Read Online Prison Baby: A Memoir by Deborah Jiang Stein - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Deborah Jiang Stein
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smuggling by example on one of his sabbaticals when I was eight. He drove our rented Fiat and approached the Swiss-French border, Mother beside him and my brother and I in the back, where our Dad had stashed his banned Cuban cigars under our seat. Dad pulled over when the border patrol waved him aside.
“Pretend you’re sleeping,” my dad said. We obeyed my father’s commands in the car because if something annoyed him, his backhand swat could reach all the way back to our seats. We learned this early on because he always drove small foreign cars.
At the border, right away my adrenaline surged inside. I didn’t understand what it was, other than a feeling I’d grow addicted to: fear and excitement at the same time.
My brother and I slid down in our seats, closed our eyes, and flopped onto one another. The border control waved Dad across, with his two “actor” kids sitting on top of his smuggled cargo.
A DECADE LATER, with three cocaine-filled balloons shoved into my vagina, I turn my body into a drug-smuggling vessel wherever and however I can, and traffic across the border into Canada. My parents—or the cops—certainly wouldn’t approve of my methods or cargo. I also carve out the inside of tampons, fill them with plastic-wrapped coke, and push as many as possible inside me to smuggle the snow across the border. If one of those balloons pops or the plastic in the tampons leaks, I’ll absorb enough coke to overdose in under a minute.
When Bobby—boyfriend number four—ends up thirty miles outside Seattle in the Monroe Correctional Complex, we go into business. By now, drugs aren’t just a lifestyle—they’re a living. With a coke-filled balloon stuffed in my mouth, I swagger into the visiting room with a pout, sit down with Bobby and wink. A spark flickers in his eyes. He leans towards me.
CHAPTER NINE
ACT NORMAL
I GRAB BOBBY BY THE BACK OF THE neck and spread his lips open with mine. My tongue thrusts the drug-filled balloon from my mouth to his. When our visit ends, I saunter out of there with the same swagger, proud of myself, relieved I’m not the one who swallows, then needs to dig it out the other end.
We split the money from sales, one of the first times the entrepreneur in me comes alive. Risk and uncertainty: I’m good at living with these feelings now, always ready in my gut to step over the edge, ready for the world to shift and tremble under my feet.
WITH THE TOP down and a trunkload of three suitcases stuffed full of weed and coke, I rip up the fast lane on Highway 101 out of San Diego in my green British convertible MG Midget headed towards Seattle. One of my recent drug deals paid for this sweet machine with seventeen hundred dollars, the cash rubber-banded in stacks of twenties. Two baby-blue suitcases with nine kilos of dope, vacuum-sealed in shrink-wrap, nestle below in a false bottom in the trunk. The leather on the top suitcase is torn from abundant use, so I face it gouge-side-down in the trunk, its raw ripped edges pressed against the dope inside worth thousands of dollars on the street.
My regular setup for hauling dope works every time. I move dope in bulk for Seattle dealers, then drive back down to San Diego to start a deal over again. Sometimes I alternate how I run the stuff to keep my trail unpredictable for the Feds. Either I pack the kilos in my car or ship them through and ride the bus or train along with the cargo. This is before the widespread use of scout dogs to sniff for drugs.
If I travel by bus or train, the insides of my arms come out a mess by the end of the round-trip drug run. In the bathroom stall at the back of a bus, I brace one hip against the outer edge of the stainless-steel sink and struggle to get a needle into my scarred inner arm. Half the time I miss my vein from the shudder of the bus. The sway of a train makes it even harder to hit.
BACK ON HIGHWAY 101, the speedometer clocks eighty miles an hour, James Brown rasps “I Feel Good” on my
“Pretend you’re sleeping,” my dad said. We obeyed my father’s commands in the car because if something annoyed him, his backhand swat could reach all the way back to our seats. We learned this early on because he always drove small foreign cars.
At the border, right away my adrenaline surged inside. I didn’t understand what it was, other than a feeling I’d grow addicted to: fear and excitement at the same time.
My brother and I slid down in our seats, closed our eyes, and flopped onto one another. The border control waved Dad across, with his two “actor” kids sitting on top of his smuggled cargo.
A DECADE LATER, with three cocaine-filled balloons shoved into my vagina, I turn my body into a drug-smuggling vessel wherever and however I can, and traffic across the border into Canada. My parents—or the cops—certainly wouldn’t approve of my methods or cargo. I also carve out the inside of tampons, fill them with plastic-wrapped coke, and push as many as possible inside me to smuggle the snow across the border. If one of those balloons pops or the plastic in the tampons leaks, I’ll absorb enough coke to overdose in under a minute.
When Bobby—boyfriend number four—ends up thirty miles outside Seattle in the Monroe Correctional Complex, we go into business. By now, drugs aren’t just a lifestyle—they’re a living. With a coke-filled balloon stuffed in my mouth, I swagger into the visiting room with a pout, sit down with Bobby and wink. A spark flickers in his eyes. He leans towards me.
CHAPTER NINE
ACT NORMAL
I GRAB BOBBY BY THE BACK OF THE neck and spread his lips open with mine. My tongue thrusts the drug-filled balloon from my mouth to his. When our visit ends, I saunter out of there with the same swagger, proud of myself, relieved I’m not the one who swallows, then needs to dig it out the other end.
We split the money from sales, one of the first times the entrepreneur in me comes alive. Risk and uncertainty: I’m good at living with these feelings now, always ready in my gut to step over the edge, ready for the world to shift and tremble under my feet.
WITH THE TOP down and a trunkload of three suitcases stuffed full of weed and coke, I rip up the fast lane on Highway 101 out of San Diego in my green British convertible MG Midget headed towards Seattle. One of my recent drug deals paid for this sweet machine with seventeen hundred dollars, the cash rubber-banded in stacks of twenties. Two baby-blue suitcases with nine kilos of dope, vacuum-sealed in shrink-wrap, nestle below in a false bottom in the trunk. The leather on the top suitcase is torn from abundant use, so I face it gouge-side-down in the trunk, its raw ripped edges pressed against the dope inside worth thousands of dollars on the street.
My regular setup for hauling dope works every time. I move dope in bulk for Seattle dealers, then drive back down to San Diego to start a deal over again. Sometimes I alternate how I run the stuff to keep my trail unpredictable for the Feds. Either I pack the kilos in my car or ship them through and ride the bus or train along with the cargo. This is before the widespread use of scout dogs to sniff for drugs.
If I travel by bus or train, the insides of my arms come out a mess by the end of the round-trip drug run. In the bathroom stall at the back of a bus, I brace one hip against the outer edge of the stainless-steel sink and struggle to get a needle into my scarred inner arm. Half the time I miss my vein from the shudder of the bus. The sway of a train makes it even harder to hit.
BACK ON HIGHWAY 101, the speedometer clocks eighty miles an hour, James Brown rasps “I Feel Good” on my
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