After Jayla’s call, Simmy had done like Jayla said and gone back to the apartment to find her stash. There was about $8,000 there, but every attorney Simmy had contacted, once they heard “$50,000 in theft” and all of the charges, wanted a $10,000 retainer to represent Jayla.
“And that will go up if we have to go to trial,” several of them had told Simmy. There was no way Simmy could pay an attorney, put money on Jayla’s books, pay Jayla’s $2,500 monthly rent, hold some just in case bail was set, pay Jayla’s utility bills, and stay afloat with the small stash.
Before Simmy knew it, she locked eyes with her cousin one last time before Jayla was led back out of the courtroom. That was it. All of those hours of waiting and Simmy was left feeling worse about Jayla’s situation than she had when she first walked into court.
Simmy’s mind raced as she made her way back to Brooklyn. She needed to figure out how she was going to take care of everything her cousin needed. Jayla had always been there for her so she would have to find a way to do right by her cousin.
* * *
“Ky, I need to ask you . . . No. No. Um, hey, Ky, can I borrow . . .” Simmy mumbled, rehearsing how she would ask Kyan for the money she needed to help Jayla.
Simmy exhaled loudly and swiped her hands over her face as she exited the train station. She hated asking anyone for anything, especially Kyan. Although he had told her he would always be there for her, she wanted to prove to him that she could hold her own. Her father had preached that she should never ask any other man but him for anything.
“Nothing in life is free. If a man who is not your father gives you something, trust me, he wants something in return. I am the only man you ever ask for anything. If I can’t give it to you, go without.”
Simmy scoffed at her father’s words now. “If you can’t give it to me, go without? Well, where are you now, Daddy? Huh? Am I just supposed to go without forever?” Simmy grumbled under her breath as she thought about the audacity of her father’s words. He wasn’t around to give her shit so was she just expected to go without forever? That made a small ball of anger build up inside of her.
Simmy rounded the corner onto Kyan’s block, still trying to build up the courage to ask Kyan for money although her father’s words still haunted her. She made it a few steps in and froze. She tugged her earbuds from her ears and let them fall onto her shoulders. Her mouth went slack, and her heart instantly banged so hard she felt like it would burst through her chest. Simmy’s head moved side to side, and her eyes roved frantically as she took in the scene: flashing red, white, and blue lights on top of blue and white police cars; black unmarked police vans; hundreds of uniformed and plainclothes officers. They were all in front of Kyan’s building.
“Ky,” Simmy gasped, breaking into a run. Her mind had already started thinking the worst.
“Ma’am, you can’t go past here,” a young, fresh-faced uniformed NYPD officer told her, pushing her back from the blue wooden barricades that read NYPD POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS.
“But . . . but my, um, I live there,” Simmy stammered, her tongue and brain seeming to be on separate brainwaves.
“Once the building is cleared and everything is cleared up, you’ll be allowed back inside if you have proof you live there,” the officer droned like he’d said the same line more times than he would’ve liked.
“Who . . . what happened?” she asked, barely able to speak.
“Drug bust,” the officer said like it was nothing.
His words made Simmy’s ears burn. Drug bust. Drug bust. Drug bust. Suddenly she couldn’t breathe. She placed her hand over her chest, a sudden sharp pain stabbing through it.
“Miss? Are you all right?” the officer asked.
Just then, Simmy saw her worst nightmare materialize into real life. Her eyebrows shot up into arches and her mouth opened into a wide O.
“Ky! Kyan!” she screeched, as she tried to run toward him. His hands had been forced behind his back and his wrists locked in handcuffs. He hung his head, nothing but a wife beater covering his chest and a pair of his house sweats on his bottom half. It was freezing outside, and they hadn’t even let him get dressed. Simmy could feel her heart breaking.
“Y’all can’t take him! No!” Simmy screamed so hard the back of her throat burned. The scene was like something out of a movie. Cops with long guns, short guns, helmets, and black bulletproof vests surrounded Kyan like he had committed mass murder.
