by Teri Woods
Kimberly thought about the assignment she had accepted and all that it would involve. She had looked at a picture of Angel in Director Burns’s office. Kimberly was attracted to the Puerto Rican woman in the picture, imagining what she looked like with no clothes on and what she felt like. In the back of her mind, she heard Director Burns, and basically she knew exactly what he was asking of her. He was asking her to do whatever it took to get close to Angel Alvarez, even if that meant sleeping with her.
Kimberly pulled into the driveway of her apartment complex. Terrence was home, and she would have to break the news to him gently that she was going undercover and would be leaving for prison now that she had accepted the assignment.
Kimberly walked into her apartment a little after midnight and found that her fiancé, Terrence, was still up walking around. She found this unusual, since Terrence always went to bed every night no later than ten-thirty. He was a weatherman for ABC 7 News in San Francisco and had to be at work early. Kimberly went into the kitchen to see what he was up to.
“Hey, babe, I wasn’t expecting you home this early,” Terrence said as he closed the refrigerator door, glad she was there.
“I got an assignment today, undercover,” Kimberly said, not really explaining the situation in detail.
“Yeah, you gonna have a lot of overtime?” he asked as he walked behind her, ready to mount her from behind. “Pull your skirt up, baby,” he whispered in her ear, one hand fondling her breasts as the other traveled between her legs, under her panties, his fingers feeling her wet pussy.
She knew what time it was. It was no different in the morning. He’d wake up with a hard dick, go to the bathroom, and get back into bed, climbing on top of her.
“Kimberly, come on, spread your legs.”
She could be lying there half asleep, but he didn’t care—he needed his release when he needed it. She could claim a headache or say she was tired, it didn’t matter, he didn’t want to hear it. His response was simple: “Just bend over, Kimberly, and spread your legs.”
“Honey, I had a hard day and I need to talk to you,” said Kim as he pulled her skirt up around her waist, playing with her pussy.
“Just bend over, Kimberly, and spread your legs,” he said, commanding her to do as he said.
He slid her panties down to her heels, bending her over the back of the sofa as he entered her from behind, pushing inside her and pulling himself out as he held her legs apart, banging out her back as if she was a blow-up doll.
“You been a good girl, huh? Whose pussy is this? You better not let nobody fuck this pussy but me, you understand?” he said, holding her neck as he fucked her harder and faster, taking less than five minutes to ejaculate inside her, his body sweating bullets. He humped her slowly, letting out every drop of cum he had, sticking his dick in her as far as it would go. She was trapped as his dick held her pussy spread apart until he was ready to slowly slide out of her and let her go.
She was still bent over the sofa, fully dressed, ass exposed. He walked away from her and down the hallway to the bathroom. Kimberly pulled her panties back up and smoothed her skirt down as if nothing had happened. The two would now resume as if sex had never happened.
“I have to tell you something,” she called out, not sure how to break the news.
“One minute,” he said before returning to the living room where she was waiting for him. “So what’s going on, baby,” he said as he sat on the couch, picked up the remote, and turned on the television.
Kimberly watched him, lifting the remote from his hand and pushing the little red button with her thumb.
“Hey, why you do that?” he said, his attention completely focused on her as she snatched the remote away from him.
“Seriously, you aren’t hearing me. I need to talk to you,” she said as he finally relinquished his power and prepared to hear her out.
“Okay, what’s up?” he said, thinking that whatever it was, it had better be good.
“I took an assignment today with the Bureau to go undercover. I leave in two days,” she said, bending her head down, not wanting to face him.
“Two days? Where you going?” he asked, as any normal person would.
“You know I can’t tell you that,” she said, holding true to her colors and her oath.
“There you go with that bullshit again. Well, when you coming back?” he asked, and waited for her response. She mumbled something but she was speaking so low he couldn’t hear her.
“Speak up, I can’t hear a word you saying,” he said hastily, his temper ready to flare.
