Tattoo Read online

  The thing was, the second the women looked up at the kid, they all froze. Wide-eyed and mouths agape, the inmates shrank a little on their bunks while staring at the two of us. The air got thicker. The kid and I couldn’t help but tense. The air-conditioner kicked on and nearly had us all jumping out of our skin from the noise of it.

  I recognized these three enough to be shocked by their reaction. They were not particularly violent. Sure, there were tiffs here and there, and they showed their muscle when it was necessary, but I would have never pegged them for the killing kind. However, the looks they were giving us made me wonder. Was it fear? Was it hatred? Both, I thought. This kid was something new, something unexplained. She was the embodiment of things they didn’t know. Her life was a mystery, and her mystery could be deadly. In prison, inmates thrived on the status quo. Anything more was a threat.

  Of course, no one would try anything with Officer Cruz nearby, but what was going to happen to this girl when she wasn’t around? What was going to happen when the lights went out?

  “This is your new cellmate, Inmate Sparrow.”

  The women turned into frightened animals, tensing as the kid entered the cell. The looks on their faces should have been accompanied with snarls, but there was no noise except the sounds of women talking a few cells away.

  An old memory crept into my skull – the one with the little white girl in school. I was always a big child for my age and a proud one. The kids sometimes called me Mexican when I was really Honduran. That earned them a beating. Not a bully-type beating because I wasn’t a bully. My intentions were not to be mean but to defend my heritage and me. I was the good guy, the one with the flitty cape and everything.

  Then, one day, there was this girl who said I looked like the maid who cleaned her house. She was small and rarely talked to anyone, a little stuck-up thing with a pasty complexion. She always wore scarfs and snooty blouses that frilled around her neck, like a model in a magazine. In a rage, I slapped her face at recess and ripped off her turtleneck blouse for all to see.

  She cried in a corner while everyone laughed, but there was no mistaking what I read tattooed on her neck, what everyone read. Her father hurt her bad. He did it a lot, and only her housekeeper, a Honduran woman named Jaime, protected her. But Jaime wasn’t there all the time. Jaime had to go home at night. I read that in the words on her skin and in her tearful eyes.

  When she said I looked like the maid who cleaned her house, it was meant as a compliment. She loved Jaime.

  Suddenly, I wasn’t the heroine or the good guy. The world shifted. That sparkly cape broke off of my shoulders and flew away from me and the evilness I caused. My clothes turned all black, and I could see how easy it was to lose. It was so easy to be wrong, to be evil when you thought no matter what, you were always right.

  I helped her up, apologized, and walked her to the nurse’s office. After school, I wept into my pillow, disgusted with how ugly I had become. The harsh truth, the dark reality was that the line between good and evil was a blurry one, and people were rarely one or the other.

  This time though, Inmate Sparrow was the fragile kid in front of me, and I was the Honduran housekeeper keeping her safe as long as I could. Eventually, I would have to leave her here. Eventually, I would have to go home and leave her with...

  “What was that, Inmate Sparrow?”

  My tone was sharp, so sharp the kid jumped before she turned around to look up at me. The other women did the same. It was my go to voice for ending conflicts.

  “I-I didn’t say anything,” she whispered.

  “You want a mark for that kind of talk?”

  Inmate Sparrow looked at me, puzzled.

  The other inmates mirrored her expression.

  “N-n-no, Ma’am.”

  “That’s Officer Cruz to you, Inmate.”

  My voice was getting louder. A few people started appearing in the hallway, trying to glimpse a hopeful spectacle. I knew how far I could make my voice reach. There was a technique to make it bounce off the walls. It was far enough.

  “I’m sorry, Officer Cruz.”

  “That’s it! You’re coming with me, Inmate Sparrow. I will not have back talk like that in my prison. You are going to solitary.”

  I grabbed the kid by the arm as I tucked her bedroll under the other arm. With a quick yanking movement, I launched her and myself into the hallway. The idea was to go for spectacle, not pain. I didn’t want to hurt the kid, just make a good scene. She stared at me in astonishment.

