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Authors: E. N. Joy

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BOOK: The Perfect Christian
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Chapter Thirty-two
The days of Doreen's time served in prison thus far had felt like a lifetime. In real time, it had only been two months—two months of absolute hell. She wouldn't wish her predicament on her worst enemy. She didn't feel like herself. She wasn't her own person anymore.
Once upon a time she'd felt like she belonged to God—that that's whose she was. But now she felt like she belonged to the State of West Virginia. Some mornings when she woke up she didn't even know who she was, let alone whose she was. On this particular morning, waking up in her prison cell, she didn't even know where she was.
In a panic, she looked around her empty cell. She shared it with no one. She'd opened her eyes only to be staring up at the bottom of the top bunk above her. Quickly sitting up, she examined her surroundings, and then it dawned on her—she was incarcerated.
Her heavy breathing slowed as she tightened her lips and fought back tears. At least three times a week, this was how Doreen's day started. That was how many times she'd close her eyes at night and dreamed of an ordinary life. It was just her and Willie. They were back in Kentucky—had no reason to ever travel to West Virginia. Doreen was still baking pound cakes. As a matter of fact, in a few of her dreams she owned a cake shop, a very successful cake shop at that.
Her sisters helped her run things. When Willie got finished with a long day's work, he'd come straight to the cake shop and help her close it down. No juke joint. No gambling, drinking, cussing, or lying. No other women. Just Doreen and Willie. They were happy.
“Stop dreaming and get ya behind out of that bed if you plan on eating this morning.”
The male guard's booming voice snapped Doreen out of her daze. Even if she hadn't recalled where she was just moments ago, that guard sure would have reminded her.
Doreen pulled her legs over the side of her bed and rubbed her eyes.
“Yep, that's right,” the guard snorted obnoxiously. “You're not dreaming. Still in paradise. Now get your skank butt up and get to moving. You're a preacher's kid, right?” he asked Doreen.
She nodded.
“Then God done showed you favor. You got a job. Starts today. Means you'll get to earn money for luxuries. You know, things like Little Debbie Snack cakes, stamps, paper, envelopes.” He snorted again, and Doreen wondered if he had something against speaking in complete sentences. “Got bathroom duty. You know how many broads would kill to have that job? Beats laundry, that's for sure. Least that's what I hear, anyway. Dunno, personally. Can't say I'd care too much for cleaning up after a bunch of nasty womenfolk. I got a wife and three teenage daughters. Bloody pads floating around in the commode. And you know how the food is in this place. Toilet full of sh—”
“If you don't mind,” Doreen interrupted before he could release his expletive, “I'd like to use the bathroom and change clothes.” Doreen nodded over to the toilet that sat out in the open in her cell.
“Oh . . . oh, no problem. No problem at all. Go right ahead,” the guard told her.
Doreen stood up and walked over toward the toilet. Clearly that's what most people did the first thing in the morning. She went to pull her prison-issued bottoms down when she noticed the guard was still standing there, watching her.
“Uh, excuse me,” Doreen stammered nervously. “Do you mind?”
The guard looked Doreen up and down, then rolled his tongue across his top row of teeth. “As a matter of fact, I do. See, my job is to keep an eye on you; a special watch. If I took my eye off of you for even a minute, anything could happen. You wouldn't want me to lose my job on the count of not doing it well, would you?” He had lust in his eyes as he eyeballed Doreen.
“Please, sir. I, I just want to—”
“Do you think I give a rat's behind about what you want? Now do what you need to do or stay in here and starve to death.”
Doreen wanted to scream inside. She wanted to cry out for help, but who was there to come to her rescue? Certainly not Willie. He'd been to visit Doreen a few times, but not as much as he should. At least not as much as Doreen thought he should. And when she wanted to talk to him—when she really needed to talk to him—he never picked up the phone. She just hoped he was saving up all that money from all the overtime he was claiming he was doing.
“So what's it gonna be?” the guard snapped.
Doreen slowly gripped the waist of her pants and slid them down an inch or two—slowly. Just as slowly as Doreen moved her hands, the guard moved his . . . toward his private area. By the time Doreen's pants were mid-hip, the guard was fully clutching his manhood.
“Go on now, girl,” he moaned, rubbing himself. “You hungry, right? How about I give you a taste of a li'l something else other than that slop they got prepared for you?”
Doreen couldn't believe her ears. Not only couldn't she believe the words that were coming out of the guard's mouth, but she couldn't believe the sound of his zipper being undone either.
“Please,” Doreen pleaded, her insides trembling while she tried to keep her exterior calm, cool, and collected.
“Oh, you don't have to beg me, pretty chocolate,” the guard cooed. “Now come on over here and do me right.” By now the guard was exposing himself to Doreen as his hand moved back and forth along his flesh.
Doreen swallowed hard. She closed her eyes and said a prayer to God. Well, she didn't really pray. Prayer was supposed to be a conversation. She was doing all the talking asking God to get her out of that situation. To direct her path. She didn't know whether she should just do what the guard wanted her to do. She feared perhaps by not doing it, the guard would make her time in prison even more hellish than it already was. Whatever she was going to do, she needed to do it fast, as she really needed to go to the bathroom.
