I first met Deb, a compact blonde with a short curtain of hair she’d toss aside with an upstroke nod like a horse flicking its tail, in the small chapel of The Old Administration Building affectionately referred to as ‘The Old Ad’ by inmates and staff alike. I sit on a honey colored pew next to Patsy, a volunteer who meets with inmates weekly hoping to buoy their souls with prayer, empathy, and normal conversation. Patsy had seen me in the corridor sobbing, cupped her hands around my waist, and sheparded me to sanctuary. She prompted me to tell her my sorrows and, a few minutes later, deep into the revealing of my woes, Deb arrives, late for her 10 a.m. appointment with Patsy. When Deb enters, I glance up at her. I see she wears the white uniform of a kitchen worker and stands at the door, feet firmly planted, as if she is about to make an announcement before a crowd. Deb soaks in my sad eyes and Patsy’s pleading look, hails a perfunctory wave, and leaves Patsy and me to our consoling huddle. After Deb leaves the room, a residual brightness lingers and I wonder how she illuminates in such a dreary place.
But it is my gloom that is unusual. The other inmates adjust to the environment while I move through the prison’s morbid grounds like a creature from another planet. At meals, I regard the food with suspicion. At night, I stare at my plastic lump of a mattress and try to figure out how to sleep. I feel ill at ease with the stark poverty of the environment. I chafe at the idea I am here because I have led a heretofore privileged life. But my discomfort is mental, not physical. It is due to my lack of acceptance; I have not come to the terms with the fact I committed a crime and deserve to be in jail.
Patsy in her decorated sweater and with her blue-eyed blinks of wonderment placates me that rainy, February day. Her outrage over my circumstances equals mine and confirms my sense of injustice. She squeezes my shoulder at the end of the hour and tells me to come by next week at the same time. I walk down the hall and my tears, like any sign of weakness, are met with sneers from inmates and officers. I keep my head bowed and try to dam my tears.
I’m in culture shock; all prison behavior seems odd. Prison is a land where they prepare to fall off the edge of the earth despite explorers having returned from having circumnavigated the globe. We are required to carry our one utensil with us at all times during meals and, as we exit the dining hall, we must hold up the implement for the presiding officer to see before dropping it into a bucket of soapy water. The rigarmarole is so inmates will not steal the utensils and melt them into weapons; this despite the fact that plastic utensils are available for purchase every week through canteen.
I next spot Deb, her signature mop of hair, peeping over a book while she stands in line for the phone. I hear her scream, “I hate how you act when other people are around. You act fake and weird!” She slams down the phone and stomps to her cell. At that moment, I remember the hours and hours I spent arguing with Jake, my ex-boyfriend. Suddenly, I am aware I am at peace in this hell hole and to my astonishment, I am thankful for that aspect of being here.
A few nights later I see Deb in the TV room. Alison, an erudite mother of four facing charges related to vehicular homicide, introduces us. Alison whispers in my ear, “There’s Deb. She’s really cool. She knows a lot about the law.” Alison, though sociable, is single minded in her conversation topics. She wants to figure out what her sentence will be, an answer no one knows with any reliable accuracy.
Alison waves Deb over to where we are seated and Deb eases into the seat next to mine. “Hey, Deb, you know Madeline?” Alison asks Deb.
“No, well, sort of. I’ve see you around,” Deb replies. She directs her eyes to me and beams a smile incongruous to my disorientation. I upturn my lips in response and stay quiet listening to them discuss Alison’s case. In the end, Deb offers to read Alison’s court papers that night and give her a more thorough opinion the next day.
“Great,” says Alison. She springs up to get her paperwork from her cell.
I am left alone with Deb and feel an awkward obligation to speak. “I saw you were reading a book, a blue one with a globe on the cover.”
“Yeah,” she says, “Atlas of the World. It’s pretty good, a little slow, but pretty good.” She smiles and I notice the out-turned teeth of a former thumb sucker.As Deb replies her gaze is like someone playing a video game, eyes glued to the screen.
The following day, Alison updates me with Deb’s response. “Deb helped a lot. She thinks I’ll do okay, maybe two and a half. That seems to be the going rate for vehicular homicide.” Alison says. Alison jokes but her tone is shades lighter than she feels. Prison is like the world of cancer, horrifying to enter, but once in, you learn to speak plainly and even use humor about your dismal situation.
“Well, that sounds good,” I say. I sense Alison needs encouragement. “That’s what Lisa and Amy got. Right?”
“Yeah, Deb’s good,” Alison says. “She’s straightforward, tells you like it is. Like she just came out and told me she’s gay.”
“She is?” I ask. I conjure up an image of Deb: short hair, round, brown eyes, her features are androgynous. “I can see that,” I say.
“Yeah, and she just comes right out and says it.”
“Yeah, I didn’t realize it at all,” I say.
