Déjà Vu (2 page)

“Hey, hey, hey. What’s all the commotion about?”

Twenty-five occupants of dorm “L” dressed in prison blue moved back from the two inmates who were in an intense shoving match as the plump corrections officer in a starched, slate-blue uniform and curly Afro wig approached the quad, giving everyone a once-over like she owned the joint. The two women continued to push and curse each other until one of them got in a lucky punch and knocked the other to the floor, but then offered a hand to help her up.

“I said, what’s going on in here?”

The two women stood erect and glared in defiance at the intruder. The inmates were serving five years to life, and Ms. Macy didn’t scare them. In fact, no one liked Ms. Macy. She had a mean attitude. She was Sgt. Macy at the control desk but was Ms. Macy to the inmates. Some speculated that Ms. Macy had endured a tough life…that someone had done her awfully wrong. Others thought Ms. Macy might have served time in prison, too, because she looked like a cold-blooded killer.

Ms. Macy swung her arm out and pierced the air with her long finger, stopping short of one of the inmates’ faces.

“You don’t have to say anything—none of you. Somebody will snitch you out. But I better not catch none of you passing another lick because you’ll be mine, if you get my meaning.”

The twenty-seven women stared at Ms. Macy who had her nose stuck in the air like she hadn’t said a word. She was “Big Bark” to them because they knew Ms. Macy wasn’t going to do anything, that is not if she expected to reap any sexual favors from “her girls” while the others kept quiet.

“Sgt. Macy, please report to the control room immediately,” said the voice over the loudspeaker.

“Barnes, I’ll be back for you in a minute,” Ms. Macy said. “We’ve got to go up the hill to see the warden.”

Angelica pushed her nose as high as Ms. Macy’s and nodded her head. The other women crowded around Angelica. Ms. Macy looked on, and then turned abruptly and left the quad.

“Hey, sister. Getting ready to get up out of this joint, huh? Tell that fine brother of yours to do what he can to get me out of this hellhole.”

“I’ll do what I can,” Angelica said.

“I’ll miss you, Angel,” another inmate said. “You are the only sane person around here. I appreciate all you did to protect me from Ms. Macy. I don’t know what will become of me once you’re gone.”

“Don’t worry. Ms. Macy is not going to touch you. If she does, let me know. There are ways to take care of the big, bad wolf.”

“It’s just that the other corrections officers are so nice and Ms. Macy is so full of hate. She makes it her business to see that we suffer anytime she’s around.”

“Like I said, don’t worry about Ms. Macy. My brother is an attorney, and even though he couldn’t save me, Ms. Macy wouldn’t want to face him in a court of law.”

Angelica looked around at the place she had called home for the past five years. Sharing a room with twenty-six other inmates
dressed in seasick blue didn’t compare to the cozy home with the moat around it that she had left. Her mansion was a gift to herself made possible by a messy divorce from ex-husband Hamilton Barnes. Hamilton was serving a life sentence at Central Prison a stone’s throw away from where Angelica lived at the North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women. She had been a model prisoner, and now her time here had expired. Angelica was ready to get her release papers, which lay between where she stood and the outside world.

“Barnes, let’s go,” Sgt. Macy shouted on her return. “I’m taking you to out-process.”

Angelica stopped to hug the few women she had befriended. It had been tough on her, but these women made her time bearable.

She had had very few visitors in her five years at the prison, but what saddened Angelica most was that the one person she thought would come didn’t. Margo Myles was her best friend once, and the cost of betrayal was too high and painful to think about. But Margo had forgiven her, or so Angelica thought. Margo’s name was on the visitor’s list, but not once in the five years Angelica was in prison had Margo shown up and signed in, which seemed to confirm what Angelica didn’t want to believe to be true.

“I’m ready.”

Sgt. Macy eyed Angelica from head to toe. Angelica’s hourglass figure made Sgt. Macy squeeze her hand like she was holding a glass of chocolate milk that she was about to consume. She licked her lips for emphasis, and her breathing intensified every time Angelica took a step.

“I can hook you up on the outside—get a place for you to stay, if you like,” Sgt. Macy whispered, her voice raspy and deep.

“And why would I want you to do that, Ms. Macy?” Angelica
said, turning around to look at Ms. Macy with contempt in her eyes and heart.

