But the client was a church, and the pastor had assured her that the parking lot was secure. She would pull up, someone would open the gate and she would park her car inside while they met, and then he would walk her out afterwards. She hadn’t mentioned to him that she was six months pregnant, and larger than the average woman because she was carrying twins, otherwise he probably would have agreed to meet her in her office downtown.
But “downtown” in DC parlance was surprisingly intimidating for many of the city’s residents. She could only imagine how the specter of the trip would have the humble pastor scrambling to find his best suit, waxing his car, and rushing over to get a shape-up. For her, it was less of an inconvenience just to meet him where he was comfortable.
While growing up, Ryann had almost never ventured downtown herself. That was where the museums were, the monuments, the … White folks. DC had been, and to some degree, still was A Tale of Two Cities.
Pastor Seabrook was one of what she thought of as her “charity clients.” The work she did for his church wasn’t pro bono, but close to it. For a flat five-hundred-dollar fee, she wrote a funding proposal, helped scout potential funders, and even attended funder meetings to help close the deal if there was interest. And since she spent easily two hundred hours on each proposal process, she was basically working for less than a dollar an hour, when her going rate was almost one hundred times that.
Tonight, all she had to do was sit with the pastor and get the details for the project he was seeking funding for. She had asked him to prepare it in memo form for easy reference as she wrote, and though it was likely she would have to return to him later to fill in some blanks, Ryann planned only to quickly walk through the memo tonight, and then set up a follow-up meeting later.
During the drive out to Deanwood, she listened to Leela James on her stereo and tried not to apply the lyrics of every single song to the sorry state of her life. When she got home, she would have a warm bath—never hot, Dr. Billingsley had warned her—and collapse into bed. If only her sleep was dreamless.
Since she’d been pregnant, she dreamed in Technicolor. Most often, the details were fuzzy when she woke up in the morning, and they frittered away before she even made it to the bathroom to empty her bladder. But she had perfect recall of the emotions, and they were seldom positive.
All too often, Ryann awoke with her heart pounding in terror, or a dim sense of impending doom. Occasionally, she found her face wet with tears. She’d told Ivy about the dreams when they’d celebrated Thanksgiving together, and Ivy told her she’d dreamt every night while she was pregnant as well, but her dreams were more strange than disturbing. She was flying, or running through woods on all fours, or eating raw meat.
‘Like a movie,’ Ivy said shrugging. ‘Sometimes I felt like I was watching, instead of participating, even though I was the star of the movie. Y’know what I mean?’
Ryann didn’t know. Because she was very much a participant in her dreams, even if she couldn’t remember them.
Pulling up to the address of the church, Ryann looked around. From the confines of her car, she noticed that the streetlights were either dim or non-existent, and the chain-link gate was locked. The street itself was close to deserted.
Reaching for her phone, she dialed the number to the church. It rang three times then went to voicemail. Hanging up, she considered. It wasn’t yet completely dark, since it was just approaching six, but the natural light had softened to a metallic, wintry gray and there was no one around. Sitting there, facing a closed gate, in her expensive car, she realized her vulnerable position and reached for the gearshift. She would drive around the block and try the church again in a moment. Waiting here alone was the kind of dumb-ass move that got people carjacked.
Just as she put her car in reverse and looked at the rearview camera image, it lit up into bright white. Shielding her eyes, she turned her head away and glanced over her shoulder. Someone had pulled up behind her! Her heart lurched and then began beating double-time.
Ryann grabbed her phone and hit the button to dial the church again. Just as it rang a second time, someone rapped on her window, causing her to jump and issue a shriek.
“Ryann.”
Looking up, she realized with relief that it was a familiar face.
With sagging shoulders, she hit the button to put down her window.
“Greg?”
“The hell you doin’ out here, girl?”
“I have an appointment,” she said, putting a hand to her breast. “You scared me! What … how come you’re …?”
“Spence told me to come make sure you a’ight.”
Ryann felt her heart quake. This time, with a completely different emotion than fear.
“I’m fine. I have a … how did he know that I was here?”
“Your secretary called him. Told him you done lost your mind,” Greg said wryly. “So, where exactly is this appointment at?”
“There.” Ryann pointed to the church. “But no one’s answering the phone.”
“Blow your horn,” Greg instructed.
Ryann did as he said. Inside her, the babies jumped, and stirred. Smiling, she put a hand on her abdomen and grinned even wider when they kept moving. Releasing the horn, she looked down, rubbing her stomach. When they moved, there was nothing like it—it was indescribable. Ryann could almost picture them.
“Scared ‘em, huh?” Greg said.
“Yeah,” Ryann laughed, “They woke up, I think.”
“Looks like you woke someone else up too.”
Ryann looked toward the church and saw the pastor, trotting a little as he made his way in their direction.
“This your appointment?” Greg asked.
“Yup. That’s him. Thanks, Greg. I didn’t think …”
“That’s what Spence said. That you don’t think.”
Ryann pressed her lips together, silently accepting the rebuke.
“I’ll pull in with you,” Greg said. “Wait till you’re done and follow you to the Beltway when you leave.”
“You don’t have to …”
“I have to,” Greg said. “Or Spence would have my ass.”
