Criminal Page 12

  “Keep your chin up,” she said as we went through the door.

  But I felt too mean and dead inside for it to sink in she was being nice.

  NO ONE WAS IN THE COMMON ROOM. THE GUARD TOOK ME straight to my cell, where Priscilla was already. Pissed-offness poured out of her like steam.

  “What happened?” we both wanted to know of each other at the same time. Her, seeing my blotchy, destroyed face, me, wondering why everyone was locked up in their cells in the middle of the day.

  “Exactly what I told you,” she started right in. “That new girl Dew’ann. Contraband from wherever she came from. Snuck in, whatever. Doesn’t matter where she got it. Didn’t take them but an hour or two to pin it down. Loudmouths.” She shook her head. “And now the rest of us have to stay here, God knows how long. Cell search too.”

  For no reason, I felt relieved I’d mailed off those letters to Jamelee. From my stepfather, I knew every piece of anything that went in and out of here was read by someone, but it felt better knowing they were reading it as part of an official process instead of finding them among my private things. Treating them like some sort of discovery.

  That was about as good as I could feel, though.

  Priscilla was hunched over on the edge of her bunk. “What they do to you?”

  Flashes went before my eyes. Dee pushing up off me, walking into the kitchen. The detectives coming to the salon. Those cops turning things over in Bird’s car. That plastic sample bag. Hampton’s unforgiving hands, the words that wouldn’t stop coming out of her: Dee and that girl Nicole together for two years. The whole time he was with me, lying. Leaving me and going to her. Maybe every single day.

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  She grunted. “Talking’s all there’s gonna be for a while.”

  “Yeah, but I ain’t gonna.”

  I pulled myself up the two railings to my top bunk, lay down. I crossed my hands over my eyes that wouldn’t stop seeing.

  Dear Jamelee—

  It’s been lockdown for hours, and there isn’t much else to do, so I might as well warn you: there are things in people that are dark and mean. I don’t necessarily want you to curl yourself up away from them—from people—but it’s my job to tell you this now. The ones you love will turn their backs on you. They will plot against you even as you love and care for them, give them everything inside you. You will do the most hateful things for them, and you won’t even know those things are wrong because you believe in that person so much. In their love for you.

  But let me be a lesson to you. People are snakes inside. Most of them, anyway. Your momma ain’t one. But mine is. And others, too. They are snakes who will not think twice about squeezing everything they can out of you, then swallowing you whole. They will take and take and take from you for their own gain. They will smile as you writhe in pain. And they will get away with it if you let them.

  HOURS IN THE CELL. LYING THERE. WAITING. WRITING A little bit and then not being able to write. Priscilla working at her crossword puzzle but then getting mad, breaking the tip of her pencil, cussing. We only had each other to talk to, but I still didn’t want to talk. After I figured out there wasn’t anything more I could say to Jamelee, I just lay there in the bunk, staring at the ceiling. There was so much to think of. Unwanted things, and not just about this life in jail. Things I’d forgot before. They kept coming over me, spilling one on top of the other. Things like the very beginning, when I very first met Dee in that Ferris wheel line at the county fair—how he smiled so sly, got me to give him my number even though I was sure a boy who looked like him asking a girl who looked like me for my number was some kind of prank. My surprise when he called, a day later. Talking slick like I was something expensive he wanted to make sure and win. And then movies. Dinners. A hand on my thigh that wasn’t about an exchange. Just wanting. Wanting me and only me. Only that. For a while. Until December, when all the questions everyone else was asking me started coming out of my mouth: When were we gonna get married? What was his intention? What did he think about our future? And then him gone. My phone empty and dead for months. No more questions from me because all there was on the other end was his silence. His refusal.

  Bird filling the gap. Helping me every day and letting me help her. Dealing with breakfast and dinner and the baby, plus getting to work. Making things happen. Showing me sometimes you just had to fake it because that was all there was to do. Reminding me there were more immediate problems like the phone bill and the mortgage and getting the baby to sleep and all the other business that just took over anything else, no matter how badly you wanted to let other things swallow you. No matter how far you wanted to sink.

