“Wake up, wake up . . .” Someone was shaking my shoulders.
“Have some water. Were you having some kind of nightmare? Where’s your mother?” The woman was pressing her face between the slight space between two bus seats.
“She’s in the back,” I lied. “I’m okay. No, thank you, I have water,” I lied again.
It didn’t matter what I told her. I have money. That should fix anything. Seats that were empty when we first left Columbus Circle in Manhattan were now filled.
“Last stop before Niagra Correctional Facility,” the man-voice announced.
• • •
In a crowded waiting room, busloads of women, some teens and kids and babies waited to be “processed.” There were signs everywhere reading do not leave your children under 18 unattended. Me and Siri sat next to two women who had kids, to act like we’re part of their bunch. Momma wasn’t in here. She must have already been processed and visiting with Poppa. I’d wait out here. Being “processed” is the official part, I told myself.
After more than an hour it seemed like none of the women and children who approached the area to be searched and processed were coming back out here. The crowd where we were was shrinking.
“They’re going out some other door,” Siri said. “After they meet their husbands they’re exiting elsewhere. What if you missed Momma?” Siri asked me. I felt panicked. My butt muscles and my jaw muscles tightened and my fingers were becoming stiff.
• • •
“Every week there’s at least one,” the guard standing over me said. “Now, you’re too young to be alone, and too old to be lost. What’s your excuse?”
I shrugged my shoulders. My tongue was dry like beef jerky or pork rinds that they used to sell in the corner store back in Brooklyn when I was seven.
“Let me see some ID,” the guard said.
“I don’t have none,” I said truthfully.
“Who did you come up here to see?” she asked me.
“I don’t know. My aunt came up here to see someone. She made me sit and wait alone.”
“What’s your aunt’s name?”
“Everybody calls her Lucy,” I said swiftly.
“Lucy what?” the guard asked. I thought of the last name I heard the most ever.
“Lucy Jackson, but I think that’s her other name,” I said.
“Other name?” the guard asked.
“Before or after she got married again,” I said.
“Forget all that. What’s your name?”
“Ivory,” I said.
“Come with me, Ivory,” the guard said.
The guard walked me to the counter where more guards were standing behind a thick closed-in glass. She unclipped a tag hanging on her guard shirt and placed it against the glass. The heavy door clicked, then opened. Two guards looked over the high countertop and down at me.
“You got another one?” one of the guards said.
A drop of pee squeezed out of me. I felt it spread in my panties. I stood behind the guard as she removed her gun and checked it at the counter.
“Headed for the other side,” she said to the other guards. I felt bricks on my head as I tried to figure if “the other side” was a good or evil place?
“Teach her mother a lesson. How many times do we have to tell them we’re correction officers, not babysitters.”
“You know I will,” the guard said.
Small drops of pee kept falling and sliding a crooked path down my leg inside of my jeans then drying around my ankles.
“This is not a place where you should ever want to be,” the guard said as we walked and walked down a slim corridor where there was nothing but officers and workers. I could not see even one prisoner or one cell. That would’ve been something, to get a glimpse of Poppa. But this must’ve been the guard’s secret passageway, I thought. Again she placed her pass on a thick glass window. A heavy door clicked.
“Lucy Jackson!” she announced to a room filled with women and some kids packing, putting on coats and jackets, boots and sneakers, and pocketbooks. If I were Lucy Jackson, I wouldn’t have answered the guard either. She called out that name like, “Come get your ass whooping!”
“Lucy Jackson,” the guard’s voice boomed again. Sweat rushed out of my pores and spread onto my face until I was nothing but sweat and piss.
“Last call for Lucy Jackson! Ladies check around and see if you lost any of your kids!” The guard was criticizing them all.
“Oh!” a lady said. “She’s on the bus with me.”
“We rode up together.” From her voice I could hear she was the lady who was seated behind me, who woke me out of my nightmare. I walked over to her and held her hand.
