Mafia Girl (23 page)

“We’ll all go out to dinner next week…somewhere interesting,” I said.

“Definitely,” Clive said. “I’ll look for a new place, maybe Thai?”

“That would be cool,” Ro said.

Everyone nodded in agreement.

Silence.

Uncomfortable stares everywhere but at me. We were all doing a miserable job of trying to look cheerful.

I gathered my books together quickly. “I better go.”

Just as I was rushing toward the door, Ro ran over.

“Gia, wait,” she said, wiping her eyes. “Tell your dad, tell him that… we love him and pray for him every day. And Gia, I’m just so sorry for you.”

Where was my hard-ass friend when I needed her?

“As if praying helps…”

“Gia…” She came toward me with her arms out, but I couldn’t let her hug me because…

“I’m sorry, Ro, I’m being such a bitch.”

“No you’re not, Gia. I wish I could trade places with you—”

She actually meant it.

“I’ll tell him, Ro.” Then I ran.

My hands are functioning without a brain, stowing things in an overnight bag. You’ll get through it, I keep telling myself. Like I have a choice.

We get off the plane almost six hours later and follow Anthony to the Hertz desk then leave the terminal and walk to the parking lot, slipping and sliding on the icy patches covering the ground. The sky is steely gray. My breath hovers in front of me like a frosty ghost.

We drive to a cheap motel and eat burgers and fries from a fast food joint and watch TV shows with forced laughter and take aspirin and try to sleep, pretending that the heater isn’t clanking loud and that the bed isn’t lumpy. In the morning Anthony drives us to the prison.

I read about it online to get prepared, to know something, anything, about where my father would be spending the rest of his life.

Thirty-seven acres. Four-hundred-and-ninety beds. Cell furniture made out of poured concrete. Showers run on a timer so they can’t flood. Toilets that turn off if they are stopped up. Sinks without stoppers that could be used as weapons. Fourteen hundred remote-controlled steel doors. Twelve-foot-high razor wire fences. Laser beams, motion detectors, cameras, and guard dogs monitor the prison 24/7 in addition to staff. One of the few journalists ever to tour it said the inside was filled with “an eerie silence,” a description that sounds like it was lifted from the latest bestseller about life in a dystopian universe.

Only this is real.

Nonfiction.

ADX, the only supermax in the federal prison system, was built in 1994.

No one has ever escaped.

We enter and I see a large black-and-white photo of Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay. ADX is sometimes called the Alcatraz of the Rockies. They’re proud of that, I think. There are also photographs of people responsible for the prison. The only one I recognize is President Obama.

After they take our pictures and search us, they take all our stuff. I turn over my handbag and so does my mom. It makes me rethink everything I keep with me every day and how it could be used by someone trying to escape: a nail file, a tiny Swiss Army knife that holds a pair of scissors, tweezers, and a pen. Useful tools. Even the small, smooth gratitude rock. I doubt that the Aborigines ever thought about how it could be used by an angry inmate against a prison guard.

Anthony empties his pockets, handing them his phone, his wallet, his keys, and his pocketknife, a larger one than mine. We walk in stages as they unlock doors in front of us and then lock them behind us. We’re under lockdown now too. We’re inmates. We can’t bring gifts, not even food.

“Would some lasagna be so terrible?” my mom keeps repeating. “Just something from home to make him feel better. One meal. Only one meal.”

Only no one here is interested in making the inmates here feel better or at home. They’re interested in only one thing: keeping them locked away.

We go forward, only our stripped-down selves. After I don’t know how many hours of waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting, and waiting, and doing nothing except dreading and living in hell and making promises to God in exchange for mercy for my dad, we go down a long, underground hallway where there are one word signs.
Loyalty. Honesty. Integrity.

Isn’t that like too much too late? And what’s the purpose now, to make everyone feel guilty for what can’t be changed? We enter a concrete room like a bunker with video cameras all around, recording every eyeblink, every hiccup. We wait more and more and all I can do is bite at my cuticles until blood seeps out and I have to suck it away until it stops. Then I play with the cross around my neck, running it back and forth along the chain and think of songs in my head and try to recite poetry that I memorized in the fifth grade and then make more deals with God and ask him to step up to the plate right now and prove himself to me because if ever there was a time…

Then.

