MAMI ✔️

Chapter Two

SANTIAGO'S POV

"Delgado, rise and shine." Callahan, the CO on night duty yells banging on my cell.

He knows I am already awake but he always makes sure that waking me is a whole dramatic moment.

I sit up from my bed, after saying my morning prayers and tuck my cross back into my green uniform. I step out of my cell and join my fellow inmates as we file out of the cells in a single line. The rest of the prison is dead silent, as it should be since it three am in the morning. I can hear a few inmates talk in their sleep as we pass their cells and I know they are not having good dreams. Prison is hell on earth so having good dreams while incarcerated is impossible.

"Time to get to work boys, don't burn anything down. I'll be watching you." Callahan demands as he turns the lights on in the kitchen and ushers us in.

I have been working in the prison's kitchen for the past one year and it's by far the best job I've ever had while incarcerated. Sure, the hours are long since I have to be awake from three and work till noon but it pays the best and keeps me occupied for half my day. While behind bars one has few options to keep their mental stability and working is one of them. It gives me purpose, something worth looking forward to each day before I go crazy.

Cooking has also aways had a special place in my heart. Before my mom passed away when I was ten, my fondest memories with her were those where we spent hours in the kitchen cooking and baking. Whenever I am cooking, I am always reminded of her and the joy she brought into my life and that gives me hope for a future when I am done serving my sentence.

I pick up my white apron, check the ingredients required to be prepped for breakfast and get to work. Breakfast is at 4.30 am thus why we have to wake up so early.

"Chop chop boys, we have six hundred mouths to feed." Ronald demands.

Ronald, the head chef, if he can even be called that is an inmate as well, in for two counts of murder serving life without parole. He was a chef on the outside, at some fancy restaurant so he took up the job as a cook when he landed behind bars. He is a cocky son of a bitch but he is good at what he does given the limited resources.

We don't interact much outside the kitchen but that's how I like things. We are in prison and not on a vacation. Rules are to keep your head down, mouth shut and try to live out your sentence. I've been in the slammer for the past three years and I've got two more to go. It's been the longest three years of my life but my life before I was sentenced was not all sunshine and rainbows anyway. I also have my own people on the inside and we look out for each other so it makes life in prison a little easier when I know someone has my back.

Time passes quickly as I work with my fellow inmates to make breakfast for the whole prison. It's nothing fancy, cereal, slices of bread, skimmed milk, jelly, margarine, sugar packets and a banana is all. Ronald fought really hard to get the quality of food improved and comparing the menu now and what it was two years ago shows he has done a good job. Don't get me wrong, the food we eat here is nothing fancy but its edible and well-cooked unlike before.

My first year in prison was rough, we had to eat terrible food and suffer brutality from the CO's. Things have calmed down now that we have a new warden as of a few weeks ago but prison is still prison. We have fights daily and riots at least once a week but nothing major. Being behind high security fences makes us inmates go stir crazy and at times we need to let some steam out. If we were perfect human beings we would be on the outside with our family and friends, not behind walls like animals in a cage.

"Delgado, you are on serving duty today." Ronald yells getting my attention.

I nod, clean my hands and get in line with the other three assigned to serve. I get the bread. The breakfast announcement booms over the speakers and three minutes later we have inmates queuing up to get their first meal of the day.