While holding my mug shot [the officer] handcuffs me and then he puts the front shackle on my ankles, which makes it very hard for me to move, so he helps me into the back seat of their squad car, and while they do the same thing to my partner, while listening, I learn her name is Patricia. I wonder: Is she just as scared as me? Is she an addict like me? What’s her charges? She looks like a baby. 

As the officer helps her in the car, I notice that the tears are pouring down her face, instantly my heart goes out too her and I don’t feel my fear. 

I can’t help but to say to her, “It’s going to be okay, don’t cry.” 

She says, “I’m trying not to.” 

While sobbing she asks me have I been upstate before. 

I tell her, “No but I hear its better up there than here— the air, the food… and although you’re locked up you’re allowed more freedom.” 

She says, “Promise me that you won’t leave me.” 

I asked her, how old was she? She replied 17. I asked her, was those her sisters and brothers in the picture she held in her hand? She said, “No, they are my three children.” I thought to myself 17 with three children. UNBELIEVABLE. 

I asked her what she was in for. She said “Manslaughter.” I couldn’t believe what she just said. She then explained to me that her children’s father was 20 years her senior and used to beat her every day, started when she was four months pregnant with their first born and when he started beating her kids, which in the end she lost custody of them, she made a vow that the next time he raises his hands to beat her she would kill him and she did just that. 

I wondered: Would or could I ever commit a crime like that? I asked her, how much time did she get? She said 25 years to life. I almost fainted but instead I shed tears for the innocence lost and stolen from this child and for the childhood she never had. 

I would learn later that she was one of thousands that I would meet on my journey to finding myself again, while at Betty’s house.