“Nothing you tell me will leave this room, Suzanne. I promise you—”
“I have nothing to tell you.” For a moment the look on the inmate’s face was imploring. Then she just shut down again, her expression blank.
Nat had witnessed this kind of closing-off from many inmates. Sometimes she could break through the barriers they erected. But it took time. It took figuring out a strategy that would work. Even when Nat succeeded, it never came easy. And because of all the complications implicit in Nat’s dealings with Suzanne, finding a way through this inmate’s defenses was going to be especially tough.
Suzanne was on her feet. “Can I be excused?”
Nat nodded wearily. But when the inmate got to the door, Nat said, “This isn’t going away, Suzanne.” Although her statement was intentionally vague, she could see from the inmate’s parting look that the message, with all its ambiguities, had hit home.
four
A miscarriage of justice has taken place here today. If my client was not a transgendered person, she never would have been found guilty.
Attorney Aaron Hirsh (post-trial statement to the press)
IF THE ELECTRIFIED razor wire ringing the stone walls of CCI Grafton didn’t exist, nor the iron entry gates monitored by two uniformed and armed corrections officers, the institution might have been taken for a somewhat run-down college campus.
Past the gates, Nat drove into a large parking lot where staff and visitor spaces were clearly demarcated. Nat opted for one of the visitor’s spots.
As she made her way past the lot, she came to a central green, the facility’s buildings forming a U around it. Two inmates were mowing the grass. A couple of others were tending to the weeds around the mums and marigolds rimming the concrete paths that crisscrossed the green.
There were a smattering of inmates sitting together on benches, most of them smoking—there was now a “No Smoking” mandate in all public buildings in the Commonwealth. The bench scene looked like a smoke break at any workplace, as, unlike men’s prisons, the women were permitted to wear street clothes, with the exception of miniskirts, cutoffs, midriff-length tops, stretch pants, or shoes with heels over one inch. It was another matter for the women placed in isolation. They were issued, state uniforms—orange jumpsuits, black oxford shoes. This was to make them instantly identifiable.
Nat took the path that ran straight across the green and led to a central three-story brick structure of pseudo-Baroque design. This building contained the administrative offices, visiting room, dining hall, medical infirmary, and a small mental health unit. An L-shaped addition added to the right of the building housed the educational and vocational area. A good decade before Nat’s time, inmates could actually attain college degrees while incarcerated. Because of endless budget cuts and the strong propunishment political climate, however, the educational offerings were meager today—mostly classes focused on helping inmates who never graduated high school get their GED certificates. There were a few outdated computers in a small lab, but class instruction was minimal at best. The main vocational training-cum-work program in the institution—beyond lawn/garden care and housekeeping/janitorial maintenance—was flag making, primarily the cutting and machine-stitching of the American flag and state flags.
A half-dozen low-slung one-story concrete buildings that reminded Nat of bunkers surrounded the main building: three on the right, three on the left. These were the dormitories housing the female inmates. There were no bars on the windows, and there were no traditional cells. But the front doors of the units were locked after nine
p.m.,
and female and male correctional officers, always in pairs, were stationed within the dorms around the clock.
Behind the administration building was one additional dormitory, not only separate from the others but enclosed within its own electrified chain-link fence. This was the isolation unit, “the IU” in prison lingo. While there were no bars on these windows, either, there was wire mesh embedded between the double-glass panes. Whereas women doubled or tripled up in the other units, here every woman was confined to her own locked room. And there was no mingling with any of the inmates in the institution at large.
Women who couldn’t function within the general population were placed in UI. They might be so hard to control that they were forced to spend their entire sentence in isolation; they might be remanded there on a time-limited basis because of severe infractions of the prison rules; or, like Lynn Ingram, placed in isolation to protect them from the other inmates. Whatever the reason, they took all their meals alone in their rooms, exercised alone for only one hour a day, and, when granted visiting privileges, had to use one of four segregated and closely supervised one-on-one spaces located within the unit.
There was no question this was a grim way to have to do time. It was one thing when you brought it on yourself and were placed there for incorrigibility or an infraction of the rules. It was another, when you were put in isolation through no fault of your own. Nat knew, going into Grafton, that she was already feeling sorry for Lynn Ingram and would have to guard against letting her emotions get the upper hand.
