Eighty-one dollars is a lot of money, especially when you’re unemployed. Even more so when you live in San Luis Obispo County, California, where to earn anything close to 10 bucks an hour I’d have had to resort to my old racket, teaching English.
So when the judge in Simi Valley refused to hear any explanation of why I had been driving at 70 mph, I grew philosophical. Could it be, I mused, that never having been in jail might indicate a woman treading a path too straight and narrow? Penal-retentive, if you will?
In any case, it was the money, not the principle, that made me opt for incarceration rather than whipping out my checkbook.
“Twenty-four hours in the Ventura County Jail,” barked the judge. “Starting at 8 a.m. Monday morning.”
I arrived on time, hopelessly law-abiding even before confinement. The clerk behind the window directed me to be seated and wait to hear my name called. She added, in a somewhat apologetic tone, that “it might be just a few minutes.” They seemed to be doing a thriving business, a refreshing change in the economy that prevailed.
When I finally heard my name spoken, I felt a surge of pride, as if I were suddenly part of that great sisterhood beginning with the biblical Judith, who slew Holofernes, and includes Lizzie Borden, Bonnie Parker, Jean Harris, and all us girls determined to do it “our way.”
I was directed downstairs, where a deputy in a glassed-in cubicle told me there might be a slight delay in getting me processed. No problem. I had brought along a book and was deep into it when a female deputy came to take me into a locked area.
“You mean I can’t read here?” I gasped, as she took keys, wallet, and book, placing them in a plastic box.
“What do you think this is?” she snapped. “A country club?”
Well, how would I know? For the first few years after moving to San Luis Obispo, I thought the California Men’s Colony was an elite resort for guys who persisted in violating the rules of grammar. Doesn’t their sign read “Department of Corrections”?
But I refrained from mouthing off, fearful it might give her the urge to strip-search me. I don’t want my body cavities rummaged for stray copies of Roget’s Thesaurus.
She only patted me down for weapons (the closest I’d come to a sexual encounter in years), and led me into a small holding cell. It had all the amenities: toilet, two phones, plus a sweet young thing with long blonde hair crying her heart out. In a better mood she might have given Scarlett Johansson serious competition, but not that day. After a time she lay down on the bench, closed her eyes, and I noticed her face and shoulders twitching involuntarily.
Before long, the same deputy dropped by to take me out for a mug shot and fingerprints. I would have preferred white zinfandel and some brie. I was starting to feel like the menace to society my ex-husbands describe to their lawyers.
I was back in my cell fewer than 15 minutes before I was visited yet again by the deputy, having come to tell me I would soon be released. This was welcome news, especially after she said that otherwise I’d have had to spend the night in a dorm room with 49 other women like me. Now that sounded like cruel and unusual punishment.
I decided to try out a phone. Instructions posted on the wall explained that the black phone was for two free calls within Ventura; the blue, for collect calls to whoever would accept the charges. I called Greyhound for departure times for San Luis and wondered if I was expected to carve my initials on the wall with my fingernails, like everyone had done before me.
My pretty cellmate was hauled off, and shortly thereafter lunch arrived. Ten-thirty a.m. is a bit early for my lifestyle, but I was famished.
Never have I been more disappointed in an entree. Out of respect for readers with palates as sensitive as mine, I won’t even describe it. I partook only of the salad and the beverage, Kool-Aid, keeping my fingers crossed it wasn’t Jim Jones’ recipe.
Enter cellmate number two, a fiery Latina. (I watch my language since standup Paul Rodriguez said he doesn’t want to be described by any adjective containing the word “panic.”) This woman had henna-assisted hair and a penchant for colorful language.
While her lunch cooled on the bench, she rang up someone named Carlos, complaining, in terms that would make a rapper blush, that she couldn’t understand why she had been picked up — again.
Before she was taken away to shower (clear discrimination: I too could have used a quick wash and a splash of Jean Nate), she said the reason I was getting out early was that so many women in Ventura were being picked up on drug charges. I didn’t bother to inquire how she knew.
At precisely 11:30 I was sprung, three and a half hours from the time I’d entered. No chance to write my memoirs, study law, form lasting friendships, or plot my escape.
I assured the deputy I intended to go straight, and expressed gratitude for my early release.
But I couldn’t help adding that it was a good thing I hadn’t killed anyone. “Because in that case,” I pointed out, “you probably would’ve had to keep me overnight.”
Athea Marcos Amir is a writer and 15-year resident of San Miguel de Allende. As many readers are already aware, she dislikes animals.
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