CHAPTER 21
CHILD SUPPORT
“Let me see, umm, this is from last Christmas, and this one is from her school clothes last year.”
A few months have gone by and now I’m sitting in the waiting area at Child Support Court. I have receipts in my mouth, and in both hands, and in the Timberland shoe box sitting on my lap. I brought all these special-occasion-holiday-dad receipts in order to prove to the judge that I take care of my kids. I take a look around and all I see is a lot of hate and anger on the faces of men and smiles and chitchat among the women. I see my wife sitting by herself a few benches down from me. We had been going back and forth to court for months, delaying the process, because of concerns due to her pregnancy. After she had the baby, which was not mine, she could make the court date. I wasn’t mad that she had a baby by another man, because I knew that I was running through the jails swinging my dick from left to right. She and I were on speaking terms for the kids’ sake and that was it. My situation was not like most COs’ situations, where due to mandatory overtime they’re never home and the spouses tend to stray.
I was sitting there nervous with my heart pounding and sweat rolling down from my unkempt hair with a little Jheri curl juice rolling down with it. I thought about all the horror stories that I’d heard from other COs. One CO that I knew had quit the job and gotten a McDonald’s job, because it was no longer worth it for him to come to work due to the garnishment. Another went and tried to kill his spouse, and now he’s doing time. I remember when I first got on the job and I was sitting in the officers’ cafeteria when a female officer came over to the table where I was sitting and started coming on to me. She was telling me how big and handsome I was and that she would spend a lot of money on me if I became her boy toy. I was flattered until I noticed that she was talking loud enough for everyone in the area to hear it. Then she stood up and started yelling and pointing at another male officer that was sitting at another table across from us, saying, “That’s right! I tricks that money I get from this nigga here every month, aaalll fourteen hundred of it! Yeeeeah, and it ain’t shit he can do about it.” She then walked by him, leaving other officers laughing and leaving me sitting there looking stupid. I sat there grimacing at the thought of ending up like him.
I wonder to myself why my wife decided to take me to Child Support Court. I mean, I bought the kids school clothes. Every Christmas or birthday either I or one of the grandmothers bought them gifts. So they were always taken care of one way or another. I give myself a look-over. Messed-up haircut, check. Bummy clothes on, check. No jewelry and unshaved, check and check. And most important, my Timberland shoe box full of please-be-enough-to-save-my-ass receipts, check. I had been advised by other officers not to come to court appearing to have a lot of money or seem well-off.
At this time the court officer comes out and calls out our names. We both stand up and walk over to the entrance. I give a hand gesture like ladies first and she proceeds. Once we get inside the courtroom we are ushered to stand behind a table that is equipped with two microphones. The judge instructs us to state our names. We do, and the festivities begin.
The judge states that we are here to settle the issue of child support for our kids and then he states their names. I get an uneasy feeling about the way he says “we” but has his eyes, which are peeking over glasses, focused just on “me.” Then he states that we have been coming back and forth with this issue and that we hope to resolve it today. My wife had missed a couple of dates due to her pregnancy, so the judge asks me if I accept her excuse for missing the dates and I say, “Yes.” I figure that if I say no she will go and petition for child support all over again anyway, so let’s just get this shit over with.
The judge asks me to present the items that the court ordered me to bring. I take the papers out of my shoe box. I fix them neatly, then hand them to the court officer.
“Mr. Heyward, are your W-2 and pay stubs in this pile of papers?” asks the judge sarcastically.
“Yes, sir,” I say.
“Good,” he says. “So that way we won’t waste time.”
He pulls out those two pieces of paper and brushes the rest to the side. Then he starts in on his large calculator and all you hear is him punching those buttons a mile a minute. I get a little agitated because it seems like he is not going to consider the receipts that provide proof of my efforts to be a father to my kids.
“Excuse me, Your Honor, those are my receipts for all of the money I spent on my kids,” I say.
At that moment, as soon as those stupid ass words come out of my mouth, I know that I have fucked up.
