by Mann, Marni
Lights out was at nine, and by then the other women looked like they were feeling as bad as I was. Sweaty, flushed skin, jittery arms and legs, and stomach cramps that made me double over. The only bed that wasn't taken was on the top bunk, but I didn't have enough energy to climb up. I couldn't even swallow my own spit without gagging.
I crouched in a ball in the corner of the cell by the toilet, which was right out in the open. Besides my mom, Sunshine had been the only other person who had ever seen me use the bathroom. And here the other women, both junkies and also dope sick, were squatting next to me on the metal rim when they had to go. Their smell made me feel worse, and so did their noises. Venus had said she didn't use drugs and slept through our noises and smells. Damn her. I never should have left rehab. Damn Dustin, too.
The police station was loud at night. Cops brought in more men and women for booking and processing. Their handcuffs clinked as they were escorted and locked into cells. The officers' boots pounded and squeaked on the linoleum floor, and doors banged as they slid shut. Everyone yelled out the same questions: why am I here, can I get some help, can I make a phone call, and can I get some medicine so I won't be sick? I cupped my palms like earmuffs and tried to block it all out.
I thought of Claire to keep my mind off being dope sick. The first time we'd met and the movie we'd watched together. How she'd shimmied her shoulders and smiled when she saw Marilyn on the TV screen. And Dustin, and how I felt the first time we'd kissed in rehab. I was never going to feel the softness of his lips ever again, but I didn't care. If he hadn't been so possessive, I would have been able to tell him the truth about the deal I'd made with Richard, and then I wouldn't have been raped. I snuck into the van, but this was his fault. If there hadn't been a warrant out for him, we wouldn't have gotten arrested.
My stomach flipped, and I leaned over to puke.
How was I going to make it through court tomorrow when I couldn't get my face out of the toilet?
An officer came to our cell early the next morning and said my court-appointed attorney was here. He told me to stick my hands through the meal slot so he could cuff me, and then he led me to a private room. My attorney didn't look that much older than me. But where I was dressed in a blue jumpsuit with unwashed hair, she was in a suit and heels with beige nails, and flower-smelling perfume.
The guard sat me in the seat across from her. Before he left, he told her he'd be right outside the door in case she needed him.
My hands were shackled behind my back. Did he think I was going to hurt her?
“My name is Melissa Davidson,” she said. “And I'll be representing you.”
She had a pad of paper, a leather folder, and a shiny silver pen and was reading from a printout. She never looked up at me, even when I'd come into the room. I wanted to see her eyes. I'd always been able to tell how rough a John was going to be by his eyes. There was something about them—the size of the pupil and how he looked at me with either big open lids or squinted ones—that told me what kind of person he was. But so far, I couldn't get a vibe from Melissa.
“Do you understand the charges that have been brought against you?” she asked. She flipped to the next page and continued to read.
Could I trust her? I didn't know if I could trust anyone. I'd never been in trouble before. Was I supposed to tell her the truth or play dumb?
“I think so,” I said. “I mean, the cops think the drugs in the van were ours and we were delivering them to someone.”
“When you said ‘our,' you were referring to yourself and Mr. Dustin Howard?”
“Yeah.”
She still hadn't looked up. She was holding the silver pen and was writing on the pad of paper.
“And what's your affiliation to Mr. Howard?” she asked.
My affiliation? Why was she talking so fancy?
I didn't want to do this here. Especially not in handcuffs, halfsitting on the chair. Not without seeing her eyes. And most importantly, not without hitting the needle first.
I leaned forward, resting my forehead on my knees. The movement made me dizzy. I still hadn't eaten, and my stomach was churning.
“Ms. Brown, I hope you understand the seriousness of these charges and how you're facing up to twenty years in jail?”
I wasn't an idiot. I understood the jail time the detectives had threatened me with. But maybe I was. I'd always ripped on Henry and my roommate in rehab because they'd been stupid enough to get busted.
