“You better shut your mouth,” I told her without turning around.
“Ms. Santiaga, take it easy. That kind’ve talk will get you in trouble,” the teacher called out.
I didn’t say anything back. Focus on the festival, I told myself. I had agreed to Lina to do that, and to let all the other bullshit go.
“Porsche,” Niecey called me.
“Yeah,” I answered.
“Are you done? Tyler would like to use the scissors and class is almost finished.”
“Oh,” was all I said as I finished up. Then I gathered up my stuff and went back to my seat.
Niecey brought me over the two pieces of yarn I had requested last week. I put nine birds on one string and nine birds on the other. One bird was left over just in case I made a mistake, but I didn’t so far.
With my fingernail, I punched a tiny hole and threaded the spaghetti straps onto the Nefertiti dress and tied four pretty little knots.
I was done.
“You are the best,” Siri whispered to me.
I whispered back, “We made it together. We are the best.” Siri smiled and her pretty white teeth sparkled.
Quietly, I stood up and dropped off my baby blue jumper.
“You’re naked!” one girl yelled out, and everyone turned around.
“So, bitch? We were all naked in the shower this morning, and the warden made girls get naked in the gym. What’s the big deal?” I said it with the Lina kind of calm and casual anger. Siri helped me to put the dress over my head carefully.
“I can see your nipples,” another girl called out laughing.
“I saw yours before, too,” I told her. We were all baby blues.
Ms. Aaronson and Niecey were both now standing on each side of where I was standing. After their tight disciplinary faces faded, their jaws just dropped. Ms. Aaronson said, “Ms. Santiaga, that dress is really quite lovely.” Then she turned towards all of the girls and said with suddenly tear-filled eyes, “You kids are so talented. What a waste, you all being locked up in here.” I wasn’t sure if she was happy or disgusted.
Niecey began slowly clapping for me. Some of the girls started clapping cause Niecey did. Niecey grabbed my little fingers and held my hand. I forgot about my paper dress. Hers was the first human touch I had felt since Momma and Winter. Not the same as someone slapping my face and me punching her lights out and choking her, I thought. But someone touching me like they cared for me, someone other than Siri.
As I walked with her to the front of the class to face everyone and receive “first prize,” which is Niecey’s bragging about me, the beat boxer from the dance class I was teaching gave me a random beat. I started moving my little body, excited to be the center of something good for a change. The girls went wild cheering for me. Even some of my rivals were giving it up. I felt moved by four forces: them, Niecey, the handmade dress, and the beat. Shockingly, Ms. Aaronson caught feelings. She had both her palms laid against her own face in amazement. Maybe that was what was missing from her life, music! As soon as the beat and my dancing began, Ms. Aaronson went from her dead self to being alive. Niecey got amped and started clapping even faster. Soon her hips started wiggling, which triggered the beat boxer to get even more live. Next thing I knew we were all dancing and having a party out of fucking nowhere!
The warden was like a high-powered vacuum cleaner. She sucked the air out of the room, like she was doing right then. It was like she removed the air and the light and now we were all standing in the dark frozen like in freeze tag and unable to breathe.
A fake smile came to the warden’s face. We had never seen that before. Her smile was either nonexistent or crooked, like a villain in a cartoon. Standing behind her was some white adults. It was like she was the wicked wizard and they were her ghost goons.
Warden must’ve had gigantic ears the size of an elephant’s and eyes that could leap out of their sockets and scurry down the hall on their own. How could she see and hear everything? I thought to myself.
“Ms. Aaronson,” the warden said, the first two words spoken since the sudden frozen silence, “give me two minutes, please.” She called our art teacher out. The warden turned and walked out the door. Ms. Aaronson followed her.
One tall like a giraffe white man, with whiter skin than I had ever seen, pale with no pink or red or off-white tint, raised a camera over his eye, his lens aimed in my direction, and I counted twelve clicks.
“You’re not supposed to photograph the children,” Niecey said politely, as though she thought she was making the mistake and not him. “It’s against the law,” Niecey added quietly.
