Breaking good, p.18
Breaking Good, page 18
I tied up my loose ends, put in my two weeks’ notice at Foot Locker, and made some plans. A road trip seemed the simplest and most fun means of moving back home while I waited for a response from the University of Hawaii. I knew it would be infinitely better with someone riding shotgun, so I made a phone call, and a few days later, I stood in the terminal at Miami International Airport to greet an old friend as he stepped off the jetway. His curly hair had been tamed with a little time and experience, his mischievous smile just a touch more suave than it had been that first night I’d passed out on his shoulder, but he was still Mark, and this road trip was going to rule.
It was already early evening when Mark arrived, so I drove us straight to the Bayside Marketplace, a shopping center on the water that was scenic and pleasant during the day but a surprisingly hip center of local nightlife after dark. We grabbed a quick meal, then headed for Fat Tuesday, where a wall of slushie mixers churned frozen alcohol in every color of the rainbow. Yes, I had just graduated from a halfway house, but alcohol had never been my poison, and I wasn’t concerned. Hard drugs were out. I was done with them, but drinks with my best friend from back in the day at a place that offered infinite combinations of flavors and quality booze? Hell yes. Besides, this was a road trip with Mark. A few drinks and a little weed were simply going to happen, and I was sure I could handle it.
Mark and I sat with our brightly colored frozen drinks, looking out over the bay with a soft, clean breeze rolling in, so close to the boats docked in the marina that I could literally almost touch them. We caught up and reminisced, laughing like we were sixteen again and so happy to see one another it hurt a little bit. But that bittersweet twinge passed, and we each lit a cigarette and proceeded to get mildly drunk.
I woke up, blissfully free of a hangover and proud of myself for it, walked out to the couch to smack Mark’s foot, and started getting ready. I’d already packed my car the day before, so a shower and a quick breakfast later, we were on the road. It wasn’t long before Mark produced a huge bag of pot he’d flown down with. In a pre-9/11 world, it was mind-bogglingly easy to smuggle drugs past airport security. Just hide it in your shoe and act cool, and you’ve got yourself all the pot you’re going to need for a road trip from Miami to New York.
Mark was gracious enough to take the first shift driving while I rolled my first joint in over a year. Then, much to my surprise, I paused to consider whether it was really a good idea.
It’s just a joint, I told myself. This is totally normal college kid stuff. I had some drinks last night. Didn’t black out, didn’t even wake up sick. I’m fine. I’m good. And I was, or at least seemed to be, so I lifted that joint to my lips, lit it, and hit it.
By the time we were crossing through Georgia, the screws were starting to come a little loose. I was behind the wheel, flooring it and giving not a single fuck, with rolled joints on the dash. And Mark, my best friend and brother in mischief, was not loving it.
“Nik, slow down!” Mark chuckled, but I could hear the nerves behind it. “It’s like The Dukes of Hazzard down here and we will go to jail if we get pulled over.” He said it with love, smiling the whole time, but his meaning was perfectly clear. Nikki, I’m happy to smoke up and have fun and shit, but you are always pushing it.
He was right. He wasn’t judging me, but he had my number. It was so easy for me to careen right off the deep end, and I never even knew it until I was in freefall. Only a few days out of Miami and I was already back on that slippery slope. I knew then and there I had to check myself, and I was grateful Mark was there to remind me.
The next stop on our epic road trip was South of the Border, a popular tourist attraction at the border of the Carolinas. We rolled up just in time for a much-needed bathroom break before killing the munchies with some gloriously greasy burritos. We hung around for a while afterward while our lunch digested, then made one last loop through the souvenirs, bought some fireworks, and took a few pictures to capture the moment before heading back out.
We were just a little over nine hours from home, and though Mark offered to trade off, he ended up falling asleep in the passenger seat on the way. He’d done most of the driving while I’d been busy getting stoned, so I figured he deserved the nap. I let him sleep until we hit the Garden State Parkway.
