Guilty Wives (20 page)

THE BLOOD IN
my mouth was warm and bitter. Beads of sweat streamed down my face, into my eyes and mouth and ears, dripping off my chin. My thighs and lower back were in searing pain. I tried to keep my breathing even by exhaling in quick bursts. More than anything, I was trying not to pass out.

My back was against the wall and my thighs were at right angles to it, parallel to the floor. It was exactly like sitting in a chair, but minus the chair. I was steeling myself against the wall, trying not to let myself slide down to the floor.

The guard monitoring me was named Lucy. She was, by all accounts, the only guard nastier than the head guard, Sabine. To my horror, she actually looked like me, if you added an inch of height, twenty pounds of muscle, and a creepy smile. My cell mates called her my
belle-soeur laide
—my ugly stepsister.

“Voulez-vous cesser?”
she asked me as she lit a cigarette.

Did I want to stop? She knew I did. I’d been in this position for almost a half hour. My legs were trembling. My face was twisted in agony. But I wasn’t going to give Lucy the satisfaction of an answer, because sure as sunrise, she would respond with a cruel direction to remain in this position for another half hour.

It had been six nights like this, each of them with Lucy. At first she went back to the steam pipe, handcuffing me over my head. One night, she just made me stand all night, twelve hours straight, with my arms out, something they called
l’épouvantail,
or the scarecrow. My ankles were so swollen I couldn’t walk the next day. Another night, she let me fall asleep on a hard floor but woke me up every thirty minutes by splashing water in my face.

I started to slip down the wall. My thighs felt like they’d been set on fire.

Lucy patted the baton against her leg, watching me.

I collapsed, my butt landing hard on the concrete floor. I stretched out my legs. I panted and moaned and spit blood.

“I did not tell you…you could stop,” she said, holding the baton against her side.

I braced myself for what was coming next. So far, they hadn’t hit me in the face; they’d limited the abuse to the torso, back, and legs.

“Get…up,” said Lucy. She knew I wouldn’t. She knew I couldn’t.

“Just give me a minute,” I pleaded. “Just one—”

The spray hit me on the left cheek, just below my eye. But pepper spray, I had come to learn the hard way, didn’t need to make direct contact with the eye to cause serious disability and pain.

Within seconds my face felt like it was on fire. My eyes shut involuntarily. I gasped for air and broke out into convulsive coughing. I was on my hands and knees, fighting for whatever air I could take in, my face ravaged with fiery heat.

I panted and gagged and shrieked. It would be a half hour or forty-five minutes before the effects would completely wear off. At which time Lucy would demand that I reassume my position on the wall. Or she’d pull out the OC spray once more.

“Ce va être une longue nuit,”
my ugly stepsister called out to me.

She was right. It was going to be another long night.

LINETTE MOREAU TOOK
Giorgio’s hand in hers and stroked it. Most of the time during these two-hour visits, which took place every other Sunday in an airy room filled with other prison visitors, they just gazed into each other’s eyes and held hands and touched foreheads from across the table separating them. This day, they’d killed the first hour on gossip: Linette’s best friend, Sophie, had broken up with her boyfriend; Linette’s mother was trying to quit smoking for the twentieth time; Giorgio’s rock band, Noise Pollution, was this close to getting a gig at the Élysée Montmartre, a big break if they could pull it off.

Oh, how she loved this boy. Two years her junior, which made him twenty-eight, a tall Italian with soulful eyes and a smile that leveled her. And he was clean now. They both were. It was the cocaine that had made them do stupid things like steal cars and boost stereos and pick pockets. That chapter of their lives was closed. Giorgio had two legitimate jobs—a courier for a law firm and a bartender at Baxo—while he pursued his dream of making music at night and on the weekends, always carrying that ratty notebook where he penned his lyrics or toting around his prized Les Paul, strumming chords and humming to himself.

She loved him so furiously it made her eyes water, her throat constrict. Just two hundred and six days now until they could be together forever. They would be married on a hillside overlooking a vineyard in Bordeaux.

