SHE
She leaned against the cold cement block wall and stared out the dirty panes at the barren grounds. The sky draped gray haze over the landscape and drained the little color away. The scenery looked like a low budget black and white film from the 1940's. Barbed wire coiled high above a chain link fence. A male guard stood on the narrow sidewalk that ran below the hill towards the dining hall. The dining hall overlooked the open sewer plant. The guard’s eyes fixed on the floor-to-ceiling curtainless windows. She figured someone was changing her clothes—stretching yawningly as she pulled her polyester prison dress over her head—knowing the s.o.b. was out there watching. Drooling. She huffed disgust towards the hazy silhouette of the guard and turned Her gaze back inside the dirty, pale institutional green interior.
A big black dyke shouldered her way through a group of women who stood gossiping in the main alleyway through the rows of barrack beds in this wing of the dormitory. The dyke, Moose Haley, shuffled into the latrine. Moose was an ugly broad. Big. Mean. She doubted that Moose was really a lesbian; She thought the woman did the dyke routine for money or power. God alone knew she had nothing else going for her. Borderline mentality. Predator.
Her thoughts rolled aside. Not inside the warehouse of miserable women, inside Her mind where She lived most of the time.
To describe She as beautiful was an exaggeration, though She had been told that by some. She had a neat, slim figure and pretty legs. Women sometimes envied Her small, straight nose. Her mouth was petite to match the pointed chin of a heart-shaped face. Her driver’s license marked Her eyes as brown, but they actually were a combination of gold, green and gray—like cypress swamp water. Best of all, She had a glorious head of hair— walnut brown and softly curly. She kept it cropped short.
But it wasn’t Her looks that attracted attention. It was watching Her emotions play across the field of Her face and Her body language. When She smiled, her whole countenance smiled. When She was sad, every pore drooped. But the odd thing about Her appearance to the outside world was that when She wasn’t smiling and animated, when Her mind had turned inward and Her face simply sat there doing nothing, She looked like the Ice Queen.
Moose shuffled out of the latrine and cut a glare in Her direction. She, off in Her inner world, remained oblivious.
"Wha you lookin’ at, bitch?" Moose snarled. "Bitch" was pronounced "bisssh."
When She didn’t respond, Moose turned toward Her, jutting a meaty hip forward and planting two fist in the fat, elbows splayed. Moose squinted meanly.
Unknown to the inmates of the compound, She was also stone deaf in one ear. An oddly fortunate trait in this environment. She, not hearing Moose well enough to realize the dyke was addressing Her, remained snug in Her mind. Moose stared unbeliev-ingly at the small white woman.
"Y’all see dat? Y’all see dat crazy bitch? Look at Her! She crazy. Girl? She done insane in de head! I bet the devil’s got Her!" Moose backed up a few steps, still staring at She, shaking her head and making weird signs to ward off evil. Then, as unobtrusively as possible, Moose slipped away and entered the television room. She yanked up a skinny little woman out of her seat and took it. Huffing irritably.
Her eyes gazed at a drop of water perched on the tip of a barb of the wire coil that leaned inward from the top of the chain link fence. The tiny drop cast a mighty prism of color that dazzled Her eyes and sent Her deeper into memories of another time and place.
*****
She sat in the chair and watched the prison psychologist. He grew long and lanky and had red hair and blond eye lashes. His pale blue eyes quietly studied Her. The man was almost good looking, in a skinny sort of way. Freckles scatted haphazardly across the bony acreage of his form, but his skin wasn’t that pinky-red of an all-out redhead, it was golden and substantial. He simply looked like a man. An ordinary man. Not a prison psychologist—whom She assumed would be a bureaucratic jerk looking for weaknesses in his "patients" so he could help the system break them down even more.
"My name is Joe Smith," he said.
His name jarred Her to the present. With a sharp huff of laugh, She replied, "For real?"
His eyes crinkled with humor, but his mouth didn’t smile.
"‘fraid so."
"A shrink named Joe Smith?" What She didn’t say out loud was, "Waddaya expect for a low budget shrink provided by the State, Stanford Vanderwhort?" Her eyes crinkled back at him, then faded rapidly, resuming Her noncommital expression that She wore most of the time. The Ice Queen.
He cocked his head and kept a steady beam on Her eyes. At first She avoided looking back at his—She never could stand being stared at—though She was having to grow used to it. With a sigh of resignation She fixed Her gaze rigidly on his pale blues. Uncomfort-able at first, She slowly relaxed, finding his gaze softening. A hint of merriment danced back in there somewhere and She searched for its source. Then suddenly, Her defenses shot up and She backed away. His eyebrows arched; he immediately realized She’d withdrawn again.
"Where did you go?" he asked quietly.
"Beg your pardon?"
"You know what I mean. For a moment there, you relaxed a little." He sat back in his chair, abruptly changing the atmosphere in the room, and began shuffling through Her file. "The matron said you’re depressed." He looked at Her for a response.
She wanted to spurt out, "No shit, Sherlock!" But She didn’t. Instead, She stared at him, Her jaw dropped and She closed Her eyes slowly several times. Turning Her head aside, then swinging it back towards him, She fixed her cypress-stained browns on his pale blues, and replied, incredulity crisping Her words, "The matron is upset because I’m depressed. Mr. Smith, I shot and accidentally killed the man I loved. I pawned out my kids to my ex and had to find homes for my dog and cats. My house is rented out to strangers, and my furniture is rotting away in a warehouse somewhere. My entire world has vanished and here I am in this ... place. And the matron is concerned because I’m depressed?"
Her head spun about again as if She were talking to a listening crowd of spectators, then once again focused on the man behind the desk. Too many thoughts jammed Her brain.
"I never had time to grieve the loss of my lover. I can’t even think about my children—I cannot imagine what they must think or what they are going through. It’s too painful. I have no idea what the future could possibly hold.
"And this place. My God. My God." She shook Her head slowly. Her whole demeanor sagged at the unbelievability of Her situation. "I’ve never been ... around people like this. I cannot ... how do I even express it? The filth, the meanness, the outrage, the sadness ... it’s the worst kind of slum ...." As if She’d run out of steam, She sank into the upholstered plastic chair. In a whisper, She said "And the matron can’t understand why I’m upset." A deep sigh. "Give me time, Mr. Smith. I’ll adjust. What I urgently need is time alone. Time to grieve. Privacy. The one commodity that is utterly impossible here."
Joe Smith, the low-budget State provided psychologist, studied Her for a few moments.
"Not utterly impossible. You can come here when you need to and sit in the other room and be entirely alone for a while. The connecting wall is lined with files and books, and makes a great sound barrier. You can cry, cuss, whatever you want to do, and you won’t disturb me in here. How’s that for you?" An empathetic smile crept across his features and his eyes softened again.
Tears sprang to Her eyes but She batted them back. She didn’t dare let a tear roll—it could lead to a flood. It could lead to a raging tide—a hurricane—an earth quake. She couldn’t speak because a spasm gripped Her throat in a vice, and if words squeezed through, that too, might let loose the storm. She nodded crisply and looked away so She could compose Herself. The Ice Queen.