“Hey. Wake the fuck up,” I said, jostling him. He sat up straight and looked around groggily as dawn broke to our right.
“Holy shit, Nik. You drove the rest of the way?”
“Just about. Another forty-five minutes, give or take, and we’ll be back in New City. God help us.” We laughed and pulled over at the next gas station for some caffeine.
Summer was on the way out when I arrived home in New City. It didn’t take much to get the old Bennigan’s crew together again, and I spent the remainder of the summer of ’93 hanging out with my people while I planned the next chapter of my life.
Seeing my old friends wasn’t just like old times—it was better, because the last time I’d seen them I was such a hot fucking mess they hadn’t known what to do with me. But this Nikki…post-rehab Nikki? I was drinking moderately and smoking just enough weed to achieve a mellow high. I was careful not to let myself get too baked. I wanted to be present enough to actually enjoy the moment and the people I was with, and I managed to do just that.
I love the fall—the colors, the crispness, the perfume of rain and dead leaves. It’s my absolute favorite time of year, and I didn’t even have to bother with school until January, so I could enjoy it at as leisurely a pace as I wanted. I had plenty of time to contemplate how far I’d come and where I was headed. Long drives alone up and down the Palisades Parkway, hypnotized by the autumn foliage, became a staple of my routine. I’d leave the windows down, the wind sliding over my skin as I blasted the classics like “American Pie” and “Bohemian Rhapsody” and newer favorite “Closer to Fine.”
The leaves were already turning when my packet from the University of Hawaii finally arrived. With my checkered academic history, I wasn’t sure I’d get in, but there it was, a thick envelope with several forms and a course catalog inside. I sat down on the front stoop, flipping through the catalog and enjoying a cigarette under a nice, overcast sky when the phone rang. I took one last drag, stamped out my butt, and headed inside.
“Is this the parent or guardian of Michael Mammano?”
“I’m his sister. Is he okay?”
“He’s not feeling well and needs to go home, but he would have to be signed out by an adult, so…”
“It’s cool. I’m twenty. I’ll come get him.”
I’d only seen the local junior high once or twice, having moved to New City just before high school, and I didn’t know my way around. The woman at the front desk was kind enough to point me in the direction of the nurse’s office. Halfway there, a balding man approached me with a paper cup of something hot.
“Excuse me,” he said in a stern voice that wasn’t making a request. “Where’s your hall pass?”It took a second to sink in. I’d always been short and looked a little young for my age, so his mistake wasn’t at all odd, but I laughed out loud all the same and kept on going. “Where do you think you’re going, young lady?”
“Dude, I am in college,” I said proudly, then I jangled my car keys at him and went the rest of the way to the nurse’s office.
I’d spent the entire fall just partying with my favorite people. Being home was better than I could have guessed. I was actually happy to be there, and everyone was happy to have me.
My flight was set for a few days before Christmas, so I could settle into Deb’s beachside apartment and spend a few weeks getting the lay of the land before classes started. It was an early-morning flight, so the whole crew agreed to stay up with me and see me off.
We partied all night long, stretching a few hours into a last hurrah that made us feel immortal. We drank and danced, then hit the diner for some pie and disco fries to sober up. I felt loved and alive and ready to take on whatever came next. After some food and a little time to sober up, we headed to Newark International Airport, where we passed the time until my 5 a.m. flight hanging out in the parking lot, giggling as we hotboxed the car with pot smoke. When the time came, everyone came inside with me to see me off.
We sat on the floor by the gate for at least an hour, some of us even lying down, just talking and laughing, taking up space without apology, wondering just what was next for all of us. I leaned against Mark, my head on his shoulder in a bizarre recreation of that first hangout immortalized in a tacked-up Polaroid four years and a lifetime ago. Some small part of me wanted to just linger in that still, peaceful moment forever, and that moment seemed to dilate until we were just floating in it. Suddenly, we looked up to find that a handful of other people had settled by the gate, and soon after, the announcement to board came.
