Monday

This is how it starts, at least this is how Jake remembers it. It’s all a blur from the moment he was pulled out of his brother’s car and arrested to here. Some old geezer in a black robe pronounced him guilty and boom, he was handcuffed and led outside to a van that took him to prison. Then he was taken inside and in out and out of doors through badly lit hallways where bulbs hissed and fluttered at him and the other prisoners who are also along for this particular ride. The guards don’t say hello, but instead repeat the same orders they’ve given to a million souls. Jake is a number now instead of a name. He feels less human, like he’s nothing, like he’s owned. He feels it with each step as he continues through a series of doors that open and shut with crashes and jerks, down hallways that curve like snakes to a room where other guards tell him to take off his clothes, before they probe him for drugs and contraband. Then they tell him to take a shower and then hand him a uniform covered in black and white stripes.

The cold swiftness of this leaves some of the other prisoners trembling. Some of them shiver thinking of the rigid metallic jail cell doors slamming shut on their freedom outside. But it isn’t going to be like that for Jake. He’s convinced himself that he’s tough enough to stand it even as he feels the eyes of his cellmate tracing him from behind. “I’ll kill him if he tries to touch me,” he thinks.

“You got nothing to worry about, kid,” says his cellmate, as if he’d read Jake’s mind. “I’m going to take real good care of you. Better than your ma even.”

“I don’t need to be taken care of. I can take care of -”

“No you can’t, kid. You couldn’t even take care of yourself out there. That’s why you’re mine now.” His cellmate walks across the narrow cell. “You can fight all you want, but in the end you’ll still be mine.” He narrows the space between them and inhales deeply taking the scent of fresh meat into his nostrils. “I’ll wait ‘til you’re sleepin’ if a have to.”

All of Jake’s toughness starts dying just then as a poisonous taste fills his mouth and searing fingers of anxiety of bloom beneath his skin.

“The flipside of that is that everyone here knows and respects me. I’m the boss of this cellblock, so no one’s gonna bother you or they’ll have to answer to me,” Jake’s cellmate continues.

Photographs of various women smile perpetually even though they are ripped and torn after repeatedly being taken down when there was no one available to “be the girl.” Jake wonders if his roommate knows what the names of the woman are as he fixes on their constant smiling gazes. He knows it doesn’t matter, but it provides an escape from the fact that hands are encircling him and fingers are secreting themselves inside his pants, pushing deep and hurtfully into his buttocks.

“No!” says Jake as his cellmate laughs then spits.

“You got nowhere to go, kid. Door’s locked ‘til mornin’. So you push me away and then what? What’s gonna happen is gonna happen. Might as well face that right now.” He licks his lips between sentences. “An’ callin’ the guard ain’t gonna do nuthin’. Guard don’t care what happens to ya. I’m all you got.”

“Please,” says Jake, “I don’t want no trouble. I’m innocent. I didn’t do nuthin’. I was only driving the car, I didn’t rob nobody. I didn’t know what they were doin’ in there. I was just sittin’. I don’t belong here!”

“We’re all innocent, kid, and none of us belong here…not even me.”

Suddenly Jake is free again and time has passed. The warmer climate has been replaced by winter frost when everything is blanketed with snow and seems fresh and clean. Some red roses blossom like a blood pool on the snowy ground. He doesn’t question the doubtfulness of the scene, but allows himself this suspension with the madness of the real world. He approaches a table filled with all of his favorite foods, but instead selects some grapes from a nearby vine. He doesn’t question the fact that grapes don’t bloom in the snow, but savors their succulence which he lets trickle down his chin. He feels revived in this moment of abstract freedom. He doesn’t allow himself to notice the thump, thump, thump of his body jerking wildly or the searing pain of being internally torn. A skeleton waves at him from across the snowy scene and he knows he can no longer pretend. This is not real. This is nothing but a poor attempt to escape the horrors of prison life and the reality of rape.

After it is over and Jake is bruised blue while lying fetal and invaded on his cot. His cellmate watches him while washing himself in the toilet.

“None of us belong here kid. I was like you once; green and stupid. Thought I could talk my way out of anythin’. Thought I was tougher than anyone, but some old prison boss taught me the same lesson I just taught you. This is how it was for me, an’ it’s how it is for you. That’s just how it is. There’s no use fightin’ that fact.”

He throws Jake the toilet-wet washcloth, before rejoining him on the cot. “Clean yourself up, kid.”

Jake unconsciously obeys without a hint of emotion or care.

“Yeah you were green, an’ so was I once. Now you’re not. So just consider this your first little lesson and learn to make do. Hell it’s just Monday, by Friday you’ll be used to how things are and maybe you’ll even learn to love it.”

Jake does not hear him. He has disappeared into his wintery world where everything is white, untouched and clean, and flowers and grapes bloom and blossom in the snow.