Lies of a Real Housewife (19 page)

The fact that Phaedra ignored my mother didn’t surprise me

whatsoever
. Lately, she had been acting real sketchy anyway. I could tell she didn’t want to be bothered. I had been calling her collect as well, and she never accepted my calls. I had dialed her home number so much I thought I would never forget it. But eventually I did. When I stopped calling her, she would write, sending me letters and pictures of her and Bobby Brown in the

courtroom. 

I would show her photos to my fellow-inmates. The celebrity

snapshots brought me respect. All of a sudden other inmates wanted
to be my friend because of my affiliation with a lawyer who represented all the stars. However, I would have preferred that Phaedra helped my mother out every once in a while. I really didn’t need her photos. I knew exactly how Phaedra looked on the inside.

Chapter Eight

“Jesus wept.” John 11:35 (NIV)

3 a.m., and I was awakened to the sound of the guard calling my

name over the intercom.

“STANTON, PACK IT UP,” he yelled.

This meant that I was being shipped to my permanent housing unit

at Pulaski State Prison. I would serve the rest of my time there. There was some reservation in leaving Metro State Prison. It was located in Atlanta, and this made it easier for me to have visits with my children. All my collect calls were local, and weren’t as bad on my mother’s phone bill. In retrospect, I was ready to go. Being transferred to another prison meant I was getting closer to finishing my time and returning home.

Quietly, I jumped out of bed so I wouldn’t disturb my cellmates. It

wasn’t that I was scared, but I did this out of respect. In prison, one wasn’t classified by the crime you committed. One could be sleeping next to a mass murderer and not be aware of it. The only way one would know, was if that person revealed the information to you. Sometimes this person’s crime could be shown on the news, or maybe people from their hometown told you about

it.

There were plenty of baby killers on the inside. I would stare at them

just wondering how they could harm a precious and innocent human
being. I would never let them catch me looking. If they could kill their own baby, I could only imagine what they would try to do to me. Don’t get me wrong, I would at anytime hold my own, but it was just always good to know what

you were up against.

I packed up all my belongings, including my bible, toothbrush, two

uniforms, three white panties, three white bras and a couple photos. Everything was folded, placed neatly inside my pillowcase, and thrown over my shoulder. I walked to the front gate along wi
th the other thirty-five women being shipped out with me that day. Then we waited. I waited in the twilight of the early dawn as the morning dew fell and tickled my face. It sure felt

good too. I hadn’t been out at that time of morning in what seemed like
ages.

We were all cuffed together by our wrists and ankles. One by one we

were escorted onto the bus, walking carefully to avoid falling on our faces. That would have caused a domino effect. I tried not to watch as we left civilization, but something made me do it. Something made me watch as the life I knew faded away. I was uncertain of my future and not sure of what the near future had in store for me. I was leaving known territory to dwell in a dry, desolate place.

The trip to Pulaski State took nearl
y three hours. I got tired of look-

ing out the window, and grew sick of watching the free world pass me by. Cars with family drove alongside the bus and I wished it was me driving the car. There were children in the back seat laughing and playing. It made
me think of my family, and I decided that just as long as my children were with me I would be good. It didn’t matter as long as we were a family, and we were together. Unfortunately, that wasn’t my life anymore. I wondered how old my

baby would be when I
had the chance to live life freely again.

We had just arrived and I was homesick already. The air was dif-

ferent. I mean you knew without a doubt that you were in prison. The yard had to be one of the biggest I had ever seen. It appeared to start at one end of the earth, and stretched to the other. Barbed wire fences surrounded us and Georgia red clay covered the land as far as you could see.

There were so many girls passing by. Face after face, each and every

one of their faces told a different story. I eventually lost count, but somehow I found the time to scan each and every one. I needed to observe my new confines. I was in the jungle, and with that being said I knew that only the

strong survived in this place.

This was my home for now. No matter how much I screamed, cried,

or begged for mercy, there was no turning back at this point. I kept thinking about my mother and Phaedra, and all those pep talks they had given me in the free world. How could I apply them to my current situation?

My mother always said, “You can’t change your past, but you can

control your future.” That was my favorite one. But what do you do when

your past was always haunting you?

I had been there for three days and realized that Pulaski State wasn’t

as bad as I thought it would be. Even if it had been, I would’ve had to make the best of it. I called home once a month. It seemed like a long time between calls but each call helped my time go by faster. Every time I spoke with my mother and my children i
t gave me strength. Hearing about Emani and how she was growing always brought a smile to my face. When I spoke with my mother on the phone Emani would be in the background speaking her babytalk as loud as she possibly could. It was the most beautiful sound I could’ve

ever heard.

Sitting in the day room, I was watching music videos with my bunk-

mate. I was shocked when I saw Jay on B.E.T. Young Jeezy! I didn’t even know he could rap. Jay had always been a mild mannered considerate person. He was a hustler
just like me. My hustle was white collar types and his

hustling was the ones he rapped about. He was now becoming a major star.

Jay and I had met back in ‘98 at the Spot Light Night Club in Ma-

con, Georgia. The clubs in Macon were always jumping. If it
wasn’t the Spot Light, then it would be G Money’s. And after partying like a rock star at the

club, many nights it would be Jeezy and I getting down.

My mother was a pastor at a church in Macon, called I AM Minis-

tries. Macon was only an hour and fifteen minutes from Atlanta, depending on how fast you drive. I made frequent runs up and down Interstate 75 South

traveling between Atlanta and Macon. A lot of those trips were to see Jay.

I wasn’t his girlfriend. That
was clear. It was just sex. We enjoyed

each other’s company so that made it more than just sex to me. I couldn’t tell you how many nights I spent with Jay. It used to be me, my home-girl, Tina, Jay, and his homeboy, Ellerbee, or like we called him, Kinky
B. You couldn’t find one without the other. One of the good things about that set up was we

knew how to have a good time.

Just in case you didn’t know, Jay had money long before the world

came to know him as Young Jeezy. Because of his hustle, Jay had
mad respect on the streets. No matter what he did or what he was doing, he always found the time to bless someone. So I knew he would in turn be blessed. Our sexcapades, or rendezvous lasted well over three years. He knew all my friends and I knew his boys. He slept with a couple of my friends, and I did with a couple of his too. Hey, we were young. We had money and did whatever we

felt like doing. That was before the fame came.

I won’t go into too many details about our sex life. Like I said be-

fore, Jee
zy was a real good dude, and to me he was much bigger than just sex. He never once disrespected me, and never treated me like a freak or a whore. He would do anything he could to help another person. For those reasons

alone, I still have the utmost respec
t for Jay.

Instant happiness and genuine excitement was what I felt for Jay

when I saw him doing his Young Jeezy rap on TV. Every time I did, I ran to the phone, and had one of my cousins on the end verify that I knew Jeezy. Not

only that I knew him, bu
t we had relations and all.

The women locked up in prison with me had to be living inside a

box their entire lives. They actually refused to believe that it was possible

for me to personally know someone on television as famous as Young Jeezy.

Seeing Jay on TV while I was in prison actually did something for

my spirit. It gave me hope and inspiration. I was so glad to see that he was doing well. He was smart and had done the intelligent thing. He had taken his money and turned it into something. If someone that close to me, someone

who I had been with, someone from my own hood had made it, so could I.

My life at this point was manageable. I had gotten myself into a

routine, and if I kept it up all of this would soon be over. My life would even
tually be back to normalcy. I was looking forward to being back at home with