Stephanie Dickinson

Clinton, New Jersey

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Heading deeper into the past, the dream highway takes Krystal and Lucy into childhood towns fattened by hardwoods and salt-flocked sea oats. A sleep-wind blowing erases the present and catapults them back to their beginnings. Long before they were both serving long sentences in the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women in Clinton, New Jersey Krystal calls out for a teammate, an eighth grader the same as she, a tall blonde with a silky ponytail, who dribbles the basketball down the court, inhaling the odor of shellacked wood floors. She looks like she belongs in this upscale suburban landscape. A silver cloud butterfly. When Krystal dribbles the basketball, she is part of the movement of ball and girl, making the jump shot, concentrating, letting go, arms and legs seeming to know, again hook shot, ball swishing through the net. So far away from herself, yet truly herself. She has pleased herself and the coach. “You’re a natural,” he says. This time she wasn’t going to bet against herself, wasn’t going to cut, bleach, coarsen herself into spiky points of platinum starlight, not real stars, not even real light.

The lights are so bright as they burst from the ceiling. “Hey, Lucy, wake up,” Krystal calls out. She knows her bunkie had a rough night. “Welcome to Tuesday.” The grim present. Lucy brushes away the ceiling light and Krystal’s voice. She’s at cheerleading practice throwing her pompoms in the air, following that with a cartwheel. Upside down or standing on her head, everything makes sense. No one can catch the streamers like she can, or fling herself into a cheer. After she showers she runs out of the high school to the parking lot where her older boyfriend idles his Firebird. He’s been waiting and after she hops in, he pulls a strand of wet hair that’s caught in the corner of her mouth. They’re on their way to his place where he’s made a surprise for her. Candles flicker around the tub, a man’s bathroom with stringy wet towels hanging from towel racks and crusty wash rags. Two long-stemmed red roses float on the water. The threes candles pitch their flames into her breasts and buttocks, like the prongs of Neptune’s fork. Lucy and her Firebird man sink into the tub, the cool water soft with bath oil. He has created a world where even the angels have sex, eat spinach tortellini, and take ecstasy with two lines of cocaine. This time she’ll stick with cheerleading; this time she’ll stay away from the raves.

“Lucy, wake up,” Krystal says, cupping her hands to Lucy’s ear and whispering. Noise that never truly doused itself is ramping up, inmates are shouting to friends to get the fuck up, fights erupt over who gets first dibs on the sink and more importantly the toilets. It was weird that in the midst of a high decimal noise-fest, you could hear a whisper the loudest.

“What? What? Lucy cries out, sitting up. “What’s going on?” Her thick dark hair has come out of its barrette and Krystal smooths it off her friend’s forehead. 

“Is it still there?” Krystal asks. “The lump.”

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Yesterday, the lump arrived. She was soaping under her arm in the shower when she found it. The shock of the thing, the it. What wasn’t there before now is, like a bird’s egg or an avocado’s seed, planted, incubating. All night in her bunk, her headphones on, the lump drew her fingers to it, testing and teasing her. Will it be gone tomorrow? Will it be smaller? Who could stop touching such a thing? It meant nothing life threatening. A blocked pore, a cyst, besides a lump rarely meant cancer. She’d fallen asleep.

Before Lucy opens her eyes she dares her hand to explore her underarm. Perhaps, the lump will be gone. Her fingers find it. If it is serious, god help her. The Medical Unit practices neglect that can’t be considered benign. 

“Is the lump still there?” Krystal asks. When Lucy nods, she asks to touch it. Okay. Lucy lifts her arm and guides Krystal’s fingers to the lump. A hillock. Yes, Krystal feels it like a ball of cookie dough, and when she presses her thumb against the dough-like thing, it moves then pushes back. “We have to put in a Medical request,” Krystal says. “I’m worried.” Lucy agrees but only if Krystal puts in one too for her episodes. “They won’t believe me,” Krystal says. “They think it’s all in my head.  Take a shower, Lucy, warm water will help.”

