“We nah touch dose,” Rose Marie said as she noticed my eyes looking into the knife case. “But me know how to andle dat. I cut the coconut open with my father’s machete. I chop the sugar cane. Oh what I would do for some of dat right now, ya hear?”
I wasn’t sure how to handle Rose Marie on our first meeting. She was the only Diamond Needle who rejected my candy tribute. It seemed like no matter what I said, Rose Marie would turn it all into a word fight.
“Rose Marie want nail polish all colors, perfume, something strong and pretty like me. Rose Marie want some panty hose, ‘sham-poo,’ some press-on nails, mascara, lotion for hands that been scrubbing huge pots and pans or . . .” She paused. “Some Q-Tips,” she added as though her list wasn’t long enough already, and as though I was a fucking magician.
“You act like you going somewhere,” I told her. I was getting an attitude cause I knew I couldn’t satisfy her.
“Me has a date wit me boyfriend on festival day. Me, Riot, and Camille. We tree catch the fellas’ eyes last year. We boys and girls, we talk and write letters, and now dem boys come back for more this year. Me hafta get good and ready.”
“Rose Marie, I’ll come back when I have something for you,” I told her.
“You too green to understand,” she said.
“Green? Understand what?” I asked her, thinking I ain’t green but I get red real quick if anyone throws me some slickass comments or insults. Rose Marie laughed. “Green means young, same ting,” she said. “You too young to know bout man and ’oman ting.”
In a second or so I caught on. “And if ya give me screw face, Rose Marie gon thrash ya,” she said, her pretty smooth black arms on her hips. She was still smiling. I left.
I wasn’t sweating no boys. I wasn’t sure how I felt about them. I didn’t have no brothers and never had no boyfriend yet or nothing like that. Although when I danced at the Brooklyn block party one stupid, troublemaking boy said to me, “You got a nice ass. Too bad you’re flat-chested.” Then he slapped his hand against his own chest and smooved it straight down to show me exactly how flat I was. Winter walked right up. She had been talking to Natalie while keeping her eyes on me so she wouldn’t get into no trouble with Momma.
“What did he say to you?” my big sister asked me.
“Nothing,” I answered back softly.
Winter liked boys. A lot of boys liked her, too. I liked the way she acted with them. She made ’em chase her, sweat her, buy her things she really didn’t need cause Santiaga already gave her his world. But there was one who she truly liked. He was a man, not a boy like the others. His name was Midnight. First time my eyes seen him up close, it felt like I had swallowed a cup of hot sauce, with no water to chase it. The heat rushed all over my flat chest and beneath my skin. The feeling was so strong and had never happened to me even once before I first saw him. And, it never happened to me again either, with any other boy. I didn’t say it to no one but I wondered, how could a man make you feel like he was doing something to you, when he wasn’t doing nothing but standing still? I figured maybe I liked Midnight cause Winter liked him so much. She had a crazy crush. I could tell by the different way she acted when he was around. I wanted to ask Winter if she got that hot-sauce feeling from him, too. I didn’t ask her, though. She must’ve had it, cause when I tried to take my turn and sit in the front seat of Midnight’s car, Winter rolled her eyes at me so hard, like we wasn’t even blood related. I was seven.
• • •
Three days later, instead of candy in a designer packet, I gave Rose Marie six Q-Tips in a packet, six representing her Diamond Needle number. She told me to wait while she opened up her gift, as though she didn’t trust me. Or as though, if she didn’t approve, she’d make me take it back and bring her something else. I was a little nervous cause I had picked the simplest and last thing she had requested on her list of wants. When she opened the package that Siri decorated, a bright smile came bursting out.
“Until festival day, this . . .,” Rose Marie said, “will give me my good feeling. Have you ever stuck one in your ear?”
“No,” I answered truthfully.
“The inside of your ear is like your pussy-hole. Stick in one of these tings and move it around slowly. Feels so good until ya get the real thing from a man,” Rose Marie said.
I thought about it later. I never stuck a Q-Tip in my ear, but Momma had. She was right about that good feeling. After Momma did it once, I found myself bringing the Q-Tips to her and asking her to clean my ears “same way you did last time.” Could a man make my pussy-hole feel better than that? I was confused about it. Some of the big girls talked about the pussy-hole as a place where men hurt girls badly. Other big girls talked about it like it was a place to be guarded. Then some were in a rush for a man to push up in their pussy-hole. I wasn’t sure which category I was in. Or, maybe, I was in all three.
Rose Marie got on my good side cause she danced with only me one day out on the yard. She brought her music cassette. I was already out there with mine. She had me laughing as she pretended to be dancing with a boy. She got up so close on him, she started grinding on the fence and caught the attention of the guard.
“Back off,” the guard shouted over our music. Rose Marie called him a “pussy clot.” He couldn’t hear her, of course, but her expression was clear. She forgot about the guard quickly and got back into her dance groove. She winded her waist, until she was in the down position. When her knees and thighs were each tightly touching, she would inch them slowly open, rhythmically until they were spread wide, legs positioned like butterfly wings. Then she stayed squatted and still, but made her pussy bounce. Meanwhile she began to move her head first to the right, smooth as a caterpillar. Suddenly she maneuvered it to the left. Soon her whole body was opening and closing like the fluttering wings of a butterfly. She wound her waist with no force or jerk to her movements until she was back to standing. Carefully, I watched her. I was dropping the beats and melodies of her Jamaican song “Down in the Ghetto,” by Bounty Killer into my body’s memory and locking it in.