Nat had a brief and disappointingly uninformative talk with Joan Moore, the recently appointed superintendent at Grafton, who had nothing of substance to offer beyond what Nat had already read in Ingram’s file. Moore then cleared out, allowing Nat the use of her large, airy, cherry-paneled office for her meeting with Lynn Ingram. Ingram arrived dressed in the mandatory sexless orange jumpsuit, accompanied by an IU officer.
Nat noticed a faint lowering of the inmate’s shoulders as the door. shut. Still, Ingram looked far from relaxed, staring down at the floor, avoiding eye contact. This didn’t surprise Nat. Inmates soon learned it could be dangerous to look a superior in the eye. It was often read as insolence, seen as a challenge. Even among themselves, men and women who were incarcerated, quickly discovered who it was safe to eyeball and who it wasn’t.
The officer lackadaisically tucked the cuffs into his back pocket and waited for Nat’s verbal dismissal before he shuffled out of the room.
Even though this was the first time Nat had seen the inmate in person she was not thrown off-guard by Ingram’s beauty. Neither the garish orange uniform, nor the blonde hair, which she was wearing pulled severely back off her face in a coiled bun, detracted from her genuine aura of femininity.
“Are you here to bring me good news or bad?” Ingram asked with a frankness that Nat hadn’t expected.
“I haven’t made my decision yet.”
Ingram glanced up at Nat for an instant then dropped her gaze. “What do I have to do to convince you to approve my transfer?”
“Sit down. How about some coffee? It’s fresh. Milk? Sugar?”
Nat was already at the Mr. Coffee, setting up two mugs. Busy work. Busy mouth.
“I’m too nervous to drink anything,” Ingram confided. “But I will sit down.”
Nat noticed, as Ingram perched more than sat in one of the super’s comfortable maroon leather armchairs, that her hands remained clasped together—as if her wrists were cuffed.
“You meet all of the requirements for transfer, Ms. Ingram,” Nat told her, carefully removing the coffee carafe from the stand. “ ‘But’?”
Having no real interest in the coffee, Nat replaced the carafe and crossed the office, taking a matching chair across from the inmate. “I’m concerned about providing for your safety.”
Instead of jumping right in and trying to disabuse Nat of her worries, Lynn nodded solemnly. “That’s understandable. I’m a liability. There’s no getting around that.”
Nat could see immediately why Leo liked Lynn Ingram. Nat found herself quickly feeling the same way. Lynn was direct without being confrontational, courteous without being ingratiating. She didn’t wear her vulnerability on her sleeve, but she didn’t seem intent on fiercely hiding it behind a
Nothing can get to me
exterior like many inmates did.
Like so many people do.
“What I need to decide is, how much of a liability. I’m hoping you can help me make that decision.”
“How can I do that?” she asked without hesitation.
Nat reached into her attache case and retrieved a small sheaf of papers she’d brought with her. “This is a list of all of the staff and inmates presently at Horizon House.” She held the pages out, but Lynn Ingram made no effort to take them.
“I’m not asking you to name names, Ms. Ingram. I just want you to go through the list, then simply tell me if you feel you would be . . . comfortable among us.”
Still, Ingram’s hands remained firmly clasped together.
Nat leaned forward. “It’s a matter of record that you were assaulted on more than one occasion while you were in the general population.” She saw Ingram stiffen, but the inmate remained mute. “You were raped, Lynn. At least once . . . more—” “Please stop,” Lynn implored. “I just want to forget.”
“You, of all people, know that’s not possible.”
“Because I’m a transsexual?” There was a note of defensiveness irt the inmate’s voice.
“Because you’re a trained psychologist,” Nat said softly. Ingram flushed. “Sorry. I’m oversensitive about gender issues.”
“I don’t blame you,” Nat said. “You were run through the mill because of it during your trial. And I’m sure it’s beerj a major issue here in prison.”
Lynn looked down at the floor. “Yes.”
“Will you look at this list, Lynn? I know you’ve maintained throughout that you never saw any of your assailants here at Grafton, and I understand very well why you’ve taken that stance—”
“Meaning you don’t believe me.”
