If Tomorrow Comes

Rule number 7 in the official ten-page pamphlet issued to new prisoners read, ‘Any form of sex is strictly forbidden. There will be no more than four inmates to a cell. Not more than one prisoner shall be permitted to be on a bunk at one time.’

The reality was so startlingly different that the prisoners referred to the pamphlet as the prison joke book. As the weeks went by, Tracy watched new prisoners – fish – enter the prison every day, and the pattern was always the same. First offenders who were sexually normal never had a chance. They came in timid and frightened, and the bull-dykes were there, waiting. The drama was enacted in planned stages. In a terrifying and hostile world, the bull-dyke was friendly and sympathetic. She would invite her victim to the recreation hall, where they would watch television together, and when the bull-dyke held her hand, the new prisoner would allow it, afraid of offending her only friend. The new prisoner quickly noticed that the other inmates left her alone, and as her dependence on the bull-dyke grew, so did the intimacies, until finally, she was willing to do anything to hold onto her only friend.

Those who refused to give in were raped. Ninety percent of the women who entered the prison were forced into homosexual activity – willingly or unwillingly – within the first thirty days. Tracy was horrified.

‘How can the authorities allow it to happen?’ she asked Ernestine.

‘It’s the system,’ Ernestine explained, ‘and it’s the same in every prison, baby. There ain’t no way you can separate twelve hundred women from their men and expect them not to fuck somebody. We don’t just rape for sex. We rape for power, to show ’em right off who’s boss. The new fish who come in here are targets for everybody who wants to gang-fuck ’em. The only protection they got is to become the wife of a bull-dyke. That way, nobody’ll mess with ’em.’

Tracy had reason to know she was listening to an expert.

‘It ain’t only the inmates,’ Ernestine went on. ‘The guards are just as bad. Some fresh meat comes in and she’s on H. She’s strung out and needs a fix real bad. She’s sweatin’ and shakin’ herself to pieces. Well, the matron can get heroin for her, but the matron wants a little favour in exchange, see? So the fish goes down on the matron and she gets her fix. The male guards are even worse. They got keys to these cells, and all they have to do is walk in at night and he’p themselves to free pussy. They might get you pregnant, but they can do a lot of favours. You want a candy bar or a visit from your boyfriend, you give the guard a piece of ass. It’s called barterin’, and it goes on in every prison system in the country.’

‘It’s horrible!’

‘It’s survival.’ The overhead cell light shone on Ernestine’s bald head. ‘You know why they don’t allow no chewin’ gum in this place?’

‘No.’

‘Because the girls use it to jam up the locks on the doors so they don’t close all the way, and at night they slip out and visit one another. We follow the rules we want to follow. The girls who make it out of here may be dumb, but they’re smart dumb.’

Love affairs within the prison walls flourished, and the protocol between lovers was even more strictly enforced than on the outside. In an unnatural world, the artificial roles of studs and wives were created and played out. The studs assumed a man’s role in a world where there were no men. They changed their names. Ernestine was called Ernie; Tessie was Tex; Barbara became Bob; Katherine was Kelly. The stud cut her hair short or shaved her head, and she did no chores. The Mary Femme, the wife, was expected to do the cleaning, mending, and ironing for her stud. Lola and Paulita competed fiercely for Ernestine’s attentions, each fighting to outdo the other.

The jealousy was fierce and frequently led to violence, and if the wife was caught looking at another stud or talking to one in the prison yard, tempers would flare. Love letters were constantly flying around the prison, delivered by the garbage rats.

The letters were folded into small triangular shapes, known as kites, so they could easily be hidden in a bra or a shoe. Tracy saw kites being passed among women as they brushed by one another entering the dining hall or on their way to work.

Time after time, Tracy watched inmates fall in love with their guards. It was a love born of despair and helplessness and submissiveness. The prisoners were dependent on the guards for everything: their food, their well-being, and sometimes, their lives. Tracy allowed herself to feel no emotion for anyone.

