“It might take me some time, Amber,” my mother whispered into my ear, “but I’ll get us into our very own apartment. We can make it without Oliver. I’ll get a better job or maybe find a better man. Something will come along for us.”
“I know,” I told my mom, but the truth is that I was very scared, because Mom had a lot of alcohol on her breath and I sorta understood without Mom saying it that right then and there, we were officially homeless. But we were also free, and Mom’s standing up to Oliver and taking a chance, well that was something I could respect. It kicked a little apple bottom—Buffy-style. Or at least that’s what I thought at the time, three weeks before Mom asked A-hole Oliver to let us back into his apartment and he refused, even after Mom brought me to him and begged him to let us back in if only for her daughter’s sake.
“Promise me something right now,” Mom said while looking me in the eyes, still holding my cheeks with her hands, five minutes after we had first left AO’s apartment. “You’ll never ever let a man treat you the way Oliver treated me.”
“I won’t.”
“Tell me that you won’t live your life afraid, but will grow up and live a better life than your mother could ever imagine.”
“I will,” I said.
We were both crying in public, with our six trash bags of belongings circling our feet, and for some reason, right then and there, I felt like I was saying goodbye to my mother, that she was going to descend into a place that doesn’t allow you to return—that this was the beginning of the end or something for her. It was like she had snapped—as if her mind had begun to turn on her and she knew it. It was like she was on her deathbed in some stupid movie and I was vowing to fulfill her last wishes. But it was also sorta like a beginning for me, because what I promised my mother—I didn’t take that vow lightly then, and I sure as hell don’t take it lightly now.
So standing there in the doorway of the prison visitation room, just before I face my mother’s killer, I take a deep breath—remembering all that has happened, all that I have survived, how strong I’ve become—and once more I say, “I won’t. I will.”
When I walk into the room, another security guard—a young skinny man—shows me to a little booth that is sorta like a desk with dividing walls to separate me from the other visitors, even though there are no other visitors in the room right now.
My mother’s killer—he’s seated on the other side of thick Plexiglas and is staring at me.
On the desk are headphones I am supposed to put on that have a little microphone stick that hangs out over your mouth—sorta like what a helicopter pilot might wear.
My mother’s killer already has his headset on.
He’s staring at me—blankly.
Huge brown glasses.
Crazy hair.
Orange jumpsuit.
His wrists are handcuffed to the belt that circles his belly.
I try not to think about what he did to my mother, but I can’t help it—a wave of anger rushes through my limbs.
I take a few deep breaths.
He nods toward the headset and mouths the words: PUT IT ON.
I look into his eyes and shiver.
There is nothing there.
He is not human.
He is a thing.
There is nothing left in his eyes.
Nothing.
He is a monster.
Seeing the daughter of his last victim—no emotion registers on his face.
Nothing.
So I do not put on the headset.
Instead, I pull out an origami swan from my pocket and show it to him.
No emotion registers on his face.
I unfold the swan with trembling hands.
My poem is written in huge letters.
With an open hand, I hold my words up to the glass and watch my mother’s killer read what I have written to him—how I am responding to his murdering my mother.
You may exist in
This world—but I exist too
And I will not yield
The face of my mother’s killer does not change.
He nods toward the headset again and yells, PUT IT ON!
He’s trying to yell through the glass, he obviously wants to say something to me, but he doesn’t get to call the shots today.
I see the guards behind him stiffen.
I keep my haiku up against the glass and shake my head no.
Suddenly, the man lunges toward the glass.
Attacks my haiku with his head—banging it against the glass several times before the guards come and drag him out of the visitor’s room.
I don’t even flinch.
Only when they have him completely out of the room do I lower my haiku from the glass.
I leave my poem there on the desk; I want it to stay in the prison.
“What the hell did you write on that piece of paper?” the young skinny guard asks me.
When I don’t answer, he walks past me and picks up my haiku.
I walk out of the visitor’s room, and the woman guard escorts me past security, through the metal detector, and out of the prison.
Surprisingly, I’m feeling a little better having faced my mother’s killer.
He has not defeated me—and if a man like him can’t beat me, I know nothing will.
There is life all around me.
Sky.
Clouds.
Trees.
Endless air.
Birds flying overhead.
There is a good bearded boy in a Volvo waiting for me.