JANUARY 2008 - I'm sitting here looking around the cold, dim room that will be my home until the day the Commonwealth of Virginia decides I'm no longer a threat to the order of society. I am 22 years old and have been sentenced to 3 1/2 years in the penitentiary. I couldn't really put together exactly how I felt other then what the fuck do I do now? I cried continuously and was so thankful that I didn't have another female in there with me because I needed to go through these emotions on my own. My father and best friend was so sick I knew that he would no longer be living the day I became free again. That saddened my heart tremendously, the one person who had my back, loved me in spite of all my demons, never forsaken me and who spoiled me rotten would not see the end result of the struggle that I was about to embark on. I reached for my bible and turned to the book of Joshua.
The words of Joshua 1:9 engulfed my heart and gave me a sense of peace that I would make it through. "Be strong and courageous for the Lord, your God has commanded you and will be with you wherever you go", those words impacted my life in such a huge way I closed my eyes searching for the peace to take hold so I could sleep and meditate on what I had just read.
FEBRUARY 2008 - The sound of the loud hydraulic door unlocking at 4am woke me up from a not so peaceful sleep. I looked sleepily at the correctional officer at Blue Ridge Regional Jail confused. "B & B" (bed and bags) sounded like the heavens playing a melody. After 10 months, and 3 jails later I was ready to make my way into the scary world of the prison system. I was stagnating in the jail, no kind of intellectual conversation or stimulation was driving me insane. I was ready to move around and hopefully rush this time out of the way.
I arrived at Southampton Receiving and Pre-Release center and seen how many other women were on their way in and hoped and prayed that I would find someone who was scared as I was, somebody to form some sort of alliance with because I knew nothing of prison other then what I seen on t.v. . I looked around and was confused and scared and just wanted to go home.
After what had seemed eternity they shuffled all 10 of us that came in that day to cosmo to get our hair cut to above our shoulders and our nails trimmed off. I sat down in the chair and the lady who was responsible for cutting our hair was an inmate too. We exchanged the usual small talk, and I wish I would've just kept my big ass mouth shut because I apparently distracted her. My long beautiful strawberry blond hair was butchered! One said higher then the other long pieces of hair just hanging nonchalantly from wherever it had been. I didn't want to cry and seem vain but this was all just so overwhelming.
Once we arrived in the cell block, more like an open dorm with four rows of twenty five bunk beds, I looked around and tried to absorb it all but this was all so new to me and honestly, scared the shit out of me! I slowly walked to my bed, bunk 19 and found a tall slender lady with short red hair. She kind of reminded me of a female Kevin Bacon. I started to make my bed, just like in the jail, you know tying the ends of the flat sheet so I didn't have to sleep directly on the plastic mattress. Once this task was completed I started to put my things away and scanned the room for girls from Lynchburg. Of course I was the only one. Out of no where I hear this sniff and a voice introduce herself. "Hi, I'm Jewel. Whats your name and where are you from?" She sounded friendly so I made conversation with her. I told her where I was from, how old I was, and how long my sentence was. She told me that she was from Tidewater, Virginia Beach to be exact and then asked if I wanted to play cards. I agreed, what else did I have to do? During the card game she introduced me to my bunk mate, Jodi, and her bunk mate Kim. Throughout the game of spades we played they explained the rules and routine of Southampton. Count time (where all inmates on the compound stand at the end of their bed and get counted to make sure that all prisoners where still present) was at 6am, noon, 6pm, 9pm, and 11pm. We had to stand at our beds in complete silence until count cleared for every count time except the 11pm. They explained all the things that I would be doing over the next week, doctor visits, educational screenings, and an orientation from the warden about what was expected of us grown women. They also explained what officers we could and couldn't get away with stuff with and who to stay away from in the pod. "Thank God for them" was all I could think of as I made it through the first day of prison without being stabbed, raped or any of the other awful things I had seen on t.v. .
That day was the beginning of the life lesson that would change my life forever.
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