The corridors outside suddenly flood with inmates. Loud voices shout across at each other and an endless stream of legs bellow out foot steps that echo into our room.
"All right ladies, that means diner time." DeMarco begins doing up her boots. Nicky, Suzanne, Miss Rosa and I do the same. "You'll have about half an hour to eat, make the most with the time you have to meet your kind."
As we take a step outside and join the rest of the inmates, Nicky catches up with DeMarco for some last minute advice. "Who'd you say I should talk to?"
"Talk to Red if you get the chance to. You're tough enough to handle her. Fall back on Morello if you feel intimidated." Nicky nods and rubs her hands, pumping herself up to step foot in the cafeteria. "Though I got a feeling you'll want to fall back on her even if you're fine with Red..." She gives DeMarco a smirk and wink and speed walks towards the growing noise.
"Umm."
DeMarco and I look behind us, finding Suzanne poking her back.
"You want help too?"
Her bashful smile is sweet and DeMarco takes her under her wing. "You're gonna want to talk to Jefferson, they call her Taystee. They're all loud. I mean, I couldn't keep up. Just be yourself okay?"
Suzanne smiles again. "Yes, thank you. I will."
With all three of us new prisoners heading off into different groups, my stomach quickly drops. Nicky is easy to talk to, a little forward, but I take her as more playful than anything. Warren, who I now know as Suzanne, is... something. But she's no threat or nothing, just different.
Neither DeMarco or Miss Rosa sits with the Latina's, even if they both qualify. So I'll have to go at it alone. Wait in line, get my food, then walk over to a group of faces who don't even know I exist.
"You alright kid?"
I look over at DeMarco, her friendly and now familiar face easing my nerves a little bit. "Yeah... I think I need some food to settle my stomach."
She smiles and pats my back. "Remember, Gloria can show you the ropes. You'll get to know the rest soon enough."
A final breath is let out before the busy corridor spreads out into an even busier canteen. An impressive queue runs around the room as guards stand watch. Diner has hardly started and already over half of the seats are taken.
I join the line with Miss Rosa in front of me and DeMarco behind. That's when the whispering around me starts.
I'd almost forgot I had a bright, orange shirt and bottoms on that don't help you from laying low when everything around you is a shade of off white or beige.
Like vultures, eyes scan me, assessing what they could be up against. Though I doubt a 5"2 Latina would do them much harm. Especially when they've got people to back them up.
The line moves along quick but the subject about me, Nicky and Suzanne doesn't stop amongst the inmates.
"Don't listen to what anybody says around here. You can't trust them unless they're your people."
I give my tray to the canteen staff who start piling it up with food.
"Does that mean I should stop listening to you?" I jokingly answer DeMarco as a sweet, older lady hands me back my tray which now holds rice and what looks like chicken. And veggies too. The food don't look that bad.
"Miss Rosa and I are the only ones you can trust." I watch as Miss Rosa generously hands me her fruit cup, eyes facing the front of the queue. "Now walk down that way and sit opposite that lady with short hair."
"Thank you DeMarco. And Miss Rosa." Both give me small smiles before I start walking down rows and rows of nearly full tables.
The Latina's come into sight. Most of them are animatedly talking to one another and a lot are much older. Except for one.
She sits at the far end of the table, watching me as I get closer. Her hands rest under her chin as her eyes relentlessly follow me, even from this far away.
I smile back. That's probably Flaca that DeMarco was telling me about. She smiles back too. It growing wider as I approach the table.
When I force my eyes away from hers, I realise Gloria had already spotted me coming. She looks at the girl sat in front of her, nudging her head to the side, telling her to move so I can take her seat instead.
With that welcoming sign that they want me here, I approach the woman I've been told to introduce myself to.
"Hi, can I take this seat?"
She waves me towards it. "Of course, sit down."
I smile, resting my tray on the table to properly introduce myself. "Thanks. It's Gloria, right?"
