Chapter 2 -- Observations
Faith looked around again as she and the other prisoners were herded downstairs to the cafeteria. The prison resembled a great concrete ant farm, filled with tiny blue ants that scurried across the tiers and down the many open stairwells in the pursuit of breakfast. Breakfast was Faith's favorite meal in prison, if only because, unlike lunch and dinner, it was usually possible to identify everything she was expected to eat. No mystery meat, no vegetables boiled beyond recognition. Prison oatmeal might have been gluey and flavorless, but at least you could tell it was oatmeal.
A line formed out the door of the cafeteria, a long, blue string of hungry, jostling, gossiping inmates. A few guards along the line, maintaining a semblance of order.
Someone shoved Faith roughly from behind. The heat of anger flared in her chest as Faith turned around to see a gang girl standing behind her, glaring at Faith with unflinching hostility as a gaggle of her comrades looked on.
Faith's mind flashed on the image of herself punching the woman hard in the gut, doubling her over, then pushing her down and kicking her in the head again and again until it split open like a rotten melon.
No, no, no, Faith thought, pushing her rage down. Not today. I can get through one day without fighting. One hour. One minute. The effort was like wresting an anaconda, but somehow, Faith kept her anger under control. She only glared back at the woman who had pushed her.
Somehow, the gang girl sensed how close she had come to unleashing something she couldn't handle. "Sorry," the girl said, taking one step back. One of her cohorts started to say something, but the others shut her up.
Word must have gotten around about the girl with the knife, Faith thought.
Whether she wanted it or not, it seemed, Faith had acquired a rep. She just hoped that a good angry stare was all she would need to maintain it.
-----
Faith got her breakfast -- tasteless pancakes with non-maple syrup and a cup of orange something that might have been Tang -- and looked for a place to sit down. Such places weren't always easy to find. Well over half of the tables in the cafeteria were occupied by jailhouse chapters of L.A.'s many street gangs. The largest gangs had enough members in GP to fill a dozen tables. There were also gangs that were strictly in-house, formed for the purpose of mutual protection from the larger groups.
This rigid social structure was the source of Faith's dilemma. She was a loner by nature, but being alone in prison wasn't just dull -- it was dangerous. As her recent experiences had demonstrated, the gangs tended to pick on people who didn't have anyone to fight on their side. And while Faith knew she could take on a whole bunch of convicts by herself in a fair fight, convicts didn't tend to fight fair; she knew THAT from experience, too. Even if she managed to avoid getting stabbed in the back again, she didn't relish the thought of having to go all Jackie Chan on a bunch of attackers in the gym or the cafeteria, drawing plenty of attention to herself in the process.
An old, familiar voice laughed at her from inside. Here she was, worrying about how to get along and stay out of trouble, when she could easily rule this place. She could be the biggest prison gang leader ever, if she wanted to be.
But then there wouldn't be any point in being here in the first place, she thought. Anyway, it's no big. If I wanted to have my own empire, it would be in a place with a lot more guys. And real maple syrup. Maybe both at once.
Faith saw an open spot at one of the neutral tables, occupied by girls with no gang affiliations, or whose 'gangs' consisted of only three or four women. She sat down and ate, not speaking to anyone.
Suddenly, a commotion erupted at a table nearby. Faith turned her head to see that a prisoner had stood up and grabbed the woman next to her by the hair. Now she was screaming and bashing her victim's head into the table, again and again. The look on her face was one of pure fury.
Another prisoner, maybe one of the victim's friends, got up and tried to grab the attacker from behind; the enraged woman spun around and punched the other girl hard in the face. The woman staggered back, her nose gushing dark blood.
It took Faith half a second to gauge the situation. The guards were all at the edges of the room and were only just starting to notice what was happening. Meanwhile, the violent prisoner had put her initial victim in a headlock and was starting to twist. The woman's neck would be broken within seconds.
