36-years-old, two tattoos, visible scars, including one from a cesarean section. Maisley Hill. The officer notes that this is, indeed, her. He tells the inmate that she can put her clothes back on and watches as she takes her shoes from a cracked plastic tray.
Maisley knows the routine by now. Three years this time, she violated her parole. Every officer, every other inmate, said she would be back. They are trembling and staring and whispering, almost giddy to see her.
Arthur Willis. A 6’5 correctional officer who is smiling at the woman. He had been young and newly married when he first started working at Valdosta State Prison seven years ago. A replacement for a weaker CO who had his eyes gouged out during a prison riot. Maisley watched it while beige food and suicide proof clothing flung about in the air. When Willis had arrived at the penitentiary the next day, he smiled at her.
Maisley looks up at Willis and sees his toothy smile has gotten even more perverse.
•••
Sheri Boggs’s voice is shriveled by cigarettes. “They raised the price on those chips you like. Four hours on laundry just to buy one bag,” she chokes as Maisley fits her sheet onto her bed.
Sheri is sweet and sixty-seven years old. Her three life sentences mean she sees Maisley every single time she decides to dip back into the institution. This is the first time they are cellmates. They talk until lights out. A little bit after, as Maisley feels her breath under her stiff blanket, Sheri informs her of everything that changed while she was away.
Maisley uses her first call for her boyfriend. “Where’s the money?” she asks wrapping the cord around her index finger. The hallway has just been cleaned. It smells like bleach and something burnt.
“I thought you had someone else sending it to you,” Tyler lies. His voice is tired, and Maisley imagines him sitting in front of the TV with his feet up on the tattered leather of the recliner.
•••
Maisley uses Willis for commissary items. Or he uses her.
•••
Maisley is two months into her sentence when she is informed she has been transferred to another prison. Sheri wishes her well, says she’ll miss her with sunken eyes. Maisley was pregnant when she first entered the prison. The second time she was not. The third time Sheri finally spoke to her, she asked how her baby was. Maisley told her she didn’t know. They both had lost children, except Maisley’s son was given up for adoption, and Sheri’s twins were murdered along with their father. In the first-degree, according to Sheri’s record.
•••
The courtyard is beautifully untouched, Maisley’s favorite part of the Lonewater Correctional Facility. The early winter winds haven’t bitten at the grass yet. The women who work on it get paid $0.25 an hour.
In four months, Tri Tri, Maisley’s cellmate, hasn’t spoken to her even once. At first, Maisley suspected the girl didn’t know how to speak English. But apparently, she hasn’t spoken to anyone since she’s been here. Maisley wants to ask what she did, but she knows it doesn’t matter anyway.
Sheri’s letters stop coming one day. It was a heart attack. Maisley imagines her lying on her back in her dim bottom bunk. The bed made bellow her, her body stiff. If Maisley were still on that top bunk, she’d tell her good morning, throw her head off the side when she didn’t get an answer. See the woman’s cold skin, see her open eyes and then crawl back into her bed.
•••
Maisley hasn’t made any friends at the new prison yet. When you have two months in the hole, you don’t need friends. When you have two years, you do. A stocky red-headed woman steals the desert off of her plate every day. Tomorrow Maisley will not let her take it; she decides while staring up at the stone ceiling. Maisley’s mind travels to her son. She heard somewhere that if you leave babies outside of fire stations, they will be taken in, taken care of. When she was eighteen, she walked around with the newborn for three hours, searching for one of these elusive fire stations. The orphanage she found seemed like a better choice, the last choice.
•••
The woman, Bird, as they call her, has to be around Maisley’s age, at most 40. The cafeteria has the usual unintelligible rustle of noise. Maisley doesn’t go her usual route after getting her tray. She doubles back, finds one of the rounded tables partially empty, then starts towards it.
She can feel sweat on her palms, in her paper-thin shoes. She sits down in the now silent cafeteria. If Bird comes over here, she’s gonna make her look weak, Maisley thinks as she hears the footsteps approaching. Everyone but the guards, of course, are watching now.
Bird reaches for her plate, and as Maisley pushes her hand away, the older woman slams her head down into her tray, the food sticks to her. She feels a dent in the skin on her forehead.
Maisley here for credit card fraud. She was eighteen and trying to buy a car. She had a baby growing in her whether she was going to keep it or not. Then she was twenty and trying to buy plane tickets. The officer said to get a real job as he soiled her record. Then Maisley was twenty-three and trying to buy drugs. Twenty-four and Twenty-seven trying to sell them. Thiry-six and getting caught still. Each time she left prison with less than she came with.
•••
Bird is above Maisley. She hovers there to remind Maisley that in here, she is nothing.
•••
Before Maisley is released, she calls Tyler one last time. “The Price is Right” plays on his television in the background.
•••
Her apartment is how she left it three years ago, except it is not. She returns in the same clothes she left in to see the same canned goods in her cupboard. They have a layer of dust on them, but she imagines they are still the same inside. Tyler tells her the hot water is off before she goes to shower.
The window is dirtier now as well, Maisley decides. She stares outside as the cold water douses her naked body.
Tahira Bradley (she/her) is a senior English creative writing major at Georgia State University. Her other fields of study include 2D art, Korean, and linguistics. Pulling from these different areas and her own personal experiences as a queer Black woman, she enjoys writing diverse literature that is both inclusive and explorative.
Follow Tahira on Instagram: @hoodbabyhira