“I’ve noticed those things, too,” he says with a little chuckle. “But I was also curious about what’s going on with the space over the garage.”
“Oh, that. My son, Dexter, he moved out a while back, and I haven’t been up there since.”
“You interested in turning it into a real rental?”
“Well, of course I would, but I can’t afford to do any improvements right now. Why do you ask?”
“Well,” he says, and turns to look at his house, which is one of the best-looking homes on the whole block. “Since I’m retired, I’ve got a little extra time on my hands and wouldn’t mind lending a helping hand. You’ve been a pleasant enough neighbor all these years.”
I don’t exactly know what to say. I’m wondering if maybe he’s suddenly hitting the bottle or something. He has never been this friendly, and I can’t wait to tell Tammy. No. Wait. Maybe I shouldn’t. But she’s nosy as hell, which means if there’s a way Eli can do something to my house, Tammy will notice it and we may have another racial issue going on, and I don’t know if I want to start anything after all these years.
“That’s very kind of you to offer, Eli, but would you mind if I mulled this over a little while, because I’ve got so much going on and these boys are costing me a pretty penny?”
“Take your time. But please understand that I own a small construction company and I would be more than happy to do this at my expense. It’s a small space. Anyway, you think on it. And have a nice day.”
“You do the same, Eli.”
I get the mail and walk back into the house in slow motion because it feels weird that my neighbor would make such a kind and generous offer after all these years. We’ve seen him doing things to improve the looks of his house over the years, but we didn’t want to make comparisons. Personally, I was just glad to look at it. Tammy’s house is an eyesore and she could stand to put a few more dollars into it provided she doesn’t spend any more on plastic surgery.
The phone rings as I’m flipping through the mail, and when I see LOS ANGELES POLICE DEPARTMENT appear on the caller ID, my heart drops to the floor. It feels like I just got a phone call like this one a few weeks ago. But the police department is a long way from middle school. I’m just praying it’s not something tragic. Or that no harm has been done to Ricky, or none caused by him. I know this is about Ricky because Luther doesn’t give me any cause to worry. I went through this mess with their mama and with Dexter, and I told both of them a while ago that I was not going to tolerate bad behavior and I meant it. “Hello, this is Betty Jean Butler,” I say like I work in an office or something.
“Hello, Mrs. Butler. This is Officer D’Agostino and I’m calling from the Los Angeles Police Department’s downtown division to advise you that your grandson, Ricky Butler, was detained here for allegedly being in possession of a controlled substance.”
“What kind of controlled substance?”
“An officer confiscated approximately six grams of marijuana from his backpack after witnessing your grandson accept ten dollars in exchange for a portion of the marijuana.”
“You mean he was selling it?”
“The officer said that allegedly this is what appeared to be occurring. Look, ma’am, this call is to advise you that after processing your grandson, because we have no facilities here to house a minor, he is being transferred to Juvenile Hall, which is located around the corner from here. I can give you that number. He will be there soon.”
And he does. And I call. And I speak to someone who tells me that he has been processed, has a court appearance before a judge two days from now, but since Ricky has no prior offenses, I am welcome to pick him up and take him home within seven hours. “What if I can’t pick him up?”
“We can keep him here at our facility until his court appearance.”
“I think that would be for the best,” I say, and write down the time and place of his hearing.
Ricky
The backseat of a police car is much smaller than it looks on TV. I didn’t like those handcuffs either. They’re cold and heavy. But on that drive downtown to the police station that took what felt like hours, all I was thinking about was that my grandma was going to kill my ass when she found out I’ve been arrested for dealing weed. I just prayed my buzz would wear off before we got there, ’cause my heart was beating like it used to when I swam the 200, but there wasn’t nothing I could do to slow it down.
As soon as we got there they took me into a glass room but they didn’t take off those handcuffs. Police are everywhere. I feel like a real criminal. I sit in here for like ten minutes but it feels more like hours and then the police officer that arrested me comes back with some papers in his hand and tells me because I don’t have a history of any prior arrests, they’re going to call my parents.
“I don’t live with my parents,” I say.
“Well, what’s your mother’s number, son?”
“She’s dead.”
“Who do you live with?”
“My grandma.”
“Does she have legal custody of you?”
“I think so.”
I give him Grandma’s number, and as I sit there and watch him press the buttons on that phone I start crying. He holds up a finger to let me know it’s going to be all right, but I know it’s not going to be all right. I fucked up. I should never have let those dudes talk me into selling this stuff. But they made it sound easy. And I liked having a little extra money in my pocket, since Grandma’s cash flow is limited.
I listen to him explain to her what I’ve done and how I’m being transferred to a juvenile facility. He gives her a phone number and tells her the phone number and hangs up.
“What did she say?”
“You’ll get a chance to call her once you’re fingerprinted and processed at the other facility.”