We all hugged and said our goodbyes. Paul was the last. We hugged, and he patted my back. In lieu of a long, sentimental goodbye, he simply offered a quiet “See ya.” Then I grabbed my bag and boarded the plane.
I reached my seat and spaced out as I gazed out the window into the predawn darkness, grateful for one last hangout sesh with my friends as I flew off to Hawaii. And, well…we all know how that turned out.
Part Three
Paradise Lost
CHAPTER 14
Lockdown
I was arrested on a Thursday—January 26, 1995. Within a week, I’d been shuttled to OCCC. My cell was small and dark, barely enough room for a bunk bed, a toilet, and a sink. My only window was blacked out, so after lights out, I couldn’t see a thing.
On my second night, I jerked awake at the sound of the door and flinched at the blinding light from outside. Two pairs of hands grabbed me, pulling me from my top bunk and dragging me out of my cell—guards. I asked them what was happening, but they didn’t answer. They just marched me along so fast my feet barely touched the stairs down to the first level, where they shoved me into a room and locked the door behind me.
Once the shock subsided, I sat at the metal table and waited for…fuck, I had no idea. I had more than a passing suspicion I was about to be raped or worse. Given my surroundings, assuming the worst seemed to make sense. Time, or at least your perception of it, expands considerably in prison. I was probably only in there a few minutes, but it felt like hours, and just as I was about to start climbing the walls, the door opened and a guard came in, holding two huge paper bags. It wasn’t one of the guards who had dragged me in there. I knew him.
“Oscar!” I whispered, afraid it was all a dream, like saying his name too loudly might make him evaporate. Despite all the business I did with OCCC, it had never occurred to me I might run into a client, but there he was. Oscar gave me an uneasy smile and took a seat, setting the bags down on the table.
“I was processing some new-arrival paperwork, and your mugshot came up.”
“Yeah? Good picture?” My poorly timed attempt at humor completely failed to lighten the mood. Oscar just shook his head, confused. He knew me as this savvy, cutthroat dealer who could take care of herself. Getting caught didn’t exactly fit that image.
“Holy shit, Nikki. What the fuck happened?”
I brought him up to speed, telling him all about how I’d been profiled by the feds, set up by a friend who’d sold me out. He asked if I was all right, if anyone had hurt me yet. The “yet” was not comforting, but I kept the conversation moving. I realized very quickly that in prison, protection was key. I was a little slower on the uptake with what Oscar was offering. Fortunately, as he was leaving he spelled it out for me.
“That’s all yours,” he said, nodding to the bags on the table. I peeked inside quickly to find smokes, toiletries, food, candy, and more. He must have cleaned out half the commissary. “There can be more of that, and an eye or two on your back…if you don’t talk.”
It’s hard to believe that up until that moment I hadn’t considered the power I possessed. There were probably a dozen guards walking the premises at that very moment with meth in their pockets that they’d bought from Oscar, who had bought it from me. A few words in the right ears, a few answers to questions no one had even thought to ask, and I could take the whole prison down, earning myself some leniency, likely even walking free. Someone as far along in the process as I was, already booked, transferred, and awaiting trial, rarely had that kind of get-out-of-jail-free card in their pocket, and I can’t believe I didn’t use it. I mean, Oscar was a nice guy and all, but I felt no loyalty toward him, not enough to rot in jail to cover his ass.
But he was a known quantity, and even if exposing him and the other guards would get me a deal, there was no telling how long that process might take or what might befall me in the interim. An assurance of some limited security and a few creature comforts carried a lot more weight at that moment than a chance at freedom. There are times you ante up and bet everything, and maybe this was one of them, but I wasn’t about to chance it. The house almost always wins.
A normal person would call their parents at that point, but normal was something I’d given up on a long time ago. I didn’t look to my parents for the promise of comfort or salvation, just another reminder that I’d screwed up yet again and had made things harder on everyone else. It was always about everyone else. I always seemed to come last in the discussion, and what I didn’t need at my lowest point was an itemized rehash of what had gotten me there and what a selfish, crazy disappointment it made me. So, no, I didn’t call home. I didn’t call anyone.
