Shelly winced at the clang of the metal door closing and locking behind her. She was trapped in a tiny space before the second huge metal door was buzzed open and she swallowed, hating that feeling of confinement. She wondered how long she had to do this. How long she had to visit this Godforsaken place. A minimum security prison in upstate New York. Who would have ever thought she'd be making her way to this nightmare of a place every Saturday?
But how could she not? She didn't know her brother had been selling drugs...well, maybe she had known. He'd paid for her undergraduate schooling as well as her PhD in Psychology after all. It was because of him she was working at the research institute today. And she never wanted for anything. But she'd convinced herself that her brother was simply money 'smart.' She was living off the interest of the money he'd socked away for her. She lived in a spacious one bedroom in an apartment complex in Morningside Heights, drove a fully equipped Lexus, and happily worked as a lab rat for very little money, all because her big brother was money smart.
So how could she refuse his request to visit him every week and bring him a "package?" She didn't know how he had managed to wind up in a minimum security prison considering the charges against him, and she didn't know how much it cost him for the correction officers to look the other way when she handed him the "package," but he had made all the arrangements and assured her she wouldn't have any problems. And she trusted him with her life.
A female guard did the required pat down this time and put her purse on the belt to scan it. Of course they would see the package, as they'd seen for the past 6 months, but she was only a little nervous now. The first time? She'd broken into a cold sweat. Every muscle in her body had tensed and she was expecting a swarm of DEA agents to arrest her at any moment. Instead, they had cleared her and in a few minutes she was waiting for her brother in a large room with rows and rows of rectangular tables. This time was no different and soon she was sitting, looking around at the bare, pale green walls and tattered furniture, waiting for Mylo.
Mylo Thomas. Her big brother. He was 10 years older than she. He'd been a basketball star in college. They'd retired his jersey, number 47. She'd kept a scrapbook of the many articles about him. He knew he wasn't good enough for the pros, but he'd considered traveling oversees to play for a few years. He told her it was a good way to see the world. Shelly had hoped to go with him. But all of that had faded away after the "incident" in junior high school. She'd been in the 8th grade, only 12 years old. She was an attractive girl, or so everyone told her. Average height, average weight, with flawless milk chocolate skin, thick dark lashes, silky black hair, typically parted into braids and decorated with a number of different colored bows, and large round eyes with pupils the color of onyx. No one knew where she and Mylo had picked up eyes so dark. They'd never appeared in the family before. And yet she and Mylo had the same eyes...they seemed destined to be connected from birth.
She'd stayed behind at school to rehearse for a play with her drama teacher. Mylo was a little late picking her up and the school was pretty much empty. She waited in the auditorium with her teacher. Mylo didn't want her to wait for him alone on the front steps. She thought she'd be safe. Mylo told her she'd be safe. So she was unsuspecting when her teacher called her backstage. Totally clueless when he grabbed her, pushed her against a wall, and lifted her jumper to shove his hands into her panties. He hurt her, jamming his fingers in and out, his nails scrapping the walls of her flesh, his thick glasses blocking her vision from all else. She whimpered, struggled, tried to evade his brutal touch, but he was much stronger, determined, cruel. She didn't know she was crying until the salty tears wet her lips. It hurt. He had his other hand on her budding breast, pinching it mercilessly. Where was Mylo? Where was Mylo? The question kept running through her head.
"Bear?"
She heard his voice, opened her mouth to scream, but her teacher clamped a hand over it. She tasted blood as he ground his hand against her lips.
"Bear, you here?"
She didn't know where she got the strength to think clearly, but she bit the hand covering her mouth, gulped in air, and screamed. She heard his heavy footsteps, could hear him vault onto the stage. Her teacher was frozen with fear. He was one of the few male teachers at the inner-city junior high school, but he was no match for Mylo. Where he was wire thin, Mylo was well developed and muscular. Where he stood only 5 feet 8, Mylo stood 6 feet 4. Where he had very soft, almost feminine hands, Mylo had hands that could easily palm a basketball. Where he had gone to an exclusive prep school and an ivy league college, Mylo had been born and raised on the streets of the inner-city and had clawed his way out. Mr. Reid was in for a rude awakening.
