It was never supposed to be me riding on this dirty old school bus especially not me as a grownup. When I was a kid I rode this bus with my mama. We rode downstate to see her man, and I didn’t like it then.

Well, to be truthful when I was a kid I did like going on the long ride and playing around with the other kids. We always made up fun games on the long ride like find the green and blue cars or the brown and red ones. I remember it was hard to find cars with a combination of colors. Oh and the lunches, I almost forgot about the surprise snacks the women on the bus would bring. Cakes, rolls, candy, pies, ‘something sweet for the trip,’ they would say.

Since I have been catching this bus as a grown person none of the adults have brought ‘something sweet’ for the trip. Maybe next week I’ll bring the kids something. Another fun thing about the bus ride was we got to hear grown folks’ business. The bus was small so we heard everything. We knew who was getting out of prison soon, and who was really guilty, and who was helping who sneak what in, and who was going to go to jail next if they wasn’t careful. We acted like we wasn’t listening but we were. At least the girls were. I don’t think any of the boys listened. If they had I doubt that four out of the five boys that rode the bus with us would be locked up now.  

The bus rides stop being fun after the second year. Once I found out what people that didn’t ride the bus said about those of us who did, “Jailhouse wives and they kids,” is what we were called, or they called us “state property kids.” I hated the names. I was already being called, skinny, nappy headed and bucktoothed. I didn’t need any more teasing tags.

It seemed like everybody in the neighborhood knew that the dirty old school bus parked in Mt. Zion’s parking lot every Saturday afternoon was going to the prison. Over forty years ago some of the jail house wives in the neighborhood got together and hired the bus for the ride downstate. When a couple of them died, they left money to keep the trip going for the families of inmates. It doesn’t cost a dime for us to ride downstate to visit, just a little pride.

When I began to whine to my mother about being teased, she stopped making me go with her. The man she was visiting wasn’t my daddy anyway, so it really didn’t make any sense for me to go through the embarrassment. I told myself that was an embarrassment that I would not have to go through again, never. Obviously I was wrong.

When Kenny first got sent downstate, I had enough money to rent a car and a driver to take me to see my man. Five years and three lawyers later, I am on the dirty old school bus with the other jailhouse wives. We, my husband and I ain’t broke, but I can’t afford to spend money foolishly. The pride of my childhood gives in to the budgeting of an adult wife with a husband in prison.

I’m not as embarrassed as I was when I was a kid, but it still bothers me a little to walk around the corner to the bus. I live in the same neighborhood I grew up in, two blocks from my mama and Big Mama’s house. So everybody knows where I’m strolling to on Saturday afternoons.

When my husband comes home we will live well. I wasn’t stupid with his money. We got a couple of buildings, and I went in with my brother and brought a barbeque-rib joint and a Laundromat. We ain’t go be ballin’ anymore, but we gonna live pretty good.

Kenny is proud of how I worked his money. I thought he was gonna be mad when I told him I sold his trucks and his Lexus, but I can’t drive. And the dope boys, his ex-friends, were offering so much money for the car and truck that I had to sell. With that money, plus with using a little of the money he left under the bathroom floor, I was able to buy our first building and pay for those useless lawyers. Well, I shouldn’t call the lawyers useless, they did get him a reduced sentence. He will be home for good in two years. The last lawyer is the one that got us the conjugal visits. With Kenny being a model prisoner, he said it wasn’t a problem.

Natalie, the older woman in the seat in front of me has been having conjugal visits with her husband for eleven years. This is my first one, and I have been sort of the joke of the bus ride because of it. I been smiling and nodding my head with them but contrary to what they think, this sister ain’t hard up or desperately in need of some beef. I am well taking care of in that department. Matter of fact I am doing better than I was when Kenny was out. Kenny’s and my thing was never based on sex at least not for me.

My high-school flame and me started kickin’ it after the first year Kenny got sent downstate. I am a twenty three year old woman with real needs that likes male company. My high-school flame is married and in love with his wife. So there won’t be any drama when Kenny gets out. He’ll have his wife and I’ll have my husband. We both know what we doing, is only temporary. At least the frequency in which we are doing it now is temporary. We won’t be able to get away with seeing so much of each other once Kenny comes home.

What I’m worried about though, is what if Kenny can tell I been with another man? My old flame is bigger than Kenny is down there. A lot bigger, he’s longer and thicker, and I’m wondering if the tight glove fit Kenny use to brag about is still there. I don’t feel any looser or larger. Every time me and my old flame do it he says I am as tight as I was in high-school. If he goes in too soon or too fast it hurts me just as much as when I was in high-school. So things feel the same to me.

