“Well, maybe you won’t be convicted, and then you’ll go home. But in the meantime, try to do the things that make it easier on yourself. Eyes open, head down.”
“Eyes open, head down,” she repeats.
I give her a reassuring pat on the shoulder and return to unpacking my canteen supplies. In the box where I store my paper and pencils, my unopened canteen statement from last week is tucked into the side. I rarely open them because my paycheck is reliable and I can keep track of the numbers in my head with good accuracy, but this time I tear it open and look at my deposits. There it is, a hundred and ten dollars, put in just a few days ago. I scan the line to the Depositor column, and my heart stutters at the two printed words: Hayes, Forrest.
“Oh, goodness,” I say aloud.
Penelope sits up slowly. “What is it?”
“Someone added money to my canteen account.”
“Yeah, my mom did that for mine. She maxed it out.”
She rubs her arm, gazing up with vague, groggy interest at her unopened box on the desk. I fold the statement carefully and slip it back into its envelope. Perhaps this is a goodwill gift on Forrest’s part, a way to say he’s sorry for the past twenty-five years of my life. If that’s what it is, I’ll take it. But I can’t help but wonder if it’s something more.
I’d call him, but I don’t have his number. Write him, but I don’t have his address. I wish he had given me one or the other, but I didn’t ask. It never occurred to me that there would be a need.
“I’m going to skip chow hall tonight,” Penelope says. “I have snacks and stuff now.”
“You have to go. The last thing you want is for them to think you’re scared.”
“But I am scared.”
“Mind over matter,” I tell her, and then the sound of the dinner buzzer sends the cellblock into a clamor.
In the morning I coax Penelope out of bed, hand her a pair of fresh socks as she dresses sluggishly, take the brush from her and fix her hair while she stands before the mirror. The skin around her eye looks both smudged and inflamed, and her gaze is recalcitrant and woozy. I suspect she has a concussion, but as long as she’s able to stand upright they won’t do anything for that, anyway. As I let my hands drop to rest on her shoulders, I feel like she should have a hair bow to straighten or a Peter Pan collar to smooth. “Go back in there with your chin up,” I tell her.
“You told me to keep my head down.”
“I meant in spirit. If you hide in here all day, they’ll know you’re afraid. Don’t be afraid. Be indifferent.”
“How can you be indifferent to being attacked?”
Still standing behind her, I hold out my forearm for her viewing, turned so she can see the Frankenstein stitching still puffed and pink. “It’s a means to an end.”
“That looks like it hurt.”
“Well, we’re all in here because we hurt other people. I try to keep my own pain in perspective that way.”
She hesitates. “I didn’t hurt anybody.”
“Let’s hope you can convince the jury of that.”
“I didn’t. Just between you and me, I didn’t.”
“Okay, well, when you’re at work here, you don’t want to send the message that you’re not the least bit dangerous. All right? Save that for court.”
I give her a meaningful look in the mirror, and she grins brokenly and says, “Bitch, I’m going to break your face if you look at me like that again.”
“Atta girl.”
The C.O. comes to collect her, and as the cell door clangs shut I sit on her bed and exhale a slow sigh through my nose. I sensed exactly what was going on —that urge to lay out the truth, unburden her soul, and know that she is heard. Until a person has felt nearly crushed beneath the weight of a secret, it’s almost impossible to understand how powerful is the urge to voice it. But I’ve been there, and I do. Yet my truth is I don’t want Penelope to confide in me. I don’t want to feel close to her, to comfort her or bond with her, because I want to save every little bit of that for my daughter. Ever since our last and most heated conversation I have felt helpless and full of anxiety, waiting for some small communication from her to signal whether we can keep moving forward. Surely she must have been prepared for me to be someone who makes mistakes, I think—but creating my own excuses doesn’t make me feel any less sick at heart. I’m bartering with God, always, in the back of my mind now. If I can hold my grandchild in my arms one day. Say its name. I want to start there, at the very place I failed with that child’s mother, and not allow my incarceration to excuse me from loving those people I have a right and an obligation to love. I want to live in the awe that resilient life presses forward in spite of the conspiring darkness. But at this moment, I just don’t know whether that’s true.
My letters to Karen Shepard and Annemarie go out in the day’s mail, and I’m relieved to see the message to my daughter collected and dropped into the great canvas bag drawn along by a wheeled cart, heavy as Santa’s sack. It won’t be misplaced, so long as it is already mixed in with so many others, and that is good. It’s an important letter, perhaps my most important one so far. I made a copy for myself, writing it down word by word onto scratch paper like a medieval scribe, so I could read over it later and feel comforted again by the truths I have relayed to her. And to my great relief the C.O. exchanges my envelope for a fresh one from Annemarie, my inmate number written across the front in her pretty italic handwriting. I sit on my bed and tear it open with tight, careful fingers. It is typed, like a business letter, then signed in black pen.
Dear Clara,
I don’t know what to say. As you might imagine, I was not overjoyed to learn the things you shared with me at our last meeting. The more I think about it, the more deeply it pains me to know I owe my life to the loss of several. That’s a concept I find repugnant, quite honestly. I don’t even know that I believe it to be true. I wonder, truthfully, if that is something you have told yourself to excuse what happened. That is to say, so you can believe some good came of your evil act, or tell yourself it wasn’t your irresponsibility that led to my conception, but circumstances that were out of your control.
I am not surprised to learn Ricky Rowan was my father, and I’m not sure why you manipulated me for so long to try to convince me otherwise. This sounds very strange, I know, but once when I was in middle school I went to a sleepover where my friends and I stayed up late watching that movie, The Cathouse Murders. An actor plays Ricky, of course, but during the closing credits they show mug shots of the real criminals (including you) alongside photos of the actors. I had an unexplainable feeling when I saw Ricky’s, like a jab to my chest, and I felt very drawn in by his face. It was almost like an instant crush, the way girls that age feel when we see a cute boy. I know now that what I sensed was the connection, maybe from the vague similarities between his face and mine. I guess my mind must have reacted to it like I was looking in a mirror and recognizing myself. What I’m saying to you is, you didn’t really tell me anything I didn’t already somehow know. I guess you thought it was a big secret, and tried to keep it one, but I was a step ahead of you there.
I would be lying to tell you I’m not angry, but my anger is mostly at myself. I don’t know what I expected to get out of meeting you, except that I truly did want the medical family history you were somewhat able to provide. It seemed like we were getting to know each other, but now I have to question whether the reward for you was in playing mind games with me. If I hoped to understand more about my “identity” I believe I made a mistake. My identity is this: I am the daughter of Philip and Mary Anne Leska. I’m from Santa Barbara. I’m an Angels fan and an artist, a dog lover and a sorority sister. You don’t actually know me at all, and nothing I am—nothing that makes me, me—is due to you. You could pretend to understand me and my life, but the fact is you have been incarcerated for my entire lifetime. So I am deluding myself if I believe there is a connection to be found there, even on the most basic level. You did not intend or want to have me, but my own parents DID intend and want to have me. So even before you gave birth to me, I was already their daughter, the same way a package you have ordered is yours even before the mailman knocks and hands it over to you.