“But if you talk to the detectives,” she said, “I can get your sentence significantly reduced.”
She meant if I ratted everyone out. Richard and his gang. Séamus and his.
“You're going to be bused to the courthouse in an hour, and I want you to plead not guilty to the judge,” she said. “I'll come here tomorrow or if you get released on bail, I want you to come by my office so we can discuss your case in more detail.”
I sat up in the chair. “Is someone going to bail me out?”
She slid her business card across the table. “I don't know.”
I didn't have a hand to grab the card, but her office was in downtown Boston and I knew the building. I said if I were released, I'd come by her office in the morning.
I had a lot to think about—how much I was going to tell her, and if I should rat out Richard and Séamus. I needed time to figure this all out before I'd say anymore.
She looked up from the sheet of paper and straight into my eyes. “I'll see you in court.”
Her eyes were thin slits and almost squinty, the color of mud, and cold like snow. She gave me the same stare I'd given to Richard after he'd raped me. I needed a new attorney. Even if it was her job to defend me, Melissa wasn't on my side.
An hour later, I was handcuffed again and put on a full bus. When we got to the courthouse, we were all seated on benches inside the courtroom. The judge faced us, sitting behind a huge desk on a raised platform.
When it was my turn, a guard brought me through a wooden gate and up to one of the two tables only feet away from the judge's desk. Melissa stood next to me, holding the same leather folder in front of her. The judge read my charges. Possession of less than one gram of a class A substance. Distribution, intent to distribute, and trafficking of over two hundred grams of a class A substance.
I wanted to throw up, but I had nothing left in my stomach.
“How do you plead?” the judge asked.
I looked at Melissa and she nodded.
“Not guilty,” I said. I sounded like a boy going through puberty.
And I wasn't guilty. Maybe I was guilty of the possession charge. The cop had found heroin and paraphernalia in my pockets before he put me in the back of his cruiser. But the rest was bullshit.
The judge said my court date was scheduled for the first Monday in July. That was two months away. Then he set my bail at ten thousand dollars.
I was bused to the Nashua Street jail and put in a cell with a nineteen-year-old named Shelby. She had been arrested for forgery and robbery and hadn't posted bail, so she was waiting for her trial. With her rosy cheeks and big oval eyes, she looked like the Raggedy Ann doll my parents had given me for my fourth birthday.
Venus had been arrested for prostitution, but she was escorting to support her four kids. Shelby had stolen checks out of mailboxes and cashed them at banks to feed her eight brothers and sisters back in Alabama.
Shelby and Venus looked better than I did. But did I look like someone who would traffic two hundred grams of heroin? Maybe on the outside—track marks all over my arms and legs, rail-thin body, sunken eyes—and yet on the inside, I felt innocent. I was guilty of being a junkie, of stealing and hooking to support my addiction, but I wasn't being charged with those crimes. All I'd done was sneak into Dustin's van and help him load up the heroin. Since I'd messed up so bad my parents weren't going to help me, I'd be stuck with Melissa and probably get the whole sentence. Twenty years in jail with no smack? I was as good as dead.
After lunch, a corr
ections officer came to my cell and said I'd posted bail. He brought me to registration, and once I signed all the forms and changed into my clothes, they let me leave the jail. I hoped to see Michael or my parents when I walked out the front door. But instead, Tweaker Tommy was waiting for me on the steps of the jail.
So Richard had paid to bail me out. I didn't know if that was good or not.
“Where's Dustin?” I asked, looking around the steps and on the sidewalk.
“The judge didn't set bail,” he said. “Dustin's too much of a flight risk, I guess.”
I walked down the steps and turned in the direction of the train station. Tommy was behind me, and over my shoulder I said, “Tell Richard I said thanks for getting me out.”
He grabbed the back of my arm. “Not so fast,” he said. “Richard wants to talk to you. You're coming with me.”