He says I won’t have anything to worry about with Kenny because my stuff is still good and tight. But I think it’s real good to him because his thing is bigger than Kenny’s. When I put on my gloves after my mama puts her big hands in them I can tell that she’s has worn them. I’m afraid Kenny is gonna be able to tell that my flame has been inside me and messed up his glove tight fit. But I really don’t feel any larger down there.

This is not the same bus I caught as kid, but there is not much difference in it. A narrow aisle, hard green vinyl seats, a rubber mat covering the aisle floor and a white metal ceiling. Looks the same but it’s newer. I know every family on this bus. They are all from my neighborhood. I thought I was gonna have plenty of time before Kenny came home. Then my stuff would get back like it was if I stopped doing it with my flame about a month or so before Kenny came home. But shoot, doing it with him has gotten so good to me that I gave him some this morning when he stopped by on his way to work. He makes sex enjoyable for me. Kenny didn’t. 

My mama said I was being stupid to mess around with my old flame. She claims she was loyal to her husband for the eight years he was in jail, but I know for a fact she wasn’t loyal to my daddy when he wasn’t locked up. Which is why he left us fifteen years ago, and I seriously doubt that she was loyal to her man of my childhood despite what she claims.

She forgets that I lived with her during most of those eight years. I saw her going out to the Eastside Club every Wednesday night and not coming home until Thursday afternoon. I know that went on for at least two of the years that he was locked down. My mama thinks everybody in the world is stupid but her. Her getting saved and sanctified may have washed her mind clean of all the wrong stuff she did, but I still remember and so does Big Mama. We laugh at her selective memory.

I hope what Big Mama told me to do about my down there concern works. She said it worked for her after having eight kids. She told me granddaddy was a happy, sexually satisfied husband until he died. I believe her cause my granddaddy never had a stern or mean word to say to anybody. I can remember him always rubbing and patting Big Mama. Where ever she was, he was always nearby. Big Mama said the alum worked for her mama and my mama too. I asked my mama about the alum but she acted like she didn’t know what I was talking about, and said she never had such concerns.

Big Mama said I should douche with the alum mix about a half hour before Kenny and me get intimate. I used the alum mix this morning after me and my flame did it and I used the mix right before I got on this bus and my stuff feels real tight now. It feels like it sucking up inside me. I don’t know if I’m gonna use anymore before me and Kenny get together, but I brought some just in case. If it worked for Big Mama after eight kids it should work behind my flame. 

I really didn’t mean to get started up with my old flame the way that I have. It was just to be once for old times but the first date lead to second and a third. The next thing I know we going at it every other day and now we have no plans to stop. So I’m laughing with the wives on the bus but believe me, I am not in need.

Natalie whispers for me not to expect too much from the first time with Kenny. She says he’s going to be so excited he might not get three good pumps in. She says by the third visit things will get better, and asks are my conjugal visits overnight. I tell her no, only one hour. She says she it wasn’t until after his eighth year that her husband got overnights. There is a nice, grown lady, auntie type smile on her face. I feel her pat me on my arm, “Things are going to be fine baby,” she says. Natalie turns back around in her seat and talks to her daughter.

My mind goes back to me and Kenny’s actual first time. I was not planning on giving him any, because all the neighborhood girls had him and his boys spoiled. It was rumored that Kenny was doing it with some of my girls’ mamas, and he was the same age as me. To me, that was just plain nasty.

Kenny and his boys had neighborhood and city baller status because they had been rollin’ good in the crack game for about two years. He sat courtside at the games and ringside at the fights. He had flown girls first class to Jamaica where they stayed in fancy hotels and all that. He had four one carat earrings in his ears, two in each and his pinky ring cost more than Big Mama’s house. So when he rolled up on me that cool fall evening in his Lexus I wasn’t try to hear a thing he had to say.

I didn’t like ballers because they treated women as if they were disposable. Every girl in the neighborhood was supposed to lie down for them because they were rich. Not me. I wasn’t going for it. At least I thought I wasn’t.

He didn’t roll up me talking that going to Jamaica or that fight and game mess. The first thing he said to me was that he thought I was “wifey” material, and that he was looking to settle down. He said his father had told him I was a good girl and that he should take me to church.

