Redemption (25 page)

A New Life

o serve out my life term, I was sent to Renz Correctional Institution, where Christy had been. It was out in the middle of nowhere on old farm property. The building looked like a white-concrete symmetrical high school, except the perimeter was circled with high fences, and a water silo towered from the back. I headed to a small building on the property for reception and orientation where new arrivals were given white jumpsuits. I had to spend two weeks in R&O for medical and intelligence testing before I could go into the general population.

I was thrilled.

Anywhere was better than the house on Eminence Avenue.

Anywhere would be better than Gumbo.

Upon arrival, I was strip-searched, a procedure I was familiar with from Gumbo. We were strip-searched before each visitation and after. We also got strip-searched whenever officers cooked up a reason. It was a degrading, time-consuming ordeal. We had to remove all of our clothing, then squat and cough three times. The squats were deep bends that made my legs sore. If we were hiding something in our natural “purses,” squats and coughs would supposedly expel buried items. Only women could conduct strip searches.

Male officers would pat-search us before and after visits—or whenever they deemed necessary. We had to take off our coats or jackets and stand with our feet and arms spread wide apart like da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. The officer would run his hands through our collars, down our shoulders over our arms and back underneath them, then down the sides of our ribs and the center of our breasts. With the back of his hands, he would lift our breasts and search under them, following the bra line to our backs. Next he would search our waistbands, circling our waists, slide his hands down the outside of our legs, and search our ankles. Then he would bring his hands up the center of our legs stopping short of the female triangle. If a perv did the pat search, he’d just barely stop before getting too close to our vaginas. If an inmate complained that an officer was too touchy, she’d go straight to the hole.

I never complained.

I was pleased to see so many familiar faces at Renz—in R&O and out on the grounds. I must’ve known one-third of the women there from my two-year stint at Gumbo. We weren’t all friends, but that didn’t matter. People knew me, and they knew I’d already done hard time. Right off the bat, I had a little bit of respect. I remember some girl who wanted to kick my ass just because I was new. Then she realized who I was and backed off, saying, “No, it’s Stacey Lannert. She’s okay.”

Women I’d been friendly with—the ones who bought my tea huggies for $1—smuggled cigarettes and Little Debbies to me. R&O wasn’t so bad, even though we were locked down. We had only one hour of recreation, and we had to walk everywhere in a single-file line. In the cafeteria, I got my first prison scare. A three-hundred-pound black woman named Big Faye worked on the kitchen line.

When I walked past her one day, she said, “You’re so pretty. You’re going to be mine.”

That was just great, I thought, I’d have to be Big Faye’s bitch when I went into general population. I was concerned. The inmates knew I was coming, and they knew what I’d done. They were just waiting to find out what kind of person I was.

I walked into population on the first day with my head held high. I didn’t show my fear—and nobody messed with me. It helped that my sister had been at Renz for the last two years. She had been released right before my trial. Christy had already done the dirty work—she kicked everybody’s ass that needed kicking. Even though I could barely say boo to a bulldog, I was protected by the Lannert reputation. Smuggled cigarettes and Little Debbies—welcome gifts—kept coming.

A gay couple, Jazz and Josie, had been Christy’s prison “mom and dad.” A woman who took on the role of the man in a couple was commonly called a bull dyke. Homosexuality is different in prison—it’s everywhere. When I caught sight of Jazz, I ran up to her and started talking. A woman named Patricia saw us together and told everyone she wanted to whip my butt. Patricia, it turned out, was Jazz’s new girlfriend. Jazz explained it to me: it’s disrespectful to talk to a woman without her girlfriend present.

I didn’t understand at first. I said, “Patricia shouldn’t be worried. I’m not gay.”

Then Patricia thought I was dissing homosexuality. We worked it out, and nobody tried to whip me. But I watched who I talked to from then on, and I learned that just about every time you opened your mouth to these women, you got yourself into more trouble.

Almost immediately, lesbian protectors hit on me. They thought I might need a hand at my new home. Arrangements could have been made to guarantee my protection. I firmly and politely declined their offers. I recognized these games, and I didn’t fall for them. Anyway, I didn’t need help. I knew a few people, and I had a little bit of money. I already had the advantage.

