Authors: Nikki Turner
GOOD GIRL GONE BAD
As Yarni approached the stoplight, upon noticing a woman
about to cross the street, she snapped out of her thoughts.
On the medium strip of Jefferson Davis Highway stood a young woman wearing an old 1992 multicolored suede jacket that was three sizes too big. It was practically hanging open off of her shoulders and she had on nothing under it but her panties, bra and some fluorescent orange socks. Yarni felt sorry for her as she watched the girl look both ways and then drop her head before putting both her feet on the pavement to cross the street.
Damn, I hate to see a sister out here like that. It's almost 100
degrees and she hasn't got a clue. I would call the fire department because she's about to burn up. I remember I used to have a coat like that. Cara and I drove to Potomac Mills and got coats just a like. She and I used to be sho-nuff road dogs, now we don't even speak. Funny how you can be somebody's best friend one day, and one incident can show you their true colors. I wonder why she hung around me so long if she really didn't care for me.
The light changed before the girl was finished crossing the street. Yarni waited for the girl to get to the other side and she pulled off. As soon as she pulled off, she looked in the rear view mirror and then looked again. I know that walk from somewhere. She made a U-turn. When she got back down to the stoplight, the girl was lying on the ground. She pulled her car in a Chinese restaurant parking lot. She opened the door and hopped out of the car, as tears formed in her eyes. "Cara, oh my God?" She put her arms around Cara. Cara couldn't look at Yarni. She jerked away.
"Cara, I am not going to hurt you. Just please let me help you." Cara only sobbed.
"Yarni, I am soo sorry, for everything," Cara cried.
"I know, Cara," Yarni said to Cara in an understanding tone.
"Now, please just get in my car." Cara shook her head, "How can you honestly help me after all I've done to hurt you?"
Yarni was squatting in front of her. She ignored Cara's question. "Cara, please just get in my car. I don't want anybody to see you out here like this. Now, please!" Yarni said as she cried herself.
"Yarni, you don't understand. I think you're blind to the fact of everything I've done to you. I'm sorry, Yarni. I'm sorry." No matter how much Yarni insisted for Cara to get in the car, Cara repeatedly told Yarni, she was sorry.
Yarni tried to be strong for Cara, "Cara Ann Bloomfeild, I am demanding that you get off these streets half naked." At that moment, Cara realized just exactly what she was wearing. "Oh, my God, where are my clothes? All I remember is I was getting high with two white guys, and the next thing I know I woke up laying on top of my coat."
Cara said to Yarni as she wiped her tears, "Yarni, I have to tell you because I know it's probably killing you, but I was the one who trashed your condo."
Yarni covered her mouth and just cried. She got up and walked off. She couldn't believe her once best friend in the whole world, had actually hated her so much. They both cried.
Cara got up and zipped up her coat and walked over to where Yarni was standing.
"I am sorry, Yarni, I swear I am so sorry. I'll do what I have to do to repay you," Cara cried.
"You mean that?" She raised her voice at Cara. "Do you really mean that?" Under any other circumstances, Yarni would have probably hit anybody else up side the head, but she just couldn't lash out on Cara.
Cara nodded her head timidly and said, "Yes, anything Yarni."
Yarni grabbed Cara's arm and pulled her over to the car's side view mirror. "Look at yourself? You look a shitty mess! Now what you're going to do is get your frail hind parts in the dag-gone car." Yarni said, pointing to the car. "Right Now!" She opened up the car door and pushed Cara in the car. Yarni ran around the other side, got into the car and drove off. Yarni pulled down the mirror in the roof of the car because Cara was afraid to look at herself in the side view mirror. "Look at yourself." Cara had no choice but to look. She slowly glanced at herself in the mirror and screamed. "Oh, my God." They were both quiet. Yarni pulled up into the gas station parking lot on the corner of Maury and Jefferson Davis. "Stay here." Cara shook her head and watched as Yarni went to get the key for the bathroom from the gas attendant. Yarni popped the trunk, grabbed her gym bag and instructed Cara to go into the bathroom and put the shorts, t-shirt and sneakers on. Cara did as she was told. While Cara was in the bathroom, she went back into the store. She knocked on the door, "Here Cara open up, here is a toothbrush, toothpaste, soap and deodorant." Cara finally was dressed. Yarni was waiting in the car.
