A Deeper Love Inside (12 page)

“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.

“Still she has the right to know,” the
NYT
reporter told them.

“Are you gonna tell me or not?” I said to the reporter, losing patience and blocking the others out.

“First, I have a few questions,” the reporter said.

“You don’t have to answer,” my first-time-ever-seeing-her lawyer said. But the reporter was smart. I could tell she knew she had some
thing I wanted. These kind of trades went on every day on lockdown so I understood the reporter wanted to make a deal with me.

“Okay, ask me one question. I’ll answer, then you tell me about my father,” I said.

“Ten questions, not one,” the reporter negotiated.

“You don’t have to answer even one question, and Ms. Bussey can give you the same information. It’s our job,” the lawyer said.

“I’ve never even seen you before.” I exposed the lawyer, eager to get my poppa’s address.

“You’ve never seen the lawyer on the other side of the table before today?” the
NYT
reporter asked.

“Nope,” was all I answered.

“That’s neither here nor there. I just received her file two days ago. I’m on the case now,” the lawyer said.

The reporter began scribbling something on her little notepad. I didn’t turn towards the warden. I didn’t turn towards Ms. Bussey, either. Bussey is a bitch. I didn’t trust her or nobody else either. I already knew that when these reporters cleared out, Team Porsche would attack me, and no one could stop that cause they wouldn’t even know it was happening. I didn’t care as long as I could write a long letter to Poppa and wait for him to write me a long letter, too. One long letter from Poppa was worth a thousand uneaten lunches, five hundred bags of candy, one hundred days of rec on the yard, fifty art classes, and ten Diamond Needles. One long letter from Poppa, and I’d volunteer to wear red, sit naked on the hot summer floor at the bottom during the fucking four-hour, fifteen-minute fucking festival.

“Ten questions, okay, I’ll answer one in exchange for my father’s address and nine for eleven dollars each. You can put the money on my account. The warden will tell you how to do it,” I said. The reporters both laughed.

“We don’t pay for our stories ever,” the
NYT
reporter said.

“Okay, then I’ll answer only one question, for the address,” I said. Just then the giraffe ghost photographer pulled out a one-hundred-dollar bill and laid it on the table. The warden and the lawyer both stood up. The photographer whispered in the
New York Daily News
reporter’s ear.

“Do you really need money?” the reporter asked me.

“All of our girls’ needs are taken care of,” the warden said swiftly.

“So why does Porsche feel that she needs money? Perhaps we should listen to her reasons,” the doctor said.

“Everybody needs money,” I answered the reporter.

“There are twenty minutes remaining before I end this meeting,” the warden threatened.

“What would you buy with this ninety-nine dollars you are exchanging for an interview?” the
NYT
reporter asked.

“A box, some stamps, and some gifts to put in it for Poppa. People in cages need people to send them gifts, or else they feel like everyone who once loved them has forgotten. I never forgot Poppa, not even once.” The room fell silent.

“Well, I can’t pay you for the interview, but it seems Hans wants to pay you. He doesn’t work for either paper. He’s what we call a freelancer.”

“How will I be sure that he’ll deposit the money? I see it on the table, but I’ll be in big trouble if I touch it,” I told the reporter.

“I’ll make sure,” the doctor said, volunteering, and then added, “and you just made a business deal, so there will always be some risk.”

“Go ahead, ask me,” I told the reporters. I had heard the doctor, but didn’t believe him. It didn’t matter. I just needed all of them to know I knew they were all making money off of me or else they wouldn’t have come up here.
So don’t play me like some dumb victim kid.
I just focused only on the reporters and the photographer. I pictured them as the customers seated in the most expensive front row seats of the porsche santiaga, sold-out solo performance.

Q: (Edith Kates,
New York Daily News
): Are you aware that your father Ricardo Santiaga is a drug dealer?

I felt like I had been hit so hard I had no breath left. I was paused at first but told myself to toughen.

A: No, my father was a businessman. He wore expensive clothes, more nicer than anything any of you are wearing now. Ricky Santiaga is respected by everyone. I never saw him hurt anybody. He was the man people came to for help. My whole neighborhood loved him.

I swiveled my neck automatically to let them know I meant it. I could hear Ms. Bussey chuckle, and the warden made a cough sound that she wasn’t making before. Bitch wanted to be funny? I’d fix her.