“I don’t know when I’ll be back,” she said, still not facing him.
“How the fuck you don’t know that?” He looked at her like she must be crazy if she thought he was going for that.
“Terrence, I’m an FBI agent. I’m going undercover, I will be back when my assignment is complete, that’s all I know. I don’t even know where they are sending me.”
“Then how the fuck you know what you’re doing if you don’t even know where you’re going?”
“I don’t, I just know what the assignment is,” she said—unfortunately.
“This is some real bullshit, some real fucking bullshit, man. I can’t take this FBI shit. I told you before you needed to look for another job,” he said, now pacing the floor, not liking what he was hearing.
“I know you ain’t talking. If it wasn’t for my job your ass would be in jail right now.”
“That ain’t the point,” he argued.
“Baby, please, I really need you to understand. I’m just doing my job,” she said, thinking about the photo of Angel Alvarez that Director Burns had shown her. Truth was Kimberly wanted the adventure. It was exciting and alluring, dangerous and deceiving. She would go away, pretend to be someone else, live another life, be a completely different person, and do whatever it would take to bring down her target, even if it meant compromising the values and principles of everyday life to do so, even if it meant compromising her relationship with Terrence.
“I need to know if you’ll be here for me when I get back,” she said, tired of his ranting and raving.
“Shit, you don’t even know when you coming back. How the fuck you gonna ask me some dumb-ass question like that?”
“Terrence, stop crying like a girl and answer the question: Will you wait for me or not?” she asked as she smookeyed him with her body, pressing her firm breasts against him, reaching her arms around his neck, intertwining her fingers, and kissing the side of his face as she held him in her arms.
“Please, baby, I can’t do this without knowing I got you back here. I need to know that. I need to know I got something to come back for—my man, my home, my life. Please understand.”
“You asking a lot for a nigga to understand. It’s not like you even being honest with me, telling me what’s going on. Shit, to hear you say it, you don’t even know what the fuck is going on,” he said, shaking his head.
“I know, baby, I know, but this assignment could really propel my career. I will be up for a promotion and a raise after this. Please, I need you to be here when I get back, I need to know you got me,” she said, pleading with him, not realizing how upset he would be.
“Go on then,” he said grabbing her ass and stretching it apart. “I’ll be here when you get back.”
“You gonna wait for me?” she asked, already knowing he would stick his dick in a sheep to get off if necessary.
“Look, I said you’ll have your home and I’ll be here when you get back, what more you want from a nigga?” he asked.
“I’ll take that.” She smiled as she held out her hand for him to shake on it.
“You might as well, it’s all you’re gonna get,” he joked, really serious, as he pushed her down on the sofa, deciding he’d better take advantage of her while she was still around. “Come on, let me get that,” he said, roughing her up as usual.
Two days later, the time had come for Kimberly to report for her assignment.
It killed Terrence to see her go, more than it bothered her.
“You gonna be all right?” she asked, realizing his tone was somber.
“Yeah, man, you be careful out there, wherever they got you going, ya hear?”
“Yeah, don’t worry, I’ll be back home soon,” she said as she closed the trunk of her car, not wanting to spoil or interrupt his tender moment. She got into the driver’s seat and started the engine, backed out of the driveway and put the car in drive, then put it in park, jumped out, and ran back to the doorway where he stood. She quickly hugged him and whispered in his ear.
“I love you.”
Before he could start with his normal curses at her use of the L word, she ran away from him, back over to her car, hopping into the driver’s seat and closing the door behind her.
I love you, too, he thought to himself as he waved back to her and watched her car fade away as she drove down the street.
