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  I see her hands freeze in the air over the mug and know she senses my presence.

  “Good morning, Mama,” I say because I don’t know what else to say.

  She gives me her face and stares at me long and hard. Whatever she is looking for, she finds, and then she nods like she is satisfied. “Leenie. What’s going on with your hair?”

  “Locks. You cut yours off.”

  “Didn’t have no choice.” She pats her Afro to give her hands something to do, and then she crosses the kitchen in my direction to give her legs something to do. “Most of it fell out, so I had to do something. Let me see what in the world you did here.”

  I stand still and let her fingers walk all over my scalp. She takes me back to childhood, to the days of sitting between her knees and having my scalp oiled and my hair braided. I can see myself there, borrowing a few inches from the pillow under my butt, with my arms looped around her calves and a wad of bubble gum in my mouth. Her hands are still soft and warm like heat lamps, and I feel myself blossoming under her touch, opening up like a rosebud.

  “Can’t comb these things out, can you?” she says, running her fingers through my locks until her hands settle on my shoulders.

  “No, ma’am.”

  I am a child again, unable to maintain eye contact and tearing up under intense scrutiny. I have done something wrong and I know it, and now I am awaiting my punishment. She can scream at me, slap me or knock me to the floor and I will do nothing to defend myself. I will let her do what she wants to do to me because, in doing what I did, I hurt her beyond my own comprehension. I made a decision for which she is sorry but I am not. I cannot be.

  She sees my tears, watches me wipe them away with my hands and releases a stream of warm breath in my face. It is the what am I going to do with you breath that mothers save for their hardheaded children. “Leenie,” she sighs tiredly. “I know you’re sorry. I know you didn’t mean to do it.”

  My mother does not see the cringe that takes over my face. She isn’t looking for it because she does not expect it. It is there though. She folds me into her arms, and every second that I am there my arms tighten around her and a war rages inside of me. I know I should let her have this one thing, but I can’t. It is a lie, and eight years in prison have forced me to look at all the lies in my life and vow to tell the truth from here on out. I can’t be tried twice for the same crime, not even by my own mother.

  “I love you, Mama,” I say close to her ear, praying she accepts my words and leaves sorry out of this moment.

  But she doesn’t. “I love you too, Leenie. And I’m trying real hard to forget what you did. I want you to know that. I don’t hate you, okay? I know you’re sorry.”

  I pull away slowly and catch her eyes, shaking my head like I am in a trance. I need her to understand, need her to finally ask me why. We have never done that, talked about why. “I’m sorry I hurt you, Mama, but I’m not sorry about what I did.”

  She cannot handle my truth, and she leaves the kitchen to get away from it. I let her go because if she can’t handle it, then I don’t know what else we have to talk about.

  Vicky is furious with me. She lurks in the shadows of the hallway, watching what she expects to be a Walton family reunion, but things haven’t quite turned out the way she wanted. As soon as my mother takes off down the hallway, she walks up behind me and pushes me across the kitchen, deeper into the room, so we can have it out.

  “What the fuck was that?” she demands, ready to slap the shit out of me.

  “She wants me to lie and I can’t do it.”

  “You can’t pretend to be sorry for doing the crazy shit you did for five minutes, Lena?” She paces the floor and shakes her hands like her nails are wet and she wants them to dry faster. “All you had to do was keep your mouth closed and quit trying to be a superhero.”

  “Excuse me?” My eyebrows shoot up and my mouth drops open. “A superhero? Superheroes don’t get caught, Vicky. They don’t go to prison. But then again, they don’t kill innocent people and neither did I, so I might just be a damn superhero. You know what this shit is about, so don’t come at me like that. She can pretend she doesn’t know, but you don’t have that luxury and you know it.”

  “Yes, I know what this shit is about, but nobody asked you to take the law into your own hands, Lena. Nobody told you to go running over there with a gun. You made that decision on your own.”

  “And what was I supposed to do? Keep being a good girl, like you?”

  “What happened was in the past.” Vicky sinks down in a chair and covers her face, shakes her head. “You don’t know what this shit has done to her. You weren’t the one who had to see how this affected her. Her hair falling out was just the beginning.”

  “Making Mama’s hair fall out was the last thing I was concerned with,” I say and mean it.

  “Seems like you were only concerned with yourself, Leenie.” My childhood nickname falls from her lips with traces of venom hugging the first and last letters.

  I feel the venom sting my skin and convince myself that I hate her. I hate her for saying what she is saying to me, but most of all, I hate her for being so weak. She has always been weak. “You know what? I don’t need this shit from you. I don’t need you to tell me about the rights and wrongs of what I did, because I already know about them. I had eight years to figure the shit out for myself. Been living with the consequences and surviving on my own all this time, so fuck you, okay?”

  “You took a life. You didn’t have to take things that far. They didn’t need to go that far.”

  “God . . . I can’t believe after all these years you’re still as blind and clueless as you were when we were kids. Ignorance is not bliss, Vicky.”

  “There were other ways . . .”