“So?” he said to her in French. Giorgio was learning English with audio recordings, but he had nowhere near Linette’s knowledge of the language. Occasionally they tried to speak in English, but he always defaulted to French. “Tell me about her.”

Linette shrugged and responded in French. “If I chose one word? Tough.”

“Choose more than one word, Linny. Come on. Everyone is so excited that you’re sharing a cell with one of them.”

Linette frowned. “She’s a sweet girl. And she’s tough. The rumor is that the guards are trying to get her to confess to her crime. Sabine assigned Lucy to her.”

“Lucy? Ugh.”

“Right. The worst of the worst. Every night, they drag her out of the cell and work her over. They gave her the ‘bath’ the first night. Since then, it’s probably their usual bullshit—stress positions and depriving her of sleep. But Abbie hasn’t confessed. She just takes their punishment. She doesn’t even complain to us.”

Linette looked about the room, which held two rows of long tables, filled to maximum capacity with husbands and boyfriends and parents and children, all desperately trying to make the most of the short time they had with the prisoners, trying to fit weeks’ and months’ and years’ worth of love into one hundred and twenty minutes every other weekend. There was not one person among them, prisoner or visitor, who wouldn’t leave this room bruised, full of despair and longing and heartache.

“I’m worried about her,” Linette said.

“That’s why I love you, baby.” Giorgio touched her face for a moment. Anything beyond that would catch the attention of the guards.
Contact minimale
was the rule, except for children under the age of twelve, who could sit with, or on the laps of, the female prisoners. “Don’t worry,” he said. “Time will pass. It will get better.”

“Time will pass,” she agreed. “But it will get worse. Right now, they can’t really hurt her badly, because of the media. The reporters constantly want to visit. Sooner or later, the warden will have to let them in. They can’t have anyone photographing Abbie with a broken nose or a black eye. But once the reporters move on to the next scandal? Abbie will have no protection from Lucy and Sabine.”

“They’ll get what they want,” said Giorgio, having served a stint in prison himself.

“Either she’ll confess or they’ll kill her. One of their famous suicides, maybe.”

The next table over, a young child was wailing as he sat on his mother’s lap. She was trying in vain to soothe him, but he was inconsolable.

Linette shook her head and sighed. “Sooner or later, they’re going to win,” she said. “They always do.”

SEVEN THIRTY. I
counted the minutes. Seven forty. Ten till. The guards called out the ten-minute warning before lights out.

The others settled in for sleep, or to light up their hash and blow the smoke out the window. It was quite a rogues’ gallery in cell 413. We had a car thief (Linette) and two killers (Josette and Penelope). We had a deranged arsonist (Lexie). Then there was Camille, in for selling cocaine, though by all indications—stringy hair, pale face, trembling hands, and constant smoking—she was more of a user than a seller. Camille was in rehab but it wasn’t going so well. She mumbled to herself and chewed her fingernails down to bloody nubs. Her forearms looked like they’d been attacked by cats.

Finally, there was Mona, a large, nasty woman from a town in northern France called Rouen whose crime, as far as Linette understood it, was dating a Saudi man who was accused of terrorist activities within France. They called her charge criminal association, or something to that effect, and she’d been at JRF for almost three years without having been put on trial.

Other than Linette, they didn’t talk to me much. Josette, the unofficial leader, had made it clear to me that my problems could not become my cell mates’ problems. They might help me inside the cell, but outside these narrow walls, I was on my own.

Today hadn’t been a bad day. I did a shift in the infirmary, where I worked as a nurse’s assistant, and helped them save an attempted suicide. Played gin rummy with some of the women in the day area. Dinner included a pork chop that was actually edible. My cell mate Camille, the cocaine addict, showed me photos of her little boy, Gregory, and I helped her make a collage she taped to the wall. In my world, this was an up day.