"I am glad it fits." Yarni said.
"Yarni, it's a shame. You know I was always a size 15/16 and I looked inside the label of these shorts and they are a 5/6. I stared in the mirror and what used to be my voluminous butt, is gone. I've even lost weight in my face. How did you even recognize me? I know I look a mess. If the tables were turned, I wouldn't even allow me to be in this car. I was really smelling, and for you to allow me to even sit on your leather seats as dirty and stinky as I was. I thank you so much, Yarni." Yarni didn't respond as she pulled in the McDonald's parking lot. She ordered Cara something to eat and herself a drink.
"Thank you for allowing me to see what I was letting drugs do to me."
"Yeah, well what are you going to do to stop it?"
"I don't know, I hadn't realized it had gotten this out of control. I thought I was handling it. I don't know what to do, or who to go to because my family has totally disowned me." She shook her head in disgust as she dropped her head. "I even lost cus-tody of Lil Ronny, I lost my house. I lost everything." Yarni reached her hand out of the window to grab Cara's food and their drinks as she passed Cara the food, she asked her,
"Cara, you never even smoked cigarettes, better yet used any drugs when we were friends, so how did it get to this?"
"Girl, I just got caught up. Right after we fell out, Mike got locked up and he started snitching on everybody in sight. He told on everybody he dealt with around Richmond, about thirty dudes, and they only took like ten years off of his twenty-seven year sentence, and you have to do day for day. If you're sentenced to three years, you have to do every day. So, he continued to rat on people, anybody and everybody he knew or heard of. They reduced his time again, taking three more years off. See, that's the part I don't understand, how they make you tell on all of them people and yet, still make you do years. After he got another reduction, that still wasn't good enough, so he was putting pressure on me to go around to clubs in D.C. and North Carolina meeting dudes who look like they getting any type of money to get their numbers talk to them and find out details, where they be, what they drive, what they do or just whatever information I can get and turn it over to the proper authorities.
"And these dudes were telling you all their business?" Yarni asked in a surprised tone.
"Yarni, you know what a dude would do for a big butt and a smile! They pour out their whole game plan, trying to impress me, plus I wasn't from there, which meant, "new coochie!" Chile please!! And, Yarni, I put my work in faithfully for him, but it was never enough. I wasn't cut out for that doing time with a nigga type shit. And, you know this from when I used to tell you, but I tried being there for him, but when I wasn't at home to take his calls or on time when visiting hours started, because maybe I was putting in work the night before for him, I was cussed out, called everything, but a child of God. The whole scenario just began to frustrate me, because it was NEVER enough to get him released. I started feeling useless, pathetic, and hopeless. So, I started smoking weed, staying high all day, everyday. Then lacing the weed with coke, and shortly after just leaving the weed out and doing coke, 24-7, I just got tricked up in the game. And whenever I wasn't high, I would think about you, and resent-ment would really set in when I thought how you held it together running up and down the road to see Des for all those years and just being a devoted friend to him along with everything you was faced with in your own life. Taking all your strengths into consideration, I began to hate you. When I heard that you'd finally gotten your townhouse, I couldn't stand the thought that you were faced with almost the same struggle as I was, if not even worse, and you prevailed, and I was just smoked out!" Cara covered her face as the tears rolled down her eyes uncontrollably. "And to top it off, Mike met some girl through the prison's pen pal program and married her right before he came home.