“I’ll take her. Her mother’s probably on the bus going crazy looking for us,” the woman said.
The guard looked at us both suspiciously.
“It ain’t like none of y’all would be asking for no extra kids, so go ahead,” the C.O. said sarcastically. When we exited my remaining pee blasted out.
“You can let go now,” the woman who got me out of there said. “I don’t know what kind of trouble you’re in, but I wouldn’t wish that place on my worse enemy,” she said, and walked away.
“I’m looking for the express bus,” I said to another woman walking beside us. She didn’t even look at me, just kept walking and looked at her watch.
“It’s gone. It leaves a half hour before the big ones pull out.”
My heart dropped into my socks. I tried to take deep breaths and blow air out to calm my panic.
As I looked back through the barbed wire fences at the cement castles and the guards on the rooftops weighed down with weapons to kill, I struggled to climb the bus stairs.
“How long till we get back to New York City?” I asked the driver.
“Seven hours including all stops, same as coming up, going back.”
***
A stray dog on the midnight Brooklyn streets followed me from the subway stairs toward the underground. I didn’t hate him. I didn’t love him either. He kept trying to smell me. He wasn’t growling or foaming or looking like he wanted to attack. I stopped and stood still. He pushed his black nose into my private space and sniffed, sniffed, sniffed.
“I know. I stink,” I said to him. He started wagging his tail like he thought we could be friends. Once I realized he wasn’t a threat, I started walking faster to get back to Momma.
• • •
Momma left me one thing, the Motorola Startac cell phone from Elisha. Her Gucci dress and heels, all of the new clothes I purchased for her, the dopest shit Mr. Sharp bought for me; my kicks, shoes, and Gucci backpack, the chain, lock, and cuffs were all gone. Even the gold earrings that Poppa bought for me and placed on the tip-top of my money tree were missing.
“It’s okay. We were growing out of some of those clothes anyway,” Siri said to me. “It will be fun to go shopping for new stuff.” I guess Siri didn’t know that I missed Momma more than any item. I was being mugged by grief and slowly drowning in pain. All I saw was black before I collapsed on the cement stairs.
Chapter 40
Seven days before my fourteenth birthday, I had now served more time with Momma than my time served in prison. Still, I wasn’t sure which sentence was worse. I didn’t know whether to celebrate or slash my throat. In fact, I know less now than I knew when I was eight, nine, and ten in juvy. At least in there, I had the pride and certainty of being a Santiaga, the deep and true love and intense loyalty to family. Back then I let that love fight for me and win. I risked everything for that love, definitely my freedom and even my life.
Now it was too hard for me to figure, understand, or accept what was happening with me. No one else seemed to know or say anything about it. No one asked or cared enough about me, except Elisha. Other people cared, but not enough. In fact everyone who knew me knew so little about me, even less than I knew about myself.
On the block where I lived beneath the ground, and everywhere
I went as myself, people said I was beautiful, gorgeous, attractive, the bomb, the shit, the brick house, the ten, the dime, the baddest, the best, the top and the bottom bitch. They used words like mysterious, elegant, exotic, sensual, sensuous, young, firm, soft, sweet, powerful; I heard them all on a regular. None of those words moved me even a millimeter.
I had never spread these pretty dancer’s thighs for anyone. The more I ignored, the more I said no, the more I resisted, the more interested they were. Problem was, I wasn’t interested at all. I was the pretty girl with five holes in my heart. The holes were so deep and so painful, I couldn’t give love to anyone. I felt even if I gave in and gave my whole heart to Elisha, all he would be getting is Swiss cheese. Plus, I was afraid to love him. Momma said, “Never give your whole heart to any man. You’ll end up loving him ten thousand more times than he’ll ever love you.” Everything Momma ever said mattered the world to me, even the meanest, most evilest words Momma said counted a lot.
I did make one decision: I was leaving the underground, the space beneath the floor with no windows and no sunlight. I would leave in a body bag or I would walk out on my own. Either way, I would be gone. Fear flew away one dark night screaming and kicking, while locked in the beak of a black raven; the fear of me not being in a space where Momma might return. That’s it, plain and simple.
