Should Have Known Better

by Grace Octavia

  “No, that’s my son,” I said, reaching toward him, but it felt like a million hands came down on my body and held me to the trunk.

  “255 Means Drive!” R. J. yelled harshly at the female officer trying to hold him still. “255!”

  I saw the park. The playground. R. J. waiting for me in the sandbox. Him smiling into the sand. It felt like, looked like, and smelled like home. All around me. I wanted to be there, too. Back before all of this. When we were together.

  “He just wants to get to the park,” I cried, trying to squirm away from the hands on my back. I kicked and kicked, hitting legs and arms and chests. “Let him go,” I screamed. “Let my baby go!”

  I was being lifted high and passed along a torrent of blue suits, pink hands, and round faces.

  I saw Cheyenne reach for me and I fought to get to her, but I couldn’t.

  I saw R. J. reach for me and I reached back for him, but I couldn’t reach him.

  Soon I couldn’t see my hands or feel them. They were tied to my back like I was an animal and I felt the hard and cold leather seat in the back of the police car slap against my cheek.

  “I’m not a drunk driver,” I hollered out to the hands stuffing me into the car. “I’m not a drunk driver!” I shouted and then I saw dark clouds rolling into my eyes in spirals. They gathered all in together and then everything went black.

  There was something wet on my forehead. Something cold and soft and wet. I opened my eyes and a strong light came shining in. I blinked and tried to look up at the soft thing above my eyes.

  “Ohhhh,” I murmured. Something pounded in my head as I tried to move.

  “Stay still, Dawn.”

  I blinked again and squinted under the pain in my head and saw my mother standing over me.

  “Mama?”

  I tried to move my legs and realized I was lying in a bed. I saw a television hanging on the wall behind my mother.

  “You can’t move. The doctor said you shouldn’t move,” she said, leaning into me over the bed rail. “You hit your head pretty hard.”

  “My head?” I went to touch the sharp pain in my head, but I couldn’t move my hand. I looked down to see my hand chained to the bed rail. “What?” I pulled at the chain. “What is this?”

  “Calm down,” my mother whispered. “They’re outside.”

  “Who?”

  “Is there anything you want to tell me? They’re going to come in here.”

  “Who’s coming in here? What’s going on? Where . . . Where are R. J. and Cheyenne?” I rattled the chain.

  “Oh, stop it, now, please calm yourself.” She looked over her shoulder outside of the room, but I couldn’t see what she was looking at.

  I heard a door open and my mother stood up, crossing her arms over her chest.

  “Calm down, sweetie,” she said pleasantly. “I think everything is going to be OK.”

  She moved from the bed and I saw a thin black woman with short blond hair walking in. She was wearing a pantsuit with heels. A golden badge was hanging from the waist of her slacks.

  My mother reached over the bed railing and grabbed my hand.

  “Who is this?” I asked. “Did something happen to my children? Where are my children?”

  “Your children are fine, Mrs. Johnson,” the woman said. “I’m Officer Russell.” She kept her hands at her side. “I’m with the Atlanta Police Department, Children’s Services.”

  “Children’s Services?” I looked at my mother. “What’s going on?”

  The woman traded stares with my mother and my mother nodded to me.

  “I’ll wait outside,” she said, gripping my hand. “I’ll be right outside that door if you need me.”

  I tried to push up in the bed, so I could sit and see around the room, but my head was throbbing and the chain kept sliding down to the bottom of the rail.

  “Be careful, Mrs. Johnson,” Officer Russell said. “You’ve really hurt your head. That’s why we had to bring you to the hospital.”

  “What’s going on? Can someone please tell me what’s going on and where are my children?”

  “Well, let’s start with last night. Do you remember anything?”

  I saw blue lights flashing. Cheyenne’s finger pointing to the front window. An empty glass on the dining room table.

  “The police officers. The roadblock,” I tried.

  “Yes.”

  “Something was wrong with R. J. I had to get to him.”

