The Second Day

The following story is an excerpt from my Memoir. It is the most complete chapter I have. It has taken a lot of drafting and re-drafting to get to this point, however even this chapter still has more work to be done, to improve it towards the end. For that reason, there is a section I have written, but not included here. I have a lot of draft material I hope to complete.

This is not the first chapter in the memoir, it is just the most complete. This is quite far into the memoir and it details my second day and night in HMP Holloway.

There is some interesting photos of HMP Holloway since its closure, here https://www.bcd-urbex.com/hm-prison-holloway-london/?fbclid=IwAR1jZuWqtQoD5Gg9pQYu9PMMeUnGQ4ziR3m4WXn5ovHL9_ez6hc80j-fwnY. 

D-Zero ©

February 2002.

Under the weight of five hundred deplorable lives, way down on the ground floor of HMP Holloway, in the depths of the very abyss of female desperation; ‘D Zero’ was at that time the Young Offenders unit. The escorting officer clunked her keys and trudged me onwards through a maze of corridors and stairs, past heavy sealed iron doors and through the gated doors. I barely looked either to the right, or the left. Terrified at the unknowing of where I might spend my second, and possibly subsequent nights. I just hoped for the best and dragged my possessions along behind me in a clear bag marked with large blue letters that said, ‘HM Prisons ONLY’.

The pokerfaced female officer led me to a dorm marked on the door as ‘Dorm 19’ she opened the viewing hatch in the door. Immediately a face appeared at the gap in the heavyweight, reinforced, solid metal door. 'Miss' she shouted out pushing her face up into the rectangle gap. Relief surged through me like a Tsunami tide. Thank God! It was one of the girls I had been penned in with downstairs in the holding boxes in reception the first night.

'Miss.'

The face at the viewing hole in the door repeated.

'Miss... What time is it? ... When we getting out?'

‘Miss’ didn’t answer. Instead she barked 'Stand back from the door!' There was a shuffling and Femi’s pretty round face disappeared. ‘Miss’ pulled the keychain out of her belt loop and rattled at the lock. The door swung open. I stepped inside to hugs and squeals.

Oh my God girl

Where the fuck did they take you to last night?

We was asking what happened to you!

Them bastards wouldn’t tell us where you went!

Both spoke with heavy North London accents.

The second young woman was Kasha, who had been brought in with us on the sweat boxes the previous night.

‘Miss’ didn’t waste no time in slamming shut the heavy door and flinging up the hatch. Femi ran and started to pound her fists upon the door. The hatch came back down.

What?

Miss. What time we getting out?

When we have staff.

BANG! Up slammed the hatch again. 

The dorm itself was large and square, painted grey with a hard, maroon coloured floor. On the exterior wall there was two large radiators each crowned with a large window divided into panels between the bars, the panels opened out to let the air (and sometimes the odd pigeon) in. The room was actually quite bright, strips of sunlight filtered in through the window bars, glittering sparkles of dust played in the air. Surprisingly, it was also very warm. Four cream coloured metal beds were screwed down into the floor, two on each side of the room, a small wooden locker/bedside cabinet/type of thing to one side and at angles in the room’s corners. Each bedspace also contained tallboy to hang our clothes.

Above each bed was a pinboard, coated in layers and layers of toothpaste that the women used as adhesive to display their treasured photographs and mementos. Drawing pins were not allowed. There was quite a lot of space in the centre of the room. My bed was near the door, next to a tiny square room with a toilet. Kasha’s bed was opposite, next to the sink. Femi was in the bed next to Kasha under the window and in the bed next to me was someone I had yet to see. She was hunched up underneath the brown prison issue sheet and gaudy bright green oversized stitched knitted blanket (they were often also full of holes).

Femi started to gesticulate, letting me know that no one knew anything about this girl. She pursed up her lips and shook her head, shrugging her shoulders. I settled myself into my new surroundings still in a daze. Nothing about this seemed real. I did not want to believe. I told the girls about my first night and they told me about their, which albeit had been much less eventful. They had been brought from the holding area with all the other girls our age who had come in the night before. They came straight here to this dorm.

