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4 East was clearly one of the prison slums. Every other female she’d seen in the day space had looked impoverished. Dirty. Trashy. Prison misfits. Junkies and ex-addicts surrounded her. Many appeared to be women who looked like they’d been around the block a few times. Others appeared to have spent the majority of their lives lying on their backs, or from being down on their knees tricking.
She hadn’t meant to pass judgment, but she didn’t feel comfortable being around all these derelicts. She already knew the moment she ordered her canteen, her shit would get stolen. And, the last thing she was going to do was sponsor a bunch of broke-down bitches.
Heaven inhaled and blinked in the grim reaper. She hadn’t done shit to this bitch, and here she was already on the defense barking orders. Heaven bit her tongue, though. She didn’t want any problems. But she wasn’t going to let this broad punk her, either.
She was doing her bid, alone. She had no friends here. Well, fuck. She really hadn’t had any friends on the streets, either. Not any that she could honestly say she trusted, or knew would have her back.
She took another deep breath. “I’m Heaven.”
“Bitch, I know who you are,” she said nastily. “You the uppity bitch who cut my girl in her face. Try that shit over here ‘n’ you’re gonna end up with your throat slit, and your guts spilling out ya ass.”
Heaven cringed. “For the record. I didn’t just up and cut your so-called girl. She stepped to me trying to get up in my pussy. I wasn’t interested. And when I asked her nicely to leave my cell, she refused. She put her hands on me, first. So be clear.”
Hand on her hip, the menacing inmate snarled, “Bitch, for the record. I don’t. Give. A. Fuck about what she did to you, first. She ran shit over there, like I run shit over here. Period.”
Heaven ran her tongue over her teeth. All she wanted to do was brush her teeth, and shower. Not argue. “Listen. I don’t want any problems with you. But, do me a favor. Please. Don’t call me a bitch.”
“Sweetie, you over here in my space. I’ll call you what I want. I heard all about you. Some uppity bitch, who thinks she’s better than the rest of us. Bitch—yeah I said it. And what?” She stared Heaven down. “You ain’t no different from anyone else; your ass is in a jumper with a state number like the rest of us. So that makes you a convict like the rest of us.”
Heaven took her in. A platinum bob of hair brushed along her jawline. Her lean, toned body reminded Heaven of a dancer’s. And though she had acne, she was still pretty. Pretty rough, that was.
Mindful not to touch her as she stepped further into the cell, Heaven sat her meager belongings, all neatly wrapped inside her bed sheet, atop her bunk, then smoothed nervous hands over her jumper pants.
She didn’t want to be in this cell with her no more than she wanted her to be. That was the only thing they clearly had in common. Still, she wanted to be civil. Or at least, pretend to be.
“Keep your shit over on your side,” her new cellie snarled. “And if you snore, I’ll smother ya ass in your sleep. Got it?”
“Then I guess lucky for the both of us, I don’t snore,” Heaven replied lightly.
The inmate swung her bob. “No, bitch. Lucky for you.”
Heaven scowled.
This shit was not going to work. And she was not sleeping in the same cell with this roguish bitch. Period. So before she went off, she politely snatched her shit off the bunk and proceeded out the cell.
“That’s right ho, step!” the inmate spat, causing a few inmates within earshot to laugh. “Before you get stomped out.”
“Coletta, you know you wrong for that, girl,” someone said. “Chasing that stuck-up ho out your cell like that.”
“Girl, fuck that bitch. She ain’t welcomed up in here!”
“I know that’s right,” someone else said.
Heaven heard them, but refused to give any of them a second glance, even though she knew she should probably pay closer attention to her surroundings, in case one of them hoodrat bitches tried to attack her from behind.
Let ’em try it!
Admittedly, she was still trying to figure out the dos and don’ts of prison life, but one thing she was sure of: whatever the pecking order, she was not about to be that bitch at the bottom of the rung getting pissed and shitted on.
She tossed her hair—real hair—and stomped down the stairs.
Some of the female inmates sitting at various tables in the day space stopped playing their card and board games, mesmerized by her. Others eyed and tapped their homegirls gesturing with their heads over at Heaven—a few even whistled and suggestively flapped their tongues—as she marched her way over to the housing officer with her belongings in tow.
“Um, excuse me, CO,” she said politely as she reached the desk.
The light-skinned woman, with the yarn twists in her hair, sitting at the desk ignored her as she wrote in the logbook.
Heaven glanced at the female officer’s nametag. “Excuse me . . . Miss O’Neal. I don’t mean to bother you, but—”