“Mr. Heyward, it appears to me that you have been misinformed,” he says, peering out at me. “We are not here to see if you’re going to pay child support, because that’s already been decided. We are here to decide how much you will contribute toward the well-being of your kids.”
Then he takes his off glasses and continues, “So many times I have witnessed father after father come into my courtroom with folders, briefcases, and of course shoe boxes filled with receipts, trying to prove that they are fit fathers to their children. I see the receipts but then I don’t see them, because a real father would never have to prove something that he should be doing naturally. You think a bunch of receipts is going to prove to me that you spend time with your kids? That you go to parent-teacher meetings or attend a school play now and then?” I tried to interject, saying, “But I be at work all the time.” He gave me a look like, “Muthafucka, I did not ask you to speak.” He laid into me again.
“Mr. Heyward,” he asks, “how much cash do you give to her on a monthly basis?”
“Well,” I stutter, “I buy the kids clothes and stuff and uumm—”
“Oh, I see,” he cuts me off, “you’re one of them. You’re one of those if-they-need fathers, instead of an all-the-time father.”
He sees that I have a confused look on my face and he breaks it down for me.
“If the child needs shoes, you buy them shoes. If the child needs clothes, you buy them clothes. But when the next month comes, you figure that you don’t have to provide any finances because they should not need anything. Well, you’re wrong! She needs money for food and rent and unexpected expenses that may come up.”
I am livid by this time and blurt out, “What about her? I mean, aren’t we supposed to be doing this together?”
“She is doing her part,” he says. “She has to tend to their every need while you’re out there”—he pauses and looks me up and down as if he knows that I am full of shit—“working.”
Then he goes back to punching his calculator and figuring out how much of my ass he is going to BITE OFF. When he comes back with the numbers, I shit on myself. Then it gets worse, because I had already accepted her reason for missing those court dates. That bites me in my ass some more. He hits the calculator again, punching those fucking buttons. I hate that fucking calculator. He then says that since I was so generous and pardoned her for missing those dates, I am actually awarding her arrears from the first day that she petitioned. This move adds more money to my biweekly payment and basically shreds my income.
“What about me?” I lose it. “How am I supposed to survive?” I yell.
The court officer, who has foreseen this and has already requested assistance, comes and grabs me by the arm. His partner takes my other arm and they begin to escort me out of the courtroom. As we walk by the judge’s desk, they pick up my papers and proceed to the door. Then they put my papers on my chest for me to hold. I look back over my shoulder to say something else to the judge, but he is already busy preparing for his next victim and doesn’t even look up.
As I am waiting for the elevator, pacing back and forth, the door to the waiting room opens and out comes one of the court officers who escorted me out. He yawns and walks over to the garbage can and throws something in it. It is my shoe box. It lands in a pile of abo
ut thirty others.
CHAPTER 22
THIRTY-NINE DOLLARS
A few weeks have passed since I was in court.
“Hold up, hold up, there must be some mistake!” I say as I bang on the window of our personnel office, where we retrieve our paychecks.
I look at my check. Thirty-nine dollars. I’m banging on the window like I hit the number in the streets and the number man is somewhere in there hiding so he won’t have to pay me!
“Yo, Lopez, open up!” I yell out.
An officer opens the window and starts to complain, “We’re closed. It’s payday. You know that we’re closed.” I’m standing there sweating, looking at him with a wrinkled forehead and bulging eyes like I don’t give a fuck what day it is, Y’all best ta get me my money! He sees the serious expression on my face and says, “What is it?” like he’s tired and has things to do. I say, “Y’all fucked up my check again!” He asks for my check stub and I give it to him. He goes over it and hands it back to me, asking if I took a look at it. I say, “No. The only thing that I saw was that thirty-nine muthafucking dollars and I knew that y’all had fucked up some kind of way.”
“Rif!” he says.
“What?” I say.
“Reading Is Fundamental!” he answers.
“The fuck you talking about?” I ask.
“If you read the bottom, it shows you that she has gotten an increase,” he says.
“An increase?” I ask.
