a minute to read the whole thing— the TV privileges, the shower procedures, the full body searches, the library book lending guidelines. Timetables, regimes, endless regulations—a ticker tape of instructions. I remember every word, every comma, every picture on the page. Done, I close the file and look to my right. Michaela is stroking the studs on her tongue, pinching each one, wincing then smiling. Sweat pricks my neck. I want to go home.
‘You read fast, sweetheart,’ she says, leaning into me. ‘You remember all that? Shit, I can’t remember my own fucking name half the time.’
She pinches her studs again. They could cause problems, get infected. I should tell her. That’s what people do, isn’t it? Help each other?
‘Piercing can cause nerve damage to the tongue, leading to weakness, paralysis and loss of sensation,’ I say.
‘What the—’ The letter ‘f’ forms on her mouth, but before she can finish, a guard tears the booklet from my hand.
‘Hey!’
‘Strip,’ the guard says.
‘Strip what?’
She rolls her eyes. ‘Oh, you’re a funny one, Martinez. We need you to strip. It’s quite simple. We search all inmates on arrival.’
Michaela lets out a snort. The guard turns. ‘Enough out of you, Croft, you’re next.’
I tap the guard’s shoulder. Perhaps I have misunderstood. ‘You mean remove my clothes?’
The guard stares at me. ‘No, I mean keep them all on.’
‘Oh.’ I relax a little. ‘Okay.’
She shakes her head. ‘Of course I mean remove your clothes.’
‘But you said…‘ I stop, rub my forehead, look back at her. ‘But it is not routine. Stripping, now—it’s not part of my routine.’ My stomach starts to churn.
The guard sighs. ‘Okay, Martinez. Time for you to move. The last thing I need is you getting clever on me.’ She grabs my arm and I go rigid. ‘For crying out fucking loud.’
‘Please, get off me,’ I say.
But she doesn’t reply, instead she pushes me to move and I want to speak, shout, scream, but something tells me I shouldn’t, that if I did, that if I punched this guard hard, now, in the face, I may be in trouble.
We walk through two sets of double doors. These ones are metal. Heavy. My pulse quickens, my stomach squirms. All the while the guard stays close. There are two cleaners with buckets and mops up ahead, and when they see us they stop, their mops dripping on the tiles, water and cleaning suds trickling along the cracks, the bubbles wobbling first then popping, one by one, water melting into the grouting, gone forever.
One corner and two more doors, and we arrive at a new room. It is four metres by four metres and very warm. My jacket clings to my skin and my legs shake. I close my eyes. I have to. I need to think, to calm myself. I envision home, Spain. Orange groves, sunshine, mountains. Anything I can think of, anything that will take my mind away from where I am. From what I am.
A cough sounds and my eyes flicker open. There, ahead, is another guard sitting at a table. She coughs again, glances from under her spectacles and frowns. My leg itches from the sweat and heat. I bend down, hitch up my trousers and scratch.
‘Stand up.’
She snaps like my mother at the hired help. I stand.
‘You’re the priest killer,’ she says. ‘I recognise your face from the paper. Be needing the chapel, will you?’ She chuckles. The standing guard behind me joins in.
‘I do not go to church,’ I say, confused.
She stops laughing. ‘No, bet you don’t.’ She cocks her head. ‘You could do with a bit more weight on you. Skinny, pretty thing like you in here?’ She whistles and shakes her head. ‘Still, nice tan.’
She makes me nervous—her laughs, jeers. I know how those people can be. I pull at the end of my jacket, fingers slippery, my teeth clenched just enough so I can keep quiet, so my thoughts remain in my head. I want to flap my hands so much, but something about this place—this guard—tells me I should not.
The sitting guard opens a file. ‘Says here you’re Spanish.’
I reply in Castellano.
‘English, love. We speak English here.’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I am Spanish. Castilian. Can you not hear my accent?’
‘This one thinks she’s clever.’ I turn. The other guard.
‘Well, that’s all we fucking need,’ says sitting guard, ‘a bloody know-it-all.’ She spoons some sugar into a mug on the table. I suddenly realise I have had nothing to drink for hours.
‘I would like some water.’
But she ignores me. ‘Martinez, you need to do as we tell you,’ she says, stirring the mug.
She has heaped in four mounds of sugar. I look at her stomach. Rounded. This is not healthy. Before I can prevent it, a diagnosis drops out of my mouth, babbling like a torrent of water through a brook.
‘You have too much weight on your middle,’ I say, the words flowing, urgent. ‘This puts you at a higher than average risk of cardiac disease. If you continue to take sugar in your…‘ I pause. ‘I assume that is tea? Then you will increase your risk of heart disease, as well as that of type two diabetes.’ I pause, catch my breath.
The guard holds her spoon mid-air.
‘Told you,’ says standing guard.
‘Strip,’ says sitting guard after a moment. ‘We need you to strip, smart arse.’
But I cannot. I cannot strip. Not here. Not now. My heart picks up speed, my eyes dart around the room, frenzied, a primitive voice inside me swelling, urging me to curl up into a ball, protect myself.
‘You have to remove your clothes,’ sitting guard says nonchalantly. She blows on her tea. ‘It’s a requirement for all new arrivals at Goldmouth.’ She sips. ‘We need to search you. Now.’
Panic—I can feel it. My heartbeat. My pulse. Quickly, I search for a focus and settle on sitting guard’s face. Acne scars puncture her chin, there are dark circles under her eyes, and on her cheeks, eight thread lines criss-cross a ruddy complexion. ‘Do you consume alcoholic beverages?’ I blurt.
‘What?’
Perhaps she did not hear. Many people appear deaf to me when they are not. ‘Do you consume alcoholic beverages?’ I repeat.
She smiles at standing guard. ‘Is she for real?’
‘Of course I am real. See?’ I point to myself. ‘I am standing right here.’
Sitting guard shakes her head. ‘For fuck’s sake.’ She exhales. ‘Strip.’ Then she sips her drink again.
My chest tightens and my palms pool with sweat. ‘I cannot strip,’ I say after a moment, my voice quiet, the sound of it teetering on the edge of sanity. ‘It is not bedtime, not shower time or time for sex.’
Sitting guard spurts out a mouthful of tea. ‘Fuck.’ Taking a tissue from her pocket, she wipes her face. ‘Jesus. Look,’ she says, scrunching up the tissue, ‘I am going to tell you one more time, Martinez. You need to take your clothes off now so we can search you.’ She pauses. ‘After that, I will have no choice but to carry out the strip myself. Then you’ll be placed in the segregation unit as a penalty.’
She folds her arms and waits.
I wipe my cheek. ‘But…but it is not time to strip.’ I swivel to the other guard, begging. ‘Please, tell her. It is not time.’
But the guard simply rolls her eyes, presses a blue button by an intercom