PART 2

In my solitude I have plenty of time to think about how I got here. I see now it was all a plot. The whole idea of a vacation down here to repair our marriage was a plot. The emergency at work that made my husband leave so abruptly and led to me flying home alone. It was all a big plan. I had been set up by my husband and his lover. This way they get rid of me without the mess and expense of a divorce. I had been left alone in this terrible country with thousands of dollars worth of cocaine planted in my luggage. Someone called the police at the airport to alert them to me.

They found cocaine in my suitcases, sewn into the lining of my clothes and even a little packet in my purse. It totalled one hundred grams. They called me a trafficker! I never saw cocaine before in my life! No one cares.

I am totally alone. I find some comfort in singing to myself. I am constantly singing softly songs that I used to listen to at home and sometimes singing nursery rhymes I used to sing to my children. When I am not singing, I am humming. It gives me comfort. I probably seem crazy to the guards.

I look forward to the doctor's visits. He is all I have. No one else speaks much English, and at least he will occasionally smile at me. Everyone else looks at me with pure hatred in their eyes. I tell the doctor all about me. He knows all about my children and my marriage. He even calls me Julie sometimes as he examines me. I do not understand how this man can take such interest in me, yet be so eager to see me die a tortured death. I use what remains of my womanly skills to inspire compassion for me in this unusual man. He has the power to ease my pain. As my pain grows worse and my terror more intense, I begin to hope I can entice the good doctor to medicate me so I will not suffer when the time comes.

I ask the doctor if he can give me Demerol before I go to the gallows, just something to ease my terror. He is emphatic that I will not be allowed any drugs. I will want to feel the full experience of the hanging, he insists. I cannot understand how this man's mind works!

At out next meeting, the doctor shows me a noose that was actually used to hang a man.  I try not to look at it, but the doctor shoves it in front of my face, makes me touch it and asks me to let him put it around my neck. I shudder and beg him not to make me do that!  The rope is coarse and heavy. The knot looks neat and complicated.He tells me the plan calls for my noose to be left around my neck and placed in my coffin with me. That is so ghoulish. I try so hard not to let that image give me nightmares.

One morning I find the menacing guard outside the open door of my cell. He has a taunting smile as he boldy fingers a ring he is wearing on a chain around his neck. I am shocked to recognize it as my wedding ring. "This means you are mine, sweet meat" he says in his accented English.
"You will be fun." I feel sick to my stomach. He grabs his crotch and blows me a kiss.

When I am let outside my cell I become a marked woman. The guards despise me and treat me cruelly. But the other women inmates truly hate me. The guards just stand by and laugh when I am attacked. I am shuffling in my chains when a woman breaks past my guards, grabs my hair and bashes my head against the wall, dropping me to my knees. As I kneel there dazed, she spits in my face. When the guards deliver my food, they boldly spit in my bowl or my water as they hand it to me. The one guard who says he owns me likes to poke at me  with his baton.  He presses his baton into my breast and uses it to lift up smock and presses it into me with while he laughs at my discomfort. I hate him. I hate his baton. He says I will be his girlfriend.

When I misbehave, the guards shackle my wrists over my head to the wall.  Sometimes they will not let me see the doctor for days and leave me shackled there. If they are generous they only shackle one wrist to the wall. They threaten to shackle me by a short chain to a steel collar around my neck if I am not a good prisoner.

Everyone spoke English to me when I was a tourist with an American Express card. They were all smiling and polite to me then. Now they just spit and talk in their Dasala dialect. I cannot understand what they say. I talk to them, but they  just shrug. They only speak English to insult and terrify me.
After several days the mean woman guard and three men come into my cell.  They take the pan of my waste and dump it into a big pail. Then the men bring a big hose into the cell and turn it onto me. They hose the cell down, avoiding the ceiling so they will not disturb the spider webs.

The guard directs the cold water onto me, turning up its force and aiming it onto my face, laughing as I am knocked sprawling onto the floor. He steps over me and plants one booted foot on my shoulder and directs the full blast at my face. The powerful torrent takes my breath away. He moves the stream of water down my body, concentrating it on my breasts and between my legs. The wet smock clings to my skin and the guards joke about my nipples showing through the thin fabric. I am left drenched and shivering in the cold. The guards hose down the rest of the cell and leave me in the cold and wet room. When they leave I lick the moisture off my skin. It is a ritual repeated every week.

The day following the hosings, when I am as clean as I will ever be, the guards take me to the warden's office where I am put to work. I savor the softness of his carpet on the soles of my feet.
While I am there the warden does nothing but sit behind his desk and watch me. He calls me wench and likes to have me kneel down in my shackles and polish his shoes while he has them on.