That’s what I mean about my life. It didn’t make sense. I have $50,000 dollars in a heavy locked safe in the wall space at Mr. Sharp’s place of business. I had a hundred thousand chances to leave the underground, but I couldn’t and wouldn’t. I was always waiting on Momma. There was also the little detail of my being both a juvenile and a fugitive, no ID, no Social Security number, no working papers, no rights. So Big Johnnie’s underground space was the hideout, where the longer I stayed, the more money I hustled up and earned.
Big Johnnie was like an uncle to me now, Mr. Sharp like a father. He even said he would put me in the charm school, and when I reached sixteen, I could debut in the debutante’s ball. He wanted to escort me in the place of Poppa. My neighbors and the local business owners were like distant relatives raising me, feeding me, keeping my secrets, not asking too much.
I made money like a money machine. Everyone said I was so smart, useful, hard-working, well mannered. I even hit the number 1111, and got my five-thousand-dollar jackpot. Riot had paid me back my four thousand dollar investment plus four thousand in earnings from flipping it. The eight thousand—she labeled the eight thousand a “buyout.” She said it wasn’t an end to our friendship, “just an end of our deal.” She had something major to do, and she had to do it alone.
People said I was lucky. All I could do was smirk at that. “Lucky.”
Elisha’s mom said I had wings like an angel that only special eyes could see. She said she saw them the first day she met me in the aisle at the organic market. I guess so. I sure couldn’t see my wings.
I didn’t know why there was no substitute for Momma, Poppa, Winter, Mercedes, and Lexus. I don’t know why the people who looked out for me the most couldn’t fill up even one of the five holes in my heart.
I came close with Elisha. Really close, really, really, really close.
Of course, what happened between Elisha and me all happened in scenes, like in any great film that has never been made yet. And, of course, everything in his life started with two words: my mother. Everything in my life started the same way: my momma.
SCENE 1
Age twelve, my momma stole everything except the cell phone Elisha bought for me. She even took my two heavy duffle bags, the chain, and the lock. I guess she needed them to carry my belongings out and to keep others from stealing them from her. Of course my momma could not steal my $20,000 that I had earned up until that point, to get our new apartment and take care of her. My money was stashed in Mr. Sharp’s safe even back then.
Completely crushed for three weeks, I worked all my jobs, but wouldn’t talk to Elisha. I felt too ashamed and bruised. When I finally called him, he wouldn’t take my call. I went looking for him. I was twelve. He was about to turn fourteen.
Outside his brownstone I rang four doorbells for four separate apartments, which made a bunch of different faces pop out the windows, including his.
“I’m in the middle of a production,” he said coldly. I knew he was angry that I had stood him up and ignored him.
“It’s cold out, but I’ll wait,” I said.
“So do that then,” he responded.
Outside I was hopping around in the December freeze blowing cold air out like cigarette smoke, waiting for him to either come out or let me in.
An hour later the front door opened. A girl our age came walking out and him after her. She cut her eyes at me. I just watched her. He saw us two staring at one another and said, “Ivory, this is Audrey. Audrey, this is Ivory.”
“You’re leaving, right,” I said to Audrey, no greetings. Why even front? She left.
“You wanna come in, or you want me to come out?” Elisha asked in an even tone, with no excitement or feeling in it.
“I’m froze,” was all I said. He widened the door to let me in.
“Your mother?” I asked, looking around at his pretty brownstone place.
“Not back from work yet,” he said. “Everybody’s out. Step into my room.” I walked behind him.
“Look at my hands.” I showed him my frozen fingers and red palms. He came up close, grabbed both of my hands and pulled them underneath his shirt, then moved them underneath his armpits. His skin was warm like a bakery oven. My heart went crazy. All of my muscles began to move in a way that I could feel them, even between my thighs. I felt blood rushing about and even my then little titties, especially the nipples, seemed to swell. My panties got wet. I was warming up rapidly. I fidgeted, afraid that I might pee. I was overwhelmed and embarrassed.
