No More Tomorrows (45 page)

‘Just do it! It’ll be so much easier and you’ll wonder why you hadn’t done it sooner,’ Michael said.

‘Do you think I’ll look ugly, though?’

‘Yes!’ was his blunt reply, and we both laughed.

After his visit, I walked back to the block, borrowed a pair of pink-handled kindergarten-type scissors from another cell and marched into my own cell, complete with thirteen-plus girls lying around in it. I then got a small mirror and placed it on top of a turned-over bucket. I put the rubbish bin beside me, and I was ready.

Sitting on the ground, I took a long look at myself in the mirror, then pulled up small clumps of hair, just enough so the blunt scissors could cut through without having to hack at it too much. I started at the front. I knew if I started chopping from the back, I’d get scared and stop. I couldn’t stop when starting at the front, otherwise I’d be left with an awful ’80s-style mullet and fit perfectly into this place . . . no, thanks.

I didn’t speak, as I didn’t want anyone talking me out of it. There was no turning back, this hair had to go. I was focused. To the other girls, I must have looked like a depressed, stressed, out-of-control wreck as I just kept hacking and hacking. I heard all the girls whispering among themselves, ‘What’s she doing?’ Women from other cells came in to sneak a peek. This was an event, anything to kill time – glad I could help them.

When Yohanna, the knitting lady, saw me, she pushed everyone out of the cell, knelt down beside me and asked what I was doing. I didn’t speak. She started crying, hugging me and saying, ‘Tell me what’s happened, Schapelle.’ I just kept looking in the mirror, chopping an inch away from my scalp. She tried taking the scissors off me. I stopped for a second, started crying and turned to her.

‘It’s OK, Yohanna. I’m OK, it’s just too hot!’ Cutting my hair was emotionally hard as I loved that hair and it also represented more of the life I’d lost.

I took a photograph of my beloved chopped-off hair and then threw the hair in the bin. A few days later, I found out that one of the girls had buried it in front of our cell. I thought that was a bit weird, but it was an Indonesian custom. I didn’t realise what a nightmare cutting my hair would cause. Suddenly, prisoners all over Hotel K, and visitors, were trying to take the first lucrative shots of my new short hairdo. It was worth a lot of cash. It was the beginning of my hat-and-scarf phase.

Each time I begin to feel something slightly resembling a comfort zone in here, something, a person, a problem, a change, whatever, will come along and throw me off course, out of whack, placing a hole in the road. Always something to disrupt, making it impossible for me to gain any illusion of a half-hearted sense of security.

My cell was the worst it had ever been. We were up to fifteen girls, including the two drug addicts who regularly shot up next to me. And though we now had running water, we were often worse off. Sonia regularly stuck her hand out of her cell to turn off the water pump. She liked doing it at 5 p.m. so we had no water until the guards came in at 7 a.m. It usually meant the bathroom floor would be covered with more floating shit, without any water to flush it away. Sometimes I found it hard to believe I was still actually a woman.

The septic tank also blocked up a few times, and our cell was the first to overflow. I went with Renae and a girl from my cell, Sumila, behind the block to try to fix it. Sumila didn’t mind getting her hands dirty. She lifted the cement lid of the septic tank and, as she did, all its gross contents came alive, spurting thirty centimetres into the air. I felt Renae grab my shoulders and shove me out of the way and then run for it. She couldn’t get away fast enough. I heard her screams over the top of my own. All the slop was gushing out all over Sumila’s bare feet. Then, with her bare hands, she replaced the lid. That would without doubt be the most grotesque image I have ever been witness to – an overflowing septic tank.

Back in the block, Sumila rinsed her feet and hands using water from the fish pond. She then gave Renae and me one of her biggest smiles. We stood in shock as we watched the simplicity of her hygiene.

Finally, after a year and a half in the pre-sentencing cell, I was allowed to move into Salma’s elite cell. It was a relief, but I had to be careful of a prisoner called Michelle. She was an expatriate Dutch woman living in Bali and in jail for drugs. She was nasty, always making snide remarks and always walking around with a camera, taking shots of everything . . . especially me.

She was odd and no one really liked her except Renae, and as they started becoming buddies, it caused a rift in our friendship. I spent one night in the same cell as this woman before she moved into Renae’s cell, lying at night with a sheet over my head so she didn’t take photos of me asleep. I’d already caught her taking sneaky shots of me a few times. I had done nothing to this girl but try to be nice.

My concerns about this woman were confirmed after she was released and sold a story about me to
New Idea
. Incredibly, the magazine just took her lies, publishing a story full of errors without bothering to check its facts. They even stated that Stanley was dead. It was unbelievable. Not only do I not have any privacy but complete lies are made up.

Journalists keep coming in trying to get stories about me by paying other prisoners to talk. I don’t understand why people won’t just leave me alone. It’s never-ending, and I know it will continue until the day someone comes to say, ‘Pack your bags, you’re checking out.’

21

Stealing My Soul

T
HIS IS LIKE THE DEATH OF MY LIFE BEFORE
. I
T’S BEEN A
mourning process, a grieving, all the emotions of shock, disbelief, denial, then anger, then trying to deal with it, then numbness and acceptance.

I have to accept that I’m here: accept that this is my life, at least for now.

But I will not accept my sentence – I don’t know why I call it ‘my sentence’. It’s not mine. I will never accept twenty years. I’m just waiting. I’m not putting a number on my years in this shit hole. No way can I think about twenty years. I live in hope that something will happen, something has to. I will fight, my family will fight. Even if we fight for twenty years, we will keep fighting.