Sometimes he does not want to be bothered with me and he gives me to his assistant. The tasks are always menial, like cleaning the coffee pot, washing windows or picking up the garbage. The other days my labor is hard. I work outside under the watchful eye of three guards assigned to me. I work apart from the other inmates who work together. I am ever hopeful I will be in a position someday to snatch something to eat. I did find a dandelion weed in the prison yard one afternoon and managed to swallow it without anyone finding out. However, when the guards discover a handful of grass I snuck into my cell to make  pathetic salad I am shackled to the wall for the next day. They say the grass was "contraband" and I am charged with smuggling!

One of my first work assignments is to clean the prison woodshop. There is great interest in my first visit to the woodshop.  Even the warden and his assistant come down to witness my horror as I discover the other inmates working on my coffin! I am forced to stand still while one inmate takes my measurements so that they would not waste any of their precious wood. When the inmate is done with my height, the guards make her measure my breasts, waists and hips as a joke.

They say my thirty-four, twenty-five and thirty-five inch measurements will change before they are finished with me!
The warden points out how crude my coffin is compared to the elaborate caskets Americans like me are usually buried in.
"It is a peasant's coffin," he says. "Better than you deserve."

The warden takes me to the other side of the woodshop where the inmates are working on my gallows. The guards and inmates make morbid jokes while I shuffle around pathetically, sweeping up the wood shavings from my coffin and my gallows. At the end of the morning I am told to carry the sawdust back to my cell to cover my floor. The guards say I should get used to the smell of the wood since I will be smelling it for eternity.

In the afternoon guards have me carry a shovel up to the dreary prison cemetery. It is filled with untended graves with weathered, rotting wood markers just like mine. The guards sit down beneath a tree and tell me to start digging at a spot outlined by white paint. It is my grave! The sun is baking and the ground is hard. The guards offer no help as I struggle to break the ground.

It seems hopeless. The ground is like concete. My shoulders ache. My back hurts. My eyes sting with my tears and sweat. After two hours of miserable labor, the guards give me a drink and take me back to my cell. I barely scratched the surface, but the guards say that is okay. It will be part of my daily routine until the job is done.  I am told I must dig at least four feet down and there will be many heavy rocks for me to lift out of the hole before my grave will be ready for my casket.

Some days I work in the prison laundry, a hot and steamy place. Often I work outside for hours when the sun is so hot everyone else, even the other inmates, take shelter.  But I am not even given sunblock, and soon the back of my neck, my legs, face and arms blister. The heat and humidity thoroughly weaken me. The guards will not give me a break or even a rag to wipe the sweat from my eyes. Sometimes the guards will even drink my water just to be cruel. I usually last through the morning, but by early afternoon I collapse and lay unattended where I fall. The guards consider my faints to be opportunities for them to take a break! By the end of my shift my smock is soaked through with my sweat.

 One of my chores is to clean the kennel for the viscious guard dogs. The dogs lunge and snarl at me, snapping their teeth menacingly, the hair rising on their backs as I shuffle in their kennels with my shackles to bend down and pick up their dried turds in my fingers and crawl on my knees to clean their cages. The dogs' bowls are full of meat, roast beef and turkey leftovers from the guard's meals. I consider making a grab for a piece, but a big rottweiler's menacing growl scares me off. The only meat that would be eaten would be me! As I back carefully away from the angry dog, the guards joke cruelly that the kennel is nicer than my wretched cell.

One hot afternoon while the guards watch me on my knees scrubbing the pavement, an inmate hits me in the ear with a rock. The blow knocks me out and the guards take a break, sipping their iced drinks while I lie there in the hot sun, bleeding from the head. As I come to, moaning in pain and confusion, the guards prod me with their batons to get me up. It is a struggle for me. I sit up and my head throbs with intense pain that makes me lay down again. When they finally get me to my feet, the guards order me to clean my blood off the concrete. My hair is matted to my head with dried blood and my vision is blurred for days after. The guards make a point out of telling me the inmate who threw the rock will not be punished.

The guards' game with my food is evolving. Now I discover they are trying to sicken me. They particularly enjoy driving me to squat over the toilet bowl. If they can give me cramps and gas they howl like junior high kids. If they give me diarhhea they go get more of their friends to peek in and watch my degradation through the window. One guard asks me how my dinner was last night. "You seemed to like them. You cleaned out your bowl, you disgusting bitch!" I cringe at the thought of what he must have fed me. The guards have taken to delaying my last meal of the day to make it more difficult for me to detect the terrible things they put in my food because of the gloom of my cell.
Men have so many vile words in their vocabulary to degrade women, and they use them with such passion. Words like bitch, slut, cunt and whore. The hateful words seem universal to all languages. I hear them all the time, every day from everyone.

