1
MOMENT OF TRUTH
Sunny looked around her cell helplessly. She sat in a small, dirty room with one tiny, grime-coated window, a filthy cement floor, a toilet that smelled and looked as if it had never been cleaned, and one old wooden bench upon which she sat now.
Sunny’s tearstained face was set in a grimace. She had stopped crying long ago, but the tracks of her tears were still evident, colored in by streaks of her mascara. Her usually bright eyes were vacant, as she stared down at her hands and tried to wrap her mind around what had happened thirty-one hours ago. She had counted each one of those hours as she stared at the clock on the wall, its second hand ticking by like a bell tolling in her head.
She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head in disbelief, fighting back the tears that threatened to rush forth once more. The reality of her situation was just too terrible. Sunny was in a Mexican prison cell, charged with cocaine possession. The baggie she had tucked into her purse when Malcolm surprised her on the seedy side of town had been discovered by customs agents at the airport. She cursed herself for forgetting about it. She had slipped. BIG time.
Sunny had been interrogated in hostile tones for hours. Like rapid fire, the police hurled questions and accusations at her in broken English, demanding to know where she had gotten the drugs. They spoke amongst themselves in Spanish after questioning her nonstop all night. When she heard them discussing all of the American money they had discovered in her purse, she couldn’t resist telling them in fluent Spanish that every penny of it was theirs to keep if they would only let her go. One of the rough-looking female guards had gotten pissed off instantly. Sunny wasn’t sure if the woman was pissed off that she had offered a bribe or if it was the fact that her Spanish was better than theirs. But the next thing Sunny knew, the guard had snatched her by the collar of her shirt. Glaring, she had gotten in Sunny’s face so close that Sunny could smell her hot, vile breath.
“Pendeja! It’s already ours to keep and you’re still going to jail!” The guard had spat on the floor in front of Sunny and then sealed it with a look of pure contempt. Since then, all of the guards had been speaking to Sunny rudely in Spanish, and watching what they said to one another while in her presence. They seemed to be convinced that she was part of some big cartel. They had accused her of attempting to smuggle the small amount of coke as some kind of trial run to test the customs agents’ thoroughness. They wanted to know whose drugs they were, how long Sunny had been working for them, and what role Malcolm played in all of it.
Malcolm.
As her thoughts turned to him, Sunny closed her eyes once more to keep the tears at bay. She had really fucked up now. She wondered where they had taken him after separating the two of them immediately after they discovered the cocaine in her possession. She imagined that they must have interrogated him just as mercilessly as they had her. She prayed that he knew to keep his mouth shut and say absolutely nothing. Malcolm wasn’t from her world. He didn’t think like she did, wasn’t as quick on his feet. She began to pick at her nails, absentmindedly, chipping away at her fill-in. She was tired, hungry, and scared to death. She imagined that Malcolm must be, too. And then there was the issue of the man they’d left to bleed to death in a cab ride gone horribly wrong. She needed to get the fuck out of Mexico.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the door opening. One of the guards entered the room. He was accompanied by a stout Mexican man wearing a cheap suit and run-over shoes.
“Abuego,” the scowling guard mumbled before leaving as suddenly as he had appeared, leaving Stubby behind. Sunny sized up the poorly dressed man standing before her, who would be acting as her attorney. She felt a pang of guilt as she thought about her real attorney—Malcolm—being detained in a room nearby.
The man introduced himself as Marcos Gomez. He sat down beside her on the wooden bench, and set his briefcase down on the floor in front of him. He smelled of unfamiliar cologne and hand sanitizer, an oddly comforting combination that put Sunny at ease. She felt optimistic. Hopefully, he could find a way for her and Malcolm to get out of this mess.
Sunny began talking animatedly to her makeshift attorney, telling him in anxious, hurried Spanish that she hadn’t been given a chance to call anyone since her arrest. She thought that surely inmates were allowed one phone call here as they were in America. Anything else seemed inhumane.
