Ex-girl to the Next Girl (12 page)

K
evin's dad never called back, but I guess that is for the better. I have been talking about the entire incident with Dr. Weltz. She was even afraid for me to meet him.

“Do you think you are ready? He raped you.”

“I know, but you know, I am over it—he doesn't think he raped me. He thinks it was consensual since we both were drinking and high.”

“There is no excuse.”

“I know, I know, but I got to let go of the way I feel and give Kevin his family.”

“Well, I would suggest that you take it slow.”

“I will—thank you, Dr. Weltz.”

After my session I went back to the office. I had a bunch of messages from various people, but the one that stood out was the one from Darius Miller, Kevin's father. I immediately returned the call.

“Hello—may I speak to Darius Miller?”

“Hello, Kimberly, this is him. I'm sorry it took so long to contact you back, but I'll be in the Maryland area at a church. Can you meet me down there? We can meet, talk, and schedule the paternity test.”

“Not a problem—just call me with the exact address so I can get directions,” I said. I was so happy Darius had called, I told Nicole everything that was going on.

The day was moving slowly—it was raining hard. I hoped the rain would calm down by the time it was time for me to go home. My phone kept ringing and I kept sending it to voice mail.

“Who is that that keeps calling you? Are you still ducking Malik?” Nicole asked.

“No, this isn't Malik. It's this guy I met at the restaurant the other night with my sister.”

“So, why aren't you answering the telephone?” she asked.

“Because I gave him my number just to be nice. He's white, but he was cute,” I said.

“You're not going to date him because he is not black.”

“I don't date outside of my race,” I said as a matter of fact.

“And why not?”

“Because I just don't. I mean, it won't work out, anyway. I prefer a brother.”

“What's wrong with you? What have the brothers done for you lately?”

“And what is that supposed to mean?”

“I'm not trying to be in your business, but look at both of your kids' fathers. Sorry I have to be the one to tell you, but all our good black men is already taken.”

“No, they are not—I'm not falling for that myth,” I said.

“That is not a myth—they are all married already. The rest is in jail, gay, or broke players. Shit, let a white man come my way—I'm taking him up on his offer. I'm not growing old waiting for a black man in shining armor. Because they don't wait for us,” Nicole said.

“Well, I am,” I snapped.

“Please—I'm not waiting for a brother. We give these damn black men too much coddling. We commend them for having a job or taking care of their kids. Don't know another race of men do so much fuck-up shit to their children. I went down to child support court because this motherfucker thinks since we broke up he don't have to pay child support, and I have to say it was about ninety percent black.”

“That's not everybody,” I said.

“Well, it's a large percentage of them. Plus, I want a man on the same level as me. We're buying houses and having degrees,” Nicole said.

“I don't care what you say. I'm not interested in a white man.”

“I will answer your phone for you—ask him if he wants to date me.”

“I can't.”

“Why?”

“Because I do everything the same; nothing out of the ordinary. I eat the same things and I just like what I like.”

“But you did say he was cute.”

“Yeah, he is but I definitely can't go out with him. We will have nothing in common.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I know,” I said as I forwarded his call to voice mail.

“How about we do some work?” I said, changing the subject.

“Kim, let me ask you something. When was the last time you had your eyebrows waxed.”

“Why?” I asked, pulling a small compact mirror out of my desk. I tried to shape my brows. But they were bushy and out of place.

“You need them professionally waxed.”

“Well, thank you. Nicole, do some work.”

 

 

I took Nicole's advice and stopped by the nail salon to get my eyebrows waxed. I sat down in the chair and the woman wiped hot wax across my brow. Then, she ripped off the strip of wax material. My eyebrow felt like it was on fire. My cell phone was ringing, I answered.

“Hello, hello,” I said as I was still absorbing the pain from having hair removed.

“Hey, how are you? You are hard to get in touch with.”

“I'm fine—who is this.”

“This is Andrew. You're a busy woman.”

“Not really. Listen, can I call you back?”
He finally caught me,
I thought.

“No, because I don't think you will.” I laughed at his assumption. He was right—I had no intention of calling him back.

“You're laughing because you know I'm telling the truth. I don't know how much longer I can chase you, Kimberly,” he said as I paid the cashier and walked out of the nail salon.

“Huh? You haven't been chasing me. It's not like that. I just,” before I completed my sentence he interrupted me and said, “I do believe I at least deserve an opportunity to prove myself.”

“You're right—go ahead,” I said, getting in my car.

“How is your day going so far?” he asked.

“Okay, I guess. How about you?”

“I'm okay. I'm in Detroit and it is so cold.”

“Detroit—why are you there?”

“I'm here on business.”

“Oh, okay, what do you do?”

“I have my own consultant firm. So when are we going to be able to talk in person?”

“Real soon. Call me when you get back into town.”

“You promise you are going to answer the phone?”

“I promise I will.”

“Okay, Kim, I will. Have a nice evening.”