  “Mrs. Johnson,” the woman started, sitting down on a small corner of the bed where my feet couldn’t reach. “You were driving drunk.”

  “Nooo,” I cried faintly. I could remember the lemon face poking into my window. The smell of the back of the police car. I was kicking. I kicked the window. Glass went everywhere.

  “Your blood alcohol level was four times the limit in the state of Georgia. There are some things I need you to know.”

  “Where are my children?”

  “Your children are fine. They’re with their father,” she said calmly.

  “With Reginald? No!” I pulled at the chain again and pulled the wet rag my mother had laid across my forehead off and threw it to the floor.

  “Mrs. Johnson, I need you to calm down,” Officer Russell said. “I know this is your first offense, so I need to explain some things.”

  “I don’t care about what happens to me. Get my children. Please,” I begged her. I cried and kicked in the bed. “I need to see them.”

  “You’ll see them soon enough.” She put her hand on my leg to stop me from moving. “I know you’re upset and confused, but you have to listen to me right now. Do you understand?

  “We have a mandatory minimum sentence for drunk driving in the state of Georgia. And you were driving with your children in the car, so they were automatically to be put in protective custody. Luckily, your husband called your cell phone while police were detaining you and he was able to come pick up the children. So they’re safe. But we are pressing charges. And he’s been given temporary custody.”

  I felt embarrassed and ashamed. Felt like I was lying in that bed naked. Alone. Cold. I looked away and at a bare white wall as the officer went on. I heard half of what she said. Maybe less. I kept thinking of Cheyenne and R. J. and what they’d seen. How they’d cried and begged me to turn the car around. Their two bodies stuffed into one seat. They must’ve been so scared.

  “When you passed out,” I heard her say after a while, “the officers weren’t sure what was wrong with you. They knew you’d been drinking, but when they spoke to your friend—”

  “My friend?” I turned back to Officer Russell.

  “Yes, a Mrs. Bellamy? Sasha Bellamy. She was with your husband when he called. She told the officers you might be using drugs.”

  “What? That’s crazy. She’s crazy,” I explained. “I don’t use drugs. She’s just trying to steal my husband. That’s what this is about. That’s why I was out there.” I looked at Officer Russell. “I know I shouldn’t have been drinking, but I was upset. It was just one time. I’d had a fight with my husband and it was wrong for me to do that to my children, but I don’t use drugs.”

  She patted my leg like I was a psychiatric patient or wounded soldier.

  “I hear what you’re saying, but you need to know that when the officers brought you to the hospital after you passed out and they told doctors they weren’t sure if you’d been drinking or using drugs or what kinds, they had to test you.”

  I shrugged my shoulders expecting a clear denial of anything Sasha had said. I’d never used drugs. Not once in my life. Not even a pill beyond what I’d taken for pain after having the twins.

  “You tested positive for methylenedioxymethamphetamine or MDMA.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Ecstasy.”

  In all my anger, in all my fear and embarrassment, I actually laughed at this. Not loudly, but just like I was sure she was joking. Ecstasy? It was a joke. And if that was a joke, maybe all of this was.
Maybe everything was fine. Some big joke the world was playing on me. I felt like the chain on my wrist had loosened.

  “I don’t use drugs. Something must be wrong.”

  She pursed her lips and reached for a clipboard hanging on the foot of the bed. She slid out a sheet and handed it to me.

  “This isn’t from me,” I said, reading exactly what she’d told me, and my fear returned immediately. “I don’t use drugs. There must be a mix-up. There has to be.”

  “Mrs. Johnson, we see this all of the time. Suburban mother working hard, needs some relief. The pills are easy to come by. They give you relief. You hid it with alcohol.”

  “But I didn’t—” I tried.

  “But there’s only a matter of time before you can’t hide it anymore. Before you hit a wall,” she said. “And I think you hit your wall last night.”

