Chapter Forty-Four

The best part about being crazy was that nobody wanted to know what that felt like. So, the rest of them huddled underneath the basketball goal while Whitney walked her laps freely around the yard. They peeked at her from time to time, especially when a newbie was thrown into the mix. She had become a tall tale, a cautionary story. A legend. She had become all the things she really wasn’t.

She had thought about writing her mother back, but Whitney only grew angry each time she had sat down with her prison issued pen and paper. It felt like a farce. She could have been writing home to someone who loved her, but instead, she was writing to a coward who had turned her son against her and didn’t even have the decency to say so to her face.

And that’s why she had made the phone call.

Whitney never made phone calls because she never had anyone she wanted to talk to, but she also hated putting her head against the greasy receiver as she stood at the bank of telephones, watching the faces of the other inmates lined up for their turn. It was an intimate moment that said a lot more than a punch in the face in the bathroom or someone on cafeteria duty spitting in your food. It felt like watching kindergartners after school waiting for their parents to show up, their faces hopeful and expectant and not yet worn out by the idea of living. Even Halo looked like a lighter version of herself.

“Hello?” Whitney didn’t hang up because it wasn’t her mother. It was Walt.

“Good. Don’t tell her I’m calling.” 

“Whit—“

“Don’t tell her, Walt.”

“Okay.” She could hear him making arrangements for that request and cerebrally navigated his migration away from where the phone hung on the wall to the back corner of the kitchen towards the living room.

“Go ahead,” he said.

“What’s happening? How’s Travis?”

“He’s good,” Walt said softly. As much as she desired to hate that man, it never seemed to be possible. He was someone who dealt with her mother on a daily basis after all, something Whitney always had a hard time doing once upon a time. But he never left. He stayed. And he seemed almost grateful.

“We got a new lawyer for him. She seems to be the real deal. Your mother is beside herself, of course...”

“Denise.”

“Yeah. She said she knew you. You and Jamal.” Walt paused like he was trying to determine all the things he shouldn’t say. “She loves you. She’s just scared.” 

“Walt, she’s not scared. She’s angry. None of this is going according to her plan. She’s selfish. If she weren’t, she’d...” But Whitney trailed off, not wanting to say the words, and not having the mental bandwidth even if she wanted to. The woman on her right was pleading in Spanish, hot tears rolling down her chin, staining her putty-colored jumpsuit.

“What do you even see in her?” Whitney asked. She had met Walt once when he came one of the few times her mother probably let him. He was a gentle looking man, the kind who knew life was bent on ruining him, but he routinely stepped out of the way. He was the type to win by default.

“I see someone who loves fiercer than she’s able to admit. I see someone who’s scared and does the things she’s always done to cope with that fear because she has a hard time embracing any other way. She doesn’t want to be hurt again.” 

“She’s the one hurt?” Whitney snorted. The pleading lady paused, then continued her begging.

“She was, still is. Trauma is a funny thing,” Walt said.

“Hilarious,” Whitney said.

“It can’t be easy being raped and then expecting to raise the child.” It was something Whitney had figured out a long time ago, but no one had ever outright said it. She wasn’t the young girl who still believed the baby in her mother’s belly had lingered there from when her father was alive. She knew her mother’s experience at the bakery had been a particular kind of viciousness that changed everything for them. But hearing it out loud was—

“Hurry it up!” Whitney looked over at Betty, a plump lesbian with the name “Rita” marked across her chest. Her bark was sharp, and Halo, standing in line in front of her, winced to prove it. Whitney didn’t want to hang up the phone, but she knew Betty wasn’t the type to play, even when it came to battling crazy.

“I gotta go, Walt. Tell Garrett I love him and Travis, too, when you see him again. I...” So many words but Whitney never knew which ones to choose.

“I know,” Walt said, his gentleness soothing every ounce of irritation inside of her.

Out in the yard she paced her frustration. Her steps quickened every time Walt got to the part about the rape. She was angry her mother never spoke about it; angry it had happened at all. Angry she was too stupid to truly connect the dots, or maybe too scared. And that made her even angrier.

Her feet quickened and so did her heartbeat. As she looped around closer to the basketball goal there was such a strong desire to be alone. Whitney had never understood togetherness until she had gone to prison, and it had become her only option. But she wasn’t sure she could bear the sounds and smells of other people knowing what had happened to her mother and there not being a single thing Whitney could do about it. So, she did the only thing that made sense.

“Hey Betty!” she said as she inched toward the fringe of the women gathered near the hoop. And as Betty turned, Whitney felt all her anger in the cock of her arm and then the punch of her fist and waited for Gina to take her to solitary.