Low (Low #1)

by Mary Elizabeth

  “It’ll grow down to your back before you get out,” she says, chewing on her thumbnail. “Isn’t this place full of halfway barbers and tattoo artists?”

  I study the curve of her bottom lip as I say, “I keep to myself.”

  “Are you afraid they’ll slice and dice you with their clippers?” She drops her hand from her mouth and smiles.

  “This isn’t like the movies, girl. Days are uneventful. My cellmate is in for selling fake passports and spends his free time teaching himself to crochet,” I say, watching her small chest rise and fall as she breathes.

  “How about the nights?” she teases, wiggling her brows suggestively. “Are those uneventful?”

  I laugh into the receiver as a guard walks past me and announces, “Five more minutes.”

  Poesy’s smile fades, and she presses her hand to the glass like they do in the movies.

  “I miss you, Low,” she professes quietly.

  I press my hand to hers and swear I feel warmth. “This isn’t what I wanted. This wasn’t supposed to happen.”

  “You knew you could have come to me,” she says, bringing her face closer to our divider. Her eyes brimming with attachment darken, and the tips of her ears turn pink like they do when she’s upset. “I could have fed you, Low. It’s been six lonely months with you in here.”

  “Tell me something,” I say to change the subject before my stinging eyes spill over.

  Poesy sighs, outlining my hand through the glass with the tip of her pointer finger. “My mom hired a new gardener. He totally fucked up her begonias and blamed it on the rabbits. Like we have so many rabbits running around Culver City,” she says.

  “More than you think,” I say.

  “Anyway, he’s gross and not you, but I give him water.” She shrugs. “He’s old, so I take pity on his soul.”

  “How’s school, Poe? Are you still going?” I ask.

  “Yep. I worked on my psychology paper on the bus ride over here.” My girl drops her hand from the glass and sticks her thumbnail back between her teeth before saying, “But I had to drop half of my classes.”

  My heartbeat picks up. “Why?”

  “College is expensive, Lowen. My parents try to help out, but they have their own shit going on.”

  “What’s more important than getting you through school?” I ask, burying resentment for her mom and dad. I’m not wasting what little time we have on those selfish pricks.

  “I’m working,” she says. “I got a job at that trendy coffee shop down the street from school.”

  “Two minutes,” the guard warns.

  “There’s not much money in serving java to college kids, but I’m saving, Low. In four years, I should have enough for us to get our own place.” She speaks faster as our time runs out. “Maybe I can finish school by then, but you can mow lawns … And we can get a dog, you know. Things can be normal for you if I save enough. You won’t be hungry.”

  I drop the phone and my head as my guilty heart drops to my feet.

  “One more minute!” the guard yells. “Wrap it up.”

  Poe bangs against the glass.

  “Lowen.” Her muffled cries vibrate through the clear partition that keeps me away from reason.

  “Thirty seconds.”

  Poesy hits the phone against the glass. With tears in my eyes and a heart that’s stopped beating in my chest, I pick mine up.

  “I’m not leaving you. Do you hear me, you son of a bitch?” Poesy cries loudly as heartbreak falls from her eyes. “I’m here. I’m here with you.”

  Clenching my jaw, I blink tears away. “I know, babe.”

  “Time’s up!” the guard yells. “Hang up and stand to your feet.”

  “I love you,” she whispers through thick sadness.

  “Visiting time is over, Seely,” a deep voice sounds from right behind me. “Hang up.”

  “Give me a second,” I say, holding the phone tightly in my hand. Sweat pools between my palm and the black plastic.

  “I’ll come back,” Poesy says in a rush. “I’ll be here every week, Lowen.”

  “Set down the phone.” The guard reaches for the link to my girl, but I shrug him away.

  A second guard approaches Poesy on her side of the visiting room. I can’t hear what the female officer says, but Poe replies with, “Give me one more fucking minute,” before the receiver is ripped from her hand and mine.

  Lifted from my seat, I’m pushed into submission while Poesy watches with wide eyes and both hands pressed to the glass.