None of us had really got a grasp of the prison routine; or what it was really going to be like locked up in jail. Femi and Kasha told me there were some girls who were out on the landing all the time, prisoners, not ‘screws’. They were all Jamaican. They brought round hot water, tea packs and sometimes food; even when no one else was allowed out. One of them had told Kasha and Femi, through the hatch that we ‘new’ girls were waiting to ‘be inducted’ and then we would have to take a job or go to the education block during the day. Unless, if you had a visit, then you would be taken to the visiting hall instead. These mysterious girls had told them that there was also a church, a swimming pool, a gym!

Femi was squashing her face into the long vertical gap between the window bars, shouting outside. She had been talking to some others that came in with us last night who had been housed in the next dorm down. Some of them were new and some were old timers who had returned. On the floor above us was the wing they had tried to put me on H1, the hospital wing. Mostly used for the new arrivals who were going to be detoxing off drugs. These girls let down pillow cases on the end of a dressing gown belt or ripped up sheet. This was called 'a swing'. You could 'swing' from side to side or up or down, the idea was that you could exchange notes or items of food, toiletries, even medication. Items received that were not originally yours were called 'contraband' and high up on the list of things that were not allowed. When Femi had enough of shouting out of the window she came and sat down on the bed. Femi was 18. She only had a few weeks in prison for fighting. It was her first time, she was cheerful and happy because she knew she was going home, literally in about 14 days. She didn’t have any children. Kasha was 18 and she had a daughter. She was serving 6 months.

Femi crossed her legs and draped the ugly pea green nylon sheet over her head and around her shoulders. She began to tell stories she had heard on the wing that day through the windows. She told us the prison was haunted, full of ghosts. There was a room, right down at the bottom of the unit on the very end, round a dimly lit corner that was all locked off, enshrouded in darkness. Very recently a girl had hung herself in that cell. There was a rumour going round that a few girls had seen her ghost in the showers. Another story involved a woman upstairs on H1 which was the hospital wing and the first stop for the new arrivals that were detoxing from whatever drugs they did on road. Heroin seemed the most popular drug they used. although smoking crack was equally common.

The woman reported that she had been sleeping one afternoon feeling absolutely ill. It was dusk when she awoke and up there was girl standing next to her bed, her back was turned so her face was not visable from the bed. She was silently looking out of the window, long dark hair tumbled down her back in messy curls. All the other girls in the dorm were asleep in their beds. It was none of them. Too uneasy to even move, the woman in the bed watched as the girl’s solid body began to slowly fade out from the waist down, until only a torso and head remained. She said the woman appeared to become translucent, where her legs should be the dirty chipped paint on the radiator was becoming clear, until finally, there was nothing left of her at all and she vanished as if it had never been there. Of course, the entire dorm were scared, and said she must be a ghost.

Belief in the supernatural or paranormal entities was a very common belief amongst staff and inmates alike. Many women and staff over the years in different establishments spoke of bizarre sightings and uncanny phenomena. Many officers told the girls stories about certain corridors having a strange atmosphere; no one would walk through them alone at night. Others said that at certain times the limp and lifeless body of Ruth Ellis the last woman in England to be executed could be seen hanging from a tree in the grounds. 

Jenny sat up in bed and reached into her locker for a pouch of tobacco. She proceeded to make a 'roll up'. I had come in the night before with an almost full 20 pack of Benson and Hedges. By now they were all gone. In the holding rooms we had all smoked them while we waited to be booked in. The remaining few I had left by the time I got up to the landings, I smoked with the girl in the first cell I was placed.

Jenny started to talk, she said she also had a son that lived with her mum. Pretty soon no one liked Jenny at all. She told us that she hated her son and she wished he had never been born. Kasha was furious, I was just upset. All I wanted was to get out of there, somehow, and be with my children. No one could understand how she could say such horrible things about a two-year-old boy. Even Femi, who didn’t have any children was disgusted.

Are you serious?

Kasha was provoked out of her silence

I wouldn’t go about saying things like that if I was you. Someone’s gonna fuck you up.

Most of the women I met here love their kids.

Jenny started to make another roll up.

NO ONE is gonna like you if you’re talking like that.

Fucking. Dirty. Skag. Head.'

Tears welled up in Jenny’s eyes, she choked

'I don’t care. I hate him! I hate him! I don’t care about no one in here either. Fuck them! I never came to make no friends. I fucking hate everyone.'