  We made our way to the next block over, where the solitary cells were kept. A few were filled, but the place was never completely vacant. Officers rarely liked putting inmates in the Hole. It was much better to earn the inmates’ respect and let them want to behave for you than to always threaten with punishment. This time, I knew it was the only way.

  “Officer Cruz, I’m so sorry for –”

  “Hold on, kid.”

  We reached an empty cell, and I guided her inside. I hated that it smelled vaguely like urine in one corner. Without a word, I took her bedroll and laid it out on the steel cot for her. Normally, we didn’t allow the normal bedding in solitary. The inmates got thinner mattresses and blankets instead. It was supposed to be a punishment. This one wasn’t here for that, so I set up her nicer bed and filled out a permit slip from the pad in my pocket. I, Officer Cruz, gave permission for Inmate Sparrow to retain her bedroll. She watched me in silence as I slipped the paper under the pillow.

  “There we go. No one should bother you about this now.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  I turned my gaze up at her. That thin face of hers was still clenched in confused fear.

  “They won’t take your bedroll away with this permit slip.”

  “No, I mean, what’s going on?”

  “This is solitary.”

  “I understand that.”

  “Good, and you saw what those other girls were like?”

  She nodded. A flash of recollection flitted across her face.

  “So, you are in here now. You’ll be safe here.”

  There was one slow nod before the water welled up in her eyes. In a flash, she ran to me and threw her arms around my neck in a sincere embrace. Despite my training and my better judgment, I returned her embrace. She was so small under my arms. It was almost as if she was a sparrow, as her name suggested. When we released each other, the usual embarrassment I would’ve felt over hugging a near stranger never came nor did she look anything but grateful.

  “What’s your name, kid? The one people call you.”

  “Jane. My name is Jane, Officer Cruz.”

  “All right Jane, get some rest. I’ll be nearby if you need me.”

  And I was. Normally, gen pop was up my alley. There was always something going on. The little cliques and tribes milled about, working through their own schedules. Occasionally, there were fights or drama. In gen pop, the hallways throbbed with dozens of moving bodies, moving minds. The air was dense with the humidity of everyone breathing so close to one another. It wasn’t peaceful detail, which is why I liked it. It was best to keep busy to pass the time.

  Working the Hole wasn’t fun, but it was plenty exciting, just not how I preferred. It was quiet most of the time in that eerie way. Then, without warning, someone would hurt themselves or spit at you when you delivered their meal. The little bit of respect I earned from the gen pop girls didn’t apply in the Hole, even if they were the same inmates as before. Nobody was the same in there. Not you or the inmates.

  The day after I locked Jane away, I put in a request for shifts in solitary. I got them no questions asked because no one really wanted those shifts anyway. It was a lonely, thankless business, but some little part of me, the part that still wanted to wear that flitty cape, knew I had to be near Jane. She needed me.

  I didn’t know what she was in here for, no one seemed to, even her. Normally, if there was any doubt of an inmate’s crime, one day on shower detail cleared everyth
ing up right away. There was no getting away with anything when your life was tattooed on your body. A few had been put away because of body tampering. They had had enough money to erase their crime and have some shiny, new memory inserted instead. Some jobs were good; some were hacked. Mostly, if you ended up in here, the job was a hacked one. If it was a really good one, you probably would’ve never gotten caught in the first place.

  Perhaps that was the unsettling thing about Jane. Her body was hacked, but there was no sign that anyone had ever touched her. Even the best tattoo artists couldn’t erase everything. Not only that, but nothing was ever added. She stayed blank. Jane walked about having a life with experiences and yet, nothing got recorded. No one knew what to do with her. How could you know where you stood with a person like that?

  Solitary is by its nature a lonely place. It is a punishment. Since we are social beings, being alone for so long a time is torture after a while. I didn’t want my decision to keep Jane safe here to be a punishment too, so every day, I went into her cell to talk to her.

