Good Girls Ain't No Fun Boxed Set (The SIX romance and urban fiction volumes of the LOVE, SEX, LIES series)

by Jessica Watkins

I sat in a jail cell for thirteen hours until video bond court the next morning.

  At about seven o’clock in the morning, all the arrestees were lined up and taken to the basement of the building. I had been crying all night, so I obviously appeared scared and weak. I couldn’t eat because fear had taken my appetite. Besides, the bologna sandwich on thick hard white bread with a slice of government cheese, accommodated by an apple juice and chips, wasn’t inviting at all.

  I was too scared to call my mother. I was more scared of her than the jail, so I opted to sit there and await my fate.

  I figured that once I was released, I would make up some bullshit story about why I was out all night, listen to her bullshit about me being irresponsible and leaving Jordan with her, and then go home to figure out how to get out of this mess without involving her.

  About twenty of us were pushed into a crowded and dirty basement as we waited our turn to sit before a judge appearing on a monitor. The women with me looked like crackheads, prostitutes, and gang members. Then there were those that looked like me, innocent on the outside but guilty than a motherfucker where it counted. In my opinion, we were the guiltiest, fronting to the world like we had our shit together while we deliberately and maliciously calculated schemes against others to get ahead.

  When my name was called, the judge spoke quickly, assertively, and offensively. She treated me like I was guilty with not one ounce of presuming my innocence. I was never even given the opportunity to plead my case.

  “Miss Anderson, you are before the court for the arraignment of the charges of, count one, possession of cocaine and trafficking of cocaine and, count two, felony murder of Reginald Timothy King…”

  Before I knew it, I screeched, “Murder?!” Immediately, guards charged toward me as they reached for their batons. When they saw that I was more terrified than violent, I was simply told to shut up. I could hear other inmates snickering at my shock and panic. My heart was beating so fast that my face felt hot and I felt dizzy.

  “How do you wish to plea, Miss Anderson?”

  I heard the judge, but I was lost in my own thoughts. Though I sat in jail all night, this shit didn’t seem real until now.

  “Miss Anderson, how do you plea?!”

  A guard yelled at me. “Speak up, Miss Anderson!”

  “Not guilty,” I muttered.

  “Can you afford an attorney?”

  “No.”

  “A court-appointed attorney will be assigned to your case. Granting people’s request of remand without bail… Next case.”

  Though the county jail was only a twenty-minute drive away, it felt like an eternity.

  I couldn’t believe that I was actually going to jail. Just yesterday I was about to move into my own place, and now I am being charged with drug trafficking and murder. My stomach was sick with anxiety. I felt betrayed as I constantly replayed the accounts of yesterday: Roxie calling me as if she was in such dire need of my help, putting those bags in my trunk, sitting nervously in the passenger side seat, while constantly looking out of the window, and then running.

  She and Benz had to know that the cops were watching him. They had to.

  I felt stupid as hell and sick with disappointment. I wondered if my mother was worried about me or if she’d already done her own investigating and found out that I was in jail.

  Even as I faced murder charges, I was still too scared to face my mother.

  I felt like I was having an out-of-body experience. As I was detained and given a medical exam, I seemed to float through the process, barely hearing what anyone was saying and hardly answering questions.

  After the medical exam, we were packed into a small room that they called the bullpen. An hour later, a female guard came into the room while three others stood outside of the door and watched. The guard inside the bullpen ordered us to stand up in a straight line and take off all of our clothing – including our bra and panties.

  After shaking out each article of clothing, we were ordered to turn around, bend over, squat, spread out butt cheeks apart, and cough.

  I thought it couldn’t get much more humiliating than this.

  The guard then ordered us to stand, turn around to face her, and tousle our hair. Then, we lifted each breast to show that no paraphernalia was hidden underneath.

  I wanted to just die. If God had taken the breath from my body right then, I wouldn’t have argued with Him. I knew that I reaped this into my own life with the scams, set ups, and fucking other women’s husbands for the money that should have been used to take care of their families, but I didn’t think that I was so bad of a person that I deserved this.

  TRICEY

  During a staff meeting, my mother called my cell phone at least ten times.

  I excused myself after the last call because I knew that something had to be wrong.

  “Hello? Mama, what’s wrong?” I closed my office door to give myself some privacy.

  “Star is in jail.”

  “WHAT?! What happened?!”

  “I don’t know! She never picked up Jordan last night. I called her cell phone all night. She wouldn’t leave Jordan like that, so I knew something was wrong! Then, I called Mary.”

  Mary is my mother’s best friend, who is also a sheriff.

  “What did she say?”

  “All she could tell me is that Star has been arrested on drugs charges.”

  “Drug charges?! Mama, are you serious?”

  That is when I noticed my mother’s demeanor. She wasn’t crying, nor did she sound concerned about Star.

  She sounded done.

  “She is in the County,” my mother told me. “As of last night, she was being charged with possession and trafficking of cocaine. She was pulled over in her car. Another girl was in the passenger seat…”

  “Probably Roxie.”

