Read Online Blame: A Novel by Michelle Huneven - Free Book Online
Authors: Michelle Huneven
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station.
Twice a day, after breakfast and before dinner, the women lined up in front of their dorms for count. Count lasted from ten minutes to an hour, if someone wasn’t speaking up or the COs had something to say.
The guard station/dayroom cluster, with its dorms and amenities, was called a cottage, a term Patsy took to be intentionally ironic, as nothing could less resemble the small, scenic dwelling the word implied. (She later learned that women prisoners were once housed in real cottages, with the idea that a safe, attractive home could rehabilitate. The term had since devolved to mean the number of women such a cottage once accommodated: thirty-two.)
Patsy knew roughly half of her cottage mates from RC. Ruth was in her dorm; Annie and Gloria were in the adjacent one.
Her gym bag was restored to her, so she could wear her own sweater and underwear. A package from her mother arrived with more clothes and books, a saucepan.
Patsy signed up one day to use the telephone, called her mother the next. Mom, Mom, you there? she yelled over a steady buzz of static. Can you hear me? How’s Dad?
Mommy Mommy can ooo hear me? The echo, in sarcastic baby talk, came from a large, ferocious-looking woman from her dorm named Joyce, who waited to make a call.
Are you okay, hon? Her mother’s voice wobbled in and out. Can I send you any . . . you heard that Burt is apply—
This call is from the California Correctional Institution for Women . . .
I need books, Mom. Paperbacks only. And clothes, but remember to leave the prices on . . . The cord was short. Patsy had to cozy up against a small, sagging stainless-steel shelf. What did you say about Burt? Mom?
Burdy burdy burdy, sang the voice behind her.
Yes, but what books, Patsy? Can you speak up?
This call is from the California Correctional Institution for Women . . .
Any kind. Novels. Biographies.
Okay, hon . . . see what I . . . The cadence of closure already sounded in her mother’s voice. Your father’s going to be so upset he missed . . .
But what about Burt? Did he get the transfer?
This call is from the California Correctional Institution for Women . . .
We’ll see you soon, sweetheart . . .
Mommy mommy mom-eeeeee. Joyce lumbered up to the phone.
•
At Bertrin, there were no drugs or alcohol, for the simple reason, Gloria said, that the guards were searched when they came on shift. The staff in general seemed less sadistic than their RC counterparts, more like weary civil servants, their games less practiced and cruel. Still, Patsy did what she could to stay below their radar.
She never went to the dining room, for it exuded the exact same sour odor as RC’s. She relied on the commissary, which was like a badly stocked convenience store. On her allotted forty dollars a month, she bought off-brand raisin bran, tuna fish, and ramen noodles. She boiled the ramen at odd hours in the kitchen, taking the cheap aluminum saucepan back to her locker after each use.
Patsy wrote letters and read books on her bunk. Big, nineteenth-century American novels: Wharton, Howells, Twain. She’d always heard there was time in prison. Time to read, to write, to make yourself into a lawyer. Nobody mentioned that the time was filled with the ambient sounds of women raging, gates clanging, an ever-crackling public-address system.
Lights-out was marginally dimmer here than at RC, so sleep was deeper, once Patsy got there. Now, as she closed her eyes, the plump thirty-four-year-old woman and her adolescent girl rose to mind as if emerging from some dark lake, drenched and inscrutable, their faces in shadow. Patsy could not have recognized them on the street, yet here they presented themselves night after night, bringing a wave of guilt so black and suffocating, Patsy never believed it would pass.
•
When the guard led her parents into the loud, filthy visiting hall, Patsy blamed her mother’s pallor on the gauntlet of metal detectors and frisks and the
Twice a day, after breakfast and before dinner, the women lined up in front of their dorms for count. Count lasted from ten minutes to an hour, if someone wasn’t speaking up or the COs had something to say.
The guard station/dayroom cluster, with its dorms and amenities, was called a cottage, a term Patsy took to be intentionally ironic, as nothing could less resemble the small, scenic dwelling the word implied. (She later learned that women prisoners were once housed in real cottages, with the idea that a safe, attractive home could rehabilitate. The term had since devolved to mean the number of women such a cottage once accommodated: thirty-two.)
Patsy knew roughly half of her cottage mates from RC. Ruth was in her dorm; Annie and Gloria were in the adjacent one.
Her gym bag was restored to her, so she could wear her own sweater and underwear. A package from her mother arrived with more clothes and books, a saucepan.
Patsy signed up one day to use the telephone, called her mother the next. Mom, Mom, you there? she yelled over a steady buzz of static. Can you hear me? How’s Dad?
Mommy Mommy can ooo hear me? The echo, in sarcastic baby talk, came from a large, ferocious-looking woman from her dorm named Joyce, who waited to make a call.
Are you okay, hon? Her mother’s voice wobbled in and out. Can I send you any . . . you heard that Burt is apply—
This call is from the California Correctional Institution for Women . . .
I need books, Mom. Paperbacks only. And clothes, but remember to leave the prices on . . . The cord was short. Patsy had to cozy up against a small, sagging stainless-steel shelf. What did you say about Burt? Mom?
Burdy burdy burdy, sang the voice behind her.
Yes, but what books, Patsy? Can you speak up?
This call is from the California Correctional Institution for Women . . .
Any kind. Novels. Biographies.
Okay, hon . . . see what I . . . The cadence of closure already sounded in her mother’s voice. Your father’s going to be so upset he missed . . .
But what about Burt? Did he get the transfer?
This call is from the California Correctional Institution for Women . . .
We’ll see you soon, sweetheart . . .
Mommy mommy mom-eeeeee. Joyce lumbered up to the phone.
•
At Bertrin, there were no drugs or alcohol, for the simple reason, Gloria said, that the guards were searched when they came on shift. The staff in general seemed less sadistic than their RC counterparts, more like weary civil servants, their games less practiced and cruel. Still, Patsy did what she could to stay below their radar.
She never went to the dining room, for it exuded the exact same sour odor as RC’s. She relied on the commissary, which was like a badly stocked convenience store. On her allotted forty dollars a month, she bought off-brand raisin bran, tuna fish, and ramen noodles. She boiled the ramen at odd hours in the kitchen, taking the cheap aluminum saucepan back to her locker after each use.
Patsy wrote letters and read books on her bunk. Big, nineteenth-century American novels: Wharton, Howells, Twain. She’d always heard there was time in prison. Time to read, to write, to make yourself into a lawyer. Nobody mentioned that the time was filled with the ambient sounds of women raging, gates clanging, an ever-crackling public-address system.
Lights-out was marginally dimmer here than at RC, so sleep was deeper, once Patsy got there. Now, as she closed her eyes, the plump thirty-four-year-old woman and her adolescent girl rose to mind as if emerging from some dark lake, drenched and inscrutable, their faces in shadow. Patsy could not have recognized them on the street, yet here they presented themselves night after night, bringing a wave of guilt so black and suffocating, Patsy never believed it would pass.
•
When the guard led her parents into the loud, filthy visiting hall, Patsy blamed her mother’s pallor on the gauntlet of metal detectors and frisks and the
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