Three strikes you’re out! I told myself as I sat with my hands cuffed behind my back in the backseat of a police car that was taking me to jail for the third freaking time. This was not how my life was supposed to be. I had it all mapped out; going to jail wasn’t on my map, wasn’t part of my plans. By this juncture, I was supposed to be rich and famous just like Sean “Puffy” Combs, my former coworker. You’re about to blow uppppp! I told myself the day I landed a gig at Uptown Records. Within less than a year, Puffy and I were promoted to top-level executives. As Puffy swiftly climbed the ladder of success, I whooshed down like greased lightning. Where did it all go wrong? Was fame and fortune not my destiny too?
During the seven-minute ride from San Gabriel Avenue in Decatur, Georgiaundefinedthe place where I was arrestedundefinedto the county jail on Memorial Drive, I slid my bony wrist out of the handcuffs. When the police car stopped at a red light, I contemplated escaping out the back door. Conscious I’d probably not get far before being tackled to the ground and then slapped with another chargeundefinedif not shot to death by a trigger happy copundefinedI remained seated. I reluctantly slid the cuffs back on, but this time I kept my hands cuffed in front. I spent the rest of the ride thinking about the penalty I was about to face for my idiotic actions and the negative effect life in prison was going to have on my two children, children who now had both parents locked up in different states. My daughter would be fine without me, I reasoned. She was twenty; plus, she already had a few years experience living apart from me. My son, on the other hand, just turned seventeen five weeks prior; he was still a high schooler, a momma’s boy, and in a sense, he was still attached to the umbilical cord. Even though he was visiting his grandmother in New York City for the summer months, he desperately needed and depended on me to provide for him, nurture him, and keep him on the right path. Without me around he was sure to go astray, and astray he went. It wasn’t long before he quit his summer job at A&P Supermarket to join one of those stupid gangs. It wasn’t long before he was selling crack. It wasn’t long before he was sporting one of those stupid black tear drop tattoos on his light skinned baby face, just below his right eye. It wasn’t long before I was reading about my son in the New York Post: …shot during an apparent drug-related incident on an Inwood street, police said yesterday…when an assailant open fire on him at 10th Avenue and West 201st Street . The shooter fled.
My son was taken to Harlem Hospital .
#
The arresting officer turned me over to Detective Buice, a blue-eyed, middle-aged man. He tightened my cuffs as soon as he noticed they were loose on my wrists. He placed me in the back of his unmarked car. I tried to get the cuffs off, but they were on too tight. Oh well, at least my hands were still cuffed in front.
“Am I gonna get a lot of time?” I asked detective Buice.
“Yes.”
“How much?”
“You’re looking at…well, now, let’s see…the victim was bleeding profusely…looks like you could get up to twenty years; butundefined”
Whatever else detective Buice said, I didn’t hear him. I was too busy noticing that smirk on his pale face. Did he think my going to jail was a joke? I wasn’t gonna say anything else to him. It was apparent he was not a fan of mine, which was understandable. Nevertheless, those little smirks, super-glued to his face, the ones I kept seeing in the rear-view mirror, were pissing me off. He reminded me of one of those sleazy detectives you see in movies. You know the kind, a rogue detective like Alonzo Harris in Training Day, the one with Denzel Washington in the lead role.
We finally reached our destination. Buice got out the driver’s side and walked around to my side. He opened the door, and I helped myself out of his car. I didn’t know where I was exactly or what was about to go down. All I knew, at that point, was that I was in big trouble. We walked inside one of those buildings surrounding the jail. Seemed like some type of office building. Inside, there were people, employees, or maybe other detectives, I guessed, sitting at their desks paying us no mind. Buice escorted me through the office; we passed a bathroom. “Can I wash my hands, please,” I asked. We made a U-turn. I entered the tiny bathroom first, Buice close behind, still smirking. With the door wide open, Buice turned on the water for me, a little cold water mixed with a little hot, and then he stood right behind me while I stood in front of the sink. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror that was hanging above the sink. Whoa! I was looking like a hot mess. For a quick second, I thought I was looking at a crackhead. “That’s no crackhead, that’s you, crazy girl,” my inner voice said. I was wearing a tight fitting short sleeve brown t-shirt, gray shorts that I regularly wore when lounging around the house, and some cheesy white run-down sneakers with blood splattered all over them. As a matter of fact, there was blood splattered everywhere, including the afro I was sporting.
It was only a year since I first decided to embrace my natural kinky curls; I’d finally come to the realization that those daggon perms I had been getting since the age of six weren’t doing anything at all except damaging the hair that the Most High gave me, curly hair that I was finally learning to accept as beautiful. To my amazement, the matted hair I was looking at in the mirror was hardly beautiful. Besides the blood, there was dirt in my hair. Must’ve found its way there during the altercation I had a few hours prior, the altercation that somehow had me sprawled out on an asphalted driveway sprinkled with dirt, the altercation that landed me into the care of detective Buice. Now, my once beautiful fro was unsightly.
I proceeded to scrub my hands as hard as I could to remove the dry blood. Maybe it was just me, but that blood wasn’t coming off so easily. There were specks of dry blood on the upper parts of my arms too, but I couldn’t reach way up there with those stupid cuffs on.
“Okay, let’s go,” Buice said after what seemed like only two seconds.
“I’m not finished,” I muttered. “Can’t you see I still have blood on myself? Dang!”
“Excuse me, did you say something?”
“No, just talking to myself.”
Buice could care less about me getting cleaned up. In his mind, I was just another stone cold criminal, which was probably the reason he didn’t even bothered to give me a paper towel to dry my hands.
We continued on our journey, Buice and I. We continued passing desks with employees sitting at them, some were on the phone, others shuffled papers. Where we were heading, I had no clue. We stopped in front of a closed door. Buice opened the door and allowed me to enter first. Even though I’d never been in that room before, it looked familiar. It looked just like one of those rooms I’d seen on television; the types of room where those sleazy detectives throw the bad guys so that they can give them the third degree or trick them into spilling the beans. The interrogation room! Yes, that’s what it was. The room was small and drab. There was nothing in it except a small table and two chairs and a slab of dirty carpet on the floor. The window, or two-way mirror, was pretty large, and I could see nothingundefinedexcept my reflectionundefinedwhen I looked into it; even when I zeroed in on it, still nothing. So, I assumed, just as on television, I was being watched from the other side. Inside the lonely room, I guessed Buice to be about six feet tall towering over my five-foot-two-inch pocket-size frame. His hair was blond with a dash of salt and pepper, cropped really short, and a hairline that was gradually receding. If only he’d wipe that annoying smirk off his face for one cotton pickin’ minute, he wasn’t bad looking. The smirk made him look sort of devilish. He seemed pretty fit though, no beer belly hanging down. He could actually be a ladies man. Not my type though. He told me to stretch out my arms, and then he inserted a key into my handcuffs, jabbing the key in and out of the keyhole numerous times. “I can’t unlock the cuffs,” he claimed, still wearing that dumb looking smirk. “I’ll have to get another key.” I didn’t believe him. Even so, he left me cuffed in the interrogation room for hours, it seemed, before returning keyless to interrogate me. In his absence, I laid on the stained carpeted floor, fetal position, alone, scared, feeling like a loser in my grubby blood-spattered clothes. I closed my big brown eyes and silently pleaded with my Maker, the One whose true name I did not know, whose laws I did not keep, signaling I had no true fear of Him.
“Please God,” I said. “Get me outta here, please-eeeesssseeee!”
To be continued…