A Kind of Freedom

by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton

  He told his mama he didn’t want visitors. Not yet, he said, though the truth was, not ever, and he planned to drag her along until that became clear. That was the thing about people on the outside. They thought it cheered him up to see their faces, but it just reminded him too much of freedom when everybody knew it was better to adjust to the kind of freedom available on the inside. For instance, he didn’t have a roommate this time, and that was something; he could also go out to the yard whenever he pleased.

  It was those small victories he wanted to bask in, those small victories that kept him afloat so when his mama came, he stayed in his cell as long as he could. The CO had to ask for him a third time before he stood up, and even then he dragged more than walked to the waiting area.

  He didn’t understand it, but she looked better than he’d ever seen her. Made up, thinner, joyful. He wanted to ask if she had come to the right place. She pulled him to her in a tight embrace.

  “Hey, my baby,” she exclaimed. “You look good. You look real good. They treatin’ you all right in there? I sent brownies. Did you get ’em? Made ’em from scratch, and MawMaw is going to send a cake, she wanted me to make sure and tell you that.”

  “Is everything okay, Ma?” he couldn’t help but ask.

  “Oh, everything’s good, real good.”

  They sat while she finished answering him.

  “I started volunteering as an aide for Miss Patricia. You know she lost her hearing, and I’m helping her through that. She’s got so much grace, this woman, it’s really given me some perspective. What do I have to complain about? I have my health. I have my family. And this.” She waved her hand at T.C. and shrugged. “Well”—she paused—“anyway, have you seen any good shows lately? I know they let you watch television, right?”

  T.C. nodded, told her he had been watching Modern Family. “It’s good,” he said, “I laugh at some of the jokes, and that Sofia Vergara, man, if I had a woman like that—” He stopped because he was talking to his mother.

  “Well, I’d say Alicia is a good girl, a real good girl,” his mama said. “She brings the baby by every Saturday for me to keep him all by myself while she’s at work. She doesn’t want to cut his hair, but I don’t hold that against her because she doesn’t have to bring him by, I know she doesn’t.”

  This was the part T.C. hadn’t wanted, the reason he’d told his mama not to come, and the reason he wanted to crawl under the steel bed in his cell when visiting hours approached.

  “How’s he doing?” he asked, because he couldn’t not ask at this point and because he wanted to know, but he was afraid of what he would do with the information, how it would haunt him once his mother was gone, and it was just him and those four walls and all the time in the world to consider what might have been.

  “Oh, he’s good, real good, baby. Saying some words. Mama and—” She stopped. “I think I’ve even heard him say MawMaw once or twice. I want to bring him by, son. Alicia doesn’t want to come herself, and that’s her business, but she said I could bring Malik, and I want to. Maybe next time, for your birthday?”

  “No, Mama, hell no,” he shouted so she wouldn’t bring it up again. “I can’t have my son seeing me like this, thinking it’s all right to go to jail.”

  “Oh, he’s not going to even know what jail is.” His mama lowered her voice as if she had been the one screaming. “He’s a baby.”

  “Yeah, but that stuff sticks with lil’ kids, and if he keeps coming, in a couple years, he’ll be old enough to remember. I don’t want him to ever think of me like that.”

  His mama just nodded. “I understand,” she said. “I understand.” She took her time saying the rest. “I just thought it would be good for him to see you. The thing is, I want him to know his father. Children don’t need their parents to be perfect, they just need them to be there, they get so much from that, and I just, well, I always wished I had pushed your relationship with your father more. He wasn’t perfect, but he was your father, and that was something. I just don’t want to see Malik go through what you did.”

  Time was called on the session, and T.C. told her he would think about it, call her next week. But the thing was, there wasn’t anything to think about. It was one thing to be in there, to know that he had gone back out of his own stupidity—that ate at him enough. But to see his best thing, the person he’d let down most thoroughly, witness what a fuckup he’d become, well that would have broken him, and he didn’t think he’d be able to recover.

  He told his mama as much when he called her on Saturday. “I just can’t do it, Mama,” he said. “It’s only three years. I’ll start fresh with him when I see him then.”

  “I understand,” she repeated. “Say, Alicia’s over here, just dropping him off. She wants to talk with you.”

  “Okay.” His heartbeat was going. He hadn’t had the nerve to call her since going in, and he thought that was a good thing. She deserved better than him, better than what he’d done, and what it had made out of all of them.

  “Hey, T.C.,” she said. She sounded all right too.

  “Hey, Licia.”

  They didn’t talk for a while; there was just something about the air between them, and when he went a long time without experiencing it, it commanded awe just to behold it.

  “I don’t know what to say,” he said finally. “I’m so sorry, but I know that’s not good enough.”

  “I know,” she said. “I know.” She sighed.

  “You deserve better than this. You deserve better than me,” he added.

  “I know that too,” she said. She paused. “And I’m going to get it. But our son, now that’s a different story. Miss Jackie said you don’t want to see him?” She paused, waiting for T.C. to answer, but he didn’t know what to say.

  Finally, he muttered, “I just don’t want him to see me like that, Licia.”

