Girls From da Hood 8

by Treasure Hernandez

  “I been a real bitch to you.”

  I nodded, ’cause it wasn’t like I could disagree with her.

  “See, D-Waite didn’t know that I had real feelings for him. He thought it was just a booty call because I never told him. So when I saw you with him I got jealous. ’Cause to me you were this goody-goody stealing my man.”

  “I didn’t know,” I swore.

  “I know,” she agreed. “It was fucked up of me. I didn’t know that you had lost your mother. That must have been tough.”

  “Yeah, it was,” I admitted.

  “I lost my father when I was younger. He was murdered.” Her voice shook at the memory. “So I know what you’re going through.”

  “Thanks. That means a lot to me.”

  “We orphans have to stick together.”

  I nodded my head in agreement.

  “Hey, can I use your bathroom? I’ll be quick.”

  “Sure. It’s down the hall to the left.”

  “And can I please have some water?”

  “’Kay.” I felt so much better as I poured Mika a glass of water. Everything in my life felt like it was turning around. Three weeks ago I thought my life was over and now it was like it was just starting.

  Mika came into the kitchen. “Thank you. I got to run.”

  “Don’t you want the water?”

  “No. Somebody is waiting for me.” She rushed out the door.

  “Bye,” I hollered out behind her as I locked the door and went back to packing. My phone started ringing immediately.

  “You can’t wait can you?” I joked into the phone.

  “Get out of there right now,” he screamed at me.

  “I’m almost done.” I rolled my eyes at his bossiness.

  “Was Mika just there?” he asked.

  “How did you know?”

  “Did she leave your sight?”

  “She went to the bathroom but that’s all.”

  “Get out of there now! She set you up! Run!”

  I grabbed my purse and ran to the door just as two uniformed cops were about to knock.

  “Going somewhere?” One of them laughed. Within five minutes they had found a pound of pot and fifty rocks of crack cocaine stuffed in my backpack.

  17

  The handcuffs were digging into my skin. They felt like they were cutting off my circulation as I rode in the back of the police car.

  “Where are you taking me?” I managed to stop crying and ask the cops.

  “You got a one-way ticket to Rikers.” He sneered at me.

  “But don’t I get a phone call?” I pleaded with him.

  “Oh, you’ll get your phone call and your useless public defender.”

  “No wonder this country is in so much trouble. You got these derelict kids with no ambition breaking laws and then demanding to be represented as if they were innocent. And it’s us taxpayers who foot the bill for their legal representation. Any other country they’d just skip right over this personal rights bullshit. It’s killing our country. You get found with a pound and you go straight to jail.”

  “But it wasn’t mine. I don’t know where . . . Well, this girl hates me and she set me up.”

  “Save it for the judge. He’s seen your kind coming and going.” He laughed and his partner joined in.

  I stared out the window, wondering if this would be the last time I would actually see the outside world. We traveled across a bridge. I saw a small island of buildings and jails. The car pulled up outside a large gray building. They helped me out of the car and led me into the gigantic building. After going through a series of buildings I understood that this was like the Door of No Return on Goree Island off the coast of Senegal. During the slave trade all the slaves were led through this door and onto ships that would carry them to faraway lands away from their freedom. I imagined that this was how the slaves must have felt entering a doorway that guaranteed the end of their old life. I saw quite a few people dressed like me in street clothes. Most were being led into the jail. I saw one man with a huge smile who was obviously leaving.

  “I’m outtie!” he shouted as he passed me, an officer leading him out.

  Finally I arrived at the Rose M. Singer building, where the women were housed. I felt myself shaking as they led me inside the gates and into a large holding area. This was an entirely different experience from the one I had only days earlier visiting my father. I didn’t know who I should phone with my one call but I needed to speak to D-Waite.

  The cops signed paperwork, all the while talking about me as if I weren’t human. As if I weren’t there. It hit me that to them I was one more statistic, another poor black girl who had fallen prey to the criminal element because of my greed to get rich quick. I didn’t bother to set them straight because, after all, I was the one in handcuffs, caught with an obscene amount of drugs in my backpack. This was the first time that I was glad my mother wasn’t alive. After all her hard work to keep me away from crime and drugs and here I was accused of both. I had let her down. Tears kept rolling down my face even though I tried to be strong.

  “Don’t cry now.” One of the correction officers laughed at me. “You did the crime and now you’re gonna do the time. I’m sure you’ll make a lot of friends. Those dykes like young fresh meat like you.”

  “Hell, she’ll be wed whether she likes it or not within a week,” another one added.

  “I hope you like the taste of sushi,” a female officer added.

  They kept at it until a middle-aged female officer entered through an inside door.

  “Y’all leave her alone,” she chastised the officers. “Follow me.” She directed me through a door. “Have you ever been arrested before?”

  “No, ma’am,” I whispered.

  “How did you get here?” she asked, shaking her head before I could answer.

  “My boyfriend—” Before I could continue she interrupted.

  “Boyfriend? Huh? It’s always some guy who gets young girls in trouble. In the meantime he’s out there probably already corrupting some new girl to be his drug mule.”

  “No, it’s not like that!” I defended D-Waite.