  “Where are you from?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Who are your parents? Do they know you are here?”

  “I had parents, sort of. I mean, I remember parents that I didn’t actually have.”

  I could feel my brow furrowing. Sometimes, the kid made little to no sense. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I didn’t have any memory of anything, until a tattoo artist gave me a life. I could remember the life she gave me so vividly. She said she had to kill off my parents because it would be the most believable thing. It hurt so much to lose them.”

  “You had a tattoo artist give you a new life?” I asked, disbelieving.

  My little Jane had consorted with a criminal like a tattoo artist? Was that the reason she was in here?

  “Yes, but it didn’t take. The next day I woke up with no tattoos at all. I did remember the life she made for me, though. It wasn’t as real feeling as it was before. More like a memory of a life I watched someone else have. I’m not good at explaining.”

  “How did you end up here?”

  “I was walking on the street. It was so crowded for a while; I thought I might be safe. Then, some men started following me. Their eyes were bad – I don’t know how to describe it – dark in places that should be light. Parts of their insides must have been ugly to make them look like that.”

  “Skin dealers,” I muttered.

  “They followed me until the streets weren’t so crowded. There were fewer and fewer people to hide me and keep me safe. I kept turning down corners, hoping to find more people, but I ended up alone. There was only vacant buildings and barbed wire on the roofs. The men got closer, and blocked off all of the ways I could have gone to get away. Someone...a woman...helped me. We ran until we found a police car. I was so grateful, but when the police man got a better look at me, he asked me to go to the station with him.”

  “And that’s why you’re here?”

  “I guess so. Why is everyone so afraid of me?”

  I was going to answer her. My mouth was open and everything, ready to explain the primitive nature of people. Why we were afraid of something new and different, even if it’s beautiful. She was so lovely...

  The beeping of my watch alerted me that someone wanted to talk with me. With one finger to my mouth, I asked the inmate to be silent. I pulled back my sleeve and touched the answer button on the call screen.

  “Yes?”

  “Officer Cruz, Inmate 427RJ361 has a visitor.”

  I looked up at the girl in front of me. The white stripe of fabric across her lapel read 427RJ361, a number assigned to her a week into her confinement. Jane looked suddenly afraid.

  “She’s in solitary. Solitary doesn’t get visitors.”

  “They do when it’s their lawyer.”

  I touched the mute button and glanced over at Jane again.

  “You have a lawyer?”

  She shrugged.

  “All right, buzz the lawyer through. I’ll meet him at the gate.”

  I left her there, promising I’d be back.

  He was not as I expected. In fact, I knew this one. He was the sort-of famous kind, but not the cheesy commercials you see on TV at three in the morning when insomnia hits sort-of-famous lawyer. I had read about him on news feeds.

  Most lawyers who came to a place like this fit into two categories. There were the do-gooders and the moochers. The do-gooders didn’t have much money, and they were generally trying to help out the common person. They were few and stretched thin, to be sure. Their suits were threadbare and their eyes tired. Normally, these were the type who was assigned a case. Mostly, these were all losing cases.

  The moochers chased the prison buses. They wore cheap, flashy suits, spinning whatever yarn about being able to overthrow faulty forensics. They normally represented the hacked-job skin cases, people who had tried to cover up their misdeeds and failed...miserably.

  This one, though, he was a new one. Lawyers such as him rarely visited prisons like mine. If a man like that was representing you, you normally had to have the money for him, and if you had that, you had the money to pay for one of those nice suites in the corporate-owned prison on the other side of town. Doing time there was like going to a restrictive resort for a while. Massages, gourmet meals, and the like.

  This guy, in his suit that probably cost my rent, smiled at me as if I were a living person. I felt myself glaring a little and tried to cover my skepticism better. Charm never was a strong point of mine. Too much lying and concealing.

  “Officer Cruz.”

  “Yes.”