G
raduation was in two weeks. We had a big final exam, and I had to be able to do two hundred crunches in three minutes. And run two miles in fifteen minutes. I have been training and studying—I feel pretty good about everything. As long as I study, I should be good. I didn't want to let Brianna go back over Brian's house, but she is a distraction. Every other minute coming to tell me she is bored or hungry or tired when she is at the house. I started talking to one of the girls in the young-girl clique—her name was Angie. She was a cute, dark-brown chick with blond micro-braids and an enormous forehead. She really needed bangs to cover it up. She wanted to get together and have a study session.

I met her at her house, prepared to study. She was twenty-two and still lived at home with her mother, father, and three sisters. It was really noisy at her house. Her baby sister was crying, her mother was cussing her thirteen-year-old sister out for having a boy come to the door. And then there was the dad, watching basketball highlights on ESPN like he was deaf. I don't know why she suggested we study at her house.

“There is nobody at my house. We can go there,” I suggested.

“It is usually not this noisy. My sister usually be at work and my dad at his other job.”

We packed up and drove to my house and suddenly I wished we would have stayed at hers. Omar had been staying with us for a while now and I notice he wasn't fond of bathing or cleaning. He was just so messy and funky. I asked Malik a couple of times to have a conversation with him, but I don't think he has. Omar was there and so was his corn-chip aroma.

“Omar, I'm about to study in here.”

“Okay,” he said as he lowered the television.

“No, I'm going to need total silence.”

“Oh, all right then, I'm out.” He went and put on a jean jacket and his dusty, ten-lifetimes timbs, and headed for the door.

“Tell Malik I'll be at Mom's.”

“Uh-huh.” Call him yourself, I thought.

“Who is that?” Angie asked.

“My brother-in-law.”

“He is cute.”

“No, he is not. You don't want him.” I said, curling my lip.

“He got a car?” she asked.

“No.”

“A job?”

“No, and he lives in my basement.”

“Okay, you right—I don't want him. But I can't wait to we graduate because I already been to the car dealership. Then I'm getting my own place.” Angie was acting like when we graduated we were going to be making a lot of money. It was okay money but not great—we started at thirty-two thousand and could get all the overtime we wanted. I guess she planned on getting a bunch of overtime. She wrote down key terms on the back of flash cards and kept going through them over and over again. We had almost one hundred terms and procedures. I'm sure we won't be using all these once we actually get in the prison.

“Let's try to make sure we pass first before you plan your future,” I said.

“You know we going to pass—it's going to be easy.”

I hope so.

 

 

Angie stayed until two in the morning. Malik was still not home. I called him.

“Malik, where are you?”

“Dropping Jarrod off.”

“I don't believe you,” I said.

“You don't believe me? Do you want me to put him on the phone?”

“Yeah, put him on the phone.” I heard Jarrod in the background, saying, “What, man? No, I'm not getting on the phone—I'm not with that dumb shit.”

 

 

The next morning I was tired and running late. I walked in the testing room. I just sat down and reread each question two times before I answered them. After the test, I met up with Angie.

“How do you think you did?”

“I know I passed.”

“Me, too. Let's go celebrate that this is over.”

“No, I have to go home and see my husband.”

 

 

We both passed with an eighty-four—you needed an eighty to make it. And out of our thirty, only sixteen made it. I really felt like I accomplished something. I was married and I had a good job that I could retire from with benefits. All I got to do is buy my house, and I'll be on the same level as Brian. Me and Malik will probably be doing better in a few years.

They assigned me to Salter Correction, a county prison. I had to report to my job on Monday. Malik took me out to dinner. My dad, Marjorie, and Brianna all came—we all got a big table. I was happy.

S
alter Correctional Facility was a women and men's prison. The jail was on State Road in Northeast Philadelphia, the outer part of the city. A row of prisons lined the road. There was barbed wire around the gray, high, stone walls. I parked my car in the crowded parking lot. I didn't wear my uniform to work—I took it out of my trunk and was going to change inside.

“Excuse me, you know which way to Salter?”

“That's the building over there.” The woman thanked me and continued to pull her two small children toward the prison.

There was a long, pebbled road to the jail. I walked toward the prison. I saw a truck being inspected. The driver had to get out and open the back of the truck to make sure there weren't any escapees. A little further down the road, inmates tapped the window and were holding a sign. The sign read, S
HOW TITS SHOW ASS.
I turned my head the other way.

I reported to C/O Riddick. She walked up and said, “You'll be with me tonight—let me show you around.” She was a mean, big girl, like five-ten. She had a big gap in her two front teeth and her hair in corn rows going back with a part in the middle.

“There are five units, A through E.”

“How many people in each unit?” I asked, looking around the prison.

“Each unit holds, like, 115. We are so overcrowded, it's more like 125 in each unit. You'll probably be put on unit B on the second floor—they need help down there. Units D and E are the women's units.”

“When will I get assigned to a unit?” I asked.

