Thurwar gripped the weapon she’d been given: a thin spiraling corkscrew with a cherrywood handle. How the thrum of thousands was so loud, so constant, it could disappear from your ears but continue to roar as something felt in the body. Would never know how it made you feel, both tiny and all-powerful. There were so many of them, so many waves of humans who would never be the object of such cruel attention. “Maybe that’s what we should call you-Little Miss Feisty.”Ī thin spiraling corkscrew with a cherrywood handle Esquire They believed this the way they believed in the sun and moon and the air they breathed. She was tall and strong, and they looked down on her and the tight coils of black hair on her head. They looked down on this Black woman, dressed in the gray jumpsuit of the incarcerated. They cheered, though their support was edged with a brutal irony. But the crowd seemed to appreciate her boldness. She’d counted herself wretched for so long. She noticed her own steadiness and felt a dim love for herself. It was Super Bowl weekend, a fact that Wright was contractually obligated to mention between every match that evening. “Why don’t you tell us your name?” His high boots were planted in the turf of the BattleGround, which was long and green, stroked with cocaine-white hash marks, like a divergent football field.

“Welcome, young lady,” said Micky Wright, the premier announcer for Chain-Gang All-Stars, the crown jewel in the Criminal Action Penal Entertainment program. She felt their eyes, all those executioners.

Friday black adjei brenyah