It came as a relief when an officer told me that while, yes, I was indeed in the prison’s unit for the criminally insane, I was only staying until a bed became available in the A5 Remand Unit. The next morning I was paged to the office and told a ‘peer educator’ was waiting for me outside. Andrea had been in Dame Phyllis Frost for a while and it was now her job to help all new inmates learn the rules of the compound – ‘crim style’. Even Corrections recognised there was a code of conduct in prison and first-timers needed to learn it – primarily for their own safety. Andrea and four other prisoners had been trained especially to do so. It was a respected and privileged job: peer educators were the only inmates allowed access to all of the units, including Management (Isolation) and the Protection Unit.
Andrea was an attractive woman in her forties with a thick mane of red hair and a warm smile she brought to life with blood-red lipstick. I liked her straight away. She was German and spoke in a mishmash of abrupt guttural tones and English. She got straight down to brass tacks. ‘The most important thing you need to know in here is not to talk to the officers about anyone, OK?’ she said. ‘See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.’
‘Yes, of course. No evil at all. Thanks.’ Obviously the horse had already bolted on ‘Do no evil’.
Andrea had been in Australia for eight years and three months – half of it in prison – and she still had eighteen months left to serve for her part in a high-profile cocaine importation ring. We spoke for an hour to get acquainted before she left me, with the promise of catching up soon. Later in the day I was ordered to grab my basket and make my way across to the main prison compound – a large open area with concrete walkways snaking off to the leisure centre, administration building and education and program buildings – to the A5 Unit, which looked like a prison within a prison. Waiting to greet me was an officer straight out of Central Casting. Miss Johnson was in her fifties, with a stocky build and a face that had seen many a hard year working in prisons. Her thick Scottish brogue took some getting used to. ‘Now, you haven’t got to worry about all the things you gave a fuck about before, when you’ve got a bed here,’ she said, fixing me with a flinty stare. ‘You’ve just got one thing to worry about now. Me!’
The Remand Unit was much older and shabbier than the A6 Psychiatric Unit and was not unlike a domed army barracks, only with a large fish-bowl office in the middle and twenty-six cells on either side – room for fifty-two inmates in all. I was directed to ‘A Side’, where all new arrivals were held for observation purposes. ‘B Side’ was for the women who’d been incarcerated a bit longer and had settled in. Adjacent to the cells was a kitchen and common area with a few lounge chairs strewn about and a TV sitting on top of a table. My new cell was half as big as the roomy, heated disabled cell in A6, but I counted my blessings that I wasn’t crippled or criminally insane.
If I stood in the middle of the cell and stretched my arms I could almost touch the walls on either side. There was a concrete bed and desk on one side and a toilet, shower and shelving on the other. The only things not bolted down were a tiny television on the shelving and a jug on the desk. A little Perspex window with a ventilation grate running down the side provided a view to the glistening razor wire that sprouted from the hard, flat plains of Deer Park like a steel tree line. While most people were in Remand for about two months before they were transferred to the long-term B and C Units, I’d still be in that cell a year later.
You could have cut the tension in A5 with a knife, not that the women could be trusted with one. In A6 the inmates had been confused and vulnerable; in Remand they were hostile and ruthless. Most had been locked up before and weren’t happy about being back. The ‘A Side’ was a particular hotbed of emotions as the women battled to establish themselves in the pecking order. Together they formed a who’s who of criminal offending, from prostitutes, burglars, thieves and drug smugglers to women charged with serious assault, arson and murder. Walking among them felt like tiptoeing through a mine field; one wrong step and … well, I shuddered to think.
Soon enough a woman named Gail – an apparently notorious criminal with underworld connections – decided I’d make a good target. ‘Give us a smoke,’ she demanded without the slightest regard for good manners. I may have looked like a little pushover but I was learning fast and the past month had hardened me. I’d had my children taken off me so I had nothing else to lose. The next step down, as far as I was concerned, was death. ‘No,’ I said staring up at Gail who was, quite literally, standing over me. ‘I’m pretty keen to hang onto them at the moment.’
‘Right, come outside,’ she demanded.
‘Nah, I’m pretty good in here,’ I said.
