''Secret Life of Bees''

That's the last I heard him yell before we got inside, Where I had an overpowering impulse to kneel down and kiss the jail- house floor.

The only image I had for jails was from westerns at the movies and this one was nothing like that. For one thing, it was painted pink and had flower-print curtains in the window. it turned out we'd come in through the jailer's living quarters. His wife stepped in from the kitchen, greasing a muffin tin.

The jail cells smelled with the breath of drunk people. He put us in the first cell on the first row where somebody had scratched the words ''Shit Throne'' across a bench attached to one wall. Nothing seemed quite real. we're in jail, I thought. we're in jail.

I think that she uses big words and she explains that you can imagine how it was and I don't think that I could write like that.