The other women laughed, some with screams of appreciation, to please the woman in the wig or to let go and hear the sound of their own voices, loud inside the cement-block walls, until Miss Kay said, “Zip it,” and they shut up. Now she looked at the black woman who had spoken and said, “Ramona, I’m only going to tell you once. Stay away from her.”
Jackie dialed the number she’d tried before. The young woman’s voice said, “He ain’t—” and Jackie said over it, “Tell him Jackie called.” There was a silence. “Tell him I’m in jail, the Stockade. Have you got that?” There was a silence again before the line went dead.
She picked up her bed sheets from the picnic table, the women still watching her, and scuffed her way back to the eight double bunks in two rows. There were no overhead lights here but the ones in front, Jackie imagined, would be left on all night. So take a lower bunk. Five already had sheets on them. A radio was playing now along with the television set, the movie. She chose a bunk wondering if she’d be able to sleep and bent over, one hand on the rail of the upper bunk, to look at the mattress. Something behind her moved in front of the light. Jackie knew who it would be as she straightened and turned to look over her shoulder at Ramona.
Heavyset, her skin dark, her black wig highlighted from behind. She said, “You gonna talk to me?”
“If you want,” Jackie said. “Just don’t give me a hard time, okay? I’ve got enough problems.”
“You a stewardess, huh? Work for the airlines?” Jackie nodded and Ramona said, “What I was wondering, they pay pretty good?”
She would sleep and wake up to stare at crisscrossed springs and the mattress close above her in faint light and would hear voices and a radio playing. She would feel the plastic ID bracelet, turning it on her wrist. She would hear the sergeant saying, “Fuels your apprehension, doesn’t it?” and remember looking at him, not sure it was what he said.
A few times she thought of crying.
But changed her mind, replaying parts of her conversation with Ramona, here pending a charge of felonious assault for, Ramona said, busting a man’s head open when he wouldn’t leave her house. Assault, or it could be some kind of manslaughter if he didn’t come out of Good Samaritan. But, hey, what about working for the airlines? . . . Jackie told her you could make thirty-five to forty thousand after ten years, never fly more than seventy hours a month, and choose the runs you wanted out of your home base. Her own experience, she was three years with TWA, fourteen with Delta and got fired. With Islands Air she was making less than half what she used to. Getting personal now. It didn’t begin to cover rent, clothes, car payments, insurance, and now Islands Air would drop her as soon as they found out she was in jail. Ramona said, “If you not happy there, what do you care if they fire you?” She said she cleaned houses for fifty dollars a day when she could get it, but only three, four days a week, all the people there was doing it now, the Haitians taking work from the regular people. She asked Jackie if she had someone doing her apartment.
Before long Jackie was describing her situation to Ramona, seeking the advice of a cleaning woman in a forty-nine-dollar wig who didn’t smoke.
Ramona said, “Possession with what, intent? I don’t see you have a problem. The way you look? The kind of hair you got? If I done it I’d go to jail, see, but you won’t. They slap your hand and say, ‘Girl, don’t do it again.’ No, if the man you work for has money to pay a good lawyer, you have nothing to worry about. If he don’t choose to, that’s when you think about making a deal with the law, get your charge dismissed if you help them, not just reduced. Hear what I’m saying?”
They got mad, Jackie told her, when she would-n’t talk to them, cooperate. Ramona said, “They ain’t your worry. What you need to think about is if you put it on the man, you want to know he don’t have friends he can set after you. That’s the tricky part. You have to put it on him without him knowing it. The worse thing that can happen, say you don’t tell on the man
Jackie said, “Terrific. I’ll be starting my life over at forty-five.”
She remembered Ramona, who she thought was old enough to be her mother, smiling at her with gold crowns, saying that’s how old she was and asking, “When’s your birthday, dear?”
She would sleep and wake up and remember looking out Tyler’s office window at West Palm fading in the dusk and remember Nicolet’s boots on the desk and the sound of his voice, Nicolet telling about the Jamaican found in the trunk of an Oldsmobile.
At noon the next day, Thursday, Jackie was handcuffed to a chain with Ramona and four other women from the holding dorm. They were brought outside and marched past a crew of male prisoners on a cleanup detail to board the Corrections bus. Jackie stared at the pavement, at bare heels in front of her. A prisoner leaning on his push broom said, “The ladies from the slut hut.” Jackie looked up as Ramona said, “Watch your mouth, boy.” The prisoner with the broom said, “Come over here, I let you sit on it.” Ramona said, “Now you talking.” They laughed and the women on the chain with Jackie came to life, moving their hips with the shuffle step, turning to grin at the men watching them. One of them cupped his crotch and said, “Check this out.” Jackie glanced at him—a white guy, shirt off sweating in the sun, twenty years younger than she was, at least—and looked away. She heard him say, “Gimme that blond-haired one, I’ll stay here forever,” and Ramona, next to her, say, “Listen to that sweet boy, he’s talking about you.”
The First Appearance courtroom reminded her of a church with its wide center aisle and benches that were like pews. Male prisoners in dark blue outfits like scrubs, brought over from the county jail, sat in the first few rows. The women were unshackled, directed to sit behind them, and the men turned to look and make remarks until a deputy told them to shut up and face the front. When the judge entered they rose and sat down again. Still nothing happened. Court personnel and police officers would approach the judge and exchange words with him, hand him papers to be signed. Jackie said, “How long do we have to wait?”
Ramona said, “Long as they want us to. It’s what you do in jail, dear, you wait.”
From the time the bailiff began calling defendants, an hour and a half went by before Jackie was brought up to the public defender’s table. He turned to her looking at a case file and asked how she wanted to plead.
“What are my choices?”
“Guilty, not guilty, or stand mute.”
Nicolet and Tyler were here, off to one side. They lounged against the wall watching her.
Jackie said to the public defender, “I’m not sure what I should do.”
He was young, in his early thirties, clean-cut, moderately attractive, wearing a pleasant after shave . . . For some reason it gave her hope, a guy who appeared to have it together.
He said, “I can get it down to simple possession if you’re willing to tell FDLE what they want to know.”
And hope vanished.
Jackie said, “My cleaning woman can get me a better deal than that,” and saw her public defender’s startled look. Not a good sign. “Tell those guys they’ll have to do a lot better before I’ll even say hi to them.”
Nicolet and Tyler, over there acting like innocent bystanders.
“Well, that’s the state’s offer,” the public defender said. “If you plead to possession your bond will be set at one thousand dollars. If you don’t, FDLE will request one at twenty-five thousand, based on your prior record and risk of flight. If you don’t post it or you don’t know anyone who can, you’ll spend six to eight weeks in the Stockade before your arraignment comes up.”
She said, “Whose side are you on?”
He said, “I beg your pardon?”
“What happens if I plead guilty?”
“And cooperate? You might get probation.”
“If I don’t cooperate.”
“With the prior? You could get anywhere from a year to five, depending on the judge.” He said, “You want to think about it? You’ve got about two minutes before we’re up.”
It was his attitude that hooked her, the bored tone of voice. And the way Nicolet and Tyler posed against the wall with their innocent, deadpan expressions. Jackie said, “I’m standing mute. After that I’m not saying another word.”
Her public defender said, “If that’s what you want.”
Jackie said, “What I want is a fucking lawyer.”
That got his startled expression again.
“I didn’t mean that,” Jackie said. She paused to glance around before saying to him, “You wouldn’t happen to