Faith was on her feet and halfway there when another prisoner, a tall black woman with close-cropped hair, approached the enraged convict from behind and struck the back of her neck with a knife-hand strike. The violent woman let go of her victim's head and turned, dazed but still full of rage. The tall woman punched twice, jabbing to the face and then closing for a powerful hook down into the crazed prisoner's ribs. The woman staggered back, the wind knocked out of her. She collapsed.
Then the guards were all over everyone. Three guards pulled their nightsticks and warned everyone nearby to sit down or else; two others dragged the tall woman backwards, away from the prisoner she had just KOd. Faith was afraid for a moment that the guards would beat her -- their knee-jerk reaction was always to resolve violence with more violence, and never mind who was at fault -- but they only cuffed the tall woman and dragged her away. She did not resist.
Faith walked back to her table, trying to act casual despite the fact that she had just seen two amazing things. First was the prisoner who had gone berserk for no apparent reason, attacking whoever was closest by with immense strength and viciousness. Faith understood the emotion of rage better than most people, but she could not understand why anyone would suddenly snap like that and just start whaling away on anyone nearby.
The second amazing part of the incident was the tall woman. She was a great fighter. What was more, she had been genuinely heroic; no one would have looked askance if she had stood back and let the guards handle the crazy woman, even if it meant letting the victim die.
The buzzer sounded, and prisoners began to move in great clumps out of the dining hall to their jobs or other activities. Faith headed towards the prison laundry, where she operated the steam press. She liked the job; working the big machine was easy for her, and she found something almost meditative in pressing one garment after another. Plus it paid thirty cents an hour, allowing Faith to save up for a couple of posters, chocolate bars, and other niceties which had been forbidden in supermax.
But all morning, Faith's mind was occupied with the thought of the tall woman's display of skill and courage. Faith hadn't seen anything like that since- well, since Buffy.
That's who I need to get with, Faith thought. That's who I need watching my back. I've gotta meet her.
----
"She's the one," Andrew Teague, warden of the Fuller State Correctional Facility for Women, declared. He and several other members of the prison staff were watching a videotape of the incident in the cafeteria, recorded by one of the many surveillance cameras in that area.
The warden pushed the REWIND button on his remote, then played the scene again in slow motion. "Look," he said. "She's not even at the same table. She has no reason to get involved at all, but she does anyway. And look at that hook punch -- lands right where it will be most effective. She's had some serious training. We've got to have her."
Teague stopped the tape on a frame in which the tall woman's number was clearly visible on her uniform: 7583.
Sarah Reynolds, the prison psychologist, punched in the number on laptop computer that lay open in front of her. "The prisoner is Sonya Medford, age twenty-two, home address in south-central Los Angeles. Interesting; despite her fighting skills, her records show no violent behavior prior to this incident."
"She's only been in for three weeks," Julian Barnes, the assistant warden, said, leaning over next to Reynolds to look at the computer screen. "Maybe she just hasn't had a reason to rough anyone up yet."
"There are no violent offenses in her criminal records, either," Reynolds replied. "Everything is drug-related, either possession or sale."
Teague frowned at that. "She still using?"
"Here?" The question came from Anita Morales, the nurse practitioner who had just taken over running the prison infirmary.
Barnes turned to her. "It's not hard to get drugs in prison," he said. "We try to keep 'em out, but some always get through, no matter how many random cell inspections and body searches we do."
"I don't know whether or not she is still taking drugs," Reynolds said, "but she is participating actively in our in-house recovery program, so I would tend to doubt it. I believe I should interview her."
"Do it," Teague said. "Today, if possible. And what about 7302?"
"She's on my schedule for Wednesday afternoon," Reynolds replied as she quickly called up her list of appointments on her laptop. "I believe I can fit Sonya Medford in immediately afterwards."
"Good," Teague said. "I'm looking forward to your evaluation."
The buzzer sounded, indicating a shift change for the prisoners and an end to the morning meeting for the staff.
