Try Prison

Three white walls, three white walls and cold metallic gray bars with a bed is all this room is. That’s all it ever will be, too. As I lay on the thin, hard mattress on the hard metal, wire frame in the corner of the room I stare at the abyss of a hospital white ceiling. It seems to never end, the ceiling, I mean. You can stare at it for hours and not even notice, it just keeps going and going, and going. That’s what it is I guess; life in prison. You get treated like a caged animal until your time is up then they release you into the wild and expect you to know how to act, or what to do amongst normal people. But then you mess up one time and right back in here it goes.
I glanced up as I saw something out of the corner of my eye. It was the warden standing in front of my cell in his black suit with a red tie. He was a fat, old, balding man. He tried to cover his gray hair with a terrible brown hair dye even a blind person could detect. With his hands in his pockets, he tried to be as menacing as possible, but it didn’t work, not on me at least. I’ve seen menacing, and he, certainly, is not even close.
“Chapman. The kids are here,” said the warden as he tried to glare at me so hard it could burn your soul.
I gave a chuckle and a grin at his attempt to scare me. I rolled my eyes and sat on the edge of my bed looking down at the usual prison attire, orange pants, orange t-shirt, white long sleeve under shirt with black shoes. It looked like we were all wearing scrubs, like what doctors wear. I stood up and walked towards the cell door, smiling at the warden because I knew that was exactly what he hated; inmates with attitude.
I looked the warden in the eyes and asked him, “Are you going to let me out, or are you going to bring them to my cell? Because if I remember correctly, my cell wasn’t on the list of tour sites. ”
Apparently he didn’t find that nearly as funny as I did, because he glared at me once more and said, “I can put you in solitary just as fast as you can snap your fingers, inmate.” He glanced over at the officer next to the lock box that operates the gate system on all of the cell doors and called out, “Block D, cell 17!”
Two officers showed up at his sides, they had their arms crossed with a blank stare. The cell door opened and they walked in and cuffed me. I honestly don’t see why they even do this because if you do escape where are you going to go, to your buddy’s unopened cell. And what will you do there, nothing you can do nothing because they will be on you faster than a hornet with ‘roid rage.
The one pushed me forward to signal me to walk. And we walked, silently through the white tiled floor hallways, with rows of cells on either side me and a row right above them. I looked up at the white ceiling with bright florescent lights; they reminded me of a hospital in all of the worst ways. Then I looked around at all of the other inmates that had their faces pressed against the bars and their greedy finger wrapped around them too. I laughed and tilted my head the whole way back as we neared the end of the hallway; almost to the recreation room where the kids were kept.
I let out a loud laugh then yelled out, “Have a good time on your own, ladies; I have some kids to talk to.”
I turned the corner and that’s when I saw them. The kids, there was only about seven of them, but that was enough for this group. One had bright pink hair with some kind of weird haircut, another had a shaved head with a lot of facial piercings, and the rest were kind of the same in one way, shape or form. But there was this one girl that stuck out to me, she looked normal. She didn’t look like she had done anything wrong and that she shouldn’t be here. She dressed like an everyday kid, and acted like an everyday kid. That was an issue.
I walked away from the officers and went up to the kids. I walked up till I was maybe six inches away from their body then I leaned in closer till I was about two inches from the girl with pink hairs face, I walked right down the line till I got to the seemingly normal girl. I looked her up and down like she was a piece of meat, because that’s all she was to me, meat. I didn’t care if this girl came to prison after this or if she became a lawyer. I really didn’t. As I looked her down though, I saw something, a one inch wide bruise going the whole way around her lower bicep, then tiny, dot like scars in her inner elbow.
I stepped back and extended my arms waiting for the guards to un-cuff me, and as they did, I said one word to the girl. I said it loud enough for everyone to hear me, “Heroin.”
I then moved to stand facing the middle of the group, rubbing my wrists where the cuffs were. I suddenly got angry. I got angry that I had to be with these girls that didn’t know what they were throwing away, they didn’t know what life is.
“Look at me, do I look like I should be in this place,” I waited for an answer that never came, “Well do I? This is prison girls. Not some place where you can pretend you know what’s going on, because I’m going to tell you right now, you know nothing! You think you won’t get caught, that everything is okay because you can hide it, well news flash, idiots, you will. And then you’ll come here, where you could be in the same cell as a child molester, or a murder, or a cocaine dealer. This place isn’t for you little fragile minded brats who think they run the world because they can shove a needle in their arm,” I felt the uneasiness coming off of the girls as I said this.
Then the girl with pink hair spoke up, “What did you do?”
I was expecting this question, so I gave the girl a grin, “The same thing as all of you, I thought I was cool. It was the only way out,” I looked over to see the normal girl actually paying full attention now. “Look at me, tell me, what do you see?”
