I was in a medium-security area and we were allowed opened doors during the afternoons as long as they stayed open and we didn’t enter another inmate’s cell. But we could talk to them in the doorways.
As shocked as I was at the guard’s declaration and quick dismissal, I was much less surprised when Candace appeared in the doorway I was still gawking at, trying to make sense of what happened.
“You’re getting out.” She smiled. Age lines dug into the corners and edges of her lips and around her eyes. At almost eighty, Candace had been inside longer than anyone. She heralded herself a caretaker of the younger inmates. For the last six years, she’d been my only true friend. The only person I trusted with the truth.
She’d never see the outside again, and tears pooled in my eyes at the thought of suddenly having to say goodbye to her.
I shook my head to try to clear it. There was no point in crying. Tears wouldn’t do anything.
“I guess?” It all seemed to happen so quickly, and yet at the same time, took forever. “I don’t understand how.”
“Maybe your mom left him.”
My mom would never leave my father. He’d kill her before she could, even if she gathered the strength to try.
“Not possible,” I muttered and picked up the envelope the guard set on my desk.
My chin wobbled and the papers in my hand trembled. I set them down and clasped my hands together to settle myself but none of the techniques I learned in therapy, such as it was, helped.
I glanced up at Candace, allowed her to see my fear. “What do I do?”
She pursed her lips, making all those lines dig even deeper. She had a kind soul. A hard shell and cement exterior, but underneath all that, I admired Candace. After years of being raped by her stepfather, she armed herself with a knife and when he tried to have her, she stabbed him in the stomach. When he still came at her, she’d managed to dig out a shotgun she’d stolen from a neighbor’s house and shot him in the chest. She said she could still close her eyes and see pieces of body stuck to her bedroom walls.
She talked about it with an eerie smile on her face, but hell if I wasn’t proud of her.
She didn’t deserve to spend a life behind bars for what she’d suffered any more than I did.
With the fiercest expression on her aged face, she leaned in incrementally and lowered her voice. “You live, Lilly. That’s what you’re going to do. You live for me. For the women in here. You live for your brother. Finish your schooling. Get a job. Get a life you can be proud of and you never, ever look back to this place or to your former life.”
As she spoke, determination flooded my veins. She had a way about her. A bossiness and fierceness I respected after I stopped being so afraid of her. Without her, I would have gone insane within weeks. Hell, I was halfway there on day two when she plopped her lunch tray down next to me and taught me all I needed to know.
Candace was more of a mom and parent to me in prison than I’d ever had in my life.
“I don’t know if I can do it,” I admitted. I went from living at home to behind prison walls when I was eighteen years old. Now I was twenty-four, almost twenty-five. I had no friends. No family. Inside these walls, I’d learned the system, knew my role. Outside? That was a whole new ballgame I hadn’t let myself truly ever consider being my reality.
“You don’t, you end up back here. That what you want?”
“No.” Except prison was safe. I knew the rules. Followed them. Kept my head down and socialized enough to be safe without getting close. I’d been in jail for what felt like a lifetime.
“You better start packing.” She stepped back and glanced down the hallway before facing me again. “You shouldn’t be in here and we both know it. What happened to you was tragic. Now’s your time to make up for that, to prove them all wrong and flip them the finger. Those parents of yours didn’t deserve you and now you get to live free of them. Forever. Make me proud, Lilly. I know you can.”
She vanished, headed to who knew where to do who knew what. I didn’t ask what Candace did when she wasn’t around me, but I’d long since suspected her of knowing everything that went on inside and everyone’s business.
Six days later, the two measly garbage bags I was given were packed along with a box that held my radio and television, and I was sitting in the warden’s office.
Maybe she gave me a character reference. I didn’t get in trouble. I didn’t cause problems. I worked hard. A lifetime of hearing about the ethics of hard work and fortitude too ingrained to dissipate behind cell walls.
“You’re to report to this halfway house in Des Moines,” Warden Dunham said. Her first name was Patricia. She was stern and unemotional as she handed me my information. She was a tough woman, but she had to be. Still, I kind of liked her. She was fair.
“A shelter? I’m not going to Illinois?”
Cold slithered into my soul, chilling what was left of my hope. Of course I wasn’t going back home. What would be the point, anyway?
She eyed me with her eagle-precision awareness before she handed me another sheet of paper. “Ellen Porter is your parole officer. You’ll have to report to her in twenty-four hours. She’ll help you get a job, get you set up with your studies if you choose to continue working on your two-year degree. She’ll ensure you follow your parole guidelines but she’s also a resource for help. Don’t make her job harder.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I wouldn’t. I’d be the best paroled prisoner ever.
“Any questions?”
Only a thousand. One prominent. Who helped me? It didn’t matter, did it?
I’d been in chains too long to question this now.
“Here are the rest of your belongings. Your Illinois driver’s license is expired and out of state, so talk to Ellen about what you need to do to get a new ID. Per conditions of your parole, you won’t be able to get a license until your parole is completed, Follow the rest of the parole guidelines, and I trust I’ll never see you again.”
“You won’t. I promise. And thank you.”
For the first time since I’d met her, Warden Dunham gave me a soft smile. One that almost made me cry again. Almost like she believed I could do this. “You did the time. Did the work. Now go do something good.”
My cheeks burned. It’d been so long since someone believed I could do anything good. Candace, maybe. Josh, definitely.
I blinked away the memory of him and grabbed the envelope the warden held out. “Thank you, again. For this.”
“You earned it. Good luck.”
Later, after processing and my bags were checked, I was dressed in clothes donated by Goodwill for these exact situations. Long gone were designer clothes and shoes and handbags. I didn’t care. The sweatshirt I wore and the aged denim jeans were the most comfortable things I’d worn in years. Anything was better than the scratchy, ill-fitted, baggy gray uniforms I’d spent six years wearing. I wrapped my arms around my stomach and relished the worn, soft insides of the Iowa sweatshirt.
“Face the left,” the guard said, once I took the bagged items back from him.
I stood in front of a set of metal double doors. Beyond that would be a chain-link fence with barbed wire coiled around the top.