Doreen stood there talking to God and twitching her legs, trying to hold in her body fluids.
“I see you squirming,” the guard snorted. “Got you all wet down there, huh? You know you want it. And I don't mind a little chocolate myself.” His snort was mixed with a laugh.
With her hands still on the waist of her pants, Doreen went to move her pants another couple of inches or so, but this time it was upward instead of down.
Disappointment flooded the guard's face. “Wha—what you doing?” he said, no snorting, just a hint of anger is all. “Ain't you gon' do me?”
Doreen said nothing. She just stood there, securing her pants above her waist. She was hopeful her actions spoke louder than words and answered the guard's question.
“You black slut,” he spat, tucking himself back inside his pants. “Ashy, black nigger witches ain't no good at going down nohow. But I thought I'd teach you a thing or two.” He threw insults that Doreen was not moved by. “Think I care if you eat or not? Can stand to lose a few pounds. All y'all do is sit around eating chitterlings and pig feets, gaining weight. Bunch of nasty black pigs.” He continued his insults using incomplete sentences. Still, Doreen never said a mumbling word. “Think you won this, don't ya? Well, you might not want to eat, but you still gotta take a morning piss.”
The man standing before Doreen was as vulgar as she'd ever met. He was simply not going to let her be. She glared at him, his eyes burning through her like the devil himself. But she would not give in to him. She would not.
As the lust had begun to fill his eyes again, he looked Doreen over from head to toe. His eyes traveled from her head, appearing to peel the clothes off of her as they made their way down to her toes. That's when the look of lust suddenly turned into disgust. That's when the next sound Doreen heard was him zipping his pants back up. He turned up his nose and grunted as he walked away.
Doreen let out a sigh of relief. She looked down at her toes, the liquid now surrounding her feet. She felt disgusted too. But she had to do what she had to do. All of a sudden she stood there and let out a chuckle. “I heard that garlic keeps the vampires away. But who knew a little bit of pee could keep Satan away?”
Chapter Thirty-three
Doreen's stomach growled as she attempted to listen to the female guard's instructions. Hopefully that devil of a male guard from earlier that morning was right; that this job cleaning the bathrooms would afford her the luxury of snacks. Because if they sent that piece of work to escort her to breakfast every morning, she'd be missing the most important meal of the day for the next ten months.
“Those chemicals are kept track of,” the guard warned Doreen, “so don't think of doing any funny business. You got that?”
“Yes, ma'am,” Doreen replied as she held on to the mop handle.
The guard looked down at her watch. “And I'm timing you too. You best be finished up in here in forty-five. Don't try to milk the job. That's the best way to lose it.”
“Yes, ma'am,” Doreen said again as the female left her to tend to her new job. It was just mopping the floor and wiping down sinks and toilets. The guard had given Doreen instructions on how to clean as if she was working for a maid service.
Doreen slopped the mop out of the industrial-size bucket on wheels. “I'd take baking pound cakes any day over this.” She proceeded to mop up the bathroom with perfection. For a minute there she was acting like she really needed this job. She acted as if just because Willie wasn't readily assessable to her physically, that he wasn't looking out for her by putting money on her books. He was, and Doreen appreciated that. It's just that she'd used it up already, not really realizing how quickly the money could be used up in jail. And she thought she overspent in Woolworth's . . .
She hadn't mopped a quarter of that floor when a voice sounded off in Doreen's head reminding her that she did, in fact, need that job. That job was what was going to keep her mind from being idle for a good part of the day. That job was what was going to keep her from fixating on time—the ticking of the clock and the pages of the calendar. This would make the days go by quicker; one by one.
What this job didn't do, though, was keep her mind off of Willie. She worried from minute to minute which day would be the day Willie decided he didn't want to wait around on her anymore. Which phone call would be the last one he'd take from her. Which visit would be her last visit from him. She'd done a horrible thing and wouldn't blame him if he decided to leave her. She stripped him of a legacy, a child—a son. Yes, she wished the circumstances under which that baby had been conceived had been different. She wished it had been conceived with her. But the child had no power over its predicament. The child didn't deserve its predicament.
Doreen felt as if she was the only one who deserved her predicament, which is why she would not complain. Which is why she would not place blame. It would be easy to say that Willie and Lauren had no business making a baby together—sneaking around together. Some scorned women would even say that Lauren had it coming; that Doreen had every right to go off on her. That's not how Doreen felt, though. What other people did was their business. What other people did and how they acted should not affect the way she acted. As a child of God she knew better; yet, she grieved Him anyway with her actions. This was her punishment. Be if from God or just the state of West Virginia, it was her retribution, and she would take it like a woman.
Now halfway finished with the floor, Doreen allowed her thoughts to travel to good places. They fast-forwarded to thoughts of her getting out of jail and Willie right there waiting for her with open arms. Him taking her into those arms and whispering in her ear how much he loves her and how he's forgiven her. Even fast-forwarding after that, she envisioned herself in Willie's arms, making love to her husband, then learning later that he would be a father after all. She would fill the void, his feeling of loss, by giving him what she had taken from him in the heat of passion—a crime of passion. She would carry his seed.
