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Prison Cooks Love Cabbage
My former coworker, Louise, was in prison. She had been there about a year, when I arranged to visit her. We’d had some quarrels in the past. I decided to visit her to try to resolve our differences. For reasons I could never figure out, she had spread some nasty rumors about me at work and I wanted to confront her about that. Maybe I could get some kind of explanation. As far as I knew, I’d never done anything to cause her harm.
There were other matters I wanted to talk to her about, so I took the time to write questions down on notecards, which I kept in my jacket pocket. My intention, upon meeting with her, was to refer to my notes, making sure I remembered to address every question I had.
Several friends came with me to the prison for moral support. We’d all been let into the prison and now sat in a conference room, waiting for Louise to be brought to us. Despite being inside a prison, the space seemed like a typical boardroom, with office chairs and a long wooden table which was a dark red. The only thing that was prison-like were the bare concrete walls and the barred windows.
Louise, escorted by guards, arrived and sat down across from me. She was dressed in a typical prison orange jumpsuit and white sneakers. Something about her demeanor seemed more meek than I remembered. She avoided eye contact, kept her head down, and greeted us by…
