“Wrong,” she said, looking up to eye the house again. “I’ve had these cards in my hands all along and didn’t want to play them, but enough is enough. It’s over, Eric. Our marriage is so over.”
“Jaime—”
“Sign the fucking papers, Eric,” she snapped coldly, before ending the call.
Aria came down the stairs and pulled Jaime into a tight sisterly embrace.
In that moment it felt damn good to have a friend.
Chapter 13
“I’m in jail. How did I get here?”
Renee knew the answer to that question literally. The police had hauled her to the city jail after she’d started to drive her car into Inga’s in a drunken rage and then crashed it into the wall surrounding the entrance to Richmond Hills.
But how did my life get here? To this point, she wondered, looking around the small barren cell as she sat on the metal bench attached to the wall. It was little more than a metal slab with a thin mattress. She looked out between the bars but saw nothing beyond her prison.
She shifted her eyes over when her cell mate began to moan from her spot huddled in a ball on the opposite bunk. This was Renee’s first jail experience, but she knew the overly thin girl was going through withdrawal from some drug she was hooked on.
Renee released a heavy breath and crossed her arms over her chest as she rested her head against the wall. One of the jailers had already told her she was in there for the weekend until her bail hearing sometime Monday.
She hated it. The smell of it. The dreary sight of it. All of it.
But she knew she deserved nothing less.
She flinched as the sound of the metal crashing against the walls replayed in her head. The feel of her head crashing into the glass replayed. She would never forget it.
“I could have killed her,” Renee whispered to herself. “Oh my God, I could have taken a life. Her and her baby’s life.”
She was utterly ashamed of herself. Her drinking. Her anger. Her life.
Everything had spiraled horribly out of control because she’d put all of her control and common sense aside for alcohol.
Even now her mouth watered at the thought of alcohol. Her addiction cried out for it.
Her cell mate rolled over and raised her head just enough to vomit. Renee turned her head from the sight of it and held her breath from the smell as she moved her feet to keep the liquidly vomit from running close to her bare feet.
Arrested for driving under the influence in nothing but a robe and in a cell with a junkie? Renee knew her life had truly hit bottom.
She rose to her feet, her body aching everywhere as she moved to the bars keeping them locked in their cells like animals in cages. “Jailer,” she called out, her hand lightly gripping the bars.
“Pssst.”
Renee looked over at the cell across from her. A big butch-looking bitch with shoulders just as broad as Jackson’s made a V with her fingers and then licked between them. “Looking good in that robe,” she said, her eyes burning holes.
Renee looked down and saw that her robe was slightly ajar and her cleavage showing. Frowning in disgust, Renee tightened her robe. “Jailer,” she called again.
“Don’t knock it ’til you try it, fish,” her admirer said.
Renee fought her tears and her fears.
“Wish you was in my cell, fish, I’ll bang that pussy real good.”
“Who’s calling me?” the jailer called down the long row separating the cells of the city prison.
“Me. Mrs. Clinton,” Renee called down between the bars.
A short and plump woman with braids walked up in her uniform. “Yes,” she asked, not at all sounding like she was in the mood to be bothered.
“Um, she’s throwing up,” Renee said, pointing to her cell mate shivering on the floor. “I think she needs medical attention.”
“That ain’t what she needs,” her admirer called over.
Several female prisoners laughed from the cells.
The jailer looked past Renee to the woman on the floor. “I’ll get someone in to clean it,” she said, turning away.
“Um, excuse me, but can I have something to change into?” she asked in a whisper.
“When you get transferred to Clinton they’ll give you a uniform,” she said, but she cut her eyes over to the other cell, seeing the butch eyeing the imprint of Renee’s body through the thin silk. “But I’ll bring you a blanket.”
“Thank you,” Renee said, moving back deeper into her cell.
“You haven’t made a call yet, have you?”
Renee shook her head as she reclaimed her seat on the bench. “I don’t have anyone to call,” she said.
The jailer shrugged and walked away.
Call who? Jackson? And be hurt and devastated if he was angry that she even thought about doing something that would kill his unborn child? She couldn’t handle that.
Aria? And say what? I’m still here in jail.
Her kids? Renee shook her head, biting her bottom lip. She refused to have her children accepting collect calls from a jail. She refused to integrate that into their lives and their knowledge base.
Renee absolutely refused.
“Pssst. Fish. Open your legs and just let me eyeball that pussy.”
Renee ignored her and silently said a Hallelujah and thank God they didn’t share cells. She used to work out regularly and was pretty strong, but Renee wasn’t sure she could take that big bitch.
What if I don’t get out for weeks? Months? Years?
That thought weakened her to her core.
Jackson and his bullshit wasn’t worth jail time. Who would be a mother to her children while she languished away in a prison?
What effect will my shit have on them? What have I done to my children? What will they face because of me?
Renee dropped her head into her hands. “Forgive me,” she begged, her tears wetting her hands.
The nights in the jail were no better. The darkness seemed to hold secrets and encourage fears.
Renee tried her best to find comfort on the thin, plastic-covered mattress on the bench and some warmth under the coarse, plain-smelling blanket that scratched her skin more than it comforted her.