  “You never thought about it?” I say, cutting her off. My voice drops down to the bottom and I sound like Satan whispering in Eve’s ear. I ease over to the table and sit next to her. She wants to look away from me, but she can’t because I won’t let her. “You never thought about grabbing a knife and hiding it in your clothes somewhere? Taking it with you when you had to go in the room? It never crossed your mind that you could stop those hands from touching you and keep that mouth off of you? You never thought about standing up for yourself?”

  “You know I did. We talked about it,” she confesses softly. “We used to plan what we would do.”

  “And then we’d go there and be good girls. Good little wimps. We didn’t stand up for ourselves and we didn’t tell anybody, we were so damn afraid of what would happen. I couldn’t let that happen again. Don’t act like you don’t know what was at stake, Vicky.”

  “I never said I didn’t. I just don’t think you did.”

  “Maybe not.” I can’t sit any longer, so I stand. The counter digs into my back as I fall back against it, but the pain is nothing in the broad scheme of things. It is like a bee sting and I know what a battering ram feels like. “I lost Beige. I lost Mama. Lost myself and then I lost you.”

  “I supported you,” she says, and I can see that she truly believes it. “I took Beige and loved her like you did, and I still do. I love her so much, Leenie. I missed you so much, but I had her, and she reminds me so much of you. I made sure you had money for the things you needed too. I didn’t know what else to do for you.”

  “I needed you.”

  “I was there.”

  “But you never came.” This is what hurts me the most. “Eight years I sat there and waited for you to come and you never did. The one person who knew my heart better than anybody else and you never came. I waited and waited, and every day I died a little more inside. I needed you to come and tell me you understood.”

  “How was I supposed to face you? How was I supposed to look you in the face and not feel like shit? I’m the oldest. I’m your big sister and I was supposed to protect you, but I didn’t. If I had done my job maybe I could’ve saved you. It’s my fault you had to do what you did.” She lays her head on
the table and cries.

  A shifting of light catches my eye and I look up at the doorway. There is Beige, and she is crying too. I don’t consider going to her and trying to comfort her because I am too busy wondering how much she heard. And how much she remembers.

  I don’t know enough to think it feels good or even that it should. In normal, healthy relationships maybe it does. But here in this room, it feels like a thousand snakes slithering all over my skin. They wiggle into my ears and into my eyes, fill my mouth and steal my voice. My lips are frozen into a perfect circle, but no sound comes out.

  Being a good girl means saying nothing as I am violated again and again. As I am taught to do things I have no business knowing how to do. I can give pleasure with my mouth and with my hands. I can produce sounds like the women in the nasty videos I watch, can make believe that what is happening to me feels like heaven, when it really feels like hell.

  I will learn, years later, that what we are doing now is called a sixty-nine. That many women enjoy the feel of a wet mouth on their breasts and between their thighs. I will know that sex is not filthy and sickening, something to be dreaded. Something to make me vomit for hours afterward. But I don’t know this now.

  I don’t know anything except what I am told to do and I do it. Like a good girl.

  I write a report for school and the assignment is to tell about something people don’t know about me. It is supposed to be a fun assignment, a way to learn about my classmates and for them to learn about me. But I wonder what my teacher’s reaction will be if I write that I know what oral sex is, if I write that nothing about it is fun.

  I wonder if there will be any other kids who will admit to knowing the same. Other than Vicky, that is. I am dying to know if we are the only ones.

  Isolde takes the certificate of completion that I pass her and smiles. She reads it in its entirety, then she sets it aside, reminding herself to make a copy for my file before I leave. She thinks I will take the original home and frame it. Has no idea that it will be in the trash before I can leave the building.

  “I’m so proud of you, Helena,” she tells me as if I should care. “It’s been, what, six months? And you’ve accomplished so much.”

  “You received the results of my mental health evaluation?”

  She nods. “No treatment was indicated, which is good. The only thing left for you to work on is getting your GED. Do you still have the information I gave you?”

  “No, but I do have these.” The next thing I pass across the desk is a manila folder. She still doubts that I am who I say I am, so I have brought her proof. In the folder are the degrees I earned, plus my high school diploma. I think about taking it from her and shoving it in her mouth, literally making her eat her words.

  Isolde takes a long time looking at the papers in front of her. She scans my degrees like she has never seen degrees before. Then she drops the folder on the desktop and scrubs her hands across her face. She searches my face and I think I see water in her eyes where there was none before.

  “It’s just such a damn shame,” she finally says.

  He is not as tall and frightening as I first thought. Since it is me approaching him and not him approaching me, I am able to see clearly. And what I see is this: He is just a man. Intimidating hulks, I can’t deal with. When he opens the door and sees me standing there and I see him, I know I can deal with him.

  “You left these in my apartment,” I say, thrusting his tools at him. “Kept waiting for you to come and get them, but you never did, so I brought them to you.”

  He takes the tools and cracks a smile. “You thought I was coming back up there? After the way you threw me out the first time? I don’t think so. I did miss these though.”

  “Well, you’ve got them back now.”

  “Be right back,” he says and clears my line of vision.