Of course Richard wanted to talk. He wanted to know what I'd said to the cops and what I was going to say during my trial.
His fingers clamped my wrist, and he dragged me to the street where his car was parked. A black Toyota, just like Dustin said. He put me in the passenger seat and went around to the driver's side. My stomach churned, not just from being dope sick and from the thought of seeing Richard, but from the scent of the car too. The odor was a mix of bong water and cat piss. I rolled down the window, and he told me to put it back up.
“Do you have any dope?” I asked.
Tommy only used meth, but he might be carrying some smack since he'd know how sick I'd be when I got out.
“I'll get you some once we get to Richard's,” he said.
Richard's house was the one place I didn't want to go. He knew I hadn't ratted him out. If I had, the police would have already raided his house. But how was he going to make sure I wouldn't talk? He'd probably make me stay at his house until the trial to make sure I didn't meet with any detectives behind his back. I'd be locked in one of the bedrooms or worse, the basement. And he'd rape me again, or he might just have one of his squatters kill me instead.
I didn't know what Richard was going to do, but I knew I had to get out of this car. The jail wasn't too far from his house. If I was going to escape, I had to do it soon.
The road went from three lanes to two, and Tommy stayed to the right. I checked the lock and it was up. He didn't expect me to bolt from the car.
I waited for him to speed up after stopping at a red light and when the gauge hit fifteen miles per hour, I opened the door.
Tommy shouted, “What the fuck are you doing?”
He reached for my arm, but I moved away just in time, rolling out of the seat and onto the pavement. My shoulder slammed onto the road first, and then the side of my stomach hit and my thigh. I felt the sting immediately, my skin scraping against the street.
The car behind Tommy's slammed on its breaks. Tommy did too, but I was already up and running. I ached, and blood oozed from my cuts, but I only ran faster.
I sprinted down side streets and through alleys, looking over my shoulder to make sure he wasn't following. After a few more blocks, I came to a music store. I went inside and headed towards the back of the store, pretending to look through the racks of CD's while keeping my eyes locked on the front of the building.
One of the sales clerks came over and asked if she could help me. I told her I was just checking out the new music. She looked at me like I was still wearing my blue jumpsuit and handcuffs and at any minute I was going to pull out a gun.
I didn't need a mirror to know how bad I looked. My fingertips were black from when the cops took my prints, and my clothes were covered with blood from the jump.
She said the new releases were in the front of the store and I was in the oldies section. She also said my appearance was bothering the other customers and she asked me to leave. Enough time had passed and I knew I'd lost Tommy, so it was safe to go back on the street. But I had to be careful. Richard and his whole gang would be looking for me, and I had to stick to places outside Dorchester and spots in Boston where they wouldn't check.
I apologized to the clerk and left the store.
On the way to the train station, I stopped by a Goodwill drop box. There was a trash bag full of clothes that hadn't made it inside. I found jeans and a t-shirt that looked like they'd fit, along with a winter hat and scarf, and changed in a McDonald's bathroom. Outside the train station, I panhandled, and when I collected enough money, I rode to Roxbury and scored a few bags and a rig.
When I finally made it to the park, I curled up in the small space between the slide and monkey bars and shot up. My stomach pains went away, but I didn't get high. I didn't have enough money to get high, and the dope was cut and not that strong.
I didn't know what to do. On the way to the park I'd stopped at a newspaper stand and saw Dustin's mug shot along with mine had made the front page of the Boston Globe under the headline “Boston Police Make Decades-Largest Heroin Bust.” I was sure Michael read the paper and had told my parents the news.
If I decided to go to court, I wouldn't be able to stay sober until my trial, so in prison I'd have to detox all over again. And if I didn't talk to the police, I'd rot in that cell for at least fifteen years. When I got out, I'd be forty, and half my life would be over. Even if I ratted everyone out, I was still going to jail, and any amount of time was too long. The only thing I could do was live on the streets until I figured out a plan.
