Jump

by Terra Little

  “It’s different with women, with me anyway. All I know is I’m not a lesbian right now. If I was then, I’m not right now. I can’t explain myself, and I can’t speak for anybody else.”

  I don’t relive the horror of the experience often, but when I do, I relive it fully. I go back in time and feel every touch like it is happening in the here and now. I smell every breath and hear every voice as if I can reach out and wrap my fingers around them. Reliving it makes my face crumble into a mask of outrage, makes my insides liquefy and my entire essence crush in on itself like a tin can under the weight of a giant foot.

  It comes when I least expect it. When I am in the basement laundry room waiting for my whites to dry. When I am swaying in time with the bus’s motion, on my way to work. When I am standing at my window, watching children play in the park across the street. I look at them and wonder which one of them will grow up to be a predator. Odds are, one of them will.

  Sometimes the horror comes to me when I am in bed, sleeping off a long night at work, and those are the worst times. The times when it catches me off guard and makes me suffer through it from beginning to end, as if I didn’t pay close enough attention the first time. I’m too tired to force myself awake and out of it. Too tired to fight it off.

  Always after reliving it, I run to the shower and stand under the hot spray until I have used every drop of hot water there is. I don’t care who needs the water I steal from them or how long they have to wait for the hot water heater to refill. I have to scrub myself, have to clean the residue off of my skin before it settles there and eats me from the outside in.

  Ironically, the shower is where it happens, the one and only time it does. If Beige is sleeping over, she humors me and sits on the toilet seat while I shower. She talks to me and tells me all kinds of off-the-wall stuff, her voice raised over the roar of the water, and I listen and stay grounded. Bringing her into the bathroom with me is a way to spend every possible minute with her, which is what she thinks my motive is, but it is also a way to make sure I am not ambushed. To make sure I am safe.

  When she is not with me, I check the locks on the door and on the windows. I lock the bathroom door behind me and pray.

  A man is warned about the dangers of dropping his soap in prison, but they don’t pass the same wise advice on to women.

  And they should. Someone should write a book and fill every page with the credo, Don’t drop the soap. It is the single most important thing a woman in prison can learn, especially one who has enemies that she isn’t even aware of.

  I close my eyes and relive.

  I don’t realize that the shower has cleared out until I shut off the water and look around, see that I am the only one left. I step off of tile onto concrete and reach for a towel, and this is when I am jumped.

  My arm is wrenched behind my back and my face is pummeled. I see stars as I fall to the floor and curl my body into a ball. There are feet everywhere, kicking me from every direction, and the pain they cause feels like nothing I have ever felt. Nothing I will ever forget.

  There are four of them, bitches that I have seen before but that I don’t really know, and I do what I can to defend myself against them. When they want to punch, I punch back. Pull hair, I pull back. Bite, I bite back. I almost take possession of someone’s nipple, smashed between my teeth, and I rip out a fistful of hair when the opportunity presents itself. I feel the skin on my knuckles split open as they connect with someone’s teeth.

  I am not without my own wounds though. I have been viciously kicked in the vagina and stomped along the length of my body until I can’t see straight. I have been bitten in the same places that I bite, and the warm heat on my scalp tells me that I am bleeding there. I think my wrist is fractured and one of my toes broken.

  I see my attackers through a haze of tears, sweat and blood. I blink a million times to keep them in my sight, but I still miss one. She is the one who circles around behind me and takes me back to the floor with a homemade billy club—contraband she is not supposed to have—and for this very reason I go down the way I’m supposed to, with little to no fight left in me.

  “Black monkey bitch,” I hear someone croak in the seconds before everything goes dark. I know what spit feels like on my skin. Urine, too. And I hear the scrape of a blade near my scalp when the ponytail that hangs down between my shoulder blades is confiscated as a trophy.

  I don’t know how long I am unconscious, but when I open my eyes again, they are violating me. Holding me down on the floor, with their knees digging into my arms and legs like shovels. One of them takes her turn and I swing an arm or a leg. It is someone else’s turn and another leg or arm is free to protest. But I can’t stop them from doing what they are doing to me, can’t stop the screams from coming out of my mouth either.

