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.