“You know what I hate?” he asked me, breaking our soft silence, us still standing close together, him still heating up my body. “I hate when I show a girl my true emotion, and then she starts acting fucked up because of it. It would be better if she would show me her true feeling, too,” he said.
“Who are you talking about? That girl who just left here?” I asked.
“See what I mean?” he said calmly with a straight face. “You know it’s all about you. You know how I feel about you,” he said.
What could I do? That’s what I said to myself. I felt Elisha did not know how extreme my love runs. If I told him my true feeling, what could happen next? I would be in the corner of his bedroom in his bed, lying next to him like I never had. His touch would make it impossible for me to ever leave him alone. I would move in. No, I just would never leave in the first place. I wouldn’t even go back to collect my things. I wouldn’t need no food, nothing. I wouldn’t need nothing but him. I would be that girl who Momma talked about. I would love him a hundred thousand times more than he could ever love me. On the strength of just him holding my hands underneath his shirt and tucked beneath his armpits, that first touch and powerful feeling, he was stuck with my love forever, and what if it drowned him, and I was left broken and useless like my momma?
“You’re not gonna say nothing?” he asked me.
“Please can you touch my face?” I asked him. He placed his hands on both sides of my face. His fingertips grazed my neck. A wave of feeling shot through my body. I stepped in even closer.
“Elisha,” I heard a female voice say. He stepped back. “You didn’t hear me come in?” she asked. “Come here, let me speak to you for a minute.”
“Ivory, you can sit on my bed,” he said to me as he walked out. I stayed standing.
“Look at you,” I heard her saying, but I couldn’t see them. “This is getting real serious. Does Mom know how you are in love with this young girl and got her in your room when no one else is home?”
“Sheba, be easy. We weren’t doing nothing,” I heard Elisha saying.
“You’re not doing nothing now that I’m here,” she said.
SCENE 2
Tuesday, December 14, on Elisha’s fourteenth birthday I wanted to celebrate with him. But Siri and I discussed how we both needed to stay away from him. “You’ll lose control,” Siri warned me. “And that’s okay if you want to surrender to him. But don’t act like you can be around him without breaking your rules, ‘No touching, no kissing, no giving your whole heart to him.’ ” It was extreme like that. I couldn’t tame my feelings, or balance them out so I planned to stay away. Today I would drop off a birthday cake and gift to him and leave.
“Why are you looking your prettiest if you don’t want to encourage him?” Siri asked me, as I picked up the shopping bag to leave to find Elsiha.
I went by his high school at 2:30 and waited for him to come out. He did, surrounded by friends, laughing and joking. I stayed to the side and waited. As they talked shit, and moved around to stay warm, eventually the boys all gave each other a pound and went their separate ways. Elisha was still standing there, with that girl Audrey. I walked across their path so he would see me. He did.
“Porsche!” He called out and began coming over, leaving Audrey behind. She caught on and rushed over also. He was staring at me. I was staring back at him and wouldn’t even give the girl a glance.
“Tell her to leave,” I said.
“Audrey, I’ll catch you later,” he told her. I began walking toward his brownstone and he followed without hesitation.
“You stay away, then show up to tease me, right? Is it a game?” he asked.
“Definitely not,” I told him. “I’m trying to keep a nice young girl out of trouble,” I said.
“This young man is no trouble,” he said. “It’s my birthday. You have to at least give me something that I ask for.”
“Something like what?” I stopped walking and turned towards him.
“Something like, let’s be tight like how we were before. Stop playing and let’s talk and meet up every day. I mean once a week, Fridays at three like before. I think I messed up when I gave you the phone. You talked to me one time over that phone and that’s it. My man said, ‘You gotta treat girls like prostitutes, then they’ll love you.’ ”
A Deeper Love Inside: The Porsche Santiaga Story Page 34