She looks around the table, grinning. "Well, well, well. I see someone's had a talk with DeMarco about who to get to know."
Shit. Does she already think I'm using her because I'm new? "Ohh, no, she was just giving me advise since I don't know nobody here-"
"-Hey, hey, relax. I was only joking."
"Ohh." I stare at them all blankly as they laugh. I join in.
"Is that how you got the fruit cup?" A woman with bushy hair asked me.
"Yeah, Miss Rosa gave it to me. Though I wish it was M&M's." I admit with a grin, relieved to see her smile back.
"What's your name?" Gloria asks.
"Mar-"
Wait, I'm in prison.
"Ramos."
"Ramos." She repeats back to me. "Where d'you come from?"
"I just walked in and waited in line, for like, 10 minutes..."
"Yeah, no kidding. It's not hard to spot you with the orange." She laughs. "I meant have you come from Psych? Max? The outside? We have to make sure you're no loca."
Psych? Max? The outside?
"I'm from East New York... Originally from Colombia but I moved when I was little."
Like I'd said the funniest joke they've ever heard, all the Latina's start laughing. Not a single one ain't smiling as they sit and listen in on mine and Gloria's conversation.
"She might be a little tonta, but she ain't no loca." Maria adds.
Gloria brushes her off and brings her full attention back to me. "Alright, first thing you should know is that you're family now. That's how things work around here if you couldn't tell from all the colours sticking together. We got your back and you have ours. Need anything and you come to me."
I make sure to nod my head, already liking and warming up to this lady.
"Alright, listen up." She claps her hands, shouts aimed towards our table, but receiving glares from the ones surrounding. "Everybody say hi to Ramos."
All eyes are on me as they welcome me to the group.
"Here we have Blanca, that's Maria, those two are Daya and Aleida and the one at the end is Flaca."
I wave at each and every one of them, wanting to get their faces and names in my heads as soon as possible.
I set eyes on Flaca last, who still holds the sweet smile she gave me when I fist saw her.
"So how'd you get in here?" The woman, I know as Maria, asks the question.
"I posed as a sales assistant and stole some sports car. It was my first time doing it too so I got busted for hardly doing nothing." I admit, not proud of how I ended up here. "It's pretty embarrassing."
"That ain't no dumb job Ramos." Aleida praises me, impressed by my crime. "You have to have skill to pull that shit off, even if you didn't get it done."
"Yeah, we're all in here because we got busted." Daya adds.
The fact they're already trying to talk to me and get to know me is a good sign, right? They all seem nice, even Aleida who DeMarco warned me about and Maria who apparently has a temper.
I start digging into my food, keeping quiet whilst I listen in on the loud ladies conversation.
"I keep hearing that Caputo's getting tired of the mad Russian and her games in the kitchen. We might be able to take it soon." Blanca reveals.
"Well we gonna keep on trying until we all get a spot. This foods missing a little Latina spice."
I watch as Blanca and the rest of the girls nod their heads to Gloria's mission of wanting to 'take over the kitchen' for some reason.
"Why'd you wanna work in the kitchen? Don't you have to wake up at like 6AM and wear hair nets?"
"It's the best job with the best pay around here. You're gonna get a job soon and you don't wanna be cleaning up peoples shit whilst you in here."
"What? People do that? Don't they hire janitors to do that sort of stuff?"
"We are the janitors. We're the cooks, electricians, cleaners, slaves - everything, all at the same time."
That must be some illegal health and safety shit. I better pray extra hard tonight so I'm not stuck scrubbing toilets for the rest of my sentence.
"Another thing you'll be getting soon is a bunk mate."
That's right. Maybe in a couple of days I'll find out who's face I'll be seeing everyday, as soon as I wake up, for the next few years. I hope they're at least clean and don't snore at night. I need my beauty sleep.
"A few Latina's have left recently so some people don't have bunk mates like Blanca, Flaca and some other Dominican girl. You'll just have to wait and see who you get when you move out of the newbies room."
