Chocolate Quake (3 page)

“Nonsense. And why are you calling me Professor Blue? You’ve been married to my son for God knows how many years. Isn’t it about time—”

“You’ve never suggested that I call you anything else.” I was so embarrassed and irritated that I continued, “What did you have in mind? Mother Blue?”

She gave me a withering look and replied, “I’ll have to think about it. Although thinking is hard to do with competing televisions in the day rooms and dormitories, not to mention the hubbub of my fellow prisoners, most of whom are miserably uneducated. The situation of the guards, however, is pathetic. I’m hoping to organize them while I’m here, and of course, I’m telling the prisoners to take their problems to the center
before
they end up in jail. Many are drug addicts, and we do refer addicted women to clinics. More than you’d imagine are mothers, and we have services for mothers in all sorts of situations. This experience has motivated me to insist that a service for women coming out of jail be organized.”

“Don’t you think we should talk about why you’re here?” I interrupted.

“You got a cigarette?” asked the man in the next area.

“Sorry, but I don’t smoke,” I replied.

“Tell him that smoking isn’t allowed, and that it’s bad for his health,” my mother-in-law said into her phone. “He should quit immediately and get a chest X ray. The city has free medical services for those who can’t afford them.”

By then I’d got a second look at him and didn’t want to tell him anything. He had tattoos from shoulder to wrist on both arms, which were fully displayed because he was wearing a shirt whose sleeves had been torn off. However, Professor Blue insisted, so I told him. He responded by calling me a nasty name, after which Deputy Jones hauled him away, and the woman he had been visiting screamed at Professor Blue. “About the events that resulted in your arrest—” I began.

“I suppose you could call me Vera,” she said, not sounding happy about it.

I nodded reluctantly. “Well . . . ah . . . Vera, just what—”

“Typical police inefficiency,” she snapped. “I didn’t kill Denise Faulk. I just found her. When I saw her lights on, I stopped at her office—with the idea of renewing our discussion on funding a library of feminist books for our clients. There she was on the floor, covered with blood and moaning, so I called down the hall for help and did what I could for her—trying to stop the bleeding, administering artificial respiration when she stopped breathing. Then other people came in and called 911, a detective arrived from the second floor, and the uniformed police and paramedics finally showed up, much too late, and then the detective who decided that I was the attacker since I was covered with blood. Now, does that make sense? If I’d wanted to kill the woman, I’d have done it and left instead of getting myself covered with blood trying to save her.”

“And she died?” I asked, horrified.

“Try to think logically, Carolyn. I wouldn’t be charged with murder, if she hadn’t.”

All right. If my mother-in-law wanted logical thinking, I could provide that. “But she was alive when you got there? Did she say anything?”

“She said
books.
With blood in her mouth, even that word was hard to understand. I certainly hope she didn’t have AIDS. I’m told San Francisco has a high infection rate.”

“They’re mostly male,” I said. “There’s evidently a whole district inhabited by male homosexuals, and they call unprotected sex with each other ‘the gift of love.’ Jason read me an article about that. I must say that I was shocked and disheartened.”

“I don’t know why you’d be shocked. Men, straight or gay, haven’t an ounce of sense when it comes to their penises,” said my mother-in-law sharply.

Over the phone I could hear women on the other side of the glass commenting on Vera’s opinion of men. One said, “You got that right, Mama,” to which my mother-law-law replied, “I am not your mother, young woman.”

“More like my gran’ma,” retorted the voice.

“You see what I have to put up with,” Vera muttered. “Inane wit and abominable pronunciation and grammar.”

“Up yours,” someone on the other side of the glass shouted.

Oh dear,
I thought. Bad enough to be in jail, but my mother-in-law seemed bent on making enemies of everyone in sight.

4

A Much-Interrupted Tale of Arrest

 

“I
was telling you
about Denise,” my mother-in-law continued. “She repeated the word
books
while I tried to stanch the bleeding with Kleenex. Not a successful en deavor, but that’s all I had at the time.”

