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25
TROUBLED TIMES

The night I got my sentence, I got drunk. Really drunk. And I got high, but it didn't seem to work like it usually did. Maybe the stuff was cut with something, or maybe I just wasn't feeling anything. When I arrived back from court, I bought two packs of cocaine on the way up to my room. Yasheeda was lying on our bed, watching TV. She had been waiting all afternoon for me to return, but I wished she hadn't. I wanted to be alone.

'How did it go?' she asked as soon as I came in. In the transport bus on the way back to San Pedro I had decided not to say anything about what had happened. I would tell her at a better time.

'The same as last time,' I answered, sitting down to make a few lines on a CD cover. 'Postponed again.' Deep down, however, I was afraid of telling her. It had been six months since we had met, but I thought that if I told her, she would leave me.

Although I had been a prisoner all the time I had known Yasheeda, it had never felt that way. We had been able to do most things that normal couples do. We had lived together, we'd had friends around for dinner parties, we had eaten in restaurants. I had even been able to go out of the prison occasionally to spend time with her on the outside. One time, I had a guard escorting me who trusted me a lot and he left us alone together in a hotel room while he waited downstairs in reception.

One night before I was sentenced, Yasheeda and I had talked about our future together. We were both drunk, but she said that she would wait. 'I want to be the first person to hug you when you're a free man,' she said. 'I'll be waiting at the gates when you get out.' At the time, we didn't know how long that would be, but Yasheeda said it didn't