As the good thoughts consumed Doreen, she picked up the pace on her task at hand, finishing up the entire floor in prison-record time. It wasn't necessarily a record she'd been striving to break, but she had nonetheless.
A loud whistle caught Doreen's attention. She'd just kneeled down on her hands and knees to begin cleaning her first toilet.
“It's sparkling clean in here,” the voice said after whistling.
Doreen looked up to see a group of women. She noticed two of them off the bat as the women from the cafeteria when she first got locked up. They were the two who had whispered something in the woman's ear she'd been dining with. After further observation, Doreen even noticed the woman she had been sitting with. The woman who had scurried off after the women had whispered in her ear—but not before hurling the insult of “baby killer” at Doreen.
“Thank you.” Doreen accepted the compliment as if she had just invited some sisters from the church into her home and they'd complimented on her cleanliness.
A couple of the women in the group of five looked at one another and chuckled. One got serious and said, “You're welcome.” She looked around the floor, then said to Doreen, “But you missed a spot.”
Doreen followed to where the woman's eyes had just roamed. “Where?” Every spot she looked at was clean.
“Right here.” The woman with her hair swept back into a ponytail and a lightly made-up face hocked up a wad of spit and spat it within inches of Doreen.
Doreen looked at the woman, her jeans fitting a little snug and her prison-issued shirt tied at her belly button, almost like a halter. To look so ladylike, she sure wasn't acting ladylike.
Taking the rag she had been cleaning the toilet with, Doreen went to wipe up the fluid next to her.
“Uh-uh.” The woman was quick in bending over and snatching the rag out of Doreen's hand and throwing it on the ground. “That ain't how you get it cleaned up.” She bent down, squatting in Doreen's face. “If you want something cleaned up real good you gots to lick it up. And I bet that little tongue of yours is just magic.” She winked while the other women chuckled.
A feeling began to rise up in the pit of Doreen's belly. Something wasn't feeling right. She took a deep breath and simply went for the rag that had been taken out of her hand. Another one of the women was quick to walk over and kick it away.
“You heard what my girl Lecia said,” the kicker told Doreen. “She wants you to lick it up.”
“Yeah,” Lecia said, eyeballing Doreen. “Then after that, I got something else I'm gon' need you to lick.”
“Oooh, can I watch?” one of the other girls mumbled while another chuckled.
Doreen just sat there now, staring down at the ground.
Yea thou I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
Doreen prayed in her head. Because right now, under the shadow the women hovering over her were casting off, it felt like death was on its way.
“Did you hear me?” Lecia spat. “Why you just sitting there? You heard me; lick it up . . . now. And if I have to tell you again, it ain't gon' be nice.”
Doreen swallowed hard, keeping the vomit down that wanted to rise up at just the thought of licking up that woman's spit off the floor.
But do I deserve this, God?
Doreen asked in her head.
Is this part of my punishment too?
She couldn't imagine God would want her to do something so degrading—so disgusting. But as she looked up at the women, she had to remind herself that this wasn't God giving her the order. She knew that God did not give her the spirit of fear, but she was scared. She was afraid that if she didn't do what these women wanted her to do, there would be hell to pay. She had ten months with them and an eternal lifetime with the Lord was how Doreen saw it as she kneeled over and positioned herself to do as she was told.
“I can't believe that stupid broad actually licked up your spit,” one of the women said to Lecia as Doreen now hung over the toilet gagging and spitting out the mixture of the woman's body fluids and the remnants of the cleaning solution.
“Heck, me either,” Lecia said, laughing. “She's easy. Witch ain't got no backbone. But then again, I suppose someone who beats a baby to death is no match for a grown woman like myself.”
“Please,” Doreen said in between gagging and spitting in the toilet, “it's not what everybody thinks. It's not like that.”
“Waaa, waaa, waaa. Somebody pull out the string instruments and give this sad song some background music,” Lecia said sarcastically. She got down on the floor with Doreen, grabbing her by the throat. “Yeah, I roll with some hard-core broads up in here. They done done a little murdering, robbing, assault—you know—that type of thing. But what ain't none of 'em ever done was harm a helpless child. But you did, and you're going to pay for that.” Lecia released Doreen and watched as Doreen went on a coughing spell.
By the time Doreen finished coughing, choking, and getting her breathing back in order, she looked up to see that Lecia now had the mop in her hand. Doreen looked deep into Lecia's eyes that told a story. They told a horrific story about what Lecia's plans with that mop were going to be. And before Doreen could even register it all, she felt hands and knees pinning down every limb of her body. She felt someone's weight sitting on her stomach while hands clawed at stripping her naked from the waist down.
After that, she felt nothing. It was as if God had spared her; removing her from her fleshly vessel, allowing her spirit to rise above it while the women did the unthinkable.
BOOK: The Perfect Christian
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