  Then May. May and Dee coming around again. Waking me from some kind of coma. Every inch of me electric, in a way I didn’t fully understand had got switched off when he left the first time. All from the sound of his voice. A stream, after that, of seeing him. Sex all the time. Everywhere. Like he couldn’t get enough. Except for when he disappeared for no reason. And me this time keeping my mouth shut, not asking questions. Because questions only end up in your ass getting left.

  Fighting with Bird. Or, more, living with her silence. She hated him, I knew. Even more so when he came back and I didn’t kick him to the curb. But she never really took it out on me. She went to work, paid the bills. Insisted I do it too, even after weekends that he spent over and I felt wrung out in more ways than one.

  He’d gotten that tattoo while we were broke up. The N with the angels. He pulled his shirt over his head the first time we were going to make love again, and I saw it and I didn’t say anything. I just knew, without talking, that it was for me. I saw it, and everything swirled gorgeous. It means something, I told myself. We aren’t wrong to be in love. I felt like, looking at that tattoo, that every mistake I’d ever made before or since could be wiped away with those few sweeps of ink. He loved me. It was in his skin. Permanent.

  But now, lying on my bunk in our cell, I knew it was for her. Never for me, like he said. He got it for her after we split up, and then he lay in my bed and let me think that it was for me.

  I knew I shouldn’t, but I pictured them dating. Finding each other online, maybe. Swapping photos and texts. Planning a place to meet. Dinners. Movies. Afternoons at the mall. Her father—a policeman who focused on gangs—being suspicious right away. Becoming more sure something was wrong just by the sound of her voice whenever she talked about Dee. Probably the two of them had to start sneaking. Which made it even more romantic. Baby. I love you. I want you so bad. She would’ve been just as in love with him as I ever was. Weak with him. Overpowered. Falling into the backseat of anywhere, just like I did.

  I guess eventually they needed to appease her father, cool things off. This must’ve been when he found me the first time. Early fall. But after those few months he couldn’t take it, being away from her. And he just dumped me on the side of the road like trash. Ran back to her. More intense. Got that tattoo. Together for another few breathless months before her father found out and told her she couldn’t see him anymore. Told Dee the same thing. I pictured a fight between them, maybe even with fists. A restraining order. Keeping them apart. And then . . . me. Dee coming around to find me again. Me with no hesitation, despite what Bird had taught me. He knew before he even called that I would do whatever he said, whatever he wanted. I could hear him telling her, Nicole, the same thing. Because the whole time, he was seeing her still. Sneaking behind me. Texting to her in the dark. Maybe even while I was there next to him in bed, asleep. Soothing her as she said how hard it was, her daddy’s hatred for him. Asking him to make it better. Giving him an idea. A chance to get her daddy out of the way.

  And me being there—the one to help him.

  Me here in jail now.

  I wiped my tears with the back of my arm. It was morning and they still weren’t letting us out. I was sad and tired from all the thinking and crying and hardly any sleep, but also I was angry. I didn’t even kno
w what Nicole looked like, but I could see her in my mind. Picture her feeling some sense of victory. That she had no daddy anymore, that no one was looking out for her, meant she was really free now. She could do whatever she wanted.

  I stewed. This girl, Nicole, had to’ve known about it, I thought. The killing. It had to be her idea. How else would Dee have known exactly when the deputy was coming home that day if she hadn’t told him? Why else would he have picked that weekend, when she just happened to be out of town? It was her. It was her who came up with the whole thing. I knew it so clearly and so hard I felt certain that everyone else in the whole jail must know it too. Her. Her. It was like a laser beam piercing the middle of my brain, a vision of her calculating the entire thing. Begging him. Cajoling him. Whispering it to him while they lay together. It was her and it was her and it was her. And I knew it.

  But they weren’t asking me about her. They were asking me about Dee. It was Dee they wanted to know about. What, exactly, he had done that day.