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The shower is cold, the water burbles, raises goosebumps, then switches to hot, someone has started the water on fire, the angry water is scalding her. Burning her. Prison. The water droplets hitting Lucy’s skin are massive yellow stones. Lumps. It’s hurting me. Water droplets, how large you are. 

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The afternoon of the lump the two women sit at table near the microwave in the common area off the Yard. They’re munching on no-name Commissary brand Doritos and filling out the Health Services Request Form. Lucy traces her pen over the lengthy numbered points elaborating the charges to the inmate for medical services. “The meat of this shitty sandwich is all about how much the inmate has to eat of the bill.” 

For free world citizens the monies mentioned are absurdly small but for prisoners surviving on a monthly budget of $30 the threat of having their account charged beyond the $5 medical visit fee discourages them from seeking treatment. You would think the Infirmary might be cleaner, that the smudged glass would be wiped of fingerprints, that you might not smell the mouths of others. Like homelessness and socks worn for three weeks. 

“This form is idiotic,” Krystal says, sinking a tortilla chip in a hot, red-salsa pond. “There’s two stupid skinny lines to explain the reason for the request. “What am I supposed to say? Episodes?” 

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To witness Krystal undergoing an episode frightens those around her. Krystal’s eyes widen and the pupils swallow the irises. “Where is the bathroom,” she asks in a little girl’s voice. Is this amnesia or a seizure? The leftover voice belongs to a blonde waif wearing a white dress. After years in Maximum Compound, Krystal knows where all the bathrooms are but the child of long ago seems lost. After Lucy leads her into the bathroom, Krystal turns to her and asks almost in a whimper, “Do you love me, Mommy?” Lucy answers, “Yes.” Where has Krystal gone? An apartment of soiled carpets where sounds travel through flimsy sheetrock walls. An apartment where the mother’s hardly there and the bathroom’s the only safe place. Where there’s mold and drip and three hungry girls share a bed. Into the same nowhere she emerged from, the little girl goes back. Krystal returns. Like birds her eyes graze the ceiling. “How did I get in the bathroom?” During this fugue state when she blacks out and no longer knows where she is, she tries to clutch others, she calls the walls by her sister’s name. She stumbles. When she returns to herself, she’s frightened and confused, she has to pee or she may have already peed on herself. Her regular breathing returns. Once again she’s safe. 

This weekend is not good. I’ve had back-to-back seizures. They took me to Saint Francis Hospital for an MRI. Yes, they transport us in shackles.

—Krystal Riordan, Inmate #661387

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Sometimes smells accompanying the episodes. The black odor of burning leaves. Whiskey aftershave. Who comes in the night? Her uncle. Incest can live its whole life in damp knots of leaves and in the tangling brush of a bed shared by three sisters. Alongside the creek of her Connecticut childhood the molestation flows. It lodges in her like a foul-smelling tavern of swarthy stone and timbers thick as an uncle’s arm. When the smells come to Krystal she enters the jagged dark of her uncle’s touching. A rock, a place of cold, her uncle’s cigarette dropping its icy ash, flakes of snow, large five-pointed stars burning out in her flesh. 

Soon Lucy knows it’s something. The lump is growing, becoming tender. She fills out the Medical Request Form again and asks the officers to take her to the Medical Unit as soon as possible, not three weeks hence. They ignore her, tell her to fill out the form that she’s already submitted twice. Baring her underarm, she shows them the lump. No response. They’re bored. The growth invades her sleep, absorbing her psyche. Another week goes by and she still hasn’t been seen. Lucy funnels her medical request up the officer hierarchy and shows off her lump to lieutenants and sergeants. It goes on and on, the show-and-tell, the officers ignoring her.

At last, sick of hearing the rumblings, they escort Lucy to the Medical Unit. The nurse examines her and then the doctor passes judgment. She’ll need an MRI and a biopsy at St. Francis Hospital. Lucy’s scheduled for tests, although inmates are never told when their appointments will be, in the event they’re planning an escape. 