  There is no gentleness here. There are teeth and hands, fists pounding into my abdomen and face, pelvises floating in front of my face. I turn my head, refusing to have unwanted pussy in my mouth, and take so many slaps across the face that I lose count. I become so unsettled that I vomit and damn near asphyxiate myself.

  I think it is over, but then I discover that it has really just begun. I have never seen anything like the grotesque-looking apparatus that is used to torture me, have never imagined that something so heinous could exist. Shock, disbelief, and then electrifying pain makes me slip underneath a sheet of blackness again.

  “That’s for Laura,” I am told. For the one who took the blade in her gut.

  An eternity passes before someone thinks to look for me, and when someone does finally come for me, it is Anna. I hear her footfalls on the concrete and think the worst. They have come back for round two and maybe brought along a few more of their friends this time. “No,” I say. “Leave me the fuck alone. Get the fuck out.”

  She sees me crawling across the floor like a serpent, leaving a blurry line of blood in my wake, and she screams. And screams and screams. She throws herself across my body and cries like someone has died. I lie still and wait for her to stop. I will not tell her that her weight causes me more pain.

  Anna is still screaming as she runs to the doorway and falls to her knees outside the shower room. Talking is difficult for her, but she manages to scream one word: “Lou!”

  Lou is tall and wide, thick with muscle and frightening to me. She crashes into the shower room and hovers over me like a statue. I stare at her buzz cut hair, at the tattoos riding the length of her arms, and then I focus in on her round face.

  I remember my voice and scream.

  “Shhh, now. Ain’t nobody gone hurt you no more. Can you stand up?” She bends at the waist and reaches for me, and I go wild. I try to swing my arms and kick my feet, but they won’t cooperate. She doesn’t waste time ducking and dodging because I pose no threat.

  “Don’t. Touch. Me.” I spit. “Nobody is fucking touching me again.”

  Lou takes a step toward me, and I stop her with a look. “I mean it. I’ll cut your goddamn throat.”

  She stares at me until she can stare no more. Then she turns her head, sees Anna in the doorway and says, “Go get Denny. And tell her to bring some clothes.”

  Aaron barely gets his door open and I am pushing past him, taking over his space like it is mine. I go straight to the weight bench and lie down. I don’t even stop to check how much weight I am about to take before I lift the bar and start punishing myself. I do five reps alone, and then he is standing over my head, spotting me.

  “Lena,” he whispers, and I shake my head.

  I don’t want to talk. I don’t want to think. I just want to sweat. Reliving it does this to me, makes me antisocial and hateful. Burns up my tongue and fills my mouth with the taste of acid. I am hoping that lifting will cause me to sweat the stench from my pores because I cannot face the shower just yet.

  “No,” I whisper back to him.

  “No, what?”

  “No talking. Just this.” He closes his mouth and keeps watching me.

  I lift
until my arms tremble. I do two hundred crunches, sixty squats, and a hundred push-ups. Then I leave his apartment and take my feet to the pavement. I run until I think I am lost.

  Stella laughs at me, laughs until I think she’s about to piss in her pants. She says I dance like a funky chicken and smile like a second-rate actress in blackface. Personally, I think the Electric Slide slash Four Corners that I am doing is pretty damn good for somebody who hasn’t danced in years. So what if the version of the slide I’m doing went out with big hair? I’m still doing it. And I’m killing it, too.

  I can’t help the smile that stretches from one side of my face to the other, either. It comes out of nowhere as soon as I catch sight of my new car pulling to a stop in front of me. Even though it is gently used, it is new to me. It has four wheels and two doors, a few dings here and there, but it is mine. Bought and paid for.

  “Girl, quit acting silly and unlock the door so I can sit down,” Stella complains around a giggle. She joins me in a quick dip and sway, and then she flops into the passenger seat dramatically.

