I’d felt the edge of my bed sink from the weight of him and pretended to sleep on as he perched there. But it was all I could do not to sob outright when he planted a kiss on my forehead, rustled Wolf’s mane, and closed the door, quiet, behind him.
Mya twisted the radio station dial. The Mustang went from blaring Three 6 Mafia to 101.1, Memphis’s Smooth Jams. With all my heart I love you baby came out soft as butter.
“God, that woman can sing. Mama damn near wore out her Fairy Tales album,” Mya said. She began humming along.
“She gets it,” I said, thinking of how I’d never really said goodbye to my daddy either time.
“Gets what?” Mya asked.
“Heartbreak,” I said.
* * *
—
“That your kid?” That was our welcome to Riverbend three hours later.
“No,” I said.
“That his kid?”
“No!”
“Well, then, no minors without a parent or guardian.”
The prison guard who ran the visitors’ office had a Southern accent that was slightly different, a tad more tonal, telling me we were far from home. He had a dark, full mustache, in direct contrast to the growing bald spot at his crown. He sat at a desk behind bulletproof glass and barely looked up from his paperwork as he spoke.
“My, you may have to sit this one out.”
The Riverbend Maximum Security Institution was a massive compound made up of tan slabs for buildings, cut against the green, sloping Nashville acres surrounding it, giving it the impression of a pyramid rising up out of the earth. The colossal fortress could be seen from I-40 a mile out. Giant oaks lined both sides of a narrow access road that led to the prison’s gates. The visitors’ center was a heavily guarded separate building to the immediate left of the prison’s main complex. To enter, Mya and I had passed through two sets of metal detectors before reaching a windowed box that contained the gruff prison guard refusing Mya entry.
It was hard to argue with or deceive the man. Mya looked her fifteen years. We both wore our school uniforms. It would have given us away to Mama had we left the house in ripped jeans and Converse. I could envision Auntie August’s raised eyebrow, the tone of her question: Y’all ready for school today? No, we had to wear our uniforms. Mya wore a maroon polo tucked into a pleated plaid skirt, looking the part of a too-young child. Her thick socks came up knee-high. I, too, wore a polo shirt with Douglass’s crest embroidered over my left breast. But seniors were allowed to wear dark jeans instead of the pleated skirts and pants sets, so my polo was tucked into a pair of black, less conspicuous cropped jeans.
Mya stared hard at the prison guard. He ignored her, circling something in his stack of papers.
“Fine,” she said after it was clear he wouldn’t be intimidated by a fifteen-year-old’s glare.
I pressed the Mustang’s keys into her palm. “You wait in the car,” I said. I didn’t want her in that prison without me, although, truthfully, the interior didn’t look so much like a prison. The visitors’ area was a long, rectangular room with cafeteria tables in the middle and a children’s play area at one end. A TV was mounted high in the middle of the room, and it played CNN on silent, subtitles shooting across the screen. It was mundane enough.
The men were what worried me. The inmates sat at the tables in the center of the room. I saw men as big as barns wearing navy-blue prison jumpsuits. When I heard the repeated clang of their handcuffs against the hard surface of the tables, I realized, in horror, that they were shackled to them.
“Wait in the car,” I repeated.
“Ugh, you sound like Mama,” Mya said.
“Don’t go nowhere.”
“I don’t know how to work that car even if I wanted to. Don’t worry about me. What about you? You got this?” Mya bit her lip and scanned the room. I could tell she didn’t want to leave me in that place alone, either.
“I’ll be okay.”
She stood on tiptoe, planted a goodbye kiss on my cheek. “In bocca al lupo.”
“What does that mean?”
“Means ‘good luck,’？” Mya said.
Later, I looked it up. Translates to “into the mouth of the wolf.” Mya always had perfect timing.
* * *
—
Derek had aged in the six years since his arrest. His peach fuzz had grown into a long, knotty, and unkempt beard. Tattoos now covered his arms. Made it seem like he wore extra sleeves beneath his prison clothes. And though he wasn’t more than twenty-three, the heavy lines underneath his doe eyes—so similar to my mother’s—made him seem much, much older.
A metal ring was mounted to the middle of the table, and a short chain led from the ring to Derek’s handcuffs. His handcuffs clanged against the table when he moved. He noticed that the sound startled me and gave an apologetic shrug.
“Not the best of digs, I admit,” he said. He spread his hands as far as the chains allowed. “But what can you do?”
“Not murder folk,” I said coolly.
He sat back in his chair. “You’ve got a point, cuz,” he said. There was just enough slack in his chains for him to reach down into the deep front pocket of his prison jumpsuit and explore there for a time. I saw the outline of his fingers work against his breast as he searched. Relaxation settled across his frame as he deftly, slowly, retrieved a single cigarette from his pocket: a Kool.
He must have heard my sharp intake of breath.
“You mind?” He lifted the cigarette.
“No, it’s just that—you look just like Auntie August,” I said.
“Really?”
“Just like.”
Guards were stationed at all four corners of the room, and one roamed the center. Other prisoners sat with their families, their wives. I saw a tall, thin Latino kid not much older than me with tattoos up to his neck pat the hand of a woman who had to be his mother. She sat sobbing, a rosary intertwined in her fingers. I heard a child shout “Daddy!” and run up to a man as large as a billboard, with locs that almost swept the floor. A skinny, pockmarked white man hugged his identical twin tight until the roaming guard, baton in hand, separated the brothers.
I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. I did not want to be there. I wanted to go home. “What do you want, Derek? My told me you wanted to speak to me.”
“You still draw?”
My stomach was beginning to hurt. Talking to Derek had always disgusted me. Time had not altered that. “Yes,” I said. “I still draw.” It was like asking if I still breathed.
“That’s good.” Derek nodded. He bent his head to light his cigarette, cupped his cuffed hands around his lighter, and, after a moment, sent the first exhalation of smoke far above his head. “Important to have a passion.”
“I’m leaving,” I said. I grabbed my backpack.
“No, Joan. Stay. Please.”
“For what? For you? You ain’t shit. Such a waste of my time.” I threw my bag’s strap over my shoulder, instinctively feeling in my pocket for my keys, before remembering I had given them to Mya. “Fuck this. Fuck you, Derek,” I said.
As I stood to leave, I felt a dark presence over the room. Another inmate had entered. He was massive. If the other men were barns, he was a building. Looked like he could have easily eaten the guard that led him through the room. I was tall both for my age and for a woman, but this man made most other human beings seem Lilliputian. His skin was the color of dark ash, and he pulled at his short beard as he strutted among the tables. He seemed to observe the other inmates and their families with a sort of derisive amusement, sneering at them as he walked. His gait suggested a stroll through a park rather than a walk through a roomful of prisoners. Like he hadn’t a care in the world. Like this was his natural habitat.