Give Me a Reason (21 page)

Stopping to take a sip of wine, Toni stubbed out her
cigarette and lit another. “I thought the meals at Sutton Hall were bad, but
nothing could have prepared me for Thornbridge. Half the time what they gave us
tasted like detergent, and when it didn’t, it had been cooked for so long it
was like a putrid pudding. The only good thing about being sent down the block
was the fact that they made our trays first. When we
did
get food, it still looked like food.

“I couldn’t believe anything like Thornbridge could exist in
our country, but I knew that once I talked to Kris, she’d get in touch with the
authorities and tell them what was going on. In Sutton Hall, we got our phone
privileges in a week, but in Thornbridge, they made you wait for a month. So, I
waited. Patiently counting down the days, but my counting stopped on day twenty-nine.”

“Why?”

“Late in the afternoon, I was escorted to the governor’s
office and shown over a dozen photographs of cons, or should I say
dead
cons. Lying on steel tables, with their naked
shoulders and faces whiter than white, I knew in an instant that they had been
taken in a morgue. I still had no idea...no
fucking
clue why he wanted me to see them, but then he explained. He said most of the
women in Thornbridge had no connections outside the walls. The nutters’
families had long since forgotten them and the sane ones, well their crimes
were so heinous that their families refused all contact, but he knew there were
a few of us who didn’t fall into those categories. He said he wanted to make
sure I understood that he wasn’t about to lose what he called his lucrative
career because of a con who couldn’t keep her mouth shut. He told me the women
in the photographs all believed they were smarter than he was, but all of
them...
all
of them died before they ever got a
chance to make their first phone call.”

“Oh my God,” Laura said in a ragged whisper.

“The next morning, when I called Krista for the first time, I
stood outside the officer’s lounge on the only phone we were allowed to use,
and I talked to her about the weather. She kept saying she wanted to visit, wanted
to see how I was doing, but I couldn’t risk it. I just couldn’t, so no matter
how many times she asked for a visiting order, I’d never send one. I wasn’t
about to die like those women. I was smart and
I
was going to survive, but it didn’t take me long to realize that the screws
weren’t my only enemies.

“You can’t erase the air of a proper upbringing in a day or a
week, or even a year, and those women inside those walls hated me for it. I
wasn’t like them. I wasn’t hard and angry. I wasn’t vicious. I had a
conscience, and they didn’t. In Sutton Hall it wasn’t like that. There, the
women were all just trying to do their time until they got out, but in
Thornbridge, all the cons had was time, so they used it the only way knew how.
They’d spend their nights making shivs out of toothbrushes or plastic cutlery
stolen from the servery, and whenever they got a chance, they’d try to stab
you...just because they could,” Toni said in a whisper. “They got me over a
dozen times.”

Hearing Laura’s gasp, Toni looked over. “You said you wanted
to know, but I’ll stop if you want me to.”

Laura wiped a tear from her face and shook her head. Hastily
drinking the rest of her wine, she reached for the bottle with a trembling
hand.

Hearing the neck of the bottle tap against the rim of the
glass, Toni reached over and took it from Laura. Steadily refilling both of
their glasses, Toni stubbed out her cigarette and then paused to take a drink
before she began to speak, her voice still as calm and emotionless as it had
been when she started.

“I had been there almost two months before a screw came into
my cell after lights out. It had rained all day, and I was lying in the dark
listening to the water drip off the roof when I heard my cell door open. That
place was so old, there wasn’t a door that didn’t squeak or a hinge that didn’t
squeal, and even though the lights were off, there was enough coming from the
courtyard that I could see it was one of the men. He was tall and heavyset, but
his face was in the shadows, so I never knew which one it was...and then he
said, ‘I heard you think you’re pretty smart. Well, we don’t like smart around
here.’ I didn’t move. I didn’t know what was happening or why he felt the need
to tell me that, but then I heard a noise, and I knew he was taking off his
belt. My first thought was that he was going to try to rape me, so I jumped up
preparing to defend myself...and that’s when the belt hit me across the face.
Christ, it hurt, but before I could even cry out because of the pain, I heard
the belt cutting through the air. I ducked and it glanced off my back, and when
I heard that sound again, I knew he had no intention of stopping. I fell to my
bed and curled up in a ball trying to protect myself anyway I could as he just
kept whipping me. Over and over and over again until my entire body was burning
from the sting...and then he just stopped. Just like that. I heard the door
open...and he was gone.

