NINA PAGANO: It’s funny how you don’t see something until you have to. All the times I’d been to the Village, I’d never noticed the prison at Sixth Avenue and Tenth Street, which is weird considering it’s bigger and taller than everything else around. Where do they get enough women to fill this thing? I remember wondering as we were brought through the door. It wasn’t like women were out robbing banks and killing people. Well, I learned the answer to that question pretty quick.

None of the cops back in Brooklyn had told us what to expect, not that it would have helped. At first, things went the way I figured—fingerprints and mug shots, empty your pockets and your purse—but that changed when they took everything. Wallet, hairbrush, chewing gum, tissues, coin purse, lipstick, aspirin; and in Lil’s case a few rolls of blank film. They even confiscated the hairpins from Lil’s hair. An officer tried to impound my glasses, but I convinced her to let me keep them if she didn’t want me walking into walls. I was just grateful Pinky had told Lil to leave her camera at the gallery, because I think they’d have had to kill her in order to bag that.

Next came the showers, which sort of made sense after I saw the shape some of the other women were in. The shower room was like something you’d associate with a high school gym, only without any benches or lockers. They told us to strip. No preamble, no changing room, no privacy. A couple other women were already in there, one looking seriously strung out, the other watching like we were light entertainment. At first Lil just stood there. She deaf? the guard asked. Lil, I said in a low voice, it’s okay. Just pretend you’re back in tenth grade. Lil nodded and started getting undressed. A guard balled up our clothes and took them away. When we came out of the shower, another guard told us to squat. What for? I asked just as another woman who’d been standing with the guard stood behind me and stuck a finger up my ass. What the fuck? I yelled before she slipped her finger out and told the guard, She clean, boss. Then she went over to Lil, who was pressing herself up against the wall like she was trying to melt into it.