Dutch Point

Chapter 1 Andrew The glare of the sun shines through my eyelashes as my body lies limp and numb. The sound of my heart beats through my ears like a samba drum as purple, red, and orange circles and squares dart across the inside of my eyelids. A tug and pull to my right, another to my left. Voices echo. The smell of cigarette smoke mixed with the strong scent of spices and urine lingers in the air. “This guy is bleeding badly. Give me some more gauze!” a male voice says with a slight Spanish accent. “What was he thinking coming near Dutch Point without the police? This is a crazy neighborhood,” a second voice says. The two voices speak to each other as the audio in my head fades in and out. I try to see what’s going on, but everything is black. The voices fade as I hear the footsteps of others who gather around me. In the distance a woman is speaking on a portable radio. I try to pick up pieces of her conversation over the constant ringing sound in my ear. “Is that the police? Um, what was that?” I say. A mellow feeling comes over me. The man with the accent says to me, “I gave you a shot to help ease the pain a little.” I swallow and sigh deeply. “Sergeant, we have two down: one critical and one fatal. We also have the shooter in custody,” the female voice says, now much closer than before. “You ID this guy?” the woman asks. I try to open my mouth to let them know he ran inside the apartment to the girl. “The name on the badge is Andrew Edwards, DCF Hartford,” one of the voices says. That’s me! What’s going on? Hey! Hey! “He’s shaking. Give him a little more morphine.” The voices become distorted and out of tune. Chapter 2 Madeline Madeline Williams, a petite African American woman with a medium complexion, walks out of the labor and delivery department of St. Francis Hospital. She takes one final look behind her to see if the nurse is following her and then hurries onto the empty elevator. Inside the elevator she presses the button for the main lobby. She leans her right shoulder and head against the wall while her left hand rubs her basketball-sized belly. The last thing she wants to do is leave the hospital, but she knows what her body needs, and there is no way she can find it inside the hospital. She zips up the oversized jacket over her hospital gown and walks out of the elevator toward the main entrance. Madeline heads down Collins Street toward Sigourney Square Park in Hartford’s Asylum Hill neighborhood, unaware that she is walking into history. Her footsteps overlap the likes of Mark Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe, both of whom lived in Lords Hill as it was called in their time. Asylum Hill was the name given to the neighborhood in the 1800s after Dr. Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and Laurent Clerc established the first American School for the Deaf. The steeples of Asylum Hill Congregational Church and St. Joseph’s Cathedral shoot high into the clouds and watch over the forever-changing Lords Hill. The ravages of drugs and violence obscure the beauty of the neighborhood. Hours from delivery, Madeline craves one last taste of heroin before the baby’s arrival. She enters the park and heads toward a sitting area in the far right corner where a group of men is socializing. In the distance a little girl no more than four years old is climbing high on the monkey bars, no adult within a twenty-yard radius. A tall, athletically built black male detaches from the group in the corner of the park and heads toward Madeline. She watches him cover his smooth-shaven bald head with the black hood of his sweatshirt and then light up a cigarette. When he is five yards away, they make eye contact. As he passes her he whispers, “Smoke, smoke.” She turns with a look of desperation as he strides by. “You got smack?” Madeline asks. “Follow me,” he says. He heads toward the monkey bars and screams, “Alizè, let’s go.” Alizè cautiously makes her way to the ground by herself and runs behind the bald-headed guy and Madeline. They walk down the driveway of what appears to be a condemned Victorian home. The paint is chipping off its textured masonry, the original stained glass windows are broken out, and the beautiful ornamental shingles are falling off the roof. “Go inside with your mother,” the bald-headed guy tells Alizè. Madeline follows him into the dark basement of the building. The floor is wet, and there is a very damp and stale smell. The man directs Madeline to a room and tells her to hang tight as he closes the door behind her. She hears a click and turns to see that the door is locked from the outside. Madeline stands in the middle of the room. It is furnished with only a stained twin mattress with no sheets and a milk crate next to the bed serving as a side table. The walls have water damage, and the drywall is sagging and breaking apart. She slowly guides herself down to the bed, twitching with excitement, knowing that her chase of the dragon will soon continue. She lies there with her hand rubbing her belly and begins to think of her first date with smack. With her eyes closed she is taken back to the summer of her thirteenth birthday. It was her last day of school and her second time repeating the fifth grade. On her way home from school, her aunt Hattie picked her up and drove her directly to Union Station in downtown Hartford. She was handed a packed bag of clothes, one hundred dollars, and a one-way ticket to Meridian, Mississippi. She really didn’t understand what was going on or why she was going to stay with her grandmother. What happened to my mother? Where is my little brother, Michael? She could tell from the tone of her aunt’s voice that something wasn’t right. She was only told that something bad happened and that she had to leave and stay with her grandmother for a while. It was a long, hot summer that year. Madeline remembers trying to call her mother in Hartford but not getting through. She knew her mother was into bad things, but it still didn’t make sense why she was sent so far away and why her brother wasn’t with her. The days and weeks in the South seemed to pass so slowly. In the mornings, she would clean the house and run errands for her grandmother, and in the afternoons, she played with her cousins and friends in the neighborhood. It started as a visit for a summer but turned into several years. Sugar, flour, and peaches were on the list Madeline’s grandmother gave her for the grocery store one morning. Her grandmother planned to make her famous peach cobbler. When she reached the market, Madeline ran into her sixteen-year-old cousin, Derek, who was hanging out with some friends. Derek looked taller and skinnier since the last time she saw him. He was her aunt Hattie’s middle son. He was sent down to live with some of his father’s family the previous year after being released from Long Lane Juvenile Detention Center in Connecticut. Back home in Hartford, he was always getting into a lot of trouble in the neighborhood. On their walk home, he asked if she wanted to take a shortcut. She agreed, and they walked down the train tracks. “This bag is getting heavy,” she said. They sat for a minute and spent the time conversing about the old neighborhood. Derek took some cigarette rolling papers from his pocket and brownish powder from a little bag. “What’s that?” she asked. “You don’t want to fuck with this, Maddy. It’s a new type of cigarette,” he said. Madeline was already experienced with marijuana and had been drinking since she was ten years old from her mother’s leftover stash. She grabbed the cigarette from him almost before he could finish lighting it. “Slow down, slow down, girl,” he laughed as the paper hit her lips. She took a long drag, and her eyes rolled to the back of her head. A euphoric rush flashed through her body as the smoke hit her lungs. “Oh, what was that? What kind of shit is this?” Madeline asked as she closed her eyes and tilted her head to the sky. Derek sat next to her smilin