A Deeper Love Inside (7 page)

“All that shit is retarded. We don’t get down like that. We’re pretty, and we’re smart. We make moves that the dumb ones can’t figure out. We money girls,” she said, and she was definitely speaking my language now.

“What if one of them twenty-eight other gangs decide they don’t like the Diamond Needles girls? What if one Diamond Needle girl gets jumped? Do the rest of our clique supposed to let that slide just cause we supposed to be smarter and prettier than everybody else who’s locked up in here same as us?” I asked.

“No, we pay any bitch back, but not the way they expect. We run this prison. The Diamond Needles are in all the right places. Everything runs through us or by us. Every Diamond Needle girl is in a power position. Since we got the power, and we make the money, we get the respect. If anyone crosses us, we don’t beat ’em with our fist. Why should we fuck ourselves up? We outsmart ’em. We squeeze ’em.”

“Squeeze ’em,” I repeated.

“Squeeze ’em,” she repeated.

Each day with Lina brought a new lesson, a new assignment, and a new understanding. I ain’t slow, so I caught on and caught up. There were seven days of lessons. Lesson one was trust, followed by silence, loyalty, friendship, teamwork, style, and method.

On the last day of my seven lessons, Lina said to me, “Being
la bambina mas joven,
the youngest of the Diamond Needles clique, is a
double-edged position. The older girls will feel even more protective over you. They might try and spoil you. Some might even expect less from you. On the other hand, since you are the youngest, you have to show all of your big sisters the most respect, answer to all the members, and you’ll follow the most amount of instructions.”

Lina also told me not to milk the “baby thing.” If I wanted to be equal, I should work hard and earn my status.

I noticed Lina called the other Diamonds her sisters, while Riot called me and Siri her sons. I didn’t think on it too long; family is family.

Even though the seventh lesson completed my training, I wanted to stay close with Lina. I liked her. She was smart and pretty, serious but still fun. She was warm if you got to know her and cold if you didn’t.

For me, style and method were the hardest lessons of all. For style, I had to use manners I wasn’t used to using. I had to introduce myself to each of the Diamond Needles separately. I had to remember their names and numbers. I had to learn their likes, dislikes, and requests, and be on call to help anyone on our team at anytime that I could.

I had to give each Diamond Needle a “tribute,” or gift. The gift giving wasn’t so bad. I understood that in here you couldn’t get something for nothing. Plus I still had my candy hustle going. I dreamed up an idea that I would put in motion immediately. I’d make some little packets in arts ’n crafts. Siri would decorate them. I’d put in assorted candies, and that would be my gift. For people on the outside that might not sound like shit, but in here a little sugar was hard to obtain and could take me far.

For method, Lina explained, “You have to be disciplined enough to follow a plan of action. You have to think with all of your girls in mind and not only yourself. You have to respond to all communications as quickly as possible. You have to make sure you don’t mess up or interrupt what the DN is trying to achieve.”

“What are we doing first?” I asked her.

“It’s your first thing, but to us is just one more thing we’re doing, in the middle of doing everything else,” she said. I seen that Lina liked to remind me that I was the young one. We were the last ones to be
chosen, Siri and me. It seemed like she thought that I was the most likely to fuck up.

Out of loyalty to Riot, and respecting the DN code of silence, I wasn’t telling Lina that I chose Siri to be in the Diamond Needles, and that Riot approved it. Lina believed that only she and Riot could choose members. But having Siri in the gang was a condition of my hooking up with dem.

“So what am
I
doing first?” I corrected myself for Lina.

“You’re not going to fight with anyone else,” she said, with the most mean look on her serious face since me and her first met. “You are going to let us handle the Cha-Cha beef. You are going to make it to the
Festival de la Familia
 . . .,” she said, speaking Spanish again. Then she said in English, “The Annual Family Festival, which no prisoner can attend if they have even one violent episode ninety days prior to the festival date, which is on Saturday July 20, 1996.”

“Okay, but . . .,” I started saying.

“You been locked down here for almost three years. You missed two festivals cause of fighting. The third one is coming up in four and a half months,” she said.

“Cha-Cha is fucking crazy. You think I can schedule my fights with her? Whenever she flips out, she flips out and fucks with me. So I fight her.”

