Release

Flakes drifted and danced in the air before they landed. He'd forgotten the peace of simply gazing out of a window. If this hadn't been the day, he may have wished to sit there on that bench forever. He would have longed for hot chocolate and one jumbo marshmallow, like when he was a boy, allowed just once a year to sip a mug held in careful hands on the couch in Mama's living room. That's what she called it. My living room. And she meant it. Every place else, like in Eden, was fair game, but her living room was forbidden, except the first snowfall of year. That time of covering sins, she would say, and starting over. There she would fling open curtains and lower her body gently next to his and rub his back and kiss the top of his head and marvel with him at the fluttery softness outside their home. It's all forgotten, she would say. Buried. And he would snuggle into the warmth of her, savoring every ounce of the moment.

The impersonal call of his name drew his eyes from the first flakes of yesteryear and today into the dreary, piss-colored light of the room. 

"Yeah."

"It's gonna be a minute," Mustachio said. "We gotta finalize some paperwork on our end. Then you can sign."

He shook his head, signifying his comprehension, and turned back toward the window.

Mama wouldn't be coming. It was Wednesday. Every Wednesday for as long as he could remember was Bible Study. Driving here would mean that she would get home after it ended. She wouldn't do that. Not for this. 

He shook his head to stop the water that wanted to pool in the corners of his eyes. He hadn't cried in here in all this time. He wouldn't cry today. He took a deep, calculated breath and peered out the window, searching for memory. The lamppost with green light bulb that told the neighborhood it was Christmastime. The smoke rising from chimneys Santa never visited. His father's hulking frame in that old army coat and heavy boots while he rhythmically stabbed the white earth, slid it forward, hoisted it up, and tossed it to his left side. Stab, slide, hoist, toss. Stab, slide, hoist, toss. Stab, slide, hoist, toss. A one-man chain gang.

Every now and then, Dad would peek back over the army coated shoulder into the window where he sat in the reassuring coziness of his mother and raise a faux-menacing fist in protest. Get off my woman, Dad would say, and he would laugh and look up into Mama's eyes before scooting further into the invisible space left between them.

He hadn't seen Mama's eyes in over seven years. 

"Look at me," she'd pleaded. "Tell me you didn't do this."

"I didn't do this." 

He'd looked directly into the deep cocoa pools of her eyes and lied, and she knew it. The disappointment he saw there shattered something deep in them both. Something they did not realize was so fragile.

So she lied, too. Every other Tuesday for seven years. Her voice, the one that sang alto in the choir, the one that chased him playfully with a come-here-boy around the house when he pretended to sass her, the one that called him "my baby" when he was old enough to have a baby of his own, lied twice a month for seven years because her eyes couldn't. 

I'm good baby, her voice would say. 

"I wish it was better weather for you today." Mustachio broke through stale air of the room.

"Naw, this is exactly how it should be." 

He shifted his eyes to Mustachio and wondered how many times he'd had to perform this vapid, small-talk ritual. How many times had he searched that bald head for something, anything, to say to fill the silence of significance? The others had told him about Mustachio. That he would be the last one. He hadn't seen him before himself, but when he saw those long blond whiskers, he figured that must be him. He smiled a little to himself at the absurdity of thinking that Mustachio was his name. It wasn't. It was nothing more than a silly nickname the guys had for the gatekeeper at the end of the line.

Dad told him about the first time Mama had come. Dad said he had to know the indignity. They'd dumped her purse, the one she never set on the floor or near a door because money would run away. They dumped it, Dad had said, into a plastic tray and sifted through it. They'd groped her breasts, ferreting around where no hands but Dad's should go, and between her legs and her backside. Pawing and squeezing for something that wasn't there. Like thieves in drawers when the neighborhood was dark and quiet. The indignity, Dad had said, of a good woman being handled like that. 

Dad's voice didn't lie. And when he had squirmed in his seat, trying to outrun Dad's stare, it was that voice that demanded he look at him like a man and take it. That voice made every one of them like him in that hot, musty room stop and take it. All of it. Handled, Dad had said, and violated on account of him. 

He was afraid to stand up, not wanting to make any sudden moves, so he stretched his legs all the way out in front of him before placing his feet on the floor directly under his knees. He circled his head clockwise then counterclockwise before rolling his shoulders three times backward and three times forward. He found the tick-tocking of the clock behind its own bars and dropped his head.

"Shouldn't be too long now," Mustachio said, noticing from behind the glass.

Dad never came back after that, but every Saturday he got up early, made himself toast and black coffee, and sat quietly by the phone in the forbidden living room, waiting to accept the charges. They'd laugh into the receivers at either end of a reality too cold to face with solemnity and talk about the books. 168 brand new books with uncracked spines, shipped first class. He had never flown first class. He never had a first class kind of life. But there, every two weeks, first class would arrive with his name on it. Small luxury, Dad would say.

He had given them all away after reading them, except the first one. The one Dad said should always be kept with him. To be discussed, Dad had said, when he was ready. It took 52 books before he was, but his hand found the words his tongue could not yet express. He wrote his father 116 letters about that first book. 

Mama got one.

Forgive me, it had said.

He rubbed the outside of that kept book and thought about Mama's hands. Her hands gripped Dad's tightly as they climbed the steps. They covered her mouth when the disheveled public defender slithered into the courtroom. They pointed in disbelief at the dusky gray suit with the cream colored, mis-buttoned shirt and offensive blood red tie loosely knotted at the neck. They'd hastily pushed open the doors and from the mahogany hallway dialed an attorney she could not afford, one who would take the time to at least dress himself like he had home training. He's guilty, she had said. Just a fair sentence. 

Though her eyes could not look into his and her voice had lied, her hands took his hands every other Tuesday and held them for three and a half hours. Her thumbs rubbed the backs of his hands and noticed every dry spot and new wrinkle. They coaxed him into calm or reminded him not to get too comfortable. They begged him to open himself to consciously feel every minute of this so he would never do anything to feel it again. Those circles her thumbs made on the backs of his hands cried and shouted and absolved them both over and over.

The snow had gathered in a diamond-studded blanket on the ground outside the window.

"I hate this time of year," Mustachio confessed, glancing outside. "Come on up. You're all set."

He stood and cautiously walked toward the glass where paper and a pen protruded from the narrow, stainless steal tray. Yellow highlights told him where to sign. He did.

"That's it. You're free to go." Mustachio's final words.

Dad busied himself brushing snow from the windows of a car in which his son had never ridden. He pushed out into the world with a deep buzzing as his only escort. Dad nodded his head approvingly at the sight of his only son, and walked around to the other side of the car and opened the passenger door as the gate to the prison spit him out. Mama emerged from the car on that Wednesday and ran to wrap her arms around his neck. She stepped back and placed his hollow cheeks in the palms of her hands. She studied his eyes, and finding life in them, pulled his face down and kissed the top of his head before snatching him back into the warmth of her embrace.

Dad eased alongside them and enveloped them both in his protective arms.

"Get off my woman, Man," he whispered as the drifting, dancing snow fell on them all. Instinctively, they all pressed in tighter, filling the imperceptible spaces of love.