With Love from the Inside

by Angela Pisel

  If you’d asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I can guarantee you my answer wouldn’t have been working at the Live or Dye Beauty Salon located within the picturesque gates of Lakeland State Penitentiary. My career path didn’t go as planned, but let me fill you in on how climbing the corporate ladder works, prison-style.

  My first few years of no disciplinary actions earned me the privilege of working within the unit. A coveted position that paid me seventy-two cents a day, but it gave me a productive reason to get out of bed each morning. First, I was assigned to janitorial duties, where I pushed dirt, strands of hair, and wad of paper around with a long-handled broom. I’d count, in my head as I swept, the number of days it’d take me to buy you a present, maybe a sequined prom dress or a new pair of dark denim jeans. I mopped the floors in front of each cell and soaked up the drippings from the daily overflowed toilets each day. After that was done, I scrubbed unidentifiable food and bodily substances off the cinder-block walls, earning me $14.40 a month in my commissary account. Not much, but it was enough to buy toothpaste and shampoo, which I was grateful for. Following my tenth year on the row, and since I had an impeccable behavior record, the warden allowed me to work in the beauty salon located between cell block A and death row, a five-minute handcuffed-and-shackled walk I took twice a month. I was overjoyed to have a job most inmates considered “Cadillac” (easy and enjoyable). Plus, I got to interact with the general population. The pay stayed the same, but I didn’t care. Guarded by two flanking officers, I could hold scissors, cut and shampoo hair, even wax an occasional eyebrow.

  Roni happened to be my first client earlier today.

  She plopped down in the gray swivel chair with her hands still cuffed and her face spotted with flat red patches that started below her cheekbones and trailed down her neck.

  After a few huffs and failed attempts to get her waistband straightened on her pants, she finally spoke to me. “You remind me of my mama. You have the same-shaped mouth. Not the same smart tongue, though.”

  I kept an eye on the scissors while I Velcroed the black smock over Roni’s orange top. I always gauged her face before I responded, the way I would test the water temperature with my toes before I stepped into a full bathtub—slowly but surely—because proceeding too quickly and without caution could get me some scorching results.

  “What do you want done today?” The red blotches had faded to pale pink, so I took that as a sign it was okay to change the subject.

  Roni was the newest and youngest (age twenty-three) occupant on the row. She’d spent the first few months not talking, not looking at anyone, refusing to eat, and showering only when forced. Her unoccupied eyes, disheveled peroxide-blond hair, and incoherent mumblings made her big-boned stature even more threatening. When it came right down to it, she was a shell of a person, really, with a soul that had crawled somewhere else. Scared of its own shelter, I had to guess.

  I hoped she’d adjust and not go mad like some in here had been known to do. Her vacancy made some sense to me—no one taught you how to make a life for yourself in prison, but the prison staff viewed Roni’s acts of withdrawal as defiant and disrespectful. Not a good way to live out your time on death row.

  Lately, she’d started to come around. She would leave her cell on occasion to sit in the common dayroom that was the nucleus of the women’s death row housing unit. There, we orange-shirted inmates could congregate to watch TV or make our weekly fifteen-minute phone calls. This earned social time occurred from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. and could be withdrawn at any moment for any reason, or for no reason at all.

  After six consecutive months without disciplinary action, she was allowed a haircut. I was thrilled the first time I was able to get a wide-tooth comb near her thick head of hair, which today was now black at the top and brassy only on the bottom third.

  “Two inches and no more,” she said today with conviction. She pointed to the back of her ponytail.

  I nodded and used my index finger and thumb to confirm Roni’s measurements. I rolled her over to the shampoo bowl and turned the water on, running my hands underneath until the temperature was warm enough.

  I could tell by the way Roni shook her foot and stiffened her back when she spoke about her family members that their relationships were not good. I avoided asking any questions, fearing this haircut might be my last. Roni, though, with every haircut, seemed to want to tell me things, painful things that had been shoved and stomped so far down they were scraping to get out.

  “You don’t look like someone who would kill their kid,” she said as I towel-dried her hair. She scrutinized my reflection in the plastic-coated mirror.

  I knew to most people I was no more than the words stamped on my prison record, but coming from a lady convicted of hacksawing her stepfather, mother, and first cousin, and then hiding them piece by piece, duct-taped and plastic-wrapped, in a basement freezer, I viewed this veiled compliment as a smidgen judgmental.

  Not that I hadn’t been surprised how normal-looking the other women on death row were. Women like Carmen, with her puffed southern hair and wrinkled hands, or Jada, with her cleft chin and scent like bubble gum—both average enough to have worked beside you in a cubicle answering questions about which bed-and-breakfast you should stay at on your vacation or what was the best way to make fluffy mashed potatoes instead of the pasty ones I’d been known to make. Women who, if given the right tools—a sober mother to tuck them into bed at night, a father who kept his hands to himself—might be working at the makeup counter at the mall instead of living in a cage with all the freedom afforded to a rabid animal.