“Are you smarter than her or is she smarter than you?” Lina asked me.

“You already know,” I said swiftly. “Or Riot would’ve chosen Cha-Cha for the Diamond Needles instead of me,” I said confidently.

“Good, then do as I say. Stop allowing her to deal you the same hand every time. Cha-Cha is controlling you. If she keeps you fighting, she keeps you from having any privileges,” Lina said.

“She loses her privileges, too,” I answered back swiftly.

“So what? She’s nobody. She’s ignorant. She don’t make real moves. She doesn’t make money. She don’t have no organized team. She don’t do nothing but keep the trouble brewing,” Lina said, her temper showing only through her pretty eyes. “Porsche, you have to make everyone believe that you have changed, by changing your
method of reacting and doing things. Even if you haven’t really changed on the inside, like your feelings and stuff, you have to make them believe that you have,” Lina said, and I felt at that moment that that was what she had done. On the inside she was angry and boiling like me. For some reason, she saw or learned a benefit to convincing others that she wasn’t.

“Santiaga,” Lina said, calling me by my last name. I liked the way it sounded coming from her lips, so different than from the warden’s. “Make customers, not war,” Lina said, sounding like my poppa.

“The festival is the only time of year where, for four hours and fifteen minutes, we can roam freely on the yard and mix with other people who aren’t locked down like us. Some of us get only one day a year for a family member to travel all the way up here to visit us. Or, it’s our only chance to see somebody we really like, not through a glass, or dirty bulletproof plastic or over a bullshit phone, or through a fence or gate. Not sitting in a small room without the chance to even touch or hug. Some girls got business on the yard on festival day. There are always competitions and prizes, good shit that can be won and sold. We Diamond Needles are all about our business and opportunities, and once a year the festival is an opportunity for us to each do something different, earn something extra, and see somebody special. You, too, Santiaga!”

Lina had me open. It was not because of no fucking festival, though. I just liked her and the feeling coming from her and the way she made me feel, like she believed in something. More than that, she made me feel like, even though she doubted me, she loved me. Of course she loved me. She sat and spoke to me and listened to me when I spoke. She taught me things I needed to know and gave me things she didn’t have to give. When she got mad at something I said, she didn’t give up or abandon me. She took the time to explain herself and her meaning. Even though I knew Lina wouldn’t say so, she knew I was smart enough even though I was young. She wouldn’t have wasted her time if she wasn’t sure I was capable.

The last question I asked her before parting, “You say all the Diamond Needles have a hustle. What’s yours, Lina?”

“Data,” she said. I thought she was speaking in Spanish again.

“
Data
is information. It’s the most important hustle, not only in here, but in total
el mundo
, the whole world.”

Chapter 7

Two months later, I’m on the yard. Been in a baby blue jumper with no red interruptions, no fights, no lockdown at the bottom. Authorities are shocked at my turnaround. Instead of them leaving me alone for not fighting no more, they look me over more closer. They wouldn’t get nothing new on me. I’m determined.

Getting ganged up was the best thing that happened to me since I was separated from my real family. Don’t get me wrong. Prison is prison, not fun or a fucking picnic. But being connected eased some of my stresses. I wasn’t silly enough to think my piece of peace would go on for the whole stretch of my stay, but even a brief break from the pressure was welcomed. It felt good to know I was not affiliated with just any group, but with the sharpest girls on the yard.

Unlike at my real home, which would always be the only real place for me, here I wasn’t the invisible middle child. I was the baby, and I had ten big sisters.

True, I wasn’t old enough to catch a prison job, internship, or assignment. Still I made my own hustle using what I already had, to get what I wanted and to play my part in the clique. I didn’t want to stay the baby or the son forever. I wanted to even up.

So, in the C-dorm, where I had influence, I listened and learned. I sorted through and counted up the opportunities available for festival day. I had done my research and found out that there was a talent competition for us prisoners. The prize was a gift basket that had all the shit every girl in here needed every day, but most couldn’t afford to get or ran out of too quick. Plus it had some stuff we never even dreamed of getting our hands on until we hit time served and walked out of this miserable joint.

