Blame: A Novel by Michelle Huneven Read Free Book Online Page B

words bouncing off the floors and walls, echoing, pouring in through open transoms. And from underneath their feet came a constant mechanical throb, as if some enormous engine rumbled in the basement. Outside, it had been ninety degrees, but in this room the temperature was no more than fifty-five. The guards wore jackets.
    Patsy waited in a long line for fingerprinting, then stood at a taped line on the floor for a photograph. A male guard took her into a smaller area, where she and three other women were instructed to take off their street clothes, squat with knees pointed out, and cough. Still naked, she was led to the showers. She’d done this before, but always under female supervision. She had two minutes under cool water.
    The guard gave her a towel. What happens next? Patsy asked him.
    You want to know what happens next? Hey, this one wants to know what happens next, he called to another guard. Imagine that. Well, I’ll tell you what happens next, young lady. Anything I want to happen happens next.
    I’m just worried about my asthma inhaler.
    You should have worried about that before you did what you did, he said, and, taking her towel, led her, still naked, down a long hallway. This one’s worried we won’t take good care of her, he said to a female CO coming up the hall. The woman gave Patsy a quick, worried look and hurried on. The guard unlocked a small cell-sized room with only a narrow concrete shelf in it and motioned her in. Here, madam, he said. Here is what happens next.
    Patsy sat naked until finally someone unlocked the door and handed her a set of thin orange pajamas and a sheaf of forms, a pen. No, she could not use the bathroom, not yet. She filled out form after form—name, permanent address, next of kin, health history, drug allergies. She finished and tried lying on the bench, but it was too cold. Time passed, an hour or more, and a woman corrections officer opened the door and took the forms. No, she couldn’t use the bathroom. Just a few more minutes, the woman said.
    More time passed, and another woman wordlessly handed Patsy a stack of clothes and bedding and led her to a dormitory crammed with bunk beds. Patsy had to squeeze in sideways to get to her assigned place. The bunk bed itself was undersized, as if imported from a children’s camp or hospital, the frame bolted to the floor, the springs loose and twangy, the mattress less than two inches thick. Patsy had the top bunk. She unfolded a green army blanket raveled at the edges, coarse white untearable sheets reeking of chlorine bleach, a crackling plastic mattress pad. She was assigned a banged-up metal lockbox at the foot of the lower bunk.
    Patsy filled her lockbox with her new possessions: another pair of the prison pajamas, two pairs of used blue jeans, two T-shirts, white cotton panties, a gray sweatshirt, canvas slip-ons, and a plastic bag of toiletries—toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant.
    Do you think we’ll get our own stuff back? she asked a young woman watching her from the neighboring bunk.
    Don’t aks me, I don’t know jack.

4
    Patsy had imagined prison to be like life in the convents she’d heard about in Catholic school, places where novices were made to scrub perfectly clean floors in silence. But no work, no activities took place in Receiving, or RC, as it was called, where women were evaluated for disposition elsewhere. RC lasted sixty or more days. Patsy had one half-hour meeting with a counselor. She also compiled her visitors’ list, then signed and sent visitors’ questionnaires to everyone on her list, one morning’s chore.
    Prisoners sat around the open dorm or in the television room. They did each other’s hair and nails and passed around three-year-old women’s magazines. Some tried to clean around their beds, several compulsively, polishing the floors with hoarded napkins, Kotex, any rag they could scrounge.
    Now, girls, the COs said. Now, girls. Time for bed, girls. Count! Attagirls. Keep to the