THE BLADDER
Championes
The guards were instructed to take us to the bathroom twice a day: in that jail, the cells were in a separate building (the main building), and there was what you would call an outhouse. We were to be corralled there in the morning and again in the afternoon.
They were a forgetful bunch. Many days they’d only take us once. Some days they wouldn’t at all. After a while, we started to complain about this arrangement–to nobody in particular, but we were making noise. We screamed until our throats were raw. We scratched at the walls like animals and we made the guards look at us, look at our filth. We made them see and hear and smell our pain.
One morning something appeared in the hallway that connected all our cells.
A plastic porta-potty.
A trophy.
I took it with me the next time they transferred us.