Are You There Vodka? It's Me Chelsea Read online

  “Hold on,” she said with her teeth clenched. “I’m just finishing up.” This was obviously how she stayed so thin: She immediately shit out any food she consumed.

  “Hand me some toilet paper.”

  I grabbed some tissue and handed it to my new best friend.

  After she wiped her ass, she pulled up her pants and headed back out to the main room. I wanted her to wash her hands, but didn’t want to be bossy. “I’m just gonna wash my hands,” I said, hoping she would take the hint. Instead, she took a menthol cigarette out of her pocket and lit it.

  We walked back to our respective bunks and hopped in. I laid my head down facing Lucille, wondering if she was my prison soul mate. I was starting to understand the tales of lesbianism you hear on the outside. It made perfect sense that without any men around, women had only two options: weight-lifting or other women. I wondered if Lucille and I would have a wedding ceremony by our bunk beds or in the cafeteria. I would be so skinny by that time from all this self-starvation that I could probably fit into any gown my heart desired. Maybe Lucille and I could even fit into the same gown.

  I wasn’t really attracted to her, but I had on occasion slept with guys I wasn’t attracted to, and figured there wouldn’t be a huge difference. I stared at her as she mashed her cigarette out on the side of her bedpost. “So, how did you kill your sister?” I asked, trying to make small-talk with my future bride.

  “With a hammer,” she replied. “Took the bitch a good forty minutes to finally die.”

  I was not prepared for that response. My body immediately went into shock. It was everything I could do not to vomit. The only other time my body had this reaction was when I was ten years old and my next door neighbor pulled down his pants and showed me his penis. But even then, I was less taken aback. I leaned my head over the edge of my bed gagging, but nothing was coming out. I knew this was not the appropriate reaction to Lucille’s declaration. I put my hand up to say I was okay until moments later, when I finally stopped heaving.

  Lucille was sitting on her bed looking at me. I racked my brain trying to come up with an excuse for my reaction, but was so thrown off-guard, I just put my head back down on my pillow and said, “We should definitely keep in touch after I leave tomorrow.” Then I rolled over and cried myself to sleep. I thought about how lucky my sister was that Lucille wasn’t in our family. I wanted to hug Sloane tightly and tell her, “You stupid, stupid girl, do you know that under no circumstance would I ever hammer you?”

  I woke up very early the next morning and opened my eyes. I looked around the room trying to think of a situation that could be any worse than this, and decided that the only thing that could be worse than prison was the navy. I looked over and Lucille wasn’t in her bed. I grabbed my bag of toiletries and went straight to the bathroom. I had to pee and I desperately needed to floss.

  Once I was done washing my hands, I heard my name being called over the loudspeaker along with five or six others. “Finally!” I exclaimed, and ran over to the glass booth, where a guard was waiting with a clipboard. I stood there while we waited for the other girls called to find their way over, thinking about how thin I felt. One more day of this, and my stomach would officially be concave. I loved it. Once the others arrived, the guard led us out a door, down a hall, and down two flights of stairs into what looked like a principal’s office.

  My name was called rather quickly and I went into the office, sitting down across from a Latino woman in her forties.

  “Hi,” I said, with a bounce in my step.

  “Hi, Miss…Handler?” she said, looking up at me with what I took to be sympathy. Finally.

  “Yup, that’s me,” I said, shaking my head at the injustice of it all.

  “Okay, there are a couple of options. Do you have any special skills?”

  “Skills? Not really, no. I’m good at reading, I can type pretty fast…. I’m not sure what you’re asking me?” I asked, confused.

  “Well, you’re here for work placement, so there are different things to choose from: You could work in the kitchen, or you could work in the industrial shop, where you could make anything from license plates to wooden wind chimes, or you can enroll in school and get your GED.”

  “What are you talking about? No, no, no…I’m not working here, you don’t seem to understand. First of all, I am supposed to be getting bailed out this morning. I do not want a job making wood chimes or fixing cars, and I already graduated from high school…barely, but I did, so I don’t need a GED! I want to go home! I just want to go home! What exactly is the problem with you people?”

  “Listen, Miss Handler, everyone thinks they are going home. But the reality of the situation is that eighty-five percent of the inmates booked end up spending a minimum of six months here, and if you want to start earning money, the best thing for you to do is get a job.”

  That was it. I stood up and placed my hands on her desk. “Listen up, miracle ear,” I told her. “I spoke to my aunt last night, and she has already paid the money to get me out, okay? I am waiting for them to release me any minute. That is the situation. So for all I care, you can put my name down to plant prison flowers, or style inmates’ hair, or head up the women’s fucking field hockey team. I am not staying here!”

  “Next,” she said as she shuffled some paperwork. I walked outside her office and sat down. I was incensed and I also really wanted my mommy. Why wasn’t anyone getting the fact that I would not be taking up permanent residence in a women’s prison?

  I looked up at the ceiling. “Are you there, vodka? It’s me, Chelsea. Please get me out of jail and I promise I will never drink again. Drink and drive. I will never drink and drive again. I may even start my own group fashioned after MADD, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, but I’ll call it AWLTDASH, Alcoholics Who Like to Drink and Stay Home.”

  When we were taken back to the main room, there weren’t many women there. Apparently it was breakfast time, but I opted to go back to bed. As I climbed back into my bunk, I wondered how much weight I had lost already. Would people even recognize me when I was released?

  I daydreamed about what it would be like when my father finally saw what my body had been reduced to; I even considered shaving my head for a more dramatic effect. “You have no idea what it was like, Dad. Some of the stuff…I just can’t even say….” I would take long pauses while looking down and shaking my head. I would imply that there was penetration, possibly sodomy, if not only to play the sympathy card for years to come, but also to remind everyone that my sister was an alien and needed to be excommunicated from our family.

  I dozed off and was awakened moments later by Lucille smacking me in the face. “No! Noooooo!” I screamed.

  “Your name. They’re calling your name to be released.”

  My eyes lit up bigger than the first time I had seen Jon Bon Jovi perform live. I jumped off the bed and started to run toward the booth.

  “Wait!” Lucille yelled. “Aren’t you even going to say good-bye?”

  I turned and ran back to give her a hug, but was dumbstruck when she planted her lips directly on top of mine and held them. My arms fell to my side and I waited for her to finish kissing me. There were hoots and hollers coming from the women around us, and one of them yelled out, “Hammertime’s got a girlfriend! Hammertime’s got a girlfriend!”

  “I’ll e-mail you,” I said as I slowly backed away.

  “Barbie’s going home to her daddy,” a large black woman with dreadlocks yelled as I was taken by an officer out of the room and downstairs to an outbooking room, where I was handed a bag filled with the clothes I had come in wearing.

  Twenty minutes later I walked out the doors of Los Angeles County Women’s Prison, otherwise known as Sybil Brand Correctional Facility, into the bright sunlight. I wondered who exactly Sybil Brand was and who she had pissed off in order to have an entire women’s prison named after her. I made a mental note to google her later.

  I saw Lydia’s car parked at the far end of