  “Elliot Mansel. I’m here for Inmate 427RJ361, Jane Sparrow.”

  “Yeah, I heard.”

  He looked at me square, sizing me up. I didn’t move. I could take this guy if I needed too. I didn’t imagine he was much under that suit.

  “You going to take me to her?”

  “What are your intentions?” I wasn’t giving this guy an inch, not one.

  He laughed with in a smirking way. “My intentions? What are you, her father?”

  “I’m whatever I have to be.”

  He faced me, eye to eye. I only had to look up at him a little, but what I lacked in height, I made up for in strength and know-how. He was soft in all the places I was hard.

  “My intentions, Officer Cruz, are to be her lawyer. The order came from on high, Judge Taylor himself. Now, do you plan to escort me to her, or should I call for someone else?”

  I knew of Judge Taylor – everyone did. The order really must have been from on high to bring a suave guy like this around. He held up under scrutiny; that I gave the man. Trust still did not flourish between us, but I relaxed my guard a little and nodded for him to follow.

  The solitary block was quieter than usual, and I wondered whether the other inmates were listening hard, as if they could sense something bigger coming this way. When I opened the door to Jane’s cell, I watched the lawyer closely for a reaction. He flinched, obviously unnerved by her, the way most seemed to be. He hadn’t met her before. That wasn’t what I wanted to see, though. What I looked for was what came next. His face would either be wrought with the kind of fear I had seen in the other inmates’ eyes or the kind of fear in mine.

  The air felt electric while I waited for his personal verdict.

  His eyes softened into a knowing, a wondering, and then I recognized it. He was afraid but not because she was a kind of different that was terrifying and wrong. That face of his reflected a deep need to protect her from others, and the fear of what they might do to such a fragile creature. I instantly liked him more, and left them alone to discuss her case.

  Mr. Elliot Mansel came often during the following weeks to talk with Jane in private. She liked him and told me he was going to help her. The lawyer’s eyes said something else to me. Sure, he put on a good face for Jane, but the second he left her cell he seemed to sink into himself. I felt a little sorry for him. It looked as
if the weight of every person in Dallas rested on his shoulders. Every time I saw him, he smelled more and more like bourbon.

  Once, he looked up at me, wiped his brow with a kerchief from his lapel, and spoke. “You always here, Officer Cruz? Don’t you have a home or something? I never come here without your lovely face staring me down.”

  It was a compliment and put-down in the same sentence. One of those back-handed ones. For anyone else, I would’ve been offended, but this guy? After weeks of watching him operate, I figured this was a respectful icebreaker or sorts.

  “No one much likes solitary detail. I don’t mind it.”

  “You watch this one close, don’t you?”

  I shrugged. “She needs someone to.”

  “Well, you and I both agree on that one.”

  He stared at me with this unreadable expression I could only judge to be kind of grateful. Not the entirety of grateful, but related to it. Grateful’s cousin maybe. The man looked as if he’d been through the wash and hung up on the line. Elliot Mansel bid me a half-hearted farewell then took his leave.

  Weeks passed, and every time I saw Mr. Mansel, he seemed a little more beleaguered. I wanted to ask Jane what was going on, but the news told me enough. Someone had got wind that she was here and what she was. Images of her frightened face appeared all over the TV. People began showing up at the gates of the prison and outside city hall. Some were the religious types who called her an angel. Others were the religious types who called her a devil. Still others picketed the judges and the courts, saying she had rights and to set her free. Being unmarked was no crime. Some held signs up saying we should test her genetics and find a cure. Bring anonymity back to the masses. None of these were the right kind of people to be around Jane. All of them wanted to exploit her for one reason or another.

  I went home from a double shift one day, exhausted and feeling every day of my years. I had been forced to drive through a thick crowd of bodies at the prison gate. Most held signs calling Jane all manner of things. There were posters with her picture on it, some with painted wings behind her and some with bullet holes in her head. The dichotomy was horrifying. One man held a sign with a verse from the bible I knew.