Kimberly would be arrested for aggravated assault and prostitution. Her story was that she was a prostitute and had a john who got a little too drunk and a little too carried away. He started getting rough, beating her, trying to rape her, and during the struggle to defend herself, she hit him with a beer bottle, causing him to stumble and fall, busting the side of his head and cracking his skull. The john survived, but the charge of aggravated assault stuck and she was prosecuted and found guilty. She was sentenced to eight years in prison, eligible for parole in two to three. After being sentenced she was placed on a bus along with fifteen other women she had been in court with. Their destination was Federal Prison Camp Alderson, which was exactly where she was trying to be.
SERVIN’ AND BIDDIN’
Kimberly entered the prison alongside the other women she had attended court with. Her new name in the system was Patrice Golden and her prison identification number was 32–786–45.
What if someone recognizes me?
That was her biggest concern, but Director Burns assured her that there was no one she would be serving time with whom she could possibly have come in contact with on the streets. But still, the thought of having her cover blown while locked up with serials and psychos had crossed her mind.
“All right, ladies, strip it down to your birthday suits. Search and sterile time,” said a female correction officer, looking like Coach Balbricker from Porky’s. She stretched her fingers in a tight plastic latex glove as she walked past the row of women, wiggling her fingers through the latex. “I’m watching you, ladies, all of you,” she said, looking each of them closely up and down. She was always suspicious of the new intakes. They seemed to be the ones who thought they could beat the system and sneak some type of contraband or illegal substance into the facility—but not on her watch. “Let’s go, put your clothes in the brown paper bag. When you’re done, hand the bag over to CO Starks,” she said, pointing to Starks, who was wearing a tan correctional uniform, her brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. “It is your job to make sure your name and number are written correctly on the bag if you want to ever see your clothing again. Remember, the next time you’ll see your personal belongings is when you’re going home, ladies. And for some of you, that’s not going to be any time soon.” She handed the intake sheet to Starks to initial for receipt of their belongings.
“How many lifers do we have today?” asked Coach Balbricker as she looked at her intake sheet over Starks’s shoulder.
A tall, overweight black woman in her midforties standing in her birthday suit, second in line from the left, raised her hand.
“Well, listen here, ‘Nothing to Lose,’ the good news is just in case your sentence is overturned or by chance you strike it lucky on appeal, I’m going to save your things for you, too. Brown-bag it!” she snapped as she passed the brown paper bag to the woman, letting it drop on the floor.
Strip and sterile was the process of being inspected, sprayed, and sanitized, and to say the least, it was quite intense. There was nothing glorious about prison. There was nothing glorious about being locked away in a facility, and there was nothing glorious about having your everyday freedoms taken from you.
Afterward the girls were taken from intake to quarantine, where they would spend the first two weeks of their sentence in isolation. After quarantine, all the new inmates were allowed into population, assigned a block, a cell, and a bunk and normally, after two weeks in isolation an inmate would want to use the phone. It would take Kimberly some time to get settled into her new habitat.
“Here you go, home sweet home,” said CO Starks, escorting Kimberly to her primary residence for the next three to five.
You got to be kidding me, said Kimberly, looking at her new living arrangements. I thought I was getting my own cell, she thought as she looked around her new living quarters.
It was tight, to say the least: a bunk, a toilet, and a sink. At the head and foot of the bunk were storage chests, one for each inmate in the cell. Her cellmate had decorated the walls with posters, and staring her dead-on as she entered the cell was an eighteen-by-twenty-four poster of the King himself, Elvis Presley. Everywhere you turned in the cell she had posters of Elvis. In the right corner of the left wall was a poster of Patsy Cline.
Is this really real?
Kimberly would be sharing a cell with a heavyset white woman with long, sandy brown hair and blue eyes named Lorraine Barker, who was serving a life sentence for murder in the first degree. Married off at the age of seventeen to William Barker, she had their first child one month later. Thirteen years and five kids after that, William had begun shacking up with Christine Wells across town, and when Lorraine found out that William was going to leave her and their kids for Christine, she went crazy, snapped out and killed him with a butcher knife in their kitchen while the kids were in school. Sad to say, she never really snapped back. And unfortunately, she was thrown into prison instead of a psychiatric facility.