I didn’t get to see the other modules at OCCC, but it’s safe to assume they looked and functioned more or less the same as mine: two floors of cells arranged in a square around the guards’ station, tables on the first floor where our meals were brought to us by male inmates.
Unlike us, the men were allowed to have jobs outside their modules, which required them to move around the complex a bit. Sure, it was for work, but it was still more fresh air than I got.
The women were allowed out a few times a day for a smoke break, when we could chat and feel at least a little normal. Once or twice a week we got an hour out in the yard, where I could look past the cinder block tower and barbed wire fence to a lush, green mountain that was so close yet so far. If one of us was really lucky, we’d get called to medical, giving us a change of scenery for ten, maybe twenty minutes, but otherwise one day was the same as the next.
Up at 5 a.m. for a head count, standing outside our cells as the guards checked us off their list, one by one. Then we had to clean our cells. Toilets, floor, and beds had to be perfect, and without much else to do, it was easy to be meticulous. After that, breakfast.
I ate so much bread in that place—not toast…bread. At every meal. A hardboiled egg…four slices of bread. A lunch meat surprise…four slices of bread. Meatloaf for dinner…four slices of bread. You wouldn’t think someone would gain weight in prison, but seriously—just count those carbs.
The rest of the day was mostly spent walking around the module. TV, when we could watch it, was a great distraction. I was wandering through that area on one of my first nights when one of the women called me over.
“Hey! Hey, was that you?” I just looked up at the TV to see some boring news story that had nothing to do with me. The inmate turned to one of the others. “Was that her?”
“Yeah, that was her. You missed it, hon.”
The arrest of one of Oahu’s premier meth dealers—yours truly—had made the evening news, giving the girls in my module something to buzz about. They waved me over to have a seat, asking me all kinds of questions. It was a bizarre, twisted, and fleeting moment of celebrity, but we all seemed to enjoy it, and after that icebreaker I kind of had…friends?
We didn’t braid each other’s hair or anything, but we sat together at meals and played cards and would join any and all meetings we could. It didn’t matter if we didn’t fit the bill for attendance; many a non-addict showed up for Narcotics Anonymous, and people without a drop of faith would show up for Bible study. Any group would be packed just so we could have a break from all the nothing we had to do. Many of us never knew how long our daily nothing would last…how long any of it would last. Someone could linger there for weeks, months, years, for all we knew. But then some guard’s voice could call one of us for “bag and baggage” over the loudspeaker, and after picking up what few possessions you arrived with, you carried it out in a plastic bag, and that was the last anyone heard of you.
You really come to appreciate certain things in prison—everyday things you otherwise take for granted like, say, showering. There were only a handful of shower stalls, wedged in amidst a row of cell doors, and you needed to book time in one.
On my second or third day, I went down to the guards’ station, signed up for a turn in one of the shower stalls, and signed out a razor, a privilege violent offenders weren’t afforded. I was mildly concerned about having only a thin plastic curtain between me and the guards (and everyone else, for that matter), but I was a floor up, and they barely seemed to be paying attention, far more interested in their magazines and conversation.
I was lathering my hair with some of the shampoo Oscar had included in my goodie bag, when I heard a scrape of metal on metal and felt a rush of cold air. When I turned around I was standing face to face with a naked woman I’d never met before in my life. Before I could think, she grabbed the razor I’d signed out and held it up.
“Make a sound, and I’ll cut you,” she breathed. This woman stared at me with an intense, almost angry frown, then ran her hand over my head to scoop up some lather. She raised her arm, smeared the lather onto her armpit, and started shaving. She sighed, and this weird look of serenity passed over her face as she groomed herself right there in front of me. All I could do was stand there, careful to keep my head out of the shower stream. Standing naked in a slippery shower stall was not the time or place I wanted to anger someone holding a razor.
