Free Prison Baby: A Memoir by Deborah Jiang Stein

radio, and the rhythm of the ribbed road rocks underneath.
    When Mother gave me these Samsonite cases for my high school graduation, she expected them to pack college essentials—new cords, sweaters, toiletries—for Vassar, Smith, or Radcliffe, where my classmates had enrolled, not kilos of dope and bundles of cash.
    I veer around a bend, a roadblock straight ahead of me—two California Highway officers in khakis stand on the roadside. I’m ready for them, though. My third bag covers the goods in the bottom two. I clench my teeth to fortify myself, my jaw already clamped like a vise from too much coke in my veins.
    Inside the suitcases, I’d scrunched my clothes around three one-gallon plastic ziplocked bags packed with cocaine. White crosses—aka speed—fill another bag. The third suitcase also shields my cargo in the event of rain. A blow-dry or slow heat at a hundred degrees in the oven always cures damp cash. But who buys soggy weed? Well, me. Dry weed or perfume-spilled-on weed, it doesn’t matter. Weak opium or cheap hash, I don’t care. Overcut coke or pure-enough-to-kill-you coke or heroin from the dirtiest dealer in town, I’ll mainline anything.
    One trooper stands feet spread shoulder-width apart. He sweeps his arm into a wide arc of “pull over.” Even at a distance, I can see he’s the same lean tower of a man as my father’s six-foot-four swimmer’s build, his legs so long, enough to be able to drive with one knee braced on the steering wheel and tamp his pipe or light a cigar with both hands.
    A few car lengths away from The Man, instinct and adrenaline drive me into a panic of survival, a rush with my senses on high alert, my reality altered. It’s the same thrill as my childhood jump off the wall.
    The midday California heat beats down on my sun-darkened hands—one grips the leather-covered steering wheel and the other yanks the gearstick to downshift, the way my father taught me. He admired Italian sports cars and even on his modest professor’s salary, he bought several. I rev my MG from fourth gear to third, to second, then accelerate and shift again. The power of my car hugs the curve of the road.
    I whiz by the first state trooper. The second one beckons with his hand and I swerve to the side of the road about twenty feet beyond their roadblock. I glance in my rear-view mirror. The glare from the cops bounces off my mirror. They saunter towards me. One of them forks his hand through his hair.
    “Uh-oh,” I say to the steering wheel.
Could use a line or two of coke right now
. No time. Just sit. The black-leather seats cook inside the convertible and a queasy heat wave surges through me, even more since my thick black hair absorbs the sun and fries my scalp. A thin trail of sweat swizzles down my temples.
Stay calm
.
    “Open your trunk,” one of them says. A suspicious half-smile curves on his lips.
    My instinct jumps alive with adrenaline. I want to bolt but something stops me. They might shoot me in the back if I run.
    My trunk’s packed with enough dope to send me down for several consecutive life sentences. It’s the late-1970s era of Rockefeller drug laws, and possession of two or more ounces of heroin, cocaine, or marijuana pulls the same penalty as second-degree murder.
    Busted or not, no big deal.
Sit tight
.
    The trooper leans over my doorframe. I wish I’d tugged the top up earlier.
    His pupils dilate while he scans the narrow space behind my seat. I smile. Nothing there because I keep my two-seater pristine. I’d stowed my ten-inch switchblade and .38 revolver under the carpet below my seat. My stack of maps in the back of the glove box conceals my kit: syringe, spoon, rubber strip to tie off, and vial of water.
    A Harley-Davidson revs around the bend. A middle-aged woman straddles the machine, her shoulder-length hair pulled back into a ponytail and a few loose strands flap in the wind, free.
    Beads of sweat outline the tops of the trooper’s eyebrows. Before I step