At night, I skip dinner to call my friend, Henry, in order to catch him at the end of his work day and before the phone lines in my housing unit get long. He’s a lawyer, a father, a voice of reason. Like confession for Catholics, I whisper my day’s worries into the headset so my soul can be unburdened. “I can’t imagine what is going to happen to me.”
Henry is sweet and ever-encouraging; his calm cadence soothes me. “It’ll be fine, Madeline. Bergoff is the best. He’ll explain things in a way that will allow the judge to be favorable to you.”
“You think?” I ask, wanting to believe but disbelieving.
One night, Deb taps me on the shoulder and motions for me to come to her cell when I am through with my call. I nod in agreement and push her door slightly open to see her fussing with papers on her desk.
“Come in,” she says.
I stare at her. We are not allowed in other people cells.
“Come in. It’ll be fine.”
I step in and look at her expectantly.
“Have you eaten?” she asks.
“I ate some,” I lie.
“Want a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?” she asks.
“Okay,” I say. I watch Deb smear two pieces of bread with putter butter and jelly and lay an unadorned piece on top of each. Too much jelly for my taste, I notice and think how I’ve never been this close to a lesbian.
“I think putter butter and jelly sandwiches are better than sex,” she says. She uses her tongue to draw a big bite into her mouth.
I say nothing and feel a mix of awkwardness and pleasure in her company.
The following night Deb again motions for me to join her for a sandwich after my phone call. I resolve to act casual with the fact that she is a lesbian. “So, I heard you on the phone the other night with your girlfriend.”
“My ex-girlfriend.’ she says. “I’m furious with her. I’m not calling her back again.”
I try to apply what I would say to someone in the same situation with an ex-boyfriend and the conversation lumbers along. Within a week or so, Deb and I establish a routine of putter butter and jelly sandwiches and chats. Deb is flirtatious with me. "Oh, I love Scorpios. All my girlfriends have been Scorpios. They're so sensual." she says after learning my birthday is October 26th.
"True enough," I say.
One conversation, I ask, “How long have you known you were a lesbian?”
“Since I was young. At thirteen my mom heard me with a friend at our family beach house,” she says.
I visualize a smooth faced Deb writhing on top of a long-haired girl, sand in the sheets. “Was your mom mad?”
“Not really but she made her point by not letting me have girlfriends spend the night.”
“Huh.” I give a non-committal response to prompt her to say more.
“I had boyfriends pretty much after that. I was even engaged but I couldn’t go through with it.”
“Wow,” I say and imagine the commotion of cancelling a wedding.
“Yeah, I just knew I wouldn’t be happy.”
“Didn’t you love him?” I ask.
“Yeah, but I didn’t like the sex.” She scrunches her nose. “Maybe if he had been smaller but he was so big, it hurt.”
I nod and think men often concentrate on depth over surface in the wrong areas of life. I realize Jake knew little of how I felt physically and less emotionally. Desperate for a steady relationship and the family approval that it would bring, I forced myself to fit Jake and did not even consider the fact he did not fit me; he hurt me.
Deb tells me about her long term girlfriends: Kathleen, a raven-haired, divorced mother of two, Melinda, a semi-pro golfer, and Jen, the aggravating woman on the phone. "Kathleen was my true love," she says. "You remind me of her."
All three, she informs me, had been straight before she met them.
“You have quite an effect on women,” I say.
In fits and spurts, I tell Deb about Jake, how the clefted-chin, movie star look alike summoned the magical in life for me. He showed me clever websites, comforting foods, and well-designed furniture. I was unworthy of him, I explain to Deb.
Deb listens with the intensity of a thief cracking a safe, her ear pressed against the lock to discern the clicks. She marks the spots of my mistaken logic with overly obvious questions. “So, Jake wanted you to wait at his apartment while he went to a party with another woman you had never met and you thought you should have?”
“Well, yes. I should have trusted him.”
“I see,” she says. Her voice is filled with profound irony.
I sit on her steel locker while Deb stands and smooths balm on her lips in front of her mirror. “Hmmmm. I love the way this smells,” she says.
She puts her face in front of mine and puckers her lips outward like a duck’s beak. I sniff and she leans forward swiftly and kisses me. I stop talking and stare at Deb who turns around to brush her hair. I watch her sure, brusque strokes. I run out of her cell and flop onto my bunk where I let my thoughts zoom over my head like the night sky. I love Deb because she made me feel good. She coaxed me to eat when I was starving myself, sided with me against Jake when society and the legal system condemned me, and she insisted, even though I am in prison, that I am a person of beauty and nobility.
From then on, I cleave to Deb. I anticipate her return form work by sitting near the housing unit’s door at the time she is to arrive. I wake her up from naps she takes because I am unable to stay away. I can’t seem to get enough of her; an inch seems distant. We speak of a future, shared moments of pleasure, electric fantasies fed by currents of desire. Deb mouths to me words that loosen my muscles as she speaks; they are a verbal massage. “I want to show you what a healthy relationship is, how to be yourself, express what you want, do what you want. That’s love.”
I almost groan with pleasure. “Okay,” I whisper.
