Insiders by Olivia Goldsmith Page B

match the new inmate with. You are the – uh – main person for the crew. I just don’t want to add a problem to an already sensitive situation.’
    â€˜Hey, my policy is just like that old president’s,’ I told her. ‘“Don’t ask, don’t tell.” That works for me, too.’ I knew what she was angling for. The Warden wanted me to take that little white witch to my lovin’ black bosom. That’s one of the deadly things about prison; you show weakness just once and everyone is ready to prey on ya’. Just ‘cause I unreasonably, uncharacteristically, and maybe unfortunately ‘adopted’ Suki Conrad into my crew doesn’t mean I’m gonna do it for every sorrowful new piece of meat that comes to Jennings. It bugged me that The Woman even asked me.
    I don’t know if the others wanted to take Suki in, but I insisted. And when I insist, they don’t have much choice. It wasn’t like anybody really hated her, and face it, girls, Movita rules. Anyway, the very first day I saw Suki Conrad draggin’ her pitiful little butt through Intake, I just took to her. Maybe it was that baby-fine blonde hair or the lost look in her eyes. I got me a pink-skinned baby doll with yellow hair and blue eyes for Christmas once. Didn’t I love that dolly! Whatever. Sometimes, though, someone like that just tugs at your heart or some shit like that. I guess I just plain felt sorry for the little thing, and that’s thetruth. Just ‘cause I’m in prison don’t mean I got no human feelings. And I felt like we needed a baby in our crew.
    Women need family. Don’t matter if it’s blood or not. In the crew we’re like mother and daughters sometimes, and sometimes we’re like sisters, and sometimes we’re like other family members, too. That don’t mean we don’t fight and argue and stuff. But when you’re in a crew you just try to keep all that to a minimum.
    â€˜Please let me know if there’s any trouble with the match-up, okay?’ the Warden asked me. She was lookin’ me right in the eye and I knew she wanted more than a trouble report. She knew how to get at me. ‘That’s it for today, Movita. You better go to dinner.’ She paused for a second. ‘What do you and your girls have planned tonight?’
    I switched off the monitor and neatened up some stacks of papers on my desk. ‘Well, it’s Theresa’s turn to cook,’ I said, ‘so it’s gonna be a surprise.’ Sometimes I get the oddest feeling that the Warden is kinda – well – envious of us in the crew. It’s like she’d rather come and eat with us instead of goin’ to her own house. I don’t know much about her life Outside, ‘cept that she’s divorced and that she works all the time. I doubt she’s got much of a life.
    When I got back to my house, Theresa was already chopping the carrots that Suki was washin’. ‘You want the salad dressing sweet or you want it tart?’ Theresa asked.
    â€˜I don’t care as long as you’re making it,’ Cher told her. She was loungin’ her sassy ass on the bunk, readin’ a magazine, and just waitin’ to eat.
    If prison is the place where society thinks they can make us cons eat shit, they do a damn good job of it. Even though the Warden keeps fightin’ with Ben Norton down in FoodServices, the food at Jennings never gets any better. No one – and I mean no one – wants to eat the shit old Ben serves up in the cafeteria. It’s nothin’ but starch, grease, and real bad meat. People eat it, but only if they have to.
    You can eat for free in the cafeteria. So if you’re destitute, or spend whatever you got on contraband, or if you can’t make even one friend, then you’re stuck in the cafeteria eatin’ one of Ben’s blue plate specials.
    But if you got some sense, a