Her hand drifted toward her breasts. They were small and firm. She’d always been flat-chested even though neither her mother nor her sister were. She thought it had something to do with the radiation they had shot straight at her chest area in order to kill the bone cancer. She closed her eyes and slowly moved her hand over the tissue. She felt something odd. So she squeezed it with her fingers. She opened her eyes and squeezed again. She sat up and looked down at her left breast. It didn’t look different, but it definitely felt different. She felt it again. There was a hard pebble inside. The water suddenly felt cold and she got out of the tub, wrapping herself in a terry robe. She refused to touch her breast again. Instead she went into her living room and sat down on the green and black couch and watched television until she fell asleep.
From the Journal of Nicole Parks
It was here in prison I discovered my gift. The gift of listening. They come to me. White, Black and in-between, young and old, vicious killers and women with no more business in here than your kindergarten teacher. They tell me things. The loudmouths and the quiet ones, too.
I observe all from my throne (my bunk square in the middle of the room). I know every secret. I know that sweet old grandma in the corner is the source of the compound marijuana. I know that mean Magna cries late at night and worries about her sick mother. I know that Viola Carpenter is a little crazy behind her Bible-reading front and that the chubby Jewish American princess from Miami is one generation away from West Virginia hillbillies on her mother’s side.
This place is some kind of madhouse. What I do is watch and listen. We got more intrigue in this place than on six Spanish soap operas combined. The girl who bunks across the aisle from me is a gypsy named Sonya. The gypsy has dark brown hair and she looks like she is getting ready to sprout wings and fly away at any given moment. She doesn’t say much, that one, but her eyes talk. Her eyes are dark as wells and they peep out through her eyelashes at just one person—Indian.
Now that’s funny to me because Indian isn’t exactly Big Stud on Campus. Indian must be in her late twenties and she’s done a lot of time. Killed a liquor store clerk when she was fifteen, they say. A robbery gone bad. You got to wonder what someone is doing out robbing people when they are only fifteen years old. But I like Indian. Yesterday she asked me if I was going to take the drama class. I said, no, there was way too much drama around here already. Then Daffy, who was chomping on a bag of Hot & Spicy Pork Skins, said to me, “Your girl Lolly is the one running it,” and I said, “For real?” She said, “Yep.” So I went to my lazy-ass classification officer and told her she needed to sign me up for Miss Lolly’s class.
I am excited. If Lolly is teaching it, then we’ll for sure do some writing and I can shine like I always do. I wonder if we’ll be writing plays and whatnot. I’ve never written one before. Speaking of drama, back to the Drama of B Dorm—so Sonya’s heart beats for Indian, but Indian treats everyone the same. She stays out of trouble, doesn’t get on other people’s nerves, and laughs about things that seem to piss off everyone else. I can’t help but wish I had her – what’s the expression? — savoir faire? That may not be right, but it sounds good. Meanwhile, Panther, that black as midnight, slinky cat with the skinny hips like a boy’s, has a thing for Sonya and is always trying to pester her.
“How come you won’t go with me, Gypsy girl?” Panther asks her, and Sonya just sort of sneers and says, “Don’t call me out of my name.”
“Okay, but you are a gypsy, aren’t you? One of those t.c.—traveling criminals, right?”
“Not a traveler. They’re Irish. My family is from Poland,” the gypsy says.
I myself didn’t know that any gypsies came from Poland, but I guess they come from all over. Something in the blood makes them wander around cheating old ladies out of their savings. Some life. I tell you what. I have gotten an education in this place, way more than my two semesters at the University of Miami, F-L-A. But, of course, it’s not nearly as much fun. The guys at Miami were off the chain. And the dorm was different, too, but in some ways it’s not so different. Having to live with white girls. Those were rich white girls, and the ones here are mostly poor. Not all of them, mind you, but you got lots of girls in here who would have been considered nothing but trailer trash by those saddity little rich bitches down there, all driving their SUVs and their Beamers that they got for their 16th birthdays. I didn’t really fit in all that good, being on scholarship and all. Maybe I wanted to fit in and that’s how I got hooked by Mr. Antwan with all his paper.
There isn’t much excitement going on in here for me. C.O. Barbie seems to be looking for something to write me up about. Not just me. But everybody. Yesterday Daffy left a towel on her bunk and bam—write up time! And the other day a dang button popped off my dress. She wouldn’t even let me go to work. “Go to the laundry and get a button put on that dress,” she says. So I go to the laundry and they don’t have any buttons, and then I’m stuck. So finally I was able to talk the laundry C.O. out of another dress. Most time I try to ignore the C.O.s. Instead I think about my man, Antwan. I know it is hard for him to be out there and not messing around with all those women who want him. He is like some kind of Black Cary Grant—women chase him down with a lasso. Or that’s how it always seemed. I wonder will he be waiting for me when I get out. It looks like I could go to work release in the fall. That’s not that far away.
Wednesday, June 7
Sonya worked in the kitchen. It was hard work. She had never been much of a cook. She and Duke usually went out to eat or got pizza or take out Chinese. Or they went to her parents’ apartment and ate the pirogues and sausage that her mother, Dina, made. Dina was a fantastic cook. And still a glamorous woman. She liked to wear a fur stole over her perfectly matched suits. In Florida there wasn’t much opportunity to wear fur, but when they traveled north, the minks always came out of the storage closets.
“Dress like a million bucks, babee, and they will never suspect you of nothing,” Dina used to say. It was her mother’s idea that she should marry Duke who was older by a good ten years. He was not a pretty boy. He was not funny. But he was quick with his hands and with his wits. Not quick enough though. Not quick enough to save her when the old man they were robbing turned out to be a retired Seminole County sheriff. Oh, Florida. What a horrible place to be stuck in. She wanted to be on the road or back up in Montreal where it was cool. Mostly she wanted to be with little Tomas. She knew Duke and her mother were taking good care of him, and soon he would be learning the ways of their kind. Rule number one: “Never talk to strangers.” Yes, that meant something different for their children.
It was still dark as she walked to the kitchen, preparing for her workday. The only good thing about being in the kitchen was that your shift ended earlier than the other work shifts and you could sometimes take a shower in peace. She and Curly, a young Jewish girl from Miami, were on duty that morning, making grits and a huge pan of powdered eggs. Most of the other women got fat on this prison food, but the sight of it sickened Sonya to the point that she had lost probably ten pounds. Panther was making biscuits.
“I hate the weekends,” Sonya said as she stirred the bright yellow eggs. “Everybody has visitors but me.”
“I don’t have much in the way of visitors either,” Curly said. “They got us all the way up in the damn boondocks here. My people can’t come up here all the way from Miami every other weekend for the next twenty years.”
“They say they are going to change this into a men’s prison soon and then maybe you’ll get sent to Broward. That’s near Miami, right?”
“A lot closer than this. How come you don’t get any visitors?”
“My family,” Sonya said, glancing around, “they all have warrants on them. Except for my baby boy and that’s only ‘cause he’s too young.”
“Your whole family? Damn, you must have had a helluva upbringing,” Curly said with a laugh. “Hey, how’s your record here? Got any write ups?”
“No, not yet,” she said, thinking of the ambush by Magna and how that could have