He says, “Yes, ever’ so often the mother of your kids can go to court and get an increase due to the cost of living always changing. So that’s what that is. The thirty-nine dollars ain’t permanent, it’s just until the system catches the payments up and levels it out.” As professional and as cordial as he is, I still didn’t like what he was saying. I turn to walk away and hear him yell as he slams the window down, “Don’t spend it in one place!” I storm out of the area, cursing to myself, “This is some bullshit. How do they expect me to live? I have rent to pay, my car note, and other bills! How am I supposed to make it?”
As I’m walking down the corridor on my way to my post, I see an inmate that I know from the streets. These run-ins are now happening on a regular basis. He says, “What’s up?” then winks and says, “Whenever you’re ready, Wood.” I am not in the mood for his begging me to bring something in for him, so I blow him off by picking up my pace and saying, “Yeah, yeah.” If I had a dollar for every time an inmate approached me and tried to get me to bring in something for him I would be rich. These inmates feel comfortable asking an officer to bring them shit because writing them up for asking has no effect on anything. It’s just more work for the officer. I immediately return my focus to more pressing issues, like my money!
I arrive on my post and I see that my partner for the day is Officer Parks, a good friend of mine, but more important, a drinking buddy—and that’s just what I need. As soon as I get on post I regulate these muthafuckas. I yell out for them not to ask me for shit and tell them that they’re dead today on getting anything because I ain’t in the mood for no bullshit. I hear grumbling for a few minutes, then they go back to watching television and working out. After the supervisor makes his tour, Officer Parks does his usual and breaks out his water bottle, and let’s just say Poland Springs ain’t never made water that tastes like this. We start sipping and I start venting about my child support situation.
“Yo, Parks, I don’t know how I am going to make it,” I say to him. “Ever since I got hit with this shit I’ve been running myself ragged trying to make ends meet. Check it, I do overtime whenever they have it and I moonlight on my days off doing unauthorized security at the local clothing stores. This shit has me doing risky bullshit just to stay afloat. Sheeit, the other day I almost got jumped by a couple of dudes trying to steal clothes from the store. I’m fighting and tussling with these muthafuckas over a shirt and I am only getting a buck a day!”
“So what did you do?” he asks me.
“I let the muthafuckas go and they hauled ass up out of there,” I say.
We both laugh. I fill my cup up again and continue.
“I was doing all kinds of kamikaze shit like working two shifts here from seven a.m. until eleven p.m.”—of course, sleeping most of my second tour, letting whatever inmate had the most power run the housing area—“on my last day before I get my two days off, then leaving from here, going straight to a strip joint up in the Bronx, working there till the morn . . . nin . . . ng . . .” I say.
My words begin to slur, because a brother is feeling no pain. My face is numb and little beads of sweat are coming down the sides of it.
“I had to give the strip joint up because one time while I was checking IDs of everyone coming in, a stripper who worked there showed me her high school ID card. So I denied her entry. The owner went crazy, saying that she was his best moneymaker. That was the last time I did that. I was not going to be responsible if that place got raided.”
At this time an inmate comes up to the bubble (the officers’ station) and asks for toilet tissue. I bark on him and say, “You ain’t getting shit! Go wipe yo ass with your hand!” Then I continue my conversation while he stands there for a moment staring at me. He storms off saying something that I can’t hear but that draws the attention of the other inmates. I don’t like that shit. He storms back up to the bubble with the inmate rule book in his hand, waving it in the air, yelling and going off about what he’s entitled to and so on, drawing more attention to the situation. He starts ranting and raving about how we as officers use our power to take advantage of them and treat them like slaves but don’t realize that we are the real Uncle Toms doing the white man’s dirty work for him by oppressing our own people. Now he has my blood boiling, ruining my peaceful tour with this bullshit, so I get back at him, saying, “Is it my fault!? Huh! Is it my fault you robbed that old lady!? Huh, or sold them drugs!?” Then I hit him with the ultimate insult. “Oh, or maybe you’re one of the ones that like to play with little boys.”
