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“Marge. Stop.” I rolled my eyes, putting my arm around Doris as she sobbed beside me on the rickety cot in the concrete cell we’d been in for almost a full twenty-four hours.
“We’re gonna die in here,” Doris wailed.
“We’re not gonna die in here.” I rubbed her shoulder. “They are just sorting out we are who we say we are.”
When we’d been separated and interviewed, I found out that because we’d gotten off the cruise ship and had no official entrance into Mexico, it only made us look even more suspect of being illegals trying to smuggle ourselves into America. My interviewee had asked me to walk her through everywhere I’d been and stayed in Mexico so they could trace our steps and try to prove our identity. She’d stared at me like I had three heads when I’d told her our saga. About the Cougar Cruise, Alice’s panic attack that pushed us off the ship and into Mexico. The shark diving. The zip lining. The rafting trip gone array where we’d lost our passports. Then our attempt to break for the border so I could get to my wedding.
When I’d finished our story, she’d just shaken her head and said, “Either that’s the most detailed and greatest lie ever told, or you ladies are crazy.”
“We’re crazy,” I’d stated with certainty. “We are definitely crazy.”
As I sat in the cell listening to Marge go into her third rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner, butchering every note like an ax-wielding serial killer, I dropped my head into my hands. “How did we end up here?”
“Marge. Marge is how we ended up here,” Alice said from the white bucket she had flipped upside down and used as a chair.
Alice had tried bribing every officer with money and sexual favors, only to be dismissed as quickly as they’d dismissed Marge’s attempts to show them she was the most American American who’d ever lived.
“By the dawn’s early light!” Marge kept on singing.
“Oh, can it, Marge!” Alice covered her ears. “I’m going to lose my mind!”
Marge quit singing, then squared off with the guard across the way. “Did you hear that? Tell me that wasn’t an American singing. That’s right, you can’t. Because it was, in fact, an American singing a love song for her country.” When he didn’t respond and just stared straight ahead, she pushed on the bars once, then let out a sigh. “Well, it’s not working anyway. They don’t believe that I’m the,” she paused and raised her voice shouting, “best damn American in the history of all of America!”
“Just sit down.” I patted the cot.
“I gotta piss first. Alice, I need the bucket.”
“No. No, no, no.” Alice shook her head, grabbing the bottom of the bucket and holding it tight beneath her. “No one is pissing in the room with me.”
“That is literally supposed to be the toilet.” Marge pointed at the bucket. “That’s its purpose. Not to be flipped upside and used like a chair. Now move. My bladder is bursting.”
“They have to let us out to the bathroom soon.” She crossed her legs, refusing to budge. “My bladder feels like it’s going to burst too, but I’mnotpissing in this thing, nor will I be present in this cell while any of you piss in it. No one is pissing in a bucket. We hold it. Like ladies.”
It had been several hours since we’d last been let out for bathroom breaks, and we’d been told there were so many detainees sharing the modest facilities at the moment that it could be many hours more until we’d get another chance. They’d given us the bucket to use between breaks, but Alice had guarded it like a pit bull frothing over a juicy steak.
“I’m gonna piss myself.” Marge crossed her legs. “Move, Alice!”
“No!” Alice gripped the bottom of the bucket tighter. “You need to hold it!”
“Alright. That’s it. Move!” Marge marched over, grabbed Alice by the shoulders, and hoisted her up.
“No! No!” Alice tried to hold onto the bucket, but as she lifted it with her, it slipped and bounced along the concrete floor.
“Hah!” Marge released her grip and grabbed the bucket, hurrying off into the corner like a squirrel with an acorn.
“How is this my life right now? How? How!?” Alice pressed her hands into her disheveled hair and marched over to the cot, plopping down beside me.
Marge unzipped her pants, sat on the bucket, and let out a long “ahhhh” as she started to urinate.
“Oh, God.” Alice closed her eyes and covered her ears. “This isn’t happening. Marge is not pissing in a bucket ten feet away from me.”
The sound of the urine stream made my own bladder clench, and the urge to go began to overwhelm me. “Shit. Now I don’t think I can hold it. Oh, man. That’s worse than a faucet running.”
Alice crossed her legs, and I knew she felt the same pressure as me.
I grimaced. “I’m sorry, Alice. I know you don’t want to hear this, but I’m gonna have to piss in the bucket too. I can’t hold it anymore.”
While biting her lip, her leg shook as she bounced on the cot beside me. “Sir! Excuse me, sir!” She jumped up and ran to the bars.