They put me back in the backseat of a different police car and drive me a few blocks to Juvenile Hall. When I get in there, all I see is a lot of teenagers, mostly black and Mexican, mostly boys, but quite a few girls, and quite a few of them wearing red and blue.
I’m glad I’m not in a gang. They say once you get in, you can never get out. This is why my grandma and Principal Daniels got me and Luther to go to a safer and nicer school near my aunt Arlene even though I don’t like her.
I get fingerprinted again.
I can already tell I don’t like being a criminal. And I don’t like being treated like a criminal. I am not one and I don’t plan on being one. This was just me being stupid, and it’s what I get for lying and trying to be slick when I ain’t slick. I was mostly just wanting to buy stuff kids need in this day and age. But I guess if I gotta sell weed to get it, maybe I don’t need it all that bad. It ain’t worth being up in here, that much I do know. Since we were little, Grandma was always saying, “Just because you want it doesn’t mean you have to have it.” All’s I know is I don’t wanna end up in jail or nobody’s prison like my uncle Dexter. He’s in jail right now, and this time they might take that monitor off his leg and send his stupid ass back to the pen. I’m wondering if this is how he started out. If this was his first stop before he ended up in prison. I ain’t going to nobody’s prison, that much I do know.
This feels like a good time to pray, and I promise God I won’t sell no more weed and won’t smoke none and I won’t get in no more trouble if He’ll just let me go home with my grandma when she comes to pick me up, but right before I say “Amen” I hear the door open and I open my eyes.
“Come with me, son,” a different police officer says. He takes me by the arm and puts me into another room, but this time the glass is smaller and it’s got black square lines going through it. I sit there and try to count them until an old black guy about forty comes in and sits down in a metal chair behind a long wooden table. He is not wearing a police uniform. Which means he’s probably vice or something.
/> “How are you doing, Ricky?”
“Not so hot.”
“Well, that’s understandable. This won’t take long. I just need to ask you a few questions so we can get your side of the events that transpired that led to your being brought here. Do you understand that?”
I just nod.
Then he reads me something he called my Miranda rights and says I had a right to an attorney, which I know means the same as a lawyer, and if I can’t afford one the court will get me one, but I didn’t know this was so serious that I would need a lawyer, so when he asks me if I understand what he just said I say, “I guess so,” but then he tells me I have to say yes or no, so I say, “Yes. But how am I supposed to know if I need an attorney?”
“Don’t worry, when you go before the judge, the court—”
“You mean I have to go to court?”
“Yes, you do, son.”
“But why?”
“Well, after reviewing all the circumstances surrounding your case, the judge will decide if you get to go home or if you’ll be required to spend time in Juvenile Hall.”
“I promise I won’t do this again. I mean it, sir.”
“I know. But I’m not the one you need to convince. At any rate, I need to tell you that the court will provide you with an attorney, and he or she is called a public defender.”
“I’ve seen them on Law and Order,” I say, even though they always lose their cases.
He smiles at me and I don’t know why. Then he says, “Now that I have just read you your rights, do you wish to speak to me?”
“I’ve been speaking to you.”
“You need to say yes or no.”
“Yes.”
“Do you have any suicidal thoughts?”
“You mean do I feel like killing myself?”
He nods.
“Hell no. I mean, no, sir.”
“Have you used drugs in the last forty-eight hours?”
“Do I have to answer that one?”
“No.”
But then he stands up and tells me I have to go see a nurse, and this time I stand up and say, “Yes, I had just smoked some weed right before the policeman picked me up.”
I have to go see the nurse anyway, who is very nice, and afterward, I sit in a white plastic chair until that same plainclothes dude takes me back to the same room and he tells me that my court appearance is two days from now. And then he says that because I am not a threat and have not committed a violent crime, I can call my grandma to come and take me home. But I’m too scared. “Can you call her for me?”
He says okay.
I sit there and listen to him explain to my grandma who he is and he repeats what I did and by the time he asks if she can pick me up and bring me back to my hearing in two days, I hear him say, “I’ll let him know,” and he hangs up.
“How soon will she be here?” I ask.
“She’s not coming,” he says.
“Why not?”
“She said she couldn’t make it.”
“Can I take the bus home, then? Or maybe can a police officer give me a ride?”
“I’m afraid not, son. But you can stay in the dormitory we have here.”
“Did she say what time she could pick me up tomorrow?”
He just shakes his head no.
I don’t eat or sleep for the next two days.
