Jennifer Clement - Prayers for the Stolen

Yes, I said. In Acapulco people steal turtle eggs.

Luna said we had to hurry and give Georgia back her phone. She’ll never lend it again if we don’t quickly give it back. She’s counting the minutes.

We left our cell and went back to the large room where the inmates gathered together. It was late afternoon and some of the prisoners were taking workshops. Classes were offered in collage, painting, computers, reading and writing.

In the room every other inmate was having her hair done. Two women were sitting in front of a small mirror gluing false eyelashes onto their upper eyelids.

Georgia was sitting at a table with Violeta. I handed her the phone hidden in the chocolate-bar wrapping and thanked her.

No problem, Princess, she said. You’re my princess so you can have it anytime.

Yes, thank you.

She’s getting her birth certificate here, right? Georgia asked Luna. You told her?

Yes, Luna said.

How old are you?

I’m sixteen.

You know you don’t have to be here, right? The law says you’re still a child, Princess.

My mother will be bringing my birth certificate. She knows.

You have to get out before you’re eighteen or you’ll never get out. Isn’t this true?

Violeta nodded her head. That’s what happened to me. I came in at seventeen, but I was sentenced to thirty years when I was eighteen!

Make sure you get out before you’re eighteen! When’s your birthday?

Not until November.

So you have plenty time, Georgia said. But hurry up. Hurry! I’m telling you this because you’re my princess.

Violeta coughed. Her hands were on her hips and her long fingernails curled toward her stomach.

If you stay here you have to imagine that there is nothing else but this. Nothing else exists but this jail and the women in it. If you think that there is anything else, you won’t survive, Violeta said in a hoarse smoker’s voice.

Damn, you don’t need to tell her that! What are you trying to do, break her heart? Georgia said.

Yes. Yes. She needs a broken heart, Violeta said.

That night there was nothing to do in the cell but lie in bed and talk to Luna. Some women had radios in their rooms, but Luna had nothing. There was no light, as she didn’t have money to buy a light bulb for the fixture in the ceiling. She bought toilet paper by the square.

I lay in my bunk bed in the dark above Luna on my cement bed, which had no mattress. The room still smelled acrid from the fumigation. Luna’s sweet voice came to me from the bunk below.

When I look at Georgia I remember my mother once told me that rain falling while the sun is shining causes freckles, she said.

That’s what makes a rainbow.

Yes, but also freckles.

Why is Violeta in here?

She’s killed many men but she’s in here because she killed her father. She does not regret it. She will tell you this over and over again. She has no regrets. She’s happy to be here. Her father killed her mother. Violeta did it for her mother and everyone agrees she did the right thing.

Has she been in here a long time?

Yes. Her father never hugged her but when she killed him, as he died, he held on to her. She says she had to kill him for him to hug her.

She doesn’t seem to like me.

She loves Georgia. She even made a collage for her as a present.

Luna explained that some of the inmates liked to take the collage workshop. It was given by a man, an artist, who had been teaching at the jail for years.

We cut out things from magazines, glue them on cardboard, and tell the stories of our lives. Will you come too? she asked.

Yes. Of course.

When you make a collage, you can really admire yourself.

I could hear Luna swallow and turn in the bunk beneath mine.

And what about Aurora? I asked. Why is she here?

Aurora. Aurora. Aurora. Luna said her name like a sigh.

Why is she here?

Aurora put the rat poison in the coffee.

The next morning when I opened my eyes the first thing I saw was the word Tarzan carved into the wall. It was as if the wall was tattooed to remind me where I was not. There were no birds, or plants, or the scent of overripe fruit.

Luna was already up and I heard her moving around. She sounded like a squirrel beneath me. I could hear her rummaging through plastic bags or dumping them out and scratching through them.

Damn, someone stole it, she said. Damn. Damn.

I didn’t have the energy to ask what she was missing. I lay in silence. I heard a baby crying down the hall and I thought of the list on the blackboard in the administration office. There were seventy-seven children in this jail and in the morning they made a lot of noise.

Yesterday, when we had walked around the jail, Luna had taken me past two small rooms that were the children’s school. Children could be in jail with their mothers until the age of six. The women got pregnant during their conjugal visits, which the jail allowed. Some of them also got pregnant because they were hired out as prostitutes by the guards at the criminal courts and tribunals. These encounters took place in the bathrooms.

Inside of the jail’s makeshift school a poster of a tree was pinned to the wall. If you are born and have grown up in jail, you have never seen a tree. There were also flashcards taped to a board that showed images of a bus, a flower, and a street. There was a flashcard of the moon.

Damn, Luna said again beneath me. Did you steal my lipstick?

I said, Jesus, Luna, who could want your jailbird lipstick with your jailbird saliva all over it?

The rustling below me stopped.

She did not know that it was my mother who had just spoken out of my mouth.

I climbed down from my bunk, sat on the edge of Luna’s bed, and watched her make up her face.

When she’d finished, she placed her rouge and mascara in a plastic sandwich bag and pushed it under the bed. Then she turned and held my chin with her hand and looked at me.

You will see your mother soon and begin to get out of here. Get through these days, Ladydi. Don’t fall down and scrape your knees yet, she said.

Why are you here? You have not told me. Will you get out soon?

Come to the collage workshop. It’s fun. We all go.

Who?

Well, Aurora, Georgia, and Violeta and a few others of course. Ladydi, let’s go.

I slipped on my flip-flops and followed her down the corridor.

On the plastic worktables were stacks of magazines, pieces of cardboard, kindergarten scissors, and tubs of glue.

The teacher introduced himself and told me to look through the magazines and cut out images that would then make up a story I wanted to tell. His name was Mr. Roma. He had been giving these workshops at the jail for years. The reason many of the prisoners liked to take his class was that they made collages about their own lives but also because they were fascinated by Mr. Roma. He was a painter. His hands were speckled with white oil paint. He had long, light brown curly hair that he tied into a ponytail. He was about fifty years old.

As Mr. Roma showed me to a worktable and pulled out a stool for me, a few other women came in and sat at other worktables. They were all dressed in blue. Some shook the teacher’s hand and others kissed him on the cheek.

Luna walked over to a cupboard where sheets of cardboard were stacked on shelves and took out her collage. She held the cardboard between her teeth and picked up a pair of scissors and glue. She sat beside me. She managed to get all her materials organized by using one hand and her front teeth.