Prison Nation

by Jenni Merritt

  I didn’t let go.

  Before I expected it, Spokane rose up in front of us. I could have sworn the ride away from the Prison two weeks ago had been much longer than that. My legs were barely cramped, my back still not fully settled into the worn seat. I looked over to the dash and saw the speedometer ticking over the speed limit. Seeing that I had noticed, Reed offered me a small smile and slowed the truck down. Slightly.

  Reed rolled past the entry gate and pulled to a stop in a marked parking spot. We were in the same parking lot Oscar had picked me up in when I had been released. I could see the covered area he had pulled into just a few weeks earlier. The flowers still grew perfectly groomed along the edge of the building, bright and fake like the people wandering in the distant town. It truly seemed like only yesterday when I had been passed off into Oscar’s nervous hands.

  The truck engine choked once then turned off. Reed moved to open the door, then stopped. He looked down at our hands, still clasped tightly together. My eyes were already glued to them. He squeezed my hand once more then reluctantly let go. Reed pulled the keys out of the ignition and shoved them into his pocket, then pushed his door open and climbed out. I followed, the sound of our doors slamming shut echoing in the near empty parking lot.

  The same woman sat working at the desk as we entered. She wore the same purple shirt I had admired the first day we were there. I glanced down at my own purple shirt, the feeling of embarrassment trying to boil inside me, but I brushed it aside and stepped up to her desk.

  The woman looked up at us, her eyes widening in surprise for a moment as she saw me. Blinking once, she composed herself and smiled. “How may I help you?”

  “I am here for a visit,” I said, my voice coming out strong regardless of the way my stomach churned in anxiety. I passed her the copy of the paper I had signed in Lou’s office. The woman read it over, nodded, and turned to type on her computer.

  She glanced at the small stack of papers held tightly in my hands. “I will need to see those before −”

  “Why?” I asked. I shot her a look that froze her in her place. The woman glanced to my face then back at the papers. Something seemed to cross her mind and her face suddenly relaxed into what almost seemed like sympathy.

  She pressed a button and a tag dropped out of a machine.

  “Wear this at all times,” she said, handing the tag to me.

  Reed glanced at the tag, then back to the woman. I could see the question growing on his lips. Before he could ask, I turned to him, my hand coming to rest on his firm chest.

  “You weren’t approved for the visit,” I said carefully. “Since I am their daughter, I am already on the approved list. I didn’t have time to apply for you to be added. Anyway, I need to do this on my own.”

  Reed let out a slow breath, then nodded.

  The woman sighed, obviously happy that I had handled this for her. “You may wait in the waiting room, sir.” She turned her head to me. “The officer in the waiting room will let you through.”

  I nodded to her. Hitting a button on her desk, the door buzzed once then clicked open. I led the way, Reed close behind as we passed through into the waiting room I remembered from my release night.

  I led Reed to a gathering of chairs. Without pausing, he sat down, his eyes watching me.

  “Will you be alright?” he asked.

  I nodded, my hands gripping the remaining papers. “I don’t know how long it will be.”

  “That’s fine,” Reed said. He picked up a nearby magazine then motioned to the others scattered around the room. “I have lots of reading here.”

  A smile touched my lips for a moment. “Thank you Reed.”

  Reed looked at me again, his eyes soft. “Anytime.”

  “Ma’am?” The officer’s voice behind me was soft, almost familiar. “Millie 942B?”

  I took in a deep breath and slowly turned.

  There, standing in crisp uniform, smile spreading on his young face, was Jude.

  18

  “Jude?”

  “Hey there, Millie,” he said, the smile growing on his face. He motioned for me to follow as he made his way to a locked door across the room. I glanced back at Reed. He was watching me, a question evident on his concerned face. I offered him a small smile, then turned away to follow Jude.

  Jude stopped at the door and pulled out the small hand held device. Without hesitating, I lifted my wrist and let him quickly scan it. The device beeped once. Jude scanned the card that had been clipped to my shirt, waited for the device to beep once more, then opened the door and motioned me through.

