“You won’t meet a murderer,” I told her as I opened the back door.
“I’ll settle for manslaughter,” she said, hope in her voice.
“We’re going to the women’s yard,” I said.
“I want men. Murderers.”
“Forget it. We’re not allowed near them.”
“Says who?”
“Who do you think?”
“I hate the warden.” She pouted. “He takes all the fun out of prison.”
“You’re lucky he’s letting you do this,” I told her.
Until this day, my visitors had been confined to the apartment. The night before, my father had, surprisingly, agreed to let Reggie come along on my daily through-the-fence talk with the inmates. I led her down the outside stairway and through the backyard.
Reggie stood at the chain-link fence that separated our backyard from the women’s exercise yard. She looked like a kid at a zoo. She boggled. “Wow!”
The prison never had more than thirty or so female inmates. (None of whom were murderers, which could not be said of the men.) The women were mostly just lolling about the dirt-packed yard, chatting, strolling. A few sat in the shade, their backs against the interior stone wall separating them from the men’s exercise yard. At the far end two women batted a badminton bird back and forth. There was no net between them.
They were all dressed identically: shapeless denim dresses. Sacks, really. No pockets.
Everywhere you looked, cigarettes were kissing. My father knew how much his people—that’s what he called them, “my people”—craved smoking. But he was afraid to let them have matches. His solution: As the inmates, men and women, filed out to their respective yards each day, a trustee was allowed to light one person’s cigarette. From then on, the only way to get a light was to kiss the end of your cigarette to the end of one already lit. Almost everybody had a cigarette in her mouth and a pack in her hand, even the badminton batters. Almost everyone smoked Salems.
Most of the women were white, with pallid skin the color of vanilla Bonomo’s Turkish Taffy. Although one person was aiming to change that.
Deena, who was in for stealing archdiocese funds for retired priests, lay on her back on a shower towel by the yard’s west wall. Her dress was hiked up over her pasty knees. Egg-shaped black plastic cups covered her eyes. She occupied the same spot every day.
The loudest and largest inmate of all was Boo Boo. Boo Boo was one of a half dozen black women. Boo Boo was a shoplifter, but I always found this hard to figure, as she was anything but quiet and sneaky. Her bellow rang out—“Hey, Miss Cammie!”—as she came bounding and laughing across the yard like a huge denim beach ball. Her hair erupted from her head in wild, woolen gushers that must have added a foot to her already imposing height.
It was all this that Reggie took in and that brought forth her “Wow!”
The fence bellied toward me with the force of Boo Boo’s arrival. Ten long red fingernails poked through the chain links.
“Hi, Boo Boo,” I said.
“And who is this, Miss Cammie?” she asked.
“This is my friend Reggie. Reggie—Boo Boo.”
“Best friend,” Reggie corrected.
Boo Boo beamed. “Please to meet you. Call me Boo for short.” She laughed and stuck her finger through the fence. “I’m a shoplifter.”
Reggie hesitated, then shook the finger. Boo Boo laughed again. Boo Boo was the jolliest person I’d ever known.
Boo Boo turned thoughtful. “Reggie…ain’t that a boy’s name? I got a cousin Reggie.”
She waved at the tower guard. “Jim! This look like a boy to you?”
Aqua short shorts. Silver sandals. Aqua toenails. Silky charcoal blouse. Everything about Reggie broadcast: seventeen! Except her eyes, gaga over Boo Boo’s attention, which said: little girl. Christmas.
Jim Carilla, the weekday tower guard, waved from afar but didn’t reply.
A voice came from the other black women clustered behind Boo Boo. “Good thing the men can’t see her.”
A constant volley of shouts flew over the interior wall. The men were playing baseball.
Boo Boo shook a cigarette from her pack of Salems. She poked it through the fence at Reggie. “Smoke?”
Reggie stared for a beat, then took it. “Thanks.”
I slapped it from her hand. “Not in my jail,” I said, and Boo Boo was laughing again.
Suddenly there was a commotion at the far end of the yard. The badminton players, Helen and Tessa, were yelling:
“Wha’d you do?”
“What’s it look like I did?”
“That’s the only one we had!”
“So go get it, then!”
Tessa had swatted the badminton bird over the back wall.
“You stupid criminal!”
“Stupid, huh?”
Tessa wound up and sent her racket cartwheeling over the high wall. Now Helen was advancing, holding her racket like a club.
Tessa tapped a nostril and shot a snot into the dust. She balled her fists. “Come on—come on—”
Nothing else in the yard moved.
“Jeez,” I growled to myself. I yelled: “Hey! Stop, you two! I’ll get it!” I yanked Reggie’s hand. “C’mon.”