AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Heaven feigned surprise. “Whaaat? I definitely didn’t hear anything about that. When did this happen?”
Sabina shrugged, shaking her head. “I have no idea. They were talking about it down in the day space.”
“Well, good riddance,” Heaven said, raising her hand in a mock toast. “And lots of bad luck.”
Sabina gave her a look.
“What?”
Sabina shook her head. “Nothing. Anyway. Let—”
“Hey, sweet pussycat,” a voice said, cutting Sabina off.
The two women looked over toward the door, and Heaven smiled at the wiry, thin woman standing there with a big toothy grin. “Hey, Miss Janie. How are you?”
“Hey, Miss Janie,” Sabina chimed in.
Miss Janie rolled her eyes at Sabina, but then smiled at Heaven. “Oh, I’m fine, pussycat.”
Sabina caught Heaven’s gaze, and shrugged. Sabina had no clue as to why Miss Janie didn’t like her. But she didn’t.
Miss Janie was a sixty-two-year-old woman who’d been at Croydon Hill since it’d opened back in 1990. Damn near twenty-six years ago. Heaven couldn’t imagine being incarcerated that long. Hell. Ten years was torture enough. And here Miss Janie had another twenty-nine years to do before she was eligible for parole. She was going to die here. And, sadly, that realization pained Heaven. But Miss Janie, always with a smile on her face, didn’t fret about that. She felt blessed all the same. And had found peace with her journey.
She’d murdered her husband. Stabbed him in his sleep, sawed off his dick, then burned the house down with him in it. She was twenty, almost twenty-one, when she’d committed what police called a heinous crime.
And what had she’d done with her husband’s phallus?
Well, she’d mailed it to the married whore he’d been fucking, right before she fled the state. She’d been on the run for almost fifteen years before the authorities finally caught up with her down in Louisiana, living under an alias (Bertha Jarvis) with a new life, new husband, and three young children.
Heaven didn’t know her that well, but the older woman was always friendly to her whenever she made her way up to the third tier. And, somehow, she’d decided that her nickname for Heaven would be Pussycat. “?’Cause you cute as a kitten,” she’d told her once, “and slick and crafty as a cat.”
Heaven had almost felt offended at first, but then she’d realized it was meant as a compliment. So whenever the older woman called her that, she simply smiled. The only time she journeyed this high up from the first floor was when she had to go around and collect on a debt. When it came to her money, Miss Janie didn’t care about being out of place. And the COs didn’t bother about writing her up, or redirecting her. As far as they were concerned, she was harmless.
Sabina grabbed her MP3 player. “Well, let me get out of here.”
Miss Janie grunted, then waited for Sabina to leave the cell. “That nasty gal right there will screw anything with two legs. E’ery time I look at her, it reminds me of an ole nasty streetwalker. And why I murdered my first husband.”
Heaven gave her a questioning stare. “Oh.”
Miss Janie waved her on. “Anyway, I thought I was gonna have to beat that lil’ bitch’s ass six cells down.”
Heaven blinked. “Who, Miss Janie?”
“That lil’ wild child, Clit-something-or another. Ole hot-in-the-ass heifer.”
Heaven laughed. “Miss Janie, what Clitina do to get you all riled up?”
“Cheating on the Spades table, last night. Chile, I was about to reach over and slap the piss, the spit, and the snot outta her, then snatch out her tonsils. That ole black ashy ragamuffin better ask somebody. Then she got the nerve to hop up and call me an old bitch. I thought I was gonna have to pin my wig down real good and show her what this old bitch can do. Two—no three—things you don’t mess over. Bingo, a game of Spades, and my damn wig.”
Heaven couldn’t stop laughing. “Ohmygod, Miss Janie. You are so hilarious.” She wiped tears from her eyes from laughing so hard. “Well, did y’all win?”
“Mmph. You know we did. Me ‘n’ Ethel tore they young asses up.” Ethel was her bunkie and gambling buddy—an older white woman who was also incarcerated
for murdering her husband. She’d run him down in his tractor-trailer.
She and Miss Janie had been cellmates for the last ten years, and best friends ever since. They were the Lucy and Ethel of Croydon Hill. And two of the most feisty, fiery women in the entire prison known for their gambling and cell-brewed “prison hooch.”
“Chile, I had to come up here—Ooh, them damn stairs real bad on my knees—and remind that heifer that payday was Friday. And the bitch better have my money, or interest would accrue by the day.” She puckered her lips and bucked her eyes, putting a hand up on her hip. “What she think, these old hands can’t go in her mouth? Let her not have my coins come payday and see what these hands do.” She reached up and snatched her wig off. “Just like that. I’ma snatch her scalp off.”
