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Janet was gone. “She’ll be back, one of her new friends told L C. It was the type of woman L C would never have spoken to a week ago. A woman she would have skirted past and not looked at. Yet in here, today, she saw woman who was the closest thing she had to a friend. A thin woman who looked older than her years with bad teeth, bad skin, and bad hair. She’s never gone long. In six months to a year she’ll get in trouble again. She always does.”
L C Was puzzled. “I thought with the three strikes thing that couldn’t happen any more. I thought if you kept getting in trouble you wound up in prison for life.”
“Ahg. It is like a routine, honey. She never does anything real bad. She gets arrested, gets booked on some big fat charge, gets the charge reduced. Winds up doing community service. Most of the time it doesn’t even show up on her record.” She shrugged and smiled broadly, either unaware or uncaring of the condition of her teeth.
L C felt as if a rope holding her to reality was somehow cut, setting her adrift, a boat that had lost its ties to the wharf that gave it stability. “It’s like a whole new world. It’s like an Edgar Rice Burroughs novel where you wake up on in a whole new world. Or nowadays I guess a whole different parallel universe. The world I lived in two days ago and I live in today have nothing to do with each other. Just yesterday my biggest worry was whether I should go to college or marry a man who could support me. Now I don’t even know if someone is feeding my chihuahua right.”
“Honey, you got more to worry about than a chihuahua. Word is you getting Andy this afternoon. She’s been in prison twice. She goes again she probably spend the rest of her life in there.”
“Okay. What does that have to do with me?”
“Word says you up for murder. You could wind up with her for your roomy for a few years. She is a bull dyke. White supremacist. Good chance for you to get in some practice. Cuddle up with her and she is the only ass you’ll have to kiss.”
“Uhhhhh.” L C felt like a space shuttle that had broken free of earth’s gravity, never to return.
“She ain’t your regular gay girl who wants to do her own thing and be left alone to do hers and her girlfriends. Andy is a cave man with a vagina. She will grab a sweet thing like you by the hair and …”
L C Left. Short, quick steps. She wasn’t prepared to face the concepts, let alone the pictures, that were going through her mind. She felt slightly dazed.
It happened later that afternoon.
She was not ready to face Andy. The woman was built like a tank with arms and legs. She would make the incredible hulk blink twice. She was huge. She was fat but she looked like her fat cells had muscles all their own. She looked like she lived for one purpose and one purpose only. To beat the hell out of anybody she could find.
The minute she entered the cell was like sides were chosen. She stared at Violet and Diamond, and even though Violet and Diamond were in separate parts of the room L C could see them forming a solid rank against the newcomer.
Then she looked at L C, “At least there is one white woman in here.”
L C felt her own eyes widen. She turned and looked at Violet. Until then it had never dawned on her Violet wasn’t white. Her skin was actually a shade or two lighter than Andy’s.
Violet smiled. It was a cold smile, one Jack Nickleson would be proud of. “A real racist can tell.”
Andy sneered at L C. “You didn’t even know. Hell, you got a lot of learning to do.”
L C felt something clutch at her diaphragm. She wasn’t even sure if it were fear or not. She knew it was a feeling that would inhibit her ability to act, to move, to defend herself and she did not like it. She knew there was no right or wrong here. It did not matter what she said or did, she was not going to find a “door three” with the bright shiny car inside. No matter what she chose, or why she chose it, there was not going to be a happy solution in here. Not now. Maybe not ever.
Her mother always told her to make the best of every situation. What would she consider the best in here? Her mother scorned her grandparents injunction, “Its better to lose being yourself than to win being somebody you despise.” Her hippy grandparents, thrown out of their wealthy homes, living on the fringe of society, arrested during sit-ins, marching for civil rights, had no doubt faced similar problems as she was facing now.
L C Suddenly realized that when you are in a parallel universe, say a prison universe, reality also changes. As the reality she lived in changed she grabbed onto the only constant she could find. She realized she had to decide who she was, really was, and she had to decide now. She felt the fear wash over her, rising from her feet up over her head. But she knew she could not let the fear decide for her.
She spoke slowly, deliberately, the way Tulkhorn spoke. “I’m not ― Interested ― In learning ― anything ― You have ― To teach.”
“What? You a lover of,” she paused to sneer, “These?” she gestured toward Violet and Diamond.
“Yeah.” L C Looked directly at Diamond’s eyes, even though Diamond kept her eyes trained on Andy. “I love her. She’s my aunt.”
“Bah.” Andy snorted. “What you think that black bitch going to do for you in prison?”
Diamond started to move. Violet interposed herself. Knowledge passed between the two L C was not privy to.
“You think she is your friend? In there she will slit your little white throat without even thinking about it.” Andy leaned close and spoke in L C’s ear so close she could feel hot, stale breath, tinged with dead cigarette smoke. “When you reach the big time you better choose sides. And it better be the right one.”
“Oh, my god,” thought L C “I can’t go to prison. I’ll never survive.”
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