Well, as long as I didn’t run into Big Faye.

It took me about five seconds at Renz to learn that there aren’t just prison rules; there are also prisoners’ rules. To survive, you had to follow the code of conduct.

1. If you’re not a child molester, you don’t become friends with a child molester. Same goes for baby killers. You don’t talk to them. You don’t become friendly with them. You don’t hang out with them. They are the prison targets, and people are always messing with them. If an officer picks on a regular prisoner, she’ll take it out on a child molester. Everyone sees themselves as above child molesters and baby killers. Those women are forced to form their own subculture.
   
2. You don’t tell. You take it. If someone asks you to hide their contraband duffle bag while they get searched, you do it. If you wind up getting caught with the duffle bag, you take the violation.
   
3. Keep to your own. Find a group of women who are just like you and stick with them. There are no gangs in the women’s prison, but there are groups. You can be friendly with women who are different—race, religion—but nothing more.
   

Caseworkers were like parents. Their job was to help us when we needed it and to dole out punishments when we received violations. Everything you wanted, needed, or got in trouble for came from a caseworker. Mine was aptly named Miss Case, and she was a tough old bird. She knew my sister, and Christy had given her caseworker a lot of headaches.

Miss Case said to me, “We’re not going to have problems out of you like we had out of your sister, are we?”

“I hope not,” I said.

We didn’t have rooms there; we had cubicles. They were more like horse stalls. Miss Case said I would be sharing my horse stall with a woman named Sabrina Kinsey.

Renz had six wings with eighty or ninety women to a wing. We were packed in and exposed all of the time. There were no real walls in our cubicles. Two women shared a cube with only enough room for a bunk bed. No one wanted to sleep on top because there were drop-down fluorescent lights that were barely dimmed at night. You had to sleep with a pillow or towel over your face for darkness. On the top bunk, you could see everyone—eighty or ninety people—and there was absolutely no privacy. I was new; I got the top bunk.

Sabrina

iss Case thought Sabrina and I would be a good match. She was sixteen when she went in, and she was about my age. Her grandmother had been killed, and she and her boyfriend were involved somehow. I didn’t judge my new roommate for what she’d done. One of the things I learned going in: don’t judge others; what I had done was just as bad if not worse. Everyone in prison had her own story—her own private hell.

When I walked into my new cubicle, the one I would be sharing with Sabrina, I stared at this beautiful—really beautiful—girl with shiny dark hair all the way down to her butt. Her past didn’t scare me; her mean expressions did.

Upon arriving at Renz, I had a court order that I was allowed to bring my personal effects. I showed up in Sabrina’s room with way more stuff than the average new girl. I put down my first box. The top flap stated, “1 of 6.”

Sabrina stared at the numbers and said, “Ahhh, just fucking great.”

I didn’t say anything. I thought,
Here we go. My first day, and I’m going to get my ass beat
.

I wasn’t stupid. I could see how small the cubicle was. The bunk beds, smaller than twins, took up most of the space. With the two lockers, there was barely enough space for both of us to stand up at the same time. If I wanted to get to my locker, she’d have to sit down on the bed or move out of the way. Even I didn’t know where all my stuff would go. There were only two lockers, and I got one.

Sabrina pointed at my locker. “You better be creative because that’s all the room you get.”

Women were walking up and down the hallway—the cubicles were right on top of each other. One of them pulled me out and whispered, “You better be careful. Sabrina’s a witch. Like a real witch. She casts spells and stuff. She’s Wiccan.”

I thanked her for the inside information and went back to unpacking while Sabrina studied me. More of my property arrived. I received my huge black trash bag. It was filled with tampons, literally a thousand of them. At Gumbo, tampons were free, so I had stockpiled them. I’d always heard you could trade things—especially cigarettes—for tampons. I was ready with my currency.

I turned to Sabrina. She frowned, and I was afraid she would cast a spell on me, but I needed more room. I bucked up and asked her: “Can I use some of the space under your bed if I give you twenty tampons?”

