RISE, A Modern Guide for the Purpose Driven Woman Spring 2014 | Page 47

and we sat and waited. It was now stifling hot. There was no air moving and I started to feel like I may
suffocate. What would happen if I had a heart attack? What happens if I get sick? Will anyone help me?
What happens if the person I am chained to gets sick? There were men in the van in another section.
Everyone was yelling and talking now. We couldn’t see each other but apparently one male knew the
Dad of one of the women with me and he was relaying a message to her from him and vice versa. Sweat
was pouring off me. I was thirsty. Hot. Scared. I wondered if anyone had died sitting here like this.
The men were banging on the walls, yelling to turn on the air. Finally I heard the garage door going up
and the engine starting. I was thankful for those loud men as the air started to blow. My throat so sore
from nothing to drink all day, I daydreamed of sticking my head under that little metal sink in my now
former cell and wondered why I hadn’t. The women began to exchange stories of what happened in
court that day and what pod they were in at county and who was in there; they asked questions about
people they knew. I knew no one. Everyone seemed to know of me instantly from the media coverage
and one girl said “You got screwed cause who you were. You got kids?” I knew my fear and enemy here
wasn’t my fellow inmates. Innocent, guilty, drug-addicted...didn’t matter. We were all the same now with
a common oppressor and a common pain. There’s an expression in jail “My orange ain’t no brighter than
yours.”
Most of the women in there had kids and everyone had a different story. Some had good people holding
things down for them. Some sold drugs to support their 5 kids, they knew no other life. As the breadwinner now in jail they helplessly heard by a payphone day by day as lights got turned off, food dried up,
the house went, the kids were separated and siphoned out into the foster care system. I imagined myself

ke a huge bag of filthy garbage. No one’s picking
hat accidentally got tossed. No one wants it now.”
in their position, helplessly listening to their life being dismantled and their children separated; I would
be in a rush to get out to sell again to get my family back...if that is all you know, it is just all you know. It
was becoming easy to understand how people ended up hopelessly stuck in this system.
They asked how much time you had; everyone is a jailhouse lawyer, quickly adding up what you’ll actually “do” and cringing when they heard I would be leaving on 5 years “paper”; probation. I watched so
many women take more time, state time, house arrest, anything to avoid the dreaded failure r