By lights-out, they finally come around to empty our dump pails. I gag as the cart squeaks by, wondering how Shorty’s faring, wondering if he’s as lonely as me.
Wherever he is.
CHAPTER 2
You can’t separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.
—MALCOLM X
My half sister, Ella, sits across from me. A spot of light in the darkness.
“Did you hear me?” she asks, her voice hard.
The room spins and I place a shaky hand on the table to steady myself. For a moment, I forgot where I was. Then it comes back, hitting me like a train until my chest caves in.
I remember the courtroom, the way Sophia sobbed on the stand, tears streaming down her white cheeks, her fire-red husband angry enough to spit glass. I remember the judge slamming down charges—fourteen counts, each one with eight to ten years, to be served concurrently, luckily. Lawyer said he went “easy” on me because I’m still just a kid. But I know white people who’ve done worse and haven’t spent a minute in a place like this.
“Yeah. Yes,” I whisper, and clear my throat, folding my hands together.
Ella watches my every move, studying me. She was the first to visit me, though I told her to stay home. I didn’t want anyone seeing me in this dump. But Ella has never been good at taking orders.
The visitors’ center is much like the mess hall but a little nicer, if that’s possible. Long wooden tables in rows of three and high barred windows. Visitors sit on one side and prisoners on the other. Hours vary by the day. Sometimes folks travel half a day or more to see their loved ones only for the warden to shut down visits for the week. So families make a long trek for nothing. Guards canvass the perimeter of the room, gripping their holsters, slapping batons in their palms. Exerting a false superiority.
Wonder if she can smell it. The funk hovering around us like a fog. Do I smell of it? Will she tell my brothers and sisters that I have hit rock bottom and reek of desperation?
Ella shakes her head and starts talking. Telling me all the gossip on the Hill, which isn’t much of anything I am interested in. I don’t want to hear about her uppity friends’ progress. I want to know what jive is happening in Roxbury. What’s the latest tune everyone is hopping to? What’s happening in Harlem? What number hit? What’s going on in the real world? But how can I ask her about what she’s never tasted?
There are a few families in the room with us: A mother visiting her son. Two women—one young, one old—visiting their brother. Another mother with five children visiting their father—I recognize him from the license-plate shop. He’s been in Charlestown for at least a decade. Some of those children don’t even look that old. Two tables over, a little boy squeezing a teddy bear sits next to his mother, visiting a cat from my unit named Lightning. The woman is a piece of melted caramel with them pretty red lips and eyes that make you feel that everything will be all right. The little boy could be Lightning’s twin. She reaches across the table and tries to take Lightning’s hand.
“NO TOUCHING!” the guard barks, spit flying out his skinny lips. Veins bulging on the sides of his temples. He slams his baton on the table. Everyone jumps, gasping. The little boy drops his bear, crying.
“Didn’t I say no touching?!”
“Sss-sorry,” Ms. Caramel whimpers at the guard.
He smirks, peering down at her, as if he could see down her dress.
The walls squeeze real tight around us. Cats look at one another. If someone makes a wrong move, they can shut visitation down, throw us all in the hole.
“Hey, man. Uh … she didn’t mean it, she didn’t know,” Lightning begs, holding his hands up, then glances at her. “It’s all right, baby. It’s all right.”
The little boy stares at the guard from within his mother’s embrace, eyes wide and filled with tears. Makes me almost glad I don’t have children. I would never want them to feel helpless and unprotected, or to see their father in here.
The guard walks off, swinging his baton. I scratch the back of my neck. Ella, her face almost pale from watching it all unfold, swallows hard.
“Why would you give your power to these monsters? Are you eating?” she asks, worry in her eyes. “You’re all skin and bones.”
Ella looks older in the face than I remember. The darkness of this dungeon makes anyone who enters appear meek and helpless. Mind games, prisons are all about mind games. First, they make you believe you’re an animal, then they make you believe you’re easy prey to kill.
“Yup. Serving me the finest chicken fried steak in here,” I chuckle, and pat my empty stomach. It aches just from the sound of her voice, remembering the good meals she used to cook. Her oven-roasted chicken, her okra, her mac and cheese, and her warm apple cobbler with a scoop of my favorite strawberry ice cream. I could sure use a plate of that right now.
“How do you find a way to make a joke at a time like this?” Ella huffs.
My sister, always stuck on what I should be doing rather than what’s real. Here I am in prison and she’s still trying to give me orders.
She rubs her hands as if starting a fire, then blows into her cupped palms.
“It’s freezing, Malcolm. Can I send you a proper sweater? My heavens. Will they let you have that, at least?”
I’m so numb I barely notice the cold anymore.
“No. They make us wear these stupid thin jackets,” I mumble. “Hey, I heard there’s a big fight coming up in a few weeks. Please lay a bet for me, will you?”
Ella’s gaze drops to the table. “Oh, Malcolm.”
Disappointment. That’s why I didn’t want her to come. I don’t want to see myself in her eyes. In our father’s eyes. I don’t want to see the disappointment.
“Well, I just hope you see the good in this lesson,” she says.
“Lesson?”
“Yes. Everything we go through in this life is meant to teach us something, one way or another.”
I squeeze my fist under the table. “Well, that’s real easy for you to say when you’re not the one in here.”
“You’re right, I’m not. You are. This is your journey. Everyone has their own.”
“So you think I was meant for this?”
She shakes her head. “You never had to sleep anywhere but in your own bed. And you’ve been sleeping for a while. You’ve been spoiled, pampered, living … that life. Now you’re in a place like this, with no power, and you still don’t know how to wake up.”
Wake up, Malcolm.
I shake the noise out of my ear.
“Are you okay?”
“Um … I’m … yeah.”
She frowns. “Hilda sent a letter. Family’s asking about you. They want to come see you.”
“Tell them I’m fine.”
“But you’re not fine, are you? You need your family. Now more than ever.”
“I don’t need nobody, you understand?”
Ella leans away from me.
“What’s … gotten into you, Malcolm? When you first came to Boston…” She puts her head in her hands for what feels like forever. “Hilda blames me. All your brothers and sisters think this is my fault. That I encouraged you to run wild, hanging out with them hoodlums, and that I knew, just knew, you’d end up in a place like this. Because Papa left my mama to be with yours. But we are blood, Malcolm. I didn’t wish this for you.”