  We entered into a long hallway, the mortared cement blocks that made up the walls painted a solid white. I had almost forgotten how white these walls were. There were no doors or windows, just the long empty stretch of the wide hallway.

  “Is this where they transferred you?” I asked as we started down the hall.

  “Yep. I guess it beats trying to see by flashlight. But it sure can get boring.” Jude smiled at me, then turned to watch ahead. “Not too many people visit the prison. Even if they have loved ones in here. It’s almost as if people just don’t care anymore. Once someone gets locked away, it’s as if that person is now dead. Kind of sad if you ask me.”

  I nodded, watching the hallway ahead. Doors were starting to appear on either side. Solid metal doors, a window cut out of each one and covered in crisscrossed wire. We passed the first few without pause, then finally came to a stop in front of the door labeled with the number 5.

  Jude turned to look at me. This was the first time I had ever seen him fully in the light, with no door between us. He was tall and thin, the gun hanging on his hip looking bulky and awkward. His tousled hair seemed longer than I remembered, brushing past his ears in waves. Jude stood straight, strong, his head held high and sure. His eyes watched me, concern flashing across them.

  “Millie, are you sure about this?” His voice had lost its casual humor. He kept watching me carefully. “They have gone downhill since you left. I don’t know how much you will get out of them.”

  “It hasn’t even been a month,” I said, my voice threatening to crack. “What happened?”

  Jude glanced at the door then looked back to me. “It seems like your leaving did more damage than good to them. You’re a hard one to let go.” He let out a long breath. “I just need to make sure you are sure about this.”

  I looked down at the papers held tightly in my hands, then looked back into Jude’s eyes. “Positive.”

  “Alright.” He put a hand on the metal handle. “I will be the guard on duty right outside this door. The cameras... They have suddenly come down with some issues. It looks like, well…” He smiled at me, making an exaggerated innocent face. “It looks like this visit will accidentally fail to be recorded or fully monitored. Stupid technology.” Jude winked at me then twisted the handle, the door swinging open a few inches. “It doesn’t hurt to have privacy every so often. Especially with family. Have a good visit.”

  I took a deep breath, then stepped through the door. It closed silently behind me. In front of me I saw a metal stool, fastened firmly to the cement ground. A metal counter stretched from wall to wall, a sheet of glass firmly secured above it. The glass sandwiched a grid of thin metal wire inside.

  I stepped closer. The icy coldness of the metal cut through my pants as I sat down. My hands, still clutching the papers, began to tremble. I could feel the pages bending and wrinkling in my nervous grip. I tried to lay them flat on the counter, but my fingers refused to let go of their tight grasp to the only thing remotely mine in this sterile room.

  A door beyond the glass creaked open, two sets of unsteady footsteps drawing closer as the door clicked shut. I could hear the shuffle as they sat down. The gasp of breath.

  I finally gathered the courage I had been searching desperately for and lifted my head. Staring back at me through the thick glass were my mother and father.

  “Millie?” My father sounded confused. H
e looked somehow thinner, as if some piece of him had suddenly gone missing. His face was covered in scruff, his eyes heavy with dark bags. I could see a dirty bandage wrapped tightly around his hand.

  “Hi Dad,” I said.

  I looked over at my mother. Her hair hung in a dirty mess off her head. Her face seemed even more tired, her body rocking back and forth slightly as she perched on her metal stool. Everything about her seemed distant and lost, a bird who had been caged too long and was unable to remember that it had wings. Except her eyes. Her eyes were watching me, not even blinking.

  “Millie, how are you?” my father carefully asked.

  “I’m sorry Dad.” I took a deep breath, my hands finally stopping their nervous shaking. “I didn’t come here to catch up. I need to know the truth.”

  My father looked at me, confusion evident on his exhausted face. I could still feel my mother’s eyes bearing into me. Through the grating I could hear her whispering.