‘You’re coming outside and that’s fucking that!’
I could sense ears pricking up around the unit as the old-school crim clashed with the stubborn little newbie. ‘Do you know what?’ I said, getting to my feet, ‘I’ve been belted by people a good four inches taller than you. I’ve just lost my kids. I’ve got nothing else to do so I’ll go outside, no problem. I’ve never been in a fight before and you’re going to win this – but you’re sure as shit going to know you’ve been in a fucking fight.’ I’d heard this line in a movie and felt that now might be the perfect time to recite it.
Now everyone in the unit was interested. Gail had just been called out but, apparently clean out of ideas and bravado, she let it slide. ‘You’re fucking crazy,’ she spat. ‘I’m steering clear of you.’ As she walked away I heaved a huge sigh of relief. I learned later she was one of the old-school prison crew and fancied herself as somewhat of a heavy. Regardless, no one had ever taken her on until that day. It gave me an inkling that I might just be able to negotiate the place using my mouth. I had a gift for the quick retort and these were street girls who had a very limited vocabulary. As time went on, and when they were on the receiving end of a verbal volley from me, they mostly ended up retreating. In my case, the mouth was definitely mightier than the muscle.
In the DPFC hierarchy, Remand inmates were the lowest, and even then those on B Side demanded respect from the new women on A Side. I heard a group of B-Siders discussing my credentials as they hunkered down around the TV. ‘The new girl? Nah, no big deal. A clean-skin – total squarehead. First time. White collar. She’s nothin’.’ In just over a month I’d gone from being a ‘mummy’ – a near deity at the centre of not one but two universes – to the lowest scum in Australia; so worthless that maximum-security prisoners held me in contempt. It occurred to me that I could at least fall no further. This was rock bottom and the only way back to my girls was up. I had to start climbing, pronto.
I dedicated the following days to getting to know every woman on A Side. It quickly became clear I was the healthiest person among them. Most of the girls were hanging out and as sick as I’d seen anyone. Following my heart and my gut instinct I started to help them. At first all I could do was sit and listen, but after a while I cottoned on to the prison trade system so I could at least scrounge extra cordial and sugar for them. Mostly, though, I just wiped their brows and listened to their stories. It became a demanding full-time job surprisingly quickly.
In turn the women realised I didn’t care what they were, only about what they were going through. They were used to being judged and spat upon, and they definitely expected it from squareheads; people who could never understand or empathise with addicts. For some reason, I did – unconditionally. I felt for them so much it would bring tears to my eyes and I became extremely protective of them. How could one not feel for the girls who couldn’t crawl out of their cells on their own? The girls who had no one to care whether they lived or died? The girls the officers ignored?
The perception of non drug users in prison is not a good one. If anyone is going to give up women with drugs it will be a squarehead because they have no vested interest in protecting the trafficking system. I couldn’t have cared less – what they did was none of my business and I told them so. Before long I had the women’s confidence and trust.
In Remand there’s a tendency for the sick, loud and in-your-face women to cast a cloak of invisibility over the frightened and quiet ones. I was frightened but I wasn’t quiet, not like Sharon. Another first-timer, she was even shorter than me, a bit dumpy and as quiet as a church mouse. A white-collar ‘fraudy’ like me, Sharon was outwardly terrified and had made no friends, preferring the semi-solitude of her cell. One night, in between bursts of anguished screaming from the wretched heroin girls, I heard her weeping. I decided to befriend her the next day.
I hadn’t seen Sharon since morning muster and as the clock ticked down to the 11.45am count she was still nowhere to be seen. I went to her cell, gently knocked on the door and pushed it open a little. Sharon seemed to be fast asleep but as I bent over her bed I saw a sickening puddle of gore soaked into the doona beneath her ghostly white body. As my mind adjusted to the lurid scene I realised there was blood everywhere; on Sharon, under her, beside her and running in sticky rivulets down her arms. Gaping wounds had been sliced into the crook of her arms; horrible divots that could have fitted a golf ball inside. For a moment I thought I saw worms wriggling out of the holes until I realised they were her veins; Sharon had tugged them through the gashes. I looked down, away from the carnage, only to see I was standing in a pool of blood so deep it was soaking into my shoes. I screamed like I’d never screamed before.