  “Oh, I get it, I do, but don’t do that, T.C. I mean, I hear what you’re saying, but think about it, think about him, think about everything you went through not having a daddy.”

  “I didn’t need that bastard.”

  “Oh? Well, I’m not saying he was a great man, but if he could have gotten it together for you and made you part of his life, I can’t see how that would have been a bad thing. Maybe I deserve better, but there’s no better our child could do than his own daddy.”

  She paused again. “Can you at least think about it for me, T.C.?”

  He nodded before he spoke, he was too choked up. Then he croaked out a hacked-up yes.

  “Good. Well, I gotta get going, but you doing all right?”

  “Yeah, I’m all right, you know it’s all relative.”

  She laughed. “Well, I’m glad. Miss Jackie says you look good. I hope you feeling that way too. I’m going to put her back on, okay?”

  “All right. Alicia, you take care.”

  But she had already passed the phone.

  He could hear Malik crying in the background, and his mama said she needed to tend to him. T.C. set the phone down, imagined seeing his son in the waiting area down the hall, staring across from him, or maybe T.C. would have a chance to hold him.

  As the day approached, he got excited, dapping off every inmate he passed, retelling the birth story, bragging about how alert the baby had been even at a few months, how he had the same nose and eyes as his daddy, how he was already saying words, Mama and MawMaw.

  Then a couple days before the visit, T.C.’s mood shifted without his consent. The thing was, he’d never thought he was good enough to father someone as perfect as his son, and then he’d gone and proven that by getting himself locked up. Now he had a constant, gnawing reminder of his own inadequacy, and that pain threatened to eat him alive. He almost called his mother to cancel the visit, but he remembered Licia, Licia who had been so patient and forgiving, who had asked only this one thing of him, who had thought it would be
good for their child, and maybe she was right.

  He gave one of the inmates his brownies so he’d twist his locks the morning of the visit. T.C. was glad for the activity. It plucked him out of the dread that would have consumed him; it distracted him from the image of his son lying against his jail clothes.

  “What’s the matter, Lewis? People are usually happy to go see their family,” the white CO said as they walked.

  “I am,” he said. “Just nervous, that’s all.” He tried to smile but it didn’t come out right.

  When he got to the door, he saw his mother. She was leaning over to wipe Malik’s mouth where he’d drooled. T.C. could still just back out, and she wouldn’t even know he had seen them, but he wouldn’t have his son thinking he’d been abandoned.

  He walked over. She stood up to hug him, then when he sat down, she plopped Malik in his lap. The baby didn’t cry the way T.C. expected him to.

  “He goes to everybody, huh?” T.C. asked.

  “Not really,” she smiled. “But he’s going to you.”

  T.C. didn’t know what to say to him. Before, when he was on the outside, he’d just talk in baby talk, lift him up to the sky until he squealed, but he felt funny doing that here, now, unfit somehow.

  His mama just talked like she did, and he used that time to examine his son. The baby seemed to be doing the same back.

  Aunt Ruby had a new friend, a man in his fifties, and Mama had heard Aunt Ruby say she’d never known love until now. MawMaw wasn’t looking good. Mama was thinking about bringing her up next time she came, if she was doing better. It would have been too much this time, with the baby too.

  “Oh, but she did send you one of her jelly cakes. For your birthday. You should get it any day now. Make sure you call her and tell her you enjoyed it.”

  Malik started to fuss, and Jackie stood. “I got his bottle right here. They only let me bring in two.” She handed it to T.C., and he popped the cap off and pushed the nipple into the baby’s mouth. Malik leaned back as he rested, let his head fall into the crook of T.C.’s elbow. T.C. smoothed his palm over his son’s thick eyebrows, marveled at his eyelashes, how much the baby looked like him, yet he was his own distinct being. T.C. bent down and kissed him.

  When the baby finished eating, T.C. lifted him to his shoulder and burped him.

  “Like riding a bicycle huh? You never forget,” his mama asked.

  T.C. laughed. “Naw, I guess not.” T.C. kept him propped up there on his shoulder for a while, rubbing his back.

  “Well, I need to get him back by four. That’s when his mama gets off work,” she said.

  “Okay.” T.C. sat the baby on his knees again. “Daddy will see you next time, lil’ man. Daddy was so happy to see you. Daddy loves you, okay?” He handed him off, gripped his mama to him.

  “Thanks, Ma,” he said, “for everything.”

  Walking back to his cell was as hard as he feared it would be. As euphoric as he’d felt holding his son, the feeling had been dug out when he gave him back, compounded by his fear that bringing Malik to this hellhole even for a visit had somehow bound the kid to the place. No, he told himself. This life wasn’t acceptable for his seed, and T.C. would do whatever he needed to do to ensure that.

  He ducked into his cell, lay down on his bed, remembering the way his son had looked up at him, with so much innocence and trust.

  Malik didn’t know who his daddy was yet. And T.C. supposed he didn’t know who he was yet either. In his son’s eyes he saw so many possibilities. Maybe Malik would know him to be a warrior, someone who turned the odds on their head. Maybe he would see him as just a good man, and, yeah, he’d made some mistakes, but he loved his family, he was there for his son. For a second, T.C. could see himself through the same lens. He bathed in that vision, let it wash over him, closed his eyes. The longer he dwelled inside it, the more he could imagine it being real.

