A Deeper Love Inside (6 page)

Finally, I took a deep, deep breath, looked up, and Lina’s arm was stretched out before me, her hand holding two tissues.

“Lina, let me get a sheet of paper—oh, and an envelope. You got one?” I asked. Instead of answering me right back, she used the tissues to wipe away my tears. She held my chin lightly and began wiping my whole face. I felt something.

Then, Lina’s face changed to thought. I believed that I understood exactly what she was thinking. In lockdown it’s difficult to get our
hands on anything. It ain’t easy like how easy it was when we was back in our homes. To get even the smallest items required us to have money on the books at commissary, something of equal value to trade, or some kind of long request process, paperwork, and explanation to some counselor authority. To get things quickly like we needed and wanted, we’d have to plot, steal, or beat someone’s ass for it. I don’t steal. I’d rather convince.

Lina took back the book with the article stuffed inside on page 100. She returned with the
Newsweek
magazine. She laid it on my desk without explanation and walked way over where the librarian was and began talking with her quietly. I listened but didn’t turn my head around. I was flipping the magazine pages, hoping Lina had placed the news article back inside. I found it, along with two sheets of paper and one envelope. I addressed the envelope to Edith Kates, The New York Daily News, NY, NY, with no street address and no zip code, cause I didn’t know it. I figured the mailman had to know it already. He probably had to drag them sacks of mail every day.

On the first sheet of paper, I wrote using the pencil that was chained to my desktop, and all of the desk tops in here. It was on a chain so short, I could hardly angle it enough to write. I wrote,

Dear Miss Kates,

I call you “miss” because you’re probably not married and have no family at all. You probably are a very lonely person who thinks you know everything. But you don’t know nothing at all. I don’t know how you got that job at the Daily News because you are a liar. No one should let a liar write for a newspaper because people depend on you to tell the truth. Especially people who have no other way of finding out if their mother or father or sisters are even dead or alive. Or whether or not they are somewhere living their lives with smiles on their faces. Or even if they were killed in an accident.

My father Ricky Santiaga is a good man, a hard worker and great friend. Every place he went, there was nothing but smiles. In Brooklyn, in the summertime when the ice cream truck rolled around he would pull out a hundred dollar bill and give it to Joe, the ice cream man, so every kid outside on the block could eat. Everybody’s mother thanked my father for the good things he did all the time.

My father gave the best block party every year. People who didn’t even live on our block came around. One time, there must’ve been more than a thousand people. That party was the first time I ever danced on stage for an audience. I was 6 years old. You should’ve of heard the people cheer. A few of them even threw money.

I don’t get it, how y’all could try and make a good family look bad? You steal their children, put them in a place that might look good but is bad.

I don’t know exactly where my poppa is. From what you wrote I guess y’all got him in a cage. He can’t get out so y’all comfortable lying on him. Why do you all love to put people in cages?

I can tell he’s looking for me. Even in your dull black and white paper his eyes shine and I could feel his nose and mouth breathing. That’s the only thing I can thank you for. After 739 days I can say for sure, Poppa’s alive.

If you found my father, Ricky Santiaga, would you even tell me? You should try and meet him. Talk to him. I’ll bet you’ll fall in love right then and there. But you better not, cause my momma will whup your ass for definite.

I be Princess Porsche L. Santiaga #7261994 ROYALTY.

“Mail it for me,” I said to Lina as she walked up on me from behind and lifted the closed magazine from my desk. I knew she would check the clock, so I did, too. There were seven minutes left before the guard would appear to release me from the chair and move me to my next class.

“Mail it for me, please,” Lina repeated, correcting me softly.

“I owe you one,” I told her.

“Paper, envelope, stamp, delivery, and my time,” she said quietly pulling down each of her pretty fingers as she counted out my debt.

“What do you want from me?” I asked her.

“Meet me here at the library every day for the next seven days during rec.”

“For what?” I asked her.

“You’ll say it’s for math tutoring. Between you and me, though, you gonna have to get your shit together if you wanna get up with us Diamond Needles. Riot saw something in you. But for me, I won’t let you get away with no little kid tricks. You wanna walk and move with the big girls? You grown? You better act like it, mamasita.” She strutted away. I watched her.

