Cell-Shocked: I Crash-Landed into a Maximum Security Prison

By Barbara Price Castellone

Barbara never thought twice about the horrible conditions that exist in this country's prisons until she got sent there. Lucky to get out alive--many of her friends didn't--she has written a gripping account of this terrifying experience.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Feb 15, 2013
• ISBN: 9781481714556

Barbara Price Castellone

Barbara Price Castellone studied psychology, sociology, and criminal justice in college and was a mental health worker in a rehabilitation hospital. She was then lured into the fast money world of nightclub performing, expensive clothes, cars, vacations; alcohol and drugs. After causing an accident while driving drunk she had to serve 5 years in state prison. This is her account of that harrowing prison experience.

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© 2013 by Barbara Price Castellone. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 02/13/2013

ISBN: 978-1-4817-1456-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4817-1454-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4817-1455-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013902665

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Contents

Prologue

Foreword

Jailed!

From Orange to White

Prison Poem, by Barbara Castellone:

Prison Lingo: The art of prison language, a vocabulary update—

This is a true story. The names and places have been changed to protect the innocent—and the guilty. I have tried to be as accurate as possible in presenting this documentary/story of my life and prison experience.

Prologue

I have just been released from a tough Texas women’s prison, where I served my entire 5 year sentence. It is considered one of the most dangerous and deadly units in T.D.C. I feel very lucky to have made it out alive. While incarcerated, I wrote a book called, Cell-Shocked: I Crash-Landed into a Maximum Security Prison about the horrible conditions in prison, a little about my life, surviving while having to watch some of my dear friends being taken out of prison in body bags. People need to be aware of the injustices and atrocities of our Texas prison system as well as the failure of the entire American prison system, so the more information we can get out there, the better.

Foreword

Following Barbara Castellone’s lead in authoring her remarkably honest book, Cell-Shocked, let’s be totally honest. The average citizen cares nothing about prisoners and has never given a thought to the traumatic impact incarceration of a loved one has on the prisoner’s family.

That truth in and of itself is a detriment to society. Like many things in life that we don’t learn until it’s too late, until the criminal justice system snares and helplessly hogties you or your loved one personally, most people couldn’t care less about what happens to the prisoner once inside the prison. It is perfectly sufficient to convict and sentence those accused of offending against society and society is happy to send them off to prison and throw away the key, turning a blind eye to what happens afterward.

Unfortunately, it is exactly that non-caring attitude that has enabled significant injustice to creep into what was supposed to be a justice system. Today, the corruption and inequities in convicting and sentencing offenders are rampant. In fact, the Innocence Project reports that due to such things as prosecutorial misconduct; forced false confessions; mishandling of evidence and erroneous eyewitness accounts since 1989 over 250 convicted people in 34 states have been exonerated of their offenses by DNA evidence. This fact begs the question, How many more innocents remain incarcerated who have no DNA evidence to prove innocence in their cases?

The Innocence Project estimates that at least 25% of those who are incarcerated are innocent of the crimes for which they are in prison. Many of those innocents are on death row. How many innocents must have already been executed?

Think of it: innocent and incarcerated, or worse, innocent on death row! The feeling must be much like being buried alive, especially in a society that has come to assume guilt upon arrest and cares nothing about prisoners.

The fact that our society has turned a blind eye on our prison system has also promoted the rampant growth of a grave blight on our society, not to mention one of the greatest tax guzzlers of all time. Society as a whole may not care, but we as a society are paying dearly for not caring.

With only 5% of the entire world’s population, the United States warehouses a full 25% of the entire world’s prison population. In fact, throughout the world the United States is widely known as a prison-nation. Prison has become an enormous industrial complex in our country; even Wall Street is now investing in the newest prison venture—private prisons.

The privatization of prisons has the prison industry growing by leaps and bounds with the obvious potential to make a few very rich at the expense of the lives of many—even at the expense of many who are innocent victims of a merciless financial enterprise. To fuel the growth of the prison industry prison beds must remain full. Therefore more people must be arrested; sentences must be harsher and longer than ever before and parole must remain evasive, even for the model prisoner.

