As the middle child and only girl in a family of two boys, I always felt that I had to be able to hang. I live for adventure. Confrontational like my father, I take no shit and disobey traffic laws. Unlike my brother, Craig who is beyond conservative, straight-laced and at times can be rather boring. Because he is the oldest, he sometimes tries to tell me what to do and how to do it. This contrast does not mean that I am a thrill seeker. Usually, I just can handle an array of situations better than he can. But with all heights achieved, limits are soon discovered.
I remember it like yesterday. It was around 1pm on Saturday afternoon, March 17, 1993. Bored to tears, my cousin Nicole and I were hanging out in our dorm room. After expressing our boredom for the 5th time there was a knock at the door, it was a friend of ours name Mona. “I know you’ll bitches are not going to sit in this room all day?” Mona said. This kind of language was usually ignored as we just wrote her off as being quite ghetto. Sharing our feelings, Mona then came up with a plan that involved her boyfriend, Lynn. “Lynn is working until 8:30 p.m.” she said exactly, “we can all hang out at his place and by the time he gets off; we will have a plan set on what we will be doing tonight.” She continued. Ill at ease of the options before us; Nicole and I were not sure what to do. Now don’t get me wrong, Nicole and I did want to do something other than hang out in the dorm but both of us could take Mona in very small doses. Ultimately we decided that hanging out with Mona would be the less of the two evils.
Now that the idea was agreed upon by all 3 of us, we were faced with a transportation problem. An easy answer would be for us to hail a cab. But for 3 poor college students whose income is divided totally into the two B’s categories, books and beauty, our current cash flow was non-existent. “Who could get us to Lynn’s?” Nicole said. “I can ask Craig to use his car.” I said. “Girl, you are crazy!” Nicole said sarcastically. “He just that got that car a month ago, he would never let you use that car.” She continued. “You’re right, but I am going to ask anyway.” I said. Silently I knew that there was no way in hell he would let us use his car. Not because it was brand new; it was because he sort of thought I was not that responsible. There are 2 possible reasons for this: The first, he is an overly cautious tight ass and the second, well I was wrong about the number of possible reasons.
We all got dressed and with our hopes and shiny lip gloss we walked up to the male dormitory. Once we got there, called him down to the lobby. Now, I could come up with this elaborate lie but he would see right through me. So I will be honest with him and to my surprise he said yes. I was still pleading my case when he asked, “Did you hear what I said?” “Yes, I did.” I replied. “But I cannot believe you said yes.” I said honestly. He then gave me his usually spill about being careful and not wrecking his car and off we went.
We were at Lynn’s house at 5:30 p.m. To everyone’s surprise, except Mona, Lynn was there. So for the next hour or so, Nicole and I sat and watched Lynn and Mona paw at each other like a virgin at a prison rodeo. We were sitting there and there was a knock at the door. Some guy, whom we later found out his name later, Randy, walked in. Randy seemed to be startled that we were there. He did not want to sit and continued to look at his watch. He was not there for more than 3 minutes when four dudes strolled in. This occurrence was odd but for some reason I was not scared probably because everyone seem to know each other. That soon changed when one guy said to Randy, “We good.” With that acknowledgment, Randy left. However instead of using the front door, he ran out of the back door. That action seemed peculiar at first but the events that followed only got worse. In unison, the guys all pulled out guns and demanded the dope and money from Lynn. I remember looking at Nicole, and thinking, this has to be some sort of joke. “Where are drugs? Where is the money? Lynn was not that guy. His friends can be so silly.” I though. Then one guy walked up to Lynn and cocked the shotgun he held and pointed at him and said, “We don’t have time to fuck around, where is it?” Nicole said, “Are we on candied camera?” Our attitudes soon changed when Lynn said, “It over there, in that box.” One of the guys walked over to the box in question and opened it. I cannot believe all the drugs that came out of that box. Soon after Lynn directed them to a drawer with money in amounts that I have never saw in my life. I looked at Mona for some sort of assurance that this was something that was shocking to her but to my surprise she was quite calm. She was almost a little too calm, as if she has gone through this type of thing before. As two of the guys stuffed large bags with drugs and money, the other two guys stayed with guns had their guns still pointed at us. Upon completion, one of the bag stuffers asked Lynn, “Where’s the rest?” “That’s all there is.” Lynn replied. The gunman, who had the gun pointed at Lynn, struck him in the face with fist. Lynn fell to the floor, obviously writhing in pain. “Oh baby, are you ok?” Mona said. The second gunman kept his weapon point in our direction. I then noticed Nicole began to cry. The guy who hit Lynn said, “Lynn you want to be some big time drug king, welcome to the other side of the game!” He then pulled out some sort of duct tape. Still demanding more money and drugs, the gunman began taping Lynn’s hands behind his back and his feet. One by one he made the rest of us lie on the floor and did the same to us while there were now 3 guns pointed at us. This is when I began to cry. I am not sure how the other girls felt but I felt in my heart that they were going to rape us.
They tore his place apart. They went through all through the bedrooms, the bathrooms and even the refrigerator. Displeased with the contents of the refrigerator, one of the goons said, “Lynn, you invited these pretty ladies here with nothing to feed them with! What kind of buster are you?” Among the pleading, the screaming, and the ransacking of his personal items, I cried relentlessly. There was the consuming sound of my racing heart beat rang in my ears. Since I could not physically remove myself from the situation, I tried to, at least remove my mind from it. I remember lying still on the floor. The overpowering smell of some type of floral carpet deodorizer engulfed my nostrils. Either Lynn owns a very cheap Dirt Devil or his is just a substandard housekeeper because down here on the floor had massive amounts of the un-vacuumed powder. With the position of my head, my tears stopped midstream and unable to reach the end of my face. The dampness mixed with the carpet freshener made a cake-like substance near the end of my nostrils. If, at that moment, the police would have arrived that would have thought I was a coke fiend. Since they could not find any more drugs or money they began to take the jewelry on our hands. They took a charm bracelet I wore around my neck that my grandmother gave me when I was five. They went through all of our pockets. One of the goons said that this one has money but found nothing. Nicole who was always snacked on potato chips had 3 empty Doritos bags folded in her back pocket. Just as I was entering my semi-dream state this is when the intruders started going through all of our handbags. The goons said that they were taking our car keys. This is when I begged them to give my keys back. At that moment, I was more afraid of what Craig would do to me than the robbers. I begged and begged and the robber finally gave back the keys. As they were leaving, he tossed them hitting me in the back. He then said, “Bitch, you not going to say thank you!” In a sheepish voice I said, “thank you.” They then pulled out all of the phones out of the socket and threw Lynn’s keys in the darkness outside.
We laid there for the next hour and one by one we were able to untie our hands and feet. Nicole and I left Mona with Lynn searching for his keys in the darkness and we drove straight back to campus. I tried to put on poker face so that I would not alarm him. However, I return the car back to him at 8 p.m. and the pensive look did not work. It did not take long for him to know that something was wrong. He asked what happened. He did something I did not expect. He was comforting, understanding, and more of a big brother than a parent. Though he did not give me one of his long lectures or a hard time about the incident, he never let me use his car again.
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