Carmen Jenner - Welcome to Sugartown

“Elijah Cade, you’re under arrest for the mutilation of Scott Turner. You have the right to remain silent …” The officer continues to read me my rights but I don’t hear any of it. I’m too focused on Ana and the way she’s mouthing “mutilation” at me like it’s a question she thinks I can answer. I feel the officers restrain my hands and slip the cuffs into place and then I’m being hauled to my feet and carted out the door.

“Wait,” I hear Ana say behind me and my walk of shame comes to a grinding halt. “I need to report a rape.” She blurts out, and for a heartbeat no one says a thing.

The officer holding my arm yanks me around to face her. “This guy?”

“No.” Ana’s shaking like a leaf but her gaze slides over me and she steels herself, wipes her tears and says, “Scott Turner is the one who raped me, in the cane fields outside town, last night.”

The officer nearest me sighs and pushes me toward the door, and I overhear the cop who read me my rights telling Ana to follow him down to the station.

I don’t know what lies ahead of me now, but I’m bursting with pride over how fucking brave my girl is. The officer forces my head down as he guides me into the back of the paddy wagon and, for the first time in my life, I smile as I’m carted off to the station.

The next six hours of my life are a living hell.

Holly drives and we follow the police to the station where I deliver my statement of last night’s events to a man who has known me all my life, and is equally familiar with Scott Turner. I cry as I recount the drinking, the struggle and several times I have to stop to catch my breath as I tell Constable Miller about waking up alone in a cane field, about the pain lancing through my insides as I struggled to find my clothing and then walking the 2 kilometres into town to Elijah’s motel room.

Afterward, I’m taken into a room where the Constable photographs my face, the bruises on my legs and the bite over my breast. Then I’m released and taken back to the hospital where the same nurse who had set my cast and taken care of me the night of the lantern parade carries out a rape kit, takes vials of my blood to be checked for STIs and HIV/AIDS, and hands me a tiny pill to swallow to prevent an unwanted pregnancy. I’m sent for x-rays to ensure my cheekbone is not broken and then I’m given a prescription for painkillers and the all clear to head home.

The police confiscated my clothing for evidence back at the motel. I only have the paper gown I’m wearing and the oversized t-shirt and tracksuit pants Elijah dressed me in last night. The thought of staying in his clothes, inhaling his scent the entire way home turns my stomach. I’m so confused right now as to how I feel, I’m almost numb. Thankfully Holly has a change of clothes in her car and she steps out to retrieve them. I lie back against the pillow and stare at the water stains on the ceiling. For the first time today my eyes are dry but when I hear a gruff, all-too-familiar voice out in the hallway they tear up again. My heart drops through my stomach.

Not here, I think, not like this.

“Sir, you can’t just walk in there,” a nurse calls from outside my door.

“Like hell I can’t,” he booms.

My door flies back on its hinges and across the room stands my dad. I watch him take me in and then his face crumples into a mask of anguish and my big, burly, rough-as-guts and tougher than a twenty-foot crocodile father sobs. Tears stream over his ruddy, sun-weathered cheeks and he cradles his face in his huge grease-stained palms.

For a moment I have no idea what to do. The nurse is watching me for some sign as to whether she should call security. I briefly shake my head and she leaves us alone.

“I’m so sorry, Daddy,” I whisper and he crosses the room in two strides and wraps me up in his arms.

“Ah, Ana girl, this isn’t your fault.” He pulls my head to his chest, cradling his thick arms around my head the way he used to when I was a kid, making me feel as safe and protected as I did back then. We cry together until Holly comes back with the change of clothes, and then Dad pulls her into his arms and holds us both as he sobs.

I don’t need to ask how he knew we were here. News travels fast in small towns like ours. Which is part of the reason why I never wanted to tell—I can’t stand the thought of people looking at me with pity in their eyes, and I can only imagine what this does to their “Ana Belle the town bike” theory, but I’m grateful to have my dad here with me all the same.

Once I’m finally dressed and on my feet again, I thank Holly and tell her how much I love her and how thankful I am to have her in my life, and then I ride home with my dad. I close my eyes as we drive past the cane fields and then again as we drive past Elijah’s motel room.