Mr. Gomez tried to suppress a smirk at Sunny’s audacious outrage. Here she was, under arrest for drug possession in a foreign country and indignant still. He asked her if she had ever been arrested before. Sunny shrugged, unsure how that was relevant. He read between the lines, and assumed that her shrug was a “yes.”
“Para drogas?” he asked. For drugs?
Sunny hesitated before answering. “Once for marijuana. The other time was for driving with a suspended license.” She watched him write that down.
“But, I was booked, given a phone call and released both times. Nothing like this!” She hadn’t brushed her teeth nor been given an opportunity to shower since her arrest. She had no access to her luggage, and had sat in the same panties for far longer than she cared to. Sunny had barely been given anything to eat and she wondered how long she would be forced to endure this nightmare. She felt disgusting.
Mr. Gomez listed the charges against her.
“Drug smuggling, possession of narcotics, and conspiracy.”
“I wasn’t smuggling anything or conspiring with anybody! Those drugs are not mine!” Even though she was aware that she was lying, Sunny convinced herself that this was all just a misunderstanding. She hadn’t been smuggling on purpose, and the small amount of coke she had in her possession certainly didn’t warrant her being held for this long under these conditions.
Gomez nodded, seeming to understand her frustration.
Sunny sighed, heavily. She dragged her fingers through her hair in exasperation. “Who was I supposedly conspiring with?” she demanded. Her thoughts turned to Malcolm again. Oh, no! Did they think that he was her coconspirator in this imaginary drug-smuggling ring?
“Are you representing Malcolm, too?” she asked.
Gomez frowned, confused. “Who is Malcolm?”
Sunny looked at him like he was crazy. “My codefendant,” she said. “The guy I was with at the airport.”
Gomez, still looking bewildered, sifted through some papers in his briefcase. He seemed to find what he was looking for, paused on one page in particular, and slowly read a section of it. He shook his head.
Sunny cleared her throat, impatiently.
“Señor Dean, yes?” he asked.
“Yes!” Sunny was growing impatient with this man.
Gomez shook his head again. His expression was bleak, and she knew instantly that there was bad news.
“Malcolm Dean has already been released. He flew back to the U.S. yesterday.”
Sunny’s heartbeat quickened and her stomach turned. She heard a ringing in her ears. “What?” Suddenly she felt sick, bile rising in her throat and sweat pooling at her brow.
Gomez scanned the document in his hand once again. “He gave a statement. He said that the drugs belonged to you alone, and he had no idea about any of it. Since the drugs were found in your luggage and not in his, they allowed him to pay a sum and leave Mexico immediately.”
Sunny felt like she might pass out. “He gave a statement?” she repeated, incredulously.
“Si,” Gomez confirmed. He shook his head, and Sunny felt comforted by this gesture. Even he knew that Malcolm was a bitch for abandoning her this way.
“Apparently, he is an attorney in the States, and assured us that he had no knowledge of your drug-related activities. He has paid his way out.”
Sunny sat in stunned silence. That muthafuckin’ bitchass bastard! she thought. She was seething. But above all, she was hurt. She had fallen for Malcolm despite all of the alarm bells ringing in her head telling her not to. And now, here she was, crushed and abandoned. Locked up abroad. She should have known better than to trust him.
“Okay, so I need to do the same thing,” Sunny said, snapping her fingers to illustrate how quickly she needed this all to be dealt with. Malcolm was a coward, she decided, and she would deal with his punk ass when she got back to the States. But, right now, she needed to get the hell out of Mexico before someone connected her to more than that small amount of drugs in her bag. “How much do I need to get out of here?”
Gomez stared at her for a moment, silently. Finally, he responded.
“The price for you could be very high. Your friend is an attorney, and he did not have the drugs in his possession. He claimed that he barely knew you, and that he had no idea what your involvement is in the cocaine trade. His situation was different. Yours will be tougher.”
