She got off the couch and came to stand next to me. Other women in the room urged us to a game: “Come on, Angie, she can give you a real game for a change.” “No way, my money’s on Angie.” “Not me, I been watching Cream there, I put five bucks on Cream.” I noticed my cellmate on the fringes of the crowd, shivering and rubbing her arms.
Angie snatched the ball away from me and posted up. I jumped as she shot and batted the ball down. She elbowed me hard in the side and grabbed the ball back, shot, and scored. When I rebounded she came in low, trying to head–butt my stomach. I twisted away and shot over her head. The ball caromed around the rim, then went through. She grabbed the rebound, kicking me savagely on the shin as she passed me under the basket. I went in below her guard as she was shooting and knocked her arms up in the air. She swore and gave me an undercut to the chin. I twisted away and grabbed the ball. We weren’t playing for baskets but for dominance.
The calls from the sideline grew louder. Out of the corner of my eye I saw uniforms of the corrections officers on the fringes of the crowd, but I didn’t dare take my eye off Angie or the court. My sore shoulders, my weak stomach, all that had to be put to one side. Shoot, grab, feint, duck, rebound, shoot again.
Sweat was blurring my eyes. Angie was a good athlete. She was strong, and she was some years younger than me, but she wasn’t well–conditioned and she didn’t have disciplined technique, either as a fighter or a player. I was keeping up with her and giving her back blow for blow. Moves I’d learned on the streets of South Chicago thirty years ago came to me as if I’d last been jumped on Commercial Avenue yesterday.
The crowd was beginning to roar every time I shot. That made Angie fight uglier but more wildly, and I had less trouble keeping the ball from her. I was driving to the basket when I saw light glint on metal in her hand. I dropped to the floor, rolled over onto my back, and scissor–kicked Angie’s feet out from under her. When I jumped up to kick away her weapon, Angie was lying under the basket. A knife cut out of an aluminum can lay next to her.
The women in the crowd began a confused yelling, urging us on to fight. Some of them were Angie’s followers, wanting a real brawl; others wanted me to put a stop to her once and for all: “Stick the knife into her now while she’s on the ground,” I heard one person call out. A guard stepped forward and picked up the knife, while another put a headlock on me. I knew how to break that hold, and with my adrenaline still high was about to, but remembered in time that I mustn’t fight back. The guards carried stun guns on their belts; they had plenty of other weapons, not the least the power to keep me in Coolis longer than I wanted to stay.
“Bitch planted that on me,” Angie muttered.
One of the CO’s who’d been cheering loudest said he was writing us both up. If you’re written up in jail it adds to the charge sheet when you finally get your court date. If you’re already in prison it can send you into solitary and deducts from your “good time” for early release.
As I stood motionless with my head under the CO’s arm, facing Angie, who was similarly corralled, a woman spoke up from the middle of the crowd. Everyone in the room, CO’s and inmates both, quieted down at once. The woman said that there hadn’t been any fighting, just basketball, and where that knife came from she didn’t know, but she could swear I hadn’t pulled it.
“That’s right,” several voices affirmed. “You were there, Cornish, you saw. They was playing one–on–one. Angie musta tripped in her own sweat.”
Cornish was another CO who’d been watching the game, if that’s what you could call my outing with Angie. He asked the first speaker if she was sure, because if she was he wouldn’t issue either of us a ticket on account of the holiday weekend.
“Uh–huh, I’m sure. Now I’m going to get me a pop. It’s a hot day.” She was a tall woman, with skin the color of toffee and thick graying hair pulled back from her head in a knot. As she moved toward the vending machines in a corner of the room, the crowd parted, like the Red Sea.
The guard who’d been clutching me let me go. A couple of women came over to slap my palm and tell me they’d been with me from the start. Others, perhaps members of Angie’s gang, gave me an evil eye and some pretty inventive insults.
CO Cornish grabbed my arm and told me I needed to get back to my cell to cool down. And what was my name? Warshawski? “You’re new, right, oh, in the jail wing. Then you shouldn’t be down here for prisoners’ recreation. Jail–wing recreation is in the mornings.” I opened my mouth to say I’d been ordered down here at three, but shut it again. Don’t trouble trouble, my mother always warned me, and trouble won’t trouble you.
A woman CO, one of only two or three I’d seen since arriving, was appointed to escort me back to the jail wing. “Lucky for you Miss Ruby spoke up when she did. Otherwise you’d have found your bail request doubled for sure.”