"I'm afraid I don't understand," Morales said as everyone rose to their feet. She approached Teague hurriedly. "Why are you interested in these two women?"
"I'll fill you in later," Teague said as he headed out the door of the conference room. "Right now, I have to go find out why that prisoner tried to beat everyone in her general vicinity to death."
Barnes, who was just ahead of Teague as the staff streamed out the door, murmured, "Maybe she just hates it when other women wear the same outfit as her."
-----
In the hallway, once the others had dispersed to their places of work, Andrew Teague and Julian Barnes walked down the corridor towards the central guard station. Both were big men; Teague was tall and bald, having lost most of his red hair and shaved off the rest, and Barnes was a thick-set black man with large, plastic-rimmed glasses. Together, they looked as much like a pair of football coaches as a warden and assistant warden in a women's prison.
"Andrew," Barnes said, once he was sure that there were no others around to hear. "I just want to make absolutely sure; you really think this plan of yours has a good chance of working?"
"If those two girls are what I think they are, yes," Teague responded.
"But what if it backfires?" Barnes asked. "What if we just end up making things worse?"
"How much worse can it get, Julian?" Teague replied. "The other night, one of my wife's friends asked me what it's like to run a prison. You know what I told her? That I didn't really know, because I have to share the job with the gang leaders and the drug dealers. That can't go on, Julian. When we talk about rehabilitating prisoners, who are we bullshitting? We can't rehabilitate anybody under these conditions. How can we stop the gangs when the girls need to join gangs for protection? How can we help the drug addicts when they're sharing cells with dealers? We need to change the system, Julian. Otherwise, our work is just a waste of time."
"When you put it like that," Barnes said, "I can't help but agree with you." He really couldn't; Teague's passion about his work was impressive.
"I truly believe we can fix this place, Julian," Teague said, "and those two prisoners are just the tools we need. You'll see."
I hope so, Barnes thought to himself. Because if they aren't, we are going to end up nailing ourselves right to the wall.
END CHAPTER 2
Faith looked around again as she and the other prisoners were herded downstairs to the cafeteria. The prison resembled a great concrete ant farm, filled with tiny blue ants that scurried across the tiers and down the many open stairwells in the pursuit of breakfast. Breakfast was Faith's favorite meal in prison, if only because, unlike lunch and dinner, it was usually possible to identify everything she was expected to eat. No mystery meat, no vegetables boiled beyond recognition. Prison oatmeal might have been gluey and flavorless, but at least you could tell it was oatmeal.
A line formed out the door of the cafeteria, a long, blue string of hungry, jostling, gossiping inmates. A few guards along the line, maintaining a semblance of order.
Someone shoved Faith roughly from behind. The heat of anger flared in her chest as Faith turned around to see a gang girl standing behind her, glaring at Faith with unflinching hostility as a gaggle of her comrades looked on.
Faith's mind flashed on the image of herself punching the woman hard in the gut, doubling her over, then pushing her down and kicking her in the head again and again until it split open like a rotten melon.
No, no, no, Faith thought, pushing her rage down. Not today. I can get through one day without fighting. One hour. One minute. The effort was like wresting an anaconda, but somehow, Faith kept her anger under control. She only glared back at the woman who had pushed her.
Somehow, the gang girl sensed how close she had come to unleashing something she couldn't handle. "Sorry," the girl said, taking one step back. One of her cohorts started to say something, but the others shut her up.
Word must have gotten around about the girl with the knife, Faith thought.
Whether she wanted it or not, it seemed, Faith had acquired a rep. She just hoped that a good angry stare was all she would need to maintain it.
-----
Faith got her breakfast -- tasteless pancakes with non-maple syrup and a cup of orange something that might have been Tang -- and looked for a place to sit down. Such places weren't always easy to find. Well over half of the tables in the cafeteria were occupied by jailhouse chapters of L.A.'s many street gangs. The largest gangs had enough members in GP to fill a dozen tables. There were also gangs that were strictly in-house, formed for the purpose of mutual protection from the larger groups.
