by Ni-Ni Simone
5
Ain’t Sayin’ Nothin’ . . .
“Simmons. Spread your fingers! More! More! More! Out like a web!” The processin’ CO, Officer Washington, snatched my right hand. Then my left, pushin’ each of my fingers onto an ink-soaked sponge, where black liquid rose from the holes like pus. “Don’t be so stiff!” She smeared my wet fingertips across a thick white card with my name—Yvette Lavonne Simmons. Weight: One hundred, ten pounds. Height: Five feet. Charge: Assault with a deadly weapon—typed across it.
She shoved my shoulder, pushin’ me in front of a black screen.
I shot her a look that straight up told her to chill.
Officer Washington smirked. “Don’t even think about it.” She paused, like she was givin’ me a moment to heed her message. “Now hold your head up. More. More. I said more! What’s with you?! I said hold it up! I’m warning you, don’t make me tell you again!” She gripped my chin and forced my face into the position she wanted it to be, directly into the eye of the camera.
Five.
Four.
Three.
Breathe.
Then she shoved a mug shot board into my hands, with the numbers 7829013 plastered across it.
Click!
Flash!
“Now get in there and drop ’em!” She pushed me into a private room, where another CO sat in the corner next to a shelf neatly stacked with orange jumpsuits, white socks, and dark blue karate shoes.
I placed my hand up on my hip. “Don’t push me again, lady. For real. You doin’ a li’l too much right now. I’m not a dog.”
The CO who sat in the corner stood up and said, “Officer Washington told you to drop ’em. And that’s what you’d better do.”
“And do it now!” Officer Washington ordered.
I sucked my teeth and twisted my neck to the left. “Yo, for real, son. Word is bond. You two need to chill.”
Officer Washington pointed into my face. “Already I’ve had enough of you. What do you think this is, the playground? This ain’t a game. Now. Take. Those. Clothes. Off.”
She trippin’. I blinked in disbelief. “Oh, really. Oh, okay. How about this: Since you don’t know when enough is enough, I ain’t takin’ nothin’ off! Period.”
“You will do what I tell you to do.” Officer Washington gripped my shoulder.
I snatched away. “You better get your hands offa me!” I lifted my right hand to push her back, but before I could touch her, the room filled with too many COs for me to count. Then somebody wrapped an elbow around my neck, squeezed, and yanked me down to the concrete floor. My head felt like it had slammed into a pallet of bricks.
There was a pair of knees pressed into my arms, pinchin’ my skin. Somebody had my legs pinned together. And Officer Washington gripped my chin, her face a breath away from mine. Her reekin’ spit speckled my eyes as she said, “You’d better get this straight. I don’t know who you think you are . . .”
I snapped, “I don’t know who you think you are! But you ain’t my mother!”
“You’re right. I’m not your mother. Her rotten ass has been replaced. ’Cause right now, all of us in here, we’re all your mother. And we’re the type of mothers that don’t give a damn about you.”
“I don’t need you to care about me! But what you better do is get your stank breath out my face.” Tears pounded against the backs of my eyes and danced around the brims.
“Or what? What you gon’ do, but get stomped. I bet out there on the street you thought you were bad, huh? Well, I’m here to break you, and I can promise you that you’re not badder than me. And you’re certainly not badder than those girls back there waiting on yo’ li’l behind. They love tiny li’l thangs like you. You’ll make somebody a nice wife and by the time you get finished smelling their fishy drawls, sour period, hot piss, stale shit, and anything else they feel like shoving in your pretty little face, you’ll be begging for my stankin’ breath to come back.”
She knocked on my forehead with her knuckles. “Now, get this through your head: This is not Burger King and you will not have it your way. You’re in my house. And in here, I’m God. And God’s gonna give you one last chance. Now you can make this easy or you can make it hard. Choice is yours. But if I were you, I’d get up nice and slow. And when I tell you to drop ’em, you do it. ’Cause if you don’t, and you even look like you’re thinking about making one crazy move, I will teach you what we do with nuts. The choice is yours.” She cast my chin from her grip.
