The Many Lives of Mama Love by Lara Love Hardin

Author:Lara Love Hardin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2023-08-02T00:00:00+00:00

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I’m told to roll it up for Blaine Street a few days and many gallons of water later. I am nervous while I take the urine test, but I pass. I tell myself that this is the last drug test I’ll ever have to worry about since I’ll never use again.

Blaine Street has its own kitchen and serves meals that are cooked in-house. Other luxuries include a sparse backyard with a dirt track around it, a badminton net, a small gym with an exercise bike and a treadmill. There is no freeway like in G, only four sets of dorm-style rooms on two levels. Each quad, as they’re called, is framed around a central dayroom with couches and chairs and its own television. There is a communal bathroom for each quad with actual stalls for privacy and porcelain sinks with mirrors and two genuine bathtubs. The bunk beds have real mattresses and even a pillow. There is a desk and a radio and a lamp. In Blaine we are given large T-shirt nightgowns to sleep in, and we get to change out our other clothes twice a week rather than twice a month. Blaine is the Ritz-Carlton compared to G.

Volunteers come in after dinner each night and teach us to crochet or tell us about reentry services. There is a class on relapse prevention taught by a woman named Tracy who I instantly love. She’s direct and no-nonsense, and we hit it off immediately. There are even volunteers who will come in and do your hair. There’s a chaplain and religious services. A computer class if you need computer training. Music. Board games.

And work. Lots of work. Each day you must clean your room before 7 a.m. Beds have to be made military style. Floors are mopped daily. Bathrooms cleaned. All are subject to inspection at 7 a.m. Once a week, on Sundays, it’s double scrub—in-depth cleaning, closets organized, every surface, knob, and wall scrubbed to perfection.

Once the daily chores are done, the girls at Blaine Street go to the main jail to clean and cook for the entire facility—without them the jail would cease to function. I’m assigned to clean the public lobby of the main jail and the sheriff’s offices. I start work at 6 a.m. Only one deputy comes into the main office that early, and we chat it up every day. She calls her mom every morning, and after a couple of weeks she hands me the phone so I can say hello. Her mom always asks if I’m doing okay and staying out of trouble, and I assure her that I am. And I’ve let everyone know at Blaine Street I am not getting involved with anything shady. I know there are probably drugs waiting to be couriered under the tampon bags in the public stalls that I clean, but I don’t look. If anyone asks me to check, I tell them to fuck off.

During my mornings emptying trash bags and cleaning bathrooms, I think about how much Blaine Street relies on women’s unpaid labor.

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