Leaving: A Novel Read Free Page B

until the attendant on the outside said that it did, so there was no way to measure how close or far you were from getting out, and this complete lack of control and the sense that you’d been forgotten was what tested you the most, more than being trapped inside. He’d swear it had been an hour, that the veins in his neck were about to burst from frustration, that he couldn’t stop himself from yelling even if it meant getting more time in the room; only the ants moving in their determined trails kept him distracted enough to stay calm.
    At the end of the three minutes, the door to the quiet room slowly cracked open.
    “Have a seat, Love. Your sit-time will start now.” Love sat in the corner with his knees up to his chest. Dark tracks of dried tears streaked his face. He could not see Tom through the open door, only the rope held taut across the space and a leg of the plastic chair.
    Love sat silently for twenty minutes. His breathing slowed. He knew the inside of the quiet-room intimately but examined it again, every scratch mark on the walls, every stain in the carpet from some kid urinating or defecating. There was a Plexiglas ceiling over the lightbulb and a vent for letting in air. Behind the vent, a fan turned with a slight hum and ticking, light cutting through it as it spun. He counted the ticks, trying to beat his own personal best, but repeatedly lost count before three hundred. He heard Tom turn the page of a magazine and tap his foot.
    “Did I b-l-i-n-d him?” Love spelled softly. The rope went slack and Tom nudged the door open wider. Tom had worked with Love since the boy had arrived at Los Aspirantes four years earlier They could see each other completely now. Tom had a red splotch on his forehead.
    “Are ya worried ya mighta hurt Rick?” Tom asked.
    Love shrugged his pointy shoulders.
    “So ya think ya blinded him?”
    “I cut his eye.”
    “How does that make ya feel?”
    Love shrugged again. They both watched a spider walk across the wooden strip in the doorway.
    “Can ya tell me how ya feel about cuttin his eye?”
    “T-r-e-m-e-n-d-o-u-s,” Love spelled.
    “Ya don’t look tremendous.”
    “You can’t tell me how I feel, dog!”
    “I didn’t tell ya how ya feel; I told ya how ya look. Don’t ya think your anger has anything ta do with ya havin ta leave?”
    Love puckered his lips and sucked in through his nose. Tom yanked the rope taut, but before the door slammed shut, Love spat a wad of saliva that hit Tom in the knee.
    “No, Bitch!”

 
    SANTA RITA JAIL
    HE CAME TO the front of the recreation room, stood on the table, and spoke to the men:
    We were not the first people to be slaves, and we won’t be the last. But all the knowledge about slavery—about how to break a man down, how to keep us in check, how to make us forget we ever had the power or right to be free—all the experience with slave-making, from the time the Jews were slaves in Egypt and before that, went into our enslavement. If you want to know how to make a slave the right way, you can learn from the past. And if you want to learn how to be a free man, you’ve got to learn from the past too. The most dangerous part of having been a slave is not knowing what it means to be free. You’ve got to know how you were robbed, know what was taken, before you can get it back.
    What’s slavery got to do with me? you ask. That foolishness ended a hundred and fifty years ago; what’s that got to do with me sitting in jail right now, over a decade into the new millennium? Didn’t we leave all that behind us?
    I know what you’re thinking: what’s that got to do with me lightin up, or bustin a cap into some punk’s head, or my father taking a switch to my ass? You say, not all Black men are in jail, in fact most are not, so it must be my own damn fault that I’m here and not CEO of Ford Motor Company, or a congressman, or a lawyer, or a teacher, or a busboy.
    And it is.
    You heard me: it is.
    And it ain’t.
    It is and