come back soon,” she calls, as I back away from the table. She blows kisses that leave pink streaks on her palms.
“Don’t,” I say. “It’s too hard to see you in here. Just—focus on getting healthy. That’s the best thing you could do for me. Don’t die while I’m in here, OK?”
I turn away so that I can’t see her crying as I get in line. I can smell sweat and hair oil and astringent soap emanating from the other women standing in line with me, and I know that this must be what I smell like, too. I close my eyes and follow this scent of humanity back to the room where we will all sit and wonder what comes next, hoping we won’t be forgotten.
* * *
—
And so I go back to waiting, but I’m no longer sure what I’m waiting for.
* * *
—
If there’s one thing you do have in jail, it’s time to think, and so I’ve found myself thinking a lot about blame. I’ve spent my whole life looking out, trying to locate the architects who constructed the walls of this world that I found myself in. I used to blame the Lieblings: It was easy to hate them for everything they had that I did not, and for the way they shut me out of their world. As if one door that closed in my face was the reason that everything else went sideways. But I’m finding it harder and harder to believe that now.
I could blame my mother, for dragging me along in her bad decisions; for failing to give me the leg up in life that I longed for. I could blame her, too, for failing to take care of herself, so that I had to do it for her.
I could blame Lachlan, for seducing me into joining his schemes and for turning on me when I became inconvenient to him.
I could blame society, I could blame the government, I could blame capitalism gone awry—I could tug on the threads of social inequality and watch them unravel all the way back to the beginning and pin my blame on whatever I find there.
And surely all these elements were pieces of the reason why I am where I am. But wherever I look to lay my blame, I always discover the same person: myself. I am the common denominator. There is no one path in life that is set before you, I’m starting to realize; no one is making your decisions for you. Instead of looking out at the world to find a cause, it’s time for me to start looking inward.
Especially here, in county jail, where I am surrounded by the truly downtrodden—women born into circumstances that drove them inevitably into drugs, prostitution, abuse, and desperation; women who never had a chance at all—I see for the first time how fortunate I have been. I have a college degree, I am healthy. I was raised without stability or good role models but I at least knew I’d always have food to eat and a place to sleep. I always had a mother’s love. That is more than so many of the women I see around me can claim.
So I suddenly find that it is hard to blame. Instead, what I mostly feel is shame. Shame that I did not do more with what I did have, and shame that I pretended that the road I’d taken was the only option I had.
Because it wasn’t. I chose that road. I made it mine. And if this is where it took me, it’s my own fault.
If I ever get out of here, I swear, I’ll find a better path.
* * *
—
A month passes before I’m summoned to visiting hours again. I assume that it’s my public defender, with news about my upcoming trial. But when I get to the visiting room, I stop short. Because the person sitting there waiting for me is Vanessa Liebling. She looks pale and exhausted, with black circles under her eyes; she is somehow simultaneously bone-thin and bloated. Her jeans strain at the waist, her sweatshirt droops at the chest. But it’s definitely