Page 8 of Fighting for Tawny

Tawny had yet to discover how the drugs were getting into the prison. Bette’s revelation, though, stunned her, and she hoped to be able to tactfully question her in more detail about what happened to Lucy.

Jo and her crew invited Tawny to eat with them at their table. Mealtimes in the cafeteria weren’t any different from a school environment. The women divided themselves into cliques and claimed their tables. Tawny found that out the hard way on her first day when she attempted to sit at a table that belonged to a clique. She’d been yanked off the bench-style seat, and her food tray dumped on the floor. Since she couldn’t go through the line again, she bought snacks from the commissary to tide her over until the next meal. Two weeks later, one of those women had picked a fight with her, and she found out the hard way not to mess with Tawny.

Tawny scanned the crowded cafeteria for Bette and saw her eating with her clique at their table near the back of the area. She caught Bette’s eye momentarily before the other woman looked away.

Bette’s afraid. She’s said too much.

Now she wanted more than ever to have a private conversation with her.

After lunch, Tawny headed toward one of the institution’s classrooms where she tutored a small group of four women. It resembled a lab with several desktop computers, three round tables and chairs, and a two-shelf black bookcase with study materials. Tawny directed three of the women to start working on Khan Academy, an online program that helped students prepare for exams such as the SAT, while she gave the fourth woman, Andee, individual attention. The goal was for her pupils to earn their GEDs.

Thirty minutes into solving simple algebraic equations, Andee grew frustrated and threw her pencil across the room. “This is stupid! I don’t want to earn a GED that ain’t worth the paper it’s written on.”

“What do you want?” Tawny asked.

“To earn a regular high school diploma conferred upon me by the great state of California,” Andee replied decisively. “Then, I can start college classes and earn my law degree. I want to practice family law so I can protect kids whose parents are assholes.”

Tawny admired her conviction. “All right, then. Let’s see what we can do.”

They explored options, and in the end, she helped Andee enroll in adult education classes online. Her hug of appreciation made Tawny’s incarceration easier to bear.

After her tutoring session, Tawny wandered into the common room and asked a group of women playing cards if they knew Bette or had seen her.

“I think she has laundry duty right now,” one replied. “Wanna join us, Tawny? We’ll deal you in for a pack of gum.”

“Sure.” She sat in an empty chair and tossed a pack of Juicy Fruit into the center of the card table. Gum, she’d soon learned, was a good bribe. So were cigarettes.

An hour later, a hard rain pounded against the roof and hit the windowpanes of the common room. The women grew bored playing cards and left the game. Some returned to their cells for a nap and others plopped down in front of the widescreen TV mounted on a wall where a Hallmark movie teased them with the idea of a life they’d never have for themselves. Knowing this, they poked fun at the conventions of a sweet romance. Tawny smiled to herself as she listened to their banter. One by one, Justice, Owen, and Hutch had succumbed to the power of love. And now that Mallory’s husband Bentley Hayes was dead, she and Luca were free to reunite.

She prayed for a happy ending to her own love story.

When the movie ended, someone changed the channel to an afternoon talk show, and the conversation grew louder as the women reacted to the guests and the topic being discussed. Craving some peace and quiet, Tawny rose to her feet with a book she intended to read in her cell until dinnertime. As she headed out of the common room, Jo fell in step with her.

“You look serious, Tawny. What ‘cha thinkin’ about?”

“You’re gonna think I’m crazy. Bette’s theory.”

Jo frowned. “It’s kinda got me spooked.”

Tawny lowered her voice when she spoke. “Did you know Bette’s cellmate, what was her name? Lucy something?”

“Not personally. The previous warden made her a trustee, so she had a lot of freedom. Lucy tried to help some of us, keep us outta trouble. Far as I know, none of us had anything against her. Warden Stoltz? Couldn’t stand her from what I heard. He doesn’t like us to have any privileges, so he started finding reasons to take away Lucy’s.”

“Like accusing her of using drugs?”

“Something like that.”

They arrived at Tawny’s cell, and Jo followed her inside. “Jo, Bette said Lucy died from a drug overdose. Is that unusual? I mean, isn’t it hard to get drugs inside the prison?”

“Not under our old warden. He ran a tight ship. He knew exactly how drugs were coming in, which guards were dirty doin’ it, and he got rid of them. We were happier and safer. Now, visitors can pass drugs to us, and the guards look the other way.”

Tawny inhaled a deep breath and decided to take a leap of faith. “I overheard some of the other women gossipin’ about inmates disappearin’.” She opened the door and waited for Jo to walk through it.

Jo sank onto Tawny’s narrow metal bunk bed with its thin mattress and drew her down, too. “I heard the rumors. Even knew one of ‘em. Nixie. Sweetest girl you’d ever want to meet. Got busted for prostitution. Twenty years old, she didn’t belong in here.”

“Let me guess. Judge Cohen sent her.”

Jo’s dark eyes flared with understanding. “Jesus, he did.”

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