Another girl spoke this time, “Well, you’re white for starters, blonde hair, green eyes, and average height. Not the person you’d see in prison,” she laughed and looked over to the girl next to her, “but isn’t it always the boring ones that get in the most trouble.”
“How about you let me answer that? I was seventeen years old when I came in here. Oops, guess daddies money couldn’t save me then either.” I looked at the girls awed expressions. “My last name is Chapman, and in case you don’t know who Dave Chapman is, he’s the biggest lawyer in town, AKA my father.”
I walked around to the back of the girls to where the chairs were and sat down, the girls slowly started to walk towards the chairs and one by one they sat down. Hook, line, sinker. They were scared, and they were showing it. Pathetic. These girls should be tough as nails if they want to even think about coming here.
“High-school is a funny place, you know? That’s how I started, high-school. I saw something I shouldn’t have. Jason Davis and Eric McKew were those two boys that you never wanted anything to do with but found them somehow unresistingly tempting to be around. One day, my best friend since,” I sighed as I remember the first day we met, back in preschool. Everything was so easy then. I clenched my jaw and started my sentence again, “My best friend since preschool, Ana Dodd and I saw those two through the window doing something strange with some man I have never seen before. He looked like a guy that you didn’t want to mess with, well at the time; I didn’t want to mess with. The man looked over at the school and saw us staring at him; he quickly looked down, shoved something into Jason’s hand, and walked away. He obviously didn’t want to be known about.”
“That’s nothing, you’re acting like you’re so tough,” the girl with the pink hair laughed.
I looked over her not even caring that the words came out of her mouth, “There was a party that night. Not just any party, a New York City style party, where everyone goes whether you’re invited or not. That was the night everything happened. I went to the party with Ana, expecting to just have a good time and get drunk, but that’s not how it went. By ten thirty I was already wasted, the drinks they were making were hard for even someone who can handle their liquor. That’s when Jason came up to me, we started dancing together. After a while he took me into the back room, knowing I was completely out of it. That’s when I felt him behind me, putting something tight around my arm, but I didn’t even care at that point.”
I walked behind the normal girl and leaned over her shoulder till my mouth was right by her ear, and then I put my hands tight around the bruises already on her arm. “It felt like this,” I said as I pressed down tighter on her arm. She let out a slight cry, I knew this isn’t what she wanted to be doing; I didn’t know how she got into it, but it surely wasn’t her choice.
“Chapman,” the guard at the door yelled out.
I let go of the girl and whispered in her ear, “It’s okay, is what he told me. It’s okay.”
“That’s when it happened; he walked around to the front of me and shoved a needle in my arm! Do you think it was my choice to be here? Do you? I got drugged with heroin while I was drunk at a party! Then what makes this story even better is that he took me home with him! I didn’t get to see Ana; she thought I left her there for some guy,” I yelled this at the girls.
They don’t understand what it’s like to get their own life taken away from you by someone else and they should.
“I lived with him for months, doing nothing but shoving needles into every vein on my body. My wrist, my inner elbow, in-between my fingers, anywhere I could, I did. Addiction by creation of another person; I knew what I was doing was wrong, I knew I needed help but I couldn’t stop. I lost everything because of a man that made me feel like I only needed two things in the world; him and heroin.” I looked around the room to see if the girls were actually paying attention and they surprisingly were.
“I knew everything I was doing was wrong, leaving my parents to live with my drug addict boyfriend. I knew doing the drugs was wrong, I just couldn’t stop. I couldn’t. That’s when my addiction got too strong for even Jason to supply. He kicked me out of the house like it was nothing. Like he didn’t care what happened to me, I could have died and he wouldn’t have had even the slightest burden on his shoulders,” I rubbed my face with my hands and took a deep breath between my thoughts. “I could have done something with my life, instead of the clean, hygienic blonde haired, green eyed girl; I became someone I wished I never would have. My hair was a mess; I was covered in dirt, grime and bruises from needles stabbing at my skin. And I spent most of my nights curled up against a cold brick wall in an ally on East One Eightieth Street in the Bronx with a girl named Red that I just met. Is that how you think I wanted to spend my nights,” I pointed to myself as I said this.
I swallowed hard knowing that if I was going to help any one of these girls it was going to be her, the only one in here that seemed like they wanted to get better, the one that reminded me of me when I was her age, just the average seventeen year old girl that got her life into a whole lot of trouble on accident.
“Red and I, well, we were on the streets, but we didn’t stop using. Whenever we could we did it. I knew Red was going to regret it in the morning; she was small, and about five foot two and only ninety pounds. The drugs hit her harder than they would ever hit me. There was two reasons everyone called her Red, one,” I stuck out my index finger in front of me showing the number one, “her hair, it was a bright red. Well, ginger I guess, but it was red none the less. And two,” I stuck out two fingers in front of me showing the number two this time, “whenever she got high, her eyes got super bloodshot, so they were red basically all the time.”
