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Henderson admits as much, but adds, "Down there, we could fight and be back to friends the next day — or our parents would make us talk it out 'cause they were friends."
She knows that not finishing school at Southeast High School would have been disappointing to her mother. She says she has asked about taking GED classes while awaiting trial, but her case manager says it's not possible.
Her father, her aunts and Hudspeth keep her up-to-date on family news.
Henderson doesn't want to think that her grandmother is as sick as her family says she is. "They don't think she can live by herself anymore," she says with a sigh.
If Henderson weren't in jail right now — if none of this had ever happened — she says she probably wouldn't try to go back to her old job at Encore, a bill-collection agency in Olathe. It was too hard to get to work, she says, all the way out in the suburbs without a car. She always had to bother her family for rides.
And anyway, there's something else on her mind. She says she can feel herself getting older. If she weren't in jail, she says, "I'd probably be trying to make me a baby. A son. I don't want no girls. I like baby boys better than baby girls. The only thing is, boys cry too much."
Pressed about why she prefers boys, she grows thoughtful. "Men got it easy on some things. People will try to test a girl before they'll test a man."
She's optimistic that she'll beat her charges but admits that she's anxious about the trial. "I don't think I'd even be normal if I wasn't nervous."
When a guard opens the heavily bolted door to the hallway to inform Henderson that her time is up, a playful look crosses her face. "Oh, I'm blessed with you, huh?" she says to the guard who will escort her back to her little cell.
"C'mon," the guard says with mock roughness. "You think we care how high-powered a lawyer you got?"
"What you know about him?" Henderson shoots back, and then she's gone.
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