Can a dead bitch think? My thoughts shifted as soon as my mind mentioned Santiaga to me. Santiaga is my first love. The number one father on the planet. The number one hustler in the streets. The number one ruler of my heart. Santiaga is the only man in the world who when I was eighteen years young and even fifteen years later while all alone in my cell, in the dark, deep into the night, beneath my one blanket, could cause me to shed silent tears.
Suddenly I was yanked out of my thoughts and on the move. I mean, I could not actually feel my feet taking steps, or my heels clicking on the ground beneath me, or mashing the snow, or sliding on ice. But somehow I knew for sure I was moving. I couldn’t see or hear. Everything was pitch-black. But suddenly I was speeding like someone had hit the fast-forward button. Oh shit, it felt like I had puffed some of that Purple Haze and hit the Henny as well.
After a time, I felt myself jerk to a stop, like a car that was just about to run a red light but the driver jammed on the brakes. Still, my high remained. Next, ah shit, I felt a floating feeling. The blinding darkness eased up to a black gray, then an electric blue. Through a type of fog, I could see Santiaga standing right in front of me. Stuck staring, I didn’t say a word ’cause I was struck at how chiseled and handsome and young he looked, even though he was seventeen years deep into serving a life bid. Obviously, he had worked out hard daily for six thousand, two hundred and five days. Yeah, I’m swift with numbers. In fact, my father, Santiaga, was the one who taught me to add, subtract, and multiply like a motherfucker. When I was six, I would be the first one in our Brooklyn projects apartment who would catch Poppa just as he walked through the front door. It was like I could feel him even before I heard his key turning in the locks. Then I would smell the scent of his cologne coming through the tiny space in the door. He would bring home gifts, lay them out on the table, and tell me the cost of each one, one time. Then he would say, “What’s the total?” He’d snap his fingers three times and if I called out the right answer, I got first dibs on whichever gift I wanted to have. And since Santiaga knew me so well, everything he bought, I wanted to keep. Soon he would lay out the gifts, knowing I had mastered that adding-up shit, and then take one item away, and then be like, “Now, what’s the new total?” After I caught on to that subtraction kind’ve lovely, he taught me how to multiply. It was like we would be chilling at the table, or I’d be in the bathroom brushing my teeth and he’d pop up at the washroom door.
“What’s twelve times eight?”
“Ninety-six!” I would say rapidly like he required. No matter how fast I would come up with the answer, he’d be like, “Nah, it took you too long!”
I’d laugh and be like, “It didn’t!! That was quick, Poppa!”
“Not quick enough!” He’d challenge me. “If you want to hang out with me, you gotta be so quick with your times tables that I can’t see you thinking.”
“See me thinking?” I’d ask, still laughing.
“Yep, swift with the right answer and with your game face on.”
“Game face?” I followed up.
“That’s what you call a face that doesn’t reveal what you are thinking or feeling on the inside. Only you should know that. Everybody else shouldn’t.”
After that I mastered multiplication super-rapid response with the right answers. I would also stare in the mirror every morning and every night practicing my game face.
In his cell, Santiaga was getting dressed. He stepped into his boxers, every muscle defined. Even his hands were rough and gorgeous and just the right size. When he turned, I could see the bullet-wound scar on his sculptured abs. His haircut was sharp and he was dapper even in Department of Corrections digs. His eyes were brighter than his atmosphere. His stare was solid, masculine. His complexion was not showing that charismatic glow he flashed naturally before hitting the pen, where there’s rarely any sunshine. But I’ll fix that. I’ll be the one to get him out of here even though he is serving life. Poppa’s release is sure to happen. It was the condition I gave Elisha. The one thing that would cause the whole entire reality show, followed up by a major motion picture, followed up by a television series, followed up by a Winter Santiaga video game, to fall through and be nothing at all. Money makes shit happen. I read the many magazine articles on Elisha and how smart he is. How he had gotten accepted into six of America’s top universities. So in my six days of thinking about my list of demands, the answer to what Winter really wants is, Santiaga. I want my father to be released. I want both of us to come up, back to where we belong. To be the royal high that we were before, but even higher. I bet my whole eight-hundred-thousand-dollar bag on that. Three gunshots later, and the most perfect plan exploded.
I rushed towards Santiaga. His facial expression showed me what I had already figured out the second I arrived in his cell. Poppa cannot see me. Long ago there was a smile that would come to his face and even to his eyes naturally whenever he saw me after not having seen me for a few days or hours even. Here I am standing right in front of him and that smile is not there.
“Poppa,” I spoke, but even I could not hear my own spoken words even though I was speaking them. “Poppa, I…” I moved in close to him and ran my fingers through his hair. My fingertips traced his iconic face. My palms rested on his strong shoulders. Then I touched his fingers and then held his hands. He walked away from me. I followed him and saw that he had a short stack of magazines with a tall stack of letters on top. I dashed to the letters and went to pick one up or push the whole pile over even, in order to grab my father’s attention. I wanted to give him a hint that I am here. But my fingers weren’t working properly. I couldn’t lift the letters up, even though I could see clearly that the letter on top was one of the many letters that I had written to him. My father, Santiaga, and I had remained close even while both being separately incarcerated. I tried to knock everything over but couldn’t.
Now Santiaga was leaning against the cell door looking out the narrow slot. I’m familiar with that stance. How many days had I stood still staring through the cage bars, and then later through the metal door slot. Sometimes staring at the floor because at that moment in lockdown, there was nothing else to do. So I eased towards him. As soon as I did he turned his head. His eyes on the lookout but he didn’t move. I could tell by his gaze he felt something. Like a man who had looked over his shoulder as hustlers gotta do all da time. Then he spun a one-eighty. His feet on pivot. His eyes on search. I ran into his arms, wrapped my arms around his neck, then closed in and hugged him extra tightly. I moved my lips to his ears and said, “Goodbye, Poppa. In all of the whole wide world, you were my favorite person, my best friend, my realest teacher, my deepest love.” I pressed a closed-lip kiss on his lips.
“Santiaga, hands,” the familiar authoritative voice of a corrections officer called through the slot.
“Don’t interrupt!” I screamed. Santiaga walked back to the cell door he had been staring out of a minute ago and put his hands through the slot. C.O. cuffed him.
“Why are you cuffing my father? He’s already locked in!” I yelled. Santiaga drew back his now-cuffed hands.
“This is just a precaution,” the C.O. said, downshifting his tone like he should have in the first place. The heavy cell door slid open.
“Wait, don’t come in here,” I said forcefully. “I need a little more time with my father!” Then I stepped between them and turned to face Santiaga.
“Poppa,” I called out. “Somebody got me! But don’t you worry about who did it. Stay still for me. Don’t kill whoever did it. I’m gonna get you the fuck out of here. I’m gonna put you back where you belong. Trust me, your Baby Girl. Poppa, you did everything in life for me. Now I’m gonna be the one to king you!”
“Bad news…” the C.O. said as though I was not even standing there blocking him from speaking directly to my father. So I started screaming to dead the sound of C.O.’s voice. It must have worked because just as the words “Your daughter…” came out of C.O.’s filthy mouth, I dissolved.