If I Should Die Before I Wake . . .
56
(Two years earlier, December 25 . . .)
“Okay, sweetheart, you gotta trust me on this shit.” Kita was a third-year medical school student who’d been workin’ in the women’s ward at the prison to finish up her residency or whatever the fuck they called it. She was one of the few people who actually took really good care of me during my pregnancy. She felt the worst ’bout what happened to initially even get my ass locked up, and e’reday when she could see me by myself all we’d talked ’bout was findin’ a way to legally get my case appealed. When dat fell through an’ every appeal I turned in got turned down, she started tryin’ to find ways for me to get out illegally. Kita could lose her financial aid and all her school shit by doin’ this, so even though my ass was scared as hell I wasn’t gonna let her down.
“This is some experimental shit we been workin’ on in lab back at Old Dominion. We’ve tried it a few times on animals, small pigs, and I’m gonna write my thesis on it and maybe earn myself an article in the Medical Journal. It’s gonna slow down your heart jus’ long enough for you to flat line. It disrupts the electrical transmitters that the EKG machine picks up on. But never mind; that shit’s technical. Anyway, in three hours you’ll go right back to normal. You still gon’ be breathin’; it’ll jus’ be extremely shallow. So shallow nobody will even be able to notice.”
We were sittin’ in the post-delivery intensive care ward, if that’s what you wanna call it. It was really just an area of the prison that they’d sectioned off with a few raggedy-ass hospital beds that had curtains in between ’em, but since there weren’t a whole lot of pregnant women up in there it was pretty much all mine. A few days ago I’d been stabbed in my cell by my cellmate—the shit sent me into labor a couple weeks prematurely, but me and my baby were both some fighters and we made it out okay.
Kita was still goin’ in, explainin’ the plan to get me out. A plan she’d come up with one day outta the blue after my last appeal was finally turned down an’ a few of the other inmates started gettin’ hostile toward me.
Some shit went down where some of Rah’s product was supposed to be killin’ people out on the street. They was up in here takin’ they anger out on me ’cause I was picked up wit’ a loaded car full of his shit, even though my ass ain’t even know it was there. But shit like that doesn’t matter on the streets. When somebody lose a junkie cousin, brother, or auntie to some bad dope, first thing they wanna do is take out anyone they think coulda gave it to ’em. My question was always why couldn’t they ass be as gung-ho ’bout takin’ the damn needle or pipe from the person as they was ’bout takin’ someone’s life over that person?
“It’ll be jus’ like havin’ one of those dreams where you can’t move an’ shit, but you’ll be able to hear an’ feel everything.”
Damn, she is still goin’. I needed to pay attention. I nodded, intent on keepin’ my ass focused this time. The baby ripped me wide da fuck open wit’ her water-head self when she came out. She ain’t get that big ol’ thang from me. I’m blamin’ all that dome piece on her damn daddy. I was pretty sure my meds must’ve been wearin’ off ’cause the stitches and the knife wound in my side was all startin’ to throb again. Thinkin’ about my baby made my eyes burn and I could feel the tears comin’. I started blinkin’ quickly, tryin’ not to cry, and counted the dirty yellow an’ white checkerboard tiles along the ward floor. Some were cracked and peelin’ up—others were broken in half, just like my family right now. We were separated and torn all apart. I’d do anything to hold my li’l girl and my man again. Fuckin’ worthless-ass prison bitches threw her in my arms and snatched her away before my blood was wiped off’a her or her umbilical cord was even cut.
“I’ma need you to be dat bitch, Honey. ’Cause they gonna tag you, bag you, and put yo’ ass in the morgue, but you jus’ keep thinkin’ ’bout yo’ li’l girl, okay?”
“I . . . I’m gonna be in there wit’ dead bodies?” Jus’ thinkin’ ’bout not bein’ able to move, freezin’ inside a dead person storage locker, zipped up inside a body bag gave me chills. I was pro’ly gonna have nightmares ’bout this shit for the rest of my life.
“You’ll be fine, Honey. My homeboy is wit’ the coroner’s office—he know what’s up. Javis gonna get to you within the first half-hour of me declaring you dead ’cause you’ll need to be put on oxygen ASAP. If we can help it you ain’t neva’ gonna make it to the freezer. You jus’ gonna be in the morgue part—that’s where they sit the bodies. Then it’s a new ID, new name. New life.”
“All right, you know I’ma do what it take to get back to Paris an’ Rah. I ain’ gonna do shit to get either of y’all caught for helpin’ me. I’ll even cut the skin off the tips of my fingers, like I seen some of the lifers up in here done did, if I have to so they can neva’ link the ‘new me’ back to the me you talkin’ to right now.”
“Girl, you jus’ find your baby, get to your man, an’ live the life you was meant to live.”
I closed my eyes, ’cause the pain from everything, from my wounds to my heart, was now too much to ignore, and the thought about the letter Kita had me write to Rasheed a few minutes earlier was just now startin’ to sink in. In order for everything to work, everyone, including my love, had to believe I was dead. He could take care of Paris until I healed up and then we could all finally be together as a family. He was gonna be mad as hell at me for scaring him like this—I could already hear him cussin’ me out now—but in the end it would all be worth it.
“All right, li’l momma, give me your arm.”
Kita dipped a cotton ball in alcohol and I jumped when the cold cotton touched my bare skin. Visions flashed before me of the man I loved smilin’ as he looked down for the first time at the li’l girl we’d made. I focused on what I wanted. This prison shit was the bad dream and when I woke up I’d be waking up back in my normal life.
“You’re gonna feel a little pinch. Now start counting backward from one hundred, and when you wake up . . .”
I closed my eyes, holding the image of the baby girl I’d just named and let go of, remembering the smile of the man I’d loved and held on to.
“One hundred, ninety-nine, ninety-eight . . .”