by Anna J.
Mecca looked at Lou, who sat next to her with a self-serving smirk. The stewardess who had served her earlier rushed to the seat across the aisle and fastened the seat belt with a look of panic across her face.
“The plane is going down too fast,” she said and looked over at Mecca. Mecca looked at Lou.
“Lou, I’m sorry. Please stop it. I’m a changed person, I swear.”
“I would fasten my seat belt if I were you,” Lou responded.
“Lou, don’t do this. I’m getting married. I plan to live a positive life with my husband. I’m going to raise a family, and I’m not going to raise my children how I was raised. I swear!”
The pilot’s voice came over the speakers again. “Ladies and gentlemen, please fasten your seat belt and duck your head in your lap.”
“This is it, Mecca. The end of it,” Lou said as their bodies jerked from the plane’s rapid descent.
Tears rolled down her face. She took one more look at Lou before she ducked her head.
Lou looked her in the eyes and said, “It’s done.”
The impact of the plane awakened Mecca. Instead of being on a crashing plane, she was looking up from her bed into the eyes of her favorite doctor as a white woman in a long white coat opened up the blinds in the all-white room, letting in the sunlight.
“‘Today is a beautiful day, Mecca. It is also your day, remember?” The handsome black doctor held her hand.
Mecca nodded. “What time is it?” she asked while wiping the cold out of her eyes with the back of her hand.
“It’s seven thirty. Your hearing is at nine o’clock. You should get ready now.”
The doctor left the lady in the white uniform in the room. Mecca looked at her, and she smiled through puffy red cheeks.
“Good luck, honey. I hate to see you go, but you deserve to leave this place.”
She waited until the lady left, and got off her bed and looked at herself in the room’s full- length mirror. She smiled at her own reflection.
“Yeah, today is my day,” she mumbled. “I’m going home.”
Epilogue
Lest you ponder her path of life—her ways are unstable; you don’t know them.
—Proverbs 5:6
Family court, Brooklyn
The small courtroom fell silent when the tall, broad-shouldered, bespectacled judge Norman Pastel entered from a door situated behind the bench.
“All rise!” the bailiff announced.
Once everyone stood, the judge responded, “You may be seated.”
Mecca looked down at the judge. He reminded her of Marlon Brando in The Godfather. As she sat down, she turned, looking at the spectators’ section, smiling at her aunt and friends of her aunt that she didn’t know but saw every time a court hearing took place.
The judge’s voice was a deep, rich tone. “I understand this is a hearing on a report and recommendation from the staff at the psychiatric facility in Bronx County.”
A slim woman of six feet stepped up to the podium situated in the middle of the courtroom, between what would normally be the tables for the defense and prosecution of a criminal defendant. This wasn’t the case of a criminal; the hearing was to determine Mecca’s madness.
“Michael T. Moore, Your Honor. I’m here on behalf of Miss Sykes.” The pale-skinned guy pointed to Mecca, who was sitting next to a black woman and a man dressed impeccably, while Mecca wore a plain white dress shirt, blue slacks, and black leather loafers with two-inch heels. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail.
“Are you her attorney, Mr. Moore?” the judge asked.
“Yes, Your Honor.”
The judge folded his hands and placed his elbows on the bench desk. “Proceed.”
“Your Honor, this is a twenty-year-old case that I will bring you up to speed on, being that you’re new to the case. A case that’s been heard over and over for many years by the now retired Honorable Stanley Doyle.” he paused to look down at papers he had on the podium. “In 1988 ...”
Brooklyn, 1988
Fourteen-year-old Mecca watched as her aunt surreptitiously placed a snub-nosed .38-caliber revolver handgun inside an empty sneaker box and placed it in on her closet shelf. Her aunt Ruby didn’t notice her niece, who she’d taken in when she was eight years old, after her parents were murdered in their Brownsville apartment in 1982.