God help me if I get the Dominican. Some of those putas think the sun revolves around them.
And I guess Blanca doesn't meet one of my requirements. I don't want to be mean or nothing, but the nest on her head's telling me commissaries running a little low on conditioner. She needs a good tweezer too.
Flaca on the other hand seems alright. I still haven't heard her speak yet but she looks like she's interested in what I gotta say.
Maybe DeMarco's right about us getting along.
I look over at my potential bunk mate and see her giggling with Maria. They're deliberately quite in the way they speak.
Like she'd sensed it, Flaca looks over at me and catches me staring. I notice her stiffen up making Maria notices. It's like they've been caught red handed. It looks like they were talking about me then...
Maybe DeMarco's wrong...
I don't talk much for the rest of dinner, preferring to let the Latina's show me what they're like.
"Ladies, lunch is over. Back to your bunks."
A couple of the guards start ushering us out. I follow everyone else's lead and dump what I didn't eat in the trash, which is surprisingly not much.
With the hustle and bustle of everyone trying to get out from the same door, I loose sight of anyone I've met.
"Move it fresh meat."
Some girl knocks me on the shoulder and soon enough, everyone starts shoving me forward. Too overwhelmed to keep looking, I decide to start walking back to my room, it's the only place I know how to get back to from here.
The halls start clearing up as I get further and further away from the canteen, and soon enough, my room comes into view.
I practically skip towards it, but I'm stopped by a hand anchoring my arm to a halt.
"Hey Ramos." I turn around like a deer caught in headlights. A wave of relief sweeps over me when I see Maria.
"Jesus, I though you were gonna beat me up."
"Nobody does that around here except for in the movies. And max." She laughs. "I'm here to ask if you want to come see what Spanish Harlem's like until count. You know, get to know everybody you didn't talk to at lunch?"
Well, I know that we have some free time before the guards come by...
"Okay."
I let her lead the way through the unfamiliar hallways I'm starting to now recognise.
"A tip for if you ever get lost. Just follow the noise." Maria advises as I follow beside her. "Sure, the blacks get loud but you can tell by the way we speak if it's us or them."
"Thanks for the tip."
As we walk alone together, I couldn't help feel a little awkward around Maria. Don't get me wrong, she's been nice and even came to come get me so we could go to Spanish Harlem. But I'm not gonna ignore catching her whispering about me to Flaca at dinner. It might have been about nothing, but it still made me paranoid.
"You know back at lunch when you were talking to Flaca?" She turns to face me, giving me her full attention. I don't think she was expecting me to bring it up. "What were you saying about me? Did I do something wrong?"
"No. You done nothing wrong."
"Ohh." Maybe she thought that was a good enough answer, but to me that raises more questions. I decide to leave it though. DeMarco told me she has a bad temper and I don't want to find out if she's right.
"Don't worry about it. Flaca was just feeling weird."
I don't get the chance to ask why or if she felt weird because of me as we'd already made it to the entrance of Spanish Harlem.
Rows of cubicles fill the room, housing two beds each. Everyone's either socialising or trying to get to sleep - which must be impossible with all the talking.
"Ramos!" I look in the direction my name was called and see Gloria waving us over. "I thought we'd lost you back there for a minute."
All the faces I saw at dinner come into view as Maria and I join the group.
"It got a little crazy. I figured I'd just go to my room and see you again tomorrow."
"Maria did good bringing you here, there's a lot of people you haven't met." Gloria smiles and starts scanning the room. "Gonzales." The tall girl stops her conversation with Daya and glances at Gloria before noticing me, who by the looks of it, she wasn't expecting to see. "Come show Ramos around and introduce her to anyone she don't know."
Flaca nods and walk over to me, stretching out her hand for me to shake.
"We haven't properly met. I'm Flaca."
Only now that I'm this close to her is when I notice how beautiful this girl really is.
