‘It not so bad, y’know.’
I scowled at her in my head; on my face I wouldn’t dare. She was terrifying. Everyone here was terrifying. I should not be in this place with these criminals and I knew, in deep down places, that I was going to come to some harm here.
‘M’ call Tina. Call me de welcoming committee,’ she said. She smiled, showing yellowing teeth that looked like they had once been straight and white and strong.
‘Led me give you some advice,’ she said.
I continued to prod at the mush on my plate. I hadn’t even attempted to cut the bread roll to butter it – it looked like a slab of brown marble and sounded like one when it had been dropped on to my tray.
‘You be awright, y’know, if you keep your head down. Don’t budder no one, and no one budder you. Y’hear?’
I nodded without really listening. ‘An’ Poppy da Ice Cream Girl be careful who your friends are, y’know. M’ talk to everyone who talk to me, me have no friends, friends, y’know.’
No, I don’t know, I thought. I have no idea what you’re talking about. But I nodded all the same. I nodded because she might leave me alone quicker if I did.
‘You keep yourself to yourself, it safer dat way, m’ promise you.’
That I understood and agreed with. I wasn’t going to befriend anyone in here. I was nothing like these people, they were not the sort of people I’d be friends with. I wasn’t going to be here that long anyway. What did I need friends for? Especially when they were all criminals.
‘You tink you better dan all of us, eh?’ Tina asked.
My cheeks flushed that she’d been reading my mind.
‘You not, y’know. Not in da eyes of da law. Dem screws, dey make sure you know it every single day. And dem udders, dey won’t like you lookin’ down on dem. You tink you better dan everyone else, fine, jus’ hide it better, girl. Hide it deep, for you own good.’
She was right, I had to be careful, I had to be really careful in here about what other people found out about me.
‘And listen carefully now, dis important: stay away from drugs.’
Drugs? Is she pulling my leg? Even if I was into drugs, how would I get them in here? I looked up at her, confused and sceptical. I thought she had some good advice, but she was clearly a bit doo-lally.
‘Girl, you face!’ she leaned forwards and lowered her voice. ‘Dere more drugs in here dan out dere, y’know. Jus’ be careful. When someone offer it to you, say no. It’s hard. You get so lonely and sad and scared in here, dat you want any-ting to make it feel better, to kill da bird. An’ dere udders who give you drugs first for free. To help you out, dey say. Dey jus’ want you to owe dem. Den they’ll be wanting you to get people to smuggle it in. An’ you do it, too. Once you got a habit, you do any-ting to get it. Any-ting. I seen nice gals, y’know? Like you. All nice and prim, wouldn’t say boo to a goose when dey get here. Den drugs get dem. And den, dem decrutching udder girls to get de drugs out and beating dem friends, making dem maddas smuggle in money and jewellery an’ tings to get de drugs.’
‘What’s decrutching?’ I asked.
‘You don’t wanna fin’ out, trust me. Jus’ stay away from de drugs. Dey is bad news all round, man, bad news.’
‘I’ll try to remember that.’
‘I mean it, y’know. An’ don’t do no favours for anyone. They be all nicey-nicey, tell you some sob story, ask to borrow you phonecard, for you to get dem som-ting from da canteen. Don’t do it. Everyone got a sad story. You start to do favours, dey take advantage. Or dey start to get you ready to smuggle drugs in for dem. Jus’ say no, to everyone and every-ting. Y’hear?’
I nodded. If I was to trust no one, then why was she helping me? I asked her this.
She smiled that wide, tarnished smile of hers again. ‘M’ tell all de new girls who look as scared as you do dis stuff. It’s what m’ want when m’ first got here. But, girl, dey never listen. Dey forget, dey don’t believe me, dey tink dey know better. At de end of de day, dey stupid. Are you stupid, Poppy da Ice Cream Girl? Dat is de question you have to ask yourself. You get yourself a job, keep ya head down, you be fine.’
‘What are you in for?’ I asked. She seemed so nice, kind, gentle. Like me, she was probably innocent and she didn’t belong here.
