Within These Walls

I never see them when they arrive. I wait with the guard, Henry Thompson, at central control until they are frisked for weapons and their valuables are checked into individual lockers. Something about feet spread and hands up affects even the smuggest among them. When the tour is over, I watch them pass through the massive iron gate and down the stone walkway where the green bus takes them back to their dull, uninspiring lives. They all bear the strides of people with somewhere to go and they move as fast as their judgmental feet will carry them.

I am not a gambling woman, but I would bet a week's canteen money that they are all afraid they might catch something from us if they linger one more moment than they have to. They all look the same to me. They cannot hide their thoughts; their condemnation is locked into one collective set of eyes and faces. I say nothing, but deep inside I want to scream. For eighteen years my screams have died within these walls of stone.

Prison is a mental and physical universe where time melts into the stale air and peeling walls. No amount of sunlight can ever penetrate the gloom that hangs like a pall all over the place. Some days I remember clearly and others I don't. Weeks and years blur into one dense and unforgiving blob, obliterating all but the feeling of having missed everything there is. Still, I know it was yesterday morning, Saturday to be precise, when one of the big men on the tour asked about HER. I almost gave it away, but almost doesn't count, does it? I took a deep breath and bit my tongue, for I did not wish to alarm anyone. I am a model prisoner. That's how I got this job guiding visitors around the parts of the old building with the square towers and round turrets that the state allows outsiders to see.