The doctor's "research" is always a part of my schedule The doctor treats me for my cold, which will not go away. My nose is running and I have a bad cough. I show him the sores on my ankles from the shackles. He only nods at  my bruises and cuts inflicted by the guards and other inmates.
He is curious about my yeast infection, but will not waste antibiotics on me. He takes a picture of me with an old Polaroid camera. He says he is keeping a record of my case.
I ask him if he can get me shoes. The other inmates all have shoes. Maybe some cheap flipflops.
He said he will pass my request on to the prison authorities.

On the way back to my cell the guard with my wedding ring grabs a handful of my hair and yanks my head back while his friend stomps on my bare foot with his heavy boot.  The pain is excruciating and I scream. The guards push me move on. I am certain my toe is broken and I limp. That was the prison's response to my request for shoes!

When I see the doctor the next time I tell him about the attack. He asks several questions about the pain and twists my toe in his fingers, making he scream and grimace. It occurs to me he is not setting the fracture, but torturing me!
During our meetings in his office, the doctor sits in his fine leather chair while I stand next to his desk, shackled and in my dirty gown. He sips iced tea and peels a tangerine while he interrogates me about my medical history. He pops a section of the tangerine into his mouth as he talks. I eye the tangerine hungrily and the tea makes my mouth water. He smiles kindly at me and I am certain he will offer me some, but he does not. One day I tell him how much I love raspberries. At our next meeting he makes a point of eating raspberries in front of me.  Sometimes he eats cookies.

Sometimes he calls me in while he is eating his lunch. He never offers me any.
The doctor asks me all sorts of questions about my life back home. I tell him about my love of dancing and the little black dress that my husband liked me to wear when we went out. I told him how I used to run every day on the bike path down by the river, how I danced ballet for seven years before I became pregnant.  I know I must seem like a snooty American.
 We talk about books and movies. He asks me if I have seen the movie "Dead Man Walking." It is a cruel question and he enjoys my hurt.  His questions become more intruding. He asks me how I lost my virginity, if I take birth control pills. He takes copious notes about my sexual history. I tell him everything. I want someone to know who I was, and I think  if this man knows  me, he will become my ally. He is my only hope. He is the only person who does not spit on me.

I ask about my hairbrush. He ignores me.
One night I am suddenly rousted out of my trtoubled sleep by a blinding light in my eyes and four noisy guards in my cells. I panic, fearing that my execution date is here.  Two guards grab me by my ankles and drag me cruelly out of my cell and down the corridor, banging my head on the floor and making my smock ride up around my shoulders, revealing my naked breasts and vagina to the guards standing along the hall.I fear a gang rape.

A violent storm is battering Dasala. The rains are torrential, the winds are roaring, ripping tiles from the roofs and blowing picnic tables over in the prison yard. Everyone is taking shelter. But the warden is worried that his newly planted vegetable garden is threatened. That is why the guards rousted me at two in the morning. I am sent into the storm to cover the seedlings with a tarp. I have to struggle to anchor the tarp with rocks as I shuffle in my chains. The wind in my face is refreshing and so strong it threatens to rip my smock off. I wish it would blow me away!
The rain is intense. I can hardly see the guards beneath the awning who warned that their rifles were aimed at my legs. I love the rain. I feel so cleansed. I slip in the mud and lay there, my mouth open to catch the rain. The guards throw me a shovel and demand I dig a trench to protect the garden from flooding. I remain out there even when the rain turns into a bruising hail. But the guards drag me back in when the lightening gets too close. They must save me for the gallows!

I see the doctor almost every day, but does nothing to ease my discomfort.
One day while he is "examining" me, the doctor does something that touches my heart. He gives me a glass of water and lets me drink. It is so incredibly wonderful. It is the first time in months I have had a drink of water I was confident someone had not peed in! He tells me he is taking a big risk for letting me drink that water. It is against the rules. He could lose his job and he does not want to miss my hanging!

I have told this doctor several times that I am innocent. The doctor just shrugs and says it is too bad. I ask him to go to the American Embassy for me, but he says they will not intervene because of the political situation. They all want to make an example of me in their War Against Drugs.
The doctor says the United States government has been pressing this government to crack down on drug traffickers, so they could not very well ask for leniency for me, just because I am American, could they? I beg him to try. I just want to live
.
He is more interested in my hanging. He watches my face closely as he talks about my execution, like he is trying to memorize my reaction.The doctor is obsessed by death.  He talks about the hangings he has seen. He is intensely curious about my terror and is constantly questioning me about my nightmares and telling me stories designed to heighten my panic.  He says I remind him of a British teenager who was hanged in Malaysia for being a drug trafficker years ago. He tells me enthusiastically how it took her five minutes strangling on the rope before she died. He shows me photographs of the public hanging of two other traffickers, a man and woman, both locals, dangling from the gallows. Signs hang around their necks proclaiming them as criminals. The doctor says I will have a sign, too. Both are wearing the dreary blue smocks, like mine, and like me they are barefooted and chained. The doctor points to the big bulk in the man's groin and asks if I think the man had a final erection while in agony. He shows me grotesque close up pictures of the woman's  puffy and twisted  face. I cannot believe the size of her blackened tongue. The gross image is seared into my brain. Death is so ugly.  I wonder if she had children. It grieves me to realize I will know what she went through and that I will look like that. I wonder if the doctor will collect hideous pictures of me. He says he will. Photography is a hobby of his. If he had not gone to medical school, he would have become a photojournalist. I will be his model.