“I’ma get up,” I said, silent tears falling from the corners of my eyes.
“You gon’ drop ’em?” she asked.
I nodded.
“That’s not an answer.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Say Yes, Ma’am.”
I swallowed. “Yes. Ma’am.”
“That’s another thing you’re going to learn in here, some respect.” She looked at the other officers. “Let her up.”
Cautiously, they eased off of me, while clutching my arms and helping me up.
Everything in me was on fire.
My thoughts were like jolts of lightnin’. Rocketin’ through my head. I couldn’t think straight. Everything was jumbled up. Confused. And all I could see were heat waves coming from the floor, the walls, everywhere.
Once I was on my feet, I didn’t care what I’d said or what I’d promised. I wasn’t gon’ take my clothes off.
Period.
I just wasn’t.
And I wasn’t gon’ let this trick keep disrespectin’ me like I wasn’t nothin’.
Like the only thing that mattered was what she wanted; and what I wanted didn’t mean a thing.
Like I ain’t have the right to say no.
I wasn’t garbage.
And I was done wit’ e’rybody tossin’ me around like stray dog shit. “Hell no, I ain’t takin’ nothin’ off!” And right after I said that, I gathered every ounce of spit I could, from the pit of my gut, hocked Officer Washington dead in her beet-red face, and watched it drip over her shocked eyes, thin lips, and slide down her veiny neck.
6
The Bridge is Over
“Are you aware that the prosecutor wants to throw the entire book at you? Lock you up until you’re 21? You realize that’s six years? Two years for assault with a deadly weapon and four years for not keeping your spit where it belongs, in your mouth.”
That was my public defender’s introduction. She ain’t state her name. Didn’t ask me mine. Didn’t shake my hand. Didn’t ask me why I was lumped up like this. She just waltzed into the empty courtroom, with Nana behind her, like hot shit on a Gucci stick, announcin’ that I was goin’ to hell in a handbasket.
Nana looked me over as I sat at the defense table with the sheriff officer standin’ next to me.
Nana frowned and said, “Dear God, somebody has finally kicked yo’ li’l behind.” She shook her head, causing the sanctified lace doily she had pinned to the top of her wig to shift to the left. Then she folded her navy pleated skirt beneath her and flopped down on the bench directly behind me. She leaned forward and said over my shoulder, “You can’t help yourself, can you? Everywhere you go you gotta let the monkey-dog out! No matter what I tried to teach you, you just gon’ do the opposite. Now you in jail showin’ off. But you gon’ learn. ’Cause them dykes and them guards gon’ turn you out.”
I huffed. Sat up straight in my chair, turned around, and looked her dead in the face. “That’s what you came here for? To talk about the dykes and the guards?”
Nana pointed into my face. “I’m here because they keep calling me. Plus, I need some help wit’ that snotty nose li’l baby you just up and left at my house. Now hush up being disrespectful. This lady is here tryna help you, and you just showin’ your bare ass.”
The thought of my baby pushed a hard lump into my throat. I looked at my attorney and said, “I need to see my baby! I need to get outta here!”
She never looked at me; instead she popped open her bro
wn leather briefcase and said, “Well, perhaps you should’ve considered that before you spit in Officer Washington’s face and made your case ten times harder for me to fight.” She closed her briefcase, then leafed through a file.
“Excuse you? Harder for you to fight?” She still wasn’t lookin’ at me, so I hammered on the table. She snapped her neck around, and I continued. “You got this twisted. Ain’t nobody fightin’ for me but me. I’m the one who couldn’t walk the street without e’rybody eyein’ me like I was crazy because Munch lied and said I was a rat!”
“And so what?” my attorney said, clearly not giving a damn. “People call each other names all the time. Call her a name back or, better, be the bigger person and walk away.”
“Amen!” Nana said.
My attorney continued. “You don’t drag someone off of a city bus, slice their face, and try to kill them.”
“Hello, somebody!” Nana waved her hands to the heavens.
“You can stop right there. Is you askin’ me if I dragged her off the bus and sliced her face? Or is you just sidin’ wit’ the cops?”
