by Terra Little
“I don’t care about a whipping. I’m still not going.”
She comes toward me, about to snatch me up from the bed and put a hurting on me. “Girl, you better—”
“I’ll call the police and tell them you beat me if you make me go over there. I’ll run away and I’ll go so far away that you’ll never find me,” I promise. And I will, because it is the only option. I have been pushed into a corner, and the only way I can get out is to come out swinging. At this point, I don’t care who gets hit. “I’m not going.”
“I’m not either,” Vicky adds. She sits up on the edge of her bed and grips the mattress. “If Leenie runs away, I’m going with her. You want us to do that?”
“I want you to get some clothes on so I can go to work,” my mother screams. I duck as she swings the belt and it lands with a loud whack on the bed next to me. “All of a sudden you’re on strike, when you know I can’t afford to lose my job playing around with you?”
“So go to work. We can stay here, like we used to do.”
“We tried that once, remember?” She glances at her watch and curses like a thug on the street. Says words I have never heard uttered in anger. I’ve heard them uttered under other circumstances, but she doesn’t know that. She pushes her hair off her forehead and looks around wildly. I think I see her counting to ten, and then she points a stiff finger. “How long have you two been planning this shit? All weekend? And you just now decided to pull this shit on me?”
“We decided we don’t need to go over there anymore.” This is Vicky’s answer, and judging from the look on my mother’s face, it doesn’t make the cut.
“You just decided.”
“It stinks,” I say.
“And it’s junky.”
“There’s roaches.” It is a lie, but she never goes inside, so it’s plausible.
“She doesn’t feed us stuff we like to eat.”
“And it’s boring. I’m staying here.”
Vicky darts a look at me and swallows. “Plus, we want to stay home from now on. School starts back in a little while anyway. We know to stay in the house.”
I look at the alarm clock and can’t help the smile that takes over my face. “You gone be late for work, Mama.”
“I swear to God, if I come home and your little asses even look like you been outside . . .”
“We won’t,” Vicky tells her.
“And don’t fool with my stove or the door. Don’t open the door for nobody.”
“We won’t.”
“Leenie?” She narrows her eyes at me, thinking I am the missing link. “You hear me?”
“Yes, Mama.”
“If I come home and shit is out of order, I’m kicking some ass. Starting with you, Leenie. You’re always the mastermind behind everything anyway.”
Vicky rolls to her side and hugs her pillow, yawns like she is so sleepy. “Have a good day, Mama.”
My mother slams out of the room, mumbling under her breath and slinging her purse around. Her head rotates on her neck and snaps back into place as she snaps at the air in front of her. She is so out of it that she forgets to put her belt back on. I sit still and wait for the sound of the front door closing and the locks twisting. When I am sure she is gone, I stroll around the house and double-check. I come back and see Vicky dancing around in the middle of the floor, grinning from ear to ear.
“Thought you was punking out on me for a minute there,” I say.
She laughs and flops back on the bed. “I can’t believe she didn’t beat the shit out of us.”
“Nothing she can do with both of us at one time. I told you that. Present a unified front and she has no choice but to back down. I was gone slit my wrists if she would’ve made us go over there. She would’ve had to drag my ass out of the house, kicking and screaming and butt-ass naked. And she would’ve really been late for work, stopping by the emergency room and everything.”
Vicky is cracking up, laughing so hard that she holds her stomach and struggles to breathe. “I can see you doing some stupid stuff like that, too.” We slap fives because we have won our first scrimmage.
“You think I’m playing, but I’m serious.” I go over to the window and raise it halfway. Find my stash and light a cigarette. I squat down and blow smoke through the screen into the morning air. “If she brings her ass over here looking for us, I might just slit her wrists instead.”
“She ain’t coming over here.”
I don’t say anything, just look back at Vicky over my shoulder and raise my eyebrows.
Around lunchtime, Vicky tips up behind me at the front door and whispers in my ear.
“You was right. That bitch came over here looking for us.”
“Told you,” I whisper back and press my eye to the peephole. My grandmother is pounding on the storm door and calling out for us to open up. To let the lion into the lamb’s den.
“Victoria! Leenie!” she shouts, still pounding. “I know y’all in there. Open this damn door and I mean open it right now!”
“She’s out of her fucking mind,” I tell Vicky. The pounding starts to get on my nerves, and before I know it, I am yelling along with her. “Go away! I’m not opening the door, so go home!”
“Leenie?” Like she doesn’t recognize my voice. “You open this door right now. Y’mama told me ’bout this morning. I’m here to bring you two back to my house so I can keep an eye on you. Now, open up. I ain’t got all day.”
Vickie pushes me aside and takes over where I leave off. “Mama said not to open the door for strangers,” she calls out in a sweet voice.
“Strangers? What the hell?”
“We don’t know you,” I say. “So go away.”
“How ’bout this?” My grandmother gets bold and sassy. “How ’bout if I call the police and tell them you in the house all by yourselves?”
Vicky is fourteen and I am twelve. Together, we are more than old enough to be home alone. “How ’bout if I call the police and tell them what I know?” I check the locks and make sure they are secure. I have considered the fact that she might have a spare key, and that is why the storm door is locked and the safety chain is in place. I tell myself that if she makes her way inside my sanctuary, they will have to carry her out. I have drawn the line.