Her stare was blank but she nodded yes.

I tried to ignore her. I stared at the real bed I would be sleeping on. I didn’t care if I had to take the top bunk. At least I got a comfy bed with a mattress. Gumbo had only hard plastic mats. But after the first night, I realized I wouldn’t be able to enjoy my mattress. Sabrina had put a hard wooden board underneath it. Prisoners could request boards if they had back problems. But Sabrina used it to cover the springs underneath my bed. Our bunks were so close that her long hair would get tangled in the metal wires when the top mattress sagged.

That bed board was so hard, I could barely sleep on it.

Sabrina and I were not friendly. She pretty much ignored me. She had a TV at the end of her bed, and she wouldn’t let me use it. I didn’t have enough money for my own thirteen-inch set yet. When prisoners watched their TVs, they had to wear headphones. Sabrina never shared her headphones with me.

After fourteen days, I went to Miss Case.

“I don’t like my cubicle mate,” I told her.

She shrugged her shoulders; she was too busy for me. She said, “I thought you two would be good for each other because you’re both young lifers. Sabrina never gets into any trouble, and I thought you could learn from her.”

“But we really don’t get along. Can’t I at least make her take off the bed board?” I asked.

“Yeah, you can make her take it off, but then you’ll have to deal with her attitude.” Piles of paper and inmate folders surrounded her.

“I want to move,” I said.

“You can’t move for ninety days. I put you there because it’s the best place for you.” Then she put down her glasses, and added, “You can’t move, but she can.”

Sabrina was waiting for me when I got back from Miss Case’s office.

“What did she say?” Sabrina asked.

I was sick of her crap. I said, “That bed board is coming down, or you can move. I’m not living for the next ninety days like this.”

“All right,” she said, laughing at me. She took the bed board down.

Sabrina wasn’t so bad after all. She’d just been waiting for me to stand up for myself. I had to earn her respect. I had to earn everyone’s respect in prison in big and small ways. Sabrina and I stayed cubicle mates for the majority of the fourteen years we spent together.

Jennifer

was happy to be at Renz. I had much more freedom than I’d had at Gumbo. We could own up to twenty outfits—jeans and tops that didn’t show our belly buttons. We could walk outside freely for a few hours every day. We had jobs. It was like a city. The canteen was in one area; the kitchen was somewhere else. We even had a cosmetology department. Old Renz was clean, structured, and comfortable—at least it was better than any other living arrangement I could compare it to.

People were getting to know me, and someone said I needed to meet this girl named Jennifer Fair. Even before we met, people said we would like each other. I found her easily. She lived on the same wing, and we used the same laundry room. I recognized her at the dryer. She was tall and pretty with a perfect body. She looked nothing like a prisoner. While I was doing a load of whites, I walked up to her.

“Hi, I’m Stacey,” I said, trying to look cool and not eager.

“I know who you are,” Jennifer said. “Everybody knows who you are. Anyway, we’re going to be friends.”

And we were from then on. Sabrina was socially inept, so I introduced her to Jennifer and her group of friends. Sabrina never went out and did things until I came along. Sabrina nicknamed me “Come On Let’s Go.”

We formed a tight group. We lounged out in the yard on the weekends. We watched softball games out on the field. Sometimes we’d play, but mostly, we just watched. Every Friday in the gym, there was free roller skating. We were almost always there from 6 to 8 p.m. On Sunday, the officers would plug a VCR into a big-screen TV. Different housing units would watch movies at different times all day long. We could bring our own popcorn and sodas.

The best part for me: the yard was always open.

Jennifer and I often went out there together, and one day she said, “You’re happy to be here.”

“Yeah, I am,” I said, trying not to think about the last five years of my life.

“People here aren’t used to happiness,” Jennifer said. “People look at you and scowl. Anyway, why should you be so happy? You’re twenty, and you have life without parole.”

I just shrugged my shoulders. I didn’t know what I was so glad about. I didn’t want to get into it with her. How I finally felt free. How a jail cell had been better than home and the cubicle was way better than the jail cell.

“I’m just saying,” Jennifer added, “it’s not in your best interest to look happy.”