MOST OF what people say about jail is true. The roaches are so big you can hear their footsteps. Showering is a spectator sport. The guards are at least as terrifying as the inmates. And every meal is one part powder, two parts grease.
Luckily, the subhuman chow came in handy for me. Once my fellow inmates found out I could cook they went from wanting to have some fun with the newbie to making sure I didn’t break so much as a fingernail. We had access to a microwave and an electric kettle, which was pretty much all the equipment I needed. Twenty-four hours into my stay they were calling me M.S.—short for Martha Stewart, another inmate who famously brightened up her tier.
My shtick was this: I’d take whatever someone bought at the commissary and turn it into something they might actually want to eat. You’d be amazed at what you can do with a packet of ramen noodles. Crush them up, boil them to mush, then tamp the mush down and let it cool and you have the wrap for a burrito. What you fill it with is up to you, but the most popular items were American cheese and fake sausage, two of the pricier commissary foods.
As for dessert, Oreo cookies make a nice base for mini cakes and pie crusts. Break them up, mix the crumbs with Kool-Aid or cola, and you’ve got a kind of batter that fluffs out like a yeast after just a few minutes in the microwave.
If you’re feeling fancy, you can scrape away the creamy center and use it later as icing.
In short, I was accepted—even celebrated. Which isn’t to say I’d ever want to go back to jail, but I learned something about myself I never would have guessed: when my back’s to the wall, I find a way to survive.
All told, I was incarcerated for three days and three nights. On the morning of what would have been the fourth day, a CO the inmates called Gangrene because of her mossy-colored skin told me to come with her and leave my blanket behind. Once we were off the tiers and out of the cellblock, she handed me off to a young social worker in a turquoise pantsuit. Her name was Karen, and her handshake was limp bordering on submissive—as if it was her way of saying I’m no threat.
I was being released—Gangrene had made that much clear—but Karen wondered if she might have a word with me first.
“A kind of exit interview,” she said.
I had no objections. The truth is, I didn’t know where I’d go once they let me walk back through those gates. I followed her into a small office that was tiled with yellow subway tiles and furnished with a laminate desk and plastic chairs. It reminded me of my high school principal’s office, only smaller.
“You know that the police have arrested your husband for the murder of Anthony Costello?” Karen asked once we were seated.
“I heard rumors,” I said. “I didn’t know for sure if they were true. There are a lot of stories flying around this place.”
“You don’t seem surprised,” Karen said.
I tugged at the collar of my orange jumpsuit—a nervous tic I’d picked up in no time at all.
“I guess I’m not,” I said. “Sean is a violent man. Anthony was a violent man. Something was bound to give.”
Karen plucked a paper clip from a tray on her desk and started straightening it, then bending it back to its original shape—her own nervous tic.
“I’m just wondering why you didn’t come forward with a full report.”
“Full report?”
“About the abuse. The physical abuse in your marriage.”
She made her voice sound as if she was consoling me when really she was blaming me for something. After all those hours in the box with Heidi, I’d played enough games to last me a lifetime.
“You might as well ask why I didn’t report the rape,” I said.
“The rape?”
I rolled my eyes.
“Don’t you people talk to each other? Anthony Costello raped me. He drugged me, and then he raped me.”
A piece of paper clip broke off in her hands. She was blushing. Her cheeks turned phosphorescent under the cheap overhead lights. I was glad I got a young one. Karen couldn’t have been more than a year or two out of social work school. Maybe less. Maybe this was her prison internship.
“I didn’t know,” she said.
“Neither did Sean. Or at least I didn’t tell him. You know why?”
She shook her head.
“Because Anthony would have denied it. More than denied it—he would have claimed the sex was all my idea. He’d have said he fought me off for as long as he could stand it, but I just kept coming on to him. And Sean would have believed him. And I think you can guess what would have come next.”
Karen hesitated, cleared her throat, reached for a fresh paper clip. I hoped for her sake that she really was an intern.
“But isn’t that all the more reason to come forward? Tell the authorities?”
I decided to break out the props. I opened my mouth wide, pointed to two shiny, fake molars on the left side.
“You see that?” I asked. “Last winter, Sean and I were walking downtown, doing our Christmas shopping. We got into a fight over how much to spend on my aunt. My aunt is more like my mother. She raised me. She’s all I’ve got in the way of family. Her eyesight had taken a bad turn, and I wanted to get her a large-screen TV. Sean said she was just an aunt. He said aunts get fancy soaps or gourmet chocolates, not expensive TV sets. It escalated from there. Next thing I knew, he was slapping me around in the parking lot behind Macy’s. There were people all around. When I started screaming, he switched from slapping to punching. He hit me so hard, he knocked these teeth out.
“Back then, I was brave. I called the cops. I filed a report. And then I waited. For weeks. For a full month. I didn’t hear anything back. Meanwhile, Sean was on his best behavior. We got that television set for Aunt Lindsey. He brought me flowers, took me to fancy restaurants. He swore up and down it would never happen again. He said he loved me. He actually made me believe he’d changed.
“So I decided to let him off the hook. I called the precinct to retract my statement, say I wouldn’t press charges. And guess what they told me? There was no report. Either it had vanished or it had never been filed.
“Do you see what I’m saying, Karen? Sean had the power to erase history. I wasn’t just up against him. I was up against a brotherhood. A state-sanctioned gang. That was when I knew he’d lied. He hadn’t changed at all. He’d do it again. And again, and again, and again. And one day he’d go too far. He’d beat me dead, and no one would do a goddamn thing to stop him. So don’t talk to me about reports. Don’t talk to me about what I could have or should have done, because you weren’t there.”
After that, Karen didn’t have much to say for herself. She walked me to pick up my belongings and my street clothes. I changed in a handicapped bathroom, signed a piece of paper, and was on my way.
Outside, I waited for the shuttle bus back to the city. It was raining, which seemed about right. I thought of Sean. I felt more like a patient leaving the hospital than an inmate leaving jail. I’d survived the torturous injection, gagged down the vile medicine, and now the disease was cured. I had the rest of my life to look forward to, and the fact that I had no plans didn’t bother me one bit.