  Evelyn

  Winter 1945

  Seven months in, Evelyn wore a big coat, but she still thought Renard might walk right past her. She’d been at the station longer than she expected. The train was late pulling in, and she’d had to wait for the white passengers to disembark before she saw Renard hustle out of the baggage car and down the steps. When she caught sight of him, she called his name, softly at first, then when he didn’t hear her, she stretched her voice past the point she was most comfortable. He turned toward her from where he’d already advanced near the station lobby, in his crisp and fitted uniform and his hat that made him seem like a different man altogether.

  She forced herself to look at his eyes; his eyes were what would tell her how he really perceived her, thirty pounds heavier, breathing hard, leaning back and wobbling, with the weight of his child inside her. When she caught them, she thought she caught a glimpse of his soul too, that it was that which pressed his eyes against his sockets so hard it seemed as if they might break through.

  He ran over to her. She didn’t have time to move herself. When he reached her, she collapsed into his chest, clung to the sandy pocket flap on his uniform shirt. There was an assortment of smells, some from the station, some from his coat, some from him, all congregating to hide his main one, the smell she had been carrying in her mind of him. She burrowed her head through his clothes now that he was in front of her, searching for it, but it wouldn’t be found.

  “What’s the matter with you, girl?” he asked, looking down at her shaking her head back and forth like a dog in a hole.

  “I can’t smell you.”

  “What?” He was smiling, but he moved his head a touch away from her.

  “Different countries got different smells, baby,” he said laughing.

  “But you’re not a different country. You’re just yourself.”

  “Yeah, I’m still myself.” He raised her head up as close to his as it would stretch and kissed her. He pressed her into him, then pushed her back.

  “What’s this?” he asked, eyeing her middle, putting the context together but not so certain he didn’t need an explanation.

  She just stared at him, objective and resolute. This was the moment when she would learn if her daddy had been right.

  “You remember what we did last time you were here?” she asked.

  “Do I remember? It’s all I could think about back there.” Then a smile spread slowly on his face.

  “You serious, baby?” He opened her coat wider and squealed. “Baby, you serious?” he repeated. He tried to spin her around but stopped himself, then patted her belly with the flat palm of his hand.

  He jumped up on the station platform. “Yes!” he shouted. People turned their heads, but he only repeated it. “Yes.”

  Evelyn still couldn’t let herself believe his reaction.

  “You mean it?” she asked. “You’re happy? You’re not upset?”

  “Not upset? Baby this is what I always wanted, what I’d go to bed dreaming about since I was a boy, and for the woman to be carrying it to be you, well, that’s more than I could have dreamed, that’s more than I could have imagined deserving.”

  He marched her straight to her father’s house with her hand cupped in his. When Mama said her daddy was out tending to a breached baby, Renard just waited, devoured every dish Mama offered, drank her tea, nibbled on her petit fours.

  “I know you must be hungry being away all this time,” Mama said. “What was the food like over there?”

  “Slop,” he said, “nothing like this.”

  She smiled. “Well, you’re home now.”

  When her father came in, he didn’t seem to sink at the sight of them; if anything, he just seemed resigned.

  He changed clothes and washed his hands before he walked back out to the table.

  Renard stood to greet him, and when he sat back down, Evelyn gripped her man’s hands under the table. She could feel them shaking, and she expected h
is voice to shake too the way it did in those early days, but it came out like steel.

  “I know you must be disappointed. You’ve done so well for yourself, and you expected your daughter to uphold the standard you set.”

  Her daddy didn’t say anything, only nodded, but he kept his eyes on Renard’s, and that was more than she’d seen him do in the last few months.

  “Then we go and embarrass you further with this.” He pointed to Evelyn’s stomach.

  “Don’t go calling my baby an embarrassment,” Mama snapped.

  “It’s not the baby, it’s us, it’s me, and I admit that. I admit that I might be disappointing. I’ve always wanted to be like you. From the day I was born I wanted to be a doctor. Unlucky goal for a Negro, but I wanted to sew people up, fix the problems that were wrong in their bodies, in their lives, and I still intend to do that. I do. My father was a janitor, and my schooling hasn’t come easy to me. I work two jobs, and I still get help, but I’m not trying to complain. I’m trying to explain to you that I’m the type of man who will do anything to accomplish his goal.”

  Then he turned to Evelyn in front of Mama and Daddy, bent his left knee until it touched the floor. “I love you, Evelyn; one of the things I love most about you is that you’re such a proud woman. It pains me that you had to walk around in this condition, and I haven’t been able to do anything to help you. I vow to you, I vow to you, sir, ma’am”—he turned to her parents then—“I will never diminish that pride again.” He leaned back into Evelyn, lifted her hand.

  “If you will have me, Evelyn, I would be honored to be your husband, to serve you for the rest of your life, to spend the rest of my own life ensuring that you never feel shame.”