‘Dat’s anudder ting m’ mean to tell you, never ask dat. If someone gonna tell ya, dey tell ya. Not everyone as famous as you, y’know. But you hear tings, you always hear tings, and you find out eventually. Don’t ask doe.’
‘Sorry,’ I said.
‘Ain’t no ting. Me? M’ grow up with strict parents, m’ dada die, m’ madda and m’ we start rowin’. We row an’ we row an’ den me run away. M’ tink m’ big grown woman, m’ can survive on m’ own. An’ den me start up really nice, find a new yard, small job. M’ get involved with a man, nice white boy him, put m’ on drugs, put m’ on streets. Nice boy, rich parents. When m’ get arrested first time, him parents take care of him, bail him out, give de judge de speech about how he was corrupted by dis dirty black girl. Him walk. Me? Two stretch. Den in and out of prison. But dis time . . . I get five stretch for trying to smuggle drugs into the country. And life for killing the bastard that rape me to get his drugs out of me.’
Nausea rose like a tidal wave inside me, threatening to spill out of my mouth on to the table. I was sitting in front of a murderer. A real-life killer. She had killed someone, removed them from this earth and she didn’t seem ashamed of it. She said it, just like that. She seemed so nice, so innocent. But she was a drug addict, a prostitute and a killer. And I thought she was just like me.
‘Don’t look so shock dere Ice Cream Girl. M’ know m’ business. De man beat me an’ rape me. Even when he got him drugs he rape again and again. And me know de poe-leece no do nuffin’. I a prostitute, right? I do what I do so me don’t deserve to say no to a man. Me know de risks, right? I know all dis. I take it. He rape me an’ rape me an’ me take it. Den, he go and den he come back, he say he gonna fix me so no one ever look at me again, and I never have chil’ren. He try to hurt me, and m’ say no more. M’ no take it no more. M’ hit him, catch him off guard, m’ take him knife, m’ stab him to save m’self. Self-defence.’
‘Self-defence?’ I echoed.
‘Self-defence if you a nice rich, white girl, but not if you ex-prostitute wid accent. Dey only know abou’ de drug smuggling cos m’ tole dem. M’ try to be honest.’
What am I doing here? I asked myself. I was tempted to stand up on the table and scream it at the top of my lungs: ‘WHAT AM I DOING HERE?’
‘Poppy da Ice Cream Girl, don’t look so scared. You be fine, as long as you no stupid. And you no look so scared. De strong ones dey feed on you fear. Even when you strong yourself, you show fear at start, dey pick on you. Hide you fear, hide it good. You have you own room, dat easier.’ She stood up, picked up her tray. ‘Don’t be stupid Poppy da Ice Cream Girl, dat how tings work in here. You don’t be stupid, you stay safe. See ya.’
She walked towards a table of other black women, who all greeted her with a smile and they started chatting, the sound of their voices blurring into the general noise around me. The haze I’d been living in the past few days, ever since I left the hospital wing, descended again. I felt calm again. But Tina’s words stayed lodged in my head. ‘Don’t be stupid.’ She was a drug addict, a prostitute and killer. If there was anyone that would know how things worked in here it was her. I should listen to her.
Dear Poppy The Ice Cream Girl, (she’s written)
So, come on then, what’s it like out there? Is it as AWFUL as everyone says – haha!
Things are absolutely wonderful in here. Everything is exactly the same. And, of course, I wouldn’t have it any other way!
March, 1990
‘But why do I have to move, Miss?’ I asked the screw who had dropped a couple of black binliners on the floor of my room and told me to pack up because I was being ghosted. Not out of the prison, though – out of this room, off this
level, down to somewhere else.
I liked this landing – as much as I could like anything to do with this place. It was quieter up here with the other lifers, even though I was the by far the youngest of them on this level. Although, technically, I was a young offender and should have been with other offenders my age, they had no single rooms on that wing, and being famous and a lifer meant I was allocated a room of my own. My room – small and cramped and hideous with its cockroaches and creeping damp – was still my own space. It still meant I could dress alone after a shower, I could put things wherever I wanted. I could do whatever I wanted. All the rooms on the four landings below this one were shared rooms, a few dormitories on the lower level. I thought that being notorious had this going for it at least – why was that being ripped away from me too? They already had my freedom, why were they taking away something else as well?