But it could be a bad night. I never knew. They didn’t come for me every night anymore. Maybe Lucy didn’t like working the overnight shift every day. Or maybe she and Sabine figured it was more effective to mind-fuck me, that the anticipation would be worse than the actual torture. They’d be right. I didn’t sleep well, waiting for them, listening to every footstep I heard outside the cell, wondering if it was one of them coming for me, if it was going to be the steam pipe or the “scarecrow” or the “seat.” Batons or pepper spray. Sleep deprivation or screaming in my face all night.

When they didn’t come, I would do it all to myself anyway, in my dreams, my nightmares, except that those were worse. There was blood and violent rape and they tore at my flesh and my children were there, watching and calling out to me and sobbing.

Lucy and Sabine were with me even when they were physically absent. And they knew what they were doing. Even when they gave me a night off, they walked by the cell, they hovered at the door a moment, they rattled the latch. They made me wonder. They made me sweat. Sweating wasn’t hard when it was more than ninety degrees outside and about a hundred within this cramped cell.

I’d been there six weeks. I don’t know precisely when it happened. But I was starting to change. I was curling inward. I saw deprivation and fear and despondency all around me, but I found it harder and harder to worry about anyone besides myself. I started to lose everything that made me human.

Yesterday, I watched Penelope the Spaniard, whose tooth had become infected and had turned black, scream into the intercom for a dentist for the fifth day running, and all I could think was that her problems paled in comparison to mine. I watched Mona, the overweight one, who is in prison basically for having a boyfriend from Saudi Arabia, as she coughed incessantly for the third day in a row, and my only concern was that I didn’t want to catch whatever she had. (Of course, I would. We all caught each other’s maladies.)

I was no longer Abbie anymore. I was D-11-0215—
onze deux cent quinze.
The number tells anyone that in the year 2011, I was the 215th person admitted to JRF, and that I was assigned to cell block D. The red border around my ID told everyone that I was considered an “extremely high escape risk.”

Josette and Mona lit up their hash a few minutes ago, trading the cigarette back and forth and blowing the smoke out our barred window. They knew that the guards, if they came for me, wouldn’t come for a few hours yet. And even if they did, they wouldn’t object to the hash. They’re probably the ones who sold it to them. If they didn’t, then they turned a blind eye during visitation while it got passed from visitor to inmate. And they didn’t turn a blind eye for free.

Nothing was free in this shithole. Possession isn’t nine-tenths of the law at JRF; it’s ten-tenths. Prisoners guard whatever item they possess, from a cigarette to a comb to a book to half a cup of apple juice, with uncompromising propriety. You want something, you give something. It’s an old-fashioned barter system. The currency could be anything. The most common forms are cigarettes and sex. Or something you want from the commissary—toiletries, a radio, clothes, stationery. Sometimes it’s a favor. Mona, for example, not being the most ambitious or tidy gal, let Penelope get high with her last night if she agreed to make Mona’s bed for a week (we can’t leave our cell unless our beds are made, which isn’t a problem for me, as I don’t
have
a bed).

Lights out. Josette and Mona kept smoking, the orange tip of the cigarette glowing in the darkness. Penelope read a fashion magazine with her night-light. Lexie, the crazy arsonist, hummed to music on her headphones.

An hour passed. Two. Three. With my own night-light, I read and reread letters from Richie and Elena. They were glad to be back in Connecticut, I could tell. Back with their friends. The ink was smeared from my tears, which fell in healthy quantities off my cheeks. This was when I cried. When the lights were out or when everyone was asleep. When nobody could see me.

Near midnight I heard footsteps. I watched the small sliver of light under our cell door, waiting for the shadow to cover it. It happened soon enough. The shuffle of boots on concrete, coming to a stop at my door. The latch unlocking. My heartbeat fluttered. I held my breath. One part of me mentally prepared for another night. Another part begged them to go away, to make the monsters go away, to leave me alone.

Leave me alone. Please leave me alone! Just one night of peace!

I hadn’t waved the white flag yet. But they were winning.

I TOOK A
seat in the large room in F wing and looked around. Prisoners were spilling in and looking for seats, sometimes in groups with friends.