Ryann swallowed hard and nodded.
“Thank you,” she said again.
Some of the women got pulled out of line, and Ryann pretended not to see it happen, or to know why.
It had never happened to her, thank God, but women were sometimes randomly picked for cavity searches. Or at least, they claimed it was random, but Ryann suspected that wasn’t exactly true. Those who got pulled tended to have the hardened look of people not unfamiliar with the routine of visiting someone in a maximum-security prison.
Though she hadn’t been singled out in that way, this time, Ryann had to submit to a female guard patting down and manipulating her pregnant belly, testing its shape, and size, making sure it was real. While the woman touched her over her clothes, with the blue plastic gloves, disturbingly similar to those that Dr. Billingsley used, Ryann had to hold herself back. She wanted to slap the woman’s hands aside, and had to bite the inside of her cheek to prevent herself from doing just that.
Now, sitting in the visiting room, Ryann looked through the smoky Plexiglas, her eyes fixed on the door on the other side, through which Rick would enter. She had only made it this far after a two-and-a-half hour long wait in the anteroom with a crowd of other visitors, mostly women. Some had children with them, some had infants, and some were, like her, pregnant.
Ryann had tried not to touch much of anything. In her car, she had a packet of handi-wipes waiting for her. She knew from experience that they wouldn’t be enough. Whenever she left the prison she wished she could shower immediately. And on some level, she knew that it wasn’t germs that she was worried about—it was the stench of hopelessness that seemed to seep into her pores. Even the staff had eyes that seemed devoid of any positive emotion. If places carried feelings, prisons were pure despair. And she didn’t want that to seep into her, into her babies.
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Eyes still on the door, she wondered whether Rick would ask her to bring the babies to see him once they were born. If he did, she would have to refuse.
Just then, the door opened, and Rick came shuffling in. He was shackled, as always, and wearing a white shirt with gray pants that looked like scrubs with slippers and white tennis socks. In that first instant when she saw him, every single time she was here, Ryann was shocked at his size.
Rick had gone in a wiry eighteen-year old, and now was a beefy man of almost forty. His once narrow face was squared-off and harder. He had several scars, stark against his pale skin. Time outside was rare, so her brother, once the darker between them, was now a yellowish pallor. His eyes, too, looked a little jaundiced. He looked older than his chronological age, and when he smiled, the crinkles at the corners of his eyes were deeper than they had any business being.
When he was sitting directly across from her, Ryann felt tears rise to her eyes. Rick grinned and motioned for her to stand. She did and turned sideways so he could see her girth.
“Ma’am,” the corrections officer said. “You have to remain in your seat, please. Sit down.”
Ryann obeyed his command and her eyes met her brother’s. For a long while, they just looked at each other.
“You look good,” Rick said finally. “You look happy.”
She heard him through the two-way in the center of the barrier between them. It wasn’t like the movies, where you had to lift a handset, but his voice was distorted. She hadn’t heard her brother’s voice unaltered by this device or a telephone connection in over fifteen years.
“I’m not,” Ryann said, shaking her head.
Rick frowned and leaned a little closer, as though not sure he heard her correctly.
“I’m not happy,” Ryann said again.
“Wh …”
“I can’t do this,” she said. “Not … I can’t pretend that it … that that night didn’t happen.”
A pall came over Rick’s features.
“We’ve been doing that for years. And I don’t want to anymore. I want you to tell me … why. What happened? Why? You’re my brother …”
For a moment, he looked over his shoulder, panicked, like he wanted to run.
“Look at me,” she said, her voice clogged with tears. “Did I … was it me? Did I do something to …”
“No,” Rick said talking over her. “It wasn’t you. It was me. I was drunk. I was high. I didn’t … I was out my damn mind. I …”
“Did you think I was someone else?”
Rick swallowed. Ryann saw his throat bobbing as he did. He shook his head. “I want to be able to say yes. But … I’m not sure.”
Ryann wiped a hand across her forehead, feeling the sudden hot wetness on her cheeks. Her brother’s eyes fell from hers and her nose dripped onto the Formica surface in front of her.
“It feels like you’ve been controlling me,” she said. “Even from in here. And sometimes you’re so … mean. It’s like you don’t want me to be …”
“I want you happy,” Rick said, anticipating her thought. “I swear I do. But sometimes, I … You’re all I got, Ry. Some dudes they got a wife, they got kids, they got … I have you. You’re all I got.”
The weight of that pressed into Ryann’s chest and for a moment, it felt like she couldn’t breathe.
“And for a long time, you were all I had, Rick. But that’s not …”
“I know,” he said, his head dropping. “I know.”
“You don’t know! I couldn’t tell him,” Ryann said. “I was scared to tell him. Because I don’t want him to be disgusted with me. You understand that? So I told him something … something that made him …” She laughed harshly. “Something that made him angry instead. His anger was better. I could handle the anger. But disgust …”
“I don’t know what to …”
“I told someone once. I never told you that,” Ryann said.
Her nose was dipping uncontrollably now. Next to them, another woman had taken her seat and was greeting her inmate. That’s how they referred to the guys to family members: your inmate. Who’s your inmate? As though they, the family, were the jailers. But Ryann felt like she was the one imprisoned.
