Reflections by Linda Dyanne Bolden (read e book .txt) 📖

purse. Pam hardly ever carries one. He said that a female police office will be there shortly to search them. The white police officer came over to them and asked each one of them where they lived. Mike was the only one of them that said he lived over there nodding his head in nowhere in particular, which pissed off the black officer because he felt that Mike was being a smart ass.

Meanwhile, he hand cuffed the both of them and put them in the back seat of their vehicle and radio for back up to the area. The white officer went back to the car and opens the door on the passenger side. He opens the glove compartment and found a gun in it along with the registration. Roy told the officer that the gun belonged to his uncle and the car was also his uncle car. He said his uncle had a permit for the gun and it was registered. They did not hesitate to haul all of their butts into the station once the other police car drove up.

Tia, Mike and Pam were booked and charge with trespassing and Roy was charged with precession of a hand gun. Tia will never forget that night she was horrified and felt degraded all because they were parked in a space that had been closed after 11p.m. The black arresting officer kept reminding Pam and her about hanging out with two no good ass guys who wasn’t man enough to pay their bail for them to walk and he said that between the two of them punks they didn’t have two nickels to rub together for them to get out of there. He said they were two smart asses that they should never have been with. Tia remembers that she had about sixty-five dollars in her purse and she told Pam she would pay her bail. During those days a misdemeanor was set at $35 dollars for bail. Tia only had sixty-five dollars and she figure if Pam could get bailed out she could get more money from one of their brothers to bail her out without their mothers finding out about them being arrest. Pam refuse to leave Tia alone and she decided to try and call one of her brothers but she could not reach him. Obviously Tia had to break down and call her mom but the officer told her that her mother had to wait until tomorrow morning and she would have to bail them out at 11th & State Street because they were being transferred to that facility.

This was the time that Tia mention beforehand when she said that it was not her last time in a patty wagon because both her and Pam was taken in the patty wagon at 11th & state street to a top floor of the lock up for women. Both of them were trembling in their jeans. As soon as they walked inside the room, the desk was right there and the officer told them to take off all their jewelry and watches (which was not much) and remove the shoe stings from their shoes. Pam was wearing gym shoes but Tia had on sandals. Any way’s the room was exceptionally bright and hot, but it felt dark and cold. The officer guided them to a very narrow cell with two small wooden benches. The back concreted wall was filled with writing on it.

Next to their cell was a young lady that looked torn down from head to toe! She looked to be a street walker and/or strung out on drugs. Pam tried her best to be brave and unconcerned about her surroundings, but after the police officer closed and locked the iron bars you could see the fear in her eyes. Tia was glad that he closed the bars because the other lady bars were wide open. She assumed that he did it for their protection. For hours they kept their eyes wide open as they listen to the lady moaning in her cell, and having out burst’s. They both said to each other that they would never ever let anything like that happen to them again. Fear of freedom had taken them over.

Early the next morning Tia mother had taken a train down town to bail them out and all the way home she repeatedly said to them “what bird can’t fly?” “A jail bird!!” she answered for them. Tia felt it was a cruel thing to say and she felt that it wasn’t humorous at all. Of course all of their charges were drop and their case was dismissed because the two lying officer did not show up for court.

Three years later Pam passed the test and her training, she became a Correctional Officer at Department of Cook County Correctional Center. Tiara thought Pamela was crazy but she realized that Pamela felt if she ever had too face yet another jail cell it would be from the other side. Pamela became tight with a lot of people working for the county jail and she asked one of the managers’ working in the cafeteria of the Criminal Court Building to hire a friend of hers because she needed a job very badly. She promised Pamela she would do her best to hire Cathy. However she told Pamela that Cathy would have to take a drug test.

A week later Pamela called Cathy on a Monday and told her she was scheduled to interview on Thursday. Needless to say Cathy didn’t show up, Pam and Tia both were furious at her for not showing or calling to cancel. Pam wanted to go over to the apartment building and beat her down like she stole something, but instead Tia told her not to waste her time on Cathy, however, Tia called Cathy anyway to read her the riot act. She let her know that she was wrong for not showing up. She told her she would always proclaim that they had good jobs and she didn’t have money to do anything, constantly complaining about her not having any support for her children.

