sometimes it gets lonely. But I refuse to lie up with one of these old, two-timing-ass niggas. But if I were you, I would confront his ass. You know men are good at cheating but bad at hiding it. We women can go out and fuck a whole basketball team. We get home, prepare dinner, wash clothes, clean the house, wash our asses, and fuck your man like your ass wasn’t just sliding down on another man’s dick. These men, soon as a bitch give them a little attention, they start fucking up. They stop coming home on time, and stop doing the shit they’re supposed to do. They think they’re the smartest. But in reality, they are dumb as fuck.”
She went on a whole tangent, and I had to say that I was grateful for her. Joy, just like her name says, was always a good time. And whether or not she knew it, she brightened up my day, just that quick. The hot cocoa and the conversation warmed my quickly freezing heart. The best part about it was that she was dead serious. And I wished I had the balls to cheat on my husband the way that he was doing me. Give his ass a taste of his own medicine. Maybe then, he would get his act together. But knowing Rasheem, he would just kill my ass and move the bitch that he was fuckin’ into my bed before my body was found. Who was gonna check him? He was that powerful.
I couldn’t do that to Ky. She wouldn’t go for some random bitch coming in and playing house with her daddy. So she would probably end up out on the streets, and he’d stop paying her tuition. She didn’t deserve that. To be motherless, homeless, and her future cut short because I wanted to get even with her daddy . . . I was better than that. But thinking of Ky made me smile. I knew what she would be with, and I planned to talk to her about it tonight.
Coming back to my current environment, I saw a smirk cross Joy’s face. I hated when she did that . . . well, when I didn’t want her to. That was something that came with being best friends for decades. She could read me like a book, and I knew that she was gonna be on my ass like white on rice if I didn’t tell her that I was thinking what she thought I was thinking. Regardless of whether I did, though, she was already planning the stealth mission that would catch my husband in his bullshit. With no prenup and fifteen years married, all I needed was proof, and I would be in there like swimwear.
I knew that I couldn’t hire anyone to do it because all the private investigators were either former cops or had some kinda cop connection, and they all knew Rasheem. He made sure that they did. Hell, even the ex-cons that I worked with knew who my husband was. They never gave me any problems because they didn’t wanna have to face his ass. That was the kinda life I lived. I was pretty much a prisoner in a miserable-ass marriage, and couldn’t do shit about anything because of who my husband was.
“So, when we getting this shit started?” Joy asked, making me laugh. I loved the way her British accent sounded when she cussed.
“I don’t know if it’s a good idea—” My phone started ringing, and I couldn’t say that I wasn’t glad. Usually, I hated when our sessions were interrupted by work. But this time, looking at the expression on her face, I was happy for the excuse to put this conversation on pause.
I excused myself and picked it up. It was the receptionist telling me that my 9:00 a.m. parolee was there.
“Work calls,” I said, hanging up the phone.
“We might be finished . . . for now, but we ain’t done,” Joy threatened, motioning her finger back and forth between her and me. Blowing me a kiss, she left, and I grabbed the file in front of me.
I took a few minutes to read over it carefully. I liked to find out who I was about to come in contact with and what their story was before talking to them.
“Joanne, please tell Mr. Greene to come in,” I paged the receptionist.
“OK, Mrs. Blake, gotcha.”
I left his folder open and sat there waiting. Sipping my hot cocoa, I started to wonder if he’d gotten lost on the way to my office or had made a stop at the bathroom or something. Either way, I was becoming impatient, and this was a bad way to start things off with me. There were two kinds of parolees: the ones who wanted to get their probation over with and didn’t give me any trouble at all, and the ones who wanted to let me know that they weren’t gonna answer to no bitch. I didn’t want to pass judgment before he got in here because I always gave them the benefit of the doubt. But I would’ve been foolish not to pay attention to these kinds of things. They were usually precursors to later, more blatant acts of defiance.
I heard a knock and tried to give him a clean slate in my mind. Sitting upright, my hands folded over his file on my desk, I made sure that I had on my poker face.
“Come in, Mr. Greene,” I yelled enough for him to hear.
A dark-skinned brother walked in. I surveyed him from head to toe. His pants sagged, and his hair wasn’t combed. He just wasn’t making this benefit of the doubt thing easy for me.
“Good morning, Mr. Greene. I’m Officer Blake. Please, take a seat.”
“What’s good?” he asked. “My bad about the delay. I had to take a piss.” He added an explanation for the delay in his arrival, but the way he was speaking was too informal for the environment we were in.
This was his first mistake—well, his third at this point. I wanted to tell his ass we’re not in the hood. That shit might work among his boys, but I wasn’t one of the boys, and it wasn’t working with me. Instead, I took my personal feelings out of the situation and got right down to business.
“So, you were released on Friday from FCI Beckley. I’ll be your probation officer. First, I need a urine sample from you. Then I’ll make sure you understand the rules and regulations of being on probation. If you violate any of these rules, I will come to get you personally and send you back to prison. Do I make myself clear?” I took a cup out of my drawer and placed it in front of him.
He stared at me and didn’t respond right away. His lack of response made me meet his eyes to make sure that my meaning was clear. But as I looked him in the eyes, I quickly looked away. Something unexplainable was happening. It was like this convict was burning a hole inside of me. My panties started becoming uncomfortable. Like . . . They were all of a sudden too tight for my ass. I wanted to stick my hand under my skirt so that I could fix them, but I couldn’t. So I crossed my legs, trying to manipulate them into a better position.
“Officer Blake, can I ask you a question?” he grabbed my attention.
“Yes, you may.” I continued to avoid eye contact by looking at the computer screen, pretending like I was reading.
“What is a beautiful woman like you doing in this position? I mean, do you like your job? Locking up people and all that?”
I smiled and clasped my hands together. Uncrossing my legs, I forgot the reason that I’d crossed them in the first place . . . and crossed them again, expeditiously. “Well, yes, I love what I do. I get to keep criminals off the streets and help those that want to come home and get rehabilitated. So, now that you brought that up, which category do you fall in?”
He looked at me and smiled. “I mean, I’ma get me a job and stay outta y’all way. You know what I mean?”
“Well, I do hope so, ’cause you will find out, I’m not the officer to play around with. Let’s go so you can take this test.”
I got up, snatched the cup, and walked out the door. He followed me to the bathroom. I stood with the door ajar while he pissed in the cup. My mind kept wandering off, but I managed to get it under control.
He handed me the cup, which barely had enough urine in it to test. I guess he wasn’t lying about using the bathroom before coming into my office. But that didn’t make sense. He had to know I was gonna test him, so why wouldn’t he hold it? Looking at it, and then at him, he smiled and gave me a shrug as if to say, “I told ya so,” to which I smirked before I could catch myself. Turning on my heels so that he didn’t see all the way through my soul, we walked back into my office.
Putting the test strip into the cup through the hole in the top, I went over everything with him.
“Your curfew is at