The laughter of the jailers filtered to their cells, mingling in the air with the moans and vomiting of her cell mate, the off-key singing of someone from a distant cell, and the grunts of the dyke across from her as she openly masturbated.
All of that coupled with her craving for a drink kept sleep from her.
Renee tried her very best to close her eyes as she used the side of her arms as a makeshift pillow.
“I’m so cold. It’s so cold.”
Renee raised her head to look over at the shadow of her cell mate on the opposite bunk. Her voice was weak and shaky. It scared her.
Flinging back her cover, Renee sat up. “Are you okay?” she asked.
“I’m so cold. And it hurts. It hurts so bad.”
Renee gathered up her blanket and moved to lay it across the woman’s thin figure on the mat. The scent of shit and vomit and unwashed hair rose up. Renee gagged.
She rose to her feet and moved back to the bars. “Jailer,” she called out, resting her head against the bars.
“Psst, fish.”
“Shut the hell up,” Renee snapped. “No, I do not want you to eat my pussy. No, I do not care how good my ass and titties look in this robe. No, I’m not gay, can’t be turned gay, and wouldn’t choose you if I was gay . . . so get the fuck over it!”
“That’s what they all say.”
Renee didn’t know if she had just made a prison enemy or turned the dyke on even more.
A tall and thin jailer walked up to her cell. “Yes?”
“Can I get another blanket?” she asked.
She shook her head. “We’re at full capacity so we’re all out.”
Renee didn’t even put up a fight as she turned and walked back to sit on the bench.
“You can take you
r blanket back. I don’t need both,” came the muffled reply from beneath the blanket.
Renee shook her head. “I’ll be fine.”
The thin and weak laugh surprised her. “Nobody ever gave me shit in life so thank you.”
“No problem.”
The off-key serenade continued into the silence. “If you don’t know me by now . . .”
“I really wish she would shut the fuck up,” her cell mate said suddenly, her voice barely audible beneath the blankets.
Renee laughed.
“You will never never never know me . . .”
Renee laughed harder.
Her cell mate moved the covers off her face. “Shit, I stink. I’m choking my damn self under this cover,” she joked.
Renee smiled, looking down at the thin and sallow face in the little bit of light from the hall. “How can you crack jokes at a time like this?” she asked.
“Time like what? Sheeit. This bougie shit is heaven compared to other city jails like Newark,” she said. “Besides I’m home. I been in and out of jails since I was thirteen.”
Renee opened her mouth but then closed it.
“Because it’s better being in jail than bein’ beat and raped by your own fucking father,” she said, answering Renee’s unspoken question.
Renee frowned in the darkness. “What’d you do to get locked up?”
“I shoplift a lot and obviously I either ain’t good at it or I really do love these three hots and a cot because I get caught a lot.” She laughed again. “But this time my old man and me was arguing in the parking lot at the mall and I missed and stabbed him when he hit me.”
Missed and stabbed him? What the hell?
“Don’t worry, I ain’t violent or nothing,” she said, shifting to sit her frail frame up on the mat.
No, you’re not violent. You just miss and stab people. Yeah. Okay.
“He fought me like a dog in the street over which store to boost from,” she said. “I done tricked to help get that nigga high and he was beating on me and . . . and it reminded me of my sperm donor and all the ass cuttings I took from his no-good ass. No not more. Not for me.”
Renee realized she couldn’t judge her. She snapped and thought about driving headfirst into the car of her husband’s pregnant mistress.
They both were addicts.
They both were in jail.
Who was she to judge?
“I bet a lot of women locked up behind some man’s bullshit, just like me and you,” Renee admitted, revealing that and nothing more. The last thing she needed was a jailhouse confession coming back to haunt her.
“Hmph. But I’ll tell anybody not to let it get you to that point. You know?” she asked, bending over suddenly.
Renee turned her head, thinking she was about to vomit again.
Her cell mate swallowed hard. “I been getting high since I was sixteen. That’s fifteen fucking years.”
Renee’s mouth fell open. The woman looked more like she was fifty-one than thirty-one.
“And you know what? Not one shot or sniff or lick of dope made me forget that shit my Daddy did to me. Trust me, I tried to fuck up on enough dope to forget my name was Basheera but it never worked. Never.”
Renee thought of her own love of alcohol. She’d gone from a casual drinker to an alcoholic because she couldn’t handle life. She didn’t want to handle it. She’d come to a fork in the road and chosen the easy way out and it never worked. Never.
“Will y’all shut the fuck up over there?”
“Will you suck a dick and call it Rick?” Basheera called back even as she shivered and pulled the cover around her small frame.
Renee dropped her head in her hands and smiled before she fell silent, lost in her thoughts, her regrets, and her prayers.
Renee ran her hands through her hair, feeling the dry texture of her natural curls as she paced the short length of her cell. She breathed deeply, trying to beat off the desire to taste alcohol. She craved it and the deep sleep she would slip into because of it.
Renee sighed, turning to look over her shoulder at Basheera’s empty bed. Sometime late last night they’d finally transferred her to a hospital for medication to deal with her withdrawal. Renee actually missed the communication from someone she probably would have never fraternized with on the outside.
