Dear Roy,
I’m writing this letter sitting at the kitchen table. I’m alone in a way that’s more than the fact that I am the only living person within these walls. Up until now, I thought I knew what was and wasn’t possible. Maybe that’s what innocence is, having no way to predict the pain of the future. When something happens that eclipses the imaginable, it changes a person. It’s like the difference between a raw egg and a scrambled egg. It’s the same thing, but it’s not the same at all. That’s the best way that I can put it. I look in the mirror and I know it’s me, but I can’t quite recognize myself.
Sometimes it’s exhausting for me to simply walk into the house. I try and calm myself, remember that I’ve lived alone before. Sleeping by myself didn’t kill me then and will not kill me now. But this is what loss has taught me of love. Our house isn’t simply empty, our home has been emptied. Love makes a place in your life, it makes a place for itself in your bed. Invisibly, it makes a place in your body, rerouting all your blood vessels, throbbing right alongside your heart. When it’s gone, nothing is whole again.
Before I met you, I was not lonely, but now I’m so lonely I talk to the walls and sing to the ceiling.
They said that you can’t receive mail for at least a month. Still, I’ll write to you every night.
Yours,
Celestial
Roy O. Hamilton Jr.
PRA 4856932
Parson Correctional Center
3751 Lauderdale Woodyard Rd.
Jemison, LA 70648
Dear Celestial, aka Georgia,
I don’t think I have written a letter to anyone since I was in high school and assigned a French pen pal. (That whole thing lasted about ten minutes.) I know for sure that this is the first time I ever wrote a love letter and that’s what this is going to be.
Celestial, I love you. I miss you. I want to come home to you. Look at me, telling you the things you already know. I’m trying to write something on this paper that will make you remember me—the real me, not the man you saw standing in a broke-down country courtroom, broke down myself. I was too ashamed to turn toward you, but now I wish I had, because right now I would do anything for one more look.
This love letter thing is uphill for me. I have never even seen one unless you count the third grade: Do you like me yes no. (Don’t answer that, ha!) A love letter is supposed to be like music or like Shakespeare, but I don’t know anything about Shakespeare. But for real, I want to tell you what you mean to me, but it’s like trying to count the seconds of a day on your fingers and toes.
Why didn’t I write you love letters all the while, so I could be in practice? Then I would know what to do. That’s how I feel every day here, like I don’t know what to do or how to do it.
I have always let you know how much I care, right? You never had to wonder. I’m not a man for words. My daddy showed me that you do for a woman. Remember that time when you damn near had a nervous breakdown because it looked like the hickory-nut tree in the front yard was thinking about dying? Where I’m from, we don’t believe in spending money on pets, let alone trees. But I couldn’t bear to see you fret, so I hired a tree doctor. See, in my mind, that was a love letter.
The first thing I did as your husband was to “sit you down,” like the old folks say. You were wasting your time and your talents doing temp work. You wanted to sew, so I made it happen. No strings. That was my love letter to say, “I got this. Make your art. Rest yourself. Whatever you need to do.”
But now all I have is this paper and this raggedy ink pen. It’s a ballpoint, but they take away the casing so you just have the nib and this plastic tube of ink. I’m looking at it, thinking, This is all I have to be a husband with?
But here I am trying.
Love,
Roy
Dear Georgia,
Hello from Mars! That’s not really a joke. The dorms here are all named for planets. (This is the truth. I couldn’t make this up.) Your letters were delivered to me yesterday. Each and every one, and I was very happy to receive them. Overjoyed. I am not sure even where to start.
I haven’t even been here three months, and already I have had three cell partners. The one I have now says he’s here for good, and he says it like he has some type of inside track. His name is Walter. He’s been incarcerated for most of his adult life, so he knows what’s what around here. I write letters for him but not gratis. It’s not that I’m not compassionate, but you get no respect when you do things for free. (This I learned in the workforce, and it’s ten times as true in here.) Walter doesn’t have money, so I let him give me cigarettes. (Don’t make that face. I know you, girl. I don’t smoke them. I trade them for other things—like ramen noodles. I kid you not.) The letters I write for Walter are to women he meets through personal ads. You would be surprised how many ladies want to pen-pal with convicts. (Don’t get jealous, ha ha.) Sometimes I get irritated, staying up so late answering all his questions. He says he used to live in Eloe, so he wants me to bring him up to date. When I said that I haven’t lived in Eloe since before I went to college, he says he has never set foot on a college campus and he wants me to tell him all about that, too. He was even curious about how I got the name Roy. It’s not like my name is Patrice Lumumba, something that needs explaining, but Walter is what Olive would call “a character.” We call him the “Ghetto Yoda” because he’s always getting philosophical. I accidentally said “Country Yoda” and he got mad. I swear it was an honest mistake, and it’s one I won’t make again. But it’s all good. He looks out for me, saying that “us bowlegged brothers got to stick together.” (You should see his legs. Worse than mine.)
So that’s all I got in terms of atmosphere. Or all that I want you to know about. Don’t ask me questions about the details. Just suffice it to say that it’s bad in here. Even if you killed somebody, you don’t deserve to spend more than a couple of years in this place. Please tell your uncle to get on it.
There is so much here that makes you stop and say, “Hmm . . .” Like there are about fifteen hundred men in this facility (mostly brothers), and that’s the same number of students at “Dear Morehouse.” I don’t want to be some kind of crazy conspiracy nut, but it’s hard not to think about things in that way. For one, prison is full of people who call themselves “dropping science,” and second, things here are so bent that you think somebody must be bending it on purpose. My mother wrote to me, too, and you know her theory—“the devil stays busy.” My dad thinks it’s the Klan. Well, not the Klan specifically with hoods and crosses but more like Ameri–KKKa. I don’t know what I think. Besides thinking that I miss you.