Sex went on day and night. It ocurred in the shower room, in toilets, in cells, and at night there was oral sex through the bars. The Mary Femmes who belonged to guards were let out of their cells at night to go to the guards’ quarters.

After lights out, Tracy would lie in her bunk and put her hands over her ears to shut out the sounds.

One night Ernestine pulled out a box of Rice Krispies from under her bunk and began scattering them in the corridor outside the cell. Tracy could hear inmates from other cells doing the same thing.

‘What’s going on?’ Tracy asked.

Ernestine turned to her and said harshly, ‘Non’a your business. Jest stay in your bunk. Jest stay in your fuckin’ bunk.’

A few minutes later there was a terrified scream from a nearby cell, where a new prisoner had just arrived. ‘Oh, God, no. Don’t! Please leave me alone!’

Tracy knew then what was happening, and she was sick inside. The screams went on and on, until they finally diminished into helpless, racking sobs. Tracy squeezed her eyes tightly shut, filled with burning rage. How could women do this to one another? She had thought that prison had hardened her, but when she awoke in the morning, her face was stained with dried tears.

She was determined not to show her feelings to Ernestine. Tracy asked casually, ‘What were the Rice Krispies for?’

‘That’s our early warnin’ system. If the guards try sneakin’ up on us, we kin hear ’em comin’.’

Tracy soon learned why inmates referred to a term in the penitentiary as ‘going to college’. Prison was an educational experience, but what the prisoners learned was unorthodox.

The prison was filled with experts of every conceivable type of crime. They exchanged methods of grifting, shoplifting, and rolling drunks. They brought one another up to date on badger games and exchanged information on snitches and undercover cops.

In the recreation yard one morning, Tracy listened to an older inmate give a seminar on pickpocketing to a fascinated young group.

‘The real pros come from Columbia. They got a school in Bogotá, called the school of the ten bells, where you pay twenty-five hundred bucks to learn to be a pickpocket. They hang a dummy from the ceilin’, dressed in a suit with ten pockets, filled with money and jewellery.’

‘What’s the gimmick?’

‘The gimmick is that each pocket has a bell on it. You don’t graduate till you kin empty every damn pocket without ringin’ the bell.’

Lola sighed, ‘I used to go with a guy who walked through crowds dressed in an overcoat, with both his hands out in the open, while he picked everybody’s pockets like crazy.’

‘How the hell could he do that?’

‘The right hand was a dummy. He slipped his real hand through a slit in the coat and picked his way through pockets and wallets and purses.’

In the recreation room the education continued.

‘I like the locker-key rip-off,’ a veteran said. ‘You hang around a railway station till you see a little old lady tryin’ to lift a suitcase or a big package into one of them lockers. You put it in for her and hand her the key. Only it’s the key to an empty locker. When she leaves, you empty her locker and split.’

In the yard another afternoon, two inmates convicted of prostitution and possession of cocaine were talking to a new arrival, a pretty young girl who looked no more than seventeen.

‘No wonder you got busted, honey,’ one of the older women scolded. ‘Before you talk price to a John, you gotta pat him down to make sure he ain’t carryin’ a gun, and never tell him what you’re gonna do for him. Make him tell you what he wants. Then if he turns out to be a cop, it’s entrapment, see?’

The other pro added, ‘Yeah. And always look at their hands. If a trick says he’s a workin’ man, see if his hands are rough. That’s the tip-off. A lot of plainsclothes cops wear workin’ men’s outfits, but when it comes to their hands, they forget, so their hands are smooth.’

Time went neither slowly nor quickly. It was simply time. Tracy thought of St Augustine’s aphorism: ‘What is time? If no one asks me, I know. But if I have to explain it, I do not know.’

The routine of the prison never varied:

4:40 A.M. Warning bell

4:45 A.M. Rise and dress

5:00 A.M. Breakfast

5:30 A.M. Return to cell

5:55 A.M. Warning bell

6:00 A.M. Work detail lineup

10:00 A.M. Exercise yard

10:30 A.M. Lunch

11:00 A.M. Work detail lineup

3:30 P.M. Supper