My attorney batted her false lashes and frowned. “Don’t be ridiculous. I represent you. What side do you think I’m on?”
I mimicked her couldn’t-care-less shoulder shrug. “I don’ know. ’Cause you came up in here yellin’ about how I treated the CO, like she sent you on a mission to check me. How about you ask me how they treatin’ me in jail? So I can tell you how, for the last two days, they had me tied down in a restraint chair, in a paper gown, with a spit guard over my mouth! Didn’t even allow me to make a phone call, and e’rybody knows you get at least one of those! They just been pushin’ me around. Treatin’ me like I’m on Death Row!”
“You’re not on Death Row. However, you are in jail.”
“I know that, but dang! And I thought you were my attorney. You actin’ like you should be sittin’ at the prosecutor’s table. You ain’t asked me my name, told me yours, or asked me how I got these bruises on my arms.” I held my arms out. “Or why I got these hickeys on the side of my face.” I turned to the left. Then to the right. “Or why I got a lump on the back of my head. You ain’t asked me nothin’. You just came at me crazy, tellin’ me how I’ma be in jail forever.”
My attorney sighed, looked at me, and held her right hand out. “Let’s start again. My name is Sheryl Blakely.” We shook hands, and she continued. “I’m a public defender. I’ve been assigned to represent you. And I never said you were going to jail forever.”
“My name is Yvette Simmons. And you said six years. May as well be forever. Especially for somethin’ I didn’t even do.”
Sheryl smirked. “Well, one thing you did do was spit in Officer Washington’s face, and that’s a charge.”
I sucked my teeth. “That trick deserved the ounce of spit she got.”
“And what you deserve is a few years in jail. But I’m trying to get the court to give you a chance here.”
I couldn’t believe she said that. “A chance? Really? I can’t tell. Feels like you already got me tried and convicted. You ain’t said nothin’ about me gettin’ outta here today and gettin’ back to my baby.”
“It doesn’t work like that.” She lowered her voice, as the prosecutor walked in, nodded at us, then sat down at her table.
“Well, how does it work?” I whispered back.
“You can plead innocent . . .”
“Which I am.”
“Then you can take this to trial. Or . . .”
“Or what?”
“Plead guilty and let me speak with the prosecutor about a deal.”
“Would I have to go to jail?”
“You may.”
“And lose my baby! Hell no! I ain’t break no laws!” I looked at the prosecutor and rolled my eyes. “Somebody call you a rat and tell people you a snitch, you handle ’em. E’rybody know that! And if some ho disrespect you, I don’t care where it’s at or where they from, then you deal with ’em. E’rybody know that too! Friend or no friend. CO or no CO.”
“You need to lower your voice,” Sheryl said sternly.
“All rise,” the sheriff’s officer said as the judge walked in and took his seat. “Judge Randall presiding.”
“So, you really want this to go to trial?” Sheryl asked in a hush tone, as we stood up.
“Yes, I do.”
She shook her head. “Fine.”
“Counsels, state your credentials for the record,” Judge Randall said.
“I’m Prosecutor Mildred Jones. Representing the state.”
“I’m Sheryl Blakely. Public defender. Representing Yvette Simmons.”
Judge Randall looked to his left. “Bailiff, please swear in the defendant.”
“Raise your right hand,” the bailiff said. “Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?”
“Yeah.”
“State your name for the record.”
“Yvette Simmons.”
“You may be seated.”
The judge looked at Sheryl and said, “Counsel Blakely, how does your client wish to plead?”
“Not guilty.” She huffed, like she’d been defeated. She looked over to Nana, then back to the judge. “Your Honor, this is my client’s grandmother, and she wishes to address the court.”
Nana stood up and the bailiff swore her in. I could tell by the look on her face she was about to say somethin’ stupid. “Good morning, Ya Honor. I’m Evangelist Darleen Carter. I bring you and the courtroom greetings from the Holiness Tabernacle Followers of Christ. I’m sure I look familiar to you.” She paused and when the judge didn’t say nothin’, she carried on. “I was just in your courtroom a few months ago with my granddaughter, Isis. Now I’m in here with a new derelict, Yvette. First, let me make this clear: Yvette is not my granddaughter. I would say she’s a family friend, who I let call me Nana, as a courtesy. My son brought her stray of a mother home, and one day I looked up and he’d left me with her litter.”
