With Love from the Inside by Angela Pisel Page A

while. I wasn’t sure why she hadn’t been there, but I missed her and I needed advising now more than ever.
    â€œMs. Liz coming today?” I asked Officer Jones, who was dialing the telephone from her desk in the dayroom. “Haven’t seen her,” she replied without looking up.
    â€œThis is Jones”—her voice serious. She paused and then said, “So it’s a go?”
    I glanced up. So did she, and then she lowered her voice. “First one in several years; this place is going to be a circus.”
    The voice on the other end must have agreed with her. Lakeland State Penitentiary was the largest maximum-security prison in the state and had both a men’s and a women’s death row. The new governor had promised he would be tough on crime and even tougher on criminals. “Too much of your hard-earned money is going to support those who have broken the law. Those who have been sentenced to death are sitting year after year in our prisons while their appeals draw out and cost you, the taxpayer, more money.” He’d shouted the words as if he was promising a refund. “I promise to expedite this lengthy process and let their punishments be carried out.” The crowd cheered through the newscast.
    Officer Jones finished her call in private. Or I tuned her out; I’m not sure which. It was obvious someone in this place would be going before me. I didn’t know whom.
    Carmen came out of her cell about twenty minutes after I did. Even on death row, she made her appearances fashionably late.
    Forgoing a greeting, she picked up last month’s
Travel + Leisure
and said, “I bet the person who donated this has never traveled out of the state.” Her long nails clicked on the metal table. “Her husband’s probably a cheap-ass.”
    She continued to flip through the pages, not appearing to care if I agreed or not.
    â€œI bet they travel all the time,” I said after a few minutes. I didn’t want to start a fight with Carmen, but I was trying to be love-worthy, after all, and this subscriber had been kind enough to donate the magazine. “She probably pays for her kids to get their hair weaved every time they go to the beach.”
    Carmen grunted and continued flipping the pages. She had been here the longest and was the toughest one for me to figure out. Roni I can understand. Burn marks from a hot iron framed her world. I’m not sure she ever felt the excitement of riding a bike for the first time without thetraining wheels, or experienced the joy that bubbles in your chest when someone said “I like your smile” or “You look pretty in that dress.”
    The same can’t be said for Carmen. She grew up in a house with a cook and a driver and had a story about every vacation destination mentioned in each donated issue. The way she cocked her head when she examined her slice of thin bologna or the green Jell-O served in a plastic cup told all of us this place was beneath her. Her shiny black hair, twisted tight in a French knot, framed sharp, high cheekbones and thin lips.
    â€œShe looks like a praying mantis,” Jada had said once, when she thought Carmen was sleeping. “Damn, a gray hair or wrinkle is even too scared to live on that bitch.”
    â€œI’ll show you a praying mantis,” Carmen had screamed, rushing full-speed out of her cell, with her hand raised in the air. An officer intervened before Carmen had a chance to attack. She spent three days in isolation after that.
    Carmen tossed the magazine onto the pile and started browsing through
National Geographic.
“Venice is way overrated,” she said. “Stan wants to go, but I’d rather go someplace else.” Her eyes stared off and she didn’t continue.
    Stan was her fourth husband. They’d married seven years ago, after Carmen had been on the row for almost a decade. Ms. Liz conducted the simple ceremony; Carmen and Stan