A Deeper Love Inside (17 page)

“It’s too long, but it looks nice,” Siri said, giggling. “It doesn’t matter, as long as we are not naked,” she added.

“I’m not keeping it. I’m not a thief,” I told Siri.

“I know,” Siri said quietly.

My fingers turned the wooden knob slowly and pulled the room door open gently. I wasn’t used to opening doors or doors being unlocked and opened.

I poked my head out. The hallway walls were wooden. No one was walking around, and I didn’t hear no sounds of life. The smell was very nice, the kind of fresh smell like pine needles from a huge Christmas tree we once had back home. I was used to noisy, busy, wide corridors and stinky dorms. Should I walk out, or should I go back and wait in the room for something to happen? Cautiously, I stepped out. I took a few steps and jumped a step back, when I looked left and saw a wooden hanging thing. When I looked right I saw another one. They were wooden masks of faces of horror. It looked like it was put there to scare the shit out of little kids. I squeezed my legs together. I had to pee. Rushing with my thighs still pressed together, I found a toilet. I stepped in. My pee splattered out before I could sit.

“There’s a window,” Siri said. I pulled down a towel from the thin rack. I cleaned up my pee. I wasn’t used to cleaning it up. I’d leave it there on purpose, a puddle for the guards to clean. I rolled the dirty towel up neatly, then hid it in a small space behind the toilet. I turned the faucet on, a sparkling clean silver faucet. I cleaned my hands.

Glancing at the window, I wondered if it was wired with alarms or a booby-trap or if there was a secret tower outside with snipers who shoot kids for moving two feet beyond the lines. Or maybe there was no tower or lines, but I’d be electrocuted or bagged by the warden. Siri lifted the window. I leaped backwards one step. No alarm rang, but a string of bright green leaves dangled in.

“See, it’s safe,” Siri said.

So, I approached. I jumped out to the ground level right beneath the window. My left foot arched a little, over a rock hidden in the green grass. I looked up. It was a brick house covered with green leaves. The leaves climbed over every section and even up the roof, leaving nothing but the door uncovered. But even the door was almost completely hidden by two tall bushes.

The yellow sun was blazing up, but the forest blocked its strength. The green everywhere was only shown up by the blue sky. I began to cry. I didn’t know why. Why not? In my last conversation with myself I didn’t know who I am. Now, I also don’t know where I am. Even in prison, I knew what would happen next, was locked into a schedule, could count up everything and reduce it to a pattern. Siri wiped my tears. I turned tough again and started away from the house into the forest, more pee trickling a trail as I stepped.

We walked and walked until I heard and then saw water, a stream sliding down some gray rocks and around the trees.

“Good, let’s drink,” Siri said.

I squatted, cupped my hands, and just as I went to splash my face Siri said, “Maybe we shouldn’t.”

With water leaking from my face, I asked her, “Shouldn’t what?”

“It’s okay to wash your face, but maybe we shouldn’t drink it, though,” Siri said.

“I have to drink water,” I told Siri as I cupped my hands and drank. Besides I liked it like this, finding water for myself instead of someone handing me a suspicious cup of something with a suspicious
fluid inside, maybe even small bubbles that could’ve easily been some spit. I found some berried branches, big purple fruits, not grapes but dark like em. I pulled a few down. Some busted in my fingers and turned my tips colors. I licked the busted ones and ate the others. I found lettuce growing from the ground. I grabbed some, washed it in the stream and ate it with a tomato, which was growing from the ground nearby. Had some more water. Seemed like a few minutes later my stomach was rumbling like thunder in a powerful storm. I squatted by a tree and pooped a pile of poo, loose like a bowl of chili. Disgusted but relieved, I wiped myself using some leaves, dug in the dirt, and buried them. Then I walked back to the stream to wash my hands and body with the cold water in the warm heat while the red dress hung on a nearby branch.

The fog had now passed out of my mind. My thoughts cleared up and came rushing to me.
I, Porsche L. Santiaga, am free. I’m going home. I’m almost eleven years old. I’m going to see Momma, Winter, Lexy, and Mercedes. After that we will all go and see about Poppa.
Holding my arms straight out in front of me, I began to inspect my skin.

“Wish we had a mirror,” Siri said.