  Before I’m shoved away and led back to my six-by-eight cell, I mouth, “I love you,” to the girl who has a cross like mine tattooed on the palm of her hand.

  TIME IS MEANINGLESS, with so much of it on my hands. Days I used to spend pulling weeds and cutting grass for chump change are now spent staring at the same three concrete brick walls and rows of bars nearly twenty-four hours a day. I mark the weeks off on the calendar I bought from the commissary, but twelve months into my sentence, the weeks are endless.

  I can only read and sleep so much before even those two things begin to feel like punishment. Supplied with three square meals a day, I’ve put on weight. I do push-ups and sit-ups by the thousands, and during rec time, I run around the basketball courts.

  I shower, I shave, and I make small talk with a guy in the cell beside mine.

  Letters to my mom and sister go out every week, and Poesy visits like she promised.

  It was her idea for me to attend the church services on Sunday, but God doesn’t listen to my prayers.

  Rewarded for good behavior, I get a gig in the laundry room. Johnny, the inmate assigned to train me, is in his late fifties with gray hair and red skin. Two years served of a probable twenty-five-year sentence, he’s a bank robber awaiting trial who doesn’t miss his life outside as much as he should.

  “It’s my wife’s fault I’m here, that bitch.” Johnny laughs, refolding the pile of boxers I creased incorrectly. “She was pissed when I lost my job.”

  I grab some prisoner uniforms and pretend to work as I listen to Johnny talk.

  “How are we supposed to afford the house?” he mimics his wife in a nagging tone. “What will the neighbors think, John? What about Alaska? I thought we were going to Alaska.”

  I laugh out loud. Johnny refolds the pants I just screwed up.

  “So, I got the money to take her to Alaska, and what does she do? She turns me in.” He shrugs. “I’m happier here, anyway. Her voice was like nails on a chalkboard. I probably wanted to be caught.”

  I shake my head, rolling a uniform shirt into a ball. “What’s heisting a bank like?”

  Johnny’s gray eyes lighten, and his voice lowers. “I didn’t hurt anyone, but there’s power in other people’s fear at the end of the barrel of your gun, kid. And there’s strength in the dollar. It’ll make any man feel like a king.”

  My mind flashes back to the night in the liquor store and how relieved I felt when I thought I’d gotten away. I felt untouchable.

  Johnny drops the shirt he was folding and positions his arms as if he’s holding an AK pointed at the industrial-sized dryers we use.

  “Everyone get down—now.” He relives the moment, waving his imaginary gun back and forth. “Hands up,” he orders non-existent bank tellers. The veins in his neck protrude, and his face reddens impossibly more as he ends his recollection with, “Nobody has to die today because my wife wants to go to Anchorage.” We both laugh as he lowers his hands and starts folding uniforms again. “Sometimes I have dreams about it. I’ll wake in a sweat, out of breath, disappointed that I’m not standing on a mountain of cash.”

  “Was it really a mountain?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. “Forty or fifty thousand was the most I ever got from a hit. But the money was easy and quick.”

  I’ve never had more than a couple hundred dollars in my pocket at a time. My family was so strapped for cash, the money I made from the landscaping job was usually spent before I cashed my c
heck. Whatever was left after the rent and the past-due bills were paid went toward the bus fare I needed to get to Culver City to see Poe.

  There was never a penny to spare, so the idea of having forty of fifty thousand dollars at a time is unreal to me.

  Stacking a bunch of orange uniforms onto a rolling cart for delivery, I don’t regard Johnny in the eyes when I ask, “How did you do it?”

  Another inmate drops off a fresh batch of unfolded boxer shorts, fresh from the dryer. I can feel the warmth from them as Johnny grabs a pair from the top and shakes them out before folding the garment in half.

  “I watched bank robbery movies.” He laughs. “Which are bullshit compared to the real thing.”

  He spends the rest of our shift talking to me about casing, raiding, and the getaway. I listen, thirsty for knowledge. We discuss security guards and dye packs, silent alarms and timed vaults. As the days pass and I get better at folding oversized jumpsuits and socks with holes, Johnny goes into detail about every one of his actual bank heists.