“After that, every few weeks I’d be visited in the night for
a bit of fun as they called it. Sometimes it would only be a punch or a kick,
but there were some nights when it seemed to go on forever. And when they were
in a really foul mood, they’d use the buckled end, and I’d end up going to
medical to get stitched up.

“So, I started learning the
unwritten
rules of Thornbridge. If you didn’t want the screws to notice you, you didn’t
notice them. You kept your eyes on the floor when they were around, never
making eye contact. To them, it was a challenge, and they were more than ready
to answer it. In the servery, if they came near you, you placed your hands
palms down on the table, showing you were unarmed, and at night, you wore as
many shirts as you could so the beatings wouldn’t hurt as much.”

Stopping for a moment, Toni finished the wine in her glass
and lit another cigarette. After the third drag, she said, “But above all else,
the one rule you always followed, the one you never,
ever
broke, was interfering when a screw was punishing a prisoner. The rule was to
walk away, and I had learned to follow their rules...or so I thought.

“I had been there close to six months and one afternoon I
heard screaming from the second level. When I looked up, one of the screws was
holding a con named Betty over the railing. She was a twig of a woman with
rotten teeth and a foul mouth, sentenced to life for murdering her parents in
their bed. From what I could gather, she apparently spilled some tea on the
guard as he was making his rounds, and he decided to teach her a lesson. He had
her by her ankles, dangling her over the railing and laughing as he pretended
to let go and then not, all the while promising that the next time, he’d let
her fall. All the cons started disappearing into their cells, knowing there was
nothing they could do, but I couldn’t move. Something told me that the bastard
was going to drop her...and then he did. I didn’t have time to think about
consequences or rules. I just reacted and somehow managed to break her fall,
but in all the commotion, for a split-second, I forgot where I was. I looked up
at that son of a bitch and called him every name...every
fucking
name I could think of...and then some guards
grabbed me from behind and took me down the block. They beat me and they
starved me, and when they finally took me back to my cell four weeks later, I
thought the worst was over...but I was wrong.”

Laura was staring at the glass in her hand as she listened.
Revolted yet enthralled by Toni’s story, it wasn’t until she heard Toni’s voice
crack that she looked up, her breath catching in her throat at the sight of
Toni’s transformation. Her forehead and upper lip were now dotted with sweat,
and her face had paled considerably. She held one hand to her stomach as if
trying to keep something inside, while the other held a cigarette made almost
entirely out of ash.

“Toni, it’s okay to stop,” Laura said. “You don’t have to go
on.”

Clenching her teeth, Toni said, “You wanted to know.”

“We can do this later.”

“We do it
now
!”

Toni’s belly had been on slow simmer since she began
speaking, but now it was rolling. Dinner and drinks were tumbling, and the bile
created rose in her throat. She winced at its sting, but forced it back down.
She wasn’t through. She would not let them win. She would
never
let them win.

Dropping the remains of her cigarette into the candy dish,
Toni took a long, stuttered breath. “Just before lights out that night, Betty
came to my cell. She said that she owed me for saving her life, and she wanted
me to know that the screw who tried to kill her was going to visit me that
night. So, I put on all the clothes that I could...and I waited. A few hours
later, he showed up. Christ, he smelled vile. A mixture of cigars and alcohol
and body odor, it was enough to make you gag, and then I heard the sound of his
buckle being loosened...” Toni stopped, staring off into space as she
remembered that night. “...and then I heard him unzip his trousers.”

“Oh, dear God, no,” Laura gasped, bringing her hand to her
mouth. “Oh, please God, no.”

“In that instant, in less time than it takes a person to
blink, something inside of me just snapped. There was no way I was going to let
that bastard rape me, and my fear turned into fury. I launched myself off the
cot and dove into the darkness until I found him. I smashed my head into his
face, and I just kept swinging at him...I just kept swinging at him over and
over and over again.