When the track switched to “Ghetto Red Hot,” by Super Cat, my turn came. I had cuffed my jumper all the way up to turn them into hot pants. I cuffed my sleeves to my shoulders. I danced Rose Marie’s dance perfectly, showcasing my pretty dancer’s thighs and legs. When I wound down into the squatting butterfly wings position, I added a bounce while I was squatting down with my legs open. I showed her I could make my pussy bounce, too. Then I stopped and bounced my butt, made it almost touch the ground, but demonstrated my control over my gentle butt bounce by never letting it touch the earth.
Rose Marie grabbed me up, swung me around, and said, “You bad lickle bitch, a real man killa. You my girl, same as my blood.”
“Same as my blood,” I repeated in my mind as I felt it moving in my heart.
Chapter 10
“I’d slide you a little drink, but you too little,” Lil’ Man said to me.
She, who wants to be called he, is number 5 of the Diamond Needles.
“How young are you, anyway?” she asked me.
“I’m ten, but I’ll be eleven in fifty-four days,” I told her.
“I started drinking when I was six,” she confessed to me, as she held her paper cup filled with church punch laced with Everclear. According to Riot, the priest laced the punch and only served it to selected “older” girls in his following. He called it “a cup of mercy.”
After trying to meet with Angel Johnson, aka Lil’ Man, several times without succeeding, I had to ask Riot what’s up with her. Riot said, “Lil’ Man is a ‘Highway man.’ ” That meant she was part of a small team of girls who get to go outside of the prison walls with guards with guns, to clean up the highways and streets surrounding the prison. Riot also told me that only the girls with the top grades in their classes and zero violent write-ups could even compete for the position. After I heard that, I had to laugh—a competition to go clean up trash.
“Lil’
Man got a thing for cars,” Riot told me. “She’s practically a mechanic. She can put ’em together and take them apart. She love’s working the highway detail cause she gets to check out everything on wheels.”
I knew Lil’ Man didn’t really get to check ’em out, press her face against the windows and stare at the interior, open the doors and recline in the plush piped-out leather seats or pop the hood and examine the engine. She simply got to stand and watch the whips speed by.
“You’re only gonna be able to catch up with Lil’ Man at the prison chapel on Sundays,” Riot said.
“I don’t even know where the prison chapel is at!” I told Riot.
“You should find out where everything in the prison is at, even if you’re not interested in it,” Riot corrected me, as we jogged around the prison yard just to do something different. “Porsche, look at every place and every person as a ‘potential opportunity.’ Never be narrow. Keep your eyes and your mind open,” Riot said, her face covered with the moisture from the spring warmth.
Now me and Lil’ Man were seated in the chapel, a dreary place not too different than any other prison place, except the benches weren’t cemented to the floors. More girls were arriving, looking a little more happy, and a little less hateful than the average look stamped on faces of the caught and caged.
As I peeped, a few girls were gathered in couples, interlocking fingers, sitting close up on one another. I caught on swift. The chapel was a meet-up spot.
“You see the church is open to all prisoners,” Lil’ Man said to me. “That’s why I like it here. Every prisoner has the right to join the church.”
That sounded strange to me, the right. Going to church was the only thing I heard of that we have the right to do.
A man with pink skin, wearing a long black dress entered the chapel. I tried not to stare at him. I didn’t like to judge people by color, but his skin was scary looking. He was human with skin the color and texture of a mouse or rat.
“Get up Santiaga, it’s Father John,” Lil’ Man said in a commanding whisper.
“He’s not my father,” I mumbled, but I got up anyway, not for him but for number 5 of the Diamond Needles.
He was saying some shit. Girls was closing their eyes, not me. I was looking at all of them. Two girls on the bench next to me were touching each other up. When I saw her hand rubbing the other girl’s breast through the jumper cloth, I felt something. I don’t know what.
Testify and witness were two words I didn’t like. I was hearing them both today even though I was in the chapel and not the courtroom where I had heard those two words the most.
Angel, aka Lil’ Man, was in the front of the room now, talking about Jesus, revenge, and forgiveness. The whole thing sounded like some confusing bullshit to me. The stuff in the room looked confusing, too. Some statues were cemented and stuck to the walls. Others were nailed into the counters just in case one of us violent girls broke fool and grabbed one of the statues and used it to knock somebody the fuck out.
I looked at Angel. She’s very light-skinned, like my poppa. Her hair was cut into a Caesar, like a dude. Not a short, pretty, girl style, like Lina or Rose Marie. As I looked at her straight on, I noticed stuff that I didn’t see when we were sitting or standing side by side. She was petite, but her personality made her seem tall and strong. Now I could see she was small. She was small and rough. She was using her hands to explain something up there but the same as like how Brooklyn dudes talk with their hands to one another while working the corner. Her face looked like it used to look pretty and maybe it still did, but she held her mouth like a boy and her eyes were not like girl-feeling eyes. Even her fingers were mannish. She didn’t put her hands on her hips or twist her little body like we girls did. Her stance was solid and determined. Her legs locked and even, not relaxed or bent or capable of flowing into a hot-ass dance step.