  “I’m not hiding anything. I didn’t hit a wall. I admitted I was drinking and I said I was wrong. If there’s a fine or something I need to pay, I can do that, but I’m not a drug user.”

  “Why aren’t your children in school?”

  “They are. It’s the end of the school year,” I said, trying to let her hear how rational it all sounded, but even listening to myself, it just didn’t. “Just one more week. I took them out, so we could come here. . . .”

  “Come here for what?”

  “My husband.” I paused and looked back at the white wall. “He’s having an affair with Sasha.”

  “And what about your job? You haven’t been there in days. Had someone been covering for you?” she asked.

  “Oh, Sharika said she’d help me out while I came to see about my husband.”

  “So you took your children out of school and left your job to find your husband when you knew exactly where he was?” she asked matter-of-factly.

  “I didn’t know where he was. I knew, but I didn’t know.” I covered my mouth with my hand. I heard it now. I heard my own confusion. What was going on? I didn’t know. I knew I hadn’t used drugs, but right then I didn’t know anything.

  “I’ve been working in this area for fifteen years and I’ve seen a lot of things.”

  I looked back at her.

  “And in my opinion, and I’ll be honest with you, you don’t really seem like the type of mother who’d use ecstasy, and judging by your response, you hardly know what it is. But that doesn’t exclude both science and investigation,” she said and I could tell by her voice that she was a mother to someone or many. “The test was positive and your coworker, the people at the library, your husband, your best friend, your mother, your children, everyone says they’ve noticed a change in you. So something is going on. Maybe in time we’ll find out what it is, but right now, you need to prepare yourself for the fact that your husband has temporary custody of your children and you’re going to jail. I would suggest that you get a lawyer.”

  8

  I had to spend a day in jail. And when it was time for me to go before the judge, he was less than understanding. I sat in a row of women with our legs chained and when the judge called my name, the only lawyer my mother’s limited savings could afford came shuffling up to the front of the courtroom searching for my name in a stack of wrinkled papers.

  I wanted to hate him, but inside I was cheering for him. I needed to get home, wherever that was, just to remember who I was. They’d taken my clothes and shoes, felt through my hair, humiliated me so many times I’d stopped eating and going to the bathroom.

  I could see my mother sitting in the back of the courtroom in one of the wooden rows that looked like pews. She was quiet, kept her eyes on the judge and her hands on what I was sure was a Bible in her lap.

  “Reginald had to bail you out,” she said in the car as she drove us home. “After I used my savings for the attorney, I had nothing left, so I had to call him. Couldn’t put up the house. That’s all I got in the world.”

  “I’m sorry, Mama. Sorry about all of this.”

  We rode in silence the rest of the way. I looked out the window and she looked at the road. We were together, but I don’t ever remember feeling so alone. In fact, counting cars flashing by, I thought of how I don’t recall ever having a real intimate moment with my mother. She’d try to slow down, to touch me, or hold me, but if it wasn’t the church or my father, it was the Bible or God coming between us. My first breakup, my period, when I lost my virginity, when I pledged my sorority, she missed all of it. Even my wedding. Reginald and I decided to have it in a park in downtown Atlanta that was just a romantic stroll to the reception hall, and she and the Good Reverend decided that it was against God’s orders not to have the service in his house. I called and begged her to come, cried into the phone that I couldn’t find it anywhere in the Bible where it said I had to get married in a church and I needed her to be there. She said she’d think about it and then I heard my father’s voice. The phone went dead.

  That’s how things went all my life with my mother. And after a while, I put her and all of the other people in the same category—do not disturb. If my trouble was too much, I’d keep it to myself. I was safer that way.

  Like glasses of Scotch, after the first day in bed, the second is just easier, and the third feels like home.

