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“Let me go?”
I looked back at Jamison.
“Baby,” he tried, his voice filled with desperation.
“Sir, I’m going to need you to stay where you are,” the fat officer said, putting his hand over his gun.
“Jamison?” I called. “Jamison.”
“She’s my wife. You can’t take her.” He kept coming toward us. Two other cops ran to him and held him back from either side. Suddenly, there were at least ten cops between us.
“Take me? What’s going on?” I asked. I looked back to Officer Cox. She was obviously pleading now with the captain, but he kept shaking his head, and then finally she looked me right in the eye and mouthed the word “sorry.”
“Just be patient, ma’am,” the officer beside me said timidly. “They’ll be back over in a minute.”
“Can’t I just speak to her before she goes?” Jamison yelled. “She’s pregnant. She can’t go to jail.”
“Jail?” I said. The word slapped me so hard my bladder dropped and urine came flowing from between my legs, wetting the front of my nightgown. “Jamison!” I cried. “Stop them!”
The female officer came toward me, pulling handcuffs from her hip.
“Mrs. Taylor,” she said, her voice deep and throaty, as if she was forcing it to be stern. “I’m going to have to place you under arrest—”
“No,” I hollered. “No! I didn’t do anything. I was just here to get my husband. He’s my husband.” I began crying again. My adrenaline was wearing thin and the thought of being arrested for the first time in my life suddenly made me feel desperate and ugly. Not who I was. Not Kerry Taylor who’d grown up privileged, on the right street, in the right part of Atlanta. Not me. Jail? I looked at Jamison, for him to do something. To stop them from taking me away. This thing wasn’t for me.
“Baby,” he said, still being held by the officers, “just go with them and I’ll come get you. I promise.”
“But I didn’t do anything.”
“Mrs. Taylor,” Officer Cox said, “because we all saw you assault your husband, we’re going to have to take you in for domestic violence.”
“Domestic violence?” I couldn’t trust the echoes vibrating through my ears. “But he’s here with that woman cheating on me.” My spine began to twitch as the baby shifted, panicking, from side to side.
“I know. But because we saw you and our captain is with us, we have to do this. If the captain wasn’t with us, we could let you go, but we have to protect ourselves. You understand?” Her voice turned to reason for a second and she slid the cuffs on and began to read me my Miranda rights. The crowd, which had grown even larger, stood silent in fear and amazement.
“That ain’t necessary, officer,” one woman said, “She’s pregnant. Just let her go.”
“Yeah,” other people agreed. But it was too late. My hands cuffed on top of my belly, I watched them all desperately as the officer began walking me to the car. I turned again to see Jamison still standing there, looking at me helplessly. He’d done this to us, to me. I was being sent to jail for hitting a man who had beaten my heart to a pulp.
“You’ll be out quickly,” the female officer said, helping me into the car. The rainbow of lights went shining again and we were off.
Don’t miss Grace Octavia’s
SOMETHING SHE CAN FEEL
Available in trade paperback in July, 2009
wherever books are sold!
Prologue
DOA
June 22, 2008 Ghana, West Africa
There was a click. There was a bang.
And then everything behind me went frozen. Dead.
