Chapter 29 - Busted

I was looking out the window when the police cars pulled up. There were two. They pulled up fast, lights flashing. I can’t for the life of me remember what color they were. Three policemen and one policewoman came across the front yard running. I was really scared. I was home alone. I wanted to run downstairs through the kitchen and out the basement door, but there wasn’t time.

I opened the door at their very authoritative rap and stepped back as they swooped into the living room. Our living room was small. You could see it all in one glance. There was very little in the way of furniture. A stereo system took up one wall under the window with all the albums filed neatly into crates except the few I had been playing. On the opposite wall was a mattress on the floor with a quilted cover and piles of pillows. There was an American flag forming a canopy on the ceiling in front of the fireplace at the end of the room opposite the door. This flag enraged the police who showed how they felt with looks and eyebrows rather than words. They did not pull it down completely only pulling one corner away from the ceiling letting the flag flop down, but not letting it touch the floor. Nothing fell out when they loosened the flag so the search went on.

I tried to stay out of their way and the one policewoman hung around me to make sure I did. Across from the fireplace was a three-story wall of windows with no curtains. A stairway went down along the wall of windows and another stairway went up. The bathroom was on the same floor as the living room and was quickly dealt with but I couldn’t see where they looked and I knew there was nothing there.

Downstairs was the kitchen, a tiny dining ell and the door to the basement. Up the other flight of stairs was the bedroom. I don’t remember them searching the bedroom. I think the whole search was just an act. Someone had told them right where the stuff was. But they made a good show of it. They got into the cupboard and looked through the flour and sugar scattering flour everywhere, all over my clean dishes sitting in the dish drainer, all over my clean floor.

Oh, I was plenty scared. I was shaking uncontrollably. I never pictured such a thing happening in my life. It was quite surreal.

And then they went out into the basement, behind the furnace and found the baggie full of tabs of sunshine acid, the yellow barrel type, the good stuff. I wasn’t sure they could prove it was ours being that it was outside our apartment in the shared basement, but thinking it over later, I was sure someone had squealed, had informed and told them where the hiding place was because, after the little ‘search show’, they went right to it. Much later, it dawned on me that hardly anyone knew the hiding place.

At the time, though, I was way too busy being scared. I had on a little sun dress which was pretty bare and what with my nerves and my shivering I was covered in goose bumps even though I was hugging myself tightly. When it became clear that I was going in the squad car to jail, I asked the police woman if I could change into something warmer and less revealing. The men did not want to wait but she let me. I hadn’t given them any trouble and I was polite. To tell the truth, I was in shock.

After I changed my dress for jeans and a blouse, they took me out the front door. I was wearing handcuffs. My shock deepened. They cuffed me in front of my body, not behind my back and led me across our front lawn to the car where they did that head thing while they put me in the back seat. I’m sure I cried.

They drove downtown and parked behind the Public Safety Building, a parking lot I had never seen before. They took me into the jail, into a land where you could not enter or leave any space without waiting for someone to unlock a really serious set of bars. The doors clanged open and shut.

I was fingerprinted, photographed and strip searched, but sent to a cell in my own clothing. Yes I wanted a cigarette, I wanted about ten cigarettes, but I wasn’t allowed any, nor did I have any. I didn’t ask for a phone call. I didn’t want anyone to know. Maybe the system could just swallow me up. Augusta and Hobart, I did not want them to know, not my cute little innocent parents who did not belong anywhere near this place.

I was in a cell by myself, right next door to a heroine addict who was in withdrawal and very sick. She kept puking and moaning, asking that someone do something. Finally they switched our cells so she would be closer to the guards and I got the pukey cell. Luckily most of the puking must have been dry heaves.

In the morning I was faced with my two little sweet parents walking down the hall towards me and the courtroom for the arraignment. I had been on TV. Everyone saw me. The entire Taylor clan was traumatized. Smithvale was traumatized. But I was the most tramatized of all. Life can change in a minute and mine just did.