I didn’t want Momma to be disappointed with my appearance. She taught me to keep my skin moisturized and to especially care for my feet. I looked down at my toes. They were still pretty, but not moisturized, just drips of water left over from the stream. Of course my nails were unpolished. I stroked my hair. It was thick and wild and longer than it was before I had cut it off and threw it at Cha-Cha more than a year ago.

The thought of Cha-Cha triggered a dark memory. But I was glad that now it was a memory, not a reality. I didn’t want dem girls touching me. That jealousy spreads like germs. I would never know who caught it next. I wish jealousy was like the chicken pox and showed up as bumps and rashes all over faces and body parts, or made jealous people’s skin turn green so they could stand out and be stayed away from. I don’t know where all my Gutter Girls are right now. I felt bad for bouncing on them without notice. But I didn’t feel bad enough to have stayed and ridden my time out side by side with them. The Gutter Girls was my little battling squad. We had a nice little hustle that helped me make it through each day in the C-dorm. I taught them
well enough for them to continue the grind if they had the heart. The Diamond Needles, however, was many levels above the GG cause their reach was stronger. In my crew, I carried the weight. In the Diamond Needles every girl played a key position. I did figure out that Riot seemed to know everything about each of us, yet we really didn’t know enough about one another. I mean we checked for one another, had each other’s back, held one another down, but beyond that, the details we didn’t know at all. Or at least I didn’t.

I needed a ride to Long Island to my house, the Santiaga palace. Or I needed some loot for a train or bus ticket and a nice outfit that won’t make me seem suspicious or “wanted.” Something that would make Winter see me and welcome me in and let me hang out with her, proudly. I wanted to look so pretty that Winter wouldn’t lose me again, and even if she accidently did she’d search for me forever.

“Someone’s coming,” Siri said.

Maybe it was dumb for me to choose the red dress, I thought to myself suddenly as I stepped behind a wide tree. Maybe my brown skin would blend better with the bark. Maybe I should leave the dress on the branch and just hide in the nude.

“What if it’s a man coming?” Siri warned whispering. I snatched the dress down and put it on. Her words caused me to stand statue-still.

She was moving cautiously, using the trees as her hopscotch hiding place, looking up towards the sky, checking for the hell-copters that she said wouldn’t come. Riot’s green eyes lit up like lightning bugs. I shifted my head and called out like back in Brooklyn, a mean game of hide-and-seek or hot peas and butter. Then I pulled it back and hid.

“Porsche, quit playing and come on out,” she said. “You okay? Feeling better?”

“Meet me halfway cause you don’t look like yourself,” I called out to her.

She was walking my way, her black hair gone, her long braid clipped off. Her hair was short and blonde in a buzz cut.

“You look like a boy,” I told her, shooting out from my peeking place.

“They’ll be looking for girls,” she said serious-faced.

“I thought you said they weren’t coming?” I reminded her.

“They won’t. We’re on Seneca territory. But when we travel off this land like I did this morning, we’ll be back in regular American territory.”

“Alright, Riot, let’s sit here and go over some things so I’ll know what’s up same as you,” I said.

“Your dress is on inside out,” Riot noticed. We both sat down on the ground surrounded by trees. “No problem. I planned to tell you some things and answer some things yesterday, but you got stung by some yellow jackets. They must’ve smelled all that sugar in your blood. You ate all my candy and the honey bun! You passed out and your whole body got all swollen,” Riot explained. I felt bad about passing out. I knew it was shit like that which made it hard for me to even up with Riot and the older Diamond Needle girls.

“So is that why you kept me here with you, because I passed out and got stung by bees? So if that never happened, you would’ve sent me home to Long Island where I want to go?”

“You can’t go home no time soon,” Riot said calm and serious again.

“What do you mean?” I asked her. I was serious, too.

“Nobody went back to the places where the authorities are gonna show up first,” Riot said.

“How would they know?” I asked.

“Because the authorities got thick files on each of us. They know all our business, our family addresses, the schools we used to attend, the phone numbers we would call, everything,” she warned.

I didn’t say nothing for a few seconds. I was thinking.

“Do you think we’re at my farmhouse right now, on my parents’ property?” Riot asked me.