“No! Kyan! No!”
Simmy didn’t even realize she was kicking and screaming as the officer at the barricade line held her around the waist. She watched in horror as they forced Kyan’s head down and shoved him roughly into an unmarked black van.
“No! Please! Y’all can’t take him! Please. No!” Simmy let out a guttural scream, her hands flailing so wildly she hit the officer across the face. She was scooped off of her feet like a little ragdoll and slammed back down to the ground on her feet. The impact sent a ripple of pain up her legs, but she didn’t care. She continued to fight to get to her man.
“Listen, miss. If you don’t want to get arrested, you need to calm down!” the uniform police officer chastised her, finally releasing her with a rough shove.
Simmy collapsed to the ground and sobbed uncontrollably. How could this all happen? First, Jayla. Now, Kyan. The people she cared about the most—her parents, Jayla, and Kyan—were all caught up in the system now. Things were spiraling out of control. And, faster than Simmy could keep up.
“Why? Why?” she cried. The more she cried, the harder it became for her to breathe. She started gasping for air but, as much as she tried, she just couldn’t seem to get any oxygen into her lungs. She lay on her back and could see everything around her spinning out of control as she tried to breath. She kept closing and opening her eyes in hopes that everything would stop spinning. Then, in one last blink, everything went dark. She was suddenly thrust back to the tragic day that had changed her life forever.
Crash! Bang! Simmy had been snatched out of her sleep by the loud noises. With her mind fuzzy with sleep, she made out the sounds of crashing glass and wood smashing. There were more noises, like voices, but she couldn’t make out what they were saying. She sprang out of her bed, out of her room, and rushed down the long hallways of their sprawling home toward her parents’room.
“What the fuck?” Simmy heard her father screaming before she could even see him. “Fuck is this?” he cursed out loud. The sounds around Simmy grew louder and louder. She couldn’t move. The loud sound of feet thundering in every direction around her caused her heart to pound so hard it moved the material of her nightgown. There was more screaming, and immediately Simmy recognized her mother’s voice. The person screaming was her mother. Simmy’s mind was not foggy with sleep anymore; she was wide awake and on alert.
“Hey! There’s someone else up here!” Simmy heard someone yell.
Simmy blinked rapidly, but still she didn’t move. The pounding and banging around her sounded like an earthquake was happening right there in her house. She hadn’t heard them say, “Police!” but as soon as her mind finally processed the scene, she knew that there were what seemed to be at least ten or fifteen police officers trampling throughout her home.
“Get on the floor! Get the fuck on the floor!” Simmy heard the commands being barked at her parents. That spurred her into motion. She ran to their bedroom door just as her father was roughly pushed down to the floor and about five police officers dropped their knees into his back. Her father’s arms were yanked behind his back, and he was handcuffed and made to lie face down on his own bedroom floor. There were cops swarming like flies around a pile of freshly dropped cow manure. Simmy’s head whipped around; she was trying to take in their white faces. They were all over her father as if they were trying to subdue a wild animal. She didn’t understand why it was taking so many of them to cuff him.
“Punk bitches. Don’t do this in front of my daughter. Don’t do this shit in front of my kid, man,” her fath
er yelled out when he spotted her standing there watching everything.
It was then that she heard her mother’s cries again. She was on the other side of their bedroom. Several officers had her surrounded, and they were yelling at her. “You better tell us! You better talk, or you’ll go down with him. You better give it up, or you’ll never see your daughter again,” one cop yelled out. That same cop then pointed to Simmy.
“Get the girl. Call CPS,” he yelled out.
Simmy saw her mother lose it. “No! Don’t you dare take her away!”
“Simone Jones, I’m going to need you to come with me.” One of the uniformed officers startled her when he approached her from behind.
“No. I’m not going anywhere with you,” she protested.
“I’m afraid you have no choice, young lady. Your parents are being arrested, and legally we cannot leave you on the property.”
