Page 16 of Detroit

And, Lord willing, not a second longer than that.

I was trying to squash my internal disgust at wearing intimates worn by an untold number of other women before me. There were bigger issues to face, I reminded myself as we walked into a octagonal two-level room full of small cells and a big observation area for the guards to keep an eye on us.

Della had been right about the overcrowding issue.

The entire center of the common area had its tables pushed to the sides to accommodate several rows of bunkbeds where other women were sitting and lying.

Once we were free to move on our own, Della shouldered in beside me and led me over toward an empty bunk while the other women tried to decide who they could or should bunk with.

“Take the top,” she told me, nodding up at it.

“Don’t you—“ I started.

“You’ll feel safer up there,” she said, shaking her head as she started to make her bed.

She was right about that.

And I was suddenly so thankful to have a mentor like Della that I found myself blinking away tears again. The sounds of the women chatting filled my ears, making me feel immediately frazzled and overwhelmed as I climbed up to the bunk, and struggled to make my bed like all the other women were automatically doing.

I just had to follow Della’s lead, keep my head down, and try not to eat or drink anything, so I didn’t have to go to the bathroom.

I mean, yeah, that was completely irrational, and my bladder was already killing me, but the bathroom thing was the biggest mental hurdle for me, so I was saving it for last.

“What’s going on?” I asked a while later as many of the women started to gather in a line.

“Lunch in a few,” Della said, grabbing my arm, and pulling me with her.

“Where are we going? Won’t we get in trouble?” I asked, voice taking on a breathless hitch in my panic.

“Now is the time to go pee when no one will look at you, because their minds are on getting in line. Go,” she demanded, pushing me toward the open door.

Taking the cue, I rushed in, trying to think of anything else, to drift away, to just get through this.

Then I washed my hands and rushed back out to line up with Della.

If I thought the common area was overwhelming, the cafeteria—or as Della called it, the “mess hall”—was that times ten.

I guess the promise of hot food had invigorated these women who were all talking and laughing loudly in groups that suggested a certain sort of familiarity. I guess these were women who didn’t get, or couldn’t afford, bail. So they were staying in jail until their trials were over.

That could be me.

No.

No, damnit.

I wasn’t going to let my mind go there.

I had a lawyer.

A good one.

I was going to be going home. Then fixing this. And never, ever, ever seeing the inside of a jail again.

“Come on, over here,” Della said after we got our trays that, yes, were full of two compartments of a certain liquid mush that I couldn’t identify as any sort of soup or stew, though that seemed to be what they were aiming for.

Della led me over to a table full of other women that had a certain similarity to Della. A hardness in their eyes, but with warm smiles.

“She don’t look like one of us,” one of the women, with coppery-red hair, older than Della, declared as I sat down.

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