Here She Lies

intersection; a young woman in a red dress and black sandals; a man in jeans and a leather jacket rushing into the precinct; a wiry messenger on a gold bike, weaving through traffic. I was steered toward a waiting squad car, which I’d been told would take us to Central Booking.
    Shoemaker sat up front, separated from me by a scratched bulletproof barrier, and I sat alone in the cigarette- and sweat-reeking backseat where perps and prisoners rode to judgment. We drove downtown in a blur of swiftly passing blocks until, between hulking ornate buildings, I caught a glimpse of the Brooklyn Bridge. Its spun-sugar supports arced and dipped overthe glistening slate blue river and I thought fleetingly of the sea, its endless acreage and horizons so distant they appeared unreachable. And then suddenly a building blocked the view and we pulled up in front of a ziggurat of a courthouse, tiered like a wedding cake. Officer Williams parallel-parked in a row of other authorized cars. Shoemaker stepped out onto the curb and opened the back door for me. Three abreast, we walked up the broad steps flanked by giant granite columns into another high-ceilinged nineteenth-century lobby that greeted you with twenty-first-century security checkpoints.
    Central Booking was in the basement of the criminal courthouse. We rode down in a too bright elevator that delivered us into a cinder-block hallway with black stenciled-on arrows pointing us to Processing. There, in full view of everyone, I was fingerprinted, each fingertip rolled individually onto a pad of purplish ink and pressed onto a square on a white form labeled specifically for that finger. I had gone through this once before, when I joined the Public Health Service, and so the residual ink staining my fingers came as no surprise. What did surprise me, what in fact shocked me more than I would have imagined, was being photographed. A small board was hung around my neck, identifying me by place of arrest, booking number and today’s date. When the flash went off I could feel from within the stunned expression, captured in digital memory, which would forever mark me as Accused. They had my mug shot. I was processed. As I was ushered along another cinder-block hallway,Agent Shoemaker explained that the next step would be my arraignment.
    “When?” I asked.
    “Soon,” he said. “The law says arraignment can’t be more than twenty-four hours after arrest. In reality, though if it’s crowded sometimes it takes longer.”
    We reached the women’s holding cells. After consultation with the guard, Shoemaker assured me the courts were on schedule today. The guard was a hefty woman whose hair had been transformed into a mat of shiny, springy Jerri curls. She unlocked the least-crowded cell, where four other women sat or crouched or stood and a clogged toilet putrefied the air. When I stepped inside, the women looked at me and I looked at them, but none of us said hello. One of my cellmates, a skinny black woman in a plaid flannel shirt, slumped asleep or unconscious on the floor. Two plump Hispanic teenagers in hot pants and matching American flag tube tops watched me closely when I came in and then returned to their high-speed chattering. One girl had a cantaloupe-size bruise on her upper thigh. The fourth woman, a stout Chinese granny with gray hair in an ironed bandanna, stared angrily at the wall.
    When I turned around, Officer Williams was gone. Shoemaker waited until I was locked in and then bid me good-bye with the promise that my lawyer would be along “soon.” Soon. What did that mean? There were no clocks on the walls, no windows; the dim light that leaked from an overhead bulb kept you stationary in time. Waiting. The girls chatted. The skinny woman slept. The Chinese woman fumed. I paced, mind grinding,heart throbbing. From time to time I paused to gulp air, forcing deep inhales when I realized I’d stopped breathing.
    Eventually someone delivered a brown paper bag containing a breast pump. Facing the corner of the cell, pumping milk from my engorged breasts (with an apparatus that was neither mine nor new; it had been offered with no explanation of its origins), I could feel the girls’ eyes on my back. By their whispers I gathered that they were both curious and disgusted by the mysterious collaboration between suctioning machine and woman’s breast; and just as I thought that, I wondered if, despite their age, either had ever known motherhood — motherhood