“I don’t care what you say. I’m not going.”
“All right, have it your way,” the officer said as he proceeded to grab her by force.
As Simmy was being forced out of the bedroom, she started screaming and reaching out for her mother as she tried to free herself from the officer’s grip. “Mom! Mom!”
The cops didn’t care. She was carried down the long, winding staircase, kicking and screaming.
“Sit down right here and don’t you dare move,” the officer said to her while pointing to the couch. Then he turned to another officer and told him to watch her. Simmy just sat there watching on as they ransacked the house. It felt like forever just sitting there watching people destroy her home. She heard a large commotion from the top of the stairs.
She looked up just as the officers dragged her father down the stairs.
“Daddy!” Simmy called out.
“Why the fuck is this girl still here? I thought Williams was on her way to get her,” one of the officers in charge screamed at the others.
“Daddy!”
“It’s okay, princess. Daddy is fine,” Simmy’s father tried to comfort her as they dragged him past her.
Simmy threw her hands up to her head and covered her ears. She tried in vain to drown out the sound of those horrible officers destroying their beautiful home and treating her father like he was an animal. She rocked back and forth and bit into her cheek until she drew blood
“Bring down the wife. She ain’t cooperating so lock her stupid ass up too,” Simmy heard someone bark.
“These stupid ghetto bitches never tell. They’d rather leave their kids behind than give up their men. Look at this poor girl; warrant says she’s fourteen and her mother’s willing to leave her out here just to cover for her piece of shit husband. Fucking shame,” another officer replied.
Simmy bounded off the couch when she saw her mother being forced down the stairs, but the officer quickly restrained her and Simmy had no choice but to sit back down. Her mother started squirming around with the handcuffs biting into her skin when she saw Simmy.
“Mom!” Simmy rushed toward the stairs, hoping to reach her this time. She didn’t make it very far. She was hoisted up into the air, her legs swinging like a doll’s.
“Sit down before I cuff you up and send you to juvie!” the officer warned her.
“Simmy, baby! I love you! Don’t you ever forget it! I love you!” her mother screamed until two officers pushed her forward. Finally, she disappeared from Simmy’s sight.
It seemed to Simmy like the officers were searching through her house for days. She had no idea what they were looking for. She kept hearing different detectives bark out commands.
“Take out that wall! Tear this fuckin’ place up until we find all of the shit!” an officer yelled. Then he looked over at Simmy and smirked. “Your daddy is in a whole lot of trouble,” he said with a sinister grin.
Simmy squeezed her eyes tight. She didn’t want to look at his devilish blue eyes. To add to that, his shocking red hair made her think of a monster.
When she heard the officers axing down walls and cabinets to her left, her eyes popped right back open. All she could do was look on as they tore the house apart. The house her parents had worked so hard to get.
“Bingo, motherfuckers! We fucking got ’em! I knew we would find something. We always fucking do!” All the officers stopped and broke out in applause.
“All right, roll out!”
“Sir, Williams never showed up to get the girl,” the cop who had been assigned to Simmy informed one of the detectives.
“All right, put her in the back of my car. I’ll bring her to the precinct myself and make sure she gets placed in foster.”
Once they had her in the back of the detective’s police car, Simmy started sobbing to herself. She couldn’t believe everything that had just happened.
Two days later, Mummy Pat was allowed to pick Simmy up from the foster care place, and they were allowed to make one last trip to Simmy’s Long Island home to gather a few things. When Marcus pulled his car up to the house, Mummy Pat gasped and put her hands over her mouth. The front door was splintered like it had been hit a million times with an ax, or blown up with twenty sticks of dynamite. There were no locks left on it. When they walked up, and Mummy Pat gently pushed the door open, it practically came apart with pieces of wood falling. Simmy put her hands up to shield herself, and her uncle shoved Mummy Pat just in time to avoid the wood that dropped in her place. Marcus helped his mother through the doorway, being careful that she didn’t slip or step on everything that was on the floor. There was glass, wall debris, and sheetrock all throughout the house. Mummy Pat put her hand over her mouth and clutched her chest like she couldn’t breathe. She grabbed on to Marcus to keep herself up. Simmy’s entire body became numb. Despite having witnessed the cops destroying the house, it still felt devastating to see it in the daylight.
