Prison Baby

by Deborah Jiang-Stein

  In truth, there was no love big enough to cover the stigma and shame I carried about my prison roots or about my ambiguous racial whatever-ness. By the time my parents adopted me, no love could repair the trauma I’d already lived or the traumas that would follow.

  WITHIN WEEKS OF the “eviction” from my dorm room, I round up a few other girls from the BSU and we roam the halls in search of white girls’ rooms so we can torch terror into them. We stack newspapers against their doors, then toss a match onto the piles. I’m into fire again, just like I was in elementary school. One college escapade after another, always fueled by cheap Thunderbird pint bottles and opium or weed. College was the first time I smoked opium, and since I’d heard about poets and artists in days past getting all creative on opium highs, I felt sort of artsy instead of druggy. What isn’t artsy is the plot I scheme to heist an armored car with a classmate in my economics course. We hunch together in the student union cafeteria over coffee and cigarettes and sketch a detailed diagram to intercept an armored car he knew of that traveled across the plains of central Ohio. But we never get further than an elaborate map and doodle, and a lot of drug highs.

  Soon after, in the middle of my freshman year, my parents receive a letter from the dean with instructions that I should “find a college better suited for my needs.” I’m asked to leave, and it’s perfect, because I’m more than ready to switch majors from liberal arts to street drugs.

  I dive into the fast life back in Seattle and travel at two speeds, either invisible or belligerent, both in high gear as I start my slippery slide downhill.

  The first time I load a spoon of dope, I go straight to the top of the class and cook up a speedball—heroin and coke. The afternoon I first shoot up, I cinch a belt around my bicep, pull the strap between my teeth, and give my vein a two-finger slap. I register—draw a little blood first before plunging. My palms sweat and my heart races, a horse inside pounding the track to the finish line. It’s divine. The coke and heroin flood through me, a chemical orgasm, part birth and part death. It’s all a gift, and I’m home!

  I’m nineteen and prowl the streets with a boyfriend I’ve met at some party. Seattle’s my city now, not my family’s. Jonathan is engaged and getting his MFA in Bloomington, Indiana, and my father’s accepted an offer from Johns Hopkins University, so my parents move to Baltimore. While my dad goes more Ivy League, I dive further off the edge.

  MY FATHER TAUGHT me smuggling by example on one of his sabbaticals when I was eight. He drove our rented Fiat and approached the Swiss-French border, Mother beside him and my brother and I in the back, where our Dad had stashed his banned Cuban cigars under our seat. Dad pulled over when the border patrol waved him aside.

  “Pretend you’re sleeping,” my dad said. We obeyed my father’s commands in the car because if something annoyed him, his backhand swat could reach all the way back to our seats. We learned this early on because he always drove small foreign cars.

  At the border, right away my adrenaline surged inside. I didn’t understand what it was, other than a feeling I’d grow addicted to: fear and excitement at the same time.

  My brother and I slid down in our seats, closed our eyes, and flopped onto one another. The border control waved Dad across, with his two “actor” kids sitting on top of his smuggled cargo.

  A DECADE LATER, with three cocaine-filled balloons shoved into my vagina, I turn my body into a drug-smuggling vessel wherever and however I can, and traffic across the border into Canada. My parents—or the cops—certainly wouldn’t approve of my methods or cargo. I also carve out the inside of tampons, fill them with plastic-wrapped coke, and push as many as possible inside me to smuggle the snow across the border. If one of those balloons pops or the plastic in the tampons leaks, I’ll absorb enough coke to overdose in under a minute.

  When Bobby—boyfriend number four—ends up thirty miles outside Seattle in the Monroe Correctional Complex, we go into business. By now, drugs aren’t just a lifestyle—they’re a living. With a coke-filled balloon stuffed in my mouth, I swagger into the visiting room with a pout, sit down with Bobby and wink. A spark flickers in his eyes. He leans towards me.

  CHAPTER NINE

  ACT NORMAL

  I GRAB BOBBY BY THE BACK OF THE neck and spread his lips open with mine. My tongue thrusts the drug-filled balloon from my mouth to his. When our visit ends, I saunter out of there with the same swagger, proud of myself, relieved I’m not the one who swallows, then needs to dig it out the other end.