“What do you think she meant?” I asked.

“I assume she was referring to the reason for my visit.”

“But how could she know why you were visiting?”

“Because that’s what we’d discussed the last time I saw her. Books.”

“Did you hear anything before you went in or see anyone in the hall?”

“Carolyn, I hope you’re not planning to investigate this yourself. I know you and Jason have had some strange experiences with criminals in your recent travels, but that does not make you a detective. I’d be quite embarrassed to think my daughter-in-law was bumbling around, asking questions about Denise’s death. The police will find out what really happened.”

“But they’ve already arrested you. Obviously, they think you did it and they needn’t investigate further. Have you been arraigned?”

“Of course not. It just happened Thursday—or perhaps Friday morning. I’m not sure what the time was when they finally took me to the booking facility. My lawyer tells me that the District Attorney’s office has forty-eight hours, not counting the weekend, to decide whether they want to change the charge or drop it.”

“They ain’t gonna drop no murder charge, ole lady,” shouted a woman from down the row.

“Nonsense,” Vera replied, and to me, “No doubt by Tuesday—”

“You’ve been in here since Thursday, and could still be here on Tuesday?”

“Please don’t repeat everything I say, Carolyn. These visits are limited to twenty minutes.”

“Are the accommodations . . . are they—”

“Dreadful. A woman my age should not be expected to wear such revealing clothes—”

“What you care, Chiquita?” called a Hispanic prisoner. “You ain’t got tits no more.”

“Or share a barred dormitory cell with three other women, none of whom have any respect for age or education,” my mother-in-law continued, quite unfazed by the rude comments. “Nor should I be expected to jog around a rooftop three times a week. I have already lodged a number of protests and shall certainly lodge more. For one thing, I want to teach a class in the women’s section, Feminist Awareness in the Twenty-First Century. I’ve never encountered a group more in need of such training, —”

“Fuck that,” a different voice echoed in the telephone.

“But the jail authorities say that a prisoner can’t teach, no matter how woefully uninformed these poor inmates are about women’s rights and other matters that should be of concern to them. The jail offers them classes in creative writing—poetry, no less—and safe sex. Of course, the latter is useful, although you’d think people would know about safe sex. But
poetry
?”

“Perhaps there’s a therapeutic value in learning self-expression,” I suggested. Actually, I found the creative writing class an interesting and promising idea.

“Poppycock. And then there is the food, which is quite unacceptable, and you know that I am not fussy about food. To give you an idea of how bad it is, some Irishman held a press conference after being jailed here and said that it was worse than what the English served to imprisoned terrorists.”

“What’s it like?” I asked. A recipe from the San Francisco jail. Now that would be an unusual addition to my column, “Have Fork, Will Travel.”

“The food meets state regulations, I’m told, which, if true, must be very minimal. I’m not the only person in the women’s section who considers the meals tantamount to cruel and unusual punishment. Of course, many are complaining about not being served their racial or ethnic cuisines—soul food, tacos, that sort of thing—although it seems to me that we get too much of it. When I said so, my fellow inmates responded very in temperately. The female population is approximately 50 percent black and 30 percent Hispanic. The rest of us are white and Asian.”

Heaven help us,
I thought.
She’s fomenting labor unrest among the guards and insulting members of the minority jail population. We have to get her out of here.

“Don’t look so alarmed, Carolyn. I’m perfectly capable of adjusting to unusual situations, especially when I’m in a position to do underprivileged women some good. Few in the academic world have the opportunity to spend time in jail. But then I was telling you about my arrest: the homicide detectives took me to their enclave on the fourth floor and asked me the same questions repeatedly. As if they thought I’d tell them something different if they asked often enough. Then they walked me underground to the booking facility where deputy sheriffs searched me for weapons, took my fingerprints and photo, and left me for several more hours in a cell by myself. Evidently I got private facilities because I was considered dangerous.

