BOUNDLESS (Mama's Story) Read online

  She shrugged. “Tama always gets what she wants. If she wants you, she’ll have you.”

  “Like fuck she will,” I responded. “Nobody can just have me.”

  We got our trays from one end of the buffet line and worked our way up, kitchen workers in aprons and hairnets ladling food onto the partitions. It didn’t look half bad and I was hungry, besides. I imagined myself on the other side of the buffet and that didn’t seem bad, either.

  “You can sit at my table,” Willow said. “Usually, people sit with their colors, but you’re new and you’re my cellmate and you did me a huge solid earlier with the cell search. We’ll see how it goes.”

  “All right,” I said dubiously, balancing my tray with one hand and carrying a cup of water with the other.

  Willow’s table was a raucous assembly of mostly white girls. They eyed me as I set my tray down.

  “This is Wanda, my new cellmate,” Willow said, jerking her thumb at me. “Wanda, meet the girls.”

  “Hello, sugars,” I said, not being able to help the idea that I had been transported back to high school and the popular girls were deciding whether or not I was up to snuff.

  They started talking all at once again as I sat down. Willow slid in beside me and we set to eating. It was simple fare, sure, but it comforted me. I was eating a hot meal. That’s more than I could say before, during my trial. All I got were sandwiches. Compared to that, this was heaven. The corn was buttery, the chicken was well seasoned, and the vegetables were still firm. Whoever was in charge of the kitchen knew what she was doing.

  “This is damn good,” I said, my mouth full of chicken.

  “You should tell Marlee that,” Willow said. “She loves compliments to her cooking.”

  “Marlee?”

  “She’s in charge of the kitchen,” my cellmate said, washing down a bite with a swig of water. “You like cooking?”

  “I do.”

  “Tell Mr. Harrison,” Willow insisted. “They’re always looking for good help in the kitchen. People they can trust. It’s food, after all.”

  “I’ll do that,” I said.

  After dinner, we didn’t have much time until lights out. Willow and I were in our beds when the guards came by, shining their flashlights into our cell to ensure we were really there. As soon as they passed by, Willow slid out of her bed.

  “It’s time,” she said. “Come here.”

  I joined her at her cabinet, where she reverently lifted the garbage bag of contraband from earlier. She unwrapped the towel from around it and jiggled the bag a little, seeming to judge whatever was inside by its weight and consistency. Gingerly, she picked at the knot that closed the bag until it came loose.

  “What is that?” I asked, peering into the plastic bag. It smelled like something cross between the devil’s Kool-Aid and a chemical that would peel the industrial paint right off of the cinderblock walls of the prison.

  “It’s hooch,” Willow told me, her eyes aflame. I’d seen my girls give that kind of look to the customers they had feelings for.

  It struck me that hooch—or any kind of liquor—was firmly against the rules of the prison, but I wasn’t about to bring that up. It’d been way too long since I’d had a drop. I’d been bone dry since the cops had plucked me from my office at the nightclub, through the ordeal of my trial, and in this topsy-turvy time in prison. I deserved a drink, didn’t I?

  I deserved more than a drink.

  “How long have you been making that?” I asked, wrinkling my nose at the odor as Willow jiggled the bag around. I could see some lumpy masses in it, and it made my stomach turn a bit.

  “Little less than a week, now,” she said. “My last batch didn’t turn out so good.”

  “What happened?”

  “Got caught.” The beads on her braids clacked as she shrugged. “They put me in solitary as punishment. Solitary just made me thirstier. And irritated at whichever bitch ratted me out.”

  I knew how the idea of getting thirstier went. I also wondered how Willow figured that somebody told on her. Honestly, that smell told on itself.

  “So what do you put in it?” I asked.

  Willow leveled a look at me. “Why are you so interested?” she demanded. “You gonna snitch on me, too?”

  “Hell, no,” I protested, planting my hands on my hips. “As long as you plan on giving me some to drink. If you tell me that you have hooch and you deny me the right to drink, I’ll sing like a fucking canary. I’m thirstier than you could possibly imagine.”

