Left in the Dark
THE LAST BUS of the day pulls away from the parking lot outside the Santa Rita Jail in Dublin, California, at 8:43 p.m. Twenty minutes later, a young woman pulls up the hood of her dark jacket, pushes open the jail lobby’s heavy door, and steps out into the night, looking for a cigarette.
Leah, as I’ll call her, is not the only just-released inmate trying to score a smoke. “Who’s got a fucking cigarette?” yells a man bursting through the door behind her. Near the bus stop, Leah finds a butt burned almost all the way to the filter. Clutching it, she approaches me for a lighter. I don’t have one; I offer her my cellphone instead. Leah, whose voice is shaking, wants to call her mom. She’s planning to take the train home. It’s a 35-minute trek, in the dark, to the station.