When I was a kid and imagined my life, this wasn't what I dreamed of: addicted to heroin, getting arrested and living on the streets. My friends and I talked trash about the kids we grew up with who turned into oxy-heads and went to Acadia Hospital for rehab. And now I was one of those fucked up kids too. But I didn't want to be.
I put on the winter hat and pulled it down past my eyebrows, covered the bottom of my face with the scarf, and set out to boost in the morning. It wasn't exactly hat and scarf weather, but I couldn't take the chance of being recognized by any of the store clerks. Boosting gave me enough money to buy dope. And later tonight I'd trick, buy food, and rent a hotel room.
But by midnight, I'd only been hired by one John, and he only paid me ten bucks for the blowjob. Johns were driving up and down the track looking to hire and all the other hoes on the street were getting picked up. My clothes weren't sexy, and they were covered in filth from sleeping in the park. I'd tucked the bottom of my t-shirt under my bra to show off my caved-in stomach, but even that didn't help. My face was dirty. My hair was greasy and tangled, and I didn't have an elastic to tie it back.
The hookers around me were charging eighty for sex. When a trick pulled over to negotiate a price with one of the girls, I went up to the driver's side window and offered to do him for twenty instead. He turned me down.
I moved further down the street and took off my t-shirt, standing at the corner in my bra. A car pulled up, and as I was telling him my fee, a cop turned down the street and drove towards us with its blue lights on. I took off running and cut through an alley, hiding next to a dumpster. The cop didn't follow me, but I wasn't going to risk going back out onto the track.
There were some Styrofoam take-out boxes in front of the dumpster. Most of the food inside was rotten except for a few chunks of bread. Once I picked off the green fuzz, I ate the bread, and when I had to go to the bathroom, I squatted on the opposite side of the dumpster. I watched my river of pee spread into the middle of the alley and a rat scurry through it.
How much longer could I do this—sleep in an alley without any food and water and barely have enough smack to keep me straight? I kept reminding myself that this was better than jail. Anything was better than being locked up and sober, being wakened every night by nightmares. This time, they'd be filled with visions of Richard raping me.
But life on the street only got worse. My clothes got dirtier, and my stomach got hungrier. The food I was eating out of the trash bins, moldy and mushy, was making me sick. Maybe I was sick because I wasn't shooting enough dope. Either way, I was throwing up every fe
w hours. I went from getting one or two Johns a night to none. I stole CD's and electronics out of the cars parked on the streets, but I ran out of energy after a couple hours and would collapse, dizzy and puking, on a bench. The pawnshops were ripping me off too and only giving me half of what the electronics were worth. I didn't have enough money to buy clean rigs, and the one I had was dull, and an abscess was forming on my arm.
I hadn't seen Sunshine on the track all week, so I stopped by our old hotel to see if she'd let me move in with her. Lucchi, the owner, said she didn't live there anymore. I called her cell phone and it was disconnected.
I had to talk to Michael and beg him to help me. Even if he'd only give me food, at least that would give me some more energy so I could steal for longer without getting sick.
When I knew he'd be home from work, I walked to his apartment. His doorman, a different guy than before, told me to wait on the sidewalk while he called him. Michael came outside. He smelled so clean, like the hospital room when I'd overdosed. How long ago was that? Six months?
Michael didn't say anything. He just stood against the building with his arms crossed.
“I need help,” I said. “I'm starving.”
His eyes didn't move from mine. His posture didn't shift, and his expression didn't soften. He still didn't say anything.
“Please, Michael, I need your help.”
“I'll only help you if you're willing to help yourself.”
Help myself? Did he mean tell the cops the truth and take the plea bargain, go to jail and get sober? If he thought I was going to do that, he was fucking crazy.
“Can I have some food?” I asked.
He covered his face with his hands. “As much as I want to feed you,” he said from behind his fingers, “I can't until you get clean.”
“All I need is some food, and I promise I won't ask for anything else ever again.”