The prize basket contained the latest technology that many of us never seen or heard of. We were used to cassette tapes and cassette players. While we were locked up, it switched. So the fact that the prize basket contained a CD player, along with a DVD player, CDs
and DVDs donated by entertainment companies made it ten times more valuable. The basket also had three phone cards, which added up to 180 minutes, or three hours, of phone talk and stuff like lotions, soaps, deodorants, perfume, and hair products, as well as a stationery set with stamps, and some books and magazines that was supposed to be the good ones. I knew for sure that whoever won that first-place basket could open up a business in here and work each item in trade or sale or use for about a year, no doubt. I even considered that the DVDs and CDs didn’t even have to be sold. If they were mines, I would open up my own version of Blockbuster and rent out the DVDs and CDs so they kept making money for me year-round. Even the books and magazines would hold weight, especially if they chose the right ones that girls from the hood would sweat, and probably weren’t available in the library. The shit that wasn’t being discussed was that whoever won that basket would need an army to keep it, even if they won it fair and square. The first-place winner would turn into a target in seconds, no doubt.

Riot wasn’t in agreement about the prize basket or the competition. She said the authorities were “slick” and the robots were dumb. “Watch how they kill each other to get their hands on that first prize.”

Riot said that the authorities paid for all that shit in the basket with money they made off of us. She also told me that the authorities would use the basket to keep the inmates in check and use the talent show to show the state what a good job they had done in controlling us, and how happy we all were to be in prison. So happy that we are up here singing and dancing for our captors.

“That’s what you’re gonna do, right Porsche? Dance for the authorities at the festival?” Riot asked me.

“No,” I answered back swiftly. “I’m the producer and choreographer for the seven girls that are gonna grab first place. I’m gonna teach them the dopest moves. When they win, they’re gonna pay me my fee.”

“Pretty smart,” Riot said. “How much you pulling?”

“One DVD player and whatever DVDs come with it. I’ll open my own movie house. Only the Diamonds will get in for free,” I said. We both laughed a little. Riot hugged my shoulders. I was working my way up to being even.

Aside from the reason I gave Riot about why I wouldn’t be dancing in the show, there was the fact that Momma had said, “One day someone will pay you a million bucks to move your hips like that.” Before Riot ever brought it up, I had already decided not to dance with the seven girls who I had selected after auditioning them. Prize basket or not, nobody in this fucking place could afford my dance performance.

It was windy on the yard, but we managed to get up a game of double Dutch. For us, it wasn’t an average afterschool-type game. After all, there was a rope involved. That meant there was a guard posted nearby, close enough to us for her to be one of the players. But she wasn’t playing. Now, I don’t know if it’s all right for a woman to weigh three hundred pounds, but this guard was pushing it and it was not the kind of fat that folded over then dropped or hanged. Hers was packed on her body like how frozen freezing ice cream is packed in the barrel in the ice case in the corner store. It was fat pretending to be muscle. Funny thing is, we knew for a fact that she could run like a lightweight. A bunch of us witnessed her dashing across the yard to break up a brawl, her heavy hands pulling bodies apart, then tossing them. Young ones got hurt more than they would have without her “help.” Her grip only choked and crushed. So we requested the rope, played nice with it, and would return it to her five minutes before it was time to leave the yard.

One, ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety. Two, ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety . . .

We counted it out, all nine of us singing together. There was seven Gutter Girls and two Diamond Needles, Riot and Tiny. Or should I say there were seven Gutter Girls and Three Diamond Needles, since I was in both gangs, the one I started and the one I joined on the low.

It was my turn and I was killing it. “Turn faster!” I called out as I danced between the two ropes, lifting my feet like lightning. I started crisscrossing em, and then paused, amazing myself by picking the beat back up in time to avoid losing a second of rhythm or tripping. I was
gonna keep the Gutter Girl Gail’s who they used to call Greedy Gail, arms turning two ropes until they were slim and sore. Siri showed up and went wild cheering for me. Both crews had to give it up to me when I bent down between the ropes and jumped out the next set from the squatting position! I’m supposed to be able to do it like dat. I’m a dancer, and rhythm and movement is my expertise.