“Don’t think of it like a prison,” her mother said. “He’s renovated the inside with the money his adoptive mother left him.” She was checking her reflection in the rearview mirror. “It’s more like living in an apartment building. They have a vegetable garden, an apricot orchard and goats and chickens. There’s a cafeteria where everyone has their meals together.”
“He”: her mother’s friend—the help-promiser. “Are the goats and chickens in prison, or to be eaten by the prisoners?” She’d meant for it to be funny, but by the look on Mama’s face, she’d said the wrong thing again—the thing her dad would have said. Summer could taste the dust from outside coating her mouth.
“Sorry,” she said quickly, not wanting to ruin the mood. “Can I have a sip of that water?”
The plastic water bottle crackled when Summer took it from her mother’s hand. She was lifting the bottle to her lips when an odd shape rose out of the desert, on her right.
“Look, is that it?” She pointed out the window at the pale building that rose out of the dirt like a squat sandcastle. A single road led down to the building. To reach it, they would have to pass through a gate. The gate was an ugly, solid, metal thing; Summer resented that she couldn’t see through it, but now someone was stepping out of the little shack to their left and she switched her attention to the thickset woman wearing a guard’s uniform.
Her mama said a bad word, tapping her fingers on the steering wheel like she did when she was nervous. “Summer, sit back,” she said.
The woman was around her mom’s age, and she had crunchy-looking blond hair that zigzagged out from her head like electrified noodles.
Noodles took a step toward the car, scanning the road behind them like she was waiting for an ambush or something.
“Name?” This one word, spoken through her teeth, with no smile to accompany it.
“Lorraine,” her mama said to the woman. She said it in the nice voice she reserved for Summer’s teachers. The woman didn’t react to the name or her mama’s friendly tone. She didn’t check a list or smile; she stared straight at Mama—stuck her jaw out at her, even. And then, in a less friendly voice, she heard her mama add, “Taured is expecting us.”
Bending at the waist, like she hadn’t heard, Noodles scanned the interior of the car for...what? Summer scanned along with her, looking for a problem. There was none. They both seemed to come to this conclusion at the same time. “Pop the trunk.” The woman’s voice was deep and impatient.
It came as an order, not a request. Summer felt rather than saw her mama tense. Sometimes she thought she could hear her mother when no one else could, feel her feelings, and she couldn’t really explain that to anyone, because it was weird. The trunk unlatched and she heard things being moved around. A few seconds later, the woman reemerged next to the driver’s-side window. She nodded to Summer in the back seat and stepped into the shed, picking up a walkie-talkie. She turned her back to them when she made the call, and Summer watched her walk back into the little shed, nod and press a button to open the gate. The two solid metal doors opened to reveal a long stretch of road.
Mama let go of the brake and the car bounced through the gate. Summer spun her head around, gripping the back of the seat with both her hands to stare out of the back window at Noodles. She was watching them.
“What a nutjob,” she said, turning back to face the front.
“Don’t say things like that. You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Daddy would have thought she was.”
“Enough!” Lorraine’s voice was angry, and her eyes were worse; Summer looked away, at the sandcastle, instead. The closer they got, the less interesting it looked. She wanted to go home.
“Remember what I told you,” Mama said.
“You’ve told me a lot of things.” She could feel her mother’s eyes in the rearview mirror, but she refused to meet them. Instead, she focused her gaze outside the window and on the bumping of the car as it rolled over the battered road. The closer they got, the more disappointing the scene: dirt, more dirt and then a dusty parking lot holding eight crappy cars.
“How many people live here?”
Her mama hesitated. “About a hundred,” she said as they neared the building. “Taured bought this place right around the time I got pregnant with you.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why did he buy a prison?”
“Oh.” She said it in a way that made Summer think she didn’t want to talk about it. “It fit his dream, I guess.” Lorraine turned into a parking spot next to the other cars. “When we were kids, he lived in a foster home up the street from my house. He was the only other kid on our street that was my age, so we kind of just had to play together. Anyway, this is what he’d talk about even way back then.”
“Living in a women’s prison?”
Her mother shot her a look that said she better shut up or else. “Creating a family of like-minded people.”
Summer opened her mouth, her next words forming on her lips, when a door opened on the side of the building. She saw his boots first—gray—and then long legs followed. Gangly, her fifth-grade teacher, Mrs. Eli, would have said. He was tall and lean like the cowboys in movies. He wore jeans, a black T-shirt and a smile spread so wide you couldn’t help but smile, too.
“Oh my God, he still wears that damn outfit.” Her mother said it more to herself than to Summer, her fingers running underneath her eyes and then through her hair. She watched, interested, as her mother clapped her hands in delight and then jumped out of the car, sprinting toward him.
There was a commotion outside as Summer scrambled to look out the back window.
“Look at all this, Taured!” her mama said, holding him at arm’s length and gazing up into his face. “You did it!” He looked so pleased at her words that he hugged her again, lifting her feet off the ground.
Mama walked slowly back to the car with him, never taking her eyes off his face as they spoke. It was like she was thirsty for him.
Summer checked that her braid was neat, then pulled it over her shoulder. Then he was there at her door, opening it and bending down to smile at her. His face was mostly covered by a thick, black beard, but the skin around his nose and eyes was tan, like he spent all his time outside. There was a freckle on one earlobe, almost making it look like his ear was pierced. He held out his hand to assist her out of the car and she felt very la-di-da.
“Summa, Summa, Summatime...” he said when she was standing in front of him. It was so hot, hotter even than California. He smelled nice and he held out his arms for a hug. She hugged him because she’d seen her mother do it and because she missed her dad.
“You’re going to love it here,” he said, looking Summer in the eye. “We’re a family.”
“Why do you have to live way out here with your family?” She kept her voice light and innocent so her mother wouldn’t chide her for it later.
“Because the rest of the world gets in your head and tries to teach you its way of thinking. Bad men sold your dad the stuff that killed him, that’s how messed up the world is.”
“Drugs,” she provided.
“Yes. You’re a smart kid, just like your mom.” He tugged her braid and she smiled at him, and then her mother smiled at her. Normally, her mother would never let anyone call her a kid, but here was Taured breaking the rules, her mom grinning like she enjoyed it.
“Let’s go check out your new digs,” he said, putting one arm around her shoulders and another around her mother’s. And then the man in the snakeskin boots led them into the Flatlands Women’s Correctional Facility, the place where her mother would be murdered.
4
Now