  “Most likely. They had probable cause to search the vehicle because the detectives had been sitting on Roxie’s house for days. When Star got there and Roxie got in the car, they drove off. After a few blocks, they pulled Star over, searched the car, and found a couple kilos of cocaine in the trunk.”

  “Kilos?!” I was nearly about to faint. My head was in my hands and my mouth was to the floor. “How do they know that the drugs weren’t Roxie’s?”

  “Of course they were Roxie’s, because when the police told them to get out of the car, she ran…”

  “And Star gets charged because she owns the car and was driving.”

  “Exactly.” Then my mother huffed, puffed, and tsked. I could imagine her rolling her eyes in the process.

  “Has Star called you?”

  “No. I can imagine she is too scared to.”

  “But we need to talk to her! We need to get her a lawyer and get her bailed out!”

  My mother smacked her lips. “If that heifer doesn’t have the decency to even call me and tell me what’s going on while I have her child, she can sit in there and rot.”

  “Mama!”

  “I take care of my kids when they make mistakes. I took care of her mistake that is lying here across my bed! But I am not about to get her out of this one when I have been telling her hard-headed behind about hanging in the streets with those people!”

  I knew that my mother was just pissed and highly disappointed. She would never let her child sit in jail. The Jesus in her wouldn’t allow it. However, she is so stubborn that it might take Jesus a few days to get through to her.

  If my mother wanted to be stubborn and teach Star a lesson, I would let her think that she was, but I was going to get my sister out of jail.

  I took off work early and immediately called Smith. Between being Blood’s right hand man, being in the streets since he was a kid, being arrested, and beating a few charges, I knew that he would know what to do.

  “Hello?”

  “Baby, I need your help!”

  “What’s wrong?”

  I was currently flying down the expressway. I needed to pick up Ariana from the sitter and then
go over to my mom’s to attempt to help Jesus talk some compassion into her.

  “My sister got arrested.”

  “For what?!”

  “Her friend stashed drugs in her car.”

  “How much drugs?”

  “A couple kilos.”

  “What the fuck were they doing with all that shit?”

  “Probably dropping it off for some nigga! My mother has a friend who is sheriff, so she was able to find out what happened to Star. Apparently detectives had been sitting on Roxie’s house for a couple of days….”

  “That’s my other line. Hold on.”

  I couldn’t believe it. Did he really just cut me off to answer another phone call as if my sister being locked up wasn’t more important than whoever was on the other line?!

  If I wasn’t so wrapped up in getting my sister out of jail before some butch made Star’s little cute ass her personal property, I would have asked Smith who in the hell was more important than my sister when he clicked back over.

  “Hello?”

  “Yes.”

  “So what else happened?”

  Something was different. Smith was suddenly irritated; with what or whom, I didn’t know.

  “Star picked up Roxie. Once Roxie got in the car and Star drove off, the detectives pulled Star over a few blocks away.”

  “So was the other girl arrested too?”

  “She ran!”

  Smith groaned and then fell silent. Background noise insinuated that he had taken the phone away from his ear.

  “Hello?... Hello?”

  With a sigh, he told me. “I’m here.”

  Out of frustration, I smacked my lips. “Is there something more important that you need to be doing? I mean, if my sister being locked up doesn’t concern you, I can let you go so that you can attend to your more important business.”

  “Baby, c’mon now. Please don’t go there with me.”

  “I’m just saying.” When he didn’t respond, I knew that his defense was to stay quiet, so I also fell back. “So what’s going to happen to my sister? Can I go get her out of jail?”

  “It doesn’t work like that, baby. If she was arrested last night, she was arraigned this morning. They either gave her a bail or held her without bail. If they had given her bail, I am sure she would have called and asked you for the money by now.”

  “And if she is held without bail?”

  “She has to stay there until her court date. The court date is usually within ninety days, closer to ninety days.”

  “Ninety days?! She has to sit in there for ninety days?!”

  “Baby, the only thing you can do is wait until she calls. In the mean time, you need to get her a good lawyer.”

  STAR

  I finally got the nerve to call Tricey.

  The line was long for the phone and it was a collect call, so I attempted to spit out as much as I could when she answered.

  I knew that Tricey would be hysterical when she answered, since the operator alerted her that she was receiving a collect call from the county jail.

  “Hello?! Star?!”

  I immediately started crying when I heard her voice. “It’s me.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Hell nah! Can you tell mama that I’m in jail?”

  “She knows already, sweetie. Her friend, Mary, told her.”

  “Shit!”

  “Why haven’t you called mama?!”

  “I’m too scared to, Tricey!”

  “So you’d rather stay locked up?!”

  I didn’t have an answer for that. It was stupid, but I didn’t know whether I wanted to stay in jail or face my mother. If I wasn’t locked up, I would have thought that the irony in that was funny.

  “I have to stay in here anyway,” I told Tricey. “They didn’t give me a bail.”

  “I got you a lawyer. I was only able to speak to her briefly because she was leaving the office, but I am meeting with her tomorrow. She sounded positive about being able to at least get you out on bail since you don’t have a record.”

  I was so relieved that I literally felt weight lift from my shoulders.

  Just as the operator told us that we had a minute left on the call, Tricey and I simultaneously blurted out what we could.