  While he is gone from the doorway, I look around his apartment and notice how much more spacious it is than mine. Then I remember that my apartment is a converted attic and his is not. His living room is my entire apartment, and he has very little furniture: a sofa and loveseat and a coffee table, two floor lamps and an area rug. Everything color coordinates and makes the other thing taking up space in the room stand out even more.

  I stare at it in awe, feeling my mouth water and my fingers itch to stroke it. At the same time, I miss what it can give me the way I miss a medium rare steak from time to time. The way I miss country fried chicken and greasy gravy, because I gave up meat years ago and took up working out. I swallow because there is too much moisture in my mouth and force myself to look away from it.

  “You lift?” he says, coming out of the kitchen and noticing the direction and intensity of my gaze.

  “I used to. That thing would probably swallow me whole.” I am rooted to the spot, staring. He laughs and motions me inside.

  “You can take a closer look if you want to. I don’t think it bites.” Hesitation is all over my face and he sees it. “I don’t either.”

  I am like a child on Christmas morning, touching everything at once. I tell myself not to do it, but I still sit on the bench and lift a free weight. I still release a shuddering breath of satisfaction as I feel my bicep making its presence known. “That feels so damn good,” I say before I can stop myself. I take the weight up and over my head, do a full set and then dance with embarrassment. I have gotten entirely too comfortable. “Sorry.”

  “No problem. Looked like you were enjoying yourself. How much do you press?”

  “Used to be a hundred solid, but it’s been so long since I did it that it has to be less now. Too damn long.” Something like a whine wants to come out of my mouth, but I don’t let it. I hop up from the bench and look everywhere but at him. “I should go. I’ll be late for work if I don’t leave right now.”

  “You want to take a weight with you?”

  He makes me smile. “Thanks anyway. And thanks for letting me drool.”

  “Anytime.”

  He walks me to the door and I take one last look around. One last look at his face before I take off down the hallway and disappear down the stairs. I join the group already waiting at the bus stop and remember that his name is Aaron.

  Chapter Eight

  My new cellmate is a woman named Patty, and I know immediately that she does not want to live with me. She is white, newly transplanted from the South, and very afraid of that which she does not understand. I am black, not in the mood to be bothered, and ready to drive her crazy. It is something I cannot help, my behavior, and I think I am channeling Yo-Yo.

  Prison makes me territorial without even realizing it. One side of the cell is mine and the other, hers. I claim the bottom bunk and force her to fall asleep staring at the ceiling. I take the dinner roll from her tray and make her wipe her hands on her scrubs because the napkins belong to me. I don’t ask her anything about herself and I make her repeat herself three times before I respond when she speaks to me, which is not often.

  I tell myself I am angry with her because she is a white woman, daring to be prejudiced in a place where she wears the same shackles that I do. But the truth lives in me, in a deep, dark cave that I have forgotten how to access. I don’t hold her ignorance against her, because she cannot take something from me that I will not give her. It is much more basic than that, much more simple.

  I am angry with her because her newness makes me remember what I have forgotten. She is in genuine distress when she sees that working in the laundry room makes her hands crack and peel. The stress of four walls and not enough space to pass gas in private causes her to bite her nails to the quick. And before long she gives up the habit of treating her hair to a hundred brush strokes at lights out. It doesn’t matter anyway because the shampoo they give us is as watery as baby piss and does not lather worth a damn.

  I am angry with her because she reminds me that I used to be a woman. Before I became an animal, I was a woman. She hasn’t yet shed the skin of the outside, though it shrivels a lit
tle more every day, and I am impatient for the transformation to be complete. Twice, she has been run off to our cell, trembling and crying, by one bully or another, and I can only watch as she is broken down. After the first time, I feel sorry for her. After the second, I know what I have to do.

  She never hears me leave my bunk and hoist myself onto hers. The scrape of contraband, sharp and lethal, is what snaps her eyes open and fastens them onto mine. We stare at each other, upside-down. My face is so close to hers that I smell her fear, right along with the scent of hot urine leaving her bladder. It makes me smile.

  “Listen to me, bitch,” I whisper to her soothingly. “I don’t want your ass in here anymore than you want to be in here. But I’m all about making the best of the situation, so here’s what we’re going to do. You listening?” I pause and wait for her to shake her head, but I don’t ease the pressure of the switchblade that I have pressed against her neck. She tries to shake her head and winces as she is nicked. “Good. Now, the first thing you should know is that there are rules that have to be followed, no matter what. Rule number one is, don’t touch my shit. Okay? Rule number two is, don’t fucking touch my shit, right? And rule number three is, don’t even fucking think about touching my shit. You got it?” She doesn’t dare risk nodding, but I smell agreement seeping out of her pores.

  I use her shirt to clean her blood from my switchblade and tell her, “Touch my shit again and I’ma cut your fucking throat. You ain’t nothing in here, so you better hurry up and get used to it.”

  I fall asleep feeling good about myself. She cries herself to sleep, and I know I have helped her in the only way I know how. She cannot be a woman in this place. It won’t let her be, and the sooner she knows it, the better. She will either kill herself or she will succumb and become an animal. The choice is hers.