  “My baby, my baby.”

  Her words gently cut through the air, over and over. I couldn’t bring my eyes to look at her. Locking eyes with my father, I nodded slowly.

  “It’s time you both tell me the real story. I need to know… I need to know from you.”

  “Baby, my baby.” My mother’s voice rose.

  Finally drifting my eyes over to her, I watched her a moment. She had started to rock back and forth harder, her fingers twitching as she sat limp on the metal counter. I could see that I was losing her. Her hidden world was engulfing her, faster than I had ever seen before.

  I picked up the sheet of paper and slammed it against the glass. The image of the small pile of leaves pressed hard into the glass, my hand wrinkling the paper as I pushed. I stared into my mother’s clouding vision.

  “Who is Charlie?” I softly demanded.

  My mother froze. Her mouth hung open, stopped in mid-word. I could see her eyes glued to the image, wide in sudden fear and memories. I watched her a moment longer, then turned slowly to my father. Tears were streaming down his face.

  “Charlie,” he whispered hoarsely.

  “Dad, is it true. Is what this article says true?” I leaned closer. I wished so much that this glass wasn’t there. I needed to feel connected to them. I needed this moment of truth to be fully real. But my parents were Lifers, and Lifers didn’t get physical contact visits. “Please, Dad,” I whispered, my lips close to the metal grating at the edge of the glass. “I need to know.”

  My father stared at the image a moment longer, then tore his glistening eyes away and looked at me. “We were traveling,” he began, his voice coming out strange and distant, as if watching the past play before his eyes. “Your mother and I didn’t have a car. So we had to walk. We were trying… we were trying to get out of the Nation before the Wall went up.

  “Charlie was three. He was such a beautiful baby boy. Chubby and always happy, always wanting to wrestle and play. I loved him, so much.” My father choked back a sob, fighting the urge to look again at the image. I slowly lowered it. As the paper crumpled into the counter, my father let his eyes trail to my face. He looked at me intensely, determination gritting his jaw tight. I had never seen this look in his eyes before.

  “We had stopped to camp for the night near a small town. Your mother was making dinner, Charlie playing some cute make believe game a few feet away. Then the three men appeared. They told us that we were trespassing. I apologized and told your mother to gather our belongings, I told them we would leave. But they… they said it was too late.” My father closed his eyes a moment, swallowing hard.

  “I could see the way they were watching your mother. And how they watched Charlie. Charlie… he had no idea what was going on. Until one of the men grabbed him.” My father suddenly slammed a fist down on the metal table, causing me to jump. “I tried to stop them,” he sobbed. “The second one bashed me upside the head then followed the first as they dragged Charlie off. The third grabbed your mother. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t get my bearings.

  “We listened as our baby cried. He cried so loud for us. Then… it was quiet.”

  My father let out a heart-wrenching sob. I couldn’t blink. I could feel my lungs burning for air, but I couldn’t breathe. He tried to form words, but every time he opened his mouth, another sob broke out.

  “That’s when I snapped,” my mother said softly.

  I looked over to her. She looked so calm. As if there had never been a care or worry in the world. Her eyes took me in, full of emotions I knew I would never fully understand. “When a momma’s baby gets hurt, it’s amazing what adrenaline will do to her. The man holding me said that according to the law, we were guilty. And that they could do with the guilty as ‘justice’ allowed. I snapped. I somehow threw the man to the ground. Then I hit him with a stone.

  “The other two came back. They were monsters, Millie. They were the monsters. They were laughing. One grabbed me, saying things I could never repeat to you. Then he saw the man on the ground. He raised a hand to hit me, but I saw his knife and, and I took it. And stabbed.”

  My mother sucked in a shuddering breath. After a moment of silence, she continued, her voice slightly shaking. “With every stab I could hear Charlie’s screams for his mommy less and less. With every stab I was pulled into the fog that took away this pain.”

  My mother gasped in another breath, her face cracking as a tear streamed down it. “That’s when I saw your father drop the third man.”

