Broken to Brave

I’m laying on a thin mattress on a concrete slab listening to other girls in the cell cry and freak out about their public intox charges.  One of them was a student here on a visa, so she had a little more right to be obnoxiously upset.  But they were going home in the morning.  As I laid there, annoyed and terrified and hungry and cold, I started making plans for what would happen when I went to prison.  My mind was reeling with potential people who could raise the baby I was carrying.

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The successful candidate would be financially stable, be a role model, and be at a point in their lives where they could take a baby.  And, of course, they’d have to be willing.  Out of all of the people I knew, I couldn’t come up with one person who checked all four boxes.  Just a couple months before, I’d thought I’d hit my rock bottom.  I thought that Jay’s confession and subsequent incarceration with no short timeline was the worst.  But lying in a jail cell trying to think about who would raise my baby was an all-time low.  

 

I had taken Jay’s place as the Driver in the operation, and he had taken his cousin’s place as Robber.  When his cousin moved to Minnesota, I suggested to Jay that I be the one to drive the car.  I remember his reluctance and my hurried reassurance that “I look like Mary Poppins!  Nobody will ever suspect me!”  Never once did I aspire to be a modern day Bonnie & Clyde, but that’s how it went down.  Well, that’s the gist, anyway.