There’s a lot of teenage criminals in here. Some of them are scary as hell. I’m just glad they didn’t put me in a dormitory with murderers or gangbangers or I might not have been able to put on this orange jumpsuit thing and be led into a courtroom where the first person I see sitting out there is my grandma. Tears start running down my eyes and I want to run out there and hug her but I can’t, and I can see tears in her eyes, too, and I know she can see how ashamed I am but I can’t turn away from her, and when they make me sit down next to my public defender I hear the judge say that the crime I have committed is severe enough that he could remove me from home and place me in this detention facility for three months or he could remove me from my grandma’s house and put me into foster care, and when I hear him say foster care I turn to look at my grandma, and she is shaking her head back and forth like she’s saying, “Not my grandson,” and I shake my head back and forth, but then when I hear the judge say that he chooses not to do either one, that he is going to let me go home with my grandma today and my progress will be monitored for the next six months and I’m going to have to meet with a probation officer once a month and if I am so much as late for class, he will enforce one of these two conditions. He asks me if I have anything to say, and I just hear myself say, “I’m sorry for what I did and I promise I won’t do it again, Your Honor,” and then I hear him ask my grandma if she has anything to say, and I hear her say, “My grandson is a good boy who has made one mistake and I can assure you that he won’t make it again,” and she sits down.
The judge looks at me, like he feels sorry for me, like I could be his grandson or something, and he says, “Do you understand the terms of your probation, son?”
“Yes, I do, Your Honor.”
Then he looks at my grandma.
“And do you, Mrs. Butler, understand the terms of your grandson’s probation?”
“I do, Your Honor.”
“Noted,” he says, and takes that wooden hammer and pounds it on his wooden throne.
I look over at my grandma, who holds up a Target shopping bag, which I know has new clothes in it. She walks over and hands it to me, and I go in the bathroom and change like they told me to. When I come out I hand that orange jumpsuit to the policeman standing there with his gun in a holster. I kiss my grandma on both of her cheeks and then give her a hug. She takes me by the hand and we walk out of this place knowing I will never give her or me any reason to come back.
Venetia
Did you really slap Arlene?” I ask BB.
“I pressed my hand against her face with a little force. But she deserved it.”
I start laughing, even though it’s not funny, as I pick out one beautiful bead after another from a long line of trays that are spread out all over this store. We’re at a bead store. I’m forcing BB to take a necklace-making class with me just because she could use some relief from all that she’s been going through with Ricky. There’s a part of me that feels like some of the trouble he’s gotten into isn’t completely his fault. I mean, in all fairness to him he was born with various degrees of physical and psychological disadvantages.
“She’s still mad at you, you know.”
“Tell me something I don’t know, Venetia. Look, I’ve tried apologizing but she refuses to accept it, so to hell with her.”
“She’ll come around, BB. Anyway, is it true that Omar is gay?”
“You already know the answer to that, and if you start getting all evangelical on me about homosexuality being a sin I’m going to drop this tray of beads and walk out of here right now.”
“I think he should be supported and not criticized, because he can’t help it if he was born that way.”
She actually sets her tray of beads down sideways, right on top of two bins full of my favorite desert sun and dichroic glass ones, and just looks at me like she can’t believe I just said what I just said.
“I read People magazine and I watch Dr. Phil and CNN, just so you know.”
“What in the world has gotten into you?” she asks. “You sound different. You look different. Have I missed out on something?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s too early to talk about.”
“What’s too early to talk about?”
“Pick out some more beads, BB. You should stick with glass. They’re easier to slide on the cord. You’re a silver person, aren’t you?”
“Hold on a minute. I
know when I’m getting the big brush off and you’re hiding something, and I want to know what it is, Venetia.”
“It’s nothing I’m ashamed of.”
“Then why won’t you share it?”
“Because I don’t want to hear your reaction.”
“Don’t confuse me with Arlene.”
“Rodney’s back.”
This time her tray falls out of her hands and the twenty or so cat’s eye and bumpy beads hit the tile and roll everywhere. I wish I could learn to keep my big mouth shut. I wish I could keep a secret. I wish I didn’t worry so much about what my sisters think about me, even though I know they think of me as the lightweight, and because I pray more than they do, because I put more faith in God than they seem to, that I’m passive, but I’m not. I’m patient. I believe we all make mistakes. I believe in the sanctity of marriage. I believe in second chances. And I believe in forgiveness.
“Back from where?” she asks as she bends down to start picking up the beads, but the Korean lady who owns this store holds her hand up to stop her.
“What difference does it make?”
“Apparently none.”
“I hear the sarcasm in your voice, BB, which is why I didn’t want to say anything.”
“Then this means you didn’t mention it to Arlene.”
“Of course not.”
“So what exactly are you saying, Venetia?”
“I’m saying that Rodney has asked me to give him another chance.”
“Just like that?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes.”
“What if you had cheated on him all these years? Do you think he’d be as forgiving?”
“I don’t know.”
“What made him want to come back?”
“He said he still loves me.”
“Oh, so it took him filing for a divorce, and getting it, in order to have a spiritual awakening, I guess is what they call this?”
Who Asked You? Page 27