“I can’t believe they did all of this. I swear Mummy, them pigs is the biggest gang in America,” Marcus had said.
“Oh, my God. They destroyed all of Chris’s hard work and belongings. I mean, these evil people have left him with nothing,” Mummy Pat said, tears running down her face. Mummy Pat reached out and grabbed Simmy’s hand.
“My life is over!” Simmy screamed out, breaking free of her grandmother’s grip and running through the mess toward the stairs. It looked like a tornado had hit the inside of her house. All of the furniture was either chopped up or thrown over. Simmy could hardly get up the steps; the entire winding banister had been broken into pieces, and wood splinters littered the carpeted stairs.
“What am I going to do without my parents!” Simmy screamed louder although she knew it was in vain. She slid on wood as she scrambled up the stairs. Her grandmother and uncle called after her, but she kept on going.
When she finally got up the stairs and ran through all of the sheetrock and plaster in the long hallway, she ran into the bathroom. She climbed into the only thing that seemed to have been left untouched: the Jacuzzi bathtub. She climbed into it and let all of the tears flow freely down her face like a river. Her pulse was racing so hard it felt like it was beating in the back of her throat. She decided she needed to see everything.
“Come here, Simone. It might be dangerous!” Mummy Pat called behind Simmy as she walked in and out of every room. Simmy didn’t stop, though.
The family room was in an even worse condition than the rest of the house. The artwork that usually adorned their walls was sliced up, and the expensive gold and silver frames her mother had picked out were shattered into tiny shards. The wall right before you entered the bathroom had a huge hole in the center like someone had taken a sledgehammer to it.
She walked into the custom-built expansive closets her parents had designed, and she took in the scene. All of their clothes were on the floor of the walk-in closets. Their dresser drawers were emptied onto the floor, and the dresser had been hit down the middle and completely split in two. The dresser mirror lay shattered on the carpet in a million pieces. Two small pictures of Simmy were crumpled up
nearby. Simmy stepped back out of the closet and walked around the room. She couldn’t stop crying.
The mattress and box springs from her mother and father’s bed were on the floor and cotton spilled from the middles like a gutted pig. Simmy had witnessed the total destruction of her house, her parents, and her entire life.
“Come here.” Mummy Pat had finally grabbed Simmy into a tight embrace. “It’s okay. I am here,” she had comforted her.
“I’m going to find the safe. Chris said it had their life savings and all of the money you needed in case something ever happened to him,” Marcus told Mummy Pat. Simmy had heard her parents talk about the safe when her father first had it installed. She remembered him saying something to her mother about putting in the safe and having his “attorney stash” in it.
Simmy watched Marcus scramble toward the closet for the safe. She could hear him kicking through debris, and she imagined him climbing through the piles of clothes and shoeboxes that littered the floor. She could literally hear her uncle falling and pushing stuff aside trying to locate the safe.
“Damn!” Marcus yelled from the closet.
Mummy Pat stood up and rushed to the doorway of the closet. Simmy was right behind her. They both watched as Marcus stood there shaking his head. Simmy could clearly see that the carpet had already been peeled back and the big hole in the floor that usually contained the safe was empty. The electronic hoist that controlled the safe coming up out of the floor was smashed to pieces, and the large Picasso painting that usually covered the switch for the hoist was also destroyed.
“Oh, Lord! What will happen to Chris now? If there’s no money left, what will happen?” Mummy Pat cried, holding her chest again. Simmy couldn’t stop herself from crying. Marcus just stood there shaking his head from side to side.
“Simmy, baby. Shh. It’s going to be all right. Shhh,” Mummy Pat walked over to her granddaughter and held her in a tight embrace.
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