“‘Porsche,’ that’s a badass name,” Lil’ Man said to me afterwards.
“Thanks,” I replied, handing her my tribute candy packet.
“It’s not Porscha or Portia or nothing like that?” she asked me.
“Nope, it’s ‘Porsche,’ the name of the luxury vehicle.”
Lil’ Man smiled. “Hell yeah! Did your moms push a Porsche?” she asked me, as though she was imagining.
“No, my father pushed it. Momma rode beside him and made it look even sweeter than it already was.” I laughed a little now; I was remembering. “I heard you like cars. What did your pops push?” I asked Lil’ Man, knowing that all of the Diamond Needles come from families that had money, land, and power.
Her eyebrows connected. Her jaw dropped. Her half smile evaporated.
“My pops is pushing up daisies and dirt. He’s six feet under, where I put him.”
Angel, aka Lil’ Man, wasn’t born because of love. Her mother was violently raped by a stranger. Lil’ Man was the result.
Chapter 11
Art class only occurred once a week. The good classes and things are always rationed out to make sure we mostly feel bad. Art class was the only thing I favored that they provided, that I didn’t have to think of and do for myself. The teacher was so-so. But, there was a volunteer helper, a university student, who brought some feeling to life. She would say what none of the guards, teachers, staff, and especially not the warden would say. She kept smiling and saying, “Express yourself! Unlock your thoughts and emotions. If you’re unhappy or angry, excited or sad, let me see a reflection of you in your art work.”
Before, most of us girls used to sit there in art class and do nothing, or scribble or rip shit apart. Sometimes we would get so bored we’d plot on how to get at each other using the art supplies, but everything was guarded or nailed down.
The college girl been here a month and now she got girls competing on the low, not for some real prize or points, but just to see her smile or look surprised. First prize would be her bragging to everyone in the class about one of our works and then posting it up in the front. The art teacher seemed glad to let the university girl, named Niecey, who swore she was from Brooklyn but living up here at her college, take over. I knew the teacher was sitting and counting the seconds and minutes and hours until she collected her paycheck and got the fuck up out of here and away from us. She must of thought Niecey was stupid for volunteering to be here working with us.
Even though there was only one pair of scissors for twenty-two of us to use, even though the one pair of scissors was on an extra-short chain bolted to our teacher’s desk and had to be used standing up in the front of the class after asking for and receiving permission to use them while supervised, I liked going to art class once a week and making things with my hands.
I had an idea for my dancers’ outfits for the festival performance. I expected my idea to be rejected by the authorities. However, I had learned from my father, as well as from my circumstances and from the Diamond Needles, to look at everything as an opportunity. So I was making the dress on the low, believing that once everyone saw how dope it was, they would let my girls rock it on stage for their six-minute performance. After they awed ’em and pulled first place, they could be right back in their jumpers.
Up until now, I wasn’t worried about any of the other girls in the festival competition finding out what I was working on and copying or sampling my style. Some shit is so well made that it can’t be copied, at least not without a long delay and study of the technique. Only Siri and me knew. Everybody else was about to see.
I got the idea for my project while thinking of Poppa. It was based on one of the gifts he once gave me. I was 100 percent sure that nobody that was living in here by force or by choice had ever received the kind of gifts that Poppa gave us. Nope, Poppa’s gifts were personal to each of his daughters. From his gift choices he showed us that he knew the difference between each of us. When I asked him for my diamond earrings and necklace, he told me, “Not now. It’s not time yet. Ask me for something that you want, not for something that you saw your sister re
ceive. That would be better.” Something about poppa made any anger I ever felt inside disappear, after he came to my room, sat on the chair beside my bed, and spoke and listened for a few moments, only to me.
Over the past two weeks in art class, I had already made nineteen paper birds out of black construction paper. I kept them in my cubby drawer.
The paper birds were the spaghetti straps to a paper dress made of black and gold Nefertiti heads.
As I stood up front with my back to the girls and facing my teacher, Niecey walked up to my side.
“Porsche.” She said my real name nicely. We was used to the authorities calling us by our lockdown number, or last names. “Ms. Santiaga,” I would hear some authority say with angry curled-up lips.
“Are you cutting out snowflakes in the springtime?” Niecey asked me.
“No, I’m using the scissors the same way that you use them to cut out snowflakes, but I’m making something else,” I told her while I kept my fingers moving and the scissors cutting out the details of my dress design.
“Should I guess or is it a secret?” she asked me, smiling.
“It’s not really a secret, but a good designer doesn’t show her design before it’s finished.” I kept my eyes down on what I was doing.
“Well, it looks nice so far. I like the black and gold color combination,” Niecey said as she began to move away.
“You’re hogging it,” one girl said, sweating me as she stood behind me waiting to use the scissors.