Suzetta Perkins - Déjà Vu

“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.”

The 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.