  We split the money from sales, one of the first times the entrepreneur in me comes alive. Risk and uncertainty: I’m good at living with these feelings now, always ready in my gut to step over the edge, ready for the world to shift and tremble under my feet.

  WITH THE TOP down and a trunkload of three suitcases stuffed full of weed and coke, I rip up the fast lane on Highway 101 out of San Diego in my green British convertible MG Midget headed towards Seattle. One of my recent drug deals paid for this sweet machine with seventeen hundred dollars, the cash rubber-banded in stacks of twenties. Two baby-blue suitcases with nine kilos of dope, vacuum-sealed in shrink-wrap, nestle below in a false bottom in the trunk. The leather on the top suitcase is torn from abundant use, so I face it gouge-side-down in the trunk, its raw ripped edges pressed against the dope inside worth thousands of dollars on the street.

  My regular setup for hauling dope works every time. I move dope in bulk for Seattle dealers, then drive back down to San Diego to start a deal over again. Sometimes I alternate how I run the stuff to keep my trail unpredictable for the Feds. Either I pack the kilos in my car or ship them through and ride the bus or train along with the cargo. This is before the widespread use of scout dogs to sniff for drugs.

  If I travel by bus or train, the insides of my arms come out a mess by the end of the round-trip drug run. In the bathroom stall at the back of a bus, I brace one hip against the outer edge of the stainless-steel sink and struggle to get a needle into my scarred inner arm. Half the time I miss my vein from the shudder of the bus. The sway of a train makes it even harder to hit.

  BACK ON HIGHWAY 101, the speedometer clocks eighty miles an hour, James Brown rasps “I Feel Good” on my radio, and the rhythm of the ribbed road rocks underneath.

  When Mother gave me these Samsonite cases for my high school graduation, she expected them to pack college essentials—new cords, sweaters, toiletries—for Vassar, Smith, or Radcliffe, where my classmates had enrolled, not kilos of dope and bundles of cash.

  I veer around a bend, a roadblock straight ahead of me—two California Highway officers in khakis stand on the roadside. I’m ready for them, though. My third bag covers the goods in the bottom two. I clench my teeth to fortify myself, my jaw already clamped like a vise from too much coke in my veins.

  Inside the suitcases, I’d scrunched my clothes around three one-gallon plastic ziplocked bags packed with cocaine. White crosses—aka speed—fill another bag. The third suitcase also shields my cargo in the event of rain. A blow-dry or slow heat at a hundred degrees in the oven always cures damp cash. But who buys soggy weed? Well, me. Dry weed or perfume-spilled-on weed, it doesn’t matter. Weak opium or cheap hash, I don’t care. Overcut coke or pure-enough-to-kill-you coke or heroin from the dirtiest dealer in town, I’ll mainline anything.

  One trooper stands feet spread shoulder-width apart. He sweeps his arm into a wide arc of “pull over.” Even at a distance, I can see he’s the same lean tower of a man as my father’s six-foot-four swimmer’s build, his legs so long, enough to be able to drive with one knee braced on the steering wheel and tamp his pipe or light a cigar with both hands.

  A few car lengths away from The Man, instinct and adrenaline drive me into a panic of survival, a rush with my senses on high alert, my reality altered. It’s the same thrill as my childhood jump off the wall.

  The midday California heat beats down on my sun-darkened hands—one grips the leather-covered steering wheel and the other yanks the gearstick to downs
hift, the way my father taught me. He admired Italian sports cars and even on his modest professor’s salary, he bought several. I rev my MG from fourth gear to third, to second, then accelerate and shift again. The power of my car hugs the curve of the road.

  I whiz by the first state trooper. The second one beckons with his hand and I swerve to the side of the road about twenty feet beyond their roadblock. I glance in my rear-view mirror. The glare from the cops bounces off my mirror. They saunter towards me. One of them forks his hand through his hair.

  “Uh-oh,” I say to the steering wheel. Could use a line or two of coke right now. No time. Just sit. The black-leather seats cook inside the convertible and a queasy heat wave surges through me, even more since my thick black hair absorbs the sun and fries my scalp. A thin trail of sweat swizzles down my temples. Stay calm.