I step back from the door and look at Vicky. We decide to ignore the pounding until it goes away. “You want the bathroom first?”
“Yeah, but you’re coming with me, right?”
“I was gone smoke another cigarette,” I say.
“Leenie,” she whines and stamps her foot. I think I see tears collecting in her eyes.
“I don’t want to look at your naked ass.” The truth is that sitting on the toilet seat while she takes a bath is boring as hell. I can think of a million other things I would rather be doing, but she doesn’t like to be in the bathroom alone.
“You can sit outside the door and read one of those nasty books you got hidden in the room.”
“Harlequin Silhouettes are not nasty.”
“Does Mama know you got them?” She never considers that smoking at twelve years old is a much worse transgression. It is the nasty books that she focuses on, and they aren’t even nasty.
“No, and she better not. Damn, you get on my nerves. Why you need me to go in there with you?”
She takes off for our room and comes back a few minutes later with clean underwear and her housecoat bunched in her arms. “I don’t know,” she says. “But you gone stay with me, right?”
I grab my book, follow her down the hallway to the bathroom, and slump to the floor outside the door. “Don’t I always stay with you?”
Half an hour later the phone rings, and she calls out, “You still there?”
“Yeah, and hurry up. My butt is falling asleep,” I answer, turning a page. She knows I’m not going anywhere.
He wants to celebrate my first day on my new job, even though all I did was sit in orientation and fight to keep my eyes open. The transition from the graveyard
shift to day shift messes with my head, and staying awake all day is a challenge that I am proud to have met head on. He wants to celebrate that too.
He meets me on the porch when I get home from work and tells me to hurry up and change into something loose and comfortable. Some shorts and a tee shirt, he says. And that is what I do, pull my locks into a ponytail and jump into denim cutoffs and an Abercrombie and Fitch tee shirt that I stole from Beige because it looks better on me than it does on her. I hope leather slides are decent enough for wherever we are going.
The minute we get to our destination I kick off my slides and crunch grass between my toes. I help him pick a spot to spread a blanket, and then I claim the spot in the vee of his thighs for my own. My spine curves to his chest and he takes my weight, lets his hands hang from his knees and gets barefoot with me.
In a park is where we are, and there is an outdoor jazz concert underway. Hundreds of people are scattered around on the grass, doing the same thing we are doing, listening and enjoying. Scandalous-smelling smoke wafts past us and the hiss of beer cans being sneaked open is loud in the evening air. We sniff and glance at each other, giggle like kids.
The sky turns dark and stars peek out, and I have a thought. I lean into his chest even harder and tilt my face up to his. “Did I ever tell you that I used to smoke?”
“Wacky tobacky?” His eyebrows climb his forehead and a smile takes his mouth.
“No, cigarettes. I was twelve. I quit when I was thirteen.”
“Nah, you never told me that.”
“Well, I’m telling you now.”
“And I’m listening too.”
“Do you hear that?”
“What?” He slaps at a mosquito and curses under his breath.
“That horn. He’s tearing that baby up. I love it. Listen.”
“I’m listening,” Aaron says and touches his lips to the back of my neck. “I’m listening.”
I beg him to let me stay until the concert is over. The music goes on and on, and it is after midnight when I finally stumble into my apartment. I will be exhausted in the morning, but I don’t care. I haven’t heard good jazz music, live and unfiltered, in years, and if I suffer, it will be worth it.
Denny gives a guard the signal, and a loud buzzing noise fills the air and shakes B dorm up. It is somewhere around three in the morning and we are awake, the six of us, my family and Anna, when we should be asleep like most everybody else. But this is not the time for sleeping; it is the time for revenge. This is Lou’s brainstorm, but I am her wingman, the one who was wronged and the one with a point to prove. If I don’t follow through, she says, then I will forever be a victim, and victimology has no place in prison.
This is why, after a row of cell doors slide open, I am the first to go charging inside cell number nine, swinging a pillowcase filled with sharp hunks of granite. I know who my target is, and I make a beeline for her, drag her down from her bunk and kick her around on the floor. I do my best to bash her head in with the pillowcase. Her cellmate tries to help her, but Lou grabs her and throws her against the wall like she weighs a lot of nothing. She finds herself with a blade pressed to her neck and, like a good girl, she doesn’t move.
This is the bitch I want. The ringleader. The one with the super-size homemade dick that bled me out like a stuck pig. Lou says she has pull and people listen when she talks, so she is the one to silence. The others are insignificant, nothing but minions, and my eventual revenge on them is sweet. But this is much sweeter, by far.
I have dreamed of the four of them, have seen their faces as I feared closing my eyes and sleeping, and imagined their demise. In the end, I push two of them into tubs of scalding hot water in the laundry room and watch their skin bubble on their limbs like soup. I know enough not to earn a murder charge, but permanent disfigurement seems appropriate. It appears to be an accident, which earns me nothing more than a stiff reprimand.
