Low Bite

Sin Soracco

Description

Low Bite: Sin Soracco’s prison novel about survival, dignity, friendship, and insubordination. The view from inside a women’s prison isn’t a pretty one, and Morgan, the narrator, knows that as well as anyone. White, female, 26, convicted of nighttime breaking and entering with force, she works in the prison law library, giving legal counsel of more-or-mostly-less usefulness to other convicts. More useful is the hooch stash she keeps behind the law books.

And she has plenty of enemies—like Johnson, the lesbian-hating warden, and Alex, the “pretty little dude” lawyer who doesn’t like her free legal advice. Then there’s Rosalie and Birdeye—serious rustlers whose loyalty lasts about as long as their cigarettes hold out. And then there’s China: Latina, female, 22, holding U.S. citizenship through marriage, convicted of conspiracy to commit murder—a dangerous woman who is safer in prison than she is on the streets. They’re all trying to get through without getting caught or going straight, but there’s just one catch—a bloodstained bank account that everybody wants, including some players on the outside.

Low Bite: an underground classic reprinted at last and the first title in the new imprint from The Green Arcade.

Sujets

• Crime

Informations

• Publié par: PM Press
• Date de parution: 01 mai 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781604863703
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

“Bogus similitude this ain’t.” Jim Nisbet, author of Lethal Injection
“Sin Soracco is the original Black Lizard. Low Bite will take a chunk out of your leg if not your heart. Read it, it will devour you.” Barry Gifford, author of Port Tropique and founder of Black Lizard Books
“Where else can you find the grittiness of girls- behind-bars mixed with intelligence, brilliant prose, and emotional ferocity? Sin Soracco sets the standard for prison writing. Hardboiled and with brains!” Peter Maravelis, editor of San Francisco Noir 1 and 2
“Vicious, funny, cunning, ruthless, explicit … a tough, original look at inside loves and larcenies.” Kirkus Reviews
“Sin Soracco’s let-it-whip style offers no apologies or excuses … Low Bite gets everybody in everybody else’s faces … fetching twistedness.” Village Voice Literary Supplement
“[ Low Bite ] tells a gripping story concerning a group of women in a California prison: their crimes, their relationships, their hopes and dreams.” Publishers Weekly