  “You know what, Stella?” I wave one last time to the salesman who talked me into buying the Chevy I am driving and ease my way into the thick of traffic.

  “I know you gone tell me anyway, so what?”

  “I used to drive a pretty little BMW. It wasn’t quite top of the line, but it was still a BMW. Had a sunroof and leather bucket seats too.”

  She doesn’t say anything for a long time, and we ride in silence. This car, the one I have spent most of my savings on, doesn’t even have a radio. But the engine is clean, and it is as quiet as a church mouse. It doesn’t jerk and shake when I give it gas. She nods her head, agreeing with thoughts that I can’t hear, and reaches over to pat my arm.

  “What color was it?”

  “Silver bullet,” I say, and we crack up.

  “Well, this here ain’t no BMW, but I guess it’ll do. You miss it, your BMW?”

  “I miss all of it. Everything I had back then that I can’t even pretend I’m going to ever have again. I miss my life.” I stop at a red light and look at her. “Don’t you miss your old life?”

  “This is my old life,” she says quietly. “Before I went in, this is what I had. A factory job and a little apartment, some worrisome-ass relatives who was always borrowing money. Bills that was always overdue. Wasn’t too much to miss, Lucky.”

  “Did that have anything to do with you going to prison?”

  She looks away from me and thinks her own thoughts. For all the talking and horsing around we do, we don’t talk about crime and what we know about it. She isn’t on parole, but I am, and we don’t discuss the fact that I am constantly in violation of the stipulations of my release simply because I associate with her. We pretend that we are drawn to each other solely based on personality likenesses.

  “I was a thief,” Stella tells me. “And I’m not talking about no half-stepping booster either. Go, Lucky. The light’s green.”

  I step on the gas and divide my attention between her face and the street. She has caught my attention. “You were on lockdown for seventeen years for stealing?”

  She laughs sarcastically. “You think driving a BMW was something, try pushing a Cadillac Seville. Those babies ride so smooth you don’t even know you moving, and that’s the truth. Used to mess around with this dude who had one, and that’s what they finally caught my ass driving. Chased me down twenty miles of interstate like I was a serial killer or something, and all the time I’m tossing shit out the windows. Five hundred dollar bags and thousand dollar shoes. Loose diamonds, all kinds of shit. Figured the less I had in my possession when they caught me, the less they could do tome.

  “Anyway, I was so busy trying to get away from them motherfuckers that I was pushing that Caddy to the limit. Shoulda been paying attention to what I was doing, but I wasn’t, and I ended up running into a few cars along the way. Hit this one car and paralyzed a lady I didn’t even know. Ran into a minivan carrying a bunch of little kids and made a mess of everything. You don’t even want to know what happened with that.”

  “Damn,” I say because I can’t think of anything else to say. “That’s fucked up.”

  “After that, I figured I needed to go to prison, you know?” She stares at me and waits for me to agree with her, but I don’t. She finally gets tired of waiting and takes her eyes out the windshield. “I guess you think I’m some kind of monster, huh? Stupid bitch running around stealing and crashing into innocent folks.”

  “I don’t think shit. You feel like you paid your debt to society?”

  “I feel like I paid mine and somebody else’s too. Prison fucks you up so bad you don’t know if you coming or going half the time. If it ain’t nobody around to tell you when to wash your ass and when to eat, you forget to do either one of them. Took me a long time to get my head on right after I got out. That’s how come I recognized you like I did.”

  “I’m walking around with a sign on my back, letting people know I’ve been to prison?”

  “Just like one whore knows another one, an ex-con knows another ex-con, Lucky.” She sees my look and grins. “You ain’t gotta look at me like that. It ain’t a permanent condition, if that’s what you worried about, but it does take some time to shake off. You should see somebody, to help you get it out of your system.”

  “Somebody like a shrink?”

  “I did.”

  I’m seeing her through new eyes, trying to picture her sitting in a room with a head doctor and pouring out all her dirty little secrets. I can’t get the picture together in my head. “It’ll be a cold day in hell before I let some quack-ass doctor get inside my head. Sonofabitch would probably be crazy by the time I got through with him anyway.”