Kasha lept up from her bed like a tornado. She flew across to Jenny’s bed and smacked her hard, right across her face. Jenny’s tobacco flew up in the air. The rizla paper floated down onto the ground slowly. Just as quick as Kasha had jumped up from her bed, Femi sprang up from her bed, grabbing Kasha after the first blow and holding her back. Kasha’s arms flailed. She was sobbing

'How dare you? How can you say that? Some people only want to be with their kids, and they don’t even have them anymore! Some people’s kids is dead! Some people got 12 fucking years! All they want is to be home with their kids! And all you doing is sitting there saying you hate your son!? Fuck you! fuck YOU!' 

Femi hugged her, saying

'She’s not worth it. Leave it babe. Forget her.'

Jenny choked back her own tears and tried to gather up the little brown bits of tobacco from her blanket. Her eyes were glassy and her face puffy. She returned to her former position, laying facing the window curled up under her blanket.

The atmosphere in the room was heavy. I laid on my bed watching the dust glittering in the strips of late February sunlight. No one spoke.

Suddenly there was a rattling sound and the hatch was opened. A woman was looking through. Her face was slim. She had short hair. She was wearing a 'dog-collar' like a vicar.

'Good evening ladies. I just wanted to introduce myself as the Roman Catholic Chaplain and let you know which services and support, we can offer.'

We all said hello to her.

She asked if anyone wanted to pray?

We all did.

Praying is a thing in prison, that typically, any woman when she first comes in, whether she is religious or not suddenly feels so vulnerable. Whether she is a first timer or returning for the umpteenth time, she suddenly finds herself wanting to pray. Sometimes the girls even call for the Chaplain to come to the door, just so that she can say a prayer with or for her. It can be a very emotional time.

And so, we all prayed. Except for Jenny. When Chaplain asked if Jenny would like a prayer too? Jenny shouted

'Fuck off! I don’t need your prayers. Just fucking leave me the fuck alone!'

And again, a silence engulfed the room, but this time it was not only a silence. By the time the Chaplain had closed up the hatch, the room was filled with an icy blast of freezing cold air. An unearthly cold that seemed to swell and grow, until it enveloped the entire room.

Before long everyone excluding Jenny had begun to shiver and feel the chill. The radiators were still hot to touch but the air inside the room was positively arctic. Femi and I complained that it must be Jenny’s fault because she had told the Chaplain to fuck off. Kasha started to bang on the door and ring the alarm bell to tell the officers that they better move Jenny out of the room; but of course, the officers were not going to do that!

A dullness settled down upon us, all anxious to get out of that room, all laying on our beds drowning in our melancholy thoughts in the cold. The hatch opened again. An exceptionally tall slim Jamaican girl in a white coat shouted through the hatch to

Come get unuh dinner

She peered in

Who get 12 year? 

I told her it was me.

'Hmmm.....'

She eyed me up and down with her wide set eyes, paused, then said no more.

We passed our plates through one by one. She took the food from a large silver metal trolley on wheels. Before she went to the next cell she told us it was going to be association soon. She also left the hatch down.

None of us knew the time. It was dark outside. No one had a watch. There was no clock. After we ate, we washed our plates in the sink with the only thing there was. Little sachets of clear yellow tinged shampoo and a scruffy green scouring pad. We then sat, impatiently until finally we heard the sounds of the wing coming to life. Footsteps and jangling keys, clangs and crashes, loud voices, shouts and screams as door by door the girls rushed out onto the landing for evening association.

The air outside the room was warm, in stark contrast to our room, that now felt like a tomb. We went in some of the other rooms. All of them were warm. Femi wasted no time in telling everyone about what Jenny had done. We brought other girls back to our room, so they could feel for themselves the intense cold. Even the officers agreed it did feel unnaturally cool. Jenny just stayed in bed. We were unlocked for about an hour. Then it was time for bed. The night air throbbed with voices from the cells all around. The subject of conversation on our wing was Jenny. Soon the story spread up to the floors above. Voices trilled out of windows

'She's gonna get it in the morning'

and

'Bitch better watch out' 

 as well as the usual

'Yeah Yeah'

'Love you'

'Love you too'

'Goodnight'

'Night hun.'

And finally, in the stillness of the starlit night came heartbroken song.

A rendition of Whitney Houston's Greatest Love of All

'No matter what they take from me....they can't take away my dignity...'

To be continued.....

© 2018 Fayza Sanchez
All Rights Reserved

No part of this publication may be recreated, either in part or in full without the authors full written consent.

Any attempts at plagerism will result in legal action being taken. 



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