The warden returned swiftly. Ms. Aaronson looked like she had just gotten one of the tongue-whippings that was regular to us. The giraffe ghost had his camera in his hand and almost behind his back, not like he thought that he was the only one who knew that he had a camera, but more like he was pretending that he didn’t just use it.
I looked at Niecey. She didn’t squeal on him. I didn’t really know what to think.
“Little Miss Santiaga,” the warden said to me in an unfamiliar tone without the angry lip-curl thing going on. I didn’t answer back, just stared at her with my eyes widened. “Please follow me,” she said. She was pretending, speaking like it was an invitation that I could choose to accept or reject. I knew it was a command. I was filled with a sudden terror. I had heard stories of girls who got called or sent to the administrative offices who were never seen again. What did she mean, follow me? I was used to being escorted by guards but not the warden! Where was she taking me? Why me, and why not any other girl in my art class? We were all partying together. Damn! It couldn’t’ve been even five minutes, not a real party at all.
Fuck the warden, I thought suddenly.
What about the Diamond Needles? Would they think I crossed them, got myself into trouble and caused the festival to be canceled? Riot said the Diamond Needles don’t fight over boys. So, if she was planning to see some boy at the festival, would she throw me out of the Diamond Needles for getting it all canceled? If she said I was her son, shouldn’t I always be her son? And if the Diamond Needles put me out, did that mean I’d have to start back all the time fighting with Cha-Cha and now the Real Bitches, too? So, I’m unprotected now? Huh!
Then I started thinking greasy. Fuck everybody. I don’t need none of them. If I gotta fight, I fight. So what if I’m not her son no more. I’m not a son anyway, and I hate pretense. If Momma and Winter wasn’t checking on me the whole time I been locked down here, what difference did it make if Riot abandoned me, too?
“Don’t worry, don’t worry . . .,” Siri said softly in my ear.
“Get dressed,” a guard said, handing me a baby blue and pointing me into a private bathroom, which was the first and nicest I had seen or been in, on lockdown. It was a bathroom for one. I was used to group everything now, no privacy. I hesitated. The guard pushed my shoulder from behind. I stepped inside.
Back in my baby blue jumper, I didn’t know what to do with my paper dress. I didn’t want to ruin it or lay it down anywhere and get even one drop of water on it. It had taken me four weeks to design and complete. Four art classes added up to six hours worth of time.
“You got a hanger?” I asked the guard when I opened the door, stepping back into the office where I had been escorted. He laughed one ha. “Nobody wit good sense in all of America would hand you a hanger.” He gave me a stern stare. The giraffe who snapped my photos stepped out from behind a closed door.
“Water closet?” he asked with some funny-sounding English.
“Huh . . . what?” the guard asked him back. Then the giraffe squinted his eyes like he was shitting or like when you want to shit, but you can’t squeeze it out.
“Oh, oh . . .,” the guard responded. Then, he pointed the tall white man to the bathroom I had just come out of.
I thought to myself Funny how the guard was all tough when talking to a bunch of locked-up girls. Now he was talking to some guy who seemed like he could hardl
y speak English and the guard seemed to shrink down to my small size. Then I watched and thought about how the photographer took his camera with him even to the bathroom. Niecey had said it was against the law for him to take photos of incarcerated minors. I wondered if that was true.
If it was, that meant he was a criminal just like us. Would they strip him out of his jeans and cashmere sweater and boots, force him in a freezing shower, give him a medical exam he didn’t want to take and almost touch his thing and pretend they didn’t, the way they did me, I mean us? Would they make him squat and bend or use both his hands to spread his butt cheeks open? Maybe he was in the bathroom inserting the film in his anus or underwear. What type of freak would he have to be to want photos of me that bad? And would the warden lock down the prison including her staff until the illegal film was found?
“Did he come out?” A lady came out of the same door where the photographer had come from at first.
“He’s still in there.” The guard was saying what we could all three easily see.
“We need to move on. The warden is becoming impatient,” the lady said.