  “They done seen and heard it all,” she says, pointing at a fast food restaurant farther down the street. “Let’s stop. I’m hungry.”

  We go in and join a line that is almost out the door. When it is my turn, I order a side salad and a baked potato. Stella looks at me like I’m crazy and orders a triple cheeseburger, fries and a chocolate shake.

  “That’s why you look like a strong wind would blow your little ass over,” she jokes. “You don’t eat worth shit.”

  “Shut up, carnivore, and pass me the salt. Have you seen the stuff passing for meat they serve on the inside?”

  “Seen it? Hell, I cooked it for nine years. Them bastards found out I could cook, and guess how I ended up serving my country.”

  “You were in one of those Nightmare in Badham County prisons,” I joke.

  “All of ’em are nightmares.”

  “True.”

  “You planning on telling me what you did?”

  “I killed my grandmother, Stella.” While she digests what I have said, I steal a couple of her fries, dunk them in ketchup and watch her face go from surprise to shock. Several minutes pass before she is ready to hear my next words. “Now it’s you thinking I’m the monster, right?”

  “I think you musta had your reasons.”

  “I did.”

  “How you live with something like that, Lucky?”

  “I don’t. Most days I just pretend like I can forget about it.”

  “You need to talk to somebody. Get it all worked out in your head, so it makes sense to you.”

  “Bullshit. I need to talk to somebody, so it makes sense to you and everybody else, but I don’t need it to make sense to me. It made sense to me the day I pulled the trigger. All this other shit, this new world I have to live in, that’s what doesn’t make sense to me.”

  “Join the club,” Stella says around a mouth full of flesh.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Beige sees the anxiety on my face and pushes her face close to mine, searches my eyes. “You okay?”

  “I’m good. What’d you say you wanted to see?” I look at the display board and become confused. Too many choices and too much room for error. None of the movie titles sound familiar, though I’m sure I must’ve seen a previ
ew of at least one of them somewhere. I already know I’m not up for inexplicable violence, and I hope she isn’t either.

  The line moves up and we move with it. I shift to the side to avoid being directly in front of the man behind me. He is too close, breathing down the back of my neck, and it feels like he is getting closer and closer the longer we stand here. Twice he has bumped into me from behind and not bothered to excuse himself, and twice I have put enough space between us that it shouldn’t happen again. But it does and it bothers me.

  “I’ve been wanting to see that new movie everybody’s been talking about. I think I want some nachos too.” Beige rubs her belly and grins at me.

  I think I want air to breathe and space to move around in. “As long as it’s not rated R.”

  She gives me a long-suffering look and shakes her head like I am old and decrepit. “It’s PG-13, Mom, okay?”

  “It better be,” I say, fishing money out of my pocket and handing it to her. Standing in one spot is driving me crazy, and I have to move. “Do you mind getting the tickets? I’ll be right over there.”

  “You sure you’re okay?”

  “I said I was good, didn’t I?” I point to a spot not too far away. “Right over there.”

  The truth is, I don’t know if I’m okay or not. It is Saturday night and it seems like the whole city is out in full force to see a movie. The lines are congested and people are stacked on top of one another; personal space is nonexistent, and I feel like I’m about to lose it. No one else seems to mind all the accidental touching and bumping, the occasional brush of asses against asses, but for me, it is a violation of the highest order. I can’t understand how people can let themselves become so complacent with having their bubbles popped, can’t comprehend that I was once one of them.

  I keep my eyes on Beige, see her buy two tickets and count the change carefully, and then stuff it in her pocket. She is stopped by a man wanting to know the time, and she smiles as she tells him that it is just after seven. So polite and comfortable in a world full of roaming animals, she doesn’t consider that he really isn’t interested in the time so much as he needs an excuse to invade her space even more than he already has and initiate conversation. She is a pretty girl, fresh and lush looking, like a peach just plucked, and he knows enough to appreciate what even she doesn’t know she has.