The Dark Lake (8 page)

"Baby girl, you gotta be shittin' with me. Dat girl's your cousin?"

"Yea
h, she stole my driver's license, my credit card, all my identity. So I get pulled over an' I get my ass hauled to jail, what the fuck? I been keepin' it clean, I don't want this shit no mo. I don't want no mo trouble with the police."

"Dat sounds like her," laughter, hard slap on knee
. "Dat girl's a playa."

I woke up to this sound on a hard bench. My head felt like a steel plate.

"She's wakin' up. What the hell happened to you, girl?"

I sat up.

"Where I am I?” I asked.

Laughter burst through the cell.

"You in the city jail, honey."

"What city?"

"Milwaukee."

"Milwaukee?"

"Hey how much longer till I get processed?” yelled one of them at the door.

Looking around me
, I realized with a mixture of uneasy fear and dull shock that I was the only white one in there. What do you call a room like this, a ‘holding cell’?

I shut my eyes tight and held my hands over my face. What was the last thing I remembered? Had I thrown up on my
self? It didn't seem so, oddly.

I always was a blackout drunk. Apparently that's when I was my funniest
: at least, so I'm told.

But laughter wasn't what I remembered from last night.

I remembered screaming, "BITCH!" at who I thought was Krishna. But it couldn't have been, could it? It couldn't have been her.

"Why didn't you call me back?” I remember asking her.

I was having a terrific time, and then something took a turn. Things got all twisted. I became so enraged at her.

Then what happened?

"You look all messed up, girl. What'd you do?” A tall, lanky girl who lay next to me with her head on a roll of toilet paper laughed.

I didn't answer her at first, but then, I thought, I don't want to be thought of as rude in here.

"I'm trying to remember," I said.

Well, this got a big laugh, and I felt like at least I was a hit in here, and if I just kept quiet, I wouldn't be messed with.

I had never been arrested before. And when they yanked me into the processing room, I heard several complaints about how whitey was getting special treatment.

The woman who booked me kept shoving me. Apparently my fingerprints didn't seem to want to take and she kept blaming me, telling me I had attitude problems, and then shoving my fingers harder onto the ink.

I started crying, and she threatened to throw my sorry ass back in the holding cell if I didn't shut that shit up.

I sucked it in and tried to cooperate the best I could. I had the strange sensation I was walking the plank.

"Do I get a phone call?"

"You'll get it, just shut the hell up and wait."

I couldn't feel my legs when I walked.

When I did get the call it turned out I couldn't make it because it was long distance. They let me call collect
, though. They weren't going to, and then one of them looked into my eyes and changed his mind.

I had to tell my mother where I was, but I didn't know how to tell her what to do to get me out of there. She just sounde
d angry. I was wanting comfort.

Back in my new cell they made me change into an orange jump
suit so uncomfortable all I could do was endure it. It was scratchy, and I wasn't allowed to wear my bra underneath it because it had wire in it.

"Could somebod
y tell me what I did?” I asked.

After a hostile, unbelieving stare I got, "You threw a brick through Zak's
Tavern.”

Zak's
Tavern?

Oh my God. Zak's
Tavern. The Transistors had played there twenty years ago. I remember the night we drove there. A whole car full of us, we were hauling the band equipment in a van driven by Krishna's brother, listening to tapes made by Krishna and Ziggy. Laughing through the streets of Milwaukee, laughing at billboards with strange, black faces and cartons of milk, billboards we didn't see in Oshkosh, laughing because we were so stoned we laughed at anything that moved or stood still. So much laughter. Twenty years ago.

That's where I was?

That night I lay on the hard mat thrown on a metal, human-sized tray that stuck out from a cement wall. There wasn't much left of the night by the time I was brought to my cell. I could see the dawn breaking through a long, narrow sliver of glass. I was alone in there at first, with a metal toilet, a tiny sink, and they gave me a tin cup. I imagined clanging it along the bars, like in the movies.

I lay there in the
half-light for a while and then the silent officer man brought a very young black girl to my cell and took out his big set of keys and undid her cuffs and gave her a tin cup too, and a blanket. She slunk over to the bunk, pulled down the mattress, tossed it carelessly against the wall, and lay down.

"Damn fuckers left me in there
—took forever. Dey took you right off. Fuck's up with that?"

I had hoped she was asleep the few minutes she'd lain silent. I tried not responding. A minute or two more went by and then, "Fuck's up
, huh?"

"I don't know."

"Hell you don't.” She rolled over and faced away from me. She mumbled something else, but I didn't know what it was.

"I heard they said it was because I was white."

At this she turned her head to look at me. Then she put her head back down.

"They said you didn't even know why you was brought in,” and at this she started giggling to herself.

"It's true, I didn't, but then I asked them what I had done and they told me. I must've been in a total blackout when the cops cuffed me and put me in the back of their car. I don't remember any of it,” I said.

"You were sure talkin' a lot when they first brought you in,” she said, still laughing.

"Really? What did I say?"

"Shit, girl? You wa
s screamin' you was dead and shit like that."

"Saying I was dead?"

"Yep."

I started to remember something. I could see the image of the cop, standing tall and blue. I remember lying on the floor of the bar.

"Did I say anybody's name?"