“Ma’am,” the judge said, like he’d already had enough of her, “please state why you’re here.”
Nana looked taken aback. “I’m here because this public defender keeps calling me.” She pointed to Sheryl. “She’s been calling me nonstop saying Yvette needs a guardian, in case the court releases her today.”
“So you’re here to take her home?” the judge asked.
“Oh, no. No, sir. Yvette’s been causing me hell since the first time she said hello. She cannot dot my door again. I’m cleaning house. And the last thing I need is Yvette as a guest. She’s lived wit’ me, on and off, for five, long, drawn-out, and miserable years.
“Yvette needs help. She’s a thief. She lies. She’s trampy. She’s violent. And the public defender told me that just the other day Yvette spat in one of the prison guard’s faces! No, I’m done here. What’s next? She gon’ spit in my face, and then I’m standing before you, charged with murder? I’m too old for that and prison ain’t for me. So, I’m here today to make sure we’re all on the same page.” Nana looked around the courtroom. “Now, I’ve already made arrangements for Child Protective Services to come and get this baby Yvette left at my house, ’cause I will not be raising her. And this courtroom was my last stop. So hear me, and hear me well, this evangelist here has officially washed her hands of and has given this sixteen-year-old Jezebel, named Yvette, to the Lord.”
“Where are her parents?” the judge asked.
“Somewhere needin’ prayer. I’m sure her mother’s in somebody’s crack den or the back seat of some trick’s Chevy. And I’m sure her daddy’s a john or probably one of the mama’s sick uncles. Hell, maybe even her brother.”
“Do you know any of Yvette’s family members?”
“I barely know Yvette, let alone her relatives. And I don’t wanna know ’em. But one thing I do know is who ain’t related to Yvette. And that’s me and my family.”
“That’s enough, ma’am. You maybe excused,” the judge said, po
inting to the court’s double doors.
“Goodbye.” Nana shoved the shoulder strap of her black leather purse up her arm, held her head up, and high stepped out the courtroom, the double doors swinging behind her. She never looked back. Never even glanced over her shoulder. Just walked out like the last thing she wanted me to see was her leavin’ me behind.
The judge banged his gavel, grabbing my attention. “Yvette Simmons, you will be remanded until the next hearing.”
What did he say?
The courtroom buzzed. The prosecutor stood up, shuffled through her files. She looked at the bailiff and told him to call the next case.
I wanted to ask somebody to repeat what the judge had just said, but they was all movin’ about like I no longer existed, like we was no longer in the same moment.
My heart thumped, hard and fast, but the beat was fading.
Tears pounded against the backs of my eyes and burned their way down my cheeks.
One of the sheriff’s officers ordered me to stand up so they could cuff and shackle me.
I didn’t move.
That’s when it hit me. The judge had said, “Remanded until the next hearing.”
My vision blurred.
My heart died.
My stomach twisted into knots.
The knots dropped into my feet.
My whole body felt heavy.
I couldn’t breathe.
I couldn’t think.
All I could do was scream.
E’rybody was lookin’ at me like I was crazy.
I wasn’t crazy.
I wasn’t.
I just needed somebody to understand that I had to get back to my baby! Otherwise I was gon’ die.
And although I was born in hell, I wasn’t ready to be burned to death.
Then Kamari wouldn’t have nobody!
The last thing I wanted was for my baby girl to be like me.
I kept telling myself to shut up, ’cause the screams made me look like I was buggin’.
I wasn’t buggin’.
I just couldn’t stop screamin’.
E’rybody in the courtroom, even the judge, seemed frozen by my shrieks. Like nobody knew if I was gon’ throw a chair or drop dead.
Shut up! Stop screaming! Relax! Think! Stop screaming!
