The Come Up (Book II) : PRODIGY

Chapter 34: Flashbacks

I remember the day Pookie came to visit me in prison, a few days after Flex and Ms. Sasha got shot up in the Ville. I was sitting on my bed in that grey cold cell by myself while my cellmate had clean up duty for starting a fight in the lunch room the previous day. I remember something dripping from the ceiling of my cell. Some kind of dirty water running from one of the pipes above my bed. I remember that dripping pipe was only one of the thousand reasons I couldn't sleep that night. I had moved my pillow out of the way and tried to sleep curled up in a ball so I wouldn't feel the cold moldy water drip on my legs. 

I had gathered a cough that stayed with me for a few weeks. I was never really sick, just always cold and so the cough came and went. I remember stifling that cough in the night as not to wake my cellmate who seemed cool with me but had the temper of an abusive alcoholic father. Nevertheless, I was never his target. And he was only my cellmate for a month before getting transferred out to a more longterm prison. That morning, during his clean up duty I was sitting on the bare bed with no sheets. I set the sheets out to dry by hanging them on a part of the shelf above my bed. They wouldn't be clean but at least they wouldn't be wet. 

I remember looking at my black shoes that had developed holes right at the tip. I think the holes might have always been there but were now becoming more pronounced as the sentence went on. I remember getting up from the bed, rotating my shoulders, cricking my neck and getting down on the ground to do some push-ups. 

I remember my rough hands touching the damp and dirty prison floor as I got in the proper form. 

One. 

Two. 

As I make my way down and push back up, the stench of piss on the floor comes up with me and my nose burns, though I am used to all of this already. 

Three. 

Four. 

Five. 

Si- 

"Inmate." I heard one of the guards. My eyes reach his black shoes and then my eyes trail up to his face. I remain in a planking position. He wasn't one of the guards I had a relationship with, the other guards knew my name and they knew I hated to be called that and they didn't do it.

The name was never one I would ever let myself get used to. But I answered when they called, I kept my head down, I was good. The goal was to make it out as quickly as possible. 

"Yes." I respond. 

"Stand up." He says harshly. 

I get to my feet and breathe out, my face close to the bars. 

The other guards wouldn't speak to me in that tone either. They knew I didn't like it. They knew I listened and they knew it wasn't necessary. 

"You have a visitor." He said. His dark black eyebrows shading his smaller brown eyes. His white skin looked pudgy, like bad pudding. 

He opened the cell and walked me down the hallways. 

I remember hoping it was Chanel coming to see me, coming to talk about the entire thing, needing my help somehow, needing my comfort. I remember battling myself with how to react to her, how to react to the entire thing. 

The guard opens the doors to the glass cut outs with the phones in each booth and directs me to booth number 6. 

As I walk to booth number 6, I can't make out the person because their back is turned away from the window and they can't stop moving. They shake out their leg like a dog would after it pees. They stretch out their arms, jumps twice and breathes.