  And I’d already told them. Some of it. But I hadn’t told them everything. I hadn’t told them about the wigs, how he asked me for them weeks beforehand—clearly plotting. I hadn’t told them how he’d changed clothes to throw people off. I hadn’t confirmed the exact kinds of guns. I hadn’t mentioned the crazy laugh on his face when it was all over, how excited he was. Or how he’d taken me to that rest stop. How, just after he’d killed a man, we’d had sex right there in the back of Bird’s car.

  I could tell them a lot of things. And they wanted to know. Needed me to tell them so they could lock him up forever for what he did. Telling them might help me too. Make me look better to the judge. But if I told them all of it—if I told them every single thing—it would make me more than the criminal I already was. It would make me a snitch.

  The thing was, though, I had done these things with him. I’d helped him with the entire plot, even if I hadn’t known it.

  And until now, I hadn’t even felt that bad about it.

  THAT NIGHT—AFTER A WHOLE DAY IN LOCKDOWN—I WAS drifting between sleep and not-sleep, and I had a memory of Dee so strong and sharp it strangled my heart. Him reaching for me. His fingers digging into the soft of my upper arm, the flesh of my waist. Squeezing. Squeezing it out of me—the wanting. Moving quietly, only the sound of cloth on cloth or skin. The sheets. My shorts down my leg. His T-shirt over his head. His hand, pressing. Kneading. Needing. His body so hard—all of him, hard—and mine so soft. Remembering, I could almost still feel where he was ungiving and I was not. His chest over mine. His pelvis against the pads of me. In. Out. Tugging. Everything about him pushing or pulling or fighting. Even his mouth a hard muscle. But warm. And the warm was all I wanted. Because it was a warmth that wasn’t about money, or drugs, or any of Cherry’s promises—it was just about me and him. I wanted to give him what was warm in me, to offer him a place of fire when everything else in him could be so cold. His eyes. The clenching in him as he turned his face away from mine, breathed “ungh.” Always close enough to my ear to distort the sound, so I could make it “baby” or “angel.” Him pushing my knees up toward my shoulders, my whole body open, nowhere to hide, and me just wanting him to take it all for himself. To give him comfort. And to fill me up so that I wouldn’t have any more room for stupid, ugly, disappointing me. My own body far away from me, only close to him. Him. He’d pull my hair—fingers raking my skull. Everything squeezing. And then, a deep press, and sigh, and rest. I was something of worth then. I had given to him, and he had taken, and we were both complete.

  Until he moved off me, away. My skin—where his was no longer touching it—immediately feeling cold. His shirt on over his head again. Standing up, going to the bathroom, lighting a cigarette. I’d still be there on the bed, my everything open, and he’d just take it and walk away.

  I saw it all the way it really was then. Me giving and giving, and him not really caring what I was giving him. Because it was never about love for him. And, if I was honest, for me either. Because I was taking too—always taking as much as I could, stuffing myself with him. Cramming him into every space.

  But now here I was alone, in the dark.

  Empty.

  WHEN THEY FINALLY LET US OUT THE NEXT MORNING, Dew’ann wasn’t there and no one spoke of her. But there was plenty of talking going on. Everyone was loud and rowdy, excited to be together after spending so much time closed up. Cam came over right away to see if I’d redo her cornrows, and Bindi’s whole braid had more than fallen out. The girls who loved the TV were back in front of it, jabbering at the screen. Everyone was eager, it seemed, to get back to normal.

  Only I wasn’t normal anymore. But I wasn’t a zombie sleepwalker in denial, either. Something had happened after that talk with the prosecutor and in the dark hours after, and I knew that I was different. I just didn’t know what to do about it. But I did know I needed to give my mind a break. So I set Bindi down in front of me, started weaving her hair into another rope, and let my fingers do the work instead.

  Visiting hours began. I wasn’t ready to call Doug yet, and there was no one for me to see until I did. But then I heard my name.

