I didn’t care how they tried to dress the joint up with a mildewed mop or a fresh coat of paint. It was nasty. The food was shitty, the showers were dirty…the whole scene was a lesson on how to live like a dog. I had grown up in Harlem so I was used to junkies, hoes, and thieves, but nothing in my life had prepared me for the hopelessness that hung thick in the air at Rikers. Being G’s woman had made me soft. He had gotten me used to sleeping on plush mattresses and bathing in deep tubs filled with hot, bubbly water. Coming up in here was like being dropped onto another planet. I felt like an alien who didn’t understand the language, the reasoning, or the rules. Right away I noticed that the guards did a whole lot of barking. Most of them were just regular dudes and chicks who had probably grown up in the projects too, but right now they were roaming around and flossing large and in charge, and they looked down on the inmates like we were some gutter scum that had come up out of a clogged toilet.