  Willow snorted. “You’re new here,” she said. “You don’t know what thirsty is yet. There are lots of ingredients in it. The most important ones are fruit, sugar, bread, and water.”

  Could it be as simple as that? Willow held the bag open for my inspection, eyeing the door to our cell in case she needed to snatch it away in a hurry. I looked at the contents. It’d been a long time since I’d had a drink, but what was floating in that bag wasn’t appetizing at all. I could even see what looked to be mold covering one of the chunks in the liquid. At such close quarters, the odor became an absolute stench.

  “And people drink this?” I asked, recoiling in spite of how eager I’d been.

  Willow jerked the bag away from me. “You don’t have to drink any, you know, if you’re so picky.”

  I snagged her wrist, stopping her. “I’m sorry. I know I can’t afford to be picky anymore. I—I would like to try it.”

  “Damn right you do,” Willow declared. “Now hold this.”

  She gave me a pitcher with a shirt stretched over it before slowly pouring the contents of the bag through the shirt. I did my best not to gag at the smell of rot. I wanted this, didn’t I? It wouldn’t do to offend Willow anymore than I already had. I had to live with her, after all.

  The shirt acted as a filter and caught the bigger chunks—the fruit and bread, I surmised. The rest of the liquid dripped softly into the pitcher.

  Once she’d poured the contents of the bag completely out, Willow gathered the chunks up in the shirt and deposited it into the trash bag. It helped a little bit with the terrible odor, but the liquid in the pitcher still stank. I didn’t know how I was going to be able to stomach it, but my brain demanded that I find I way. I wanted this. No, I needed this. I wanted the buzz, I wanted to take the edge off. This could maybe even help me forget that I was in prison for a time.

  “It’s a little tough to stomach, at first,” Willow said, taking the pitcher from me and giving me a plastic cup to hold. “Especially if you’re not used to it. And you’re not. You’re new. But it’ll do the trick. Trust that.”

  I tried not to gag as Willow poured a few fingers of the foul liquid into the cup. Now that I was even closer to tasting it, it smelled worse, making my throat close.

  “Bottoms up,” Willow said helpfully.

  I wanted this, I told myself. I did. I needed this. The shit that had happened in the holding cell during my trial—that was an anomaly. That was simply because I’d stopped drinking. I never had to stop drinking, now. I could sink into a stupor any time I wanted with Willow’s simple recipe for hooch.

  I tipped the cup back and emptied it into my mouth, pushing past the disgusting taste, the wretched burn on my tongue and scorch down my throat all the way to my belly. I came up gasping and choking, coughing as the hateful brew curdled in my stomach.

  “Quiet,” Willow hissed, trying to shush me. I grabbed my pillow and tried to mask my coughing with that, relieved when the fit passed and the hooch stayed firmly in my stomach.

  “Holy shit,” I said quietly. “Holy shit.”

  “I make a good hooch, Wanda,” Willow said, winking at me. “Stick with me, and you’ll never be thirsty again.”

  I thanked whatever God was looking out for me for getting me paired with the girl who could keep me in as much liquor as I could drink.

  “More,” I suggested, offering my cup.

  “She likes it,” Willow observed, her eyes glowing. She poured me some more,
then took a draught herself straight from the pitcher. “Goddamn, that is good. I don’t know what it was, but there’s a higher alcohol content in this one.”

  “How can you tell?” I asked, throwing back the hooch in my cup.

  “Less rotten taste, more gasoline taste,” she said wisely, filling my cup again.

  “Aren’t you going to save some?” I asked, eyeing the dwindling pitcher and draining my cup.

  “I’ll just start another brew as soon as I get the materials,” Willow said. “The jig’s up if the guards smell it. It’s hard to keep it concealed once it’s out of the garbage bag.”

  “So maybe last time the guards just smelled it,” I suggested.

  “Or maybe someone snitched,” Willow retorted, taking another drink straight from the pitcher. “I don’t give a fuck as long as I have my hooch.”

  “I’ll toast to that,” I said, holding my cup out for a refill.

  We had the hooch dispatched and secured in the trash bag before the guards came around again to check on us. Even with me lying down in bed to pass the check, my world was still spinning. The hooch was strong, and I’d had a lion’s share of it. This was what I needed. This feeling of being away from reality. This was what I craved.

