Read Online Mad Cows by Kathy Lette - Free Book Online Page B

just for . . . I mean, shop-lifting.’
    Mamma Joy narrowed her eyes. ‘You tink I did a murder? I was tinkin’ about it . . .’ She erupted into that stagey cackle. ‘No. Me neva done no murder. I’m guilty though – of
gettin’ caught
. Tings can get a little awkward when a fella put he hand into him pocket, to find yours already dere.’
    Maddy watched Mamma Joy’s mouth – bright red, even without lipstick – with the fascination of despair. ‘How long before you up in fronta de Judge?’
    â€˜I dunno . . . about a week.’
    â€˜Dat no time at all. I know
marriages
lonelier dan dis.’ Mamma Joy patted Maddy in a magisterial way. ‘Time passes.’ Yeah, thought Maddy, avoiding Sputnik’s rapacious gaze, like kidney stones. The three-thirty dinner bell brought a cadence to her conversation. ‘And stay away from Sputnik. She
was
goin’ to anger therapy classes . . . till she head-butted de psychology woman. Hee,
hee
, hee hee . . .’
    But staying away from Sputnik was not as easy as it sounded. The woman was fixated. At meal times she’d position herself a fork-prong’s distance from Maddy, skewering her with a look of mild hunger. It was clear from the way Sputnik attacked her sausage – stabbing it with the plastic knife, twisting, yanking it out, then stabbing it again and again – that GBH was a vocation.
    Sputnik also seemed to specialize in full bladder synchronization. Every time Maddy ventured into one of the two bathrooms on the L-shaped wing, there she would be in her peripheral vision, sniffing primordially. Maddy would have avoided the showers altogether, except hot water was the only relief for her lumpy-as-boarding-school-porridge breasts. The milk Niagaraed on to her feet. There was so much hair clogging the drain that Maddy was tempted to get down and shampoo it. It was the only plug hole she’d ever seen which needed a cut and blow-dry. But bending over in the near vicinity of Sputnik would be a major misdemeanour. Bend Over; I’ll Drive’ was the woman’s motto. Maddy watched her with what could only be described as mounting apprehension.
    As Sputnik’s only reading material contained dialogue in balloons, education classes seemed the best way of avoiding her. To alleviate the bum-numbing tedium, various do-gooders made regular, condescending appearances through the prison gates. About once a week some pulped biographer, antediluvian backbencher or remaindered author of
How to Make Loo-Roll-Holders Out of Hubby’s Shirt Cardboard
and
101 Uses for Old Egg Cartons
would offer inmates their pearls of wisdom – make that fake pearls, make that
paste
. ‘Nick-sniffers,’ Mamma Joy called them. The announcement of an acting workshop, however, was met with universal enthusiasm. The remand wing’s drama qualifications were that they were bored shitless and would do
any
thing not to be banged up twenty-three hours a day. The trick was to get a walk-on part, no dialogue. This was going to be a play with a
lot
of walk-on parts, no dialogue.
    In the gaol gymnasium, Petronella de Winter glanced nervously towards the door, where two bored kennel-keepers were bent over a copy of
Hello
! magazine. She took a deep breath and introduced herself as an Actress. Judging by the combination of cleavage and IQ, Maddy felt sure she’d got her start in films entitled
Moist Choir Girl
and
Make Your Own Benwah Balls
.
    â€˜There is always a chance of like, dying on stage, especially when it’s being, you know, shared with a couple of murderers,’ she quipped.
    Maddy’s cellmate, Chanel, so-called because she was daughter number five, lifted one bottom cheek off the chair and let rip with one of her famously resonant farts.
    â€˜All right’ – the blonde actress pointed a painted finger into the audience – ‘which one of you naughty girls stole my car