I looked at her, the pain I felt dripping down my cheeks, until I finally relented, first peppering Natalie’s face with kisses before I handed her over. “It’s time for you to go, honey,” I said to Brooke, again dropping down to her level. I hugged her tightly, cupping the back of her head with my palm. “I’m so happy you came to see me. Be a good girl and take care of your sister.” My heart felt ragged and torn—sawed in two.
“Come on, sweetie,” Gina said, carefully extricating Brooke from my embrace. “Say good-bye to your mom.”
“Noooo!” Brooke cried, squirming as violently as she could, the way I’d taught her to get away from a stranger.
“It’s okay, baby,” I said through my tears. “You’re going to be fine, I promise. You’re going to be okay.” I tried to reassure her—and myself.
Brooke struggled against Gina as the other woman lifted the car seat, where she’d harnessed Natalie once again, even as my younger baby shrieked.
“I’ll be right back,” Gina said. “I’m just going to help them out to the car.”
A male guard stood at the door, holding it open as they began to leave. A jagged sob ripped through me. “I love you both so much,” I said. “Don’t forget your mommy loves you!”
“Mama, please!” Brooke screamed as Gina took her into the hallway. Her voice echoed and bounced, shooting through me like arrows as I stood alone in the room. “I want my mama!” she cried, over and over again. Her tears were razors, slicing open my skin.
“Wait!” I said, rushing toward the door, only to have the guard grab me.
“Back up, inmate,” he said, as I pushed against his strong arm, straining so I could see my girls one last time.
“Mama loves you!” I cried out again, but Brooke had stopped talking by then, dissolved into an indecipherable auditory tangle of screams and tears. I leaned hard against the guard’s arm, staring at the backs of the silver-haired woman and Gina as they walked down the hall. The last thing I saw was the flash of Brooke’s lavender blanket, and then my daughters turned a dark corner and were gone.
? ? ?
The next few days passed by in a blur.
I remembered Gina hugging me when she returned to the room, murmuring words too dull and meaningless to help. I remembered stumbling back to my bunk, the other inmates calling out names like “*” and “fucking crybaby,” none of them knowing the magnitude of what I’d just lost.
I remembered feeling like I wanted to die.
I spent my days curled fetal on top of the scratchy gray blanket on my bed, fists tucked up under my chin, my face shoved into the pillow. Sobs racked my body, and I wept what felt like an endless stream of tears. Every time it seemed like I might stop, that I could control my grief, my sharp, hiccupping breaths, it would rise back up, washing over me in a wave with a violent undertow, pulling me down, down, and down. My babies’ faces haunted me. Their cries echoed through my bones.
The only relief I found was in the blissful, dark comfort of sleep. I fought waking as best I could, closing my eyes and attempting to force myself back into an unconscious world. A world where I wasn’t in jail, where I hadn’t just given up my children. Hours went by, then days. I didn’t shower, I didn’t eat. I used the bathroom only when I absolutely had to. The correctional officers on each shift tried to talk to me, tried to make me rise from my bed, but I swatted them away. “Please,” I croaked. “Just leave me alone.”
I wasn’t sure how, but word of what I’d gone through made its way around to the other inmates, and I started to feel the occasional pat on my back, to hear a soft voice saying, “It’s okay, girl. You did the right thing.” The compassion in their voices only brought up a fresh round of tears, the desire to spiral deeper into despair.
“You need to get up,” one of them said. She sat on the edge of my bunk, the weight of her causing me to roll over. “You need to eat.”
“No,” I said, opening my eyes just enough to see the woman trying to rouse me. She was tall and thin, with braided blond hair and ice-blue eyes. Her long, bony fingers squeezed my arm.
“You think you’re the only one in here with a sad situation?” she said. “Please, mama. I know you feel like shit, but you need to get up.”
“I can’t,” I whispered. The marrow in my bones felt as though it had hardened into lead, pinning me to my thin mattress. I tried to move away from her, but she pulled me over onto my back, forcing me to meet her steely gaze. Her skin was almost translucent; I could see the thin blue rivers of veins in her long neck.
“Yeah,” she said, “you can.” She sighed. “You want your girls finding out you let yourself die? That the story you want to give them to carry around the rest of their lives?”
Her words tore through me like a knife. I hadn’t thought past the moment I was in, the sharply barbed agony I felt. I hadn’t considered the possibility that someday, wherever they might end up, my girls might want to find out what happened to me.
“Come on,” she said. “You can do this.”