“Good Lord, I’m even thinking like a lifelong criminal,” she muttered, pulling her robe tighter around her frame as her admirer across the hall turned in her sleep.
What is going to happen to me? she wondered as she looked around the cell, hating that it had already become familiar to her in a way.
Renee glanced across the cell and then down at the shiny metal commode in the corner. With the lascivious lesbian always peering into her cell like a Macy’s window display during the Christmas season, Renee had gotten quite good at holding her pee. She hurried to fling up her robe and squat over the commode, hating how the sound of her urine echoed inside the bowl. She rolled her eyes heavenward as she finished.
“I can give you a real golden shower.”
Renee gladly flushed to mask the harassment from across the hall. Fucking pervert, Renee thought as she washed her hands. Not because of her sexual orientation but her relentless pursuit.
“Clinton. You have a visitor,” a male jailer said at the door.
Renee looked up at the stained mirror, her curiosity clear in the depths of her eyes. Her eyes took in everything. The puffiness of her face from her tears. The darkness around her eyes from stress and lack of sleep. The wrinkled and disheveled state of her robe. The lopsided lean of her hair from sleeping on that side.
She looked absolutely nothing like Renee Clinton. Nothing at all.
“Let’s go, Clinton,” the jailer said, his voice hard.
She quickly rinsed her face and tightened the belt of her robe as she made her way to a small amount of freedom from her cell.
“One of the jailers called your husband and asked him to bring you a change of clothes,” the jailer said as he signaled up the hall for the cell to be unlocked.
Ka-dang!
The door slid open slowly with an almost rusted-sounding grind.
Jackson. Renee paused momentarily before she stepped out of the cell for the first time in three days.
Physically? Barely washed.
Spiritually? Not cleansed.
Mentally? Totally undone.
She barely listened as the jailer explained the visiting procedure to her and how after a search of the garments they would bring the change of clothing to her cell.
As they waited for the heavy door at the end of the hall to open, Renee spotted Jackson sitting at a small table in a nice-sized room. He looked one the better than she did.
Did he comfort Inga as I lay in a jail cell?
And then she hated that even now jealousy ruled her.
Renee thought about the last time they’d been together.
And as good as it had felt to have Jackson’s dick buried inside of her again, Renee had felt relief when he’d eased every delicious and traitorous inch out. We weren’t ready for sex. As much as I wanted it. Enjoyed it. Needed it. We weren’t ready, she admitted to herself.
Renee eyed him as she made her way to his table. Some of the hair on his head was silver. The squareness of his shoulder had rounded just a bit and his middle was softer, but Renee knew that she would have loved this man and stayed with this man until his hair was snow white and his body the epitome of old age. And she would have felt the same way as she did when she’d sworn to be his wife. Until death. Not until an affair.
Renee blinked away tears as he looked up at her as she sat down in the chair opposite him. She made sure to press her knees close together and tried to gather the ends of her robe, aware of the curious eyes of the other visitors and prisoners. She closed her eyes and released a breath filled with all her stress.
“Jackson,” she began, opening her eyes to look at his profile as he sat at some spot beyond her.
<
br /> He turned and looked at her. “I brought you a change of clothing,” he said, his tone emotionless.
She nodded, forcing herself not to look away from his eyes. “They told me. Thank you . . . I . . . I . . . uh.”
Jackson shook his head and balled his fist on top of the table. “We’re better than this, Renee,” he said, piercing her with eyes now filled with some anger and some sadness. “I fucked up . . . but you’re better than this. What about the kids? What about you? What were you thinking?”
“In that moment?” she asked. “I wanted her dead.”
Jackson dropped his head into his hand as he shook it.
“The alcohol, the jealousy, the hatred . . . all of it fueled one of the dumbest and the most dangerous things I’ve ever done,” Renee admitted. “But I couldn’t do it and I turned the car into the wall instead.”
Jackson looked up. “You could have killed yourself.”
Renee bit her bottom lip as she tilted her head back. “Everything . . . everything is all a fucking mess,” she said in a harsh and emotion-filled whisper as one tear raced down her cheek.
“We will get through this,” he insisted.
She swiped away her tears. “How? Through conjugal visits?” she asked bitterly, her eyes brilliantly glassy with unshed tears.
“I have my attorneys already looking at the case and they’ll be here for your bond hearing tomorrow and they’re confident you will get a bond,” he told her, his eyes filled with his desire to reach for her. To touch her. To comfort her.
Renee felt some comfort that Jackson was not ready to turn his back on her, but it wasn’t enough to beat out the truth of the situation. “Jackson,” she said, leaning in close. “I was going to kill your baby mama and she knows it. I am in jail,” she stressed, almost choking on the words. “I’m an alcoholic. Friday was not the first day I’ve been drinking.”
Her final words stunned him. He leaned back in his chair and wiped his mouth with his hands.
“Jackson,” she said again, firmly. Insistent. “Jackson, it’s over.”
“What have I done to you?” he asked heavily.
For a moment, Renee wondered why she, on the side of the table for inmates, was consoling her husband, a visitor free to leave at any time.
Mistress No More Page 21