Mecca and her aunt lived in a Coney Island apartment in the same building as Ruby’s friend and lover Monique Johnson and Mecca’s half sister, Dawn. Monique and Mecca’s father had an affair while Mecca’s father and mother were together. It was no secret in Brownsville that Dawn was Bobby Sykes’s daughter, because the news had spread like wildfire. Mecca’s mother was infuriated at the news but didn’t bring it up to Bobby, because she was in love and it was a fling when they broke up.
When Mecca’s mother saw Monique’s baby, she had no doubt it was Bobby’s. She hated Monique, but she didn’t take it out on the baby. She was mature enough to invite Monique over so that their babies would know each other.
When Monique moved to Coney Island, it was Ruby who made sure that the girls grew up together as sisters. At first, the girls got along wonderfully, but after the murder of Mecca’s mother and father, Mecca’s attitude toward Dawn and Monique changed. They got into fights often because Mecca initiated them.
Despite their problems, Monique still loved Mecca as if she was one of her own. Mecca clung to Monique to make Dawn jealous. It was revenge for Mecca, because Dawn had tried to steal Bobby Blast’s attention when they were younger.
Then, one day, while Mecca and Dawn fought over a Barbie doll that they both claimed was theirs, Dawn told her, “My daddy bought me that. He loved me more!”
That was when Mecca started to plot her demise.
It was years later, when the girls were fourteen and had started to blossom, that Mecca carried out her plan. One day, when Ruby was out and Monique slept in her bedroom, Mecca retrieved Ruby’s gun from the sneaker box, grabbed a pillow, and walked up to a sleeping Monique and shot her twice in the head. She walked out of the apartment and down the hall to the apartment Monique and Dawn lived in and knocked. Dawn answered.
“Mecca, what’s up, girl?” she asked, looking at Mecca, who had a strange look on her face, with her hands behind her back.
“Nothing.”
Mecca walked into the apartment when Dawn turned to walk to the bathroom. She was in the middle of curling her hair with a hot iron when two shots rang out through the complex. Dawn’s body slumped to the floor.
Mecca stared down at her, smiling. “Hey, Dawn, don’t look too good, bitch. See if Daddy loves you now.”
The shots were heard by the neighbors in the building, and they opened their doors, looking into the hallway as Mecca walked by as if she didn’t see them. The gun was still in her hand at her side.
She climbed into the elevator and rode it down to the first floor and sat on the steps in front of the building. She was arrested and taken to the police station. When Ruby arrived, Mecca told her interrogators, “Those bitches got what they deserved.”
After a psychiatric evaluation by defense and prosecution experts, it was determined that Mecca was unfit to stand trial. She suffered from various mental illnesses. One doctor testified, “When she was a very young child, she suffered head trauma when she fell in her neighborhood playground. This concussion went untreated, resulting in brain damage.”
Another psych testified, “Her head trauma, coupled with the emotional trauma of watching her parents being murdered at such a young age, only worsened her already unstable mental condition.”
On the recommendation of both defense and prosecution experts, and subsequently stipulated by both attorneys, Mecca was committed to a psychiatric facility for the criminally insane. Every year she would have a hearing on her condition.
It was later decided that she would never be tried for the murders, but she could be released from the facility only on the recommendation of the staff of the facili
ty. Those hearings would be held every year.
“Your Honor, I call my first witness, Dr, Paul McLeod, Jr.,” Mr. Moore announced.
The courtroom was hushed as a well-dressed man who appeared to be in his fifties walked to the witness stand. He wore his dreadlocks in a ponytail. Mecca recognized the gray-eyed man as he stated his name for the record and told the court his occupation and dealings with her.
“I’m a clinical psychologist who has worked with Mecca Sykes for the last five years,” he said with a Jamaican accent.
“And you have with you your report and recommendation. Is that correct, Mr. McLeod?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Can you tell the court your recommendation?” Mr. Moore asked from the podium.
“Yes. It is my professional opinion that Miss Sykes’s treatment is complete and she is ready to reenter society as a fully functioning, mentally fit adult.”
“And you base your opinion on what?” the judge asked, looking over his glasses.
