“As of next week, you’ve served your minimum sentence. I’d designed the intricate tattoo myself-black lace crisscrossed with strings of tiny pearls and chandelier jewelry. Her gaze darted to my lacy tattoo where it peeked out from beneath the short sleeve of my pale blue prison shirt. “Andrea and I are here to offer you a way out of this place,” the woman named Lisa said. “I don’t understand,” I said, looking from one woman to the other. She wore her hair in a short, no-nonsense Afro sprinkled with gray. She’s an attorney.”Īndrea Fuller nodded at me. This woman’s expression was somewhere between boredom and apprehension. But she didn’t have Michelle Obama’s ready smile. She had a pin on her lapel in the shape of a house, and she reminded me a little of Michelle Obama. The woman in the tan suit sat forward, manicured hands folded neatly on the table. Did they see the anxiety in my eyes? I’d learned to trust no one in this place. I kept my gaze on them as I sat down at the other side of the table. They looked up at me, unsmiling, their dark-skinned faces unreadable. They were dressed for business in suits, one navy, the other tan. Both of them were somewhere between forty and fifty. I walked into the small room to find two women sitting at one side of a table. Why the private room? Couldn’t be good news. S’posed to take you in here today.” She turned me in the direction of the private visiting room, and I was instantly on guard. I headed for the door to the visiting room, but the guard grabbed my arm. She moved too easily down this hallway, and the burned-out, bored, bitter look in her dark eyes gave her away. And while she might have been new to the NCCFW, I could tell she wasn’t new to prison work.

She was new and I didn’t know her name and couldn’t read the name tag hanging around her neck, but she’d obviously already learned my prison nickname. “Dunno who it is, Blondie,” the guard said. My arrest held a mirror up to their flaws and now they were as finished with me as I was with them. Then he cried those sloppy drunk tears that always embarrassed me. My father came once after I’d been here a couple of weeks, but he was already wasted, although it wasn’t yet noon, and all he did was yell. I’d given up expecting one of my parents to show up, and that was fine with me. “Who’s here?” I asked the guard walking by my side. I was facing my second summer inside these cinder-block walls and tried not to think about it. It was on its way for those outside, anyway. Wouldn’t know it was June outside, that things were blooming and summer was on its way. You wouldn’t know what season it was from this hallway.

Cinder-block walls, a linoleum floor that squeaked beneath my prison-issue shoes. This hallway always felt cold to me, no matter the time of year. North Carolina Correctional Facility for Women Raleigh, North Carolina

Big lies little town