You and I are paying a high price to keep the prison industry growing. With two and a half million people behind bars in the United States at an average cost of $45,000.00 per inmate each year, our country spends almost $63.5 Billion (that’s with a capital B) a year on incarceration to do nothing more than warehouse human beings—prisoners are the prison industry’s inventory.

How do I know?

As a licensed professional counselor I have worked in the field of criminal justice for over thirty years and like a rapidly growing segment of our population, I too now have loved ones who, both justly and unjustly have become ensnared victims of our criminal justice system. I’ve seen it first-hand.

Those who believe our prison system serves to rehabilitate the errants in our society are woefully wrong. The prison system is solely an economic enterprise that like any other profitable business seeks ways to cut costs of operation while offering a public façade of adequately serving its consumers. Barbara Castellone was there for five years; she knows of these operations first-hand and in this book she shares quite honestly of the detrimental impact our prison system has on prisoners, their loved ones and thereby on society as a whole.

While small pockets of somewhat helpful intervention for prisoners may exist here and there, the vast majority of our more than two and a half million prisoners receive no helpful, let alone therapeutic intervention. Therapy would cost too much and thereby lessen the profitability of the prison enterprise.

While we certainly do not expect our prisons to luxuriously coddle inmates, it is important to recognize that we send prisoners to prison as punishment, not to be further punished by brutality and degrading humiliation and harassment at the hands of guards and certainly not to be maimed or incapacitated or even killed due to laziness and negligence of officers and certainly not due to the deprivation of at least adequate medical care.

As citizens we pay taxes for the operation of our prisons. It is unlikely that the average citizen is even aware that their taxes allocated for incarceration purposes are heavily augmented by prison families who must provide prisoners with funds for items as basic as toothpaste and tampons. Without family financial support prisoners in Texas would have no access at all to medical care. Without their families’ financial support prisoners throughout the country would be unable to even send a letter home to their loved ones. Who do you think pays for stamps and envelopes and paper and even the pen or pencil for a prisoner to write a letter home?

No. It’s not your tax dollars. Even though your tax dollars provide the warehouse in which to stockpile prisoners as inventory, it is the prison family who provides the vast majority of sustenance for the prisoner throughout their incarceration. Woe to the prisoner who has no family or outside support. As Castellone describes in Cell-Shocked, the forgotten prisoner must become cleverly manipulative and even devious to meet their basic survival needs in prison. Is that why we sentence people to prison, to become more devious?

I had to laugh when I recently read someone’s rantings about prisoners receiving a free college education. The truth is that while it is a widely known fact that education is key to reducing incarceration and recidivism, our prisons provide no more than GED preparation classes and doggedly thwart inmates’ efforts to even enroll in college or vocational correspondence courses.

While a few scattered prison units offer access to college courses which may lead to Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees, the prison system does not provide those classes, an area college or university does. And the prison certainly does not pay to enroll prisoners in the college classes. If an inmate is to receive higher education, the inmate must pay for those classes. In Texas, prisoners who provide the bulk of labor required to operate the prison are not permitted to earn money. (There was a time that type of labor was termed slavery.) In other states and federal prisons the prisoners might earn fifteen dollars a month—hardly enough to pay for a college education. Therefore it is the prisoner’s family who would provide the funds for college classes if there are to be any.

Cell-Shocked clearly delineates these realities and so many more. While typical books written by former prisoners recount that ah-hah moment when the light dawned and a sudden spiritual transformation occurred, Castellone’s Cell-Shocked is a brutally honest accounting of what actually happens behind prison walls. Unfortunately, the book is so well written it reads like a gripping mystery novel which may erroneously lead the reader to the misconception that this book is fictional when in fact it is a depiction of the absolute truth.