The one girl looked confused as she stared at me, and then asked, “Wait, so y’all were high all the time? Man, how’d you get that kind of money?”
I rolled my eyes. Do these girls not even know English rather than street talk? I really wanted to know if they were even smart enough to go to school considering every word I’ve heard come out of their mouths had some kind of accent on it, and not one from a different country, the one you get from growing up on the street. I know I’m in prison and I should be used to people speaking like this, but considering that I grew up with a very rich father in a very prestigious neighborhood, I would much rather listen to people speak at least some sort of proper English.
I sighed knowing that I would get nowhere arguing with any sort of English she spoke, I said, “Parties. We’re in New York City for Christ’s sake, why can’t you put the pieces together? You girls should really start going to school, you’re all basically stupid,” I shook my head and started my original thought again, “But then again, there are problems with parties and clubs and such, the cops. That’s where I ran into my problem.”
I sat down on one of the hard, cold, gray metal chairs they gave us, and looked through the large window covering one wall from about four feet in on each side, and two feet from the top and bottom. It was nothing special, just a window peering into the hallway. I sighed and rubbed my hands against my face as I remembered that horrible night. The night that I couldn’t tell if I got saved, or hung out to dry on a never ending rope.
I ran my hands to the sides of my neck and looked down at the ground then I said, “I was just having a good time, and that’s all I wanted, was to have a good time. That’s not what I got though. Red and I were surprised that we got into the club to begin with. The strobe lights were flashing red, blue, green and yellow. Other than that and the lights over the bar it was pitch black. All you could see were colors and bits and pieces of people as they danced. I knew that there were some people there with what I wanted. When you live on the street, you can listen, you hear the people in the alley ways talking about where the next hit was going to be. So Red and I knew it was going to be at this club. And unlike you, these people were smart about where they sold it, smart, but predictable. It was always in a back room or a bathroom, more or less a back room though. And that was straight where I headed. I was wearing black heels that were just high enough that I could walk in them, and a black dress that obviously showed way to mush skin, but I was trying to get it for free, or at little cost as I could. When I went into the room, there was a man in a black suit sitting down with his feet propped up on a glass coffee table. He had short black hair and a face that you couldn’t forget, with a smirk that could make girls fall over and piercing blue eyes that made you feel like he saw your soul.”
I had to stop. I needed a few seconds. There was too many flashbacks for so little time. I looked back up at the girls instead of looking at the tile floor; I knew they wanted to hear the rest.
I shook my head as I started my story again, “I did things that night that I wouldn’t wish on the worst people, but I got what I wanted. I remember taking a rubber band and sliding it the whole way up my arm, till right above my elbow, then I did it. I pushed the needle into my skin trying to find just the right vein to make everything better. And I did, I remember throwing my head back as I felt it course through my body. I felt so much better; my body had finally got what it needed. But that was the worst thing I could have done that night. I couldn’t look at that man as I walked out of that room, I didn’t even know his name! I needed to forget, so I walked out and went to the bar. I didn’t care about anything at that point, so I asked for something hard, but little did I know two very big things were going to happen in my life at that time. I was at a club in the Bronx; it was nothing fancy, not even close. I was honestly surprised the place was still open. I took whatever drink the bartender gave me and downed it without a second thought. I started to dance with Red when I started to get dizzy. That’s when the second worst thing happened, the sirens. All I saw was the room spinning, people running, and Red screaming at me, but I had no idea what she was saying. The flashing lights, the yelling, commotion was all just too much for me. I couldn’t take it, so I ran, I ran without a sense of direction. My head was spinning, my eyes were sunken in, and my body was exhausted. I tried to run as fast as I could, but no one was there to help me, Red left and the last of the people were sprinting out the door. I tripped over my own feet, and I didn’t have the strength to stop myself. But I didn’t hit the ground; I hit something firm and warm. I looked up with my eyes halfway closed to see a cop. Before I passed out I heard him say one word, “Roofies.””
I stood up and spread my arms out wide and spun around in a circle once then started yelling “Then I woke up in this rat trap. With my ankles tied to a cardboard bed, throwing up every two seconds, feeling like there was someone with a sledgehammer inside of my head just beating on it, and so thirsty you would drink out of the toilet. I spent two months in the same cell, doing that, and wanting to kill myself. Does that sound like fun? No. It doesn’t, because it isn’t. But if you keep doing what you’re doing, that will be your life. I promise. I still have urges after all of that. I’m an addict for life.”
I looked directly at the normal girl then said, “If you think life is hard, try prison.”