Chapter 53
Fed Baby
On the track, Rach and I are logging miles—five to ten a day. Thirty-two laps make a mile. Darla, who left last week and runs marathons, once did fifteen miles here. We were inspired. We talk a little, mostly we churn the wheels of insight. Nevaeh and Lyric stroll in their lane. I overhear Lyric saying to Nevaeh, “That’s how you do it,” pointing to us. “Look, they don’t even talk, they just walk. Fast.” Mind you, this shifted their walking not in the least. They are there to go through the motions of walking that serve as a backdrop for their ongoing conversation that needs to change sets every so often, from poker to betting on the football game, to lying on Lyric’s bed.
We pass the two of them on the track freeway and do the equivalent of a light honk. Lyric’s ass is round, her tits are round, her moon face is round. And her belly is round. She’s seven months pregnant but is more active than the skinny 22-year-old who doesn’t wake up until 7 p.m. and then glares at everyone that they would dare make noise prior to that. As we pass, I ask Lyric, who is so fluent in “hood” language that she could hold a Hood Linguistics Ph.D., “Is there a slang word for ‘inmate’? I’m playing with book titles.” “Jailbirds?” she suggests. “I like that,” I tell her. “Flight.” Lyric brightens, her smarts shining through.
Around here, compliments are suspicious; attention is a rare currency, and it’s almost always transactional. I keep it moving. The truth is, really seeing another woman takes a kind of wealth most in here don’t have. The women here are used to the fake version of that attention—the kind that’s a setup, not a gift. A compliment isn’t kindness; it’s a currency exchange. It means: I want something. A favor, a shortcut, a little safety. “Your hair looks nice” sounds less like affection and more like a car salesman trying to close a deal. Lyric stands out here, and not just because of her pregnant belly protruding through her prison uniform. She reminds me of an inner-city honors student at a crossroads—the question is, which game does she want to play?
But here, in a federal prison, the options are different. The choice isn’t between the familiar and an Ivy League scholarship; it isn’t a choice in your external circumstance. The question is whether you want to play any of the “outer games” or whether you want to master the inner game. Lyric’s got a grade-A game and outside these walls it could get her whatever man and whatever security or diamond jewelry he offers. The trouble is, she’s bored. “Don’t be number one at the number-two game,” I tell her. “The number-one game is inside.” “That’s a million miles from here,” she says, but she hears me. On our next lap, she grins, still turning over possible book titles. “Fed Baby.” “What’s that?” “Means you ‘made it to the feds, baby.’ Big-time now.
Not just county or state.” “I like it,” I say. “Let me think on it.” By the next lap, Lyric and Nevaeh join us and after a few times around the track, Lyric and I find ourselves paired off. Up to then I’d mostly heard Lyric; she travels with her own laugh track. We trade ideas back and forth; it turns out we’ve watched all the same strange and esoteric Instagrams and podcasts, had all the same fascinations with them: “Oh, you haven’t heard the Telepathy Tapes? You gotta check it out.” Cities build public squares so people can bump into each other and cross-pollinate. This is ours. She tells me she’s worked as a stripper and, to her surprise, I have too.
She says she’s been with a lot of men, “But I ain’t a ho, if you know what I mean.” “I am,” I deadpan, letting her peek behind the polite-housewife façade. She cackles. A door opens. The story spills. “Yeah, I got pregnant by another guy. My guy’s here—got arrested before me. I met someone else. I don’t even like him. Thought I was pregnant, test said no, then I get here—test says yes. I can’t tell my man; his mama just died. We gotta go to court together soon—maybe I can hide it.” The belly that leads us around the track suggests that won’t be an option. “You have to tell him,” I say, too pragmatic for the moment. “Yeah, but…his mama…” The sentence trails off.
In here that usually means: I’m afraid of losing him, but no one says it directly. Softness is dangerous. You have to shine like you have options, money, a plan. A few days later, she calls me to her bed—an honor. She wants to show me a photo. Not her boyfriend. Not the baby’s father. A new guy she met through means we won’t discuss. He’s cute—waves, dark skin, all coyote. Knows his way around a woman’s body and the money game. I pray she meets a man who is, as they say in here, for real. I don’t know he’ll be found inside these walls, but who am I to say? Three days later, they scheduled a bail hearing for Lyric.
It feels like a miracle; the women cried in sympathetic joy and relief with her. She’s due in two months. Nonviolent crime. Already served real time. They have to send her home on confinement. There’s gratitude for the many prayers made by all the inmates here for this to happen. And, still in her womb, Lyric’s baby is present in the dorm with us. Blessed by the hope of forty women. This baby’s already made it to the big times—not county, not state, this is a fed baby.