“Because you don’t have nowhere else to go? I hear your brother had to sell your place to pay your attorney’s fees.”

“What’s it to you?” Angelica barked, her finger pointed at Ms. Macy’s nose. “You need to keep your nose out of other people’s business. I do want to make one thing absolutely clear, though. There is nothing you can do for me.”

Ms. Macy grabbed Angelica’s arm and gripped it tight. “Don’t play with me, girl. You ain’t even all that anyway. You just sugar with some paint on it. Good riddance.”

“Whatever. Now take your hands off me.”

“You’ll never be far. I hear that your ex-husband and boyfriend are at Central Prison.”

Angelica flinched. The last time she saw Jefferson, he was being placed in an ambulance after the shootout at the courthouse. It was also the last time she saw Margo. She had tried to see Hamilton, but his family made sure that she had no access to him.

“Process me out, Ms. Macy. Today is a new chapter in my life. If prison taught me anything, it taught me to be strong, to be tough, and let nobody change who I am, no matter what is dangled in front of me. I am who I am. I’m ready.”

Ms. Macy wrinkled her nose and rolled her eyes. “You’ll be back before Christmas. You can’t survive by yourself. Let’s get you out of here.”

T
he clerk at the property desk handed Angelica her belongings. There wasn’t much—a North Carolina driver’s license, a tube of lipstick, two hundred dollars, and a diamond ring that her ex-boyfriend Robert Santiago had given her. Funny, she had not thought about Santiago the entire five years she was in prison, but looking at the ring made it all come back to her. So vivid was the image, it made her shudder.

Santiago was a vicious person. As head of Operation Stingray, an underground group that purchased weapons stolen from a military base to sell to Honduran rebels, Santiago had ordered her ex-husband Hamilton and good friend Jefferson Myles killed. In fact, Angelica was in the car with Jefferson when he was gunned down. She and Jefferson miraculously survived the hit, although Jefferson was partially paralyzed from the waist down and was now spending time in jail for his part in Operation Stingray. Angelica had no idea where Santiago was and she didn’t want to know. Simplicity was what she craved, and anonymity is what she prayed for.

An old-gray bus approached and stopped directly in front of her.
S-c-r-e-e-c-h.
The door flew open and a portly middle-aged man dressed in a blue uniform flagged Angelica in.

“Going to Fayetteville?”

“Yes,” Angelica half whispered.

“Well, get on. I have another stop to make and we’ll be on our way.”

Angelica stepped onto the bus and ignored the bus driver’s stare. The bus was nearly empty save for two other gentlemen who were asleep in the front of the bus. Angelica moved to the back and didn’t respond to the bus driver’s attempt at conversation.

Sleep tried to overtake Angelica, but the noonday sun, familiar streets, and the roads she once traveled beckoned her to stay awake. It was a perfect March day, although she was certain that March winds had visited earlier in the week, with all the broken branches scattered across lawns. The bus stopped outside of Central Prison. A lone black male with braids got on the bus. He noticed Angelica sitting in the back, but when it was obvious that Angelica wasn’t interested in sharing prison stories, the gentleman took a seat near the front, looking out the window as the bus started to take off.

A sigh escaped from Angelica’s mouth. Her heart began to palpitate. Thoughts of the forbidden were choking her mind. She was back in the car with Jefferson as the bullets rained down on them and she had left him to die. Angelica wondered what Jefferson was doing behind the walls of Central Prison and if he thought of her at all. She knew it would be suicide to try and contact him, but she couldn’t release the feeling that gripped her heart.

What was it with her and Jefferson? Did she have feelings for him or was it the high she got whenever she and Jefferson came together in the heat of a moment? Margo would never trust her again. After all, Angelica had betrayed Margo—the one person who loved her unconditionally and treated her with decency and
respect. Why couldn’t she leave alone the one thing Margo loved dearly—Jefferson? It made no difference that she and Jefferson were never in a real relationship. Angelica was lost in her thoughts.

She jumped. She must have dozed off. She sat up straight and stared up at the man who had moved into her space. His braids were natty and his face unshaven. He wore an old Army field jacket that was two sizes too big.

“Hey, Miss, you going to Fayetteville?” the man with the braids asked.

“Ain’t none of your business, and I don’t feel like talking.”

“You ain’t got to be like that. Look, you don’t have to say a word; I’ll do the talking,” he said.