  When I saw who it was in the booth, waiting, I almost fell down.

  “Bird.”

  She was in one of her Sunday suits. I hated knowing they’d made her take off the jacket, patted her down in places she didn’t ever want to be patted. Her steel face, braving them. Just to see me.

  The tears came straight to my eyes.

  “You ain’t the one should be crying,” she said.

  I cleared my throat, tried to pull myself together. For her.

  “You look all right,” she started. “But thinner.”

  I nodded. “The food’s terrible.” I should be home, cooking for you, I wanted to say, but didn’t. I wanted to tell her . . . so many things. But her stiff spine was hard to approach.

  “I should let you know first off,” she said, all formal, “that they ain’t coming around like they did. They talked to Grandma and Mel, sure, but it didn’t take long for them to know we told the truth. They didn’t try to find Jamelee’s daddy either. That was Kenyetta just being hysteric. Of course, you being here, whatever you said—” Her eyes went over to the lady in the booth beside her.

  I was clinging to my receiver like it was her arm. That Bird was no longer under investigation was like clean air or water was rushing through me. And, even better, she was here. To forgive me. Or at least start to.

  “What more can I do?”

  Her eyes came back, hard. “You can’t do nothing.”

  “Bird, I—”

  “I see what you’re trying, writing those letters, and I came to tell you to stop. I don’t—we don’t—want nothing to do with you no more. I’m not saying it mean, or to give you any more trouble than you already have, but I had to come here and tell you, soon as I got them. You need to stop. You need to block us from your mind. Because that’s what we have to do to you.”

  Everything in me wanted to plead with her, but at the same time everything knew it would do no good.

  “He killed a man, Nikki.”

  I flinched.

  “We saw on the news they arrested him, and by now I know you were in it and you were in it good. More than I even thought, and you know I told you more than once about him. That you could do better, that you needed to—”

  She paused. Swallowed. Shook her head.

  “Anyway, I just came here to tell you, face-to-face, straight-out, right away, that me and Jamelee, we’re done with you. You send another letter, I’ll tear it up, light it on fire without looking at it. Because I warned you, Nikki, and you fought me. You told me it was all right. You lied to my face and you took my car and you—”

  But it was too much for her to even say. And all I could do was sit there and know it. And not be able to do anything to make it right.

  “Bird, I never meant . . .”

  “It don’t matter what you meant. What matters is what you did. An
d you got to know that I’ve seen it and I don’t want to see no more. I came here to say straight to you that I don’t want to speak to you again. We had a friendship, a bond, and I’m grateful for what you did to help me and my baby, but all you’ve done since is break that to pieces. And I just wanted to be clear. It only seemed decent to tell you to your face.”

  “Bird, don’t—”

  But she was already standing up. Already finished with me. All I could see was her slim, strong hand putting that receiver back in the cradle. Nothing else.

  “Bird,” I called out, pleading. Though by then she’d already walked away, leaving only the sound of her panty hose against her skirt.

  I COULDN’T EAT DURING LUNCH, BUT I TRIED TO AT LEAST follow the conversation, look involved. Concentrate on the chatter so I wouldn’t have to think about Bird leaving me forever. Or any of the evil things I’d done to deserve it. I sat in the middle of all the other girls so I could pretend that there was anyone left who cared about me.

  Afterward, everyone cleaned up and took their yard time. I still didn’t like it out there, but Priscilla did. And though my heart shook with self-pity and sadness, though so much of me wanted to curl in a ball and shut myself away, another part of me was tired of all that. And I didn’t have anything to lose anymore.

  “You mind if I join you while you walk?”

  Priscilla shrugged and started her fast lap around the fence. I figured that meant I could, though at first I had to work to meet her pace.

  “You’ve been here for a while, haven’t you?” I huffed eventually.

  “Two weeks before you came. So, today, twenty-six days.”

  The short amount of time surprised me. She saw it.

  “You already know how it is in here. One hour can be like a whole day. Or maybe three.”