Suddenly.

Out of a dungeon room. In the back somewhere. A form takes shape.

My dad.

And he’s…oh my God, so, so different now.

No silk designer suit or fine cashmere bathrobe. No confident stride. A short-sleeve prison uniform. His legs shackled together so he can take only small baby steps. His hands cuffed, attached to a chain connected to a black box attached to his waist. Hair clipped so short it shows his scalp. His face drawn, his perpetual tan gone yellow. He’s thin, so thin, hollowed eyes as if life has been gouged out of him.

My daddy…

How can I stand this?

But he can still smile. They haven’t stolen that yet. And it changes him back, a little.

“Daddy!” I call out, my voice coming out high-pitched and shrill after not speaking for nearly a day and a half. Only how stupid to call him because he can’t hear me behind the thick glass partition. He can’t hear anything inside this tomb. There’s a phone. That’s why there’s a phone. We have to use it to talk to him.

My mom goes first.

“How do you feel?” she asks in a pitying voice, holding the phone in her left hand, her right in a fist in her lap.

He shrugs and she listens while I try to lip-read his answer.

“How do they treat you?” she says and then, “what do you eat here?” Then more questions about “the room” because she won’t say
cell
, and answers I can’t hear or lip-read, but I watch his face. That’s enough. My dad is tough. Sure of himself. He’s been beaten up by fists and real life and been in and out of prisons before.

Only he’s never had to face anything like this.

No enemy is as tough as solitary.

My mom gives the phone to Anthony. He talks about business and everything is straightforward. Emotionless. Only it isn’t. All that is kept behind Anthony’s eyes because he’s good at that. He’s been trained by the master. Finally it’s my turn.

“I’ll give you Gia,” Anthony says. He crosses his arms over his chest, like he’s giving my dad a hug.

But my dad holds up a finger.

“What?” Anthony says.

“Be clean,” he says.

Anthony looks unsure. He raises an eyebrow. “Dad, I…”

“Listen to me,” my dad says, staring intently at my brother. “Listen to me. It’s over.”

Anthony hands me the phone, and I fall silent, stupid, forgetting everything I wanted to say and the whole script that I practiced again and again. I’m dumb. My mouth is dry. All I can feel are the hot tears about to flood my eyes, tears I’ve tried to fight off and vowed to hide inside me.

“It’s okay,” my dad starts, studying me. “It’s okay, my Gia,” he says, because saying it isn’t okay would hurt me too much.

“What do you do…every day?” I ask, remembering a question.

“I read, I pray…” He smiles. “And all the memories, I have all the memories and go over them. Like our home movies, remember?”

I swallow and nod.

“You tell me…about everything,” he says. “How is school?”

I tell him about Clive and Ro and the election and what Christy and Brandy and Georgina did. “They tried to cheat—to steal the ballots, Daddy,” I say haltingly. “But we didn’t let them get away with it. I spoke to the principal and asked for a recount and they found the missing ballots and counted again and I won.” Only now it sounds like some kind of hollow victory to me. “I won,” I repeat. “I’m president.”

“President!” he says, his eyes lighting up. He nods. It makes him so proud. I talk more and more to give him information to fill up his now empty life.

What I don’t tell him is about the scholarship because it would tear him up. He’d know why Clive’s parents did it. He’d know that without their help I’d be out of Morgan and he doesn’t need anything else to haunt him while he’s lying on his back in his cell for twenty-three hours a day, a cell that’s always lit and monitored 24/7. Only a single hour to exercise in a space that resembles an empty swimming pool so none of the inmates know their location for possible escape. He doesn’t say that, but I know it. I read it. Still I ask him about his “room.”

“There’s a window and I can see a sliver of blue sky,” he says. “That helps.”

A sliver? A tiny fraction of the outside world. That’s what they’ve left him. I feel like I need to double over because of the hurt. This place will drive him insane. But I snap to. Herbie. I’ll tell him about Herbie.

“We adopted a dog, Daddy.”

My dad’s eyes widen. “What kind, a puppy?”

“He’s a senior, Daddy, a pit bull. A ten-year-old pit bull named Herbie.”

He nods his head, understanding.

“Old,” he says, shaking his head, “without a home.”