The response to this remark from the other inmates enrages him. He comes back, saying, “Y’all come up in here like y’all better than us!” I counter, “I am!” He continues, “Like just because we committed a crime you as a CO can shit on us and violate our rights!” I’m hyped and drunk. I come back at him, “I am the fuckin’ judge. Is it my fault that you got caught? I didn’t put you here. You put you here! Don’t blame me because you put yourself in the position for me to treat you like a slave.” He comes back with “You’re supposed to be a corrections officer but what are you correcting?” Then he mimics me, “Wipe yo ass with yo hand!” He starts waving the inmate rule book toward me, yelling, “What are you correcting? Did they teach you that in the Academy? Tell me that ain’t some master-to-slave shit!” Now he has an audience and continues, “Did they train you in the Academy on how to correct somebody and make them a better citizen when they come home?” He answers himself, “No, so why do they call y’all correctional officers?”
I see the other inmates nodding in agreement. He sees it and now he feels that he’s on a roll. He’s now standing there with his arms folded when he says to me sarcastically, “The judge didn’t say for you to further punish us after we were sentenced. And it ain’t even the crackers here on the Island, it’s our own kind that do it to us.” He throws the rule book in my direction; it hits the gate that separates us as he walks off back to his cell. Now I am really pissed! I’m pissed that this muthafucka got the best of me, that the child support judge got the best of me, and that I have a thirty-nine-dollar check in my pocket and there ain’t shit I can do about it. I open the gate and storm in behind him. My partner does the ultimate no-no and comes in behind me, ordering all the inmates to go inside the day room. This move is crazy, because even though we have our body alarms that alert the officers in the control room, if we are in trouble and need assistance, we have the keys to let them in. We are both now on t
he floor with the inmates, who could kill us both before anybody can get there to help us. I go down the walkway to the inmate’s cell and when I get there he’s standing inside it with a smirk on his face like, Whatcha want to do? I don’t hesitate and neither does he; we lunge at each other. We both swing, him hitting me in the chest, and me hitting him on the side of his head.
Now all I see is that judge’s face and all I hear is the tapping on the keys of that fucking calculator adding up my money. I black out on him and start punching wildly, screaming, “I take care of my fucking kids!” He looks at me, confused, but does not stop putting up a fight. Good, because I don’t want him to. I want this right now. No, I need this right now. I want to hit something, somebody, anybody, and he is the prime candidate. He catches me on the side of my jaw. Pow! I don’t feel shit. My face is numb. I head butt him and he goes down. I grab the judge in a choke hold from behind. He grabs at my arms, trying to break free. He can’t. I start yelling over and over again, “I take care of my fucking kids!” In my head all I hear now are voices echoing, A REAL FATHER DOES NOT HAVE TO PROVE HE’S A REAL FATHER!
The next thing I know, my partner is yelling at me to let him go because his face is losing color. I do, and the inmate drops to the floor holding his neck and gasping for air. I step over him, leaving him there on the floor, and my partner backs up my attitude by throwing the inmate rule book back at the inmate and slamming his cell door closed. We walk back to the officers’ station. My partner yells for an inmate named Murder, the local gang leader who runs all the inmates, to go and check on our civil rights leader. We sit down and he, like the caring coworker that he is, pours me another drink, along with one for himself. Then he lays into me. “Muthafucka, are you crazy? You could have killed that nigga. Now I am all for backing up my partner no matter what but I ain’t about to throw my shit away on some bullshit like this!” He continues, “You better get a hold of yourself with this child support shit, because it will back you into a corner and have you doing wild shit that you would not normally do.” Murder came back and told us that Mandela was okay and just wanted to know if he could get some hot water for his soup. Parks lets him out and he comes past the officers’ station and yells, “It’s all good, CO, ’cause I jails for real. Ain’t no snitching here.” I nod and he goes and gets his hot water. Parks tells me that most likely Murder warned him not to make the house hot by going to the clinic. I chill out the rest of my tour, then bounce. I change my clothes and wait for the route bus to take me from the jail to the officers’ parking lot. While waiting for the bus I overhear another officer bragging about his new phone that has a calculator in it. I look over at him like, If he only knew what I want to do to that phone right now.
Corruption Officer Page 8
