CONFUSED SPEARS OF DARKNESS SPIKED THROUGH THE METAL bars, leaving faint shadows on the ground. About six guards marched into our unit like lethargic storm troopers, their boots stepping in unison, their hair slicked back behind their ears.
I was in bed, trying to get some sleep at the time. My right ankle cradled my left. My left hand cradled my head like a canopy, its heavy weight sinking deep into the pillow all the way to the mattress beneath. But my legs awakened to a tremor when the stomping began. Wide heels of rubber slapping the cement floor. A humming from one novice officer. The heartbeats of them all moving together as one machine. I didn’t open my eyes. I knew what was happening. It was October. Maybe it was November. It was sometime around Halloween, and it was Patsmith’s X-day.
A jingle of keys rustled against a thick leather belt as breathing continued in a symphonic round. Some sounded like they might have had asthma and refused to carry around their inhalers for fear of losing their virility. Others breathed in pain, as if from years of filter-less smoking. I imagine they counted along the beats of their hearts so that at least something made sense to them that night. The only breathing I didn’t hear was Patsmith’s. She must have been holding it in this whole time as if she just didn’t know what to do with it.
Next, I heard the insertion of the key, the twisting of the lock until it clicked open, and the smooth shifting of metal upon metal. Patsmith’s door opened, but still, there was no sound from her. No breathing, no crying at twenty-one past the hour, no need to see her daughter one last time. Just silence. Then the simple and expected placement of handcuffs closing, the sequential footsteps of a shackled inmate strutting on the floor like little bird steps between the longer ostrich gait of the guards as they walked forth.
I didn’t open my eyes to see her marched off. I didn’t get up from my bed to watch. It wasn’t my place to ogle her. This was just the next part of the process. Arrest, conviction, incarceration, appeal, execution. And even though I knew this was coming for her—for me, too—knowledge is a different beast entirely from experience.
The footsteps faded as she walked farther away. She never got to see her daughter. At least I don’t think she did, and perhaps that’s what makes me sad. She didn’t feel closure as she walked to the gurney. She wasn’t able to see the one person who mattered to her. If I had one person still alive, I would have given her mine.
A few weeks ago, Patsmith abandoned her nightly cry for just one evening. I asked her why she stopped calling out for Pat that night. I was worried I actually might have to give her a new name.
“I dunno,” she said.
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“It’s kind of pointless, right? I’ve just been thinking, you know, it’s kind of pointless to call out for someone who isn’t there.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It shows you care.”
“I don’t care, P,” she said. “Not anymore.”
I didn’t respond.
“Maybe I just needed a change in my day. A new routine.”
“Routine?” I laughed. “Isn’t that what prison is all about?”
“Isn’t that what life is all about?” she shot back, as if she’d picked up a GED, BA, and master’s in philosophy in the course of a thirty second conversation. “I mean, if we change our routine, then we can sort of feel something again, right?”
I shrugged, thinking back to my mother’s living a new life on stage each season in my youth. To my father, who shacked up with a new correctional facility every other year. To Ollie, who was learning something new about himself each day he visited me. They were all living.
“Sure,” I said. “I guess so.”
At twenty-one past the hour that night, I sat up in bed, hoping to hear her nightly call. “Pat, I love you, Pat! I need you, Pat. I miss you, Pat!” It’s not that I truly expected to hear it. I heard her walked out of her cell. I heard the bars screech as they yawned. I even heard her teeth as they clapped in fear. I knew she was gone. But for nearly ten years, I’d listened as she cried out to her lover.
There is something illuminating in the change of routine, no matter the direction. Wake up. Urinate. Sometimes defecate. Have your wrists cuffed. Feel the butt of a nightstick thrusting you from your cell. Shower. Feel the butt of that nightstick thrusting you back to your cell. Sleep. Listen to the nightly moaning of your neighbor calling out for her beloved victim. Repeat. This is the life of a decade. And now, it’s gone.
I want to say I miss it. That I will miss her. Patsmith’s routine was the same as her mantra: “Pat, I love you, Pat! I need you, Pat. I miss you, Pat!” For Marlene, it was career, money, power. For Persephone, it was probably china patterns, tennis, and laughter. For my father, something having to do with sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Or children, love, and freedom. Maybe my new mantra will be: I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Perhaps Patsmith will hear me and relay the message to the others.