This rigid social structure was the source of Faith's dilemma. She was a loner by nature, but being alone in prison wasn't just dull -- it was dangerous. As her recent experiences had demonstrated, the gangs tended to pick on people who didn't have anyone to fight on their side. And while Faith knew she could take on a whole bunch of convicts by herself in a fair fight, convicts didn't tend to fight fair; she knew THAT from experience, too. Even if she managed to avoid getting stabbed in the back again, she didn't relish the thought of having to go all Jackie Chan on a bunch of attackers in the gym or the cafeteria, drawing plenty of attention to herself in the process.
An old, familiar voice laughed at her from inside. Here she was, worrying about how to get along and stay out of trouble, when she could easily rule this place. She could be the biggest prison gang leader ever, if she wanted to be.
But then there wouldn't be any point in being here in the first place, she thought. Anyway, it's no big. If I wanted to have my own empire, it would be in a place with a lot more guys. And real maple syrup. Maybe both at once.
Faith saw an open spot at one of the neutral tables, occupied by girls with no gang affiliations, or whose 'gangs' consisted of only three or four women. She sat down and ate, not speaking to anyone.
Suddenly, a commotion erupted at a table nearby. Faith turned her head to see that a prisoner had stood up and grabbed the woman next to her by the hair. Now she was screaming and bashing her victim's head into the table, again and again. The look on her face was one of pure fury.
Another prisoner, maybe one of the victim's friends, got up and tried to grab the attacker from behind; the enraged woman spun around and punched the other girl hard in the face. The woman staggered back, her nose gushing dark blood.
It took Faith half a second to gauge the situation. The guards were all at the edges of the room and were only just starting to notice what was happening. Meanwhile, the violent prisoner had put her initial victim in a headlock and was starting to twist. The woman's neck would be broken within seconds.
Faith was on her feet and halfway there when another prisoner, a tall black woman with close-cropped hair, approached the enraged convict from behind and struck the back of her neck with a knife-hand strike. The violent woman let go of her victim's head and turned, dazed but still full of rage. The tall woman punched twice, jabbing to the face and then closing for a powerful hook down into the crazed prisoner's ribs. The woman staggered back, the wind knocked out of her. She collapsed.
Then the guards were all over everyone. Three guards pulled their nightsticks and warned everyone nearby to sit down or else; two others dragged the tall woman backwards, away from the prisoner she had just KOd. Faith was afraid for a moment that the guards would beat her -- their knee-jerk reaction was always to resolve violence with more violence, and never mind who was at fault -- but they only cuffed the tall woman and dragged her away. She did not resist.
Faith walked back to her table, trying to act casual despite the fact that she had just seen two amazing things. First was the prisoner who had gone berserk for no apparent reason, attacking whoever was closest by with immense strength and viciousness. Faith understood the emotion of rage better than most people, but she could not understand why anyone would suddenly snap like that and just start whaling away on anyone nearby.
The second amazing part of the incident was the tall woman. She was a great fighter. What was more, she had been genuinely heroic; no one would have looked askance if she had stood back and let the guards handle the crazy woman, even if it meant letting the victim die.
The buzzer sounded, and prisoners began to move in great clumps out of the dining hall to their jobs or other activities. Faith headed towards the prison laundry, where she operated the steam press. She liked the job; working the big machine was easy for her, and she found something almost meditative in pressing one garment after another. Plus it paid thirty cents an hour, allowing Faith to save up for a couple of posters, chocolate bars, and other niceties which had been forbidden in supermax.
But all morning, Faith's mind was occupied with the thought of the tall woman's display of skill and courage. Faith hadn't seen anything like that since- well, since Buffy.
That's who I need to get with, Faith thought. That's who I need watching my back. I've gotta meet her.