The big baller rolled up on me because his daddy told him to. We went to church for about two months, then to the movies, the theatres, out to dinner and shopping. I liked shopping the most.

When we did it the first time it wasn’t remarkable or anything, at least not to me. He asked me to marry him right after that. I came down a little on my menstrual and he thought it was virgin blood. I didn’t tell him any different because I was getting use to his spending. Besides he was only the second man I had done it with in my life, and since my high school flame didn’t live in the neighborhood so no one knew about him, and I was never one to tell my business. So was I head over heels in love with him?  No, but we are in love now and that’s all that matters.

Everybody on the bus is back into their own conversations and the teasing about my conjugal visit has stopped. I think I may have overdid the alum my stuff is getting uncomfortable. Good thing the bus is pulling into the gate, I need something inside of me to work against the tightening.

We all get off the bus together, but me, Natalie, and Maxine, the other wife with conjugal visits are escorted to another smaller building. Walking down the sunny concrete path alongside me, Natalie she says we are going to the cottage. What she calls a cottage is a short one story building. We have to stand outside in the cold waiting to get buzzed through the steel double doors.

Once in the cottage we all are escorted to large community shower room where we are told to strip. This throws me back a little. I haven’t had to strip before, but seeing Natalie not hesitating to disrobe I do the same.

We are given laundry baskets to hold our belongings. The three of us are standing butt naked behind these little baskets when two female guards walk in. I see Natalie bend over and spread her cheeks without a word said, Maxine does the same, and so do I.

One guard is going through our clothes in the basket while the other is behind us with a flash light. I feel fingers open my coochie pie and my bootie hole. I don’t like this one bit. The guard behind us walks out without a word said. The others get dressed, and so do I. We don’t say a thing to each other. The guard that went through our belongings says we can only wear the clothes we have on to the dorm rooms, our coats are to stay in the baskets.

We follow her out of the showers and down a corridor full of rooms. She points to the first room, it’s for me, 16A. I go inside. There is a small twin sized bed and a cassette player on a tiny table next to the bed. On the far white wall is blue face clock. It reads five fifty five. Inside the cassette player is ‘A Soul Lovers’ tape with songs by Luther, the Temptations, Marvin Gaye, Mary J. Blige and others. The twin bed is covered with a thin brown blanket. I pull it back to see a cover sheet and a fitted sheet. I sit in the bed and wait.

Outside in the hall I hear one of the female guards arguing in a whisper, but I don’t hear a response from the one she’s arguing with. Something is said about her doing her part and why should she have to act as if it was okay. I hear the guard’s rapid steps past the door and in walks Kenny, and damn, he looks good to me.               

He says something about it being good to see me. I ain’t hearing him really because my man has swollen up with muscles. I had seen them through the glass but up close and personal they seem bigger.

His kisses are hot and probing. His tongue is almost down my throat. This is new for him, Kenny doesn’t like to French kiss. His grip on my butt is hard and painful. He’s squeezing me like he thinks I’m going to pull back. We are standing and he has his fingers inside my panties. Alum tight or not, my juices are dripping. His fingers are slippery wet. He pulls them from my panties and smells them. That’s new for him too, Kenny used to want no parts of the pussy near his mouth. He would never do that before.

He pushes me down on the bed, flips up my little mini and grabs a hold of my panties. He pulls them off, but leaves my skirt, blouse and shoes on. All he does is unzips his fly and flips it out. I don’t even get to see it.

I have missed all of this man. I want to see feel and touch every part of him But he’s frantic, so I let him have me the way he wants. He tries to work it inside but I’m tight. Damn tight. He has to slow down. I hear him whisper that he forgot how tight my stuff was. He slows down.

He looks into my eyes like he’s seeing me for the first time this afternoon. Now he kisses me like my Kenny with soft wet lips.

“Baby,” I hear him say, “Baby I missed you so much.”

He stands up and takes his clothes off. He is ripped up, muscles are all over his lean body. He bends down to me and helps me out of my clothes and bra. We are laying in the bed, him on top of me and he is kissing my lips, then my neck and now my nipples. This is how my Kenny does it. Now I feel him working on me down there. He is in my wetness and has got me opening to him. I feel him inside of me. As snug and as wet as I am, I am expecting him to climax soon as he gets it all in. He doesn’t, he buries himself inside me and keeps it there. I feel his pulse inside me.

“My woman,” he says, “this is my woman alone.”

