The Long Night

Thump, thump, thump.  Thump, thump-thump.

Shit.  What time is it?  Was Bob supposed to pick up the kids?  No...they wouldn’t be knocking at the door, they’d be calling.  Did something happen on their way home from work?

Thump thump thump.

The blankets have me, the bed’s high, I’m disoriented.  I practically fall getting out.  

Thump, thu-thump.

Bob stirs.  I shake my head to wake it and glance at my attire.  Good ‘nough.

I trudge-stumble to the door.  Trying not to think about what disaster is waiting outside the door.  Maybe I can handle it without waking Bob up?

I yank the door open and stare blankly at a short young lady in a tidy officers’ uniform.

“Elizabeth?”

I scan the yard for clues as to what’s happening.  Another officer stands a ways down the drive.  No one else.

“Are you Elizabeth?” the woman asks again.  I don’t completely catch the rest.  Something about arresting me on a warrant? She’s saying something about changing my clothes.  Yea.  What else am I gonna do?

Traipsing to the bedroom, I leave the front door open.  A fleeting thought about the cats getting out flutters through my groggy brain, but they’re on the bed with Bob.  He’s awake.  Good.  That’s good.

I throw on yesterday’s clothes, stumbling on blankets and camping paraphernalia. I’m supposed to be going camping with my oldest, Allen, tomorrow.  Today?

I see my half drunk glass of burgundy sitting on the nightstand.  I gulp that down in one swig, wipe the dribble off my lip, and turn around to face...whatever.  This event.

Stepping out on the porch, I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do, and they aren’t saying.  So, I start toward the road and the waiting vehicles.  Vehicles?  Plural?  Is this usual?

The young lady stops me.  Something about my hands.  Their cuffing me?  I mean, me?  I’m cooperating.  I’m the farthest thing from a threat to anybody I know. Okay, so I know what they're taking me for.   A physical altercation happened months ago.  But, geez.  I’m not the violent one.  I’M not a violent person.  I’m a pacifist, for Christ’s sake.  Raised in a small town church of less than forty people.  Never had more than a speeding ticket.  I turn fifty this year, and this is the first time I’ve ever been arrested.  And this...this is different in real life than what I imagined watching television.

I’m standing in front of the first step of the porch with my hands behind my back in restraints.  Shit.  Still in a sleep haze, I stare at the step trying to figure out how to navigate them without falling and killing myself.  I think for a moment about asking this distinctively young person to help me down them.  Pride wins out.  I take a deep breath and pay super close attention to my balance as I navigate the stairs without being able to grasp the rails.

Relieved at the bottom, I stride to the SUV at the end of our drive.  I halt at the door. Stare dumbly.  Again.  My God, these two must think I’m high or something. But...what the frank am I seeing?  Why are the seats like that?  Should I ask?  Would they get irritated with me?  How do I GET IN IT?  They’re like shopping carts with the plastic kid seats in them.  My sleep medicine loaded, half asleep, befuddled brain can’t with this.

Sigh.  Is this over yet?  I need to go back to sleep.  Shit!  Am I gonna be able to go camping this week?  We’ve been planning this for months.  What the hell am I going to tell Allen?  He alone chastised me with reason when the ‘incident’ in question occurred.  That day I told him was the first glimpse I had into my future.  When I’m decrepit and he has to be in charge of my care because I can’t take care of myself anymore.  God, I’m not looking forward to that.

Everybody else seemed either impressed, or just thankful that I stood up for myself.  I suppose it’s easier when you aren’t actually the one experiencing the consequences.  

The vehicle stops.  She’s been communicating with someone in a gibberish language on the ride.  Now we’re outside a garage door.  More gibberish.

We park inside a school-house cement block garage. She helps me out and we stand.  And stand.  What time is it?  Damn, I’m exhausted.  I hadn’t been able to fall asleep right away tonight.  So probably I only slept an hour maybe?  Huh.  It occurs to me I’d just been hauled out of my home and bed in the middle of the night and dragged off to imprisonment.  Like in a third world, dictatorship country.  I’m gonna try not to think about that, because it’s just a bit too disturbing.

She’s saying something.  I regard her for a moment and she repeats. “Do you know what this is for?”

“Yeeeaaa...this is kind of a once in a lifetime thing.”

She starts to speak again, but we’re interrupted by the door buzz-clicking open.

That’s good.  I didn’t want to be rude, but I also didn’t want to speak.  That whole ‘can be used against you’ thing.  Don’t want to say something that hurts me in the long run. Right?  Isn’t that what I’m supposed to do?

She has me go ahead of her into a cement block hallway.  Full of cops.  Full of them.  Is that normal?  I mean, the little one next to/behind me could take me down by blinking her damn eye.

One of the women snaps out directions.  A tad bitchely.  Like I’m being insubordinate.  Disobedient.  She reminds me of someone, but I’ll be damned if I know who.  I think I’ll call her Joyce.  

I try to obey.  Lift your leg.  No, not like that.  