Three officers appeared from nowhere and ordered me out of the cell. ‘Code Black!’ one barked into her radio as the others tried to wrap Sharon’s butchered arms. ‘Urgent assistance!’
Three more officers arrived and ordered everyone out of the unit. As I followed the women being herded like sheep, I left footprints of blood across the vinyl floor, a path from Sharon’s door out to the front verandah and across the gravel walkway. The women behind me noticed the footprints in front of them, and the women already out there noticed the blood path behind them. All roads led to me. In the muffled background, I heard someone ask what a Code Black was – that day I learned it meant death or serious injury. I was starting to feel a little like Colonel Mustard, with the Carving Knife in the Dining Room. A medical buggy zoomed up the path with nurses and equipment bulging from the sides, and in a matter of minutes Sharon was brought outside on a stretcher, bloodied and bandaged but still alive, and whisked away to the medical centre. Then it was all over.
I hadn’t moved. Not a muscle. I was waiting for the officers to follow the bloody footprints to where I stood frozen, and for me to be accused of a crime, while waiting to be tried for another. But the only thing that happened was that I threw up.
I stood there in vomit and blood for another twenty minutes and still no one came for me.
‘You over yourself yet, Tucker?’ yelled Kristy from the front door. ‘We’re up for table tennis.’
‘Does anyone care about what just happened?’ I yelled back, visions of Sharon’s mutilated limbs still strobing in my mind.
‘What – that you threw up?’ she questioned. ‘Twice! Get over it and come inside.’
And Kristy was the sensitive one.
I took off my shoes and headed back into A5, where I dumped them in a bucket of soapy water the women had organised to mop up Sharon’s lost blood supply.
The suds turned pink and my stomach churned again.
‘Hey look, it’s Chucka Tucker,’ one of the girls teased as I walked in.
‘Get fucked,’ I replied.
I was already in tears when Shannyn and Sarah ran towards me in the Visitor Centre. From the days they were born I’d never been away from them overnight. Five weeks felt like five years for me, so it must have stretched out like a lifetime for them. Their little bodies crashed into mine as I knelt on the floor, arms outstretched to receive them. Neither girl seemed to care they were in a strange place or that Mummy was dressed in a zip-up green jumpsuit with no pockets – the delightful attire we were required to wear for contact visits. And they could never have known that I’d spent the previous day scrubbing a lady’s blood out of my shoes.
‘We know you can’t come home with us, Mummy. Daddy already told us,’ Shannyn said almost sternly, trying to be brave about it. I looked up at my ex-husband and mouthed the words ‘Thank you’.
‘That’s right, my darlings. It might take the judge a little bit of time to decide when I can come home. Mummy is very sorry and very sad that she has had to leave you.’ I was raining tears and choking back hard to stop myself from breaking down completely. The girls’ father assured them he’d bring them to see me every weekend for as long as it took for the silly old judge to make up his mind. For two hours I cradled my girls like the day they were born. I gently kissed their little faces, wiped away their tears and tucked their soft curls behind their ears. I stroked them with the tips of my fingers, carefully sculpting their features into my memory. Then it was time to go.
‘Goodbye, my babies. Mummy loves you more than the stars in the sky and the fish in the sea. It will only be seven more sleeps until we can cuddle again. And Mummy will call you tomorrow. I love you, my little angels …’
They started crying and screaming. ‘Come with us, Mamma!’ They had two officers on either side of them as they were ushered to the door. ‘Mummy, you can came home with us now!’ Just as they were bundled through the door Shannyn cried out, ‘We’ll come tomorrow and get you out …’ And then they were gone.
I will never forget the looks on their faces as they were left to face their strange new world without their mum. I left through the other door and stepped back into my new world to be strip-searched. On the way back to A5 I started packing my emotions away. I was getting good at it and now had a collection of boxes stored right at the back near the base of my skull – one for each emotion: shame, guilt, rage, regret, hate and love. Pure love. Some were neatly tied with ribbons, some were stamped ‘Handle with Care’ or ‘Fragile’. And, of course, there was the big one: ‘Open at Own Risk’.