  “They’re gone,” Willow said, sitting up again. “You feeling it?”

  “Feeling it?” I repeated. “I’m fucked up, sugar.”

  She laughed. “That’s what I want to hear.”

  “So what are you in here for?” I asked, smacking my lips. Now that I was used to it, the taste of the hooch wasn’t so bad.

  “Drugs,” Willow said. “That’s my poison of choice, but getting drugs in prison is another animal. I’ve been in and out my whole life, but this stint is going to be longer.”

  “How come?”

  “Because I’d just scored a shit ton of coke when I got caught,” Willow said, sounding almost sad. I wondered if she was sad that she got caught, or sadder that she’d left all that coke on the outside. “Enough to be charged with intent to distribute. Yep. I’m going to be here for a good long while. It’s been kind of like a second home to me, though.”

  I started to ask her another question, but stopped as her face twisted, shifted, changed.

  “What’s wrong?” Willow asked, but it wasn’t my cellmate anymore. It was Johnny French, in the flesh.

  “You’re what’s wrong,” I told him. “You could’ve sent me a lawyer, at least. Try to keep your ass out of the hot seat. I would’ve appreciated it, Johnny. I would’ve lied for you, too, if you’d shown me one ounce of fucking courtesy. I thought I deserved that with as much as I did for you through the years.”

  “How would I have done that?” he asked, stroking his smooth chin. He had to shave twice a day to keep it that silky, I knew. I used to shave it for him after we got through with sex and he got cleaned up, ready to put his cop’s face back on to complete his shift.

  “You would’ve found a way,” I said. “You always find a way, Johnny. Shit. I’m disappointed in you. I can barely stand to look at you.”

  “Then stop looking,” he said, grinning. He knew I couldn’t stop. He knew that I actually liked him, unlike the customers I’d simply pretended to like. I hated him having that on me.

  “I’m not going to stop looking, as long as you’re here,” I said. “Why don’t you come here, honey? Give Mama a kiss.”

  “I think that probably counts as contraband,” he said, but he sidled closer all the same.

  “Am I a bad influence on you, Johnny?” I asked coquettishly, licking my lips at his broad shoulders, his dark hair. He always set my heart beating, always.

  “You’re the worst,” he said, smoothing my wild hair, tracing the line of my jaw with his fingers. “You make me a dirty cop, Mama.”

  “Not yet I haven’t,” I said. “But I’ll make you dirty. You just watch.”

  I kissed him, probing his mouth with my tongue, stroking his own tongue gently with mine in the way that drove him crazy. He slipped his hands into my jumpsuit, working me out of it, palming my large breasts. They’d always been big, even when the rest of me hadn’t matched. Johnny loved them, loved tweaking my purple nipples until they stood out, hard nubs. He put his mouth on them, teasing them with his tongue, nibbling them with his teeth. It drove me nuts, made me wetter than anything else.

  “I’ve missed you, Johnny,” I breathed, pushing his hand down between my legs. “Touch me, sugar. It’s been so long since you’ve come to see me like this. Make me feel good.”

  “The door swings both ways,” he said, smiling against my mouth, rolling my clit between his fingers. I arched my back at his demanding touch, my body having no alternative other than to respond to his every touch. He wormed first one finger, then two into my slick pussy, seeking out my G-spot and finding it with deadly accuracy. He always knew just what to do to get me off, treated the idea of getting me off as just a part of the routine. I’d known customers who stopped as soon as they got their jollies with me, but not Johnny. Johnny kept going until we were both satisfied.

  “You know I’ll take care of you, sugar,” I said, my head lolling at the liquor and the pleasure, my breathing ragged, my body right on the edge of ecstasy. Then, it came all crashing down, my climax shattering me into a million pieces. It had been so long, so long since someone had given this to me. I’d had no idea I’d needed it so badly.

  “Now you, sugar,” I said, parting my legs for him, drawing him to me, taking his hard cock from his trousers.

  “Seeing you,” he said, caressing my sensitive breasts. “That was enough for me. I don’t need another thing.”