If you leave EMCF for the hospital or any doctor’s appointment even if you are lacking a heart beat you will be shackled and handcuffed. 

—Lucy Weens, Inmate #922870C

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Lucy rides in the doggie wagon, cuffed and shackled, head bowed, the 52-minute ride from Clinton to Trenton through the hardwood stands of hackberry and honey locust, the picture-perfect landscape, which she can hardly see. Trenton rises. New Jersey’s colorless capitol, a church steeple, the interstate’s exhaust grime. Government buildings, squat courthouses, traffic floating by. St. Francis Hospital. Prisoners are walked in the front door. The officer accompanying them orders them to not look at bystanders. “Keep your eyes straight ahead. Stop.” Every head in the lobby turns as Lucy shuffles into the waiting room in shackles and handcuffs. A mother pulls her daughter out of Lucy’s path and actually covers her child’s eyes with her hands. What am I? People staring as if the sight of her soils them. Does my skin glisten and smell goaty?  Shame sinking her into the earth.

I have a mass the size of a nickel in the lump on my arm. It is embedded in the center of the lump, in the fatty tissue. It IS cancerous.

—Lucy Weens, Inmate #922870C 

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The cancerous cells are cut out and a hysterectomy performed on the 36-year old at Robert Wood Johnson in New Brunswick. Shuffling in her shackles and handcuffs down the beige halls, she smiles at the red carpet welcome mat. Welcome, what a beautiful word. It glows. The hospital is much more relaxed than St. Francis, and it’s likely some of the staff have friends or relatives in prison. She’s treated as if she’s human. 

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Upon her return home, she’s given her bedroll to carry across the compound. The Medical Unit refuses her request for a pain killer—not even a Motrin. Still hurting, Lucy returns to the Yard where inmates congregate. She meets Krystal, who has been worried about her best friend’s recovery. The hysterectomy is only a week and a day old and no one in Medical warns her about her bladder dropping and urine leakage. Lucy sits among 30 other women in their beige uniforms and she’s afraid to get up because pee is trickling down her thighs. “To hell with the Medical Unit,” Krystal says. “I’m going to pee, too. You’re not going to be alone.” Krystal pees on herself and the two friends stand up and walk hand in hand inside. 

No one is giving me any answers on why all of a sudden I started to get seizures. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s all the black mold and asbestos I breathe in all the time. These buildings are so old and so moldy. The Medical Department here is horrible.

—Krystal Riordan, Inmate #661387

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The Medical Unit finally agrees to an MRI and the doggie wagon transports a shackled and handcuffed Krystal to Saint Francis Hospital where her brain undergoes testing. A diagnosis, albeit a tentative one, is given. She’s experiencing seizures but why remains a mystery. Epilepsy? Brain abnormality? A tumor? More tests are required to discover the underlying condition. One of the doctors tells Krystal that her symptoms suggest a very uncommon seizure that only happens in women. Rhett Syndrome, which manifests itself in childhood with loss of muscle tone and diminished crawling and walking. This in a girl, an all-star basketball player, seems wildly off the mark. Soon she should be going for an EEG when electrodes will be attached by thin wires to her scalp. 

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The soon has yet to happen and the EEG has never been performed.

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At EMCF there exists a Puppies Behind Bars program. Inmates with excellent records are selected to raise and train puppies to be therapy dogs for cancer sufferers, companion animals for veterans suffering from PTSD, and Seeing Eye dogs for the blind. To be one of those inmates is a hope for many women. Not only is there the joy of being with an animal whose affection hinges not on how much Commissary you can buy them, but a sense that your work will give something to the world. The puppies are fed lean beef and veal, their beds thicker and softer than the thin pads the inmates are given to sleep on. The dogs are allowed outside time and receive visitors, and when they go to the veterinarian they’re neither caged nor transported in a doggie wagon but a regular vehicle where they’re taught to ride in the back seat.