“Your Honor, in the last five years Mecca has shown so much maturity that she even helps the staff counsel other patients when those patients suffer psychotic episodes. The patients practically trust her more than they do us, and under our watchful eyes, we even have her give them the medication when they don’t want to take it from staff.”
The judge nodded his head, and Mr. McLeod was excused.
“I would like to call Dr. Benjamin Mason, Your Honor,” Mr. Moore announced.
A thin, wiry man in his midforties walked to the witness stand with a slightly stooped posture. His complexion was olive toned and dull, and he had brown, bold eyes. He was clean shaved and had short graying hair on his head.
Dr. Mason was born and raised in Senegambia, West Africa, and moved to the United States in the 1970s, after earning a degree in psychology at the University of Cairo, Egypt. Once in the United States, he got a job at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan, where he worked until 2000.
He was subsequently offered a job at the Bronx facility, with the promise of a salary close to a hundred thousand a year, as a senior psychologist who would train college students who were majoring in the field of behavioral science. He had testified at over a hundred trials, mostly for the state and only a handful of times for a defense lawyer. He was accomplished in what he did and made sure that everyone in the room new it.
As he sat on the stand, Mecca didn’t bother to look at him and instead looked at the lawyer paid by Ruby to represent her. Dr. Mason had opposed her release at her last hearing five years ago, where he’d simply stated, “It is my opinion that Miss Sykes’s behavior and mental condition deem her unfit to function normally in society.” Now she wondered what he would have to say.
After explaining his credentials to the judge and informing the court that he had had the occasion to work with Mecca for the last seven years, he expounded on their relationship by stating, “A lot of my time with her was short. She isn’t on my caseload. Dr. Parker has worked with her for the twenty years she has been at the facility.”
“Surely enough time for you to render a report and recommendation, correct?” Moore asked.
“Indeed.”
“And your recommendation is?”
“Contrary to the one five years ago, I must say,” Dr. Mason remarked with a smile, “today a different Miss Sykes sits before you. Not the manipulative, impulsive young girl I saw seven years ago. With Dr. Parker to credit, assisted by the staff who testified prior to me and others, what you see today is a mature, mentally developed woman ready for a productive livelihood among society.”
Mecca couldn’t believe her ears. She turned to stare at a man she’d come to hate. A man other patients at the facility called “Doc Devilman.” Her eyes watered, and she felt strange inside.
When he walked off the stand, he passed by her and smiled. “It’s your time, Mecca. Make the best of it. Good luck.” With that, he left the courtroom.
“Your Honor, I call Daphne Carter.”
Moore’s voice was followed by the double doors of the courtroom opening, and a heartbreaking, lovely, statuesque, golden-brown-skinned woman with beautiful, pale hazel dreamy eyes strutted in. Her knee-length black Versace dress showed her dancer’s legs. Her perfectly done hair surrounded her oval face, with a ripe mouth under her small, pudgy nose, which she applied makeup to smartly. Every man in the room stared in awe, while the women glared as her Chanel No. 5 perfume filled the room. The sight of the woman brought a smile to Mecca’s face. Daphne Carter took the stand and crossed her legs after stating her name for the court. She went on to explain her job at the facility and how it related to the treatment of Mecca.
“I am a mental health counselor. I’ve been working at the Bronx County facility for ten years. I have counseled Mecca every two weeks in her anger management groups and have had one-on-one talks with her on many occasions.”
“I understand your staff deals with a small amount of patients. How does that affect the patients?” Moore asked while sipping on a glass of water that had been placed on the podium.
“With a small amount of patients, it affords us more time to deal with the patients’ needs individually. Mecca is on Dr. Parker’s caseload, and Dr. Parker keeps me informed of her progress before she comes to groups or sessions with other doctors. This is so we know what type of individual we are dealing with.”
Her voice was smooth and gentle on the ears and had captivated every man in the court.
“Miss Carter ...”
“That’s Mrs. Carter,” Daphne corrected him.
