Chapter 6
The next visit began with the same fluorescent lights and the same thick glass, but Lena sat closer to it than before.
Nia was on her lap, restless in a light-colored onesie, her curls pressed flat on one side from the car seat. Lena kept one hand around her waist and held a small envelope in the other. She didn't wave when I sat down. She just looked at me through the glass, then at the envelope.
“What is it?” I asked when the phone connected.
She slid the envelope toward the barrier.
Inside was a photograph. Nia's tiny hand rested against the glass, beside the faint print left from our last visit. The date was written along the bottom in Lena's careful block letters.
I looked at the picture for a long time.
“You took it after we left?”
“She wouldn't let me put her down.” Lena glanced at Nia. “The print was still there.”
I pressed my palm to my side of the glass, not touching the photograph. “You kept it.”
“I didn't know what else to do with it.”
There was no softness in her voice, but there wasn't accusation either. That was harder. I had gotten used to anger because anger had edges. This was something quieter, something we both had to hold.
Nia turned toward me. Her small hand lifted, then dropped against Lena's blouse.
“Papa,” she said.
The word landed between us. I didn't answer right away. I couldn't make a promise she could understand, so I only kept my hand where she could see it.
After the visit, I sat on the edge of my bunk with the photograph folded inside my paperwork. The paper had warmed against my fingers. I thought about the life Lena and I had before every conversation became scheduled.
We used to argue about groceries because I bought the wrong coffee. She liked the apartment cool at night; I woke up cold and pulled the blanket back over myself. On Saturdays, she played music while folding laundry, and I pretended not to hear her singing when she thought I was in the shower.
Now I knew the sound of her voice through a prison phone. I knew the hours she could visit. I didn't know what time she put Nia down, whether she still skipped breakfast when she was worried, or which side of the bed she slept on.
During our next call, I asked her.
She gave a short laugh that didn't contain much humor. “You want the schedule?”
“I want to know your life.”
“My life is diapers, work, and trying to make rent.”
“I know.”
“No, Malik. You know the sentence. You don't know the day.”
I let the silence stay.
Then she told me Nia had started pulling herself up on the couch. She told me the apartment's kitchen window stuck when it rained. She told me she had eaten cereal for dinner twice that week because cooking for one adult and half a toddler felt pointless.
I told her I still woke before the morning count sometimes, reaching for the space beside me before I remembered.
She breathed out slowly. “I don't know what to do with that.”
“Neither do I.”
That answer changed something small. Not forgiveness. Not peace. Just the end of pretending either of us had instructions.
A few days later, I asked to record a message for Nia. The approved room smelled faintly of dust and old plastic. I sat before the small recorder, hands flat on my knees.
Lena had said not to promise things I couldn't control.
I looked at the red light.
“Hi, Nia. This is Papa.” I stopped, then started again. “You don't have to wait for me in any way. You can grow, and learn, and be happy. I'll keep showing up when I can. If it takes time, I'll still be here. You can take your time too.”
I looked toward the person operating the recorder. “That's all.”
At the apartment that night, Lena placed the photograph in a new folder. She wrote the date across the tab, then added a page for the visit, another for the recording, and another for the papers Jonah had asked her to preserve.
“What are you calling it?” I asked over the phone.
“Family records.”
The words sounded practical, almost cold.
Then she added, “One folder for every visit. Every message. Every document. If we remember something, we write down when.”
“You think it will help the case?”
“It might.”
“And if it doesn't?”
Lena pressed the photograph flat beneath a clear sleeve. “Then it's still proof that we were here.”
May you like
I closed my eyes. For once, neither of us tried to make the sentence beautiful.
We chose the next visit date before hanging up. It was a small ritual, but it belonged to both of us now: a date, a record, a message, and whatever truth we could manage before the glass separated us again.