  “I want to, Johnny,” I said breathlessly, hooking his body with my legs and bringing him right to my entrance. If he could feel that warmth and that wetness, he wouldn’t be able to resist me.

  His eyes fluttered closed and he thrust forward, penetrating me with one swift, smooth moment. Oh, God. It felt incredible. I could make any man believe he was incredible in bed, but I didn’t have to pretend a goddamn thing with Johnny. He was perfect in every way. I had practically already forgiven him for keeping his distance during the trial.

  “Fuck me, sugar,” I gasped as he thrust into my violently. It’d been a long time for him, too, apparently. “Yes, sugar, fuck me good. Yes. Yes.”

  “You’ve always been mine,” Johnny said. “Always.”

  We finished at the same time, my second orgasm less desperate and less life altering than the first, but no less welcome. My Johnny had come back to me. Life was good.

  He withdrew from my body, leaving me feeling creamy and sticky, but I didn’t mind. It belonged to Johnny. It was all him. It was all I wanted.

  “I’ve gotta go, Mama,” he said, his face sad as he pulled on his uniform again.

  “Why?” I asked. “We have hours. We have years. Stay here with me.”

  “You’re in prison,” he reminded me. “And I’m a cop. It can’t work.”

  “We can make it work,” I protested, gathering my jumpsuit around myself. All I wanted to do was fall asleep in his arms. That’s all. Was that so illegal, so wrong?

  “It’s not going to work, Mama,” he said, but it wasn’t Johnny French anymore. His face was morphing into someone I didn’t recognize, his body shrinking away from me.

  “What’s happening?” I asked.

  “What’s happening?” the little boy in front of me asked. “Where are you going, Mama?”

  Jesus. My own son. I hadn’t recognized my own son. It’d been long—too long. I didn’t want him to see me this drunk, but I couldn’t turn him away. I didn’t have any kind of choice.

  “Come here, baby,” I said, holding my arms out, relieved that I wasn’t naked in front of my child. “Mama’s here. You come give your Mama a big hug. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “You left before,” my sweet child said. “You left me.”

  “Marshall, I left to make sure we had a good life,” I said. “I did it for you, baby.”


  He shook his head. “I wanted to go with you, Mama,” he said. “Why didn’t you take me with you?”

  “You couldn’t go where I was going, baby,” I said. Especially since where I was going ended up here, in prison. “I need you to understand that.”

  “I want my Mama,” he said, that full bottom lip getting puffier and puffier as he pouted, the tears brimming in his eyes.

  “No, no,” I said, enveloping him in my arms. “None of that. I don’t want any crying, you hear me? Not here. Not when Mama’s here. Mama’s here, baby boy. She’s here.”

  I rocked my precious son in my arms, hugging him tightly. I’d left for him, tried to make a living so that we never had to worry about money again. The nightclub, everything, was for him. I wanted to make a good life for us both.

  “You left me,” he sobbed. “You left me.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” I said. “I’m right here, baby. Look at Mama. I’m right here, son.”

  But he wouldn’t stop crying. It broke my heart. He clung to me, but I gently extricated myself, holding him at arm’s length to get a look at his face.

  It wasn’t my son.

  “Cocoa?” I asked, in absolute disbelief. “Is it you?”

  “It’s me, Mama,” she sobbed, hiccupping for breath, wiping the tears from her cheeks even as they continued to fall.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked. Cocoa had been something of a lieutenant to me in the nightclub. She’d been my liaison between the business side of the nightclub and the personnel—my girls. She told them things I asked her to, and became like another mother to several of them. I trusted her—I used to trust her—with everything. Whenever we took on a new girl at the boarding house, it was Cocoa I always put her with. Cocoa was patient and kind and always showed the girls what they were supposed to be doing—if not by telling them outright, then by showing them through her example. She was one of the most talented, highest paid girls in the nightclub.

  But then, she betrayed me.

  “You betrayed me,” I said, scooting away from her. “You fucked me over, Cocoa. Why?”

  “I didn’t,” she said sadly, shaking her head. “I’d never, Mama. It was you who betrayed me.”