“No con ever fought back, so I took him by surprise, but it
didn’t take long before he got the upper hand and began pushing me across the
cell. When we stepped into the light, I could see blood all over his face. It
was pouring out of his nose, but he didn’t seem to notice...or maybe he didn’t
care. I don’t know. When he got me to the wall, he pushed me hard against the
rock, but I just kept fighting. I could taste blood in my mouth, and the stone
was cutting into my face, but there was no way that bastard was going to take
me like that. No
fucking
way! It was at that
moment when I realized I had become what I had been convicted of being...a
murderer. Because if there had been a weapon, if there had been something I
could have used to kill him, I would have. I would have gutted that bastard
without one ounce of remorse. I wouldn’t have asked for forgiveness or offered
an apology. I would have cut out his heart...just like that.”

Toni’s voice drifted off as emotions welled in her throat.
Taking another deep, ragged breath, she let it out slowly. “It felt like an
eternity as we stood there and fought. His hands were everywhere, groping and
squeezing and hurting me, and his words were so filthy, so utterly appalling,
but as each minute passed, I grew weaker. He was so fucking strong, and I knew
I wasn’t going to be able to stop him. I knew it was going to happen...and I
wanted to die. I so wanted to die. Somehow...somehow I found this last bit of
energy, and I pushed as hard as I could, trying to twist away from him...and
then something...something let loose. I started to scream. Christ, it hurt. I
didn’t know what had happened, but I was...I was afraid to look. The
bastard...it felt like the bastard had ripped off my arm. Jesus Christ, I had
never felt pain like that before.

“For a second or two, he just stared at me. I guess I scared
him. I don’t know, but as he came at me again, my cell door swung open, and I
heard a woman shouting. There weren’t many women screws in Thornbridge, and up
until that night, I thought them no better than the men, but she proved me
wrong. Odd, how a few days earlier she had kicked me awake and now...now she
was saving my life. I guess beatings were one thing, but rape...rape was
something else. I crumpled to the floor when she pulled him away, and then they
left. They closed the door, turned the key...and just left me there. I stayed
on the floor until the next morning when they took me to medical to put my arm
back in its socket.”

Slowly, Toni got to her feet, swaying slightly as she stood
tall. She held one hand hard against her stomach, trying in vain to quiet the
churning, while the other had turned into a fist, and her jaw, once strong and
defiant, now trembled uncontrollably. “You wanted to know why I don’t see
myself being with anyone,” she said, her voice so weak Laura leaned closer to
hear. “Because every time...every
fucking
time
someone touches me, every time someone gets
too
close, all I feel is rage. I think of that night. I think of his hands. I think
of his smell and the pain and the terror, and how much I wanted to kill him.
How much I
still
want to kill him!” Clamping
her hand over her mouth, Toni ran to her bedroom, pushing the door open with
such force that it slammed against the wall. Bouncing back, it almost hit Laura
as she ran to catch up.

Toni barely made it to the toilet before her stomach emptied,
and standing in the doorway, Laura looked on in shock. A minute passed, and
taking a hesitant step in the woman’s direction, Laura said, “Toni—”

“Get out!” Toni screamed between heaves. “Get the fuck out!”
Again, her stomach lurched, but there was nothing left to expel, and with a
sigh, she sat back on her haunches. Sensing Laura was still in the room, Toni
looked over and glared. “For Christ’s sake, I’m begging you. Please...please
just leave me be.”

It was a plea Laura could not ignore. She had trampled on
Toni’s privacy again, and with regret etched on her face, she backed out of the
room and shut the door. With a heavy heart, she walked to the bed and sat down,
quietly waiting as she sniffled back her tears and worried about the woman on
the other side of the door. She had no idea why Toni had chosen tonight to
speak truths and terrors. Why she seemed so intent on getting every word out,
but she had and the result wasn’t uplifting. Laura had been the one pushing to
hear the story, prodding for information and believing the result would be
cleansing. It wasn’t, and Laura felt dreadful. There was no epiphany to be found
amongst the ruins of what Thornbridge had done to Toni. There was only more
pain.