Sunny’s blood boiled. Malcolm was claiming that he hardly knew her when, just days ago, he’d had his face buried in her pussy. The two of them had children who played together. He had met her family. They were a couple. But, not anymore. Right now, she could just kill him.
Mr. Gomez snapped her back to the issue at hand.
“We can maybe work something out for you, Señorita.” He looked her in the eyes. His suggestive tone of voice conveyed the message loud and clear.
She dismissed her thoughts of Malcolm that instant. “How much?” she asked, anxiously.
Mr. Gomez shrugged. “Ten thousand U.S. should do the trick.” He rubbed his thumb against the rest of his fingertips in the universal symbol for cash.
“Are you crazy?” Sunny snapped. “I had $100 worth of yayo and you muthafuckas want ten grand?” She was appalled.
Gomez suppressed a smirk. For someone who had been framed, she certainly knew the market price of the drugs she’d been carrying.
“You must think I’m crazy. You must be out of your mind!”
Gomez watched silently while she had her temper tantrum. Sunny was on her feet, pacing her tiny cell, muttering how ridiculous this was. She thought about Malcolm. Had his corny, dumb ass ponied up that much to get himself out of this hell? She shook her head at the thought.
“I don’t have that kind of money,” she said, lying.
Gomez held her gaze, unblinkingly. “It is no good lying to your lawyer, Señorita Cruz.” He pulled out a cigarette and lit it. Exhaling the smoke, he leaned back against the wall. “The police at the airport discovered that you and your companion were traveling home with $7,000 in cash—$6,000 of which was in your bag. You have expensive jewelry, expensive clothes, and shoes. And your traveling companion told his interrogators that he was working with you, that you are scheduled to do a film. So you are a high-profile American woman. It is very easy to search your name on the Internet to find out exactly who you are and whether we can get more money from a tabloid instead.” He took another puff of his cigarette. The cost is $10,000 or they Google.”
Sunny was snarling at him and he took notice. He softened his tone a bit.
“I am not your enemy,” he said.
“All you muthafuckas are my enemy,” Sunny snapped. “Somebody must have planted those drugs on me. I’m telling you it wasn’t mine.”
He looked at her doubtfully.
“What else did Mr. Dean say in his statement?” She figured that he hadn’t told about the incident with the driver because they never would have offered her a way out if they knew that she was a murderer. Still, she asked out of curiosity.
“He said basically that the two of you met recently. That he was your attorney, maybe sometimes more than that. But that he doesn’t really know who you are.”
“He’s lying.” Sunny fought the emotions that she was truly feeling, and looked Gomez squarely in the eyes. “All of that’s a lie.”
Gomez stared back at her silently. He pondered what would be the best route to take in order to convey his message to his fiery client. The lovely lady before him had all the markings of a chameleon. Sunny slipped between Spanish and English so easily, and switched demeanors at will. Her duality was evident, as she looked lost and sad one moment, then angry and defiant the next. Gomez wondered what her story was, how she had learned to be two people at the same time. Even though he was a stranger to her, it was easy even for him to ascertain that Sunny was into something, and she was in way over her head.
Sunny felt trapped between a rock and a hard place. She was being extorted. “I don’t have that amount of money.” She spoke slowly, emphasizing every word. “You said yourself that I only have six grand with me. I don’t have ten.”
Gomez balanced his cigarette between his lips, and began to pack away his paperwork. “That six grand has already been taken as evidence,” he said, calmly. “You will need to produce an additional $10,000.”
Sunny was furious, but she kept her mouth shut. She was aware that it was futile to try to reason with these people. Involuntary tears flooded her eyes. As Gomez zipped his briefcase, Sunny faced the facts. Either she was going to see her reputation publicly torn into pieces, or she would have to call someone close to her and explain her predicament. Someone would have to bring the money—and fast! Her carefully guarded secret was now being exposed, and she had never felt like such a failure in her whole life.
“You do not want to remain in jail here in Mexico. Nothing nice about it.” Gomez gestured at her surroundings. “The real thing is far worse than this.” He hoped he was getting through to her.