  “It never is.” She took my finger and fingerprinted me. “You’re gonna be in here for most of your youth while he’s out there free, not thinking about you. These guys are worse than pathological. They use woman. I hope you figure that out before it’s too late.”

  “You don’t know him.”

  “In sixteen years working corrections I have never seen a guy stop his girlfriend from taking the fall for him.”

  “That’s not what happened. It’s not his fault.”

  “Did you have anything to do with drugs before you met him?” She stared me straight in the eyes. I had to look away. We finished the rest of her work in silence. She photographed me, did a strip search, and then she gave me a small bar of soap, a scratchy washcloth and towel, and led me to a shower without a curtain or door.

  Maybe it was the water or the reality hitting me but I broke down crying, my entire body racked with sobs. I didn’t know how long I had been in there until she yelled out, “Hurry up in there. This ain’t no country club.”

  When I got out and dried off she handed me a bra, panties, and a gray jumpsuit that closed with Velcro. It was the standard uniform that all the prisoners wore.

  “Come on.” She hit the buttons on a keypad and a large steel door opened. She led me down a hall until we reach a heavily barred door. “Lemme give you some advice: keep to yourself and don’t let them see you crying. Weakness will work against you.”

  “Open!” she yelled out and the door swung open to the inside of the jail. We entered on the lower level where female inmates crowded out of their cells, into an open area, where some watched television or hung around.

  “Fresh meat!” a voice yelled as I followed the officer. She led me into a tiny cell with a metal bunk bed, a metal toilet, and a sink.

  “This is where you will be until your case is heard. It can
take up to forty-eight hours since it’s a weekend.” She pointed to a lower bunk with a folded blanket on top. “I will make sure you don’t have a roommate tonight. Take care of yourself,” she warned and then she was gone. As soon as she left two inmates crowded around the door. The heavyset dark-skinned one looked like a man.

  “What you in for?” she asked and I swore she sounded just like a dude.

  “They found drugs in my backpack.”

  “So you a mule?” the dude asked but it sounded like a statement of fact.

  “You broke the first rule of crime. Don’t get caught.” The short, pretty Latino woman, about twenty, laughed. The heavyset woman swatted her on the ass.

  “Bitch, you glad you got caught. In here, you gotta make the right friends. Ones who will have your back,” the big one informed me. “They call me Tiny Tina.” She grabbed on to my head, rubbing it like I was a puppy or something. “Shit is real and soft.” She smiled to herself.

  “Um, I just want to rest.” I had been holding back more tears and I remembered the officer’s warning not to break down.

  Tiny Tina shot me an angry stare. “You rejecting my friendship?”

  “No. I just . . . I’m really tired.”

  “Want me to give you a massage?” She smiled easily at me as if we were old friends or lovers.

  “No, thank you.” I tried not to appear mortified but I was afraid she wasn’t fooled.

  “No, thank you,” the short Latino mimicked me. “Oooh she’s all Miss Manners and shit.”

  I started to apologize, but then I thought about what D-Waite taught me about letting people see fear, how they immediately treated you as a victim ready to be abused.

  “Look, I just need to be alone.” I grabbed my blanket, rolled it into a pillow, and lay on the bed with it under my head. Inside I was shaking in total fear but I pretended that I wasn’t.

  “A’ight, bitch, you wanna fuck off my generous offer of friendship. Don’t come begging to suck my dick when you understand that this ain’t no high school.” Tiny Tina sneered down at me, then turned and walked off with her friend.

  There was no way I would be able to sleep. Nobody even knew that I was here. They didn’t let me make a phone call so I couldn’t talk to D-Waite. I closed my eyes imagining it was six hours ago and I was still with him, that I hadn’t gone home to get my things and I hadn’t let Mika in. But the noises of the inmates screaming and yelling, arguing and laughing kept me awake. I glanced up at the small window in my cell. It hurt to even consider looking outside. My whole life I had done all the right things, followed rules, and yet I had wound up in the same place as people who had never walked the straight and narrow. One thing I felt certain of was that my life as I knew it was over.

  18

  “Breakfast!” one of the women yelled out and jarred me awake. I had been up most of the night listening to sounds, people coughing, having nightmares, and other unidentifiable noises. Heavy metal doors clanged as they opened the cells. Women lined up single file as they headed out to breakfast.

  “You ain’t hungry, chil’?” an older, grandmotherly-type woman stopped in the doorway to my cell.

  “No, ma’am,” I answered.

  “It’s hard at first but you’ll get your appetite back.”

  “Keep moving,” a gruff corrections officer shouted and she continued moving down the line. Inmates marched past my cell, staring in at me. I felt naked as they made comments, acting as if I weren’t even there.

  “Doors closing!” an officer called out as the door to my cell slammed shut.

  After everyone had gone to breakfast and no more prying eyes were moving past my cell I got up to use the bathroom. The metal toilet sat right there in the open cell. Sitting on the cold metal I broke down in tears again. I wondered how many tears I even had left. I had to accept that nothing and no one could ever get me out of here. I was almost eighteen, which meant that I would be tried as an adult. I missed Maddie and all the stupid inside jokes we had that no one else found funny. And school, a place where I had always excelled and been treated like I was exceptional. In here I wasn’t special. I was simply one more brown-skinned criminal. One more good girl gone bad.

