Isabel slowly follows the sounds of the shrieks, unsure whether she wants to find out who or what is behind them.
“Get your hands offa me, you motherfucker!”
Through the front window of the unit, Isabel watches as two aides try to pin down a young, wiry newcomer. Just as they seem to get her under control enough to slip her lanky frame into restraints, she lets out a piercing scream.
“I’m gonna fuckin’ kill you! You hear me? I’m gonna kill you.”
Because she is young-looking and breakably thin, it startles Isabel to hear this come from the girl’s mouth.
The restraints are finally in place. The new girl is sapped of all her angry energy and is sobbing on the ground, her head twisted to the side, her face shiny with sweat.
Isabel looks down the winding driveway and, as the black girl is hauled past by two hospital aides, stares at her only way out.
The thought calms Isabel. It soothes her to plan her fatal escape.
Kristen, the girl Isabel had met the night before, chirps “good morning” and walks past Isabel out the door of the unit. Isabel watches Kristen’s hand shake as she attempts to light her cigarette from a box on the wall that contains what appears to be something resembling a car lighter. Matches and lighters are confiscated on arrival.
The blubbery man she sat next to the day before lumbers past and joins Kristen just outside the door to the unit. Isabel turns her head and hopes her ear can bionically pick up their conversation through the pane of glass. It’s so riddled with greasy fingerprints that Isabel is careful to keep at least one inch of space between herself and the disgusting barrier.
“What’s up with that new girl?” Kristen asks him. “Did you see her yesterday?”
It’s disconcerting for everyone on the unit to see someone in restraints. In the jacket. To hear someone resist. The new girl will provide conversation material for the entire day: Did you hear the new girl this morning? Did you see how long it took the orderlies to get the jacket on her?
“Her name’s Keisha,” the giant tells Kristen in a conspiratorial voice. “She was gang-raped.”
“She was gang-raped?” Kristen repeats it slowly, as if it’s a spelling bee and she has to use the vocabulary word in a sentence.
“Yeah,” he answers, pleased to have Kristen’s undivided attention. Isabel, inside the unit but off to the side where they can’t see her, feels her head butt up against the slimy window. “She was raped for four hours or something. And she was baby-sitting her nephew or something, and the guys? They killed the kid. They killed her nephew she was sitting for. Then they took off. She lost it. Completely fucking lost it. They found her wandering in the middle of the street.”
Isabel jumps when the quiet is broken by a voice coming from behind her: “Asshole don’t know what he’s talkin’ about.”
“Oh, my God.” Isabel steps back. “You scared me!”
Keisha calmly turns her eyes from Kristen and Ben through the window to Isabel right in front of her.
Keisha could be the poster child for the inner city. She looks about fourteen, with long, skinny limbs and a head full of short nappy dreadlocks. Her entire outfit consists of sportswear: Air Jordans, five years old but pristine, nylon Adidas sweatpants that would make a swish sound if her lanky legs ever rubbed together, which they don’t, and a hooded sweatshirt about four sizes too big. It’s her uniform. She takes a long time to look as if she hasn’t taken any time at all.
“Listen to them goin’ on and on like they know.” Keisha juts her chin in the direction of the smoker’s deck, Kristen and Ben.
Isabel knows Keisha wants to be asked about herself but cannot summon the energy it would take to enter into any conversation, much less this one. She turns and looks out the window and hopes nothing will be required of her in what is threatening to be a social interaction.
“That ain’t it!” Keisha says to the window, after hearing another fragment of Ben’s prattle. “Okay, you want to know what happened?” She is addressing Isabel.
But Isabel is finding herself begrudgingly drawn to the edgy teenager.
“I wasn’t walkin’ in the street, first of all,” Keisha begins without encouragement. “The police came and got me from my sister’s place when neighbors called 911. Hours, my ass. It wasn’t no hours passed. A few minutes, sure. Maybe, and this I’m not sure about, but
“Wow,” Kristen says, exhaling smoke and looking down. “Hey, Ben? How do you know all this?”
“You think I’m a freak, Kristen.” Ben pouts. “You think you’re the only one who’s got a clue. You’re not, you know. I know stuff, too.”
Isabel looks over her shoulder and past Keisha toward the nurses’ station to see if anyone cares that they are eavesdropping.
“Ben,” Kristen says, trying to soothe him. “We’re buddies, right? It’s just…well…I’m a little surprised that you know all about this girl. I just want to know what you know, sweetie.”
Isabel marvels at the fact that both Ben and Kristen are missing the point. She looks longingly at the driveway.
“You teasin’ me now, Kristen? Huh? You a fuckin’ tease now?” Ben is getting red in the face. He stomps toward the door to the unit and Isabel busies herself with the old
Kristen throws what little is left of her cigarette to the ground and steps on it just as a nurse with a clipboard brushes past Isabel and opens the door to the outside.
“Hi, Kristen,” she says, making a mark on her notepaper. “Just doing the check.”
Kristen smiles and shakes out another cigarette. “Hi.”
The nurse lets the door close and sees Isabel and Keisha. More marks on the clipboard.
“Hi, ladies. I’m just making the rounds.”
Isabel and Keisha turn their attention back out to Kristen, who is now talking towards Melanie.
“He said her name’s Keisha,” she is telling Melanie, “and she was raped for hours and hours and hours. They found her naked in the street. The police. That’s how she ended up here. I guess she was on some kind of suicide watch….”
“See you later,” Isabel says as she slips past Keisha, who is emphatically shaking her head. As Isabel crosses the room Keisha mutters, “Bitch don’t know what she talkin’ about.”
A few minutes later Isabel is willing sleep to visit her in the little airtight room at the end of the hall.
Six
“Erin Hayes has exhausted all her appeals and now waits for a last-minute reprieve from the Texas governor. Her legal team is not optimistic, given the state’s well-known record on stays of execution. Crowds have already begun to gather here outside the state penitentiary in Huntsville. Some will hold candlelight vigils, others say they’ll cheer if and when Hayes goes to the electric chair.”
An overripe banana was the only health food in the Huntsville 7-Eleven. Isabel picked it up, felt the oblong bruise running along its backside and wondered if she could make herself eat around it.
“Is that it?” the cashier asked.