I would urge the reader to firmly step into Barbara Castellone’s shoes and attempt to walk with her on her very real journey into the bowels of a women’s prison. Not only is Castellone honest about the prison experience, but seeking no sympathy she boldly allows the reader insight into her personal battle with alcoholism and its tragic consequences. She provides a rare opportunity for the reader by courageously opening doors that most prisoners choose to shut tightly behind them when they are finally released from their journeys into the Hell known as prison.

Carolyn Esparza, LPC

Founder and Executive Director Community Solutions of El Paso, Founder and Chair, National Prisoner’s Family Conference, President, El Paso Chapter CURE International, Co-author, The Unvarnished Truth about the Prison Family Journey (with Phillip Yow).

Jailed!

EPCDF—El Paso County Detention Facility—

The gavel came down with a splitting sound, and I was consigned to Hell. Of course I didn’t know how bad it would be, because I’d never been there before—to prison. I felt like it was happening to somebody else, when the judge read me my sentence, April 18, 2007: five years in TDCJ. The rest was a blur. I remember my mother crying as I gave her my purse and jewelry. That crystal cross pendant you are wearing could very easily be used as a weapon—the ends of the cross are pointed, my state attorney said. You’ll only serve about half that time and then you’ll be out on parole, he added.

The bailiff walked me across the street to the jail, the El Paso County Detention Facility. The only reason I wasn’t handcuffed was because I needed a cane to help me walk. I saw cameramen with video recorders rushing around the corner and I realized I was probably going to be on the 6 o’clock news. I drew a lot of stares as I hobbled into the county jail. I don’t look like a criminal—with my black skirt suit and my blonde hair in a French twist— I look pretty harmless walking around with a cane, I thought.

The dehumanizing and degrading process of booking started, inside the jail. After I was photographed and fingerprinted, I was evaluated by one of the nurses on duty. What medications are you on? he asked. I had the pill bottles with me; Avinzaa (time released morphine); hydrocodone (also for pain), xanax and Effexor for depression. Well, you’re not gonna get anything that good in here—You’d better take some now. I took a handful of morphine and hydrocodone and then handed them over. I wanted to take the whole bottle.

We’ll give you something for the pain in your legs. It turned out to be vicodin twice a day, and also something for my depression (klonopin). But that was all. Once you are in TDCJ you won’t even get that. You’ll be lucky to get Ibuprofen.

I was then strip searched, showered, de-liced and manhandled. After that I was given the infamous prison orange jumpsuit along with a mattress (an overstuffed exercise mat) and a small goody bag filled with a tiny, watered-down roll-on deodorant, blue toothpaste, handleless toothbrush, men’s small black comb, soap, and trial size shampoo. I felt like I was in an episode of Hotel Hell. Even though I walked with a cane, I was expected to carry all my stuff, including that dead weight mattress that I ended up dragging down the hall to the pod I was assigned to.

There were six 8’ by 10’ cells in this pod. Five other women were there for various offenses. I went straight to my cell (the empty one), put my mattress on the iron bed frame and crashed out. I was awakened only by the sound of my loud metal door sliding and then clanking shut. The officers controlled the opening and closing of our doors from someplace else, the officers’ picket. They closed and locked us in our tiny cells at night. It seemed like just a few hours later, that metal door was clanking open again, with officers yelling through the overhead PA system: platon! platon! I didn’t know what they were screaming. I heard people shuffling out into the dayroom, the center of the pod where several metal tables and stools were bolted down. I felt almost comatose and didn’t want to get up until the guards came in to get me. They kept sliding my door open and closed, making a horrible racket, and then an officer came and stood at my door screaming for me to get up and go out into the dayroom. It was 3 in the morning and I found out that platon meant chow or platter in Spanish.

