Danielle Steel - Malice

“Okay, girls.” A shrill whistle blew, and six female guards in uniform, wearing guns, lined up at the front of the room, looking like coaches on a ladies’ wrestling team, “Strip. Everything you have on in a pile on the floor at your feet. Down to bare-ass nothing, please.” The whistle blew again to stop them from talking, and the woman with the whistle introduced herself as Sergeant Freeman. Half of the guards were black, the others white, which was fairly representative of the mix of the prison population.

Grace carefully took her sweater off, and folded it on the floor at her feet. One of the officers had un-cuffed them, and now she was going around removing the circlet of steel around their waists that the chains were attached to, and the leg irons so they could remove their jeans. It was a great relief to have the leg irons off, and Grace slipped out of her shoes. She was surprised when the whistle blew again, and they told them all to take everything out of their hair, any rubber bands or bobby pins. They were to let their hair loose, and as she slipped the rubber band off her long ponytail, her dark auburn hair fell in a silken sheet well past her shoulders.

“Nice hair,” a woman behind her murmured, and Grace did not turn around to see her. It made her uncomfortable knowing the woman was watching her as she took the rest of her clothes off. And in a few minutes, all their clothes were in little piles on the floor, along with their jewelry, their glasses, their hair accessories. They were stripped entirely naked, as six guards walked among them, examining them, telling them to stand with their legs apart, their arms high, and their mouths open. Hands riffled through her hair to see if there was anything hidden there, and their hands were rough as they tugged at the long hair and moved her head from side to side. They shoved a stick in her mouth and moved it around, gagging her, and they had her cough and jump up and down, to see if anything fell out of anywhere. And then one by one, they had them stand in line, and get on a table with stirrups. Sterile instruments were used, and a huge flashlight to see if anything had been concealed in their vaginas. And as Grace stood in line, she couldn't believe that she had to do that. But there was no arguing with them, no discussion about what they would or wouldn't do. Ope scared girl tried to refuse and they told her that if she didn't cooperate, they'd tie her down, it was all the same to them, and then they'd throw her in the hole for thirty days, in the dark, buck naked.

“Welcome to Fairyland,” one of the familiars said. “Nice here, huh?”

“Ah, stop bitching, Valentine, you'll get your turn.”

“Shove it, Hartman.” The two were old friends.

“I'd love to. Wanna look when it's my turn?”

Grace's heart was pounding as she got on the table, but the exam was medical, and no worse than most of what she'd been through, it was just humiliating going through it with an audience, and half a dozen of the other women seemed to be eyeing her with interest.

“Pretty cute … here, little fishie, swim to Mama let's play doctor … can I take a look too?” She seemed not to hear them at all as she followed the rest of the line to the other side of the room and stood waiting for further instruction.

They led them to a shower room then, and literally hosed them down with near boiling water. They used insecticides on any area with hair, and sprayed lice shampoo on them, and then hosed them down again. At the end of it, they reeked of chemicals and Grace felt as though she'd been boiled in disinfectants.

Their belongings were placed in plastic bags with their names, anything forbidden had to be sent back at their own expense, or disposed of on the spot, like Grace's jeans, but she was pleased that she was allowed to keep her sweater. They were issued uniforms then, a set of rough sheets, many of which had blood and urine stains on them, and given a slip of paper with their B numbers and their cells, and then they were led away for a brief orientation as to the rules, and they were told that they would each be given job assignments the following morning. Depending on their jobs, they would be paid between two and four dollars a month for working, failure to show up for work would result in an immediate trip to the hole for a week. Failure to appear a second time would result in a month in the hole. Failure to cooperate generally would wind them up in solitary for six months with nothing to do and no one to talk to.

“Make it easy on yourselves, girls,” the guard in charge of orienting them said in no uncertain terms, “play it our way. It's the only way to go at Dwight.”

“Yeah, bullshit,” a voice whispered to Grace's right, but it was impossible to tell who it was. It had been a disembodied whisper.

In a way, they made it sound easy. All you had to do was play their game, go to work, go to chow, stay out of trouble, go back to your cell on time, and you'd do easy time and get out right on schedule. Fight with anyone, join a gang, threaten a guard, break the rules, and you'd be there forever. Try to escape and you were “dead meat hanging on the fence,” or so they said. They certainly made themselves clear, but there was more to it than just pleasing them, you had to live with the other inmates too, and they looked as tough as the guards, or worse, and they had a whole other agenda.

“What about school?” a girl in the back asked, and everyone jeered.

“How old are you?” the inmate standing next to her asked derisively.

“Fifteen.” She was another minor, like Grace, who had been tried as an adult, but they were rare here. Dwight was almost entirely for grown-ups. And surely for grown-up crimes. Like Grace, the other girl had been accused of murder, she had plea-bargained it down to manslaughter and saved herself from the death penalty. She had killed her brother, after he'd raped her. But now she wanted to go to school and get out of the ghetto.

“You've had enough school,” the woman standing next to her said. “What do you need school for?”

“You can apply after you've been here ninety days,” the guard said, and then moved on to explain what would happen to them if they ever had the bad judgment to participate in a riot. Just the thought of it made Grace's blood run cold, as the guard explained that in the last riot, they had killed forty-two inmates. But what if she got caught in the middle? What if she was taken hostage? What if she was killed by an inmate or a guard while she was just minding her own business? How was she ever going to survive this?

Her head was reeling as they finally walked her to her cell. They went in a single line, watched by half a dozen guards and hooted and jeered at by most of the inmates, standing on the tiers, looking down at them and squealing and laughing. “Hey, look at the little fishies … yum yum!” They blew kisses, they shrieked, the girl in front of Grace in the line was even hit with a flying Tampax, and Grace almost retched when she saw it. It was a place like nothing Grace had ever dreamed. It was your worst nightmare come to life. A trip to hell from which Grace could no longer imagine returning. She could still smell the insecticide on her face and hair, and as they stopped at the cell she'd been assigned to, she could feel her asthma starting to choke her.

“Adams, Grace. B-214.” The guard unlocked the door, signaled for her to step in, and the moment Grace had, she heard the door clang shut, and the key turn. She was standing in a space roughly eight feet square, there was a double bunk, and the walls were covered with pictures of naked women. There were cutouts from Playboy and Hustler and magazines Grace couldn't imagine that women would read, but they did here. Or at least, her roommate did. The lower bunk was neatly made, and with shaking hands, she set about making the top bunk, and put her toothbrush on a little ledge with a paper cup they'd given her. She'd been told that she had to buy her own cigarettes and toothpaste. But she didn't smoke anyway, she couldn't with her asthma.