Ona Gritz

Word Count 1728

“You’re not pregnant too, are you, baby?” my sister Angie teased.

I was on winter break from my freshman year of college, and my dad and I had arrived in San Francisco from New York hours earlier to visit her and her new husband Ray.

We wandered a rundown patch south of Market in desperate search of a bathroom. Finding no better options, we ducked into the Greyhound Station where I raced to the women’s room. 

“Better?” my dad asked after I found them all huddled together on one of the few benches that didn’t hold a sleeping drunk or mumbling addict. 

“Much.” 

“Good,” Ray said. “Let’s get out of here.” 

We came so close to slipping out the door Ray held open and having the simple visit we’d planned. 

“Where do you think you’re going, Angie?” 

The voice belonged to someone pleased with himself and entertained by the coincidence. I turned, expecting a round of awkward introductions. Ray shaking the hand of one of Angie’s old boyfriends, the guy acting shocked and impressed by her beach ball of a belly. Instead, a uniformed police officer began reading my sister her rights.

“What’s going on?” my dad broke in. 

“What’s going on is this young lady didn’t show up for a court appearance on a drug charge,” the cop said, giving her a smug little smile. “Isn’t that right, Angie?” 

“I cleared that up,” she told him, but he just talked over her, continuing his recitation where he left off. 

“You have the right to an attorney. If you can’t afford one…” 

Ignoring him, Angie looked to my dad. “It was my seizure meds,” she explained. “They come in this huge prescription bottle I hate carrying around, so I had them in a sandwich bag. I already told that to the cop who decided to confiscate it from me.” She searched my dad’s face, as though, by believing her, he could fix this. “I cleared it up,” she said again, turning to the officer. 

“All I know is there’s an outstanding warrant.”

How did he know that, I wondered vaguely. Had he seen her mugshot in a binder somewhere? Had he been watching and waiting for her?

“Is this a joke?” I asked as he stepped behind Angie, clipped handcuffs onto her wrists, then guided her toward an empty bench. The rest of us followed. “It isn’t funny.” I kept prattling, though I meant to keep quiet. “I can’t believe this is happening...” 

When the officer left us to call in the arrest, I looked at Ray to see if he thought we should all try to bolt, despite the handcuffs. He stayed seated between us, one hand draped over my shoulders, the other on my sister’s knee. 

“I’m sorry, Daddy,” Angie said, though clearly I was the one who should apologize for dragging us into the godforsaken station. 

“It’s not legal,” Ray told us. “Handcuffing a pregnant woman like that with her hands behind her.” 

I glanced across him at Angie sitting so far forward to make room for her bound hands, I worried she’d topple. “You okay?” 

She shrugged and rolled her eyes. 

“Well, we’re just gonna have to hang tight,” the officer came back to tell us. “I’m expecting a return call from the station.” 

“This isn’t right,” my dad said. 

But the guy just plopped down next to him, as if we were all simply waiting to board the same bus. 

“It’s not right,” my dad said again. “The kid’s on medication. That’s not a crime.” 

“We’ll see about that,” the cop answered, lacing his hands behind his head. 

“We’ll see about that,” I mimicked under my breath. 

Fear and rage are close-knit cousins, I learned that night. When the cop stood and moved across the room to the window, I found myself trailing him. 

“That’s not legal, what you just did,” I heard myself say. “Handcuffing a pregnant woman behind her back. You’re the one who’s going to be in trouble when this is over.” 

He stared, appearing calm but for the way his nostrils flared. Then he began to scream. “You’re an idiot. You don’t know anything. You don’t know a fucking thing.” 

For a moment, I thought he might hit me. Instead, he stormed out of the station. All the more shaken, I watched through the glass as he leaned into his car to pull out the radio on its stretchy cord and speak into it. Before long, the image blurred, my old habit of crying whenever I got yelled at taking hold. 

Stop this, I silently pleaded. Let us go. One prayer to the god of ludicrous situations, one to the suppressor of teenage sass. Help me stop making this worse. 

Snuffling, I took a seat next to my dad. 

“What’s wrong, O.? What just happened?” 

The sobs started as I admitted how the cop had ranted, calling me an idiot. “I am an idiot,” I moaned. “And I’m so sorry I got us into this.”

“All you did was have to pee,” Angie was kind enough to say. 

As my dad held me and patted my back, it almost felt like we’d be okay. That I just needed this good cry before we could walk out the door and continue our evening. But then our captor returned, and my dad leapt up, pulling his own small bottle of pills from his breast pocket.  