Low Bite Sin Soracco
Originally published in a Black Lizard Books hardcover edition, 1989. © PM Press 2010 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be transmitted by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.
ISBN: 978-1-60486-226-3 Library of Congress Control Number: 2009912424
The poem, “Woman with Cat and Iris” reprinted with kind permission of the author, Marilyn Buck
Cover art by Gent Sturgeon Cover layout by John Yates Interior design by briandesign
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
PM Press PO Box 23912 Oakland, CA 94623 www.pmpress.org
The Green Arcade 1680 Market Street San Francisco, CA 94102-5949 www.thegreenarcade.com
Printed in the USA on recycled paper.
Woman with Cat and Iris
Marilyn Buck
three purple iris poised among crystal dew morning-blurred sun back drops black birds flickering across day canvas raucous as they sip from glistening blades Mustafah, grey tomcat sits regal beggar awaiting free-fall breakfast and I, a prisoner, luxuriate wealthy in morning light wrapped in this anywhere world tableau guards’ voices clang the last drops of bitter coffee nudge my lips into resolution Mustafah flees Sunday becomes prison.
Marilyn Buck is a political prisoner, speaking up for liberation and justice all her life.
It’s an honor to present one of her poems here.
ONE
The first shot went wild.
Thin and sharp as barbwire, bleached as an old bone, Lily kept climbing the chain-link fence. State issue blanket tied around her waist, state issue gloves covering her hands, up and up she went, her pale hair ribboning in the wind. She knew the fog would hide her until she was over the top. And away.
She stretched the blanket over the razor wire, pressing her weight on it delicately, twisting to see the highway.
The second shot ripped her off the fence. She hit the dirt running zigzag through the winter bare field at the edge of the prison yard, bent double aiming for some nonexistent shelter.
She collapsed with a small scream, her ankle snapped clean from a final misstep into the abandoned weasel burrow.
The guard came up on her cautiously, nervous pistol drawn.
She didn’t look at him, just tipped her head back and howled her rage at the sky.
•
The next day Johnson, a sweaty new guard, escorted me past the red brick housing units to the law library for my afternoon shift. I noticed her uniform was tailored so tight her face ballooned strangely from the starched collar of her beige shirt. I didn’t mention her missing neck because I wasn’t feeling so good about myself, a result of representing Lily in that morning’s conferences with the administration.
I leaned over, whispering, “I’ve got a knife.” Stepped out briskly.
Officer Johnson hustled to catch up. “What did you say?”
“Ai! What a night.”
She tried to step in front of me. “That’s not what you said.”
I slid primly around the panting guard. “I whored all night.”
“What did you say? Stop! I got to escort you!”
I looked back at her over my shoulder. “Said, ‘Snored all night.’”
Johnson squinted her eyes, hustled to catch up. “Are you trying to provoke me, young lady?”
I stopped dead, Johnson ran up over my heels. I didn’t remark on it, I’m a tolerant sort of person. “Me? Provoke you? Oh come on.”
I watched with detached professional interest as Officer Johnson fumbled with the lock on the law library door. She stepped into the tiny windowless room first, probing for something amiss among the book-lined clutter.
Johnson was always bitching about the law library, how it was a major cause of trouble, no good ever came from it. She started up again, “Makes you think you got rights, as if you were somebody. You people aren’t special.” She paused for effect. “Just nasty thieving murdering bitches. Devious.”
“Dykes.” I knew she didn’t like dykes. Unnatural.
She didn’t quite look at me. “Morgan! I expect this place to be tidy and clean when I come back for count. You never see a broom or what?” She shut her mouth so tight she swallowed her lips.
“Sure thing, Johnson. Sure thing.”
I’d already turned away from her to dig my way through a tower of grimy files. I moved volumes stuffed with papers from the tables to the chairs, others from the shelves to start new piles on the tables. The floor, every flat surface, was littered with crumpled papers, cigarette butts, law books with torn pieces of paper sticking out; my typewriter held a typed sheet, the second draft of an appeal, covered by untidy green inked corrections. Between my successful cases the layers of chaos built up. There weren’t many successes.
Prison time is chicken bones, something to be sucked clean. Time is a thing, abstract, made of interlocking gears, everything connected. I scowled at the mess. My notes on a couple of sadly inadequate habeas corpus writs were mixed in with the divorce papers for half the women in general population. The newest craze.
Officer Johnson stood on one foot, then the other, trying to demand more of a commitment. Ignored, she huffed out the door, muttering pointlessly that she’d be back.
Everyone would be back. I wondered how much longer Johnson would last. What sort of shit she’d stir up before her inevitable departure. The possibilities were staggering. I pulled my coffee cup out of the lowest drawer of my desk, filled it from the hooch jar, took a long necessary swallow.
Prison exists to serve one purpose: locking people away from life’s good things, usually other people’s good things. A temporary solution at best. The combat continues unabated behind the walls. A regular knock-down drag-out with the administration and the guards in here whaling away just like the convicts. Everybody fighting over the good things no one ever gets enough of.
I sat there after Johnson left, counting cigarettes, trying to figure out what my next move should be. So far I’d managed to make a royal mess of things.
I had been convicted of nighttime residential burglary with (unproven) use of force. The DA elaborated, fancifully, I thought, how no one could have gotten by that particular citizen’s massive security apparatus or into his expensive new safe without force. The judge gave me four years. So much for independent thinking in the judiciary. Four years. The courts have no appreciation of my skills. Probably a good thing.
I didn’t consider that job exactly a failure, more like an embarrassment. I usually worked alone, did my own research, my own setup—just that once I went along as backup on someone else’s job. Little things just clog up the works sometimes. I try not to take it personally.
Wearing cascades of Spanish lace, tinkling bracelets, tight black jeans, China swiveled her way into the law library, clicked her tongue and unceremoniously dumped a stack of books off a chair. “Got to get some discipline to your habits, girl.” Her voice was musical, seductive.
I moved my eyes a fraction of an inch to look at the newest pile on the floor, back to her. I wasn’t thrilled to see her.
China had a warm brown triangular face, full lips, great slanted eyes, a long mane of black hair, and a heart of endless larceny. “You know that guard woulda killed ‘er if she was anythin’ but a ver’ white girl. Crazy gavacha, tryin’ to escape like that.”
I, like all of us, tell lies and still sleep pretty well. “Lily wasn’t tryin’ to escape.”
“Sure she was.”
“Nope.” I ruined my morning in conference with the administration about just that thing. Reality can be bought or sold in prison. It’s strictly a futures market. We decided, the administration and I, that Lily hadn’t been escaping, the guard hadn’t shot at her. Those things made unnecessary complications under the circumstances.
Lily never did anything right, poor kid still got cards from the bastard she tried to kill. Postmarked Reno, Las Vegas, Atlantic City: “Havin’ a wonderful time, girl. Placed some bets for you—you always lose. Hahaha.”
“I be glad when he’s finally dead,” she said, “even if it ain’t me what does it.”
If Lily was charged with escape she would become a three-time loser: attempted escape, aggravating a guard into using his weapon, the commission of a felony in the course of which bodily injury occurred, her own, but that was just the way things went for her. Other charges could be arranged. Time piled up on time; once it’s started there’s no way to stop the process, as if punishment feeds on itself growing bloated obese succulent.
I’d made a couple suggestions at the hearing this morning. Only thing the administration and I ever agreed on. Gave me serious doubts about myself. “It’s a bad time to be shooting women, you know. This a model prison here.”
“Say what?”
I did