  “Open your trunk,” one of them says. A suspicious half-smile curves on his lips.

  My instinct jumps alive with adrenaline. I want to bolt but something stops me. They might shoot me in the back if I run.

  My trunk’s packed with enough dope to send me down for several consecutive life sentences. It’s the late-1970s era of Rockefeller drug laws, and possession of two or more ounces of heroin, cocaine, or marijuana pulls the same penalty as second-degree murder.

  Busted or not, no big deal. Sit tight.

  The trooper leans over my doorframe. I wish I’d tugged the top up earlier.

  His pupils dilate while he scans the narrow space behind my seat. I smile. Nothing there because I keep my two-seater pristine. I’d stowed my ten-inch switchblade and .38 revolver under the carpet below my seat. My stack of maps in the back of the glove box conceals my kit: syringe, spoon, rubber strip to tie off, and vial of water.

  A Harley-Davidson revs around the bend. A middle-aged woman straddles the machine, her shoulder-length hair pulled back into a ponytail and a few loose strands flap in the wind, free.

  Beads of sweat outline the tops of the trooper’s eyebrows. Before I step out of my car, I clench my eyelids tight as fists to prepare for the worst, then open them, swing my legs out, and plant my feet on the pavement. I stand firm in my uniform: flip-flops, jeans, and a long-sleeved T-shirt to hide my track marks. I look away when the cop’s eyes dart up and down me from head to toe, my one hundred pounds dwarfed by his bulky frame.

  They order me again to open the trunk. My rubber flip-flops smack my soles as I mosey at a Sunday-stroll pace to the rear of my car. One trooper hovers on my left, the other steps to my right. I bite the inside of my cheek, a ridge of scars there from so many years of gnaw gnaw gnaw. A hand motions towards my trunk. “Open up.” I turn my key in the lock.

  Act normal. What’s it mean to act normal anyway? What’s normal for a nineteen-year-old like me who runs drugs for a living, blueprints burglaries and bank scams, and is the think tank for a small gang of ex-felons? What’s normal for anyone? How do we ever gauge if we’re in the norm or outside it? Somewhere along the way I learned to compare myself to others. But it’s a moving target. Every time I find someone or something “better” than I am, better than I think I am, another “better” comes along.

  Pretend the lock’s stuck. No. Say you need to pee. Nah, too obvious. Run for it. Nope. Better not. My brain tangles in a debate. Dread pulls my stomach muscles tighter. I force myself to keep my other hand from a dive into my jeans pocket to hide the bulge of the plastic film canister pressed into my thigh. Cocaine fills the case, the snow I need to jolt my eyelids open on the long drive up the coast.

  Dizzy from the heat and from the flood of adrenaline, I reconsider: Bolt! I calculate the risk and the steepness of the cactus-covered dusty incline to my right. I’d never make it up the hill.

  My breath freezes at the bottom of my lungs.

  “C’mon,” the trooper repeats, his nostrils flared, “open it.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  GNAWED

  A SHEER CLIFF PLUNGES INTO THE ocean on my left.

  Jump. Soar like you did as a kid, all those leaps out of a tree. But my hunger for thrill slips away—I envision multiple rounds pelted between my shoulder blades.

  I flip open the trunk with one hand and dig the other into my pocket. They’ll never notice. I grip my fingers around the vial of coke buried in there.

  “Just as I thought,” the trooper says.

  I suck in a reservoir of air to fill my lungs, maybe my last breath of freedom.

  He repeats himself before I get a chance to digest the critical consequences of my situation. My heart quakes on the edge of terror. I’m in for it.

  “Just as I thought, but we gotta check anyway.”

  The other trooper slams my trunk closed, then they both turn their backs to me. I draw my spine into a tight rod.

  “Not enough room to fit anyone in there,” one says.

  What?

  Their routine completed—a random check for Mexicans smuggled into the United States inside trunks and under seats—the troopers step away from me to approach the next driver.

  I jump back into my car and my lungs collapse with relief. “I’m free!” I say out loud.

  My gut still tight, I shade my face, use my hand like a shield to hide what just happened, then jam my MG into first gear and hit the road, back on my warpath. Nothing slows me down. It’s Deborah against the world.