I was thinking she probably would’ve told me to come here to the library every day for a week
even if
I didn’t ask to borrow the paper and envelope.

The guard came through. I had my eyes on Lina as he uncuffed my ankles.

“Get up,” the guard said. I stood.

It all made sense to me.
Lina number 2
, I thought to myself. The name of our crew is the Diamond Needles.
That rocks,
I thought to myself.
Sounds beautiful.

I pictured Lina standing beside Riot. She made Riot look more good. Girls love to have pretty friends. That way, one day we could all walk down the street together knowing that there was no reason for any of us to feel jealous, cause we was all doing it with our original styles, flair, and finesse. Each girl in our group having plenty of options.
Hmpp
 . . . I would’ve picked Lina, too, definitely.

I didn’t know if Lina would really mail the letter for me. I figured out not to trust even one mouth moving. It didn’t matter, I told myself. Showing up at the library instead of rec was nothing to me. While I was wearing the red jumper, I couldn’t do shit at rec anyway, just be cuffed and stuck.

Late that same night, I laid close to Siri thinking about Riot.

Riot must be smart, I thought. Yeah, she told me her story. But, it seems she had already known my story. Maybe she chose me cause she read the words “$100-million-dollar empire” in the news article. Or maybe she knew other things that were written in the newspapers about my family and maybe even about me. But I knew for sure that nothing in a newspaper could be trusted. Unless you are a part of someone’s life every day or even just with them most of the time, you will never really know what they have and had, what happened with them and how they really are, what they do, why they do it that way and what they feel.

Chapter 6

“Hables?”
Lina asked me when I showed up for my “math tutoring.”

“Huh?” I answered back.

“Tu eres Santiaga, si? No Hables?”
she said.

“What?” I said. Then she understood to speak fucking English. “I ain’t Spanish,” I told her.

“I’m not Spanish, either,” Lina said. Her faced was relaxed. Her body was still, but her eyes were revealing her fierceness. “
Yo soy una Boriqua, Puerto Ricano!
Don’t forget it,” she said to me. But how could I remember something I didn’t understand in the first place? “I can see why these young chicks wanna punch you in your face,” Lina said. “You come off all wrong.” She spoke calmly, but I could tell she was working hard to hold back her temper. “Maybe you won’t be happy till you got a buck-fifty on your face? I know one girl up here who didn’t know how to shut her mouth, so someone sliced her face open with a razor. What would you do if that happened to you?”

“I’d cut her back,” I said. “As long as the one who sliced my face was walking around with her face sliced open, too, I would wear my scar. I wouldn’t complain,” I said honestly, then shrugged my shoulders like I do when I don’t have nothing else to say.

“You stupid, stupid little girl.” She said it softly but it was heartfelt. I didn’t let Lina see that she hurted my feelings, but she did. I hated to be put down. I hated for anyone to play me like I’m dumb. I hated that I could tell that she really believed that I was stupid. I hated that I liked Lina a lot, and she either couldn’t tell or didn’t care. I hated that now Lina thought I was fighting cause I was a stuck-up, little, stupid bitch, and not because I was defending myself. I’m ten. Lina is either fifteen or sixteen. She is in the beige-tan jail jumper. Why was she coming so hard for me?

Tears bubbled up, then streamed down my face. She got up and came back with a tissue. It was the second time, on our second day of meeting, that she wiped my tears for me, while I was red, my wrist
controlled on a short chain, ankles cuffed to the chair. After she did that, I was feeling hate and love towards her, and I was confused.

“Don’t you know that when you are pretty, everybody expects you to be stupid?” Lina asked me.

She was seated back close to me, pretending to be tutoring me in math. Her question repeated in my mind:
Don’t you know that when you’re pretty everyone expects you to be stupid?
I sat thinking. Lina is saying that she thinks I’m pretty. That mixed my feelings up for her even more.

“A girl should never be stupid unless she is pretending to be stupid to save her own life,” Lina said.