Then he starts to pump, and oh my God it feels like he is pulling me inside out. It’s not painful, but I am so tight around him that it feels he is taking my insides out with each thrust.  I tell him to, “slow down daddy,” and he does. I feel his throbbing, his pushing and twisting, but no pulling out. It feels like he is part of me. I hear him say again, “my woman my woman alone.” And the next thing I know I am having multiple orgasms like crazy. I say like crazy because this usually don’t happen with Kenny. I have never had multiples with him, but I’m having them now.

Like I said our thing isn’t sex based, at least it wasn’t. Every time he moves I have a climax. This is crazy. My mind tells me it’s Kenny but it’s hard to believe because he is doing it better than my high school flame. After the multiples I feel looser and a lot wetter. I tell Kenny to get back to pumping and he does. And he pumps fast. Now when Kenny does fast, it is usually over quickly. I am expecting him to pop off any second. I know this good fast pumping is not going to last. I usually have to slow him down to make it last but he’s working on me like it’s going to last and damn if it ain’t lasting. 

He’s not stopping, and he has me building up for a big one. If he keeps doing it fast like this, I’m going to. . . damn! 

A big one, with Kenny?

What’s really going on?

I wrap my thighs around his waist like I do my old high school flame and go buck wild because my man is giving it to me. I squeeze my thighs tight then I fling them open wide for him. If he’s going to make love like this he can have it all.

I just had another blast of multiples and this ain’t never happened with Kenny.  I cuming so much that I’m dizzy. I feel his sweat drops falling on me. I open my eyes because I have to look just to make sure it’s Kenny. He started a feeling building up in the nape of my neck that shoots down to my toes and causes them to ball up.

Damn, he made it happen twice. He’s doing better than my high school flame. Oh, this has to stop, this is too strange. I feel him jerk a little but he pulls of me and says, “get on your knees.”

Now I know it’s about to end he can’t hang doggy style, never has been able to. I get up on my knees and he opens my thighs. He put one foot up on the twin bed and keeps the other on the floor. He used to fumble around in the doogy position and not it in right, but now he enters with no problem and he starts off long stroking like he not afraid of cuming. Since he’s going like this I push back when he pushes in, before he could never handle me meeting his thrust. I’m not trying to meet his thrust anymore because my man has beat the pussy up. I collapse to the bed out of exhaustion. I am afraid to cum again. I’m laying flat on my stomach and he is still hard inside me and he is moving. He grinding into me hard and fast and I feel him swell up and then I feel his whole body jerking on my back. I feel his hot warmth inside me, all through me. Natalie was wrong, very wrong about him popping off in only three pumps.

The door to the small room is suddenly pushed open and a female guard is standing above us. She says, “Conjugal visits are over, get dressed inmate.”

Has it been an hour? I look the blue clock on the wall and see it has been an hour and fifteen minutes. My man threw down. When I roll over to kiss him I notice his eyes don’t leave the door. He says, “I love you.” Then he is dressed and gone before I can put on my bra. Now I know I’m dizzy and drained, but him leaving like that doesn’t seem right. I get dressed, put my shoes on and walk out into the hall. Only Maxine and one of female guards are in the hall. I remember that Natalie has overnight conjugal visits, lucky her. We don’t walk back through the shower room. It’s a locker room that we are going through. One of the guards is looking hard at me and grinning. She draws her pistol and points over to the other side of the room.

I see my man going into the room with the other female guard. One of her arms is out of her uniform shirt. She is looking directly at me and mouths, “My man bitch,” and signals for the other guard to take us out. I guess the other guard thought I was going to yell out because she puts the pistol to my head and tells me to keep quiet.

When I get on the bus I’m not mad. At least my man ain’t getting raped by another man. And whatever that guard is doing to him got him getting better at love making. Besides in two years he’ll be home with me anyway. So what if he’s getting some while he’s locked up. She’s a guard, so she’ll probably keep him safe. This ain’t a bad situation. 

I’m not happy about the slut calling me a bitch, but she had watch to Kenny throw down with me an hour and fifteen minutes. That had to get to her. I can live with what’s going on with them. He has to do what he has to do to survive.

Sitting on the bus I can’t help but wonder was it the alum or has he really gotten that good. Next month I just going to have go in natural and see what happens. Either way it’s going to be a visit to look forward to. Who knows, maybe the thing with my old flame won’t last. When the bus pulls through the prison gates I start to cry. I wish my man was free.