  “Don’t do anything stupid like wear a Halloween mask of the president. It’ll get you caught,” he says, unloading clothes from the dryer. “The FBI can track who bought those masks and where they were purchased from, because they’re not sold everywhere.”

  A disguise seemed like the logical option to me. I pick up a dropped shirt from the floor and ask, “What did you wear?”

  “Black,” he says. “Black shirt, black pants, black shoes, and a black ski mask. You want to hide your face.”

  Every workday goes on and on like this, and after a month or so, Johnny and I start spending chow and rec time together, too.

  “Four robberies doesn’t make me a professional,” he says one day at breakfast, tired-eyed. “But I experienced enough to know what I would do differently if I were out.”

  I take a bite of cold eggs and say with a mouthful of food, “Tell me.”

  Johnny drinks his carton of milk in one gulp and wipes his mouth dry on his wrist. “I’d have a getaway driver.”

  WHEN I’M NOT with Johnny, writing to my mom and sister, or visiting with my girl, I learn what I can about Bonnie and Clyde, Jesse James, Frank Nash, and other famous bank robbers, using the limited resources the prison library offers. Considered a trusted inmate, I’m allowed to go on the Internet a couple of times a week—which I use to my full advantage to study the differences among a city bank, a country bank, a credit union, and their business hours around the LA area.

  There are a few news articles posted online about Johnny and his eventual capture. Dubbed the “Unhappily Ever After Bandit” because his wife narked when she found his stash of cash in their backyard shed, he was more of a nuisance to the LAPD than a threat. But he managed to pinch a hundred thousand dollars in his short career.

  Eighteen months into my stretch, I become obsessed with banks and bandits and often dream that I’m the one in the black ski mask, pointing an AR-15 at faceless hostages.

  “I have four thousand dollars saved, Low,” Poesy says. Her hair’s in a tight bun, exposing her entire sweet face. “We’ll be able to use that money for a security deposit and first month’s rent on an apartment when you spring free from this joint.”

  She’s in a yellow cotton sweater that exaggerates the gold in her eyes, and her lips are tinted rose, but I can see her beneath her clothes and makeup—underfed and underslept. Poesy’s bitten her nails low, and her face is thinner than it was only last week.

  I keep the phone on my ear and rub my calloused hand down my face. Life outside of this place has changed since I’ve been hemmed up. My mom met some guy in one of her physical therapy classes, and she and Gillian have moved in with him. I don’t worry about those two so much now, because they’re being taken care of. But week after week, I watch the girl I love vanish as she tries to balance school, work, and me in the palm of her small hand.

  It’s impossible to not feel guilty. I should be out there with her, blistering my palms on the rake and burning under the California sun, laying sod to help her save money and get through school so she can be something. Instead, I’m here, dreaming about being rich with stolen money when it’s the thief in me that fucked up everything in the first place.

  The last thing I should do is memorize which banks have bulletproof partitions and which don’t. I’m a high school dropout with too much time on my hands in this hellhole. I should get my GED so I’m more than a felon when I get out.

  “I’ve stayed out of trouble, Poe, and I mind my own business,” I start to explain, staring into her tired hazel eyes. “I’ve stacked up good behavior time. Maybe it won’t be too much longer…”

  She yawns, scrunching her nose and closing her eyes. “I’ll be waiting for you right outside the gates when that day comes.”

  AS EIGHTEEN MONTHS slowly turn into twenty-four, my stint is half over, and I become anxious, wondering if my conduct has been good enough for an early release. Ditching my work in the laundry room with Johnny, I now serve food in the kitchen with a bunch of thugs and dope dealers. None of them have stories as interesting as Johnny’s, but I didn’t need him as a distraction anymore.

  Three times a week, I take classes to work toward earning my GED. It’s a reminder that I’m street smart, not book smart. But when I get frustrated, I think about my girl’s sunken cheeks and bleeding fingers. She’s the one that pushes me to study after lights out and before we’re lined in the morning for head count and breakfast.

  I may never master linear equations, but if Poesy can stay in school, so can I.

