I’m here.
Here, Jackson.
Just one glimpse would be like holding you again and carry me home.
Please look, Jackson.
Please.
But Jackson didn’t see me as he and another prisoner carried ladders and paint cans toward an official white van, where a guard stood watch beside it. The men began loading the vehicle with their supplies.
Jackson opened the van door and abruptly paused and looked over his shoulder toward my automobile. His eyes narrowed and slowly filled with surprise, then tenderness.
I raised my trembling hand higher on the hot pane and pressed in close, collecting this memory of him.
Us.
Home.
The moment was a gift I would magpie away into the deepest core of my being.
I crowded in closer to the window.
Jackson’s gaze held mine. Then sorrow shadowed his face when their guard pointed him and the other prisoner into the van.
“Looks like Warden Alton finally sent over his volunteers to paint the library,” Sam remarked. “Let’s hurry and git you inside, Lovett. Been a long day for ol’ Sam here. My missus’ll be waiting with my slippers and a stiff bourbon.”
Sam pulled into the employee lot, searching for an empty parking spot as I watched the other vehicle pass by, gaining speed. Taking my husband back to his prison. Me back to mine. The moment passing with our lives in its iron-fisted grip.
My palm slid down the window as I realized he’d volunteered like myself, but hoping to seeme.
Seventeen
Pounding heat and rain returned the last days of June, paralyzing the prison.
Waldeen caught me by the sleeve as I hung the mop in the utility closet and reached for my bag of books. “The warden just sent for ya. And she seemed a mite agitated.”
Agitated.It seemed everyone was.The soupy, festering air was wrapped in molasses and barely crawling inside the penitentiary. Even the wind carried a cry when offering up a stingy breeze.
Many of the women soaked their sheets in cold water and draped themselves to escape the heat and foulness, but it still felt like we were trapped under wet woolen blankets. Some slept on the cool concrete floors, their heads swathed in dampened towels. But despite the temporary remedies and having all the windows open behind curtains of water-sopped bedsheets, a stubborn anger gripped the prison.
I rubbed my painful arm. The unrelenting weather rioted against my newly knit bones, aggravating the tender joints and nerves whenever I mopped the cafeteria floors.
“Scuttlebutt is, Warden is still griping about funding again. But luckily, our budget’s not in her crosshairs.” Waldeen lifted the tail of her apron and wiped the dampness off her brow.
I still didn’t have any library visitors, but a few of the girls in my wing had been requesting books. Slowly, more had followed.But would a handful be enough? Or would she fire me because I hadn’t lived up to her expectations?
“I’ll take your books. Ya better hurry, kid.” Waldeen grabbed the bag.
As I stepped out of the cafeteria, I bumped into Regina. She shoved me, and my shoulder hit the wall.
“Wonder if book witches bruise blue,” she said and hurried by.
I brushed off the injury and swiftly made my way to Warden’s office, almost colliding with a corrections officer. “Slow down. Walk with your eyes open, Lovett. And dammit, step lightly; you sound louder than a parade of elephants,” he scolded.
***
A guard came into the warden’s tiny waiting room some forty minutes later. “Go on in, she’ll see you now.”