“Meaning,” Nat said, “that I know the terrible risks involved if you ever named names. And I’m not asking you to do that. But if there’s anyone at Horizon House from Grafton who might pose a serious threat—”
Ingram looked up, her lovely blue eyes meeting Nat’s. “If you okay my transfer, I’m not only going to be inside your institution, Superintendent. I’ll be on work-release, which means I’ll be out in ‘civilization’ as we affectionately call it here. Are there people outside who might want to harm me? People at Horizon House? People in here? Of course there are. Who they are . . . How many—?”
Lynn shrugged. A shrug of resignation. Acceptance. “To certain people I will always be a freak. Worse, a freak who made a conscious choice to become one. That makes me deserving of their ridicule, their disgust, their revulsion, even their assaults. And then there are those people who, whether repulsed or not, are sexually drawn to the taboo I seem to represent to them. But the truth is, under no circumstances will I ever truly be a woman to them.”
As she maintained eye contact, her beautiful face was a study in earnestness. “But I am a woman.”
“A woman at risk,” Nat was compelled to add. A whisper of a smile flitted across Lynn’s lips. It took Nat a few moments to realize Lynn’s smile was most likely a result of Nat’s affirming that she’d identified Ingram as female. It was true. Now that Nat had met the infamous transsexual, she found herself remarkably ^conflicted about Lynn Ingram’s gender. Not that it would make her decision any easier.
“Being at risk, Superintendent Price, is something I’ve had to make my peace with, something I will always have to live with, no matter where I finish up my sentence. I will do everything in my power to avoid the risks, but I can’t promise you, no matter who’s on that list, that I will be safe. I can only tell you that if I have to spend the next six months in a solitary cell twenty-three hours a day, seven days a week, I think I truly will go mad. I suppose you’re thinking, ‘What’s another six months to someone who’s already done twenty-nine months, three weeks, and two days in protective custody—?’ ” She paused, smiled fully, winsomely. “But who’s counting?”
five
Dr. Ingram never behaved in an improper manner at the clinic. Not ivith Matthew Slater. Not with any of her patients. Nor with any members of our staff.
Dr. Harrison Bell (excerpt from Ingram trial transcript)
"SUPERINTENDENT PRICE?"
“Yes.”
“This is Dr. Harrison Bell. I’m the—”
“I know who you are, Doctor.” Nat picked up the catch in the anesthesiologist’s voice.
Oh, God, something is wrong,
she was already thinking—fearing. “Is it Lynn?”
“She was . . . attacked. She’s in the hospital. I don’t ... I don’t know if she’s going to . . . make it. Christ, it’s all my fault. We were about to leave the clinic to get some lunch, but I had to finish up a report on a patient, so Lynn went on ahead to get a table—at this little Greek place she always eats in. Then, just as I was halfway out the door, my wife called and was all upset about our son Josh. The boy got into a fight at school. Boys do. He only got a day’s suspension, but my wife has this tendency to blow things out of proportion.”
“What happened?” Nat had let the doctor prattle on this long because she was feeling too short of breath to break in. And even as she asked, she was thinking,
Five weeks.
Five weeks almost to the day since Lynn Ingram’s transfer to Horizon House. Five gloriously uneventful weeks. Nat was starting to actually think her fears for the inmate’s safety were, while certainly not unfounded, greatly exaggerated. So much for that pathetically naive assessment.
“I couldn’t have been more than fifteen minutes behind her. The thing is, there’s this shortcut in back of the pain clinic. Kind of an alleyway, really. Cuts out a block. And what with the rain . . . I almost. . . didn’t see her. I was dodging puddles, looking straight down. God only knows what it was that drew my eye over to the Dumpster.”
He stopped. Nat could hear a muffled cry. She waited silently for him to continue, her hand white-knuckling the phone.
“I saw her hand, just her fingers, really. Like she was trying to pull herself out. If the Dumpster hadn’t been full, she’d never have ... I’d never have known she was in there. Christ, she was bleeding everywhere. All . . . cut up. Her chest, her face . . . even . . . I can’t believe anyone could do such a . . . monstrous thing. A maniac ... It had to be—”