What I Did to Survive Five Years Behind Bars

Five years. That was the sentence that came down on me when I crossed the border with a suitcase that wasn’t even mine. Esteban, my boss and my lover, had given it to me with one of those smiles I still believed. “Take it to a contact in Bolivia, I’ll pay for the trip and a little extra,” he told me. At customs they held me there, and hours later the judge ordered the suitcase opened by force. Inside was almost a million and a half dollars.

I’d been used as a mule to smuggle dirty money out of the country. Esteban sang like a canary when they squeezed him, but his lawyer made sure he didn’t let me off the hook completely. So there I was, Carla, locked up in the women’s prison at Las Acacias, in a wing for economic crimes.

The lawyer repeated the same thing to me on every visit: behave, sign up for some workshop, with good conduct I could get out early in two or three years. I nodded. But the truth is that inside there’s another economy, another currency, and nobody explains it to you on day one.

***

The wing wasn’t so bad, if you knew how to move. You had to make friends, trade favors, return kindnesses. And among the guards and the riot squad that came in whenever there was trouble, there was always some uniform with a taste for it. If one of them set his sights on you, things changed: a little time in the guard room could be exchanged for cigarettes, for sweets, for life inside being a little less gray.

Damián, one of the riot-control guys, had taken a shine to me. Tall, dark, with a three-day beard that rasped like sandpaper. Those men were even more bored than we were, pacing around the yard like dogs looking for a lead. I would roll up my gray uniform sleeves so the tattoo on my thigh showed—a snake coiling its way up—and I knew perfectly well what kind of looks it drew.

One afternoon in November the sun beat down on the cracked concrete of the yard like hot iron. I was leaning against the wall, smoking a cigarette I’d taken from fat Susana, who always had extras. Damián appeared out of nowhere, with his vest pulling tight across his chest and that owner-of-the-place face.

—Come on —he said softly, gripping my arm where no one could see—. Today’s your turn.

It wasn’t a question. I already knew what was coming, and I’m not going to lie: my body got there before my head did. In that hole, a little real desire was a luxury.

***

He took me to the old guard room, one from before the renovation, hidden behind the wing. A broken table, a cot, a fan that didn’t cool anything. He locked the door and turned to look at me like a man sizing up what he was about to eat.

—Take your clothes off —he said, lowering the zipper on his pants.

I obeyed. If I didn’t, goodbye cigarettes, goodbye sweets, and goodbye to that one hour a week when I felt like something more than a number. I took off my shirt, then my pants, and stood there in a red pair of panties Nélida had left me when she got out.

He already had everything out, hard, watching me with that half-smile.

—Look what you do to me —he murmured.

I knelt on the dirty floor because I knew the ritual by heart. I took him in my mouth, slowly at first, feeling the weight, the heat, the salty taste. He grabbed my hair, not violently, more like setting the rhythm, and let out hoarse words through his teeth. I closed my eyes and let myself go, licking, sucking, gradually losing track of the little room and the smell of dampness.

He yanked me up and threw me onto the cot.

—Open up —he said, and he bent down between my legs.

His mouth worked slowly, his beard rasping the insides of my thighs, and I clutched the edges of the cot because I felt like my body was going to split in two. When he slid his fingers in and curved his hand until he hit that exact spot, I stopped pretending any kind of composure. I came hard, biting my arm so I wouldn’t scream and half the wing wouldn’t find out.

—That’s more like it —he said, laughing, wiping himself off with his sleeve.

He got on top of me and went in all at once. I hooked my legs around his waist and dug my nails into his back as the cot creaked with every thrust. I wasn’t thinking about the sentence, or Esteban, or the years I had left. For those minutes there was nothing but that body on top of mine, filling a hollow that wasn’t just physical.

Afterward he gave me my usual cigarette, and I went back to the cell with weak legs and a strange calm, the kind a storm leaves behind when it finally lets loose.

***

Rita was waiting for me. She was my cellmate, a dark-skinned woman with a big chest who’d been locked up for a credit-card scam, and she had a sharp nose for gossip and fresh sex.