“Suit yourself.”

“What’s your name?”

Angelica got up in the man’s face. She wrinkled her nose and moved back quickly. His breath was stale. “I said, I don’t feel like talking.” Angelica closed her eyes.

“All right then. My name is Walter Hopkins. I did time for armed robbery and attempted murder.”

One eye flew open, and Angelica took a good look at the man who wouldn’t shut up.

“Yeah, I killed a man once, but never was convicted of the crime. I was a hired gun—got paid real good, too. Tried to get me to kill a cop.”

Angelica sat up straight, measuring every word her seatmate uttered. Walter had taken the liberty of sitting in the seat in front of her while he entertained her with sordid details of his destructive life.

“Bad cop. Killed a sistah because he claimed she saw some mess he was involved in. Killed a white man too. He was tough
on the outside, but that fine brotha ain’t nothin’ up against the real hoods in Central.”

“Wha…what is the cop’s name?”

“Oh, you want to talk now?”

“No, I remember a cop in Fayetteville who was put away about four or five years ago for murder and accessory to an arms deal scheme.” Angelica leaned back in her seat.

“Yep, that’s him. Hamilton Barnes. That pretty boy got it hard. The boys are spanking that behind. Bee-sides, nobody like a cop that ain’t got no respect for anutha brother. So, pretty thang, did you say you were going to Fayetteville?”

“I didn’t say.”

“What were you in for?”

“Walter, I don’t feel very hospitable right now. I should be happy, but I’m not. And I don’t feel like talking.”

“I was thinking that maybe you and me could hook up.”

“When I get off of this bus, Walter, it’s just me and me—no you.”

“Umm, had you pegged wrong. Ain’t you one of Macy’s girls from the women’s prison?”

Angelica sat bolt upright and looked straight into Walter’s eyes. She bore a hole deep into his soul.

“Who are you, and what do you know about Ms. Macy?”

“Sgt. Macy, ahhh, she comes by the prison on occasion.”

“To do what?”

“How do you expect me to know? I was locked up like you.”

“Funny, you were offering her up like you were handing out government cheese.”

Angelica looked at the braid-wearing brotha in the wrinkled T-shirt, Army field jacket, and tattered blue jeans with renewed
interest. He knew something that he failed to share—something that had to do with Ms. Macy, Central Prison, perhaps her ex-husband or maybe Jefferson. Angelica wasn’t sure, but there was one thing she was sure of—Walter struck a nerve with her. She would have to extract as much information as she could before the bus arrived in Fayetteville because entertaining the likes of Walter Whatever-his-last-name was strictly out of the question whether she had a place to stay or not.

Angelica sat back and crossed her legs as Walter fidgeted and searched for what he was going to say next.

“Look, ahh…I never caught your name.”

“Don’t have one. My number is 656933.”

“Cute. Well, I think I’ll go back up front and sit.”

“No need to go. I’m interested in talking about Ms. Macy.”

A frown crossed Walter’s face. Angelica watched as Walter sized her up, his eyes lingering too long on her breasts that filled out the pink cotton stretch blouse she wore. He didn’t look half bad. A good washing and scrubbing would probably make him presentable.

“Look, I figured a good-looking woman like yourself had to be one of Sgt. Macy’s girls. See, Sgt. Macy is well known in these parts. It’s no secret that she likes the little girls and the grown ones, too. No big deal. That’s prison life.”

“Walter, what are you trying to tell me? I was never good at riddle games.”

“Ain’t trying to tell you nothin’, sugar. Just makin’ conversation to pass the time.” Walter stood up and bowed. “Excuse me if I interrupted your…sleep. I’ll let you get back to it.”

Angelica sat staring at Walter as he walked to the front of the bus. The last twenty minutes were bizarre, and no further infor
mation would be forthcoming. She wracked her brain for the meaning, but nothing came and she fell asleep.

“FAYETTEVILLE,” shouted the bus driver an hour later.

Angelica wiped her mouth and collected herself. She stood up and looked toward the front of the bus, but the man in braids had disappeared into the brightness of the day. She got off the bus and looked around at the few patrons who waited for buses to take them as far away as New York. Angelica hugged her few belongings and sat on a bench, wondering how far the money she had in her pocket would take her and who the man in braids was.