“I’ll watch him. She’s ready.” The guard pointed at me.
“Come on, little miss,” the lady motioned to me with her hand.
Terror tripled inside my small body. I counted seven adults seated with serious-looking faces and no smile. There were three on the left, three on the right, plus the warden at the head of the table. With the secretary standing up beside me, and the photographer suddenly reappearing and the guard peering from the half-opened door, there were ten of them.
“I made this dress for the festival. It’s not even for me. It’s for some girls who gonna dance on the stage. I know I wasn’t supposed to try it on, but I wanted everyone to see it so, if the warden said so, the girls could wear it for the talent show,” I explained. I felt nervous. I’d rather be punished like before, forced to wear the red jumper or left naked and locked up in the bottom listening to the music in my mind and dancing alone in the dark, than in this position right now. Surrounded by ten adults.
“I’d like to take a look at your dress if you don’t mind,” a man in a business suit said. The warden interrupted him. So I didn’t make a move.
“Please wait. There are some rules and guidelines we all must follow. I’ve got a shift change to oversee in ninety minutes. So we’re going to make the best use of all our time,” the warden said.
The guard closed the door, minus one. Now there were nine authorities and me in a room behind a closed door. The photographer walked to a chair at the table and sat. The secretary slid the one remaining chair away from the table and over to where I stood.
“Please sit down,” she said to me politely. Her friendly tone made me even more suspicious. I began thinking feverishly.
Maybe, as Riot would say, the warden was pretending for her bosses. Maybe, these people gathered here were in charge of the warden and that’s why she’s acting so human. She wanted her bosses to believe that she was nice and friendly to the “juveniles,” or that she even loved us and cared for us well. Maybe for once the warden was frightened. Maybe she thought I would tell on her, about the way she talked down to all of us and locked us up in the basement and forced us to do things her way without a choice or say-so in our direction.
I was starting to feel a little bit better, believing now that the warden was more frightened than me. In fact, that shit felt good.
“For the record, Porsche Santiaga’s guardian is the State of New York. It’s our responsibility to protect her. This is the reason I have assembled all of the persons to my left. They are each involved in the ongoing protection and care of Miss Porsche Santiaga. Beginning at the head of the table, I’m Warden Strickland, next is Meredith Frankle, Porsche’s legal counsel. Dr. Sally Moldonado is Porsche’s psychiatrist. Karla Bussey is Porsche’s in-house counselor. Dr. Dov Westinthal is a member of our board and also the top donor to our charitable sister organization. Finally, meet Paul McNamara, who is my superior and deputy commissioner. We are all on ‘Team Porsche,’ ” the warden said. I was confused. They were all seated in one room together but now the warden was introducing them as though they were all just meeting.
“That’s not fair,” a lady on the other side of the table said to the warden, with attitude but without yelling.
The warden ignored her and said, “To my right is New York Daily News reporter Edith Kates, New York Times reporter Stephen Black, and lastly, photographer Hans Stanislaus.”
Greek, the warden might as well have been speaking Greek to me. I wish she was speaking pig Latin, Ubbie Dubbie, or Gutta talk, at least then I would’ve understood her. Or maybe it wasn’t that I didn’t understand her, but just that I couldn’t figure out fast enough what was going on. I know I never seen any of the people on the right side of the table before today. The left side was a joke—“Team Porsche,” my lawyer, my psychiatrist, this and that. The only one from “Team Porsche” I had ever seen besides the warden was Ms. Bussey, the in-house counselor, and nobody liked her frontin’ ass. Ask her a question, and she’ll tell you everything else but the fucking answer, boring bitch.
“Hi, Porsche. I’m Edith Kates, the reporter for the New York Daily News, the one who you wrote the letter to.” She was extra polite and soft speaking but I wasn’t blinded by her. I didn’t say nothing back.
“You did write me a letter, didn’t you?” she asked me. I didn’t say nothing.
“As Porsche’s lawyer I must say, she does not have to answer to any questions if she does not want to,” Attorney Frankle said.
