Property

127 renner’s mother used to restore old dolls— specifically, American compo dolls. Madame Alexander, Amberg. One of her last memories of her mother must have been of a Sunday afternoon, the day she would invite Brenner to stand at the sink with her and watch while she worked. It was such a careful process. The doll would be covered in plastic wrap so it wouldn’t get wet. Each strand of hair was massaged in the soapy water, then brushed with a metal comb. She’d fill cracks, airbrush their faces, paint their eyes and mouths, so gentle, and her strokes clean, but then she’d scuff them. “No one wants a doll that looks new.” The dolls were sent to her in the mail. She cared for them as if they were the owners’ children . Brenner always wanted to play with them, but it was her mother ’s work, and she wouldn’t have dared. In this memory, maybe the last before breast cancer took her, her mother took the green out of a doll’s mohair wig, then made up the doll with charcoal eyebrows fiction Property David Moloney B 128 | DAVID MOLONEY and magenta cheeks, and though Brenner couldn’t remember her mother’s face well from that day, the doll’s remained with her. inside the property room, Brenner was changing out a junkie, pupils pointed down, thick red lipstick cracked and smeared, still groggy from whatever she’d swallowed or stuck in her arm before her arrest. The woman was young—younger than Brenner, and Brenner was twenty-five. Lt. Hobson called her a whippersnapper , though she didn’t think he knew what it meant. Nashua had scooped up six women in a prostitution ring, and Brenner was sure to spend her entire break searching holes for bags. “Fishhook your cheeks,” Brenner explained, miming the action. “Straighten up. I said straighten up. With your fingers. Fishhook.” The new admit was nude, her skin bruised in all sorts of places, deep blue marks in her armpits. She stumbled and caught herself against the brick wall, then leaned there. Behind her were shelves of bagged and boxed inmate property: shoes, jewelry, clothes, suits dropped off by loved ones or good lawyers for court. The whole room smelled like wet sneakers. There was a shower where the inmates rinsed, like at a public pool. They’d dry off and get walked through the unclothed search procedure. Other than the Bubble on Max, which was a boys’ club for male officers to pack dips and nap, Property was the only room not under video surveillance. “Hon, you need to get this over with,” Brenner said. Brenner took the few steps that were between them and helped the woman stand up. “I’m going to inspect your mouth. Then I’m going to bend you over at the waist and check you. Can you do this with me?” The inmate nodded, her dry tongue between her crusted lips. Brenner had been working at the jail for a year and had learned a lot about people. How bad people’s teeth could get. The inmates— the hookers and women with gangrene arms—their teeth could get rocklike, gravelly. The inmate’s breath smelled like cigarettes. Brenner grabbed her around the waist with her left arm and pushed her into a bow with her other hand. The inmate let all her weight collapse in Brenner’s PROPERTY | 129 grasp and her arms hung limp. Brenner struggled to hold her up. She spread her feet to get a stronger stance, then inspected the inmate’s vagina and anus as respectfully as one could. Brenner was the only female officer on first shift. Radio calls all day: “Brenner, 10-11 Property.” Tully was the property officer, but as a policy men couldn’t change out the women. Strip searches gave Brenner an affinity for the inmates. She didn’t like that. She wanted to be hard on them. But if one was in distress, or agitated, the male officers would call her down to U1 or Booking, and she’d be expected to calm them. The male officers were never expected to calm...