i wake up again in the same position in which i’ve fallen asleep.  i’m on my right side, facing the doors so that i won’t have my back turned to anyone who comes up and tries to mess with me in my sleep.  my blanket is still twisted so that it covers most of me and curls around underneath my head, to keep my face from sticking to the mattress.  my hair is wadded up under my head, too, so that nobody will pull on it.  my brownie from lunch is there in its plastic bag on the mattress next to me.

only a few of us are left inside the inner cell, scrunched up on the cement bunks.  the inner cell doors are open, and everyone else has moved to the benches and tables in the outer cell.  i can see them, hear them talking.  this time it isn’t about drugs or crimes or whether or not a third offense means you’d serve time or how much weed is a felony.

“she was ugly as sin, but she could really wax that ass, you know what i’m sayin’?” one of the girls says.  she makes a spanking motion with her hand.  everyone laughs.  i cringe.  how can they all sit around talking and laughing as if we weren’t in jail?  how many times have they been here before?  is someone going to try to make me wax that ass?

i can’t sleep anymore.  maybe if i go talk to them it will pass the time.  maybe if i go talk to them they won’t want to mess with me.  i climb down off my top bunk, wrap my blanket around me, and go to the outer cell.  the girls on the benches have just seen one of the prison employees walk out with her purse and car keys, and are debating whether or not the shift change means it’s three p.m. or four.  we have not been allowed to know what time it is.

there are two new girls.  they have the same cornrowed hair and are talking to one another in low voices; i assume they’ve come in together.  like the others, they are waiting in jail as if they were in line at a grocery store or gas station, or in the waiting room at a dentists’ office.  like the others, they have not been crying.  i am the only one.

“what are you guys here for?” i venture, hoping that it’s okay to ask.

second-offense DWI, says the girl across from me.  possession, say the cornrowed girls.  “forgery,” says wax that ass.  “it’s a felony.”

wax that ass is named marie.  she’s a professional con artist, she tells us, and i wonder if we’ve gone back in time to the 1920’s.  i’ve never met a self-described professional con artist before.  marie forges things all the time, she says, but the two-thousand dollar check she wrote at circuit city for a plasma-screen television got her caught.  this is her third time in jail.  “this your first time, isn’t it?” she says to me, and i tell her yes, it is.  “yeah, she been cryin’ all day,” marie tells the room in general.

the warden comes in.  “everyone up!” she yells.  a few of the lumps stir in the inner cell.  “when i call your name, tell me the number on your wristband! didn’t i say get up!” she screams at the sleeping girls.  wrapped in tangles of hair and blankets, they rise slowly, shuffle out like mummies.  the warden has another woman with her, a small redhead who appears to be in training.  the redhead watches as the warden calls out the names and bond amounts.  marie’s bond is 20 grand.  the cornrowed girls are 20 grand each.  sara, the second-offense DWI, gets a thousand.  my name is called.

“172,” i say, without looking at my wristband.

“yours hasn’t been processed,” the warden says.  “stick around,” she says to the trainee.  “you might learn something.”  they laugh as they walk out, the doors slamming behind them.

i stop breathing.  i’m going to be in here tonight.  friday night.  when it will be so crowded someone will sleep on top of me.  i’m going to be in here the rest of my life.  i’ve always been here.  this is where i live.  i’ve always known marie, sara, alicia.  those cornrowed girls with the drugs.  maybe if i don’t breathe, i won’t cry, i decide, but it doesn’t work.

i stand up.  through the glass walls of the cell (bulletproof glass? plexiglass?), across the hall, through the glass windows of another room, on the other side of that room, through a loading dock of some kind, i can see a tiny bit of outside.  trees and sky.  if i start banging on the glass, start screaming, slam my head on the wall, maybe they’ll let me go out there.  just for a minute.  i’ll come right back.

“you not prison material, girl,” marie says.  she’s on top of one of the tables.
“no, i’m not!” i sob, sitting back down.  “how can you stay so calm in here?”
“i just pray.  i pray to jesus that he get me outta here.”

circuit city probably prayed to jesus that he would get her in here, i think, but decide not to say anything.