‘Don’t ask questions, EX396798, just do as you’re told,’ she replied in her gravelly smoker’s voice.
My hackles rose at this screw’s use of my number. She loved doing that; loved to remind you that you don’t officially have your name any more, that since the moment you walked in here, you became a number. On every piece of paper that relates to you, that number has to be written. If they so chose, they could forgo noting down your God-given name at all and just use your number. This screw in particular also loved to use your number so you never forgot she had a long and detailed memory. Oh, and to remind you that she was a fucking bastard.
Sometimes I would be stopped short by how quickly I started to speak and think like the other prisoners: how easily I’d started to resent the prison officers, how quickly I started to swear, how I picked up the lingo. I had been here six months, was allocated to stay here, and sometimes I felt like the girls who’d been here years.
‘I haven’t done anything wrong, Miss,’ I stated, ‘I don’t see why I should move.’
‘I’ll be back in ten minutes, anything you haven’t packed gets sent to the incinerator. Got that?’ she said, her voice sounding more gravelly than it had two minutes ago. I was going to sound like that if I didn’t stop smoking. I’d only started since I’d been in here. But cigarettes were something to do, a silent but constant companion, another way to kill bird. I understood now what Tina meant about drugs being appealing. After a few months, when it dawns on you that even appeals can take years to come through, you start to look around for other things to occupy your time, your mind, your body. You look for escape routes wherever you can, anything to kill that bird called time.
‘Yes, Miss.’ I snatched up the bags then began to unpeel all the pictures and magazine pages I’d stuck with little globules of toothpaste to the noticeboard and walls of my room. That bastard screw wouldn’t even tell me where I was being ghosted to.
I soon found out: ‘Welcome, welcome to the party room,’ Tina said, flashing me her less-than-perfect smile and opening her arms wide to show me my new quarters. ‘I’m so glad we are going to be sharing,’ she said.
This, this move, was all down to her. In general, prisoners did not dictate such things, but I had a feeling this was down to her. She seemed to have some sway with the other prisoners but that obviously extended to the Big Luv, because look where I was. Away from my welcomed solitude to this. I’d never even shared with my sister when I was at home, now I was expected to do so with her, a complete stranger. An ex-tom, ex-smackhead, and murderer. Don’t get me wrong, I had a lot of time for Tina, I had a lot of respect, but that didn’t mean us sharing would be a good idea. Especially not when I had my appeal coming up and I had to prepare myself mentally for it. It’d probably be the first time I would see my dad since I’d been in here. Mum came to visit every so often, so I’d seen her, but not Granny Morag. And Granny Morag probably wasn’t going to be at the appeal because she’d be taking care of Bella and Logan who certainly wouldn’t be coming. I would see Dad, though.
I needed time and space to prepare myself, not this. Not this sharing nightmare.
Tina already had her bed picked out, her locker beside her bed had a few cosmetics on top, all neatly lined up, and a Good News Bible resting proudly on the edge of the locker closest to her bed. The sink in the corner had her toothbrush and a tube of Crest toothpaste sitting in a tin mug. Her noticeboard was covered in postcards from Jamaica and photos of her family. I only had a few photos of my family. A few I had hastily packed the night before the last day of the trial, when something in me told me to at least pack a bag in case. I packed it, but had left it at home. Serena’s family, apparently, had a bag with them. She’d been ready to go down, which is maybe where I went wrong. I stupidly believed that being innocent meant I’d be sent home with the Court’s apologies.
The metal-framed bed on the opposite side of the room to Tina’s was neatly made up, with hospital corners and the white sheet folded down at the top over the thin, grey, scratchy prison-issue blanket. I was touched: she’d obviously done it – there was no way in hell a screw would do anything like that.
‘I don’t understand what I’m doing here,’ I said, sitting down on my new bed with the two binbags of my belongings slumped beside my feet.