  In the food chain of convicts, I’m valued alongside termites and small rodents. A child killer. Categorized as even more despicable than the group of perverts who’d molested neighborhood children waiting alone for the school bus. I was long past trying to convince others of my innocence—of the love I’d had and still had for my family, of the good mother I’d so desperately tried to be. In prison, lies, justifications, and excuses were as common as dry skin in the winter. Instead, I focused on what I could control, such as how I treated others and the kind words I spoke.

  “You think I’m evil?” Roni asked me as she checked the ends of her hair to make sure they were even. She freely admitted to anyone who asked she was 100 percent guilty, deserved to die, and didn’t have an ounce of remorse in her.

  “My on-and-off-again stepfather screwed me every chance he could,” she’d told me once, “and my mama knew it. My birthday present on the night I turned five. That bastard and my poor excuse for a mother deserved to die. My cousin was collateral damage. Saved her from another night with him, too.”

  I hesitated before speaking. I placed my hand on Roni’s shoulder, using my back as a shield to obscure my touch from the officers. “Your stepfather did a bad thing. Your mom did worse.”

  I thought about you as I was doing Roni’s hair. Did you share your story with the lady blow-drying your hair?

  “My mom was arrested when I turned twelve. I practically raised myself.”

  I wondered if your words produced tears or if you’d told the story so often the sharpness had worn off.

  “I’m so sorry,” I imagined the faceless lady replying as she turned off the dryer and stroked your damp hair, “you had such a bad childhood.”

  I looked at Roni’s reflection in the mirror and said with the only truth I could speak with certainty, “I see much good in you.”

  Her face, scarred with deep pits from anger and acne, briefly softened, and I caught a glimpse of an innocent child whose own mother never loved her.

  After my last client of the day, I washed out the sink and swept the curly and straight hair into a dustpan, while the two officers bantered back and forth their predictions for the upcoming Thanksgiving bowl games. I handed the scissors back to the officer standing closest to me and watched as he locked them away in a white Formica drawer that
held razors and sterilized thin black combs.

  I wondered what your hair felt like, and if your honey-gold hair was still curly like your dad’s or straight like mine. What did it smell like? Our home had been nothing like Roni’s, but I feared your scars cut just as deep.

  I returned to my cell and knew I had to write all of this down for you. My hands are weary, and my feet are cramping, but my mind is boiling over. I have no possessions to distribute, no finances to arrange, no funeral to plan, but I still have affairs to put in order. I need to stamp my place in this world even after I no longer belong to it: I am here! I matter! And most important, I need for you to know you matter.

  SOPHIE

  Sophie could feel the panic creeping across her face as she stared at the unopened letter. She had finally gotten to a place where she could move forward and make plans, leaving that degrading part of her life padlocked and buried with the rest of her family. Why was someone trying to take that from her?

  Well, she wasn’t going to let them. She was going to see Thomas before her hospital visit, as she had planned. He should be finishing with his last patient by then and maybe the two of them could grab lunch before he left to do afternoon rounds.

  She folded the envelope in half and then in half again. Thomas wouldn’t accidentally find the letter if she tucked it in her makeup bag, but he might if she stuffed it under last month’s water bill or in an old shoe box under the bed. She couldn’t take any chances, so right between her Fairly Medium powder foundation and her Perplexingly Pink lip gloss lay her secret. Her makeup, she thought, as she zipped the bag, was just as confused as the rest of her.

  When she pulled her car into the physicians’ parking lot at the back of Thomas’s building, she realized she didn’t even remember driving there. She parked next to him in the reserved area. Perks of being a doctor’s wife, she thought every time she slid her key card through the gate.

  Thomas’s office was modern, to say the least, and not like other doctors’ offices Sophie was used to. Gone were the standard plastic-coated waiting-room chairs, the muted tones of the previous decorating era. This waiting room had red suede sofas with square metal frames and backs with clean, shiny lines. Large plasma-screen TVs hung on the walls on the perimeter of the room. A calculated visual buffet advertised what you could have: full, pouty lips; tight, round butt; bigger breasts. The words Cutting-Edge and Why Not Now? popped up between images.

  “First impressions are everything,” Thomas explained to Sophie when she first toured his office. “Clients need to be thinking about potential when they walk in and perfection when they walk out.” Sophie felt the need to check herself for wrinkles every time she visited.

  An unfamiliar face greeted her when she approached the front desk; the usual receptionist must have been on vacation.

  “May I help you?” the chipper twentysomething receptionist with perfect white teeth and a tight button-down asked.

  “I’m Sophie. Sophie Logan.”

  “Oh, Dr. Logan’s wife,” the girl said, looking up. She analyzed Sophie’s appearance before speaking.

  “Yes. Is he finished seeing patients?”

  “Last one just left before you walked in, but I think he’s busy, uh, in a meeting.”

  “Thanks,” Sophie replied, in a way that said I’m not asking for your permission. She opened the waiting-room door and walked down the hallway.

  The door to Thomas’s office was closed, so she opted to sit in a small waiting area outside a consultation room. She was bold enough to refuse orders from a temp at the front desk, but not as audacious when it came to interrupting Thomas’s workday.

  She checked the time on her phone. She had a little more than an hour before she had to get to the hospital. She hoped his meeting would finish soon and they’d have time to eat together.