And Rick was her jailer.
“I told someone once,” she continued. “He loved me before I told him, but afterwards, everything between us changed. He never touched me again. He never looked at me the same again. And then he was with someone else, and …” Ryann swallowed a hard pebble in her throat.
“You never …”
“Of course I never told you, Rick.” She looked at him. “I felt responsible for you being here. I didn’t want you to carry that burden too.”
Now Rick’s eyes were welling up. He opened his mouth to speak.
“Guard!”
Ryann sat back, stunned as the CO advanced.
“I can’t …” Rick said, gulping. “I … I can’t …”
He stood and Ryann watched, speechless, as he allowed himself to be led back toward the door, through it, and to the other side.
The drive between Red Onion State Prison, and Washington DC was almost seven hours long. For a woman six-and-a-half months pregnant, it felt much longer but after Rick cut their visit short, Ryann’s only thought was getting out of Pound, Virginia and back home as quickly as she could. It was already four p.m. by the time she hit the road, so the responsible decision would have been to stop at one of the nearby Super 8 or Best Western motels and get a room, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She wanted out of the godforsaken town just about as fast as her car would carry her.
As if sensing her tension, or admonishing her for making the long trip in the first place, her abdomen tightened into a painful Braxton-Hicks contraction just as she pulled out of the parking area. Ryann grimaced and reached down to lightly massage her middle, taking deep breaths to help her bear the pain. The contractions were frightening, even though Dr. Billingsley said they were normal.
One mile outside of the town limits, Ryann gave in, pulling over to the side of the road and allowing herself to cry, deep sobs heaving her chest and shoulders. She sat there until she was dry-eyed, and resolute once again, then reaching for her phone, she mapped out a route that promised the least traffic and fewest delays. Just as she pulled back onto the highway, one of the babies gave her an encouraging kick, reminding her that she wasn’t truly as alone as she felt in that moment. They were still there and still with her.
The drive took almost nine hours, because she stopped several times for the bathroom, and to stretch her legs. She wasn’t hungry, and didn’t like the look of the processed donuts, cakes and chips at the rest stops; and she was too fearful of unknown germs to attempt one of the prepared egg salad or ham sandwiches crammed into refrigerated cases.
So it was after one in the morning when, exhausted, ravenous and emotional wrung out, Ryann finally got home. Parking haphazardly in her driveway, she stumbled into the house, locked all the doors and went to bed without eating.
~28~
Ryann sat down heavily, grateful to be off her feet. Glancing toward the door for what felt like the hundredth time, she reached for the phone. She was sure she told Ivy twelve-thirty, and it wasn’t like her friend to be late. This appointment, she didn’t want to do on her own.
Lately, it seemed like all her backbone had dissolved. She was a mass of nerves and tears, weakness, and swollen feet. And to make matters worse, the babies weren’t as active as they used to be. Though she knew it wasn’t wise, she’d read a few things online; ominous things with phrases like “cord accident” and “fetal distress.” Phrases that kept her up at night, and made what little sleep she got, more fitful than it had already been. Between the bad dreams and the internet, she was beginning to look a mess.
Gone were all her illusions of being a radiant and glowing pregnant woman. Instead she had visible dark circles under her eyes, and most days was way too exhausted to bother with all the contouring neces
sary to make her look like something other than a zombie. At the office, she was useless. She forgot meetings, napped at her desk, and left early more days than not.
She fell heavily asleep every day when she got home, sometimes before she could muster up the energy to eat dinner, and then woke up panting and in a panic, her heart racing like someone being chased. And yet she couldn’t remember a single thing of substance that would explain her terror.
“Good afternoon, sir. May I …?”
Ryann looked up just as the receptionist greeted Spencer.
“I have an …” He looked around the waiting room until he spotted her, and stopped speaking mid-sentence.
They both froze, each with eyes locked on the other. One corner of his mouth lifted for a nanosecond. Ryann mentally took stock of how she looked—black pants, white button-down with black ballet flats. Very little makeup, and her hair held back with a headband because she had been too exhausted to fuss with it that morning.
“Sir?” the receptionist prompted.
“No. Thank you. I’m … I see her,” Spencer said, his eyes still on Ryann. He walked toward her, and the closer he got, the harder her heart hurt.
He looked so good. Darker from the sun, and wearing boots and work clothes. He was probably on a site today. Ryann had no way of knowing anymore what his daily schedule was like.
Sinking into the seat next to hers, he exhaled. Ryann stole a glance at him out of the corner of her eyes. Spencer was looking down at his lap. Wiping both hands on his thighs, he turned the one closest to her palm up. Ryann put her hand on top of it, and laced her fingers through his. Spencer curled his fingers around hers, and held them tightly.
“I don’t know how to say this gently,” Dr. Billingsley’s speech was slow, stern and deliberate. “You’re putting your health, and that of your babies at risk. I don’t know of a single scenario that makes weight-loss at this stage of a pregnancy anything other than a full-blown crisis. Especially given your age, and the fact that you’re carrying twins. I’m going to have to insist that …”
The Lover Page 28