"Kept talkin' to some people that weren't there, I can't remember their names, they had weird names. I think one of them was Gay."

She was starting to sound sleepy. Some of the memories were indeed coming back. Lying on a beer-soaked floor, talking to them, even though I knew they couldn't be there. I shuddered to think what I must have looked like to everyone.

Then did I snort that coke? Did they say I'd had any drugs in my system? Surely they would have tested for that. And then what would have happened? D
id they arrest me for that too?

"What are you in here for?” I asked.

She glared at me in response to this.

After a while they brought us both a little brown sack with breakf
ast in it, and a cup of coffee.

"Is this caffeinated?” I asked.

"Yep,” the officer answered.

"Oh thank God,” I muttered.

"What'd they give us?” she asked, holding the paper sack way up in the air above her resting self.

"Um,” I began to rummage through the bag, "there is a little box of Frosted Flakes, a little carton of milk, a plastic bowl …"

"They give us a spoon?"

"Yep."

"Coffee too?"

"Yep."

She sat up and opened her sack.

We sat crunching our sleepy cereal and stared vacantly at the wall.

When breakfast was finished, we crumpled up our sacks and sat silently for a moment.

Then she said, "
They better come get us or I'll miss the hearing this morning. I can't be missin' that!"

I went and lay back down in my metal tray with the blue mat.

She said it a few more times—that they better not let her miss the hearing—and then she got up and started ringing the buzzer.

"Hey,” she yelled.

There was, of course, no response.

"Hey,” she tapped hard on my shoulder
. "Get up and ring that buzzer, yell for him, get him down here,” she demanded.

I lay there staring up at the human-sized
, metal tray above me, trying to think of an answer.

"He'll get us there in time
, don't worry,” I answered, affecting a bored tone.

"No he won't
.” She wrestled around a bit more back on her mat, apparently intending to get some rest while she put me on the task of harassing the officer.

I waited a moment. Even shut my eyes.

"Get up and ring that buzzer,” she insisted.

"Don't worry about it. They will get us t
o court in time. They have to."

"No they don't,” she said
. "Get up and ring it."

I walked over and rang it one time and lay back down.

"Ring it again!"

"Just relax it's going to be all right,” I said.

She huffed around on her mat and tossed a few more times and kicked her foot out and hit the crunched-up sack.

"Ring it."

I got up and buzzed the buzzer.

"Do it again."

I buzzed it one more time and then she yelled, "Hey, come get us or we're gonna miss court!"

An officer hurried over to us
, and when he saw me he demanded to know why I kept hitting the buzzer. I tried to explain myself, and she kept perfectly silent.

"Stop buzzing that thing,” he shouted in my face.

After that she began snoring and I lay there staring at the metal tray above my head. After about a half hour we were both brought up to another holding cell, this one tremendously crowded. There was one metal toilet sitting center stage. If you used it, not only could all the women see you, but also there were men who could see from across the hall.

"I got up and I shoved him like this," a very tall
, skinny woman stood up and mock shoved, and then, frustrated with no one to demonstrate on said, "Hey, you, get up. I wanna show 'em what I mean."

I pointed to myself.

"Yeah, you. Get up,” and with that she grabbed me by the shoulders and put a knee in my back, demonstrating how she had shoved whoever it was.

Then she laughed and laughed and all the girls in there laughed at how she had shoved him.

"What’d he do then, girl?"

"Oh man, he turn around and say 'hey you bitch
’.” She howled with laughter. They all did.

"Dat why you in here?” one of them asked,

"Hell no, that bastard wouldn't dare narc on me; no I in here for no insurance."

"You kiddin' me,” a couple of them said.

"No,” the tall lanky one sat down. "I ain't done nothin' wrong in eighteen months. Dat's the longest for me, man. Can't wait to get home and see my little girl."

"When I get outta here
, I'm gonna get my cousin, I'm gonna fuck her up," one of them said.

"Be careful what you say in here," said the tall
, lanky one.

"She the one that stole your identity?" said another one.

"All my credit cards, my driver's license; I get pulled over and accused of something she did with my license."

"What are you in here for
?” asked the girl next to me.

"I threw a brick into a tavern."

They all cracked up laughing.

"She funny
, that girl,” said my former cellmate. “I kept buzzing the officer and she kept going, be cool man, it'll be fine man; she a riot."

"You gonna do time in county
, you think?"

"I don't know, I hope not. What's it like in there?” I asked.

"It's nasty, but it's like anyplace."

"What do you mean?”

"You know, days pass, some people are nice, some are bad, you know, but you gotta stand up for yourself in there," my former cellmate said. "You gotta let ‘em know you ain’t takin' shit."

"They'll probably let you off
; this your first offense?" another girl asked.

"Yea
h,” I said.

"You'll get off I bet, if it wasn't too bad. Was anyone hurt?"

I'd never thought of that.

"I don't even remember what happened. I was drunk."

This set them off on a whole new diatribe of drunk stories, one topping another. They had a lot of remember-when’s and was-you-there's? They went on for quite a while with this. Then this segued into other issues, like their own particular issues at trial, and what would they say to the judge. One had it all planned out. She would cry at just the right time. Always worked, she swore. They kept high-fiving each other.