  She glanced around the room, investigating the information that lay on the brushed-metal coffee tables. Before-and-after pictures of clients documented the skills of Dr. Thomas Logan. She was most impressed with the book titled Body Contouring After Weight Loss, which featured picture after picture of patients once overtaken by excess skin, modeling their new sculpted bodies. Two thumbs up to them and to Thomas.

  She checked her watch again. Forty-five minutes before she needed to leave. She picked up a magazine and skimmed the articles. “Redefining Gravity—There Is Hope for the Sagging Breast” or “Under-Eye Puffiness: Is It Temporary or Genetic?” Neither looked interesting, but the word genetic caused her insides to swerve.

  Did her mom still look the same? Were the tops of her hands still soft? She shook her head and tried to make the memories stop, but they wouldn’t go away.

  The last time she’d visited, Sophie had tried her best to force excitement. “I received my cap and gown today.” One of the happy, but not really happy, events Sophie saved up to help her mom feel better and make her seem involved.

  Through the glass, she’d watched her mom lower her head.

  “I wish you could be there, too.” Then Sophie hung up the phone because their time was up.

  “Can I get you anything?” Front Desk Girl said to Sophie after the second time she’d circled the room.

  “No, I’m still fine,” she replied. “Don’t need a thing.”

  “Just checking.” The girl pretended to straighten some magazines on the coffee table before leaving the room.

  No sign of movement from Thomas’s office, so Sophie opened her purse and dug out the folded letter from her makeup bag. Eleven years ago, she’d walked out on everyone who resided in her past and resigned from the second-rate position of making her mother happy. She wouldn’t pick that job back up now.

  Surely Thomas’s office had a shredder. She stood and started to look around for it, but the remembrance of her mom’s heartrending face stopped her. She ripped open the envelope.

  Dear Mrs. Logan:

  I hope this letter finds you well. I’ve been trying to locate you for quite some time on behalf of your mother, Mrs. Grace Bradshaw. Mrs. Bradshaw asked that I contact you and inform you of her changing status. This is a very urgent matter. Please contact me at (334) 232-2549 as soon as possible.

  Regards,

  Ben Taylor

  The words blended on the paper and then blurred together. Urgent matter . . . changing status. Sophie felt nauseated.

  Status? What did that even mean? She accepted the fact that her mom was still on death row, but her dad had always said a case this shaky would never survive the appeals process. “Your mom will not die in prison,” he’d said, while he folded a load of once-white bath towels.

  Maybe she’s getting out. Sophie didn’t know what to do with that possibility, either. Her necklace with an S monogram started to feel like it was strangling her.

  Voices were coming from Thomas’s office. She shoved the letter back into the envelope and crumpled them both in her purse.

  “What are you doing here?” Thomas said, after emerging and doing a double take.

  When she didn’t answer right away, he said, “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. I needed to pick up a donor list. For the benefit. And I wanted to see if you had time for lunch.”

  “Sorry, Soph. I’ve already eaten.” His tone was apologetic as he gestured back to his door.

  Eva emerged from his office, dressed in silver heels and a navy skirt. In her hands was a crinkled-up deli bag.

  “Oh, hello,” she said to Sophie before she turned her back and darted into the restroom.

  Sophie forced herself to gather her thoughts before speaking, though she knew the look on her face must scream appalled. “What is she doing here?” she finally said after Thomas didn’t offer any explanation.

  Before he could answer, the temp girl came bolting down the hallway. “I’m going to lunch. Be sure and check your messages. Isabel Campor’s family called you again.”

/>   —

  “UM, I PICK ALEXIS,” SAID MOLLY. The rest of the class snorted and giggled.

  Her PE teacher ignored the taunts just like the rest of her teachers did. “Well, that just leaves you. Go and join the blue team.” Sophie walked across the expansive gymnasium and through the sneers and snickers. “Maybe she’ll have her mom’s killer instinct,” one boy mocked, before she finally found a place to sit down.

  God knows she had trust issues, but right now, as she ran into St. John’s Hospital for her donor meeting, she didn’t know what made her want to scream more—the letter from her mom’s attorney or the lacy pink bra under Eva’s thin white shirt.

  Her cell phone had rung at least three times. She assumed the calls were from Thomas, but she didn’t look or answer. She couldn’t trust the words ready to fly out of her mouth when she felt this upset.

  He’d managed to give her a quick kiss on the cheek before mumbling something about Eva bringing by lunch while she dropped off some drug samples. She didn’t wait for him to finish his explanation or for Eva to return from the bathroom; instead, she told him she was late for a meeting and left.

  Sophie’s phone rang again as she walked through the hospital lobby. The caller ID read St. John’s Hospital, so she decided to answer.

  “Thank God,” Mindy said. “You have a minute?”

  “Barely. I’m trying to grab someone from the hospital advisory board to see if we can finalize some donor numbers for the fund-raiser.”

  “I’m probably not supposed to share this information, but Max has a high fever. He’s been asking for you.”

  —

  MAX LOOKED SO HELPLESS when Sophie entered his room. His damp hair and flushed cheeks made her ache. His oxygen apparatus inhaled and exhaled in the background.