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uncharitably – but only mentally – referred to as ‘Baldy’, was well under forty.
    â€˜What we are hoping to achieve,’ Lardner was saying, ‘is not just a new level of productivity, but also a new level of profitability within a correctional facility.’
    â€˜Well,’ Gwen pointed out with a smile, ‘ any profitability would be a new level, wouldn’t it? Prisons have never made any money.’
    â€˜Certainly,’ Jerome nodded, ‘certainly none of the public prisons make money, but the privatized ones do.’
    That word! Gwen decided yet again that she would not argue statistics with Jerome Lardner. Whenever she called any of his ‘facts’ into question, he was always ready with statistics. If figures didn’t lie, then liars like Jerome certainly didn’t figure out anything except how to protect their own position. ‘Inmate Output Management Specialists have been very effective in supervising the productivity of privatized facility workers,’ Baldy droned on.
    Sometimes it took Gwen as long as five minutes to figureout what the JRU terminology meant. They seemed to avoid using straightforward words like ‘prison’ or ‘forced labor’ when they could use their multisyllabic buzzwords instead. It might fool the politicians, but it didn’t fool Gwen. ‘Whatever you just said, I’m sure you are right,’ Gwen responded.
    At last! She got a bit of a chuckle and a few laughs from the JRU staff. That would be her little gift to them. Gwen suspected that they were probably laughing at her, not with her. She imagined that she was probably the butt of plenty of JRU jokes. But that was nothing new. She knew, for example, that at Jennings many of the women – both the inmates and the staff – referred to her as ‘The Prez’ – as in ‘The President’. This wasn’t because of her strong image or authoritative air, but rather because of her somewhat unfortunate name. When Gwen Harding first arrived at Jennings, her nameplate had been erroneously engraved to read: WARREN G. HARDING instead of WARDEN G. HARDING. She assumed that the error was an innocent one and not a purposeful attempt to make her look silly. She had had the sign redone, but she kept the original one at home and amused friends and relatives with it at dinner parties and family gatherings – back when she gave dinner parties and had a family to gather.
    Gwen could laugh about the nameplate now, but it was not the most dignified way to begin her tenure as the new warden. Fortunately, over time, Gwen had noticed that fewer and fewer of the women who were sent to Jennings even knew who Warren G. Harding was. She imagined that ‘The Prez’ would eventually be replaced with a new name – probably something even more offensive. Maybe it already had. The inmate population grew, changed, and becameless educated and more troubled each year. She’d been shocked only last week when Flora, the middle-aged inmate in charge of the laundry detail, apparently didn’t know the difference between a city and a country. ‘When I get out of here, I’m going to Paris,’ Flora had said.
    â€˜France?’ Gwen had asked her.
    â€˜There, too!’ was Flora’s reply.
    It would have been something to laugh about if it wasn’t so sad. But Gwen would’ve preferred that she and Flora had something to laugh about together. Jennings was such a sad place, she wished that all of them – the inmates, the officers, the staff – had something to laugh about. But, after all, it was a prison, wasn’t it? And she was the Warden – not a clown. And most certainly not a teacher, a nurse, or a mommy. The job wasn’t what she had once hoped for. Contrary to what she (and no one else) thought of as her ‘amusing public speaking anecdote’, being Warden had very little to do with nurturing,