She must be around my age, maybe younger, but I'm not used to seeing girls that look like her from where I'm from. Her raven hair and fringe frames her slim face perfectly and her winged eyeliner's done pretty well for someone in prison, even if it's a little scary. And I probably would find her intimidating if it wasn't for her warm, deep brown eyes.
I take her hand in mine, still gushing over her whilst I shake it, too distracted to respond. She doesn't seem to mind by the way our handshake lasts longer than usual.
"Umm." She abruptly lets me go and turns around, walking over to what I assume is her bunk "So, let me show you what you'll get when you first move in."
I trail behind Flaca, walking into a bunk separated by low walls, 2 beds flushed against them. She leads me to her locker.
"You're gonna need a toothbrush and toilet paper for tomorrow." She starts taking out brand new toiletries, apparently to give to me.
"Is that all for me?"
"Mhm."
"But what about the money? I'm gonna have to pay you back, but I don't know when they're assigning me a job."
"It's alright. This is like a housewarming girft, you don't have to pay me back. We all pitch some money in for basic things the new inmates of our kind would need. It doesn't cost a lot when we split the total." She wraps all the stuff, now belonging to me, in a small sheet. "Like Gloria said, we're family now."
A little taken back by everyone's generosity, I hesitantly take the bunch of supplies, scanning through them and stopping at a bright red wrapper that pops out.
"M&M's?"
She grins, looking away shyly to continue with my tour of the bunk.
"These are our beds." I jump down on the one unoccupied, unsurprised that they're as flat as pancakes. "They ain't much but at least they're big enough to fit us."
"I guess." Though I'm not sure someone my size would ever have to worry about that. I'm more worried about the blankets though, that aren't nowhere close to how thick I need them. Plus, they're made from that cheap polyester shit. "What about when it's Winter and when it gets super cold? Do they give us extra blankets?"
"You have to toughen it up. But if we can fit, some of us sneak into each others beds when the guards aren't looking. It's kinda nice since it gets a little lonely in here."
What does she mean by 'gets lonely in here'? Is she still talking about keeping warm?
"I bet it is... too bad we ain't got no guys in here to snuggle up to instead, right?"
She snickers, smiling to the floor as I not so subtly wait for her response. "It might be for some people, but I don't mind it either way."
Flaca glances at me, catching me off guard with her response whilst I figure out if she's trying to say what I think she is. The more I think about it, the clearer it becomes... and the more it feels like she's flirting with me.
"Ohh." It's all I say because it's the only thing I can think to say.
With that conversation over, I wonder for a bit, stopping at her shelf when I spot her radio.
"You get to listen to music around here?" I ask, holding up the device.
She nods her head, walking over to me. "There's never anything good on though. Just the same 4 crappy songs playing over and over again."
"Ohh yeah? What d'you listen to?"
"On the outside I'd listen to alternative rock and indie stuff. Like The Smiths."
"The Smiths?" I ask, giggling a bit. "That's pussy music."
"Hey." I can tell I hit a nerve when her eyebrows furrow and she snatches the radio from my hands. "'How Soon Is Now' is like, an 80's anthem."
Not realising she's only making me laugh more, I force out the words out my mouth. "Weren't you born in the early 90's or something? You don't know shit."
With that comment, she lightly punches my shoulder, an over dramatic frown instantly gracing my face as I rub the hit area. But the fake beef between us soon disappears when we both burst out in laughter, Flaca having to hold herself up by my shoulder.
This honestly feels so weird. It's like we're old friends that have known each other forever... It feels like that anyway.
We settle down, but it's immediately obvious that we've gotten significantly closer, both physically and as prison mates.
There's a couple of seconds in which we don't know what to do. We stare at each others mirroring dark, brown eyes until I'm reminded where I am and how surreal all this feels.
So I look to the ground, taking a not so subtle step away from Flaca.
But I don't want this to feel weird, even if it does, even if the weird feels like a good kinda weird.
"Umm... so where do you get the make-up to do your eyeliner?"
She takes a second to register she was asked a question before she responds. "We get stuff brought in by mostly Red. But the rest we make ourselves by trying whatever we find like spices, Vaseline mixed with ground up stuff, anything."
