By 7:00 a.m. we were seated in Court Room C waiting for the judge to hear charges against those arrested overnight. Most of them were public drunks, vagrants, and homeless people with nowhere to go and had been picked up for sleeping on park benches or in doorways. When Joshua was ushered into the courtroom my heart nearly stopped; he looked haggard and frightened. I managed a small smile and nodded to him, hoping to buoy him. Joshua faced the judge who read the charges against him and asked him to enter a plea. He had been assigned a public defender who entered a plea of guilty. Bail was set at $5000, high for a first-time offender, but his blood alcohol had been three times the legal limit. In this introduction to the legal world of drunk driving, I learned the more intoxicated the driver, the higher the bail.
Candler followed me into the bail bondsman’s office where I gave him cash for the bond and sign the agreement. Jason was given the privilege of one call after his arraignment.
“Hi, Mom,” he said, “did you get the bail money yet?”
“I did. We’re already at the jail and they say you’ll be released soon,” I told him.
“I’m so hungry. My blood sugar’s dropped and I feel sick,” he said.
“I’ll see if they can get you something,” I promised. “Just hang in there, you’ll be out soon.”
From the likes of the waiting room in the city jail, no one was in a hurry to release anyone. The only thing that seemed to be happening was shift changes and breaks. When I first announced our purpose for being there, we were met with disconnected disdain; after all, these corrections officers saw hundreds of people pass through their doors daily. For them the procedure was robotic; for me, gut wrenching.
By the second hour I explained that my son was hypoglycemic and had been in jail all night without any food. They told me that he’d be given a bologna sandwich for lunch and that I need not worry.
By hour four, the desk attendant had changed and knew nothing about my son and we had to start all over. I offered to bring in food for him, but was told no food, however if I had money they would see he got it and he could use the vending machine. I gave them $10.
My concern for my hypoglycemic child grew larger with every hour. My anxiety and despair looked like a Chia pet in time-lapse, sprouting, budding and blossoming to its full capacity in a matter of hours. And yet time passed like maple syrup tapped from a tree, its slow drip filling the bucket of time. By 5:00 p.m. I began to come unglued.
Ten hours in a city jail waiting room gave me way too much time to chastise myself for my own sins and reflect on the sins of my father who had started the whole mess.
The troubled child tattoo my parents had inked on my forehead as a young girl had proven hard to cover with even the best concealer. I’m not saying I didn’t earn it; but honestly, by the time I came along, all the good roles were taken.
My eldest sister had claimed the right side of the known universe early in life. Her reincarnation of the Virgin Mary routine allowed her to appear sweet, compliant and dutiful; always a winner with parents. My highly creative middle sister took the far left side of the Milky Way. As an astral-projecting white witch, her routine included regular alien abductions, communing with her spirit guides and dancing with woodland fairies in the thicket that lay across the street from my parents’ home. My mother, an unrealized grand dame of the theater, seamlessly blended Jacqueline Kennedy, June Cleaver and Mommy Dearest into an elegant, domestic diva with a tendency for the terrifying.
Admittedly, my early years, including my first two marriages, had been a grave disappointment to my mother, not to mention me. I might not have ever gotten tied up with Daniel and the whole blue collar thing if it hadn’t been for our family’s code of silence and my father’s lack of affection. These lethal gases created an electromagnetic field that drew my tiny, almost invisible moon of a self into the planetary orbit of almost any male that gave me attention. The men only had two requirements: 1) they had to be from a really screwed up background like me and 2) they had to be very bad for me. One can see that my disturbing need for self-destruction began exceptionally early in life. I would do almost anything to feel loved, and love meant being abused; that old subconscious doing its job again, keeping my known universe intact.
This twisted concoction turned lethal on October 10, 1971.
It was during the early days of my preaching period, which began in January of 1970 after I experienced a miraculous conversation with the Real Jesus, not the fake plastic one our Baptist church had been telling me about all my life.
People are always saying that things happen for a reason. I guess when the board of our Baptist church built their new multi-million dollar sanctuary and forgot to include a cross; it was because God was trying to point me in another direction. That little omission was the proverbial straw. I told my parents I had had enough, pouring out all that guilt from the pulpit every Sunday, those “good girls” in the balcony looking all pious, and no cross as a focal point for my disassociation.
“I won’t be going there anymore,” I said, knowing the wrath of Khan would come down on me hard. My father tried in his gentle way to nudge me in the right spiritual direction, “Then you’d better find a *!*#! church and get in it!”
I did as commanded. It was the beginning of something wonderful — perhaps the first wonderful thing that had ever happened to me. Who knew that obedience could bring blessings?