It was movie night. The prison got a different film every month and showed it on various nights to accommodate the two thousand inmates. I signed up for this one because it was an American movie—
Sex and the City 2
—so it would be easier for me to follow. But truthfully, any time I spent out of my cell was like a reprieve.

And I was hoping that I might see one of my friends. I hadn’t laid eyes on Winnie, Serena, or Bryah since we arrived at the prison. Each of us had been placed in a different cell block. The warden had a built-in excuse—we were still subject to our appeal, so we weren’t supposed to communicate. But the truth was, he wanted to keep the heat on us, especially me. If only I would confess—

There. There she was. Winnie. I stood up and saw her before she saw me.

My heart swelled. I hardly recognized her. She looked haggard, depleted. An unhealthy kind of skinny, with sunken eyes.

When she saw me, she lit up. Before we reached each other, we were both crying. Everything that had happened so far, the terror and pain and despair, came pouring out. We held each other until a guard divided us with a soft rebuke. When we separated, I noted how many people were observing us. I sometimes forgot we were celebrities in here.

We took seats in a middle row, creating a distance between us and the guards, who mostly sat in the back. We had our arms around each other. We stroked each other’s hair. We touched heads. The room went dark and the screen lit up with the movie, but neither of us was watching it.

“It’s just bloody awful in here, isn’t it?” she whispered.

I moaned. “Let’s not go there. Have you talked to the others?”

“I saw Bryah once. She’s in with the Muslims, y’know.”

I’d heard. They separated the races in here. As best they could, at least. Most of the prisoners in here were white. The blacks and Muslims, together, formed about a quarter of the prison population, so they were put together.

“I saw her at the library,” Winnie added. “She’s learning Arabic.”

We both laughed. That was
so
Bryah. God, it felt good to laugh.

“What about Serena?” I asked.

Winnie shrugged. “I saw her once. She’s doing pretty well, actually. Nobody messes with her. I guess being so strong and athletic helps. She’s in cell block A and has only one other person in her cell, an elderly woman.”

“Wow.” That must be nice. Luck of the draw, I guess. Or maybe Serena had proven herself early on, with her fists. Either way—good for her.

“Bryah told me…she said they’re being awful to you. They’re trying to get you to confess?”

It figured that Bryah would have a grapevine in here. Once an information junkie, always an information junkie. “I’m a big girl,” I said. “Have you seen Christien? The kids?”

We’d been here ten weeks now, so with visitation privileges limited to every other week, she could have seen Christien four or five times by now.

Winnie was quiet a moment. “It’s…hard. It’s the best part and the hardest part. Right?” Then she looked at me. She knew, presumably, of the rift between Jeffrey and me. “Have you seen your family?”

I shook my head no. “I don’t know if I can stand the thought of the kids coming here, seeing this. And Jeffrey…he’s coming next week, I think. We’re writing letters.”

“Christien said Jeff’s going back to the States. Is that true?”

It was. Jeffrey’s days at the U.S. Embassy in Switzerland had been numbered since my arrest, even more so once his affair with the ambassador became public knowledge. They weren’t so barbaric as to fire him while we were in crisis mode, but now that the trial was over, the writing was on the wall. Jeffrey was going back to Georgetown. On the plus side, he’d be a lot closer to Richie and Elena, who had returned to their boarding school in Connecticut. On the down side…

“He’ll be so far away,” Winnie whispered.

I leaned into her. “I think that’s okay with him, Win. Know what I mean?”

She let out a pained sigh. “Oh, God. I’m so sorry. Abbie, I’m so dreadfully sorry about all of this. All of this is my fault—”

“Shh.” But Winnie couldn’t be consoled. She broke down, quietly sobbing. I held her and closed my eyes and savored the warmth of my friend. It went on like that for a good thirty minutes. I didn’t mind a wet shoulder. It felt so good having Winnie close again.

When it was over, when her body had stopped trembling, Winnie was quiet for a long time. Then she put her mouth up close to my ear.

“I can’t do this,” she said. “I’m not going to make it in here much longer.”