"So you make your own make-up?"
She nods her head. "Mhm."
That's pretty interesting. This could totally be my thing here in prison. I could start my own independent company and trade my skills for stuff in the commissary.
"I'll have to buy some of that eyeliner from you one day so you can teach me how to do it like you." I say as I lean closer to Flaca's face, getting a good look at it. "The Russian lady knows how to get the good stuff, It's super pigmented."
Flaca smiles, letting me look a little longer before she walks over to her make-up are, grabbing a black tube I figure is her eyeliner.
"Here." She places it on top of my already huge pile of essentials she gave to me. "Red has a new shipment coming in on Thursday. If you like it, I'll ask her to order an extra one for you next week."
I stare at the tiny bottle. Wondering if there's a catch - I've been around Flaca enough to know there isn't one, but it feels like she's being too nice. I haven't even been here 24 hours yet and I know what this means to these ladies. This is all they have.
It's nowhere near as good as the MAC one I would normally use on the outside, but I still can't accept it.
"Ohh no, I can't take this." I place my stuff on the empty bed and give her back the bottle of black liquid. "You already gave me the M&M's. But thank you."
I see the reluctance in her eyes, but I bet 1 million dollars I'm more stubborn and soon she takes it back.
"Then how about you come over tomorrow before movie night." She suggests as a compromise. "I'll be working the whole day, but after I can show you what I use for make-up and teach you to put on my eyeliner like I do. We can get all glammed up to see the movie. If you can even call it 'glammed up' in prison."
I chuckle but then agree with a nod to come back to Spanish Harlem tomorrow, not even knowing they were showing a movie tomorrow night to begin with.
"Eyy, Gonzales." Flaca turns around towards Gloria. "They're doing a check soon, Ramos better get out of here before the guards show up."
Flaca nods, looking back at me with a sorry smile on her face. "I guess you should get going then. It was nice to meet you Ramos."
The more I hear her talk and get to know her personality, the more I'm liking her. She's kind, funny and I think we're going to end up being really good friends.
"Thanks for showing me around Flaca. And for all the stuff you gave me. If I'm lucky, maybe you'll end up being my bunk mate." I nudge her shoulder, loving how easily I can bring out her pretty smile. "And call me Maritza, Ramos still sounds weird."
Like I'd said something outrageous, her face drops and she stares at me. After a while, I cock my eyebrows up, questioning with the puzzle look on my face if something's wrong. When she doesn't say anything, I decide to say my goodbye.
"I'll see you tomorrow for breakfast, yeah?"
I hardly get a nod from her as I wait an extra moment longer to try figuring out why she's so distant with me suddenly. I don't get it...
So I walk away, more than confused at what just happened. I pass my the rest of the Latina's who I wave goodbye to and start the short walk to my room.
Before I get in, two officers approaching from the opposite side of the corridor tell me I've made it back just in time.
My 4 temporary bunk mates are already there, standing near their bunks and I do the same as the officer takes count and leaves.
"You got guts getting back here at this time Ramos." Nicky impressively states. "We were all wondering where you'd been."
"Where'd you run off to after dinner?" DeMarco asks with a bit more concern.
"Maria took me to Spanish Harlem to get to know the place a little better. I got caught up."
And with that, I get on my top bunk and cover myself with my sheets as the rest of my roommates start talking about anything and everything. I even hear a much more confident Suzanne speaking.
It's the first real alone time I've had since I got here and the only thing I can seem to think about is Flaca. Well, not Flaca exclusively, but what suddenly happened when things were going good, better than good, between us.
Let's just hope things clear up tomorrow.
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Maritza, open your eyes girl. Thanks for your comments on the last chapter and sorry this one was a little late, I was busy making a Flaritza edit. Go see it and my other 2 if you'd like https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPRIN7_UzF1tlNgpFs4LU7g
Hope you enjoyed the chapter!
-D