  I remained rolled up in the old sheets in my old twin-sized bed upstairs at my mother’s house for four days. I took calls from the lawyer about when I’d be able to see the twins and organizing my mandatory community service activities to complete the judge’s sentence. I still had months of community service and a fine. He also suggested that I get a clinical evaluation for alcohol and drug dependency and a therapist. I refused. I knew what was wrong with me. And it wasn’t drugs or alcohol. I didn’t know how to explain to anyone that I was telling the truth. All they saw were the results, and after the attorney had me tested, they came back positive for MDMA three times. It didn’t make any sense. I was lying in that bed, not sleeping and not dreaming, trying to figure it out.

  “You have a phone call,” my mother said, popping her head into the bedroom.

  “The lawyer?” I asked, not bothering to lift my head from the pillow or look directly at her.

  “No, it’s a woman.” She came toward me and I looked up to see her holding the phone’s receiver cupped in her hand. “I think she’s from your job,” she whispered. “Her name, it’s something African or French. Not American.”

  “Sharika?”

  She nodded and I reached out for the phone.

  “I’ll take it,” I said.

  “You eating dinner tonight?” my mother asked, handing me the phone. “I’ll just warm up what you didn’t eat last night.”

  She walked back to the door and turned to look at me like I was an insect.

  “Sure, Mama. That’ll be great,” I said, lifting the phone to my ear and waiting for her to leave.

  “Yoooooooooooooooo,” Sharika howled into the phone. “Dawn! I’ve been calling you! Tried your cell phone like a million times. What’s going on over there?”

  I don’t know if it was because I’d hardly heard another human’s voice in days—aside from my mother’s and the attorney’s—or how quickly Sharika’s sound flipped me back into my past, but I started crying nearly immediately after she said my name. Big, sloppy tears welled in my eyes and when she asked a question and went silent I couldn’t speak for the knot doubling in my throat.

  “You there?” she asked. “Are you crying? What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” I murmured. “It’s just, just so nice to hear your voice.”

  “Ohhh,” she purred. “Well, I’ve been trying to call you, but the line went straight to voice mail.”

  “That was probably when I was in jail—”

  “What was that like?”

  “Awful and then worse than awful,” I said. “The worst part was that I didn’t expect to go there. I thought there was something I could do, but as soon as the doctor pulled the bandage off of my head, I was carted downtown in the back of a van.”


  “I’m sorry to hear about that,” Sharika said. “You know some detective called here. Everyone at central knows you’ve been out. I couldn’t lie. It would’ve been my ass then.”

  “Please, you don’t have to apologize, Sharika,” I said. “I understand. I don’t think either of us saw this coming.”

  “Yeah, that’s exactly how I felt. It just seemed so unreal, you know? How everything happened. I actually went and did some research.”

  “Research about what?” I asked.

  “About Ms. Stinky Bellamy and that conference you said she was in town for. I don’t know what it was, but when you told me she was here in Augusta for some conference, it didn’t sit right with me. I mean, conferences come here all of the time, but we know about them—especially if someone from the news or something is going to be there. We hear about them. And I didn’t hear anything about a journalism conference.”

  “So what did you do?” I sat up in the bed and looked at the knot on my forehead in the mirror on my old dresser.

  “Just asked around. Spoke to some people downtown. And you know what? There was no conference. Nothing anyone could recall.”

  “What?” I stood up.

  “No conference. You heard me right. There was no conference.”

  “But she said she was in town for a conference,” I explained as if this would negate what Sharika was telling me.

  “Well, she was certainly in town, but it wasn’t for a conference,” Sharika said. “Any idea what else could’ve brought her to Augusta?”

  I sat back down on the bed and tried to remember Sasha’s message on my machine. Reginald saying she was coming over. The car in the driveway. Her suitcase. The red candles on the dresser in the guest room. Phil Landon’s nervous eyes on her legs at the car dealership. Then there was his wife at the nail salon. Her angry face. Her cold eyes. She’d pointed at Sasha. “I guess you’re the black whore who’s been fucking him,” she’d said. “I have all of the receipts from the hotel last week. When I get finished with your ass, you’ll wish you never gave him your number.”