“I’m not stupid,” I said confidently.

“How does a stupid person know that she’s stupid?” Lina asked me.

I didn’t answer.

“Exactly,” Lina said, as if I had actually answered her question.

“Exactly what?” I asked.

“If you are stupid, you would be too stupid to know it,” she said without smiling or laughing. I still didn’t say nothing.

“When you meet someone who is on your side, start off by introducing yourself. That’s what smart people do,” Lina said.

“That’s not really smart—if I am just meeting someone, how would I know if they are on my side or not? Why would I tell them my name?” I asked, and I meant it. I was looking at Lina, waiting for her to answer.

“I meant . . .,” Lina started to say. “Whatever! I introduced myself to you. I told you I was Lina, number 2, the Diamond Needles. You knew then that I was on your side.”

“Okay. I’m Porsche L. Santiaga. I’m ten. I like music. I like to dance. I don’t like to fight. I don’t start fights with anyone. But I will fight anybody who starts a fight with me, even if I don’t think I can win. I’m pretty. Lina, you’re pretty, too,
so you know how it is. These ugly bitches got us surrounded.
”

We both laughed. I exhaled a lot, and then felt easier with Butterscotch Lina, who I had thought had no smile.

“I like your haircut,” I said to Lina suddenly. “Did you cut it yourself?” I asked.

“No, we have a salon in Building A. My girl JinJah cut it. She’s Diamond Needle, number 9,” Lina said.

“She has a jail job?” I asked, all surprised.

“All Diamond Needles got a hustle. The hair hustle is the biggest payday. But chica,
I get mines done for free.
Me and JinJah in the same clique. So we take care of each other.” Lina put her fingers in her hair, stroking through the soft black-black half curls, stopping at her neck where it was still silky but cut low and clean.

“And these aren’t ‘jail jobs.’ You young, but don’t forget. We’re in prison,
not jail.
We’re convicted, not on trial. We’re on lockdown, viewed as violent and a threat to society.”

I knew all of that, but it sounded even worser when Lina said it all out loud.

“To make it in here you gotta start off by choosing the right family. The family with the right connections,” she said.

“Like how Riot chose you?” I asked her.

“That’s not how it happened,” she said, still calm and cool. “But it’s true, with our clique, girls have to be chosen by either me or Riot. It’s the only way to get up with us.”

“JinJah number 9 can’t choose nobody? And numbers three, four, five, six, seven, eight, ten, after they in the Diamond Needles, they can’t bring nobody in who they choose?”

“No.
Nunca
,” Lina said.

“Nunca?”
I repeated.

“Never,” Lina translated.

I sat thinking for some seconds. I knew now that Lina didn’t choose me. I wondered if that meant she didn’t approve? Maybe she disagreed with Riot’s choice.

“What if Riot wants someone in, and you don’t?” I asked.

“Confianza,”
Lina said. “Between me and Riot, there is
trust.
We don’t argue. We trust each other’s choices. We know that if either of us chooses the wrong person, both of us will suffer, then fail. Riot and me always say,
‘If you tell on me, you tell on yourself.’
So we don’t worry. Everyone we deal with has something to lose, something to gain, and something to protect. Riot wouldn’t have chosen you if you didn’t have something to lose, something to gain, and something to protect.”

Lina’s lesson went on like that. It was more heavy than being
in math, science, or English class. I found myself doing way more thinking. Lina placed her words carefully. It seemed like every other sentence from her was laced with a threat and a challenge.

Lina told me, “There are 528 inmates locked down here as of today. In one second that number could increase or decrease. There are twenty-nine gangs in here. In twenty-eight of the crews, you gotta get ‘jumped in’ to get down with them. That means you gotta get your ass beat by the whole crew. Maybe they’ll fuck up your face or shove a broom in your little pussy or tight asshole. Like that ain’t enough, you could get ordered to do something dumb, hurt yourself or someone else you don’t got no beef with. Then, your time here on lockdown doubles or triples up,” Lina said, like she was disgusted. She was leaning forward in her chair, one hand pressing down on her leg and the other on her hip.