  “Gabrielle Davenport,” an officer called out as the doors to my cell clanged open. Before I could move the same officer who brought me into my cell stood in front of me.

  “Come on! What you waiting for?” she snapped. I followed her back through a series of doors. In the same room where she had given me the prison uniform she handed me my clothes and I changed. I didn’t dare speak until after we exited the Rose M. Singer building into a car that took us back to the main building.

  “Am I going to court?” I asked.

  “No. From what I hear you’re going home.”

  “Home?” The word came out like a question because it didn’t make any sense to me. She led me into the building.

  “I guess I was wrong. He’s not letting you take the fall. First time I ever heard of this happening.”

  “What are you talking about?” I felt like I was in a fog or some other person’s movie. I stood at the counter where I had turned in all of my belongings, as the outside door opened and in walked D-Waite being led in by two policemen. Before I could say anything he lifted a finger to his mouth in the hand movement of silence. The officer handed me my belongings. D-Waite mouthed the words “I love you.” I said them back to him and just like that he was led inside the jail as I was being ushered out.

  On the cab ride back to Brooklyn all I could think about was the man I loved behind bars. My phone rang.

  “Hello!” I answered the blocked number hoping it was D-Waite.

  “Gabrielle Davenport?”

  “Yes?”

  “This is Bruce. Mr. John Thompson told you to expect my call?”

  “Yes. Um. Can I call you back?”

  “This will be quick. Is anyone listening to you?”

  “I’m in a cab.”

  “Then listen. There is a bank account set up for you from your father’s legitimate enterprises. He purchased a building for you at 68 South Portland. Do you understand?”

  It was D’s apartment building. “Yes.” He really did know everything that went on in the outside world.

  “All of your things have already been deposited there. You will have adequate money in your account to handle all of your needs in college, including a car and whatever else you need. I will set up an account for your friend so that he will be able to buy anything he needs while incarcerated, and also a phone account so that he can make calls. He’s looking at twelve months to two years. Your father would prefer you not visit jail again. Ever. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is that agreeable to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You have the keys to the apartment?”

  “Yes.”

  “Great. I will have your aunt’s apartment packed up and placed in storage. As soon as she is doing better your father will make sure that she is settled somewhere nice.”

  “Okay. Can I ask you one thing?”

  “Sure.”

  “What happened? Why did Mika set me up?”

  “She blamed your father for her father’s death. It was her way of getting back at him. But don’t worry. She’s being handled.”

  I shuddered, wondering what price she was going to pay for hurting me.

  “Oh.” I was kind of relieved. It made sense that she didn’t do it because of some guy, although D was a hell of a guy.

  “Miss Davenport, Big John has a long reach, so whatever you need, if you’re ever in trouble, he’ll know before you do. And he’ll be there to help. Enjoy Harvard.” And the phone went dead.

  I made the next call. “Hello?” Maddie picked up on the phone on the first ring.

  “Gabby, where the heck you been? I haven’t spoken to you all weekend.”

  “I’ve been crazy but I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Wanna come over after school a
nd do your homework?”

  “That sounds great,” I replied. As I hung up the phone, tears streamed down my face. I had never felt so loved and so alone at the same time. All I wanted was to get home to our place and put on one of D’s T-shirts. It may be awhile before I can see him again but I will wait. He was worth waiting for.

  Friendly Fire

  by Natalie Weber

  1

  LaRhonda, Keisha, and Shawna

  “Damn, bitch, you drunk already? That was only a wine cooler.” LaRhonda nudged Keisha next to her.

  In a tight circle they sat on milk crates left by the hustlers of the building. Although the stench of piss permeated their nostrils, they ignored it like any other teen living in the projects of East New York, Brooklyn. Keisha, Shawna, and LaRhonda lived in the same building for most of their lives. It was Shawna’s birthday and they were celebrating. LaRhonda got the drinks and the smoke from her cousin, Daryl. LaRhonda and Keisha swore they were finally going to get their girl drunk and high on her seventeenth birthday.

  Shawna never associated herself with anything bad unless she was proof positive that her parents wouldn’t find out. Six months away from early graduation and starting her internship with Lifers Music, one of the newest and hottest labels in the industry, she was what every mom from the hood wanted for their daughter—a way out without getting pregnant by some deadbeat, go-nowhere hustler in the hood.

  Everyone who knew Shawna knew her parents, Raymond and Gloria Vasquez. All the local dudes who hung out in front the building purposely stayed far away. There was an understanding between her father and those hustlers hanging in front of the building: if they didn’t want any trouble then they wouldn’t dare approach his daughter unless they were saving her life. Her mother, on the other hand, wasn’t so smooth with her tolerance; her numerous rants of Jesus and the Mother of God kept them at a distance in Shawna’s presence.

  “It’s yo’ birthday . . . We gonna party like it’s ya motherfuckin’ birthday!” LaRhonda and Keisha belted out, singing along with the music from a passing car.