Knock, knock, knock.
Lyulle and I sat up straight from the living room floor of Ms. Byrd’s house. Lyulle stood up to face the large wooden door.
I grabbed Brooklyn from the floor, where he too had been sleeping.
“Are you Lyulle Peterson?” one of the men dressed in all black asked abruptly.
“Um, yeah.”
The man’s skin-tight black T-shirt and vest read U.S. Marshall. All three of the giant men were ready to take him down and rip my dreams of “happily ever after” apart.
They took him shackled and halfway naked. I was humiliated for him. I was humiliated for us all, really.
The law had finally caught up to him, to us. We were on a grocery store run a few days before when we saw an oddly parked black Suburban with an unidentifiable person inside. Lyulle had deduced that it was the police and that they needed evidence to locate him and take him in. We had been riding in Ms. Byrd’s van named the Gray Goose, a Scooby-Doo-style van that got her from point A to point B and back home when they spotted him or, rather, where he spotted them.
When would this cycle ever end? Three hundred dollars was all I had to my name. I bailed him out of the county jail where they were keeping him. He would be back home again within days. With a little advice from no other than Thomas, I’d paid the fees. Thomas had also moved from Akron to Columbus, and I kept in touch with him from time to time. I asked for a few favors among my friends. Those whom I asked, I knew, had what I needed. I knew they would help me, the godmother and godfather types with cash who were wiser, and they helped me throughout my whole life, not just at that time, from the kindness of their hearts. I was able to get an apartment with their help so I would not be living in Ms. Byrd’s apartment anymore. I had to make moves. Any move I made would do. As long as Brooklyn and I were safe, anyone else could fend for themselves. My responsibility became Brooklyn, and him solely would I focus on. Brooklyn would know that I loved him.
Gem had had a party for Brooklyn back home in Akron, so his diaper supply was in surplus. If I would have had any hustle about myself, I would’ve taken all that shit to the projects and sold newborn care packages to some or all of those hood bunnies. They had cash. You know, hood bunnies be thirsty for a booster. You talk about a come-up? Fifty-dollar care packages for their babies and diapers in Ziploc bags, ten for five dollars, or something like that. There was a recession during that time, but that still don’t sound like a bad idea for a present-day hustle. But I had no large-scale hustle in my bones. It’s really unbelievable how far I had to travel. I have to thank Gem; because of that party, my number-one prayer for Brooklyn was answered. He was taken care of immensely.
When Lyulle was released from the county, he’d come home to a new apartment. It was the same style of duplex that Ms. Byrd had lived in, but we now lived on the bottom. I was okay with that. I had my own space again. I supported Lyulle somewhat, and he supported me. I worked part time, enough hours to get food stamps and take care of Brooklyn most of the time. Things had mellowed out a bit, and we began to live comfortably in working-class poverty.
I had to be crazy to live this life. I pressed through the pressure, pressed myself harder than the pressure my life had pressed on me. I did not have an overall good feeling about how life had happened up until then.
On our first baby’s birth, Lyulle was absent, and now heading into our first Christmas as a family, he was gonna be absent, facing time again. That PV of walking out of the Oriana House would have him serve a six-to-eight-month sentence behind bars at a prison in Lorraine. He turned himself in sometime that December before Christmas but after his birthday. Still without a car, I had to find work close by. In the neighborhood where we lived, there were all kinds of opportunities for the lower working class (a.k.a. the poor). I chose the neighborhood Kroger. It was around the corner and through the woods.
I’d strap Brooklyn in his stroller and we’d walk everywhere. Rain or shine, Brooklyn and I were walking. People were nice to me. They saw I was a good girl, a good mom. They treated me nice and helped me. I died a little each day back then.