Sunny was trembling. She knew better than anybody that she had to get the hell out of Mexico immediately. Malcolm had left her with a dead body and a bag of cocaine on her hands in a foreign country. She had to figure out who she could turn to for help. For the first time, she was the one who needed a lifeline. Sunny cried in silence.
Gomez took pity on her as he rose to leave. “I will see to it that you get a shower, a decent meal, and a phone call home.” He offered a weak smile. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
And then Sunny was alone again.
* * *
Jada and Sheldon sat together eating dinner quietly at the dining room table. The silence was eerily familiar. It had been three days since Sheldon’s release from the psych ward of Staten Island University Hospital. Three days of awkward conversations and unspoken tension. Both Jada and Sheldon had found comfort in the silence that continually fell between them. In that silence, each of them was able to think things that would have been too dreadful to give voice to.
Jada blamed her son for the fact that her relationship with Born was in ruins. She hadn’t spoken to the man she loved since the day she’d walked away from him at the hospital weeks ago. He texted her from time to time to see how she was holding up. She would respond and let him know that she was hanging in there, that she needed some time alone with her son to sort things out. Sheldon had made it clear through his suicide attempt that he was not happy with his mother and Born’s relationship. Jada had martyred herself in the weeks since then, depriving herself of Born’s love as a way to make up for all the damage she had done to her only child. But the truth was that a large part of Jada hated Sheldon for forcing her and Born apart. It felt as if Sheldon’s father, Jamari, was torturing her all over again from the grave. She hated it so intensely that she had to make a conscious effort to be kind to her son. She reminded herself that she had no one to blame but herself for Sheldon’s struggles. Still, it was hard not to think negatively about the young man who had taken such control of her life.
Sheldon, on the other hand, was having his own sinister thoughts. He was glad that Born was gone, gladder that Jada was clearly upset about it. Good for her! he thought. She deserved to suffer for being a crackhead, for making him so different from other kids his age. She was to blame for the urges he felt to lash out and misbehave. All the doctors at the psychiatric center pointed to his being born a crack baby as an explanation for his imbalance. He had heard them discussing his problems and their roots in Jada’s drug use. Toward the end of his stay at the hospital, Sheldon had reduced his own medication. He didn’t like the way it made him feel—all loopy and lethargic. He had no energy when his meds kicked in. Even his thoughts slowed to a crawl. He didn’t like it. So, he began to find ways to avoid taking it. He couldn’t get away with it all the time. The aides were usually extremely vigilant. But, at times, while one of the lazier aides waited and watched to ensure that he swallowed his pill, he’d create a distraction—sometimes sneezing and spitting it into his palm, other times dropping something on the floor so that he could stash the pill while the aide bent down to pick up the dropped item. Each time he would dutifully open his mouth and lift his tongue to prove that he had swallowed his meds. And once the aide was gone, Sheldon observed what was being said and done around him. Without the medication, he felt more like himself. He had perfected his listless gaze and would stare off into space as the doctors discussed his medical history. It was during one such conversation that he overheard a discussion about his parents’ battle for custody of him. As he sat staring blankly at the bare white wall, Sheldon listened closely.
His father had been killed, he learned, in the midst of his parents’ custody war. It was something his mother had never told him. She hadn’t told him much of anything, in fact—not about his father, not about her drug use.
As they sat in silence now, eating curry chicken, yellow rice, and asparagus, Sheldon watched her. Her eyes were focused on her plate as she seemed lost in thought. Probably thinking about Born, Sheldon thought bitterly. He cleared his throat.
Jada seemed to snap out of her trance and she looked up at him. Their eyes locked for several seconds.
“What’s wrong?” Jada asked. What’s wrong NOW? she thought.
Sheldon set down his fork and sat back in his chair, looking his mother in the eye. “I want to know everything,” he said. Seeing a look of confusion flash across her face, he explained. “About my father. And about you. And how I got here.”
