she had three-hundred-thousand dollars and could get out of jail for a third of that, she could take the other two-hundred-thousand and disappear for a long time. Forever. Why did she want to spend it on David Freeman, just give it to him? It didn't seem right somehow.
"Five thousand," Rhea answered. "So it's takin' Jimmy a day or two to get it together. It's cool. We talked about it."
"You mean you boyfriend, he'll bring in five thousand dollars and you'll just go home tonight or tomorrow and that's it?"
"This girl got no bail." Jennifer was Clara's story and she wanted to tell it. "No bail at all."
Rhea, ignoring Clara, seemed to smell something. Something with Jennifer. "You got no bail? Is that true? Don't you want out of here?"
"Amen to that," Mercedes said, "Everybody want out of here."
"'Cept me." Rosie, who had nearly killed her boyfriend, was the youngest of them, a diminutive, sweet-faced Hispanic. "I stay in here as long as they let me."
"You want that?"
Rosie's black eyes shone at Jennifer. "I want to be where I don't get hit no more."
"Amen," Mercedes said. "Amen amen."
"I get out of here," Rosie continued, "next day somebody's going to be hitting me. Next time he hit me I think I keel that son-of-a-bitch. So here" – and her face brightened – "I'm safe. Nobody hit me. I can't hit nobody back. I stay a while here. I think."
One of the guards, with a tag on her chest that read "Jessup," was moving their way. The talking stopped.
She came over to them. "You ladies having a nice time? Sure sounds like it." She tapped the table gently with her nightstick, her mouth becoming a thin line, nearly invisible. "Finish it up, now. Let's eat up."
Jennifer heard her name called over the loudspeaker.
Freeman was not sitting. Nor was Hardy. Jennifer looked defiantly up at them both. Freeman, who had obviously been through this sort of thing many times before, spoke matter-of-factly. "Typically, a full-scale murder trial will run to between half-a-million and a million in legal fees, so yes, I'd say your retainer will be spent."
"Then what?"
"Then what what, Jennifer?"
"After it's gone."
"Then we go to the court and get paid by the state."
"Couldn't they still just pick a public defender then?"
Freeman nodded. "They could, but they won't. They don't want some new defense team coming in and spending a year getting up to speed. By that time we'll know the case inside out and the court will stay with us."
"How about if we just don't mention my… my secret account?"
Freeman was shaking his head, pacing. "Jennifer. Without your secret account there isn't any money to begin with, so the court then appoints whoever it wants, and you've already said you don't want that. You know, I'm afraid I don't really understand your problem here. You're going on trial for your life, Jennifer. And you're talking about money you'll never be able to spend if you don't have the best representation and, frankly, maybe even with it."
"That'a'way, David, Hardy thought, sugarcoat it. He did understand that Freeman felt he had to give Jennifer a dose of reality, but her response made Hardy feel that he was going too far. Her head was going back down in that cowed way she had; she was blinking back new tears.