“Jeepers, Starks,” she yelled at the CO. “I thought you guys were going to tell me when I was getting a new roommate,” said Lorraine as she hopped up and started straightening up the cell.
“No one has to answer to you, Barker, or tell you anything. You do as you’re told or you’ll see where you’ll wind up,” said the guard, ready to throw Lorraine in the hole if she didn’t watch her tone.
Lorraine Barker had her dirty underwear and prison duds, as well as some of the toiletries she had just bought from the commissary, on the top bunk, and her bed wasn’t made. The room was littered with pages that had been torn out of magazines and crumpled balls of yellow tablet paper.
“I pay her no mind. She’s always so crabby,” said Lorraine as she flagged CO Starks and then wiped her hands on her blue suit, holding her right hand out to greet Kimberly formally. “I’m Lorraine.” She smiled, oh so happy to finally have someone to talk to.
“I’m Patti,” said Kimberly, faking a smile.
“Oh, this is going to be so great. I haven’t had a cellmate for quite some time, but finally, someone to talk to instead of myself,” she said, kicking the balls of paper out into the middle of the floor’s walking space.
“Nice,” said Kimberly, as if she was Fabolous herself.
“I’m so sorry. I know it looks like a pigsty, but really, it’s quite a charming cell when it’s Cleaned up,” she said, stressing the word cleaned in CO Starks’s face as she swung around, grabbing her dirty underwear off the top bunk.
“Yeah, it’s charming, all right,” mumbled the officer, walking back to her post. “Charming as a troll’s ass.” She laughed to herself.
It didn’t take Kimberly long to get settled in. It wasn’t like she had major unpacking to do. She walked out of her cell and looked down the hall in both directions. It was busy, to say the least. Everyone had a job to do, everyone had somewhere to be, and those who didn’t could be found chilling in their cells or in the television room and, of course, the phone station, where there were four phones per block.
Breakfast was served at 6:00 A.M., lunch was served at 11:
30 A.M., dinner was served at 4:30 P.M., and it was lights out at 9:00 P.M. The prison offered the women commissary on Tuesdays and Fridays where they could purchase almost anything you could think of from tampons to Mounds and Almond Joy candy bars, as long as they had money in their accounts, or “on the books,” as most referred to it.
“Hey, Bob Barker, how’s that song go I like?” asked a Puerto Rican woman standing in the doorway wearing the normal blues, a red bandana around her head, and holding a toothbrush as she brushed her teeth and talked at the same time.
“Um, ‘Crazy,’ by Patsy Kline,” guessed Lorraine, as if she would win a prize for the correct answer. She jumped up and began singing the song for her, just as crazy as crazy could be.
“Yeah, that’s it.” Angel smiled as she started singing it to herself before she walked back into her cell, right next door.
Get the fuck out of here, thought Kimberly positively identifying Angel as her target. This is going to be easy, really easy.
Or so she thought. Location had nothing to do with cracking the Angel code, ’cause Angel wasn’t having it. She wouldn’t even give Kimberly eye contact, and Kimberly did everything, everything that you could think of. She made it a point to leave her cell to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner when Angel left hers. She sat as close to Angel as possible in the cafeteria or in the TV room. She worked out in the yard when Angel went outside. She said hello every time she walked by Angel’s cell. She even took a computer art class because Angel was signed up, but Angel wouldn’t even look her way, let alone speak to her. Kimberly tried everything, even striking up small conversations in the shower about the latest news or weather, but Angel would just look at her, never saying a word. Kimberly could keep trying to fuck with Angel until the cows came home; it wasn’t going to work. Angel had no intention of fucking with nobody in that joint. Her intentions were real clear: All she wanted to do was to win her appeal and get the hell out of there. She wasn’t there to make friends with anyone, especially people who she didn’t know from a can of paint. That was the last thing she had on her mind.