Eleven Years Too Long

“It’s time,”  Jared called approaching me.  I saw Jared nearly every day for the past eleven years but I had never been as happy to see him as I was today.  I was sitting on my bare mattress bed and I closed my eyes in a little thank you prayer.  But this was no longer my bed.  I got up and walked out of my cell.  But this was no longer my cell.  Someone else can grace their presence with this bed and this cell now.

I had already gathered a few belongings I had come to cherish over my eleven years here: my journal, my bible, The Stand, a Stephan King novel I had read again and again and never got sick of, and a few small trinkets.  I put these items in a provided brown paper bag.  I left my toiletries and items I was happy to say goodbye and leave behind.  I followed Jared down the hall and through passageways. Today the passageways looked different.  I guess it was because it had been eleven years since I last saw them.  

He led me to a room and asked me to wait.  He walked through a door on the other side of the windowless room.  Waiting was all I did around here.  Eleven minutes.  Eleven hours.  It didn’t matter to me at this point.  I had already waited eleven years and now I was leaving this place and that is all that mattered to me.  What were a few hours added onto a few years?

I sat in one of the four plastic chairs lined against the wall clinching my paper bag.  The floor was concrete and the cinder block walls were painted a light green.  The lighting was a bit harsh but after eleven years, one becomes accustomed to the harsh lighting.  One becomes accustomed to all kinds of things they never thought they would, hard surfaces, bland food, noise, avoiding confrontation, and not seeing your loved ones.  Eleven years is enough time to dull one’s senses to anything. 

As I sat I thought about how I ended up here.  How it was a case of the wrong place at the wrong time.  I happened to be wearing a black hoodie in the same neighborhood at the same time another man with dark skin was wearing a black hoodie.  This other man shot and killed a liquor store attendant a block from where I was.  I was wearing a black hoodie and out for a jog after my late-night job.  Pair that with a public defender and that is all it took to find me guilty. 

That day, my muscles were still sore from leg day.  I should have listened to my body.  I should have stayed home.  It was god’s way of telling me to stay home.  But I didn’t listen.  I decided that a short jog was better than no jog at all.  That was an eleven-year mistake.

It took eleven years for them to match the DNA of the real killer with the DNA found at the scene of the crime.  Eleven years of having the evidence and the technology, but not “getting around to it”.  That was eleven years too long. 

Jared came back into the room. “Follow me,” is all he said.  

He signaled to a window and I set my paper bag on the ledge.  A large woman in her late forties and short wild hair sat on the other side of the window.  Although I was standing well above six feet, she was perched above me and made me feel small.  That is another thing one gets used to with eleven years in here, feeling small.  Feeling smaller than the guards and the other prisoners.  Feeling smaller than in my life before.  

“Please sign at the bottom here,” she said, placing a form and a pen in a metal box and sliding it over for me to retrieve it.  I review it to verify it was not a form to stay for another eleven years or a transfer to another facility for eleven years, I put the pen to paper and make the loops I had developed in the outside world.  I slide it back to her in the metal box.

“And this one,” again I review it, sign, and slide it back into the metal box.

“Here are your things.” She now slides a clear plastic bag with my name written on it into the metal box.  “Please review it and sign the paper included when you have verified that everything is there.  There is also a bus ticket you can use to get to where you need to go.” 

I review the contents of the clear bag.  A pair of black basketball shorts, a white shirt, and a black hoodie.  Sweaty socks and a pair of Air Force Ones.  A Fitbit and a pair of keys.  That is it.  I sign the paper and slide it back to her through the metal box.

“You can change in the restrooms over there.  Put your jumpsuit in the provided reciprocal” She points to a door opposite where she is sitting. “And then you are free to leave through those doors.” She points to the doors at the end of the room.  Through the sliding glass, I can see the outdoors.  Although it was daytime, it is dark and it looks cold but I can’t wait to breathe in the fresh damp air.

I enter the restrooms, enter the handicap stall, and set both bags on the floor.  I changed into my shorts and tshirt.  I put my socks on and then the Air Force Ones.  The Fitbit is dead, but it’s the only possession I have, so I put it on my wrist.  The keys are in my pocket.  I was sure the locks have changed but I needed to see for myself.  I bundle the jumpsuit and the hoodie in one and dispose of it in the reciprocal provided.  Someone else can have that hoodie, it’s no use to me.

As quick as I can, I am out of the restroom and on my way to the outside world.  I walked swiftly, worried that at the last moment someone will grab my arm and tell me, “Just kidding.  You get to do another eleven years.”  But no one comes.

The first door opens and then the second and I feel the cool breeze on my skin.  I look up and take a big breath.  My face is wet and I’m unsure if it is a tear or rain.  I stretch out my arms like a cross, dropping the paper bag in movement.  I start spinning and I can’t stop.  The white t-shirt is soaked through but I can’t stop spinning.

After eleven years, I don’t know what is next for me.  But I do know it can only be up from here.