Later I would learn that was a routine question meaning What are you in for? Drugs, hooking, who’d you kill, or what’d you steal? But I didn’t know that yet. I still defined myself by my job, not my crime. “I’m a lawyer,” I said with my eyes narrowed and my tone brutal. I said it like I was saying killer. Like being a lawyer was my crime, and a pretty heinous one at that.

A rumble of murmurs rolled around the table, then spread to the next table and the table beyond that one. Dozens of women twisted in their seats to gape at me. But they didn’t look hostile. They had a gleam of interest in their eyes. I thought they must be struck by the novelty of seeing a lawyer on this side of the bars. Penitentiaries were full of lawyers serving hard time, but I doubted there were any here in pretrial detention, for the obvious reason that lawyers could post bail or had friends who could post it for them. As both a lawyer and a white woman, I had no business being here at all.

But as it turned out, it wasn’t the novelty that drew their interest. It was my potential usefulness. The women surged out of their seats and swarmed around me, buzzing with questions. How long till they have to give me a trial? Don’t they have to let me go if my boyfriend says he did it, not me? Don’t my mom have to bring my kids to see me?

They must have all had lawyers on the outside, but public defenders were notoriously overworked and underpaid and stingy with their time. A lawyer on the inside would be a real asset. They pressed in close, jostling one another to gain my ear, calling out their questions from all sides.

I had to clap my hands over my ears to close out the clamor. “I can’t hear when you’re all talking at once,” I shouted.

The bandana-wearing alpha woman put two fingers in her mouth and blew a sharp whistle. Instantly everyone fell silent. “Back the fuck off!” she shouted. She stabbed her fork at me again. “You know any of this shit?” she said. “You ain’t no real estate lawyer or nothin’?”

I took a bite of sausage, chewed, and swallowed. “I know all of this shit,” I said.

The woman’s chin came up, and her eyes narrowed. Her name was Nina, I soon learned, and she ran Pod C. She ordered everyone back to their tables and announced that the lawyer would take their questions one at a time, by appointment only, beginning in the common room that evening. She, Nina, would be in charge of the appointment book. “How much time for each?” she asked me.

“Depends on the question.”

Nina shook her head. “No. We gotta do this orderly-like.”

“Then make it fifteen-minute slots.”

“Okay, bitches,” she hollered. “See me if you want an appointment.”

The other women seemed to know enough not to clamor around Nina. They formed a line and waited patiently until she finished her breakfast and waved the first one forward. She wrote that woman’s name on her napkin, then waved the next one forward.