We all had to go sit in that dayroom whether we ate or not. Breakfast served 3 to 3:30 am. I remember feeling sick and I could not eat. The other inmates and I were looking around at each other but trying not to make it obvious, checking each other out, wondering who was here for what. Some were illegal aliens and didn’t even speak English. They were waiting for their people (the immigration service) to come get them and take them home (back across the border to Mexico.) I thought I’d be polite and not ask unless someone volunteered why they were there, so I just kept quiet, until one woman said she was there for embezzling and forgery, another for prostitution, and the others for drugs or drug-related charges (assault and robbery, to get drugs). Then I told everyone why I was there, killing a man while driving drunk.

I felt like I was in a fog and I just wanted to sleep. Some of the women were calling me out to the dayroom and saying that I was on the TV news. I was too sick to even get up and watch. I realized I had become heavily addicted to prescription pain mediation because I was so medicated in the hospital after the accident. When released from the hospital, I continued to be prescribed very strong drugs for my pain, anxiety, and depression. My body had built up a tolerance and I was having to take more and more to get the same effect (release from pain). I knew that I was going through withdrawal and I heard horror stories that some inmates going through withdrawals in here actually died.

I also found out that a man had hung himself and died in my cell. One of the guards laughed as she told us the story. She said he had hung himself over traffic tickets. I started hallucinating after that, seeing him hanging there, kicking his feet and clawing his fingernails into the wall. After that, I could swear I saw where they had painted over the scene. They didn’t clean it up very well, just painted over it. I could still see short black hairs under the paint, and whatever had leaked out of him had clogged up the holes in the metal speaker in the wall which they hadn’t even bothered to clean.

We then found out our pod was haunted. That night I heard banging noises and all our metal doors were rattling. My heart started racing and I was terrified. I hit the emergency button on the wall and told the guard what I was hearing and that I was scared. She said, Oh, they’re just cleaning in the building. That’s all you are hearing. The next night, my toilet started flushing non-stop, on its own. It was loud and echoing and my cell was filling up with the smell of bleach, or whatever was mixed in with our toilet water. I sat on the edge of my bed in a panic holding my ears closed and trying not to breathe. I kept hitting the emergency button begging for help for what seemed like a half hour; I had a raging headache from the fumes and was in a state of panic. A guard came and peeked in at me through the little window. She acted like she was afraid to open my cell door. When my door finally slid open, I ran out. The guard looked at me like it was my fault, like I had rigged the toilet to continually flush. I was finally assigned to another cell that happened to be vacant. The toilet continued to flush non-stop for about two hours, filling up the whole pod with a bleach smell, giving us all headaches.

I was finally moved to another pod. In fact we all were. We were all split up into different pods. I had made a friend and she was in the pod right next door. People can’t help but make friends, even in dire circumstances, I soon realized. We would stand on the toilets and talk to each other through the vents up high on the wall. I also discovered that there was a regular communication system through the sink/toilet. People would not only tap messages to each other, they would also talk to each other through the pipes. They would try to blow the water out of the sink pipes so that they could hear each other better. Some would even fish—send and collect contraband through the toilet by flushing a string wrapped around a pen or pencil, in hopes that it would tangle with their friends’ as they both flushed and then pull it back up with the contraband or kite (note) attached to the pen in a plastic, hopefully waterproof bag. It amazed me how resourceful people could become in situations like this.

We’d watch TV soaps, game shows, or sitcoms, and sleep much of the day. There was really nothing else to do. There were playing cards in the county jail, so once in a while I’d play cards with someone or just solitaire. My mother started to have books sent to me— the only way we were allowed to receive them: straight from the bookstore or book club. I started reading like crazy, and passing my books, mostly mysteries, ghost stories, and biographies of movie stars, around to fellow inmates once I was finished with them. There supposedly was a library at the county jail. An officer with a little cart full of books would roll them up to the bars and give us a whole ten seconds to grab Two books only! The books on wheels happened twice a week and most of the books were really old and not very good, so I quit even going up to grab any through the bars.