Jada’s jaw clenched. For Sheldon’s whole life, she had avoided talking about his father or about the ugly and traumatic things that transpired between them. But her policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell” clearly hadn’t worked. Born was not around for her to seek his strength and reassurance. Alone with her son, Jada took a deep breath, sat back in her seat, and threw up her hands.
“What do you want to know, Sheldon? I already told you … I was addicted to coke … cocaine. Your father accepted that. He gave me crack to smoke. He lied to me—
“Lied to you about what?”
Jada sighed. “A lot of things. He hated Born.”
Sheldon frowned. “Why?”
Jada shrugged. She shook her head. Sheldon was so young, too young to fully understand. But she forged ahead. “Your father was jealous of Born.” She ignored Sheldon, who sucked his teeth in disbelief. “Born and Jamari grew up together. They were close friends. Jamari’s mother was addicted to drugs. So was Born’s father. So, Jamari and Born bonded since they had that in common.” Jada could tell that she had Sheldon’s undivided attention. She went on.
“Jamari’s mom told him that he and Born had the same father. She claimed that Born’s father, Leo, had never acknowledged Jamari because Leo was married to Miss Ingrid.”
Sheldon’s brow furrowed as his young mind tried to process all of this information. “My father and Born were brothers?”
Jada shook her head. “We don’t know that for sure. That was what Jamari’s mother told him. But she died, and Leo never mentioned anything about it before he died, too. So, we’ll never really know for sure.”
“Why would my grandmother lie about that? If she said it, I believe her.”
Jada noticed Sheldon’s choice of words. My grandmother. He said it with such conviction that she was slightly taken aback by how he had aligned himself with his father’s side of the family so instantaneously. He had never met his paternal grandmother and couldn’t even remember his father. Yet, he had such faith in their truthfulness. Jada didn’t address it, opting to continue instead.
“Jamari was jealous because Born’s father gave him everything. Meanwhile, Jamari and his mother struggled. So, all the time that he was friends with Born, he wanted what Born had. And then Jamari stole money from Born.”
Sheldon blinked a couple of times. “He prolly needed it since him and his mother were broke,” he suggested.
Jada’s jaw clenched again. Clearly, Sheldon refused to believe the worst about his father. She wanted to end the conversation, but she pressed on. “When Born realized that Jamari stole the money—”
“How much money was it?” Sheldon interjected. Bet it was like $20! Born seemed like the type to make a big deal out of nothing.
“Five thousand dollars.”
Jada waited for a reaction from her son but got nothing.
“Anyway, Born cut him off. He stopped being friends with him and I never knew the whole story between them until years later. All I knew was that Born didn’t like him, didn’t trust him. And Jamari didn’t like Born either.”
She took a sip of water and swallowed slowly before continuing.
“After Born found out that I had started getting high again, he broke up with me and I had no place to go. I had a bad drug problem, and my family had abandoned me. Jamari and I got closer and … we started a relationship.”
“Did you love each other?” Sheldon asked.
Jada wished she could self-destruct. She knew what Sheldon wanted to hear. Every kid wanted to believe that they were conceived in love. But the truth was far uglier. She recalled Jamari’s lies, the way he had manipulated her. She could still picture his outstretched hand with the crack vial in it.
“Go ahead and take it. I’m not gonna judge you. I understand.”
She could hear Jamari’s voice as clearly now as she had all those years ago.
“Sheldon,” she explained. “I was so addicted to drugs that I couldn’t love anybody. Not even myself.”
“Did he love you?”
She shook her head no. Seeing the hopeful expression on Sheldon’s face melt into dejectedness, she lied a little. “He did at first,” she said. “But my addiction made him turn against me eventually.” Jada knew that, in truth, Jamari had never loved her. He only saw her as a pawn in his sick game against Born. His control over every aspect of her life was all in an effort to flaunt his “trophy” in Born’s face.
“Why did y’all break up?” Sheldon asked.