Mecca smiled, as if she was in on a secret that no one knew about. Daphne was married to her childhood sweetheart, Donovan. He was an American-born Jamaican who she kept a picture of on her desk. He was very handsome, and once in a while he came to the facility to pick Daphne up. They lived in Brooklyn together, and she told Mecca that Donovan was a master chef who ran two Jamaican restaurants in Brooklyn.
“Tell us about Mecca’s progress, Mrs. Carter.”
Daphne smiled, looking at Mecca. She was a twenty-three-year-old woman when Daphne began working at the facility. Well, she appeared to be a woman, but when Daphne became involved with her, she realized this was still a little girl in emotional pain, trapped in a woman’s body. She’d walked in on Mecca unaware when she was having a conversation with herself in the voice of a small child. Then her voice changed to her regular one.
She would listen to Mecca speak to herself as if she really was speaking with another person. The conversations were mainly about seeing no reason to change her life. Mecca seemed to blame her behavior on the death of her parents. Most memorably, Daphne heard her say, “How am I supposed to feel after my mother and father were killed in front of me? Am I supposed to just forget that? How did you expect my life to turn out? This life is all I know!”
Daphne’s heart went out to her. Besides Dr. Parker, Daphne was the only other staff member that had established closeness with her beyond the call of duty. She treated Mecca like a daughter. As her condition improved, Daphne shared a lot of personal things with her. She told her about how her brother was murdered and how much it hurt her. The abuse she’d witnessed her stepfather administer to her mother. Things Daphne told Mecca made her sad but gave her strength.
“We can’t let these things control us, Mecca,” she’d told her. “We have to pick up the pieces and put it back together and make our lost loved ones happy by doing good in life.”
She’d watched Mecca grow over the years. There were setbacks when she became angry and had psychotic episodes where she had to be sedated, but those incidents gradually became a thing of the past.
“She has made the best progress I’ve seen in any patient since working at the facility,” Daphne testified. “She is very ready, sir.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Carter.”
As she walked off the stand, she stopped at Mecca’s table and reached over to hug her. Several tears had fallen from Mecca’s eyes, and Daphne wiped them away.
“I love you, Mecca.”
“I love you, too, Daphne.”
She left the courtroom, wiping her own tears away with a handkerchief.
“I call the last and final witness, Your Honor. Please bring in Dr. Louis Parker,” Moore announced.
In walked a man standing six feet, with a glowing dark brown skin tone, penetrating black eyes, a mole at the corner of the left eye, a close-cropped, sharply lined graying beard, cut-glass cheekbones that made him incandescently handsome, and a perfectly rounded, short Afro with graying temples.
His presence was commanding. He walked with an air of authority. He was in charge. He looked expensive in his tan suit by Ralph Lauren Purple Label, white Dior Homme dress shirt, and silk tie. He’d complemented his suit with a pair of brown suede Hermès bit loafers and a rose gold Breguet watch. His scent of Attitude Armani overshadowed the scent left by Daphne. This man looked serious.
“Please state your name for the record,” the judge commanded.
“Louis Parker.”
Moore went into action. Dr. Parker was his most important witness. Even though the other staff members’ testimony was compelling, Mecca’s release from the facility depended on Dr. Parker’s opinion and recommendation.
“Can you tell us your occupation and duty at the facility, Dr. Parker?”
As serious as he looked, to those who knew him, he was a kindhearted, devoted Christian man who genuinely cared for the patients under his control. He treated everyone fairly, and he made his patients feel as if they were in a family setting more than in a psychiatric institution.
“I am a clinical psychologist, a professor of behavioral sciences at Columbia University, and author of two books on psychiatry. I am the managing director of the Bronx County psychiatric facility.”
Mecca stared at the man who for the last twenty years had been like her father, brother, mother, friend, and sometimes foe and watcher. She had a love/hate relationship with the man, who was caring, but at the same time stern in administering discipline when she got out of hand. This was the only person alive that knew everything about her. He had her life down to a science. He knew when she was in a bad mood, a good one, or just sad. He knew her thoughts, her weakness, everything.