“He had a sad life in a shelter and now he lives with us.” I hold up a picture of Herbie, the only thing they let me keep.

My dad’s face softens. He smiles.

“And he likes mom’s cooking. She’s always feeding him.”

“He looks like a good boy,” he says. “You did right—they give back so much.”

“I wish you could meet him,” I say, my voice cracking.

“I wish I could too, Gia,” he whispers, his eyes clouding over.

Seconds of silence and we just sit there and stare at each other with all the memories of our lives together flowing between us because this has to last. Finally we go on, talking normal, everyday things. Words, words, and more words back and forth like a volley over an invisible net to keep the lifeline alive. The neighborhood, the church, the priest, my friends, my schoolwork, movies he’ll never see, music he’ll never hear. Whatever we can grab to keep our mouths moving—and it all feels like lies and hypocrisy and empty talk without meaning or joy or laughter because we’re afraid to divulge too much because it will show him that we’re living. While he isn’t.

I don’t want him to think about what he’s missing or how everything’s empty now without him at home. But he knows. My dad knows everything. Still I don’t want to make his life here even worse, if that’s possible.

Minutes go by and then hours. I’m so, so bone tired. He is too. But no one wants to turn away because this visit has to last him.

Five visits a month, that’s all he gets. Only we’re more than halfway across the country so we aren’t flying back to Florence, Colorado, next week or the week after. We can’t afford to. So we talk and keep talking like guns are pointed at our heads. And none of it matters except that we connect.

I pick up my hand and press it against the glass wall. He puts his in the very same spot, as close as we’re going to get for the rest of our lives.

“Who loves you more than anyone else in the whole world?” he whispers.

“You do, Daddy,” I say, pinching my leg so hard that I break the skin.

Neither of us says anything and I shake my head as the tears flow.

“Please,” he says, “please don’t cry.” He glances up at the clock.

“Gia,” he says finally. “Remember our secret?”

I nod.

“Remember Beppo?”

I squint.
What?

He lifts a finger as if to silence me then turns it into a fist that he presses against his mouth, pretending to cough. He glances up. The room, they’re listening, the gesture says. “Take good care of him,” he says, looking at me pointedly.

A message. But what?

“Time is up,” the guard says.

My dad gets to his feet. He makes a kiss with his lips, then slowly turns away.

“I love you Daddy!” I shout. “I love you!” Only he doesn’t turn back, so I shout it again, louder. “I love you Daddy! I love you!” because I forgot to say it, I forgot to say it! All that time together and I’m so stupid, so stupid, I forgot to tell him.

“Gia!” Anthony says.

“I forgot to tell him, Anthony!” I scream. “I forgot to tell him!”

“He knows it, Gia,” he says softly, stoically, his own eyes filling with tears as he takes my arm and pulls me away. “He knows it.”

But I pull away and run back to the glass and pound on it. “Daddy, come back!” I shout. “Daddy, Daddy, please!”

“Lord help us,” my mother cries. “Lord help us.”

“He’s gone, Gia,” Anthony says. “He can’t hear you anymore.”

Then he drops his face in his hands and starts sobbing too.

The wind is blowing hard and it’s starting to snow as we walk to the parking lot. The ground is icy and uneven and it’s hard to walk without slipping. My face feels as numb as my insides. Anthony takes my mom’s arm so that she doesn’t slip on the ice. I nearly fall once and then again.

“Can’t they salt the parking lot? Is that so fucking hard?”

Anthony turns around and stops, reaching out an arm to me. I take his arm and we walk slowly, stepping carefully, crossing the frozen tundra.

My mom sits in the front seat next to Anthony and I stretch out across the backseat.

“Turn up the heat,” she says, putting up the collar of her coat.

“It’s as high as it can go, Ma,” Anthony says.

“That’s all it can go?”

“Ma, it takes time. It’ll get warmer. It takes time.”

“This is how it is here for your father all the time,” she says. “It doesn’t get warmer for him.” She looks at Anthony but he stares ahead and doesn’t answer. She shakes her head and closes her hand around the cross on her neck.

“Not even a plate of food from home,” she says, shaking her head and staring out the window.

I close my eyes, lulled by the motion of the car, just like when I was a baby. Only now my dad isn’t driving.