They were made to shuffle forward until they were standing on the red line that ran around the circumference of the special housing unit. In his glass watch post, a CO eyed them carefully. He reached for a microphone and his voice was amplified until it squalled off the glaring white walls. “It’s raining outside, so exercise is indoors today.”
Caxton heard an angry moan go up from somewhere on the far side of the guard post. She glanced around the side of the post and saw four inmates over there, all of them shackled as she was. If every cell was full to capacity, there would be forty-eight women in the SHU, Caxton figured. Apparently only six were allowed to take exercise at any given time, with three COs supervising. Nothing in the SHU was ever allowed to get out of control. Nothing was ever left to chance. As a law enforcement officer, or rather, an ex–law enforcement officer, she had to admire the efficiency of the system. As an inmate she felt like she was being ground down, all her humanity scraped out of her one indignity at a time.
The COs got all six women in a line, then made them stand six feet apart from each other. Then the exercise began in earnest. They were told to walk around the SHU in a circle, keeping one foot on either side of the red line at all times. They were required to maintain the distance between them, to keep their hands in plain sight, and there was to be no talking. “Okay, walk,” one CO ordered.
Caxton walked. She watched the inmate ahead of her, a woman with frizzy brown hair, and did exactly as she was told. And liked it, despite herself. It felt good to use the muscles in her legs. It felt good to breathe air that she and Stimson hadn’t already breathed and exhaled a thousand times. It even felt good to be silent for a while, and not have to listen to Stimson talk or chew her nails.
She passed the time watching the cell doors go past on her left. She counted them and knew how many laps she’d made around the SHU, which kept some tiny part of her brain occupied. She wanted to see how many laps she made in an hour. Then she noticed that the woman ahead of her had a dark spot on the back of her jumpsuit. It grew steadily as she walked, never slowing down for a moment, and ran down the inside of her pantleg. Caxton watched in fascinated horror as a drop of yellow liquid fell from the orange cuff and splattered on the floor. Then another. Soon a narrow trickle was dribbling out behind the woman, and Caxton had to step carefully to avoid getting her slippers wet.
One of the COs came rushing in and pushed Caxton back. He grabbed the woman from behind and pulled her into a painful-looking armlock, then frog-marched her over to the guard post.
“Keep walking,” another CO ordered, and Caxton realized she’d stopped and that Stimson was right behind her, less than six feet away. Caxton got back to the line and started walking in circles again.
Eventually exercise time was over, and she was taken back to her cell and had her shackles removed. She went in and walled up next to Stimson and waited for the door to be officially closed again before she spoke.
“She peed herself!” Caxton exclaimed. “Did you see that? She peed—on herself. I think she did it on purpose. Why on earth would anyone do that? Was she sick, or just crazy?”
Stimson’s face broke into a wry and knowing smile. “When you been in here awhile, you’ll understand. She pissed herself,” Stimson said, as if it were perfectly rational, “so that one of the COs would have to clean her up.”
7.
The guards had been busy while Caxton and Stimson were out. They had put a picture of her on the door, right next to Stimson’s. Underneath, where the guards were advised not to give Stimson any stimulants of any kind, they had written in, “Caxton prone to violence. Use anti-stab and anti-bite precautions.”
It was official, then. She was a resident of the SHU for the duration.
She quickly learned what that was going to mean. How it was going to change her whole philosophy of life.
For instance: when you had nothing, you learned to appreciate the little things. When you had no freedom and no civil rights you learned to treasure any shred of dignity or hope you were permitted.
Caxton finally got her first shower a week after she arrived in the SHU. She even got a shower stall all to herself. Of course, two female COs watched her the whole time and she had to wash around the shackles on her legs, but the hot water made her feel almost human for the first time since she’d been moved to her new cell. It was over all too soon. As she was dressing she was told she was in for another treat: a one-hour therapy session. She was allowed one every six weeks and her number had come up. “You’re allowed to refuse therapy,” a CO told her, but Caxton couldn’t imagine why she would. Any human contact that wasn’t with Stimson sounded like heaven.
She quickly discovered that the therapy she was being offered wasn’t what she had expected, though. She was led to a small room near the SHU. It had padded walls and it smelled of antiseptic. There was no one in the room except for Caxton and two COs, but there was a telephone mounted on the wall. She was told she could pick it up and speak directly with one of the prison’s staff psychotherapists. When Caxton picked up the handset she saw there were no buttons on the phone. It was strictly for this purpose and there was no way to get it to call outside the prison.
“Um, hello?” she said, placing the handset to her ear.
“Yeah, hi. How are you feeling?” a bored male voice asked from the other end of the connection.
Caxton licked her lips. “I, um, I’ve been better.”
The psychotherapist said nothing.
Caxton let her head fall forward a little. “It’s tough, you know? It’s just tough adjusting to this routine. It’s kind of. Um. It’s nice talking to a friendly voice. Everybody else I talk to around here is either yelling at me or they’re crazy.”
Caxton blushed. She couldn’t believe she was opening up like this with a complete stranger, one she couldn’t even see. But the chance to unload her problems, even in such a clinical way, was affecting her in a way she couldn’t have foreseen.
“I miss my girlfriend,” she said. God. It felt good to say that out loud. She’d been afraid to say it even to Stimson. “I get pretty scared in here. I can’t sleep, and the food doesn’t taste like anything, it tastes like cardboard. I think—I think maybe I’m having a harder time of it than I even let myself believe. I think I might be going—”
“Are you depressed?” the therapist asked.
Caxton thought about it. “Um, I—”
“Depression doesn’t just mean you’re sad. Everybody’s sad in here. What about voices? Are you hearing voices? Voices that tell you to do things you don’t want to do?”
Caxton’s body tensed up again. “No,” she said.
“Let me know if you start hearing voices or having hallucinations. I can give you Thorazine for that. If you think you’re depressed I can send over some Prozac. You just have to be careful with this stuff. If you start feeling suicidal you need to alert a guard right away. Do you want the Prozac? We’ll start with a low dose and adjust as necessary.”
“No. Thank you,” Caxton said, and hung up the phone. Her therapy session was over.
On days when it didn’t rain, the SHU inmates were allowed outside for their exercise period. Sort of. They were let out of their cells in groups of six, and as before their feet were shackled and they were never allowed to be less than six feet away from each other. They were then taken out of the SHU through a short corridor to a door that led to sunlight, and open air, and a patch of blue sky.
It was the most beautiful thing Caxton had ever seen. It was also carved up into sections by a mesh of wires so close together that Caxton couldn’t have put her hand between them, even if she’d had the chance. The SHU exercise yard was a cage twenty feet wide by fifty feet long. Wire mesh formed a ceiling and four walls. The concrete floor of the cage had a red rectangle painted on it, and the inmates were never allowed outside of that rectangle, which kept them always six feet from the mesh.