----
"She's the one," Andrew Teague, warden of the Fuller State Correctional Facility for Women, declared. He and several other members of the prison staff were watching a videotape of the incident in the cafeteria, recorded by one of the many surveillance cameras in that area.
The warden pushed the REWIND button on his remote, then played the scene again in slow motion. "Look," he said. "She's not even at the same table. She has no reason to get involved at all, but she does anyway. And look at that hook punch -- lands right where it will be most effective. She's had some serious training. We've got to have her."
Teague stopped the tape on a frame in which the tall woman's number was clearly visible on her uniform: 7583.
Sarah Reynolds, the prison psychologist, punched in the number on laptop computer that lay open in front of her. "The prisoner is Sonya Medford, age twenty-two, home address in south-central Los Angeles. Interesting; despite her fighting skills, her records show no violent behavior prior to this incident."
"She's only been in for three weeks," Julian Barnes, the assistant warden, said, leaning over next to Reynolds to look at the computer screen. "Maybe she just hasn't had a reason to rough anyone up yet."
"There are no violent offenses in her criminal records, either," Reynolds replied. "Everything is drug-related, either possession or sale."
Teague frowned at that. "She still using?"
"Here?" The question came from Anita Morales, the nurse practitioner who had just taken over running the prison infirmary.
Barnes turned to her. "It's not hard to get drugs in prison," he said. "We try to keep 'em out, but some always get through, no matter how many random cell inspections and body searches we do."
"I don't know whether or not she is still taking drugs," Reynolds said, "but she is participating actively in our in-house recovery program, so I would tend to doubt it. I believe I should interview her."
"Do it," Teague said. "Today, if possible. And what about 7302?"
"She's on my schedule for Wednesday afternoon," Reynolds replied as she quickly called up her list of appointments on her laptop. "I believe I can fit Sonya Medford in immediately afterwards."
"Good," Teague said. "I'm looking forward to your evaluation."
The buzzer sounded, indicating a shift change for the prisoners and an end to the morning meeting for the staff.
"I'm afraid I don't understand," Morales said as everyone rose to their feet. She approached Teague hurriedly. "Why are you interested in these two women?"
"I'll fill you in later," Teague said as he headed out the door of the conference room. "Right now, I have to go find out why that prisoner tried to beat everyone in her general vicinity to death."
Barnes, who was just ahead of Teague as the staff streamed out the door, murmured, "Maybe she just hates it when other women wear the same outfit as her."
-----
In the hallway, once the others had dispersed to their places of work, Andrew Teague and Julian Barnes walked down the corridor towards the central guard station. Both were big men; Teague was tall and bald, having lost most of his red hair and shaved off the rest, and Barnes was a thick-set black man with large, plastic-rimmed glasses. Together, they looked as much like a pair of football coaches as a warden and assistant warden in a women's prison.
"Andrew," Barnes said, once he was sure that there were no others around to hear. "I just want to make absolutely sure; you really think this plan of yours has a good chance of working?"
"If those two girls are what I think they are, yes," Teague responded.
"But what if it backfires?" Barnes asked. "What if we just end up making things worse?"
"How much worse can it get, Julian?" Teague replied. "The other night, one of my wife's friends asked me what it's like to run a prison. You know what I told her? That I didn't really know, because I have to share the job with the gang leaders and the drug dealers. That can't go on, Julian. When we talk about rehabilitating prisoners, who are we bullshitting? We can't rehabilitate anybody under these conditions. How can we stop the gangs when the girls need to join gangs for protection? How can we help the drug addicts when they're sharing cells with dealers? We need to change the system, Julian. Otherwise, our work is just a waste of time."
"When you put it like that," Barnes said, "I can't help but agree with you." He really couldn't; Teague's passion about his work was impressive.
"I truly believe we can fix this place, Julian," Teague said, "and those two prisoners are just the tools we need. You'll see."
I hope so, Barnes thought to himself. Because if they aren't, we are going to end up nailing ourselves right to the wall.
END CHAPTER 2
