I walked a mile to Walmart after the bus dropped me off. A pink backpack with a fairy on it was the first thing I’ve bought in almost five years that wasn’t from the commissary. I count twenty-four different cereals lined up side by side on the shelves. Twenty-four different cereals to choose from. Funny, the things you miss. I missed Frosted Flakes. I also missed clothes without numbers, someone calling my name and not “Inmate” with that practiced sharpness. I’m not a number anymore. I’m not faceless.
Didn’t realize I spent twenty minutes in the cereal aisle. I’ll buy Frosted Flakes next time. The $56 in my pocket isn’t gonna last if I spend it on brand-name cereal, but a $5 pink backpack with a fairy is worth it. I can throw away the white sack with black airbrushed numbers.
The first person to speak to me after I left prison was a Walmart cashier. Her name was Darla and she told me to never smoke. Said she’s been trying to give it up for at least fifteen years but hasn’t been able to stop. She said it’s a horrible habit and it’s expensive, too.
“Trust me. Cigarettes are the devil. You know I could have bought at least two cars with what I spent on those things? I don’t care how much stress you got, don’t smoke! You’re a pretty girl, too pretty to do that anyway,” she preached.
Darla was once a pretty girl. Maybe smoking took that away or maybe it was something life does to some of us. And though we’re not always left looking pretty, we have a ragged beauty, one that shows strength instead of a perfect nose or sculpted cheekbones.
I smile and reply, “Thanks.”
I wait for Layla on a bench where fresh air caresses my face, but crawls along my scars. They’ve faded over time or I think they have, willing my body to somehow start to forget. My eyes still haven’t adjusted to the plain squat buildings making up this town. They search for skyscrapers in the distance and instead find barren green pastures and skinny asphalt roads with rumbling trucks blaring country music.
A little brown girl looks at me, curious with flashing dark eyes, almost black, wearing a pretty green dress. Her mom scolds her for staring, takes her hand and ushers her across the parking lot to their blue car.
And I see her. Layla. Smiling. She’s gonna ask me if I’m okay and I might be, at least more okay than I was a day ago, and the week before that and so on. She’s gonna smile at me and hope I return the smile. Isn’t freedom, my freedom, cause for celebration? Isn’t friendship, her friendship, enough to tug at the sides of my mouth in a bright arc?
I go to her silver car, me and my pink backpack with the fairy on it. She hugs me across the divide of a gear shift and cup holders, and I let her. Hazard lights blink. Tick. Tick. Tick. I don’t pull away. I put my arms around her. I take in someone who wants me to be here, someone who’s happy to see me despite who I am and my mistakes. Kinda like what people at church said God was supposed to be like. A friend driving hours to pick up another friend, maybe that’s God, too.
Layla smells of soap and cinnamon. I don’t know how I smell. I hope it’s good. Someone honks their car horn. Layla lets me go before I let her go.
And we drive.
“You got a new car? It’s nice,” I offer.
Layla’s glances at me sheepishly. “I’ve had this car for a few years.”
Which is code for I got this while you were in prison, but I don’t want to make things any more awkward than they are. “It still smells new though,” I say.
She smiles apologetic and hesitant.
The silence is nice for a time. I think about Mom and what she’d be doing right now. How would that quilt have turned out? Who would she have given it to? I think about her a lot especially during sunset. And that thing happens when I think of Mom, some dark part in the back of my mind grudgingly dredges up Lebanon, my thoughts about him an unfixable, leaky faucet.
Lebanon never showed up to any of the hearings. The ones that determined I was at first a danger to myself, when I spent days in a cell with nothing to hang or cut myself with. A dirty mattress on the floor with no bedding was the only furniture in the room, but they gave me a cell with a window. Cold eyes scanned my small space every fifteen minutes or so to make sure I was still alive. Pale yellow walls became my clock and measure of hours. The sun splashed lower and lower against concrete blocks laid in rows until the moon made the cell bone white. Or, when there was no moon, I sat in the dark until the sun came out and I again began to count the days.
I did this for a week.
I wasn’t going to kill myself. Me dead would make Lebanon’s life easier and why would I want to help him out? Me living is revenge enough. I wish I would’ve recognized that before everything.
Jackson and Layla never missed a court date. They were there every step of the way like Layla promised that night by the police car. The public defender pleaded my case down. Said I was depressed. Wasn’t thinking straight. Thought it was a burglar. Was so scared I hid the gun. I didn’t tell him it was Lebanon who hid it or that it was his gun. It would’ve been so easy to implicate him, have him behind bars, but he had tried to help me by hiding the gun. That was the closest thing to fatherly I ever saw him do for me, and maybe that meant in some deep recess of his heart he loved me, or at least that’s what I chose to believe and that’s why I kept my mouth shut.
The detectives, the big one and the one with red hair were there too, but never testified. They just came to make sure their case was closed out. That their job was done. The judge looked at me or maybe through me. I couldn’t tell. He said my mistakes would cost me five years. Then I signed some paperwork with my lawyer. I liked my lawyer. He didn’t remind me of the slick guys at my old job. He listened. To him I wasn’t invisible, and he was good at what he did. I could’ve spent the rest of my life staring at the sun and moon on a bare concrete wall, but I spent only four and a half years doing this. Let off early for good behavior. It’s hard for me to wrap my mind around good behavior after I took a life.
I suppose there’s nowhere else to go but up from here.
And we drive.
Gentle bumps on the road give way to mild concrete craters and then back to gentle bumps, then deeper craters. Layla glances over from time to time but lets me be until she can’t anymore.
“He doesn’t come around the church. I don’t think he and Dad have talked since that night. So, you’re safe.”
“From him? Yeah, I’m safe from him now.”
My vision grows blurry for a second. Dull green and even duller brown become some swirl of color, like my eyes, while the sky matures to a darker blue and the clouds a starker white.
“You want to ask me what happened while I was gone, but there’s nothing to tell, Layla. I appreciated the letters you sent though.”
“Why didn’t you want us to visit?”
“What purpose would it have served? Small talk. Forced jokes. Your Dad reading a Bible verse or two or twelve. It’s worse for me to see you knowing the world’s going on without me. That you’re going on without me.”
It’s hard to breathe now; the plush confines of the car slowly feel suffocating. Chicago’s skyline dimly glows from a distance and suddenly bursts forth with all the noise and life and dirt I remember.
“I’m not trying to be a bitch, Layla.”
“No, you’re not trying,” she retorts and then she chuckles. It’s a warm sound. “I can’t say I know your feelings, Rue. I don’t, and I know I push—”
“Yeah, but I’m thankful for it.”
“Well, thank you, too.”
“For what?”
“Not giving up.”
And we drive.