His weight was lifted from her and she heard a grunt as the man hit the floor. Mylo was on him and she saw a flurry of punches and kicks. The man whimpered for a while, but then he was silent. When he was absolutely still, so still it made Shelly nervous, Mylo suddenly shut down his fury and turned to her.
"Pooh Bear, you all right?"
It was a name he'd call her from birth. He claimed she looked all soft and cuddly, just like Winne the Pooh, when she was born. But she didn't smile at the term of endearment this time. She stood, silent, trembling, crying. He gathered her into his arms as he made the phone call. They waited for the police. She watched as they arrested her teacher. The rest of that night was a fuzzy memory. She remembered the hospital, poking, prodding, people invading her private spaces. She remembered them giving her something that tasted like cough syrup. And then she woke up the next morning in her own bed.
She stopped talking for three months. She heard Mylo often fighting with her parents about sending her to a therapist. Finally he arranged for it himself against their wishes. She figured he must have started selling drugs around that time. His plans to travel oversees were never discussed again. And his job in an accounting firm, she realized much later, could not have paid for one of the top child psychologists in New York City. So he had to have another source of income. Perhaps that was the reason her parents cut him out of their lives. And she wasn't sure how she'd come to live with him, but suddenly he was her legal guardian and she saw her parents on holidays. Of course, she didn't figure any of this out until she was graduating from her private prep school and on her way to New York University. Honestly, she thought her parents had been disappointed that she'd let that teacher molest her and didn't want her anymore. Even her psychologist had not been able to erase that thought from her head. Needless to say, she wasn't close to her parents anymore and spoke with them infrequently.
When she returned from graduate school, she finally asked Mylo about the money. He was still at the same accounting firm. There was no way he could afford the trips to South Africa, Brazil, Rome, Japan, Sydney. He took a month long trip to some new part of the world every year and usually took his woman of the week with him. He wore $3,000 suits, $500 shoes, a huge diamond stud in his ear and a thick platinum bracelet on his wrist. He drove a maxed out Lincoln Navigator and owned three motorcycles, a BMW and a Jaguar. He'd bought and renovated a brownstone in Harlem and the interior had been featured in some decorating magazine. There was no way he could live that way on $45,000 a year. And she didn't need a graduate degree to figure that out.
He avoided the question, changed the subject, and then finally told her the less she knew the better. Instead, he asked about her love life, or the lack thereof. How could she tell him she never wanted another man to touch her? She'd tried to work through that in therapy, but to no avail. Her therapist told her she'd dive into romance when she was ready. And she was content with her work for now.
Then Mylo was arrested. Serious drug charges that his team of lawyers managed to plead down. They couldn't confiscate his assets because everything was in her name, and they could find no connection between them other than blood. He had thought of everything...other than the fact that she needed him. Needed to lean on him, needed his strength, needed his support. And now he'd left her all alone, except for a 30 minute visit every Saturday.
She brushed a strand of silky black hair from her cheek as she waited, glancing at the cameras in the room. She wondered how he was doing in here. Was he safe? She'd heard about rape in prison, was he in danger? God she missed him. She heard the door across the room buzz and watched as a correction officer escorted him in. She smiled, stood, and flew into his arms. Her smile deepened just a bit as he buried his face into her hair and inhaled deeply, his huge arms embracing her tightly. Technically they weren't allowed to hug like this, but as always they had the room to themselves. She swallowed back tears and held on for just a moment longer before he set her down.
"Hey Pooh Bear." He looked down at her, brushing another strand of silky black hair from her cheek.
She looked up into a face that looked remarkably like her own and swallowed the sadness that was trapped in her throat.
"Hey Mylo. You okay?"
He chuckled, "yea, I'm okay. You?"
"Working hard as usual. That idiot you have living in your Brownstone hit Jimmy up for another five grand."