Tia told her she should get rid of her no good boyfriend who never works, always laying around smoking weed, selling her food stamps then lying about someone stealing the stamps out of the house. He lied to her about doing some hustling jobs, but most times he’s would be messing around with other ladies. Tiara told her she should stop dealing with losers that never have jobs and can’t get any child support from them at all. Cathy jump to his defense and accused her of being jealous that she had a man and she said that Tia always thought she was better than everybody. Tia shouted at Cathy telling her that she never thought that she was better, she just wanted do better and she didn’t want to keep making excuses not too. She always told Cathy that she should think about her kids and put their needs ahead of her own. Tia stated that it is her daughters who will suffer in the long run if the police raided the apartment and find drugs in it, and they would take her kids in a heart beat, becoming wards of the state, or they could end up drug addicts themselves if they didn’t see anything else in their surroundings.

When Tia told her this she became angry at her and slam the phone down, and after the blow-out Cathy didn’t speak to Tia again.

Pam found out months later that Cathy was snoring cocaine like crazy and that she had been doing cocaine for a long time. Three days after Cathy twenty-second birthday, she got hold to some bad drugs and had a heart attack and died. Leaving this world at an early age of 22 and leaving behind 3 children, age 6, 4, and 2 ½ girls, which caused a burden on her mother who had to step in and raise her children. Her boyfriend was in jail and had been for about a year. Tiara was so sadden by the tragedy, she cried, mourning her death for months. Naturally Tia couldn’t get pass the argument with Cathy, she was angry at herself for not making amends with her before her death; the guilt was eating away at her spirit. She never wanted her friend to assume she was being insensitive. She knew how it was to truly love someone, entrusting your heart in them, and each day that pass by, you watch them misuse it. The lost of her friend was a traumatic experience for her, she staring looking at life differently.

Cathy tragic death left a scaring on Tia, she miss her friend she wished that she had one more chance to hug her and let her know that she loved her and cared for her well being. She never wanted Cathy to believe that she only care about herself, which was not in her character. Tiara wanted all of her friends to do well and have a piece of mind and get the best that life had to offer. She also wanted her to see that even if they have been raised in the ghetto or on welfare doesn’t mean that they couldn’t turn their circumstances around. They didn’t have to stay on welfare or stay in the ghetto and they didn’t have to stay with men that will misuse them, just to say that they have a man that said he loves them. Tiara felt it wasn’t that serious, a person has to love oneself first of all.

After meditating on her death brought back distressing thoughts of her pass abusive relationship she had a year before she met her husband and the some other incidents in her childhood.


CHAPER SIX


The Devil is a Lie

Tiara strongly remembers when she was 21 years old; she had met this guy, who was a massager for the massager’s service for her company. His name was Charles Carter, an average looking guy. Dark skinned, with neatly trimmed side burns, dark brown eyes, about 5’11 in height. At any rate he was very nice to her; they always ate lunch together during her lunch hour. Their relationship took off to a good start. They went out to movies and sometimes occasionally dinner, but most of the time he would cook her dinner at his place because he was a very good cook and loved doing it. He would always share with her about his plans to be a chef and launch his own restaurant someday, which she encouraged him to do and she also told him that he should take some culinary classes in the evenings after work, but he never did, making excuses one after another. He was the first man she fell in loved with, even though, the relationship made a turn for the worst. Charles always had altercations with women. Something she did not see at the time, but she put two and two together later on as they became closer. She spent a lot of nights at his apartment.

As for the love making, that wasn’t much to write home about either, but of course, she was in love with him or at that time she believed she was, it was her first serious relationship with a man. After time pass they did less entertaining with each other or with anyone else, he was always complaining about going out. Nevertheless he constantly wanted to get high, smoking reefer (marijuana) as they called it in the 80’s and snorting cocaine. He started pressuring her for money to get high, which escalated into arguments.

One day he grabbed her in the streets pulling on her arm because