“Here! You want to make another illegal arrest, you son of a bitch?” he fumed, shaking his medicine in the cop’s face. 

In a flash, the guy had his hand on my dad’s throat. “You don’t know who you’re dealing with.” he snarled. 

“Stop,” I shouted, jumping to my feet. 

But he held on, muttering threats and tightening his fingers on my daddy’s neck. “Come on, man,” Ray said in his reasonable way. “Let the old guy go.” 

He is old, I thought as I stood there, helpless. He’s sixty-two and he’s going to die right here, choked to death in front of us. 

“Stop,” I wailed again. 

Reluctantly, the cop released my dad, but only to snap handcuffs on him too. Too soon, our party was severed in half, bail set at $5,000 or $500 coupled with the deed to a house. 

In the hotel room that became our think tank for the next few hours, I sat cross-legged on one of the beds while Ray stretched out on the other. 

“Do you have $500?” I asked. 

Ray stared at the ceiling, as though the solution to our troubles would appear in the plaster if he concentrated hard enough. “Yeah, that I can come up with.” 

“Well, I’ll just call my mom and tell her she needs to wire us the deed to our house.” 

“It has to be property in California.”

“It does? Shit. What if she goes into labor?”

 “Could happen.” Ray sighed. “What about your other sister? Don’t they have a house somewhere up north?” 

“They rent it.” 

Defeated, we fell silent. Ray turned out the light and I sat there, haunted by the image of my dad being choked. Again, I saw how his eyes grew wide, watched him swallow once, then set his fleshy chin firm against the assault. I wondered what he was doing right now. All I knew of jail I’d learned from the cop shows he liked to watch. Meanwhile, Angie was trapped in another bleak cell. I imagined her long fingers wrapped around the bars, knuckles whitening as she tightened her grasp with each contraction. 

Figuring I could think more clearly if I rested a while, I lay down and willed myself back to our last amazingly ordinary visit when Angie’s pregnancy was still a sweet secret she’d only shared with Ray and me. I recalled hamming it up for the camera in front of their trailer, and visiting our mom’s old friend Susan at her lovely home across the bay. 

“Ray,” I burst, bolting upright. “I know who we can ask.” 

I didn’t have Susan’s number and couldn’t even come up with her last name. We had to call my mom, but Ray convinced me to wait until morning, so as not to alarm her. In fact, he felt we shouldn’t trouble her with what was going on at all. “We thought we’d see if Susan and Eric could meet us for brunch,” I finally told her the next day, having rehearsed with Ray. “We’ve got nothing else planned this afternoon.” 

“What a nice idea.” The familiar sound of my mom’s voice nearly undid me. “How is everything?” 

“Great. Angie’s about ready to pop. So, um...can I have their number?” 

She went to find her address book, and I glanced at Ray who nodded encouragingly.  

“Let’s see now,” my mom murmured, riffling pages. She gave me the number, then asked to talk to my dad. 

“Everyone’s waiting in the car,” I told her, earning a thumbs up from Ray. 

Thankfully, Susan’s husband Eric answered on the first ring. 

“That’s a lot to ask of someone,” he said, after my rushed account of the nightmare we found ourselves in. Still, he met us at the courthouse, deed in hand. 

After an endless hour of waiting, Angie was returned to us, cursing and, just as we’d feared, in labor. My dad wasn’t in great shape either with a new worrisome tremor, small but constant nods of his head. 

Naturally, he was surprised to see Eric. “He’s our hero,” I explained, making both men blush.  

After my dad’s embarrassed thank you, Eric quickly left. We piled into Ray’s car and headed to the hospital where my dad and I were left in a waiting room with posters of plump babies on the walls and piles of outdated magazines on the tables. I squeezed close to him, awed by and grateful for how he’d stood up for us against that terrifying cop. 

“Was it awful?” I asked. 

“Well, I wouldn’t say it was the best night I ever had,” he said, his head still nodding, as though agreeing with every thought that crossed his mind. I laid my head on his shoulder and dozed for a while. 

Finally, Ray appeared in the doorway, wearing scrubs and the goofiest of grins. “Hey, Grandpa, Auntie. Come meet my son.” 

“This is worth everything we went through,” my dad said. 

Ona's new memoir, Everywhere I Look, is about sisterhood, longing, true crime, and family secrets. Her nonfiction has appeared in Brevity, Dorothy Parker's Ashes, The Guardian, The New York Times, The Utne Reader, and been named Notable in The Best American Essays. She teaches creative writing to teenagers with disabilities.