I still didn’t say nothing. She seemed comfortable enough to be at home, but I was still thinking.

“We’re not. I knew and I know I can’t go back there for at least a year. Even if I did go back, it would just be out of curiosity. The authorities stole the land from my parents. If I went there, I’d be trespassing. But I’m smart enough to know they still expect me to go there,” Riot explained. “Porsche, you know I’m not a liar. We’re hours away from where I used to live. We are on a reservation,” she said.

“A reservation?” I repeated.

“We are in America, but not really. This is the land that the American government had to set aside for the Native Americans, who they stole it from in the first place. Now the Native Americans own this land. They have their own government and way of life. They own their own businesses. They have their own police. The American government and the New York State Police are never supposed to come here. That’s why I chose this place for us to be safe,” she explained.

“How long do you plan on chilling here?” I asked, getting red.

“Porsche, you gotta think. You’re young, but you still have to think everything through, every detail. That’s how we pulled this caper off. We stayed calm for a long time. We made moves quietly. We let our pride go so we could get our goals accomplished. I was serving ten years. You were serving eight. If we didn’t get out on our own, we wouldn’t have seen nobody we know or loved for a crazy long stretch. Now this place is real nice, even though it ain’t where you wanna be. It’s not home but it’s better than prison.” She gave me a stern stare. “
You
put yourself in the Porta-Potty. Nobody pushed you.
You
had the choice.
You
wanted to walk. You could’ve stayed, I didn’t have to convince you, right?” she asked me.

“True,” was all I said.

Her words were true and I couldn’t front on even one of them. Still I was mad about the parts that I did not already know and understand before Riot brought them up and broke them down. I didn’t want to be treated like a kid and have everything hidden from me until it’s too damn late. I didn’t want to know everything except what someone older thought I didn’t need to know.

“What about Lina?” I asked.

“Lina is straight,” Riot responded, again without telling me nothing.

“Hamesha, Rose Marie, Ting-Tong, and Camille?” I asked.

“None of em could fit in the Porta-Potty or the trunk of the car,” she answered.

“So they all still locked down?” I asked, feeling like if we are all one clique, nobody in the clique should get left behind and forgotten.

“No,” is all Riot answered.

She had secrets. I could see she had plenty of secrets. I had my secrets, too, but less than she did.

“So it’s just you and me?” I pushed. Thinking there had to be a reason she only kept me. Then a feeling rushed over me.

She kept me.
I repeated my thoughts to myself.
Riot kept me. She did what Poppa and Momma and Winter were all unable to do.
It made feel closer to her. Then I warned myself,
She kept you so far . . .

“How long before you and I split up?” I asked Riot.

“Why? Do you want to split up?” she asked me. “I’m not the warden, Porsche. Leave if you want to. But I thought it would be better if you and me stuck together.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because we’re the same, except you’re younger than me. Right now you are the same age I was when I murdered a man. We both fight hard. We both love hard. We both smart. We both will never ever give up.”

“True, but my main thing is to get back to my family . . .,” I said.

Then we were both quiet. I felt fucked up because I didn’t mean to put Riot down because she had no parents or land or house to go back to.

“So you’re trying to get back your people and your things. I’m trying to get back the same, except my parents can never come back to life. That’s why I have no fear. The worse thing they could do to me they already did it. Now I’m ready to fuck the authorities. Everything they ever thought they controlled, I’m aiming at that. The money they love the most, I’m taking it, making it. I’ll use it to punish them,” Riot said.

Only the word
money
stood out to me from what she had just said.

“Yeah, let’s make a plan to get money,” I said.

“I already got a plan,” Riot said.

“I said ‘let’s.’ That means you and me make the plan together,” I told her. I knew she was right about the fact that we could work together.

“You got some ideas?” Riot asked, as though she was sure that she was the only one with ideas.

“I got some money,” I told her. “How about you, Riot? Do you got some money?” I asked her.

I was trying to get my weight up in Riot’s eyes. I needed things
to get more even between me and her even though she was four years older. I needed to show her that I was really smart, not just because she says so, but because I am. Besides, if I thought that she secretly thought I was dumb, I would think of her the same way I think about people she calls “the authorities,” and that wouldn’t be good.