I am strong enough, capable enough of surviving in prison for twenty years. If I have no choice; if I have to, if there is no alternative. I am not capable of hurting myself, not capable of suicide or hurting my family in that way. I will come through without damaging myself; I will not allow anger or bitterness to eat away at me.

I feel paralysed inside these walls, my heart is still beating full of love – well, half full of love. I am still alive, but I’m stuck, I can’t move, no one can hear me. People care for me, people work for me, but as yet, with all their efforts, no one can save me. The people who have died within these walls have died of loneliness, helplessness, of a broken heart, broken spirit.

Like a small child, I’ve had to learn to walk again. I can’t do anything for myself, everything is relied on from the outside world – my friends, family – everything I need has to be brought in, from my food, toilet paper and medicines to emotional support. Without constant contact through my visits, it is very possible that I might go insane, a depressed, angry, crazy, psychopathic Aussie chick.

I think I am back to my normal mental state . . . not so religious. I keep all my relationships personal, as with my relationship with God. It’s personal, between Him and me. No one else. I still pray, in my cell.

As part of accepting that this is for now my fate, I’ve also realised there’s nothing to be gained in this place by letting anger overcome you, rebelling against discipline, screaming at the guards. It’s not going to help me walk out those doors; it just causes more problems. I work every day at staying calm, on an even keel, replacing negative thoughts with positive ones.

I’ve become numbed to things. I have changed in some ways: I can sit calmly reading my book on my bed with a cell full of girls screaming at each other and barely notice; I can switch off, I’m like the calm in the eye of a storm.

Most days and nights we can hear the cries of prisoners in other cells humming through the concrete walls, like a dull constantaching all night long. I’ve grown accustomed to this sound, so now it doesn’t affect me. It used to sadden me greatly that I couldn’t reach through the walls to comfort the girl whose heart was breaking. My own heart would be burdened by that sound, and I’d usually lie on my bed listening and end up crying myself to sleep with them.

Now I still hear this sound, but I’ve grown to not let it affect me as it did. I can’t allow myself to drown with every sound of pain that penetrates these walls, as it eats away my strength and energy; I need to be in control of my mind and feelings, it’s my mind and feelings that I need to concentrate on, not others, for me to get through this.

But I am slowly losing myself. When I go back to the women’s block, I change, I disappear. I can go three weeks without talking to anyone. I keep to myself. I’ve become introverted. Only on the rareoccasion when the Schapelle I once knew comes out to give me a visit do I realise how alone and terribly lonely and lost I am.

It’s so lonely in here. I see my family, I’m surrounded by lots of people, but I long for male company: that of a cute guy, nothing naughty and rude, just small stuff like a caring hand to move the hair out of my teary eyes and kiss my forehead, give me a warm hug, hold my hand. Little things like that. I’m usually a very touchy person. When will I have that again?

I do not want a relationship in this place, but I have thought that if I’m here years from now, maybe I would have a child – somehow. It is life’s most precious gift, and I don’t want to miss my chance. The prison rules would allow me to keep my baby here for two years. Maybe it seems cruel, but he or she would be just as loved as any other child. Maybe I could build a cell, so that it’s clean. It’s just all silly daydreams at the moment.

Maybe I will serve this sentence in an Australian prison. It is a question everyone seems to try to answer for me but one I have not seriously contemplated. I will wait and decide in time.

I long to be free and live again outside these walls. So many simple things from the outside world now seem so precious. When my brother Michael comes in to visit me straight after a surf, his feet are always covered in wet sand. I forget what it feels like to get sand between my toes. I rub the sand off his feet and onto mine. In a weird way it gives me a little comfort, makes me feel a little closer to where I long to be.

But I do realise that this is where I must stay until that day in the future when someone in authority grows some balls to help fight for my innocence, my freedom, for what is right, to get that cage door unlocked. The culprits who did this have watched this play out like a sick TV soap opera. I’d like to think they’d put their cowardly hands up, but I gave up any hope of that a longtime ago.

I will never understand
WHY
, why this happened to me. Why my bag? I still sometimes go over it in my head but never get an answer. I live day by day but don’t look into the future, as the future means only these four walls, heat, dirt and too many stinky people. The future means sixteen more years locked in a cage. I feel sad and broken – my hopes have faded to nothing. They’re dead. I waited for justice for four years, since that very first Monday in Polda when I was sure I’d be free to finally go and enjoy my holiday. I always seemed to be waiting, waiting for the next answer, for the court’s decisions, waiting on my appeals. But my wait is over. I’ve lost. My judicial review was rejected on 28 March 2008, exhausting the last legal avenue.

Right now, I’m empty, lost and numb. I used to have a clear fresh sparkle radiating within, showing through my laugh and my eyes, I never had a problem looking in the mirror, I knew who I was, I didn’t question myself. Lately now, four years on from that fatal date, and after repeated blows, I’m finding a confusing, distant reflection in the mirror; it’s dull, my eyes don’t seem to speak any more, they’re lifeless, as though my soul is drying up. Where have I gone, where am I going? I can feel I’m gradually losing the essence that makes me me.

It’s strange and it hurts, indescribably, to become aware of your own fading soul reflected through your eyes each time you look in the mirror.

I was once so vain and preoccupied with trying to keep my face youthful and line-free. I’d buy all the latest creams and products, fighting the signs of ageing. Now, how I’ve changed; I would love to be the owner of deep ingrained laughter lines. It’s been so long since I’ve felt peaceful and happy. So long since I’ve smiled and laughed on the inside and out.