  I REACH FOR a glass of Jim Beam one day and stumble, buckled over from the pain in my gut. I try to straighten but can’t. The pain rocks me to the floor where I stay until Diego, my current boyfriend, comes home to our shared apartment and finds me. Diego’s a smooth-talking, soft-spoken Mexican American and just out of the joint. I’ve been a rookie apprentice to his two-time felony crimes. He half-carries me to his car and speeds to the hospital.

  We’ve just returned from one of our drug runs and, an added bonus, a few weeks on the beach in San Miguel, a quaint fishing village in Baja California before tourists invaded. We tooled on down the highway from San Diego across the border in my MG.

  OUR FIRST DAY on the beach, I spin out my car into the sand. I forget the science of weight, because as soon as I’m off the damp sand patch near the shoreline, my MG sinks into the dry, dusty sand. Diego gathers a few guys from the beach and they surround the car and pick it up! Then they walk it off the sand. Same happens when we get a flat tire the next day. No tire jack, just a few guys to grip the bumper and lift the rear end while Diego changes the tire.

  Our first night in Mexico we both want to sleep on the beach. Diego warns that we’d better put our cash and keys in our jeans’ pockets and roll them for a pillow so thieves won’t raid our valuables. He grew up in San Diego and spent weekends in Mexico with his family to visit relatives, so he knows things I don’t.

  It’s right after midnight and neither of us needs sleep, neither of us wants it. We peel off our clothes, toss them into the sand, and stand bare, alone on the beach. Forever miles down the sand in all directions to the end of the earth, our naked exposure in open sea air, the galaxy of clear night all around, the risk of public sex and the anxiety of what-if-someone-shows-up, this freedom our foreplay, the start of orgasm before we’ve even touched.

  I lean to kiss him and he pulls me forward. I climb on to wrap my legs around his waist and he falls backward into the sand, me on top. “You okay?” he whispers into the curve of my neck. Often in sex he asks about my needs, not something I find with other men. We kiss and kiss through beach grit and salt air. I straddle him into the late-night heat. The Mexican sun still seeps out of the sand. A coating of beach dust sticks to the sweat on his arms, more inside my thighs. He always comes slowly, and we’d been high all day, smoked Mexican weed and downed shots of Tequila. No sense of time. Hours, it seemed, then he rolls me over and I kneel, grip handfuls of sand. These moments, a night like this, I forget about my past. I forget about the stabs of pain in my stomach.

  We fall asleep snuggled together against a dune and wake at dawn, exhausted from the all-night romp and from the drive the da
y before. We awake aching for more.

  After I clear my head, I dive my hands into my jean pockets. All my money’s gone. We’ve been robbed. Diego’s jeans are still rolled under his head so at least we have car keys and enough cash to make it through the week.

  BACK IN SEATTLE, Diego rushes me into the doctor’s office without an appointment. I’m flat-backed on top of the crinkled-white-paper–covered exam table. The doctor ignores my moans. He prods and probes, then shakes his head and schedules me for a barium test.

  When he later gives me the test results, he says, “You’ve developed an advanced ulcer, and over some years.”

  Some years? I’m not yet nineteen. “Explains the bits of blood when I throw up,” I tell the doctor.

  He talks about reducing stress, asks a thousand questions, and then frowns when I fold up the paper he’s handed me with a list of bland foods to eat. And no alcohol. Nothing on the list about drugs, though.

  Oh yeah, I’m stressed. My hair falls out in clumps and quarter-sized bald spots dot my scalp. It’s alopecia areata, a temporary stress-related condition. And I’ve gnawed the inside of my cheek so much it aches from a ridge of scar tissue. I’ve deteriorated inside and out. But none of it a reason to clean up. Why leave my one friend, my family—drugs. Deep down, though, some glimmer inside knows I’ll be better off if I quit. Next Friday, I promise myself. Or the week after. For sure by the end of the month.

  The apprentice in me graduates the day one of the guys I run around with gives me a .38 Special with a mother-of-pearl inlaid grip. For the next five or so years, I spiral deeper into drugs and ratchet up my crimes.