‘Poppy the Ice Cream Girl, sometimes it’s better not to question these things. Sometimes it’s better to just embrace it.’
‘How can I embrace something that’s basically a loss of privileges?’
‘Did they say you were losing privileges?’
‘No, but this isn’t exactly good, is it?’
‘People would kill to be in here with me. Even when there’s overcrowding they don’t put just anyone in here because they know what an honour it is to be with me. Stop complaining or I might think you’re not really my friend.’
‘You were the one who warned me off being friends with people in here, now you’re saying that we’re friends?’
‘Every young girl who comes in here for the first time needs to be told to stay away from “friends”. It stops them making stupid mistakes and it makes them take their time to suss people out before they get to know them. Otherwise, you would all become friends with the first person who smiles at you. And a snake’s smile can be very pretty. Very pretty indeed.’
I flopped back on the cardboard-like mattress, stared up at the grey-cream ceiling with its cracked and peeling paint. My appeal had to go well. They had to quash my conviction and set me free – I couldn’t take much more of this.
‘Let me tell you the rules for this room,’ Tina said.
Rules, of course there were rules. Everything had a rule in here. ‘We don’t sleep too late, we get up, sweep the floor, mop it with bleach every other day – that helps to keep the cockroaches away. Tidy your bed, keep your things neat. You wash up anything you use straight away. We can take it in turns to get Sunlight soap from the canteen to wash underwear. We try to get as much time outside as possible – it’s good for the mind and soul to be outside in God’s fresh air. We don’t play the radio too loud. And we have as much fun as possible.’
‘This isn’t a holiday camp, and we’re not here for fun,’ I said.
I heard Tina rustling around in her locker and then, after a fashion, the click-click of plastic on plastic. She was probably knitting, a lot of women did that in here to keep sane and to keep them off the fags. I could not summon the energy nor will to lift my head to see what she was making.
‘You know what your problem is, Poppy?’ she said. ‘You want to be rescued. You long to be rescued but you’re not willing to do it for yourself. And you cannot see a good rescue when it hits you over the head.’
‘You’ve rescued me?’ I asked. ‘How? Because all I can see are four walls and a window with bars on it and a metal door I’m not allowed a key to.’
‘You’re so pathetic sometimes, I wonder why I like you,’ she replied. She obviously avoided answering my question because we both knew she had not rescued me. She had probably just called in some favours to get herself a roommate. ‘Tell me what your favourite colour is so
I can make you a blanket for your new bed.’
‘Green,’ I said.
‘Baby blue it is then,’ she replied, and the clickity-click got faster.
‘Hang on,’ I said to her, lifting my head to watch her sit cross-legged on her bed, knitting, ‘what happened to your accent? You don’t sound West Indian any more, you sound like Northern Shona, like you’re from Yorkshire.’
‘I am,’ she said with a grin as she scrutinised the line of stitches she was creating. ‘Would you have listened to a word someone with my real accent was saying? Would you heckers! To someone like you, a Jamaican accent is probably a bit scary, but definitely unforgettable. And before you ask, yes, everything I told you about my story and why I’m here is true. Every word. Every bleeding word.’
I rested my head back on the mattress again. Shamefully, she was right, her real accent would have been lost in the white noise in my head – her Jamaican accent, being so alien to me, kept repeating in my head when I got into a situation that she had warned me against.
‘And by the way, you say “Caribbean”, not “West Indian”.’
‘OK,’ I said. After a few seconds, I raised my head again. ‘I really don’t like blue that much.’
‘It’s only a scarf,’ she countered. ‘I’m sure you’ll love it.’
‘A scarf? You said a blanket a minute ago.’
‘Girl, do you think I’m going to use up all my spends on wool to make a blanket? Are you mad?’
I’ve managed to knit myself a new roommate. She’s much quieter and neater than you, but she doesn’t seem to get it when I tell her to wash my smalls, too. So, in that way, you were far better. Not that I want you back, or anything.
April, 1990
‘It’s true,’ one woman said to the other.