  “Star, be careful. Don’t let them see you cry.”

  “Tell mama that I am so sorry. I will call you again when I can.”

  “I will be there Monday to see you. I’ll try to bring Jordan.”

  “NO! Don’t bring my baby here.”

  “Okay…”

  Then the call ended. Before standing, I attempted to discreetly wipe my face.

  Then I headed straight back to my cell.

  I was housed in Block 9 with other convicted felons, mostly murderers. We all wore black scrubs with a v-neck top and elastic waist pants. Surprisingly, there was a library, gym, and recreational room, but I didn’t plan on taking advantage of any of that. I just wanted to sit in my cell, sulk, and pray to get released ASAP.

  Block 9 was separated into two tiers that rotated shifts of when we were let out of our cells to eat, use the phone, socialize, etc. Currently, my tier was out, but like I said, I just wanted to be in my cell. Most of the women who arrived with me today and were here for the first time were doing the same.

  My cell was an eight by six slab of concrete. There was a bunk bed, desk, toilet, and sink. There were no windows. As I walked through the facility when I first arrived, I saw that this block was so overpopulated that there were even cells that held three inmates, with one sleeping on the floor.

  Luckily, I only had one cellmate. I was all too happy to learn that she was here by mistake just like me, so wasn’t as hardened of a criminal as the other women that snarled, catcalled, or threatened me as I walked to my cell. Her name was Tammy, and she was convicted of the same drug charges that I was. She was caught with thirty kilos of cocaine in the floor of her minivan that her husband made her run for him to Arkansas.

  She was a little petite Spanish chick, in her thirties, and with four kids. She too was praying that her lawyer would be able to get her released since this was her first offense.

  “What did your sister say?” Surprisingly, Tammy was very eager to help me survive my stay as easy as I could. I cried for an hour when the guard first put me in the cell and closed the gate. The entire time, Tammy tried to tell me how to survive in here, but I didn’t hear her because my prayers were too loud in my head.

  “She said that she got me a lawyer. They are meeting tomorrow. Hopefully, they can at least get me out on bail since this is my first offense.”

  “Good,” she said in her high pitched accent. “It’s possible that you can get bail. That video bond court is illegal as shit anyway. You didn’t have an attorney to represent you! The only reason that I didn’t get bail is because those punk motherfuckers want me to turn on my husband and his cartel. I am not doing that though. They can lock me up first.”

  Before I could respond, a shadow cast over our cell, taking our attention away from each other and to the outside of the cell. There stood another inmate wearing a cynical and sneaky grin.

  I recognized her only because she was one of the inmates in the bullpen with me during arraignment and processing.

  She seemed to be laughing devilishly as she stared at me and spoke. “You the chick that set DeShawn up, huh?”

  Once the words left her lips, immediately, my heart began to beat fast and hard. There was no way to deny what I was charged with because she was there during my arraignment, so she’d heard everything the judge said. Yet, I attempted to fake my innocence. “No, I’m the chick that DeShawn was fucking when he got stuck up.” However, I was doing a bad job of playing if off. My voice was shaky and trembling uncontrollably.

  The girl laughed me off as if I was a joke. “Girl, please! DeShawn never got robbed before he met you. Everybody in the streets figure you had to know them goofy motherfuckas that robbed him. And apparently the Law know too.�
�� She cut me off before I could respond. “Anyway, the shit ain’t my business. Just thought you should know that Tim’s sister is housed in this block too.”

  There was no hiding my shock.

  She giggled at my fear as my disposition began to reveal my anxiety. “Yep. That’s my girl. She got locked up a few months ago for running a bitch over with her car. Couldn’t even go to her brother’s funeral. I’m sure she’ll get a kick of out knowing that you’re here.”

  Eleven

  Thursday, March 18, 2010

  TRICEY

  When I met with Star’s attorney yesterday, she gave me promising news.

  Since this drug possession was Star’s first offense, and it was obvious who the drugs belonged to, Jean, Star’s attorney, felt as if we could at least get Star out on bail once she requests another arraignment hearing.

  However, she did strongly suggest that I attempt to locate Roxie. Because Roxie and Star were such good friends, Jean thought that maybe, just maybe, Roxie would consider turning herself in. If that were the case, the judge would probably grant Star even more leniency, or drop the case against Star all together.

  It was a stretch, but I was willing to try anything.

  I knew where Roxie lived because I picked Jordan up from Roxie’s place for Star on a few occasions.

  Imagine my surprise when I pulled up in front of the house and saw Roxie walking to her car without a care in the world.

  I shouted as I jumped out of the car. “Roxie!” I yelled her name like she owed me money, and if I had to pay my sister’s bail, Roxie damn sure was going to.

  When she saw me, she tried to act like she didn’t see or hear me.

  “Bitch, don’t play with me!” I was on her heels as she walked into her yard. Without thinking, I grabbed her by the arm. To me, this little bitch was a child, though she was well into her twenties.

  She of course shouted and fought back. “Don’t touch me!” Then we began to tussle back and forth as she tried to free her arm from my grip.

  I didn’t care how much of a fight she was trying to put up. I was ready to whoop her ass if it would convince her to turn herself in.