Free Prison Baby: A Memoir by Deborah Jiang Stein Page A

out of my car, I clench my eyelids tight as fists to prepare for the worst, then open them, swing my legs out, and plant my feet on the pavement. I stand firm in my uniform: flip-flops, jeans, and a long-sleeved T-shirt to hide my track marks. I look away when the cop’s eyes dart up and down me from head to toe, my one hundred pounds dwarfed by his bulky frame.
    They order me again to open the trunk. My rubber flip-flops smack my soles as I mosey at a Sunday-stroll pace to the rear of my car. One trooper hovers on my left, the other steps to my right. I bite the inside of my cheek, a ridge of scars there from so many years of gnaw gnaw gnaw. A hand motions towards my trunk. “Open up.” I turn my key in the lock.
    Act normal
. What’s it mean to act normal anyway? What’s normal for a nineteen-year-old like me who runs drugs for a living, blueprints burglaries and bank scams, and is the think tank for a small gang of ex-felons? What’s normal for anyone? How do we ever gauge if we’re in the norm or outside it? Somewhere along the way I learned to compare myself to others. But it’s a moving target. Every time I find someone or something “better” than I am, better than I think I am, another “better” comes along.
    Pretend the lock’s stuck. No. Say you need to pee. Nah, too obvious. Run for it. Nope. Better not
. My brain tangles in a debate. Dread pulls my stomach muscles tighter. I force myself to keep my other hand from a dive into my jeans pocket to hide the bulge of the plastic film canister pressed into my thigh. Cocaine fills the case, the snow I need to jolt my eyelids open on the long drive up the coast.
    Dizzy from the heat and from the flood of adrenaline, I reconsider:
Bolt!
I calculate the risk and the steepness of the cactus-covered dusty incline to my right. I’d never make it up the hill.
    My breath freezes at the bottom of my lungs.
    “C’mon,” the trooper repeats, his nostrils flared, “open it.”

CHAPTER TEN
GNAWED
    A SHEER CLIFF PLUNGES INTO THE ocean on my left.
    Jump. Soar like you did as a kid, all those leaps out of a tree
. But my hunger for thrill slips away—I envision multiple rounds pelted between my shoulder blades.
    I flip open the trunk with one hand and dig the other into my pocket. They’ll never notice. I grip my fingers around the vial of coke buried in there.
    “Just as I thought,” the trooper says.
    I suck in a reservoir of air to fill my lungs, maybe my last breath of freedom.
    He repeats himself before I get a chance to digest the critical consequences of my situation. My heart quakes on the edge of terror. I’m in for it.
    “Just as I thought, but we gotta check anyway.”
    The other trooper slams my trunk closed, then they both turn their backs to me. I draw my spine into a tight rod.
    “Not enough room to fit anyone in there,” one says.
    What?
    Their routine completed—a random check for Mexicans smuggled into the United States inside trunks and under seats—the troopers step away from me to approach the next driver.
    I jump back into my car and my lungs collapse with relief. “I’m free!” I say out loud.
    My gut still tight, I shade my face, use my hand like a shield to hide what just happened, then jam my MG into first gear and hit the road, back on my warpath. Nothing slows me down. It’s Deborah against the world.
    I REACH FOR a glass of Jim Beam one day and stumble, buckled over from the pain in my gut. I try to straighten but can’t. The pain rocks me to the floor where I stay until Diego, my current boyfriend, comes home to our shared apartment and finds me. Diego’s a smooth-talking, soft-spoken Mexican American and just out of the joint. I’ve been a rookie apprentice to his two-time felony crimes. He half-carries me to his car and speeds to the hospital.
    We’ve just returned from one of our drug runs and, an added bonus, a few weeks on the beach in San Miguel, a quaint fishing village in Baja California before tourists invaded.