What was supposed to have just been a simple traffic stop, where they wrote my dad a ticket for the tints, and the loud music, turned out to him reaching for his license and registration, just like they told him, but somehow, they convinced themselves that he was reaching for a gun, and they killed him in broad daylight. Fucked the whole Miami up with that one. I was too young to hurt from it. I didn’t start hurting from it until I was older, and I realized what was taken away from me.
The older I got, my mom would tell me that I was every bit of my daddy, just in a female form. I was a bad ass little girl. Always fighting. Always getting kicked out of class because my mouth was crazy, and I found myself looking up to my big brother Roman, wanting to be everything like him.
By the time Roman was fifteen, him and his friends were doing the same shit that my daddy used to do. They started out selling weed, and then they upped it to coke. Man, I remember the day my mama found drugs in Roman’s bedroom, and she beat the shit out of him. She beat his ass so bad that he literally couldn’t sit on his own ass for at least a week. She was determined for neither one of us to go down the same road as our father. It was too late. That shit was genetic. We were every bit of that nigga.
Time went on, and I wanted to be put on with my brother, doing the same thing that him, and his friends were doing. I was getting in trouble in school, constantly getting suspended. I was always beefing with my mama, so as a juvenile, I was always running away, which would have me going to juvenile detention. I put my mama through hell man. Me and my brother.
My brother was my right-hand man. He shared the same kind of hurt as I did, especially when it came to my father, and how quickly he was taken away from us. We shared a lot of the same anger. I felt like he was the only person in my life that could truly understand me. Imagine loving someone that much, and then they fuckin die.
I lost my big brother too by time I turned seventeen. I haven’t been right in the fuckin head since. Something died inside of me the day that I was picked up early from school by my mom, and I got in the car with her, and she told me that my brother had been murdered in a drive by shooting. Talk about a blow to the chest. The daughter that my mom once had, she died right there in that car because I’ve been an angry, short-tempered bitch since then.
I stayed in trouble. In and out of jail for the dumbest things, but it all boiled down to the fact that I couldn’t watch my temper. The smallest thing would make me snap, and I knew it was because I was running around with all this pain, hurt, and trauma, that I didn’t like to talk about because talking about itonly made me re-live it, so I would rather keep it bottled up inside.
So, the fact that officer Randall was standing here, doubting me, telling me that I was going to be back, especially since I’ve been to this jail so many times before, I couldn’t say whether he was right or wrong because fuckin around with me, I never know what I might do tomorrow that’ll land me back in here.
“Yeah okay,” I replied to officer Randall, reaching my hands up, so that I could retrieve the clear, plastic bag that the property officer handed to me.
She told me to check inside, and make sure that everything was in there, and the only thing that I was worried about was my phone, and the jewelry that I had on the night of my arrest, and once I saw that that was inside, I was good to go.
“Who’s outside to pick you up?” Officer Randall asked me, walking on the side of me.
I looked over at him, and I laughed.
“Nigga, why?” I wanted to know.
Officer Randall got on my damn nerves because he was always trying to preach to me, but in all seriousness, I liked him. That was big for me to say because I swear I didn’t like anybody. I wasn’t saying this in a way to get cool points from anybody, but I was mean as hell, and I didn’t let people in like that, so officer Randall had to have been doing something good for me to say that I liked his old ass.
“Ay, watch your mouth talking to me like that girl!” he snapped on me, with it being no kind of playfulness in his tone.
Shaking my head at him, I continued carrying my things, walking on the side of him, as we were making our way out of the building.
As we were walking, I could feel his eyes on me. He wasn’t looking at me in a lustful kind of way because officer Randallwasn’t that type. If anything, he was staring at me, as if he was thinking about the next thing that he wanted to say to me.
“I’ve seen you come in and out of this jail since you were eighteen, Riot. You gotta change. You rough as hell, with a mouth on you that’s crazy, but I see past all of that. You’re a beautiful young lady. Drop dead gorgeous if you ask me, and you don’t need to be constantly in and out of a place like this. Your still young. Only twenty- one years old. You’re a baby in my eyes, who’s life hasn’t really started yet,” he went on to say, telling me things that I’ve already heard from him, but I was respectful, keeping quiet, and listening to him.
“I know that I was just talking shit to you, telling you that you were going to be back in here, but please prove me wrong. This not the kind of job where I’m supposed to get attached, but when I look at you, I view you as a granddaughter, and all I want is the best for you. All your charges over the years have been petty charges, which is why all you ever had to serve was jail time. You don’t want to go out there and do something crazy in the streets, and your ass gets sent to prison. Prison is a different type of time. They’ll eat, and swallow your little ass up in there,” he preached to me like he always did.
I heard everything that he was saying to me, so I kept quiet, wanting to receive it.
“I hear you,” I let him know.
“You hear me but are you understanding what I’m saying to you?” he asked me.
“I’m understanding,” I was short.
I was the wrong person to try to sit here and preach to. I did what I wanted to do in life. It was hard for my own mama to get through to me, so officer Randall might as well stopped while he was ahead. I think he figured that out because he eventually shook his head, and then he stopped talking to me altogether.
We continued to walk in silence in the release corridor. This part of the jail had the same smell as the rest of the jail did. I couldn’t really explain it to you, but it smelled like disinfectant spray, mixed with old air, and I couldn’t wait for this to be my last few moments smelling this shit.
It was just the two of us walking, so with that, you could hear our footsteps echoing. The boots officer Randall had on were big, so his footsteps sounded big, and heavy compared to mine.
After walking a little more, we finally made it over to the Sally Port Area. I was familiar with this area because I’ve been locked up so many times that I knew that when you made it over here, you were seconds away from freedom. Sally Port was basically the controlled exit that the jail used.
We made it over, and the first gate buzzed, allowing us to walk out. Literally, the second we walked out of the gate, it immediately closed behind us. We walked a little more, until we finally made it to the final door. This is when I could feel my heart racing, and if I wasn’t always trying to act so tough all the time, I would have jumped up and down, started screaming because I knew that this was the moment that I had been waiting for. I’ve waited a whole year for this moment.
I watched as officer Randall scanned his badge, the lock on the door made a clicking sound, he turned the knob, and right there, parked outside of the jail, just like she told me she would be was my big cousin Ari. Ari was short for Ariana.
I loved my cousin till the death of me. Truly loved this damn girl like I built her with my bare hands. Ari was four years older than me. We’ve been in each other’s lives since I was a baby. Her mom, which is my auntie Rasheeda is my mom’s oldest sister. My auntie Rasheeda and my mom were the closest out of the four sisters, which is why Ari and I were so close.
