Treading the Waters, Part 4

Skyline of New Orleans

LRMoore/Pixabay.com

Last time, young Gerald was calling his dear mother from the New Orleans police station he’d been taken to by police after trying to pocket a few cans of tuna at a K&B drug store. 

I say, “I’m in jail.” 

“In jail?? In jail for what?” 

“They say I stole out of the K&B drug store. That lady lyin’ on me. Them other boys was stealing, she thought I was with them boys.” 

“So why has she got you mixed up with them?” 

I say, “Because there was a lot of young boys up in there. They was stealin’. I wasn’t there. They ain’t gonna say I was stealin’. I ain’t know them people. The truth gonna be told.” 

My momma say, “Let me call somebody to pick me up and I’ll come get you.” 

I say, “Alright,” and I hang up. 

The lady in the station ask me, “What happen?” 

I say, “They say they on their way.” 

The lady say, “Well, you gonna go back in that cell until they come get you,” and she took me back to the cell. 

A little while later, I heard the door to the cell open again. There was two cops standing there, ununiformed. 

They open the cell, they say, “Hey, what’s your name?” 

I say, “My name’s Gerald Anderson”. 

“Oh, you the one we lookin’ for.” 

I say, “For what?” 

They say, “Step out the cell and come with us.” 

I walked with them and we went into a room. 

One of them tell me, “You the one they say was stealin’ out the store?” 

I say, “Yeah. They lie on me, I wasn’t stelain’.” 

So the other cop look at the first cop and say, “Hey, what happened last weekend when that guy was stealin’? What happened to him?” 

The first one say, “Oh yeah, you talkin’ bout that guy from last week?” 

He opened the closet, he pulled out what looked like a cut-off arm with blood on it. 

He say, “This what we did. We cut his arm off.” 

Me being young, not knowing, I thought, “Oh shit, they gonna cut my arm off.” 

He took one of them paper machines, the kind that slices paper all the way down. 

“Hey, step over here. We gonna put your arm over here.” 

I say, “Man, you all can’t cut my arm off.” 

He say, “Not this time, but the next time, this what we gonna do to it.” 

Whup. He brought the blade down. 

I look, I say, “Damn…” 

I say, “Man, I ain’t gonna never steal no more.” I was scared. 

He told me, he say, “Don’t you tell nobody you ever seen us do that. You do. We get you.” 

I say, “You ain’t gotta worry about me tellin’ nobody.” 

When I got back to the cell, a guy in there was asking me, “What they call you out there for? I don’t like them two jerks. Them two jerks like to intimidate people.” 

I say, “They was asking me what my address and stuff was.” 

He say, “I bet you they try to scare you, huh?” 

I say, “Nah man, they ain’t tryin’ to scare me or nothin’. 

“I know them policemen. I come here all the time. Come in here every weekend. Every day it look like it be the same two white boys I can’t stand.” 

I say, “Nah, they ain’t do me none of that.” 

All the while in my mind I want to tell the truth, but I was scared them police was gonna find out. 


This new series chronicles Gerald Anderson’s time running the streets and going in and out of prison. It will eventually become his sophomore autobiographical book. You can purchase the first book, “Still Standing: how an ex-con found salvation in the floodwaters of Katrina,” from Gerald directly or find it on Amazon.com.

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