—They really wrecked you, huh —she said, never looking up from the cigarette she was rolling.

That night, after the usual dinner, we climbed into the lower bunk. Rita had hands that knew what they were doing and an even better mouth. There were no cameras in the cells, only the distant noise of the guards and the hum of the sleeping wing. We searched each other slowly, knowing every corner by heart, muffling our moans into the pillow so we wouldn’t draw attention. With her it was different from Damián: no orders, no trade, just two women keeping each other company in confinement in the only way left to them.

—Rest —she told me afterward, holding me from behind—. Tomorrow is another day just like this one.

And she was right. The days at Las Acacias were all the same: workshops, controlled visits, the lawyer’s countdown, and stolen meetings in the corners I already knew like the back of my hand.

***

It wasn’t all Damián. In the sewing workshop, where they made us stitch uniforms to kill the hours, the Sarge ran things, a burly guard with short hair and eyes that pinned you in place. Everyone knew what she liked.

—Stay behind, I need to inspect you —she said one afternoon, when the others were already leaving.

She closed the door. Her “inspection” started with my hands, moved to my neck, and ended exactly where we both knew it would end. The Sarge was direct, no beating around the bush, and in exchange she let extra cigarettes fall our way and the occasional permission other women would have killed for. What we had became routine on Tuesdays, after the workshop, on the table still covered with gray scraps of fabric.

Sometimes I think about what becomes normal when you’re inside. Outside, all that would have seemed like another world. Inside, it was just the way to keep breathing, to feel that my body was still mine even if they had locked it up.

***

The months went by, because time is the only thing that never fails inside: it passes, for better or worse. One day the lawyer came in with a different smile.

—In three months, before the holidays, you’ll be out on parole if you keep this up —he told me.

I nodded, without much emotion. Five years roughs up your skin and something deeper too. Freedom no longer seemed like a dream, more like another cell change, a bigger one, with the sky above instead of a roof.

One afternoon during visiting hours my sister came, with that exhausted face she’d worn since I got locked up. We talked about the usual nonsense—how Mom was, how the nephew was already walking—and then she lowered her voice and said what she’d been holding back.

—Carla… that son of a bitch, your ex-boss. They transferred him to Cruz del Sur prison. They say he’s really in bad shape, got sick bad, they’re taking him to the prison hospital. He’s a shadow of himself.

I stayed quiet for a long while, looking through the scratched-up glass that separated us. I waited to feel something: joy, renewed anger, a urge to celebrate. I felt none of that. Not even pity. Just a cold calm, like when you crush a cigarette against the wall and there isn’t even any smoke left.

—Trash goes in the bin —I said at last, without raising my voice—. Let him sort himself out.

My sister stared at me, as if waiting for me to explode or cry. But there was nothing else to say. I hung up the receiver, stood up, and went back to the wing with the same slow step as always.

***

That night, in the bunk, Rita asked me what had happened. I told her just enough: that the bastard who’d sent me inside was worse off than me, much worse, and that fate had a way of collecting what it was owed.

—Shit karma —she said with a dry little laugh—. And you?

—I’m getting out soon. And when I do, I’m going to live. Without looking back.

She kissed the back of my neck and slowly ran her hand over my body, not urgently this time, more like reminding me I was still alive, that I could still feel, that underneath all that filth I was still whole.

—Then enjoy what’s left —she whispered—. Outside, a new life is waiting for you. And this place will be left with its ghosts.

I closed my eyes and let myself be carried by her fingers, thinking about how everything turns around in the strangest way. The man who sent me to hell ended up sunk deeper than I was. And I was going to walk out, my body worn down by so many nights, but intact, and that was the only thing that mattered.

***

I got out on a Tuesday in December, with a plastic bag and the clothes I’d come in wearing, which were already too big on me. At the prison gate the sun hit just as hard as it had that November afternoon, like hot iron, but now it wasn’t pinning me against any wall.

I don’t regret what I did to survive. Everyone endures confinement however they can, and I endured it like this: trading desire for air, heat for a little stolen dignity. This is my confession, told without makeup. Trash, in the end, goes in the bin. And I, against all odds, walked out moving forward.