  My father reached over and laid a hand on my mother’s now shaking fingers. They looked into each other’s eyes, sharing a memory long since buried. Then my father turned to me. “Charlie was already gone when we got to him. They had just left him there, lying alone behind the bush. We buried him. We didn’t want the other monsters of the world to find our baby.

  “While we were doing that, the man your mother knocked out must have come to and ran off. He brought back the authorities, and told him we had jumped him and his ‘pals’ for no reason. That’s when we were arrested.”

  I could feel the cold metal of the table digging into my stomach as I leaned as close as I could to the glass. Pulling away a few inches, I looked back and forth between the two of them. “But why didn’t you tell them the truth?”

  “I tried,” my mother whispered. “I tried and tried. But they classified me as unstable. I was crazy.” She took a deep breath. “Everything I said was thrown out on grounds of insanity.”

  My eyes darted to my father. “Why didn’t you try?”

  He looked at my mother a moment, then shook his head. “I couldn’t.”

  “You couldn’t?” I asked, my voice rising. “You couldn’t? You couldn’t defend your wife and murdered child? God, Dad! Really?” My fists slammed on the metal table, louder and harder than my father’s had. My shadow of a father, who barely lifted a finger of any emotion, couldn’t even defend his family at the worst of times. Anger flooded me, and I didn’t try to calm it down.

  “Millie,” he said evenly. “Your mother needed me.”

  “You’re right, Dad. She did. And you did nothing!”

  “Nothing?” His voice cracked. I could see the pain flood his face as my words hit him. “I killed a man who had been intent on hurting her. I buried our little boy so that her last memory of touching him would be when he was warm and alive.” He leaned in, tears flowing once again from his blood shot eyes. “I didn’t tell the truth, Millie, because I was the only hope your mother had of staying with me and away from a mental house. If I stayed quiet, they let us stay together. I was told to keep her calm. If I did that, then we would stay together.”

  My mother turned her face to him, shock breaking through her own tears. “Alan…” By the haunted tone of her breaking voice, I realized she had never known what my father had just told me.

  He reached over and gently stroked her wet cheek. “I couldn’t let them do that you to you, Leann. They had taken away our baby, our future, our freedom… I couldn’t let them take away our love.�
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  I had never seen this affection between my parents. My father seemed so strong. My mother became tender in his outreached fingers, her face leaning against his protecting hand. This was the image I had always dreamed of my parents. Two people, madly in love. Two people who would do anything for each other. I had never realized they had already done everything for each other.

  My father closed his eyes, his hand still holding my mother’s face. “It was just after we were finally incarcerated here that we found out we were pregnant with you. They wanted us to abort you.” He clenched his eyes shut tighter. “But one of our babies had already died. We couldn’t let them kill you too.”

  My mother turned her face to me. The clarity in her eyes, the lack of any fog licking at her mind amazed me. “Charlie was my first baby. I see him sometimes, Millie. I see him as the baby he was, as the man he should be. I let myself fall into those fantasies of him. I know I shouldn’t. But I can’t control it. I need it. I know I look insane, that I haven’t been the mother for you I should have been.” She wiped the tears from her face and leaned to the glass. “But Millie, you are my baby too. You are my baby who saved me. Without you…” Her eyes became haunted. She blinked it away, but never finished the sentence.

  I stared at them a moment. Then the words gently slipped from my lips. “I am so sorry.”

  I would have given anything right then for that glass to be gone. I needed my parents. I needed to feel their arms around me, holding me, protecting me from this dangerous world I thought I knew. I had thought I knew so much. Everything had been turned upside down though. I needed them, now, but the thick glass between us stood as a cold reminder that they were forever locked away from me.

  “There has to be a way,” I said, trying to let hope fill my choked voice. “There has to be a way to clear you. I will find it.”

  “No Millie,” my father said forcefully.

  “What? Why Dad? Do you really want to stay in there?” I couldn’t believe my ears.