Geez.  How else does one lift their leg?  

She takes a deep frustrated breath.  She’s working the night shift.  It’s just another night of work for her.  Nothing new.  Nothing out of the ordinary or novel.

They put me in a long, slender cement block room with a cement bench running the length of it.  The usual toilet like you see on TV at the end of it, with the privy hidden behind a waste high cement block wall.

I lay down and curl up against the wall.  Trying to get more sleep.  On a rock.  It’s a big cold rock.  And my mind is buzz-whirring.  And I’m attempting to hold back tears, because I’ll be damned if I’m going to be a cry baby about it all.  

If I can blank my mind out enough, maybe I can just sleep through it.  But, mostly I just keep wishing I was dead.  I’m on the road all the time.  What kind of an accident could I get in, and not walk away from?  A semi?  Shit.  Gotta make my mind go blank and not think about it.  I’ll have to have someone stay with me when I get out, so I don’t do something stupid.

I wake to the door buzz-whirring open.  Joyce says something about intake.  What is that?  Haven’t I already been taken in?  She points for me to stand by a counter where another lady is perched in front of a computer.  I don’t have a name for her.

Is this your first arrest?

YES!

She collects my life’s information.  I’m polite.  I’m not crying.  I’m holding myself together.  That’s good.  I’m doing good.  She asks if I’ve ever attempted suicide.

Well, yes.

When?

2002.

How?

Pills.

Are you having suicidal thoughts right now?

I whip my head up to gawk her in the eye as the question processes through my damn brain cells.  I mean, I have been, haven’t I.  Does that count?  I know she knows by the eyes.

If you are, we need to know, we take that very seriously.

Sigh.  I’m gonna be honest, yes.

I don’t really hear her questions after that, even though I know I’m answering.  How stupid.  Why didn’t I bluff?  Why didn’t I hide my damn reaction?  I’d rather just deal with it myself than have these ladies involved. I’m an idiot.  

Joyce leads me over to a computer at a table with a dark plastic

Needless to say, more cops are called down and informed.  Hey, yea.  Let’s tell the whole blankety-blank planet that you’re putting me on suicide watch.  Lovin’ it.  I’m fascinated as she collects...prints.  I’m wondering if I’m going to be required to provide a butt print as well.  The tears trickle.  I resist them.  Another print. I give in and just let my eyeballs do whatever the hell they want.  I’m too worn to pretend to be tough.

Suicide watch consists of my own cement room, with a padded blanket, and only a padded, velcro all over to close it jumper that won’t stay velcrod shut (naked).  I cocoon myself up in all my padding, head to the wall.  The tears flow.  I cry.  And cry.  Until I fall asleep, I cry.  I wake up crying, reposition my body on my velcro bed, try to bury myself more in all the padding, and cry my sorry derriere back to sleep.  

I’m woken several times by the boisterous and loud sighing doofus in the holding cell next to me.  We share a bathroom.  I have to go in and pee on a toilet after he’s sat on it and aurated the event articulately.

I re-cocoon and cry myself back to sleep.  Eventually they bring me the jail food breakfast.  I’ve heard the jokes about jail food, but I’m in shock as I contemplate the contents in my package.  I close it back up and drink the apple juice.

And then...I swaddle again and let the weeping and the time warp commence until they send in a psychiatrist.  He stands just inside the door and quizzes me, an officer standing next to him at attention.  As if I am a threat to that man’s life.  Is THAT usual?  Do I seriously appear threatening to two grown men?  Me?  Really?

I get the answers correct and I’m allowed a jumpsuit.  I get to go share a cement slab with another girl.  She IS a girl.  So young.  So young and in here?  I hate that she’s here.  She needs to be out living her life.  Raising her family.

I’m to wait until the magistrate shows up.  A few hours. So, more sleep for me.  I’m certainly catching up on some zzzzz’s

The buzz-whir.  Jones!  Magistrate’s ready for you.

“It’s like I’ve been sucked into a movie,” I think.

The magistrate is in a television screen in the corner of a closet size room.  Cement. Blocks.  A plastic chair in the other corner.  I figure it out before I’m told this time, and plop in the seat before Mr. America cop can tell me.  I’m proud.  I must be losing my mind just a little bit.

She never looks at me.  Not once.  She takes my life story.  Including income.  Childrens’ names?  Did she just ask me that?  I’m too distracted by the fact that I sit here, having one of the most traumatic experiences of my life, and here this woman sits, invading my personal life and typing it all into a semi-public computer, and she won’t even glance my way.  She never does.

I’ve learned now.  Sleeping is the only way to survive the hours of absolute nothing.  White. Cement. Walls.  Lord, please let me sleep.

Bob gets me out on bail.  I lay my head on his shoulder weakly, like a stupid arse damsel in distress, but I don’t care.  He keeps asking me what I want to eat on the drive home.

Food, I say.  Just….food.

The sky has never been so blue.  The clouds never so perfectly formed, never so vivid. Such a tremendously exquisite sky.