“I must say that I was happy to be alone. Too bad my quarters weren’t soundproofed. The holding cells were full of drunken, foul-mouthed persons, many of whom were throwing up and screaming at one another.”

“But didn’t they let you have a lawyer?” Her description of the situation was horrifying.

“Of course, I called Margaret Bryce Hanrahan, the center’s lawyer, but she wasn’t available until the next morning, and I really didn’t see the sense in asking for a public defender. If I weren’t donating my time to the clinic, I wouldn’t be in jail, would I? My feeling is that they owe me legal representation.”

“But does this lady know anything about criminal law?”

“If she doesn’t, someone in her husband’s firm will. She quit there because they weren’t making women partners. Now they have to do all sorts of pro bono work for the clinic to appease her.” My mother-in-law smiled tightly.

“Later, the people in booking spent an inordinate amount of time asking me questions about my gang affiliations and my criminal record. On both counts I had little to offer, so I was turned over to someone who was trying to decide whether I might be psychotic or suicidal. I pointed out that, although not psychotic or suicidal, a woman my age might well drop dead from police harassment and lack of sleep.

“They must have taken that suggestion seriously because they walked me up here for a disgusting breakfast, after which I insisted on taking a nap rather than attending a seminar on breaking a drug habit.”

The guard had just announced that we had one minute left, so I asked for the telephone number of the lawyer.

“I don’t see why you need that, Carolyn. What you should do is move into my apartment, where I can call you collect. You’ll be there awaiting word from me. Presumably, I can leave messages on my own answering machine, which you can retrieve, if you really have to go out.”

“But how, if we’re not home and there’s no one to accept a collect call—”

“I’ll purchase a phone card at the commissary if necessary. The telephone charges are outrageous. Over three dollars just for a connection and three minutes.”

“At least tell me the name of the lawyer,” I begged, afraid it might have been erased from the answering machine.

“There’s no need.”

“Very well, Vera, I’ll tell Jason that you refused to let us help you,” I said sternly. “I won’t even tell him about the apartment and the phones.”

My mother-in-law looked astonished. “Goodness, Carolyn, you just threatened me. I believe you’re developing a bit of spunk in your middle years. But don’t let that persuade you that you should wander around San Francisco trying to investigate this foolish mistake by the police. They can figure it out on their own. One of the homicide detectives on my case is a woman, so I’m quite optimistic—”

“You gotta leave, ma’am,” said Deputy Kinesha Jones. On the other side of the glass, deputies were bearing down on Vera.

“Her name,” I demanded in the voice I had used when the children were going through rebellious stages.

“Just tell her, you old bat, so we can get her out of here,” snapped the deputy, but it was too late. The telephone had been yanked from Vera’s hand, and she was dragged roughly to her feet.

“Well, never mind, honey,” said Deputy Jones. “I can get you her lawyer’s name. She ain’t much nicer with family than anyone else, is she?”

“Thank you so much for your help,” I replied, and allowed myself to be escorted away.

5

Citizen Cake

 

D
eputy Jones found
both home and office numbers for the lawyer, Margaret Bryce Hanrahan.
Quite an impressive name,
I thought, hoping that her credentials would prove as impressive. First, I called her home number from a public phone booth on the first floor of the Hall of Justice and was told that Mrs. Hanrahan was at the center catching up on work she’d missed Wednesday and Thursday because she’d been passing a kidney stone. Well, that explained why she hadn’t come to Vera’s rescue Thursday night. Kidney-stone passage, as I understand it, is a very painful experience.
Poor woman,
I thought as I dialed her office number; and after such a debilitating experience, she’d gone right out the next morning to help Vera.

When a booming, low-pitched female voice answered the telephone, I introduced myself and mentioned my visit to my mother-in-law in jail. “I thought I should talk to you as soon as possible since you are her lawyer.”

“Well, phooey. When I heard your name, I hoped you were calling to say Vera wanted another lawyer.”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Ah well. Then we do need to talk. Since I’m in the mood for something sweet, let’s meet at Citizen Cake.”