“No, no don’t do that,” Marcus said. He had always refused her visits, for months now, but Sylvia thought she heard a small hesitation in his voice this time. Please don’t say yes, she thought. Please. She hated to admit it, even to herself, but she was glad he’d said no. The truth was that prison scared the hell out of her. It was her good luck that she’d not been inside a prison for nearly thirty years since she’d gone to see a son of a friend. That was enough to hold her for a lifetime. Many times Sylvia thought that the people sitting around waiting for the zombies to attack ought to visit a jail sometime. That’s an apocalypse nobody knew what to do with.
“I’m a good sleeper. I can sleep standing up most of the time,” Sylvia snorted. “But these days I’ve been walking the floor. It’ll pass.”
“Have a drink before bed. You’ve got vodka don’t you? When I first got here I didn’t sleep for weeks. They keep you up. For real. Anything to make you crazy.”
Sylvia hadn’t meant to talk about her sleeplessness, her daily problems that couldn’t sound like anything but petty and small ones in comparison. “Forget about all that. You’ll make it,” Sylvia said, momentarily unsure if the conversation had led them into a slick-sided hole. All that was left was to struggle back out. “You’ve got to work on yourself. You hear me? This is the time to improve. Fight the shame, okay? What did I tell you about that? Worse has happened to people. Worse has happened to me,” Sylvia said.
“Not to me.” Marcus cleared his throat. “This is it.”
“Well, it’s done now.” Sylvia resisted the impulse to sigh. “What are you going to do about it but live through it?”
“You cut to it, don’t you?”
“I’ll bring you a hamburger on Sunday. I can cook, but probably not this week.”
“They rob you here. You have to buy the stuff they’ve got. Three dollars for cheese crackers.”
Sylvia heard loud voices again and what sounded like the muffled-from-the-bottom-of-a-box sound of Marcus’s hand over the receiver. She imagined the life going on around going on around Marcus. He stood in a hallway of a dorm, the common phone large and heavy like a dumbbell in his hand. Marcus leaned against the wall as the other young men (they are white with deep parted hair) lined up behind him in their shorts and baggy underwear waiting their turn to talk to folks back home. Sylvia knew better. But in her fantasy, the whole enterprise of the prison industrial complex was no more sinister than a boy’s summer camp circa 1968. “I’m just glad I got you. You don’t know how glad.”
“I’ll bring you some books then. What do you read?”
“I thought I lost you, Sylvia. You don’t know how glad.”
“Pay attention, Marcus. You need to read something. Focus your mind. I can bring you books.”
“No books. I can’t concentrate for long.”
“You can change. Keep your mind sharp. Believe in that, Marcus. Life is sad, but there’s some good moments and you have to live for those. That’s all we got.” Sylvia couldn’t remember the last time she waited for a good moment instead of holding on through the bad ones for the next wave of bad to shock her into a different kind of sadness. “You know what, Marcus? I changed my mind. There’s nothing wrong with shame. Most people could use more of it. Shame can make you better. Yes, it can.” Sylvia wondered at the statement even as she said it. In her experience nobody got better from shame, only more afraid. Fear moved underground is the most dangerous feeling in the world.
“I’m okay. I feel better. I’ll get used to being a monkey in a fucking cage,” Marcus whispered.
“Don’t talk like that.”
“I’m sorry, sorry.” Marcus’s sigh sounded to Sylvia like a shudder. “There’s guys in here that sold a little dope, stupid asses like me.”
“I’m not trying to hear that, Marcus.”
“What would you call it? Crack rocks. You believe that? The drug world has moved on, Sylvia. I couldn’t even get arrested right.” Every third news story around the area was about meth and now even heroin was making a comeback. Crack. How 1992. There’s a guy in there that was just in the same room where it was. I’m not trying to say that was me. I screwed up, man. But some of these guys. Like Tay. He needs to be in the hospital.”
“You don’t have a choice. Understand that. I tell my son all the time, if you say something enough times it’s true. You have to be strong. You hear me, Marcus?”
“How did he get over it?”
“Get over what?”
“Everything. This life, everything,” Marcus said.
A memory of Devon at her father’s geese pen emerged. He was four, maybe five, a tall boy for his age, as tall as the geese. The birds became very still as the two of them approached. The geese stared at them with their murderous beads of eyes and hissed loudly, all of them in different voices like a pit of snakes. If Sylvia had before or since heard a more hateful sound she could not remember it. Devon stopped short, his boyish movements over. He screamed, too afraid to look back at her for the reassurance she wasn’t sure she could give him. She’d wanted to scream too.
“What I’m saying is that he just keeps on trying, just like you have to. There’s boys your age and younger fighting overseas in a disgusting desert.”
“Sylvia, don’t start with the boys overseas.”
Sylvia heard the mocking tone in his voice her own children used when she pronounced mature with two oo’s or salmon with an L. “Now listen, smart ass. Think about how they feel. Everybody is struggling, Marcus.”
“Please don’t say anything about the starving children in China, Sylvia.”
“Well, there’s nothing wrong with your smart mouth.” If Marcus joked that was a good sign. For the first time in the conversation Sylvia felt a little relief.
“I’ve never been strong like that. How pathetic does that sound?”
“There’s more to you than you think? Hasn’t anybody ever told you that? You’ve got short time. What is it now?”
“Fourteen months.”
“See there! And you’re here near at home. You can make it, Marcus,” Sylvia said with as much conviction as she could, much more than she felt. If someone told her she had to be locked up for over a year she’d jump in front of a train.
“Short time? Have you been watching Law and Order?”
“I know what the kids are saying.” Sylvia laughed.
“Sylvia, can you hear me?”
“I can hear you.”
“Sylvia?”
“I can hear you, Marcus,” Sylvia said louder.
“The phone is about to cut off. I’ll call you in a couple of days. Okay?”
“Don’t get down on yourself. You have to fight for your life. Believe what I’m saying, Marcus.”
“How long can you fight, Sylvia?”
“Get a hold of it before it takes over, Marcus.”
“I’m better. I’m better. I’m okay.”
“Think about the next fifty years you have to live when you get out.”
“I’ll try.” Marcus’s laugh hissed between his teeth.
Sylvia wished she had some encouraging idea to add or a religious verse about Jesus’s enduring love.
“Will you be there? I’ll call. Sylvia?”
The line cut out before Sylvia could answer.
3