Frankle might as well have been Frankenstein to me. Now I could tell she didn’t want me to talk to the reporter. So I definitely would. We always do the opposite of them.
“The commissioner approved this interview. Respectfully, you shouldn’t block the free press,” the New York Times reporter complained.
“If my client does not acknowledge ever having written the letter, there is nothing left to discuss,” the lawyer said. Then eyes shifted back on me. I felt a cold wind coming from the warden. Man, she was cool though. Her face and eyes were blank, clothes so neat and pressed. She had one hand lying on top of a file probably filled with fucking lies about me. I hated files. Her hands were calm, not one finger tapping nervously. I fidgeted some in my chair. My belly was filled with butterflies, and empty of everything else, including today’s lunch, served in the slop house, where I never eat.
“We are scaring her,” Dr. Westinthal said. “Let’s make Porsche feel more welcome. Let’s ask her first what she wants and what she would and would not like to do.”
He was right. More than anybody else, I hated doctors. So even though he was try’na play nice, he was the scariest. I hated doctors. They put me to sleep without my permission, poked needles in my arms, shoved tubes down my throat and even up my nose. I hate doctors. I hate hospitals. I hate anyone who thinks they can touch me without me wanting to be touched. Every time I woke up in a hospital, I’d move my hand beneath the thin cold sheet and place two fingers inside of my vagina, pull them back to my nose and smell it. Then I’d push one finger up just a little further to feel for a piece of skin I first found when exploring myself. I know what rape is. Girls in the group home and up in lockdown whisper about it from time to time. Besides Tiny made it most clear. No matter how few times or how many times rape was discussed, it was something no girl would forget. I check after every doctor, every nurse to make sure they wasn’t poking around in my private parts and spaces after they drugged me.
In my dorm, I recruited a girl everyone called Choo-Choo. When she first heard them calling her that, she cried. She caught a case behind a guy she really liked, who let his friends, who she didn’t like, run a train on her. After a couple months with the bold bitches in the C-dorm, Choo-Choo became the name that she answered to. I stepped up, pulled her in, and held her down. Most importantly, I gave her real name back, Shaleka. Then she got Gutter Girled up with me, Gail, Brianna,
and rest of us, selling sugar.
“Porsche, everyone here has taken the time out of their busy work day to come and talk with you. Are you planning to answer one or two questions? Let’s decide and get this finished so you can join the other girls in their activities,” the warden said as if I was missing out on some type of picnic or double-Dutch competition, something exciting.
“Porsche, may I see the dress that you have there?” the doctor asked me again. I stood up and walked the dress over to him carefully. He held it up by the spaghetti straps, and looked at it like he could even give the dress a medical exam.
“Where did you get it from?” he asked.
“I made it in art class.”
“By yourself?” he asked like he didn’t believe me.
“Yes,” I answered. Siri helped, but I wanted to protect Siri from all of them, so I didn’t bring her up.
“Do you know where your father, Ricky Santiaga, is?” the reporter spoke out suddenly, interrupting the doctor. Pee trickled down my leg and a small piss puddle formed in front of the doctor’s shoe. The people on “Team Porsche” pushed back in their chairs, and stared at the floor, disgusted.
“You should’ve waited for our permission to begin questioning the minor,” the lawyer said. The secretary jumped up from where she had been writing in her pad all along, left the room and returned instantly to soak up my piss with the mop. I ignored the stain streaming down my baby blues.
“No, will you tell me where my father is exactly?” I said, turning towards the reporter while controlling my anger like Lina number 2 does. The reporter looked across the table at “my team.”
“How come the in-house counselor hasn’t given this child this public information concerning her father?” the reporter questioned them.
“The last state case worker who raised the topic of Porche’s family is in a wheelchair now,” Ms. Bussey said with so much anger. “Talking about her family is a trigger for her!”
“So that’s why she’s here,” the reporter said and asked with a mixture of shock and excited curiosity. She looked toward the second reporter.
A Deeper Love Inside: The Porsche Santiaga Story Page 9