The cameras have blind spots, and one of those spots is where I am waiting with my sister for the fourth person on my list. We throw her to the floor and kick her any and everywhere. One of her arms is broken and she is missing three teeth when we are done with her, and I make sure she remembers me.
This one will too, I think as I aim for her face again and again. I try to wipe it away completely and almost take her life with me. Lou clamps her hands around my arms and pulls me out of the cell. She tosses the pillowcase inside the cell and goes back in after it. I don’t hear what she says to the woman I have beaten to within an inch of her life, but I do hear what she says to her cellmate.
“Put the word out,” Lou says. “Lucky is part of my family now, and that means nobody fucks with her from here on out. Make sure everybody understands, okay?” Her voice is low and smooth, like she is asking what color the sky is, but I have seen her choke a woman and use the same tone. She is a lifer, which means she has nothing to lose and we all know it. She has no soul.
Not long after I inflict senseless violence, I scream like I have lost my mind. Being a member of Lou’s family means I have to take the mark, and I do it willingly. Anna wipes sweat from my forehead and tries to distract me with soft touches and sweet kisses, but nothing can erase the pain I feel. I breathe through my mouth and growl like a lion the entire time that it takes Denny to draw the hourglass on my back and then to color it in.
“How many years?” Denny wants to know. She already knows, but she wants to hear me say it.
“Nine.” I get nine teardrops, and each one of them feels like fire on my skin. I don’t consider it abuse though.
I consider myself lucky.
Isolde studies me curiously. She has changed up lipsticks and now she wears a crazy color purple to match the lilac eyeshadow on her eyelids. Everything she wears is from the purple family, her pants, her blouse and her shoes. Even the sterling silver ring on her index finger has a purple stone perched on top of it. I stare at her, and in my mind she looks like a giant grape. Reminds me that it’s lunchtime.
“Is it as bad as they say it is?” she asks. We are talking about prison life. “I mean, I’ve seen that show Oz, and it makes prison seem like hell on earth. But is it really like that?”
“Television dramatizes everything,” I say, choosing my words carefully. “But a lot of what you see is really what it’s like. Only worse. People have no idea what goes on behind those walls, and most people don’t have the stomach to find out. It takes a certain kind of person to survive it, which isn’t necessarily a good thing. Weak people go crazy.”
“You seem okay.”
“I’m not weak. I’m not crazy either, which is why I asked you what I asked you.”
“About therapy.” She remembers the information I requested from her the last time we met. Referrals to low-cost counseling centers. She shuffles papers around on her desk, and then she swivels around in her chair to flip through a stack of files. “You said you wanted something economical but still sort of private.” She removes a paperclip and passes me a sheet of paper across the desk. “I think I found something that might work for you.”
I read the paper, and then I read it again to make sure I am comprehending. “A pilot project?”
“There haven’t been very many programs developed to assist women who are just coming out of prison and returning to society,” Isolde explains. “But with the increase of females who are convicted and sentenced to prison, people are starting to take notice of the obstacles women face. Things like child custody and housing resources. This project is aimed at working with female offenders and helping them reintegrate into society.”
“I’ve reintegrated just fine.”
“Yet you asked me to locate places where you can get therapy.” Her face says she is skeptical. “I think if you give this place a chance you might be surprised.”
“I don’t want to sit in a waiting room full of ex-convicts, with everybody knowing why I’m there.”
“The project sponsors therapists in private practice, Helena. I don’t th
ink it’ll be quite like going to the free clinic and having sick babies sneeze all over you.”
“I can pay for what I need.”
“But why should you have to pay for something that’s here for the taking?” She folds her hands on the desktop and stares at me. “It’s free, so use it. Plus, I’ve heard some good things about a few of the therapists. One of my other clients sees a guy by the name of Kimmick and she says—”
I get hung up on one word. “A guy?”
“Yes, a guy. Would you rather talk to a woman? Because I’m sure they have some women working on the project too.” That makes me laugh. I sit back and pinch my nose, shake my head, and look at the paper again. “What?” She smiles, ready to hear the punchline.
“Nothing. It’s just . . .” I laugh again. Shake my head some more.
“What is it, Helena?” Now Isolde is giggling. “Tell me.”
“It’s just . . . I’ve been around nothing but women for the last eight years, and I swear to God, if I don’t ever have to talk to another woman for the rest of my life, I’ll be satisfied.” The punchline is not what she expects, and her smile slips sideways. I put up a hand. “No offense.”
“None taken,” she grunts. “I think.”
“You don’t understand.”
“I guess I don’t.” She points to the paper in my hand and nods. “But I bet they will.”
“You said Kimmick?” If there has to be an evil, a man is the lesser of the two. Considering.
“Kimmick. Tell him Sollie sent you and he’ll give you a discount. Oh, wait. It’s free, so forget the discount.”
I can’t stop laughing. “Sollie?”
“What, don’t I look like a Sollie?”
Actually, she looks more like a big, juicy grape, but I don’t share my observation. I remember that I’m on my lunch break and I am starving. If I leave now, I’ll still have time to grab something quick to eat on my way back to work.
“Yeah, you look like a Sollie.” I fold the paper and slip it in my purse, reminding myself to have Aaron do some digging and check the place out for me.