CHAPTER
13
She was sitting at a green plastic table.
Her eyes followed me all the way across the floor until the CO let me go. Then Mom jumped up and hugged me tight without letting her head brush against my bandages. She held me like that till we could both keep from crying.
“You’re still my baby, Martin,” Mom said, stroking the side of my face that was still whole.
I looked into her sad eyes and thought about everything I ever did wrong to put us there. Then we sat down right in the middle of Rikers Island and were a family.
She told me about my sisters’ good report cards from grade school. She said that both Trisha and Tina had parts in the school play, and that Grandma’s asthma was getting worse.
“Maybe there’s one good thing coming out of this,” I said, trying to ease her worries. “I’m starting up high school in a new house. I got more than two weeks left here. Maybe I can take some kind of test to get some credits toward senior year.”
“Thank you for giving him the strength,” she said, looking up to heaven. “Lord, thank you for his mind.”
Pops hadn’t been home in seven years after he caught a second charge in prison for nearly killing somebody in a fight. I knew Mom was afraid that would happen to me.
“I can see the hatred in your eyes,” she said. “Don’t let it burn.”
“It’s all right,” I told her.
“I don’t want to hear nothin’ about some damn man’s code,” Mom warned me. “Forget about getting even. I’ve been on too many of these visits in my life. I’m tired of coming to jail. Please, Martin. Let it go. I swear I got enough anger inside of me for this whole family.”
My sisters made a drawing for me. There was a sun in bright yellow crayon and all of us standing in front of our apartment building except for Pops. He’d got buried so deep in the system that my sisters didn’t even remember him living with us. And since I’d been locked up on Rikers, Mom stopped visiting him upstate so she could see me on Saturdays.
I asked how she’d got off work from Key Food and she answered, “You never mind that. I do what I have to do for my children.”
Mom wanted to see my face under the bandages, but I said no.
“I haven’t even looked yet,” I said. “I’m gonna wait till it’s healed more.”
Then she kissed me on the forehead one time. Mom said she still hadn’t told my sisters or Grandma what happened, and I was glad for that. I knew she wouldn’t tell Pops because he’d get crazy mad over it, and he had enough problems to worry about already.
It’s only on a visit that you want the time to go slow when you’re in jail. After a few more minutes, the CO came back and told Mom it was time to leave.