Every Friday and Saturday the guards would put a movie in for us to watch. They controlled our TVs from their picket, and a lot of times when we wanted them turned up or down, we were ignored and someone would either stand on the table closest to the TV or climb the bars right under the TV to turn it up or even change the station. I started using my cane to control the TV since it was way up high. Pretty soon we were all using it until one of the guards threatened to take it away from me if we used it for that anymore. Sometimes they’d bring really scary movies like Friday the 13th or Wicker Man. We’d all try to get as comfortable as we could on the hard floor right under the TV, and the ones who had been able to get something at the commissary would bring snacks or sodas out. Some would even share. The first thing I bought at the commissary was instant coffee and sweets. I had a vicious sweet tooth and they don’t give you candy or desserts in jail. The first things I bought besides shower shoes for the funky shower, real shampoo, conditioner, and antiperspirant, were candy bars, cookies and coffee. Once a week the commissary ladies would wheel everyone’s load of commissary goods down the hall and hand them to the inmates through the bars. We would then hand them our lists for the following week. Some of the inmates who didn’t have money for commissary would retreat into their cells whenever the commissary ladies rolled up. You knew it was hard on them. It was like Christmas morning and not having a single present under the tree.

We all had to share two metal showers that were right up front against a window that looked out into the hallway. In fact anyone who was walking by in the hallway could see us as we stripped down to get in and out of the shower. Another serious problem, we were warned that if we didn’t wear shower shoes we would catch some awful toe fungus. Some caught the fungus anyway. After showering, we had to put on our orange prison jumpsuit again until we could afford to buy white cotton shorts and t-shirts. I also wanted a thermal t-shirt and bottoms because some of the pods were freezing cold.

Visits from my family and friends kept me sane, even though I had to see them from behind a glass, a thick, unbreakable piece of plexiglass. I had to talk to them with a telephone. Everything still seemed surreal to me, like none of this was really happening. I felt like I was just having a bad dream and pretty soon I’d wake up and everything would be back to normal. It was hardest seeing my 11 year old little girl, Diana. I remember crying so much I could barely talk. I wanted to climb through the glass and hold her. I just put my hand up to the glass and she put her small hand on mine from her side.

Even my two court-appointed lawyers came to visit me. You’ll probably only do two years, maybe two and a half, one reminded me. That seemed like an eternity to me. There were pay phones, two in every pod, and I was on that phone day and night calling my mother and daughter and various other family and friends. I probably drove everyone crazy calling so much.

For exercise I had started walking in a circle around the pod, practicing walking without a cane. Someone had calculated that between 1,200 and 1,500 steps equals one mile. I was trying to walk at least two miles a day, round and round the pod. Some of the other women looked at me like I was crazy. But I was learning how to walk again, walking pretty well without a cane. The only time I left the pod was when I had an appointment with medical, or when I had to be across the street in the courthouse for further sentencing. One time I was shackled and handcuffed and walked (limped) through the underground walkway with two officers. When I got into the courtroom I had to sit in the prisoners’ box with the other prisoners, chained and wearing orange. It was an all-day event just going to the courthouse across the street. We were put in one holding cell after another. One of my lawyers surprised me by coming over and giving me a hug in court.

My crazy and vindictive ex-husband was charging me with harassment claiming that my sister and I had been driving around shooting at him. The judge and my attorney left the room together and both came back a few minutes later. The charges were dropped and the judge reminded me that I would be going to TDCJ for my intoxicated manslaughter charge. Where is TDCJ? I asked my lawyer and he said, One of the prisons in central Texas somewhere. Bill also said Good luck to me as I exited the courtroom, through the back door, where the prisoners went with their escort officers.

A few other times I left the pod to go to the recreation area on the rooftop, surrounded by an 18 foot wall and barbed razor wire all along the top. You could hardly see the sky. It was hot as hell up there but at least we got a little sun and fresh air. It seemed that women who had a girlfriend in a different pod would meet up on the rooftop rec. yard. Some played basketball, others walked laps, around and around. There were also some weights, locked behind a fence, but they were only for the men. I walked some, but it was so hot that I decided I was more comfortable walking inside. Even though it was a much smaller area to walk, inside the pod, it was a lot cooler. I had noticed that I could file my fingernails on the sandpaper floor up there on the roof, so sometimes I’d go there just to do that. I’d sit and talk to my friends as I rubbed my nails on the sand mat.