He kisses me, whispers softly that I am guilty and deserve my punishment for my crimes. He is close to me. I feel self conscious about the way I must smell. He laughs and says I smell like a woman. The doctor kisses me again. It is funny. I am grateful for his kisses. It means I am still a human, that I have some worth to someone. It is better than being spit on.

I ask him if he can, as my doctor, convince the authorities to give me more water and food. He tells me he is not "my" doctor and that Dasala does not care if I am healthy. I only have to live long enough to hang! I tell him I am thirsty all the time and my mouth is so dry. He suggests I try drinking my urine. I tell him I am so hungry I barely have the strength to walk. He says I have no where to go.
I am  not allowed to see my children or even to receive any mail. I beg the doctor for paper and a pen so I may write them a letter. He could mail it for me. He says he will think about it, but he would be taking a great risk. I am not worth it.  I ask if he could get me some better clothes, like the other inmates. Just a sweater?

I hate the blue smock I have been wearing since the first day. It is filthy and the thin cotton does not keep me warm at all. I am constantly cold.

"Don't complain about the way you are dressed. After all, you could be hanged completely naked.
That would be infinitely more degrading for you, and more exciting for us!"
He laughed at his own joke.

The next morning the guards come to my cell. There are four of them, one more than usual. They shackle me more painfully than normal. I am prodded and poked into a fast shuffle that leads me to the office of the warden. It is about my request for better clothes. My request is denied. The warden says it is part of enlightened prison practice designed to keep inmates under control. It is a policy he says is most effective with women.

"You know the way you dress is part of the way you want to appear in front of others. We take a woman, like you Julie, strip her from the clothes she has so carefully chosen to wear. Here we put you in loose, ill tailored prison smocks. Make you look ludicrous. We take your  shoes off, so you will be shamely barefooted, soiling your so carefully pedicured feet. We restrain your  ankles with iron shackles, so you will look and walk as a slave and not a free woman anymore. Your beauty fading, your hands callous. The soles of your feet growing leatherish.  Convict feet. All that is part of your punishment. It all  has to end with you dead."

"If I cannot get my clothes back, maybe I could get a hair brush?"

The warden says he will see.  I ask for more food and the warden instructs the guards to take me directly through the kitchen on the way back to my cell. I am elated!

I am so excited by the prospect of eating real food. My heart beats with happiness. The guards push and prod. The kitchen is big, with industrial sized stainless steel tables, freezers and ovens. I am in heaven. There are baskets of oranges, tomatoes and peppers on the table nearest me. I reach for a lucious red tomato, my mouth watering. I feel its ripeness and anticipate the wonderful taste.

Suddenly, a sharp pain in my elbow numbs my arm. The tomato falls to the floor. Before I can move, a baton in my ribs drop me to my knees. A booted foot kicks me to the floor. I see the tomato inches away.

"The warden told us to walk you though the kitchen, Gringa Whore. He did not say to let you eat!"

Whenever I think the cruelty cannot get worse, it does. My arm feels paralyzed. The baton has knocked the wind out of me. I lay there, wide-eyed, unable to draw a breath as I look up at my tormentors. They nudge me to my feet. As I stagger, gasping for a breath, they push me back to the basement, telling me I am in for serious punishment for my crime.  Crime? The guard says I will be charged with stealing from the People of Dasala, a serious offense.  That tomato belonged to the people! I do not really care. What can they do to me?

That night I dream of brushing my hair. I curl up on the cold concrete floor listening to the mice squeak and the beetles scrape, and remember how my mother taught me to brush my long hair one hundred strokes every night before bed. It is a nice memory. I cry for my mother that night.
The next day goes by and no one comes with my water and food. So much for my request for more food! I am getting desperately hungry. I am listless and have trouble finding the will to move around my cell. I am so weak at times I cannot lift my arms.

The guards break my fast with a bowl of potato peelings from the kitchen upstairs. It may be garbage from the  inmates' meals, but to me it is a feast. Some of the peelings are black and mushy. I know the guards would not allow me enjoy the meal and I do succeed in picking out two worms before I eat. I suspect there were more nasty surprises in the bowl that are now in my stomach. .