I don’t know how I’ll continue living in this town with so many horrible memories around every corner. I don’t know how I’ll ever forgive myself for the decisions I made that night, or how I’ll forgive Elijah for the ones he made, but I’m glad now that I reported it. I don’t have room in my heart right now to think about how he’s doing behind bars or how long he’ll be there. The word “mutilation” keeps running through my mind unbidden and I can only guess what it means, but I’m hoping to god it’s not what I think it is because it would mean that Elijah, my Elijah, was as sick as Scott and it hurts too much to think about that.

I spend all day at the station knowing she’s in a room nearby, wishing I could be there to hold her hand through what comes next but knowing that I deserve this, to be locked in a cell for a very long time for what I did.

The cops have already informed me that I won’t be getting a trial. Instead, because I’m already a convicted felon with two priors, I’ll stand before a judge in some bullshit courtroom hearing and have a sentence handed down to me. I don’t give a shit about the details because, deep down, I know that though what I did was barbaric, it was also the right thing.

Thankfully, I’m in a cell alone, and I don’t have to listen to some other fuck up fart and piss and complain about how he’s innocent. Instead, I lie back on the cold metal bunk, close my eyes and pretend that I’m in that shitty motel room and Ana’s wrapped in my arms where she belongs.

Much later in the day I’m taken before the judge. Despite what my legal aid lawyer says, I plead guilty to malicious intent to harm another individual. When he asks me why I committed such a heinous crime on an “innocent” young man I laugh so hard I almost die. Then I turn to him in all seriousness and say, “What would you do to the man who brutally raped your wife?” For a half-second he just blinks back at me and I think I see pity or even understanding in his eyes, but then he lifts his gavel, glares at me like this is the last place on earth he wants to be and sentences me to one year in prison with parole for good behaviour. He brings down the gavel with a hard knock. The finality of that all too familiar sound rings in my ears and makes my heart squeeze.

I’m handcuffed again and driven for two hours in the back of a paddy wagon to Grafton Prison where I’m stripped, hosed down and some big Maori guy buzzes off my all my hair. Then I’m shoved out in the yard for playtime, where every badass motherfucker in a bad mood is eye-raping me like I’m fresh meat. This is nothing new; it’s not my first time at the fucking rodeo, but it is the first time I’ve been inside without the weight of the club at my back. MCs have connections everywhere, from prison staff to inmates, and I may be a long way from home but that doesn’t mean the Angels don’t have contacts inside this prison. If they do, I’m as good as dead.

I pour two vodka shots and slide one over to Holly before leaning back in the faded lounge chair. Dad and the dragon are out on some weekend-long bike run to the mountains and Sammy has long since gone to bed. These kinds of nights have been almost a regular occurrence for us since Elijah went away and Cooper up and left town for the city lights and the stage. Holly and Coop drove me crazy with their kissy faces and their pet nicknames, at least for the first two months; after that things began falling apart, swiftly.

Coop missed the city, he missed his band and he missed being worshiped by his groupies on the dance floor as he belted out songs from the stage and, despite wanting an out almost her entire life, Holly didn’t want to leave Sugartown. I hope that wasn’t on my account, but I suspect Elijah being behind bars and my impending trial might have had something to do with it.

Things got messy between Holly and Coop. They fought, they made up and then one day he showed up at the diner with a loaded car and an even more loaded ultimatum. Holly, being the stubborn woman she was, was determined to prove her point, so she sent him off without so much as a kiss goodbye.

“You know, I’ve been thinking,” she begins.

“No.”

“What do you mean, no? You haven’t even heard my brilliant plan.”

“And yet the answer is still no.”

“Hey, I’ll have you know I’m excellent with my hands, and I’ve never had any complaints in the sexy time department.”

I laugh. “You’re brilliant plan was that we should convert to lesbianism?”

She shrugs. “I’ll try anything once.”

“I think that’s your problem.”

Holly grabs the bottle and pours another round, “When did we get so pathetic, Ana?”