The rest of the time we were stuck in that metal and concrete, loudly echoing pod. Everyone’s voice was amplified and the noise from the TV seemed to bounce off the walls. I started getting really bad headaches and finally made earplugs out of toilet paper, which helped. Every day was the same, prison as usual, inmates would come and go. Some stayed, like me, always wondering when we would pull chain, and get sent away somewhere else. We were continually fearing that they would come for us and take us away to our permanent prison unit, somewhere in central Texas. We couldn’t take anything with us, I was told. Our stuff was either thrown away or put in our property. Some inmates would roll their stamps up in a piece of plastic and stash it where the sun doesn’t shine, just so they’d be able to write their loved ones when they got to their new unit. Also I learned later that stamps are prison currency, and could be traded for stuff, the closest thing to money that we could possess.

I remember just wanting to stay busy once I went through withdrawals and started to feel better. I read, walked, wrote a lot of letters and even made drawings with colored pencils that I had bought at the commissary. I didn’t eat a lot because I didn’t want to gain weight; I saw the women around me starting to balloon out, getting real bloated from eating so much and not getting any exercise. You are very sedentary when you’re locked up in a cell. The foods they serve prisoners are mostly bread, potatoes, and mystery meat, always processed, and we were clueless as to what it was. Once we were told there might be maggots in the potatoes, and I didn’t eat them after that. Every Saturday we were given a Subway-like sandwich with lettuce and tomato and a small package of chips. That was definitely the best meal of the week.

Some of the women inmates left the pod every day to work in the kitchen or do janitor duties. Some even sewed in the sewing room across the hall. They mended our jumpsuits and sewed the officers’ clothes. It keeps us busy, working every day, and makes the time go by faster, one told me. I didn’t feel that enthusiastic about working and I also saw how badly the guards treated the inmates and wanted to keep my distance from them. Most of the officers acted like we were less than human, lower than animals. I heard stories about some of the inmates attacking the guards when they came into their pods. I could see how easily that could happen. There were certain guards I felt like I wanted to attack, for sure, but I decided I’d let their own bad karma catch up to them instead.

I spent a lot of time just looking out the window. You could see part of downtown El Paso and beyond that the mountain and Scenic Drive, a twisty turny road over the mountain that was originally built by men prisoners on a chain gang. It made me grateful that I wasn’t hard at work somewhere on a work gang like that. If you looked straight down out the window, you’d see families and friends of some of the prisoners in the county jail standing in the street waving up at them or doing some kind of sign language with their arms and hands. Some would even hold babies or small children up for the prisoners to see, even though you needed binoculars to see them, we were so high up on the 10th floor. The window had chicken wire over it on the outside. The men’s floors were right below ours. The El Paso County Jail was voted one of the worst jails in the country. I could only imagine what TDCJ was like.

We had to take turns sweeping, mopping and cleaning the dayroom, our cells and the showers and toilets off to the side of the dayroom. The officers came and brought us a mop bucket and spray bottle with the cleaning chemicals already in them. They also brought us a broom, mop, and some cleaning rags, right after platon early in the morning, and we had about one hour to clean. Fights broke out if someone refused to clean when it was their turn. One time two women started fighting about the unmopped floor, both insisting it was the other one’s turn. The officers came running and we were all put in our cells with the doors locked while they took the two women and put them in segregation.

Another time one of the women who had just gotten to the jail stayed up all night cutting herself. She was a self-mutilator. The next morning when our doors were opened, one of the other inmates walked past her cell and started screaming. The woman was covered in blood and there was blood all over her cell. She also was taken to seg. Then they moved my friend Tammy back into the same cell I was in. She was on the top bunk and I was right below her. She would sometimes scream in her sleep and freak everybody out. One night she fell off the top bunk screaming and landed on her feet. She had the same name and same birthday as my sister Tammy, but although both were 45, she looked much older, with red hair, green eyes, and false teeth. She had been in prison many times before. She never told me how many times, but I gathered it was a lot. She knew all the different TDCJ units and told us about each one.

