Ashna Beah Narrative

When Ashna’Beah first came along I was already four months pregnant. My breathing partially off, feet swollen to the ankles, waddling around like a penguin. I didn’t like her because she was actually really pretty. She had a large nose but for the most part, her full lips and burnt orange colored eyes made me overly jealous; made me feel insecure. She wasn’t so attractive to the point that it made her unapproachable but her looks just made you wonder what she was doing in a place like this. I later found out that her boyfriend had been smuggling drugs and she just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I felt sorry for her because she just didn’t fit. Like a rose growing from cracks in the cement in the ghetto, or a newborn baby …show more content…
Sometimes when the elevator went out the prisoners being put to death would be walked through our hall. The looks on their faces would always seem so broken. Completely unexplained Ashna would beg to sit with them on their last days. When she came back she would sleep until the day they were brought out to breathe their last breath. Upon knowing that, she would stand by the cell gate and crane her neck to see them leave, with her hand stretched out to touch them as they passed by. It irritated me but they seemed to not mind at all. I thought she was insane the first time I saw her do it. She seemed to like being close to death, and pain. Anytime we would go out to the yard she would sit amongst the shrubs and claim to be “thinking”. I didn’t understand her and she was my only cellmate, yet sometimes I still felt like I was by myself. Still felt like it was just me (Loshanda) and No Name. That was the name I gave my baby. I couldn’t think of one. All of us prisoners had the weirdest names. I didn’t want to name him after any of us. If they weren’t in another language they were made up from combining random names and items. I thought maybe that’s what made her crazy, her name. I had read in the library in this really old newspaper once that your name made you who you were. So one day I asked her if it had a