Night Road

Tamica was crying. “Don’t you come back,” she said, “or I’ll whoop your white ass. ”

“I won’t,” Lexi promised.

As she carried her pathetic shoe box through the prison, women catcalled and yelled to her. She remembered how they had scared her at first, these women. She was one of them now, and she knew that no matter how long she lived or how much she changed, a part of her would be here, behind bars. Maybe a part of her always had been. A girl without a mother was a prisoner of a different kind.

At the desk, another uniformed guard handed her some paperwork and a bag with her own clothes in it, as well as a small manila envelope.

“You can change in there,” the guard said, pointing to a door down the hall.

Lexi went inside the room and shut the door. Alone, she stripped out of her faded, worn prison khakis and secondhand underwear.

Inside the bag, she found the wrinkled black pants and white blouse she’d worn to the courthouse so long ago, along with her own beige bra and black panties and a flattened patchwork denim purse. Black kneesocks and cheap black flats completed the old Lexi look. Or the young Lexi.

She dressed carefully, enjoying the feel of the soft cotton against her dry skin. The pants were too big for her now; they hung off her protruding hip bones. So was the bra. In her zeal to keep busy and get strong, she’d spent long hours in the gym, and her body had turned almost freakishly sinewy. Her boobs had all but checked out.

She buttoned up the black pants and tucked her shirt into the baggy waistband before turning to the mirror. For years, she’d imagined joy on this day, pictured it. But now, when she stared at her reflection, all she saw was a tired, stringy version of who she’d been.

She looked like an adult. More than that even, she looked at least ten years older than she was, with her pale skin, her prominent cheekbones and colorless lips. Her black hair had been cut off a few years ago by the prison barber, who had taken all of seven minutes to chop off twelve inches of hair. The pixie cut had grown out into soft curls that framed her angular face.

She opened the yellow envelope and found an expired driver’s license with a young girl’s face on it, a half-empty package of gum, a cheap drugstore watch, and her promise ring from Zach.

A knock on the door roused her.

“Baill. You okay?”

She put everything, including the ring, in her purse, threw the bag and envelope in the wastebasket, and left the room.

At the prison office, she signed one document after another and took the two hundred dollars that was her exit money from the state. How a person was supposed to start a new life with two hundred bucks and no valid ID was beyond her.

She followed instructions and did as she was told, until she heard a door clang shut behind her and she was standing in the open air, beneath a bright late-afternoon sky.

Free air.

She tilted her face to the sky, felt the day’s warmth on her cheeks. She knew the van was waiting for her—it would take her to the nearest bus station—but she couldn’t seem to make herself move. It felt amazingly good to just stand here, with no bars or razor wire defining her space and no women getting in her face. No—

“Lexi?”

Scot Jacobs walked up to her, smiling. He was older—his hair was short now, conservative looking, and he wore glasses—but other than that, he looked the same. He might even be wearing the same suit. “I wanted someone to be waiting for you. ”

She didn’t know how to process the gratitude she felt. After so many years of bottling emotions, it wasn’t easy to open them. “Thank you. ”

He stared at her for a moment, and she stared back, then he said, “Well, let’s go,” and started walking toward his car.

She automatically fell into step behind him.

He stopped, waited for her to catch up.

“Sorry,” she mumbled. She wasn’t a prisoner anymore. “Old habits, I guess. ”

This time she walked next to him to the blue minivan parked in the lot.

“Don’t mind the junk in the car,” he said, opening the passenger door. “It’s my wife’s car, and she says she never knows what she’s going to need, so she never takes anything out. ”

Lexi climbed up into the passenger seat and stared at the imposing gray of the prison.

She snapped her seatbelt into place. “It’s really nice of you to pick me up, Mr. Jacobs. ”

“Call me Scot. Please,” he said, pulling out onto the road and away from the prison.