On the other hand, some of the common prisoners, with the way they spent every waking moment threatning and extorting anyone weaker barely seemed to me to qualify as human beings. The cruelest of them was known as Sappho, a half Chinese, half mullatto woman of thirty-five or so, with a body of spectacular curves and a face bisected by a jagged scar, oh her name was the reiminder of her current sexual inclinations the sexual favors, the scar, of her courting customs. Day and night, she announced the sexual favors she intended to claim from the prisoners in the cells around her the first time the llaveras left the doors unlocked, and the murderous consequences for anyone who resisted. To be within earshot of her cell was like living next to a backed-up toliet; the stench seemed to work into your very pores.
They put her in a cell with Sappho and three other women, who took turns hloding her down and rpaing her. Afterward, they stole her soap, toothpaste, toliet paper, sheets, and mattress.
The screams of those girls echoed in my dreams every night. I could defend myself well enough in a single fight, or even several fights, I thought. But what would happen the first time I went to sleep? And what about all the other political prisoners who wouldn't last even that long, who would be beaten senseless and raped within hours?