When he was released, we saw each other. He rolled up on me in his brand new Lexus, that he got from hustling. Can you believe he's right in this same town where he told on a rack of people not even three years ago? And these same local cats is still buying and selling drugs to his police ass. He said, he'd lost all respect for me because I'd looked so bad and had let drugs get the best of me. Well, I told him that I'd lost respect for him too because he wasn't a man, he couldn't do his time without bringing other people, who had nothing to do with his case down. He beat me like he was fighting a man, and called me a
"crack head, trick bitch." I told him, with what little energy I had that he was a coward and a snitch, and that he can beat me, but while he's beating me he better be looking over his shoulder because somebody may be coming to kill him. He only got madder and stomped me with his Timbs.
"Damn, Cara. I feel so bad for you. I had no idea that things had gotten so rough for you. But, Cara, you got to bind out that evil spirit, that curse, that addiction in the name of Jesus, Girl.
You've got to stay in the word." She reached into the back seat of her car and grabbed her Bible and gave it to Cara. "And on your knees in prayer and believe in your heart that it can be done. Take my word, Cara, that all things are possible through Christ who will strengthen you." Just then, they pulled up at the Good Samaritan Inn on Hull Street, which was a place that reha-bilitated people, provided them with a structured environment, meetings, shelter and helped them find employment.
"Cara, I was in route to do something very important when I saw you. These people here will be able to help you get yourself back on track. My boss is a personal friend with the coordinator, so they will call me if you get out of line. Don't disappoint me.
I called while you were in the restroom, so they are expecting you.
"I won't disappoint you because after everything shiesty that I have done to you, you've found it in your heart to get me out the gutter and back onto the right road. Thank you so much, Yarni."
Yarni didn't want to get emotional, so she never elaborated on what Cara had just said to her. She told Cara, "I won't be able to bring you any of the things you need in here because I will be preoccupied for the next few days, but I am going to get Steph to bring you some personal items and a couple of outfits. They're not going to allow you to go out for the next thirty days." Cara shook her head. "I understand Yarni, I owe you my life.
Thank you."
Yarni drove off. She had no idea exactly how much she loved Cara in spite of everything Cara had done to her. Yarni had always said to herself that if she ever seen Cara, after everything she's done from throwing dirt on her name to sending Des letters revealing every foul thing Yarni had ever done, to calling her job trying to get her fired, if she were to see her lying on the side of the road dying and needed one drop of water, she wouldn't even spit on her. That's how much animosity she had towards her. Now, after seeing Cara, she'd realized exactly how much God had ministered her heart. Yarni knew that it wasn't her who had the will and the power to put her own feelings aside to assist Cara. It was God. This was another confirmation of God's miracle working powers.
Meanwhile at the Haynesville Correctional Center on June 30th 1999.
"Desmond Taylor, B&B," said a fat black correctional officer with sweat rolling down his face.
Des heard the announcement while he was playing chess.
"What is going on?" He said.
The correctional officer arrogantly said, B&B, Bed and Baggage.
"Where am I going? They don't usually transfer in broad day-light." Des asked suspiciously.
"Are you going home or not?" The correctional officer asked.
Des grabbed his state issued property, mattress, blanket and sheets. He didn't know what type of stunt was being pulled. He gave all his items he'd just bought from the canteen two days before away. The only thing he kept, was his sweat suit that he purchased from the J.C. Penney Catalog. The clothes he wore in were too small. He'd gained forty pounds, all muscles from working out over the decade he'd been there.
He walked through the gates. He saw Yarni leaning on her black convertible Jaguar waiting for him. The gates shut behind him. He dropped to the ground and started thanking God. He stayed on his knees for ten minutes. Once he finished praising God, he gazed up, and Yarni was standing right there. He hugged and kissed her. They hopped in her car, and drove off.
THE BEST THINGS COME TO THOSE
WHO WAIT
Yarni and Des ended up in D.C. where she was taking him shopping.
They enjoyed a quiet lunch together also. Yarni explained to Des the information that Gloria had produced.
"Didn't I tell you that I was going to get you out? It may have taken me a decade, but I came through," Yarni said.