Jada sipped her water again and swallowed hard. She fought the urge to smile at the memory of stealing Jamari’s re-up and exiting his life for good. Revenge had been sweet. Still, she couldn’t tell Sheldon the truth—she had stolen his father’s crack, sold it, and binged. She had to find a way to cushion the truth.
“When you were born, and I had made up my mind that it was time to get clean … I started seeing things differently. Once I was out of the fog, I realized that Jamari had manipulated the whole situation. I felt like he used me to make Born jealous. So I ended our relationship, and I focused on doing everything I could to be a good mother for you.”
Jada sat back in her chair and looked into Sheldon’s eyes. She had given him the abridged version, but it was the truth nonetheless. She prayed that Sheldon would stop seeing her as his enemy.
“Sheldon … I love you,” she said, sincerely. “I’ve loved you from the first moment I laid eyes on you. I foughtfor you. When you were born, your father was mad at me. He was angry because I had been selfish, and he had every right to feel the way that he did. But I was sorry, and I had made up my mind to stop using drugs. He didn’t believe me. He hated me. And to be honest with you, I hated myself. I felt like dying.”
Sheldon watched his mother closely, saw the tears that welled up in her eyes. He heard the emotion in her voice and he believed her. He realized, maybe for the first time, how sorry Jada was—how much she cared for him.
“But then Sunny would bring me pictures of you. Every time I saw those pictures, I felt stronger, more determined to fight for the right to be your mom. When I got out of jail, I was in court just about every week to get visitation rights and trying to get custody. You were the only thing I had to live for anymore. Your father did everything he could to keep me from seeing you. But the judge slowly made it possible for you and I to build a relationship. And then your father was killed.” Jada said that last part flatly. She felt no remorse that she and Sunny had left Jamari to die alone in that parking lot in the dead of winter.
“Once he wasn’t around to fight me anymore, I was finally able to be your mom.”
Sheldon stared at his hands, letting it all sink in. He wondered how his life would be different if his father hadn’t been killed. He knew that Jamari had loved him. Somehow, he had always known that in his heart. But now Jada had confirmed it for him. His father had loved him so much that he had fought to keep his drug-addicted mother out of his life. Sheldon watched Jada wiping the tears from her eyes. He replayed her words in his mind.
“Sheldon, I love you.”
He looked at his mother, thought to himself about how pretty she was. She wasn’t a terrible person. He had seen some of his classmates’ mothers, so he knew that horrible parents existed. The kind who talked loud and cussed all the time. The ones who wore scarves on their head in public, and barked orders at their kids. Jada was nothing like that. Whatever she had been in the past was far behind her now. He decided that maybe it was time to forgive Jada. Clearly, she was sorry and had already paid dearly for her transgressions. Sheldon would turn over a new leaf with his mother. But Born was a different story.
“Why did you name me Sheldon Marquis? Why don’t I have my father’s name instead of Born’s?”
Jada’s eyes narrowed. What an odd question! she thought. After all of what she had just told him, after hearing how determined Jamari had been to keep her away from her child, after hearing about his jealousy towards Born … all Sheldon had to ask was what had inspired his name?
“I named you after the two men who had been most important in my life. My father and Born.”
“Did you wish that Born was my father?”
Jada hesitated before answering. “I did,” she admitted.
Silence engulfed them again.
Finally, Sheldon spoke. “I bet my dad didn’t like my name.” He toyed with his napkin.
Jada didn’t know how to respond, so she said nothing; instead, allowing his words to float unanswered.
“Thank you for telling me the truth,” Sheldon said softly. “You coulda lied about a lot of stuff. But you didn’t. I’m glad that I know the whole story now.” He set down his napkin, pushed his chair away from the table, stood up, and looked his mother in the eye.
“I love you, too,” he said.
And, with that, he walked out and went upstairs to his room.
Jada sat there alone, wondering if she should get her hopes up. She couldn’t help but pray that this signaled a light at the end of what had been a very long and dark tunnel. Only time would tell.
Copyright © 2015 by Tracy Brown