  The only downside to doling out food is that it’s harder to blend into the sea of faces when everyone passes by me three times a day for their meal. The black guys look at me like they want to kill me. The white guys gawk like they want me to join them. The Mexicans are somewhere in the middle.

  “Where you from?” I’m asked throughout the day.

  “You need our protection,” some of them warn me, despite surviving here for two years without their protection.

  My reply is a spoonful of instant mashed potatoes and a nod to keep the line moving.

  “White boy.”

  “Peckerwood.”

  “Cracker motherfucker.”

  After dinner, it’s my turn to wash the dishes. I soak in the sensation of warm water on my hands, snatching the opportunity to wash my face. The showers and sinks here run cold, so this is a luxury I take advantage of when I can.

  Once I’ve scrubbed the last pot and hung it on the rack, I untie my apron and turn around to come face-to-face with three unfamiliar inmates. I search for the guard assigned to this area, but he’s nowhere around.

  I pull the hairnet off my head and hold it in my hand with my apron. “Sorry, guys, no leftovers.”

  The tallest of the three is a white man who has every inch of exposed skin from his neck to the tips of his fingers covered in faded tattoos, including a swastika on both of his eyelids.

  “We’re wondering why you haven’t come to us,” he says. “Are you some kind of bitch?”

  I shake my head, standing tall. “Just laying low.”

  My heart beats steady, knowing I’m lucky not to have faced this day sooner. What I consider keeping a low profile, in their eyes, is disrespect to their gang and to my race. But I’m no soldier in some white power movement, and I don’t have beef with any Asian, Black, or Mexican.

  I’m just a guy trying to get home to his girl.

  “It makes us look bad,” one of the other guys says. He’s smaller than the first one, with Aryan Brotherhood marked down his left arm.

  “Not my intention,” I say, keeping my voice steady. It echoes off the pots and pans hanging from the wall.

  “Then you wouldn’t have a problem serving white men first from now on,” he says. I know he’s talking about mealtime.

  I shrug and lift my eyebrows nonchalantly. “First-come, first-served, friend.”

  The third man laughs. His dark black hair’s pulled back, and I can
tell by the length of his long nose and the olive tone of his skin that this guy’s a wannabe. They’re all posers with a manipulated sense of brotherhood—fakes. I’m sure their Jewish grandmothers and Hispanic daddies are proud that they’re hailing Hitler. Another fake motherfucker who had a dream of a world filled with blonde hair and blue eyes. None of which these idiots have.

  “That’s not how it works around here, comrade.”

  The right side of my mouth curves up. “I’m not your brother.”

  Adrenaline I haven’t touched in a long time sparks and sets fire, sending my heart flying and my hands trembling. The apron drops from my grip and falls to my feet, and I step back to build space between my guests and me.

  The tall one smiles, showing a mouthful of crooked teeth. “You sure?” he asks.

  “Positive.” I untuck my shirt and square up, ready for a squabble. GED classes and an apron can’t take the hood out of the boy, and I’m no punk.

  I breathe in quickly through my nose and exhale harshly through my mouth. I didn’t grow up on the mean streets and not learn how to defend myself. Some of my first memories are of knuckling up with my dad on the front porch with the sun beating down on us and my mother calling for my dad to be easy on her baby.

  My dad, the Aryan Brother, is spending one hundred years in San Quentin for first-degree murder.

  I want a life with Poesy more than I want respect from the three men standing in front of me, but if I back down, they’ll find a way to kill me, and I won’t have a life with her at all.

  Confusing my slow retreat with surrender, I’m stalked with their defenses down and their egos up. They laugh amongst themselves, like this is a joke, like I won’t break their motherfucking jaws if they get any closer.

  I can see it when they realize it, too. The smiles fall from their faces, and the muscles in their arms flex as they fist their hands. With the two smaller ones flanking the big one, I stop backing up and wait for him to make the first plunge. Ungraceful, he charges toward me and stumbles when I dart out of the way, pushing him in the process. He doesn’t fall, but his face flames red with embarrassment, and his jaw flexes.