Tammy had been a drug dealer. She asked me one day if I’d ever played a Ouija board. I told her I had. Could you make one? I’ll try, I said. I made one out of the cardboard backing from some typing paper. I wrote letters and numbers on it with a Yes, No and Maybe. We played it one night with another woman in our cell, using my eyeglass lens (it popped out occasionally) for the planchette (the thing you put your fingers on as it moves around the board). She spooked and wanted to quit playing when she asked the question Who’s buried next to my friend Buddy? and it spelled out SON, that his son was buried next to him. Apparently Tammy knew that was true and wondered how the Ouija board could know that.

Tammy taught me a lot. Since they didn’t sell makeup at commissary, she taught me how to make it. We used coffee mixed with lotion for foundation, and coffee and toothpaste for mascara. You had to be careful not to cry because you would burn your eyes. We’d also use black and brown colored pencils for eyeliner. We could apply it easier if we soaked them in hot water first. My motto was Hey when in Rome do as the Romans do. Plus I wanted to look good for my visits behind the glass with family and friends. I felt naked and ugly without makeup. Some used the red pencil for lipstick or lip liner. I didn’t like the color on me though.

My birthday came and went in EPCDF in July, and Tammy made me a cool card which everyone signed. She also made me a miniature cake, a chocolate bar melted over a honey bun, and a cute little figurine out of red and green Jolly Rancher candies twisted into a red rose with green leaves. It looked just like a rose. It was amazing some of the things these women came up with. I saw a miniature pool table that one of the women had made for her girlfriend with a pool stick and balls and, it appeared, green felt on it. Some of the meals that these women cooked in their hot pots were incredible too: Burritos, nachos, tamales, enchiladas. I wouldn’t even begin to know how. I could barely heat water for instant coffee and Ramen soup.

Tammy was taken away one day to seg., when for no reason, out of the blue she started slashing at her wrists with a razor blade saying They’re telling me to do it now! We all started yelling at her to stop and someone ran to the emergency button and called the guards. The first officer who came in wrapped a towel around her arm so she could wrestle the blade out of Tammy’s hand without getting cut. Finally with some backup the guards got the razor blade away from her and wrestled her to the ground. We had to clean up her blood in the cell. She even flung it on the ceiling. I was pretty freaked out after that. I never found out what had gotten into her, why she’d flipped out. I figured she must be schizophrenic and hearing voices. I wondered if I was going to lose my mind as well.

I kept asking myself, Did I really kill someone? Am I really here? Is this really happening to me? I kept thinking of that movie Apocalypse Now and Marlin Brando saying The horror, the horror! Every morning I kept waking up in this horrible place, without my family, without my daughter. Caged like an animal. Given food trays through a slot, forced to be around women who are losing their minds. It’s a pretty scary existence. All we have to look forward to is food, commissary (the ones who can afford it), mail, and visits on weekends. The rest is hell: Living in a loud cage. Voices echoing and guards screaming. Nothing pretty to look at, just bars and bare walls. You try not to let it get to you. You try not to let it Suck you under. Like a heavy cloud of depression settling over you, trying to smother and suck the life out of you. I prayed Lord, I know I did wrong but I’m not a bad person. I’ve helped a lot of people and I’ve done a lot of good too. I know that I deserve to be punished, I deserve to suffer; I just don’t think I’m gonna make it out of here sane and in one piece. I wondered, Will I even make it out of this alive? Maybe I’m not supposed to live through this. I took a man’s life. Even though it was an accident I caused this horrible thing. If I hadn’t been driving drunk, that man would still be alive. I was tormented by my own thoughts. I had real bad nightmares and was sometimes afraid to fall asleep.

In the middle of the night once, I woke up having terrible chest pains. My left arm even