I move to a different housing unit so Deb and I meet at certain times and locations to continue our relationship. Sundays, we attend catholic mass together and sit stage right, by the piano and the statue of Mother Theresa.
One Sunday afternoon, I arrive first at the bottom of the stairwell leading to the chapel. I see her down the hallway greeting people. When she reaches me, she scowls.
“What’s wrong,” I ask.
“Why don’t you tell me?” she asks.
I remember the short stories she wanted me to read to help her with a class she is taking at the prison’s college education program. “I read the stories, Deb. You were right. They’re terrible.”
“That’s not what I am talking about,” she says.
I press my mind to think of other reasons for her anger. “I don’t know, Deb.”
“Did you write a letter?” she asks.
A clue, my mind recognizes, and I blurt out the unedited results of my thinking. “Well, you know, I write my cousin, aunt and uncle, my brother, . . .”
“No, Madeline, that is not what I am talking about. Have you three-wayed a letter?”
Three-ways are a means prisoners use to write letters to other prisoners at other facilities with correspondence is not allowed. Inmates send the letter to someone outside prison who, in turn, mails it to another prisoner.
“No,” I answer. “Who would I write to?”
“Are you sure?” she asks.
“Yes,” I say. Deb’s sustained anger alarms me.
“Maria said she received a threatening letter.”
Maria is Deb’s friend who, according to Deb, consistently expresses interest in having a relationship with her. Deb told me on several occasions she explained to Maria that the feelings of attraction are not reciprocated. Suddenly, I am not sure the conversations ever took place or, if they did, that Deb was as emphatic or adamant as she claims.
“And she thinks it’s from me?” I ask.
“Well, who else would it be from? Who else would do something like that?” Deb asks.
Unspoken but inferred is the behavior that brought me to prison: I stalked my ex-boyfriend and his new girlfriend. I couldn’t let go. Deb is implying I am jealous of her and Maria. She is accusing me of writing the letter.
I speak over the sounds of my heart thumping in my ear, the last signal you get from your body before you are about to explode as if anger stems from your heart, surges up to your head, and erupts out of your mouth. “Deb, I did not write any such letter.”
She responds with fierce silence and it occurs to me – she believes Maria. “Is the letter signed?” I ask.
“No,” she says.
“Well where is postmarked from? Is a town where I know someone?” I ask.
“I don’t know.”
I ask, “Have you looked at this letter?”
“No, Maria is sending it to me. She just told me about it on the phone before I came here,” Deb says.
It occurs to me that Deb believes Maria without having seen the letter, speaking to me, or considering Maria’s ulterior motives. I am stunned and in my motionless state, I see two paths.
One is familiar, the one I traveled with Jake: a torturous, winding road of distrust I move along propelled by the fear of abandonment. The ground is worn from dragging myself along it. In the scene, I beg and subjugate myself. I forge ahead, though in pain, waiting for the elusive clearing at the end of the path, the ease, relief, and reward of my effortful journey, love and acceptance.
Then, I view a narrow path, winding and unused. I step down the mossy, alluring trail. Curious and intrigued, my skin tingles. I am fueled by pleasure and intrigue. I stand upright and step on soft ground discovering unexpected wonders. It is this path I choose.
I notice Deb talking to another inmate, Julie, a striking woman marred by a repulsively odd personality that caused her to kill a man and bury him in the woods. Deb laughs and I am horrified she is capable of such convincing joy after having made her accusation.
I feel unsprung; my internal gears grind to a halt. I use the time she spends talking to Julie to come up with a plan to protect myself from further damage. “I’m moving seats.” I tell Deb. I sit for the remainder of the service alone and absorb the idea that Deb’s faith in me is permeable; this is not love.
After mass, Deb accosts me. “I plan to pursue this with a lawyer to the furthest extent possible,” she says.
“I regret ever having met you,” I say, turn my head with forced torque, and walk out the chapel door, straight to my cell.
I lower my shaking body into a seated position on my locker and stare at the blank, cinderblock wall opposite me. Soon, the wall distorts into a screen where I project images I have often visualized of Deb and me.
Deb and I rest on an overstuffed couch, the smell of the ocean wafts in the windows, and my skin is clammy with the stickiness of salt water. My head props on Deb’s lap and our fingers intertwine on my stomach. She talks, I make a wisecrack, and I watch her smile burst above me.
I cry silent, sliding tears, and watch the next scene.
Deb stands by a sink in a kitchen awash in dusk’s muted light. I perch on a stool at the kitchen island and my outstretched arm pats the dog’s ears so she will stay away from Deb while she cooks. The night stretches before us like an unfurled dream.
I allow the visualizations to play out, dim, and vanish. My mind then travels the gentle, picturesque path of my choosing. I feel my body resume its rhythm. My heartbeat recedes into silent thumps and my breath returns to unconscious inhales and exhales.  My face softens and my eyebrows unfurrow. I do not panic; I relax into my journey and trust good things will come.