Apocryphal Family Tree: The Rough Draft

On A Mission

The way slavery is taught in school, you'd think it was over. It's not though. It has different names like human trafficking and debt bondage, but it's still slavery. And it's still in our food supply, the vulnerable migrant workers who harvest our spinach, and the prisoners who harvest our strawberries. We haven't gotten away from it, we've only managed to hide it under the guises of better working conditions and better pay. Not being able to make enough money to feed your family, having to work three jobs in order to make ends meet but never get ahead. Those are also part of slavery, only it's somehow worse because you think your free but you are always between one and three missed paychecks away from being homeless, deeply in debt, and with no health insurance.
The idea was to get convicted and get into a prison that sells its people as a labor force. But you can't control what prison you get sent to. And you can't control how long your trial takes, or how long it will take a district attorney to offer you a plea deal that will work for what you want. And also Winnie and I didn't want convictions on our records. Mine because I'm almost out and hers because she doesn't want that to give her away when she tries to do something that involves her fingerprints.
It's easier to sneak into a field where laborers are and hitch a ride back with them. They care if they are missing a person. They do not care if they picked one up, as long as we also follow the rules and aren't carrying anything illicit like banned books. Also a few carefully placed forged documents that say Winnie and I are where we are supposed to be and we good.
The wardens and deputies and shit all scare me. They are mostly white men, with a lot of power over women that society has decided to throw away while their communities scream their throats raw asking for them back. That creates some very unbalanced power dynamics.
Winnie and I share a cell. We talk to the other women in here to get the lay of the land and find out there are also two men and a non-binary person being housed with us because reasons. All three people are trans and the reasons seem to be: the men haven't had any transition surgeries so they are really still women and therefore wouldn't be safe in men's prison. The non-binary person was assigned female at birth, so this is where they belong. Both Winnie and I don't know how to tackle that issue but we know it can't be good for their mental health. When we send our reports out to Wild Hunt we mention that.
Winnie writes her report first so I can see what can go into a report. I read a sentence that mostly makes me sad.
"I usually go to where people want to fight back. Where they've had enough and they're ready to take back the rights that have been so cruelly stolen from them. But not here. Here the people are broken. They want to survive, they aren't going to be in here forever and that is what keeps them from fighting back against these injustices. Not all of them, some of these people are in for long enough and the guards pick on them in a way that it feels like forever. Those people are ready to fight back. But fighting back means risking your life and in this situation, the lives of everyone around you because you can't predict what the authorities will do when they have the mob mentality going and a reason to punish these people. And I'm not going to risk their lives if they aren't willing to."
Reading the report, I can already see the wheels turning in Winnie's head. Much like Harry Potter having one spell he turned to (expelliarmus!), Winnie really only knows one way to act. Fortunately, she's really good with it. Winnie has martyrdom down to a science because she's been doing it on purpose for decades. She's only willing to risk her life to prove her point. Risking someone else's life without their consent is complete bullshit and not something a real freedom fighter would ever do.
Winnie planned to get taken into solitary confinement. There had been a few reports of suicides that weren't actually suicides. Winnie had Hopper's team give her contacts fitted with cameras that regularly transmitted the video back to them when there was a decent enough cell signal. Winnie hoped that her time in solitary would be eye opening. There isn't enough cell signal down there to transmit anything, so we were all in the dark for days and weeks. It seemed like we'd completely lost contact with Winnie and I can only imagine what she felt like. Winnie kept her wits up, as best as she could in the situation. She was in and out of solitary confinement for months. And the entire time she made sure the guards ire was focused on her, as much as she could. Guards are bullies. They like authority and power but they usually can't get that in their life outside of prison so the assert it on those more vulnerable than them.
On her fourth trip to the hole, Winnie didn't come back. It was sudden. I'd never been so close to someone who died. It shocked me even though I knew it was coming. And like Winnie planned, her death was eye opening. When they finally brought Winnie's body up, she'd been dead for almost a week. They said she hung herself. The video filmed with her eyes shows that she had help. They'd tried to drug her, but Winnie is most than a little resistant to most drugs. All she had to do was keep her eyes open and play along and die. I couldn't imagine the strength it took to do that. It still scares me. I decided that now that Winnie wasn't coming back, it was time I leave.
My extraction plan, as I was calling it, was simply using my key to leave. This did not go as planned. I'd thought I'd be able to sneak through a doorway in the yard or something but I'd unwittingly caught the eye of a guard who was watching me far more than was necessary (which none was necessary but I digress). I went to a door and pulled my key out and the glint of the metal probably looked enough like a weapon the my guard dog pulled the trigger. I managed to get through the door but I had a massive bullet wound in my shoulder leading through my torso and I was bleeding out over Winnie's floor. I took my key out and slammed the door against the yelling I could hear in the yard. I hoped no one else got hurt. If only I hurt me with my stupidity, I can live with that. Or I won't have to live that much longer. I made it to the doorway and leaned against the doorway, bleeding against the wall. Winnie is reposing in the other room under the watchful eye of Glenny Mae. The racket I made has her in my doorway and fussing. I'm leaning against the doorway out of my room and smiling. I cough up blood. It tastes weird and everything feels floaty and disconnected. I try to hold onto feeling but everything turns to fog in my head. Eventually I stop. Glenny Mae says that it's okay. That I'm hear with loved ones and that my body will be safe. I think she says until I return but I don't know what I'd be returning to.
Glenny Mae is standing beside me and it's otherwise black. It's beautiful and serene. I see Glenny Mae in her prime. She's over six feet tall and built thicka than a Snicka bar, with gleaming dark brown skin and a white gap tooth smile and a 'fro that probably can punch people if they try to touch her hair without permission.
"You could choose to look like this all the time, couldn't you?"
"I earned all them wrinkles and grey hairs baby! Don't I look beautiful in my old age?"
"You do. But you could have it without all the arthritis and maladies that beset the aged human body," I say. "Don't you want that?"
"I also earned my time to take it slow. Everyone always rushing and if I look young, I'm expected to rush too. Fuck that. I take my time, and you'll be pleased I do."
"Where are you taking me?" I ask. "Don't think I can go to Heaven. None of the apprentices were there. Don't know where they are though."
"Oh those turkeys were there. They just hiddin' because it's fun to play tricks on the newbie. Also they all big mad that you went to Heaven without dying."
"Everyone shrugged their shoulders when I asked."
"Do you know how long they've had to wait for anyone new from the family to pull one over one? Years. It's been years."
Lenny heaved a sigh of relief. She knew where she would end up after all. With family. And maybe she could use Winnie's door from this side and visit her family. She wondered why no one in her family had done that before. Maybe they had. Maybe they'd teach her. Maybe they weren't supposed to. Fuck what they supposed to do anyway.
"I can take you there while your body gets ready to take you back, but we'll have to go around the back way. Don't want any Saint Peters getting sanctimonious on you."
"You did mean I'd come back to my body! How do you know? I can't even tell."
"It's like cooking: you know how you can just tell when something has been seasoned enough?"
"You add until your ancestors tell you to stop. Or in my case where that could actually happen but literally never did: you just know when."
Glenny Mae shrugged. "It's super unsatisfying but yea. I just know."