Flip-flops and Buttered White Bread

I won’t bother to tell you why I was arrested, or why on this particular day I chose to wear a black-and-white striped blouse with a black pleated miniskirt to work, an outfit I detested anyway because it was ill-fitting, although now that I think back, it must have been because I hadn’t done the laundry. Hell, maybe my electricity had been cut off. That had happened more than once. Maybe that’s why I love candles so much; they are not only decorative, they are useful. But I digress.

My manager stood up in his office at a little before lunchtime for my shift and motions at me to come in and see him. I put my phone in queue and, annoyed, go to see him. This will affect my call time and denomination for that day because I am not on an official break; surely he knows this. But he’s obviously in a hurry, judging by his mannerisms, so I step up the pace myself. He doesn’t even wait for me to get all the way into his glass cubicle of an office -- he meets me at the door and whispers:

I don’t know what’s going on, but you need to call someone and let them know you’re being picked up.

[giggle, snort] Picked up? Like I’m getting a promotion? Or my grandma is coming to get me because I’m sick? What?

Neither -- the police are downstairs and want me to escort you to their vehicle at the back loading dock.

I stand there agape, mouth wide open, because honest-to-God I have no idea what he is talking about, but this isn’t the first time I’ve been in trouble, so instead of asking, I do as he says.

I tell him I’m going to the bathroom right quick and he nods and I sprint for the bank of phones that are actually right between the women's and men's bathrooms. I have no desire to pee but I probably should have at least tried. But that was the least of my worries.

I dial up "Boris", my one-time boyfriend but long-time good friend, who is also a cop, and tell him what I’d heard. He didn’t know what was going on but he said he would find out while I was enroute downtown.

Well, fuck! I wanted him to just call them up and tell them, look, I know her, she’s a cool chick, just sort of an idiot, I’ll handle this from here.

Mr. Manager comes back to the phone bank, which is also near the elevators, and waits quietly. I hang up and stand next to him. I should be thankful he didn’t make a scene and jerk me around like the criminal I obviously am. He didn’t even try to hold on to me, and I will be forever grateful for that his kindness. Even if he was a Redskins fan.

We go downstairs to the mailroom -- which thank God is huge -- and nobody notices us walk through to the loading dock and down the side stairs. There is a white police car backed up to the dock, with the driver’s side back door already open and waiting.

I put on my bravest smile and simply step in. It could have been a white limo for all the grace I was showing. In return, the officer doesn’t handcuff me; he simply closes the door as if he were my chauffer, and we drive off.

[Here, I could interject the amiable conversation I had with Officer Friendly on the way, but it sounds too trite, even to myself.]

We arrive downtown at the back entrance of the jail, which is new to me; the last time I’d been brought downtown the holding cells were nearer to the river. At least that’s all I can remember. This time, I was sober.

I am brought into a small-ish room that is surrounded by bulletproof glass and joined by a tall black woman in uniform. The thick green doors swish closed behind her as she instructs me to remove my shoes, pantyhose, and any hair ornaments, which I place into the clear plastic baggie she is holding out with one hand, while in her other hand is a pair of green flipflops, the cheapo kind, each made of a hard, molded plastic “Y” that is punched through 1/8” of foam.

She doesn’t search me, which I still wonder about, and she escorts me upstairs to where the other female inmates are housed. On the way, I notice another cop friend sitting at a desk, who glances up at me, then does a double-take as I am whisked past. He doesn’t acknowledge me; just follows me with his eyes as I am handed a thin, scratchy green wool blanket from a cabinet next to a set of big glass doors trimmed in the same green.

A loud buzz sounds, and one set of doors slides open, then closed, as we step into a small foyer, then another set of doors opens, and I am released into a large two-story octagon-shaped room that is made of concrete and painted in drab gray. A few bored looks from a card game is all I am rewarded with, and a voice booms over a loudspeaker:

You’re in H.

Then, another loud buzz, and straight in front of me against the far wall, a single green-and-glass door slides open. I head that way, seeing the big white H embossed in a black piece of plastic, and go straight to the far bunk, which is directly underneath a long then horizontal window that is too high for me to see out of but lets a little bit of light in.

Sitting down on the 1/2” plastic-coated foam mattress, I take notice of my new surroundings, and I am impressed. The jail is newly built so it’s actually pretty clean. Even the stainless steel toilet and tiny sink doesn’t look totally awful.

I am not sure how long I will be here but it will at least be for one night until my arraignment, so I tuck in for the long haul. I curl up on the bunk with one elbow under my head, my legs closed and knees bent with the blanket covering my lower half, since I am, after all, in a miniskirt.

Hey, White Girl! You want your bread?

The door to my cell is open and an older black woman in a pair of pink and purple scrubs is holding out a tray, like the kind you used in school from the cafeteria. I see an unknown meat with gravy, (what I think are) instant mashed potatoes, green beans, and one thin slice of buttered bread. I am not hungry, but the polite thing to do is to at least get up, so I take the proffered tray and look at her blankly as she repeats:

Your bread. You gonna eat it?

When I shake my head no, she delicately removes the bread from atop the meat and nods her thanks. I smile back and start to retreat back to my bunk but she jerks her head toward the main room, so I follow her to a round stainless steel table with a wide bench welded onto the base. There are a couple other girls sitting there too but they scoot over and make room for me. We all sit sort of back-to-back, with our feet on the benches facing out, rather than our butts on the benches and trays on the table, facing in.

I’m a little self-conscious about the stupid skirt, because as I sit, the back of the skirt falls down and I feel my ass being exposed, along with my granny panties, and with my knees pressed tightly together I feel like a total prima donna, when I’d much rather have jeans on, splaying my legs out to show my confidence in this situation. Prim I am not.

Some more gals wander over with their trays, eating with their plastic sporks, but none seem overly threatening, besides, they’re all wearing flipflops like mine, so I figure they just want some fresh news from the outside.

Interrogation over, I take my time eating, looking around, some meeting my eyes, some not. I see that everyone has eaten their bread first before tackling the other food, until I notice the woman I’d given my bread to, and she is carefully mating the buttered side of her piece of bread to the buttered side of another piece of bread, both of which she wraps in her napkin and takes the package to her cell before coming back out to the common area.

That was the night I learned to play Hearts, and soon it was time for showers and bed. You didn’t have to take a shower if you didn’t want to, but some of the women had obviously been there a long time, and this was routine. Some were brushing their teeth, getting ready for bed, or brushing one another’s hair.

It was then that I suddenly became aware of the need and usefulness of the bread: the buttered side becomes a smooth brush that oils their coarse hair and keeps it from breaking. Palming the un-buttered side, they stroke their hair smoothly, using every bit of the bread until they determined they were done. To this day I am not sure how they knew the butter had been used up or if they saved it for the next night, or even for a trade with another inmate.

To this day, I hate flip-flops, and I don’t eat buttered bread when I can help it. Someone else might need it more than me.