“They probably will be moving you around for the next couple of months. You can report to me to find out where they need you. We keep everybody apart. There is a little gang situation going on, but mostly we got North Philly at war with South Philly,” she said as she opened the cell for me to look at. The bed was a dark gray, steel flat bed with a thin mattress. We walked into the rec room—about fifty inmates in orange jumpsuits were watching a big television. Other inmates were in line to use the telephone.

“They get ten minutes free direct phone time and unlimited calling card calls. They have codes—do not give any of them their codes, they know them.” A few inmates were huddled around, playing cards. Riddick picked out one guy that was hiding from her and said, “Yo, Riley, if I see you again, you going to be sorry.” The inmate said, “I'm sorry Ms. Riddick. I got you.”

“Don't play with me, Riley,” she said, then took me to meet our supervisor, Sergeant Wilson. We walked in his office—he was short with some kind of curly process in his hair. He looked up from his computer.

“Nice to meet you,” he said. “Riddick, what do you have her doing?”

“I was walking her around, then I was about to go to lunch.”

“Take her down there on Unit A until you come back from lunch.”

“Okay, sir.” We walked out of his office, and Riddick said, “I'm about to take my lunch. Do you want me to get you something while I'm out?”

“No, I will just order something. Do you have menus?”

“Menus. No, I don't know why they didn't tell you that in training there is no ordering food to the jail. Now, if you want to you can go and pick food up, but you can't bring it back in.”

“Oh—well, I'll just eat something when I get home,” I said.

“All right—let me introduce you to Hicks.”

“Hey, this is Robinson—she is new. Show her around. I'm going to lunch.”

Riddick left me, and I trained with Hicks until my break. He was a tall, thin, young guy about twenty-six with light facial hair and a low 'fro. He just showed me how to operate the cameras that monitored the different areas of the prison until it was time for me to go on break.

 

 

At my break I walked back to my car and tried to call Malik. He didn't answer, so I just sat in the car and listened to the radio. The rest of the evening, C/O Riddick showed me how to fill out paperwork.

When I came home, it was 12:30. I looked in the refrigerator to see if Malik had ordered me something. There was an iced tea and cheeseburgers and fries. I warmed my food, then sat at the kitchen table. Malik walked into the kitchen.

“How was your day?” he said as he put dishes in the sink.

“It was okay,” I said sadly.

“So what shift are you going to work?” he asked as he pulled out a chair and took a seat.

“I have to work all three shifts for the first six months. I'm still considered a trainee.”

“You're not going to change your name at work, Mrs. Moore,” he played.

“No, I'm going to stay Ms. Robinson at work.” I yawned.

“What's wrong, baby? You like it? You think you're going to be able to last?” he asked.

“I think so, baby. I'm tired. I'm going to go upstairs and take a bath and get in the bed.” I put what was left of my food in the refrigerator, then I dragged up the steps to the bathroom. I pulled out my facial cleanser and body wash, then pulled the shower curtain back and saw a big, brown ring of dirt in the tub.

“Malik,” I screamed.

He came racing up the steps to see what was wrong. “You okay?”

“No, I am not. Look at this nasty shit,” I said pointing at the ring in the tub.

“You called me up here to show me that?”

“I want to take a bath.”

Malik shoved me and said, “Shonda, move. I'll clean it up.”

“You act like it is no big deal. That is nasty—I don't want to have to clean up after no grown man.”
If you want this to work, you better tell him something,
I thought. Malik cleaned the tub out and I took my postponed bath.

 

 

They have been placing me somewhere different each shift. Today it was the visiting room with Angie, aka C/O Sheppard. She was still silly—she made me laugh talking about everybody. She had a nickname for everybody at the job. Kids were crying, screaming for their daddies when the visits were over. It was actually kind of sad. I saw guys in the visiting room with different visits from several women, each thinking she was the one. My job was just to make sure they didn't get too close and to tell them to leave when it was time. I tried to be nice about telling them their visit was over. I mean, that is the least I could do. They were locked up. I would go and tell them to leave before they got in any trouble. They understood. But Riddick was just mean as shit. If you looked funny at her or didn't get up soon enough, she took your name off the visiting list for a week. A lot of these correction officers are just some mean, spiteful bitches. It's like their first time having a real job and some control. Most of them are power freaks and get pleasure from disrespecting and abusing inmates.

Maybe Malik is right—I don't know if I am built for this. I think Malik
is
right. Maybe I can't stomach this every day. It is depressing. I know that people do wrong shit—that's how they got here. I don't cosign with no murderers or child molesters, or rapists. But being at the job, I see how hard it is. I go home every day and they are still here. Some of them going to still be here until their trial dates come. Some people are sitting for a two-hundred-dollar bail. Nobody cares enough about you to get you out of jail and pay the two-hundred-dollar bail. I'm seeing guys that are young as hell, and I know they just got a body. My job is to keep them inside of the high-stoned barbed-wired walls, but I felt sorry for them. A lot of them didn't do it or refused to snitch on each other. They'd rather do a possible five-year bid and still be able to come home and be the man on their block. I don't know, I wasn't expecting this. It is crazy. They say, leave your job at work. But it is hard—I have been coming home thinking about it.