I finally got to make my visitors’ list and right at the top is you, Celestial GLORIANA Davenport. (They want your full government name.) I’ll put Dre on, too—does he have a middle name? It’s probably something religious like Elijah. You know he’s my boy, but when you come the first time, come by yourself. Meanwhile, keep the letters flowing, baby. How did I forget that you have such a pretty handwriting? If you decide not to be a famous artist, you could go be a schoolteacher with that penmanship. You must bear down on the pen because the paper buckles. At night, when the lights are out—not that they are ever really out—they make it dark enough that you can’t read but too light to really sleep—but when they cut the lights off, I run my fingers over your letters and try to read them like Braille. (Romantic, right?)
And thank you for putting money on my books. You have to buy everything you think you might want in here. Underwear, socks. Whatever you need to try and make your life a little better. This isn’t a hint, but it would be nice to have a clock radio, and of course the main thing that would make my life a little better would be seeing you.
Love,
Roy
PS: When I first started calling you Georgia, it was because I could tell you were homesick. Now I call you that because I’m the one missing home and home is you.
Dear Roy,
By the time you get this letter, I will have already been to visit because I’m mailing it on the way out of town. Andre has filled the tank and the car is stocked with snacks. I have practically memorized the visitors’ guide. There are clothing regulations and they are extremely specific. My favorite detail is that “gauchos and culottes are strictly prohibited.” I bet you don’t even know what those are. I recall them being very fashionable when I was in the fourth grade, and thankfully, they have never come back in style. To summarize the dress code: show no skin. Don’t wear an underwire bra unless you want to fail the metal detector test and get sent home. I imagine it’s like going to the airport . . . on your way to a convent. But I’m ready.
It goes without saying that I know this country and I know history. I even remember a man who came to speak at Spelman who had been wrongfully imprisoned for decades. Did you see him? He spoke along with the white woman who pointed the finger at him in the first place. They both got saved or something. Even though they stood right there in front of me, they felt like a lesson from the past, a phantom from Mississippi. What did it have to do with us, college students piled in the chapel for convocation credit? Now I wish I could remember what they said. I’m bringing this up because I knew that things like this happen to people, but by people, I didn’t mean us.
Do you ever think about the one who accused you? I wish I could have a sit-down with her. Somebody attacked her in that room. I don’t think she’s making that up, you could tell that just from her voice. But that somebody wasn’t you. Now she’s gone back to Chicago or whatever, wishing she never stopped in Eloe, Louisiana, and she isn’t the only one. But you don’t need me to tell you this. You know where you are and you know what you didn’t do.
Uncle Banks is preparing the first appeal. He reminds me that it could be worse. Many people have run-ins with the law and they don’t live to tell the tale. There’s no appealing a cop’s bullet. So at least there’s that, but it’s not much.
Do you know that I’m praying for you? Can you feel it at night when I get down on my knees beside my bed like I did when I was a little girl? I close my eyes and I can picture you the way you were when we were last together, all the way down to the freckle over your eyebrow. I have a notebook where I wrote down every word that we said to each other before we fell asleep that night. I wrote it down so when you get home, we can pick up where we left off.
True confession: I am extremely nervous. I know it’s not the same, but it reminds me of when we were first going out, when we were trying to be a long-distance couple and you sent me a ticket. After all the buildup with our phone conversations and email, I wasn’t sure what to expect when we finally saw each other again. Obviously it all worked out, but I feel the same way writing this letter. So I want to say in advance that even if things are awkward between us when we finally lay eyes on each other, please know that it’s because it’s all very new and I’m so agitated. Nothing has changed. I love you as much as I did the day I married you. And I will always.
Yours,
Celestial
Dear Georgia,
Thank you for coming to visit me. I know it wasn’t easy to get here. When I saw you sitting there in the visitor’s room, all classy and out of place, I have never been happier to see anyone. I could have cried like a little girl.
I won’t lie. It was strange to have to see each other for the first time in front of so many people. And the truth is that I was quiet because you said that you didn’t want to talk about what was really on my mind. I didn’t push it because I didn’t want to ruin our time together. And it wasn’t ruined. I was very glad to see you. Walter teased me all the next day about being lit up like a Christmas tree. But I’m sorry, Celestial. I have to tell you what has been troubling my soul.
I know that I said that I didn’t want any son of mine having to say his daddy was in jail. You know I don’t know much about my biological father except his name and that he is probably a criminal. But since Big Roy raised me as his own, I didn’t have to wear shame around my neck like a giant clock. Sometimes, though, in the back of my mind I could hear that clock ticking. I was also thinking about this kid I knew named Myron whose father was in Angola. Myron was teeny-tiny and his clothes were all donated by the church. One time I saw him in one of my cast-off jackets. They nicknamed him “Chickie” because his daddy was a jailbird. To this day, he answers to “Chickie” like it’s his real name.
But our kid would have had Mr. D and Gloria, Andre, and my family, too. That’s a village and half right there to take care of him until I win my freedom. He would have been something else for me to look forward to.
I can see why you didn’t want to talk about it. What’s done is done. But I can’t stop thinking about him. Of course, I don’t know that the baby was a boy, but my gut is telling me he was my junior.
This is painful to ask, but if we had more faith, would things have worked out differently? What if it was a test? What if we kept the baby? I could have made it home in time to see him crown into the world, innocent and bald-headed. This whole ordeal would just be a story we would tell him when he was older, to teach him how to be careful as a black man in these United States. When we decided to have the abortion, it was like we were accepting that things weren’t going to work out in the courtroom. And when we gave up, God gave up on us, too. Not that He ever gives up, but you know what I mean.
You don’t have to answer this. But tell me, who knows about it? It doesn’t matter, but I’m curious. I put your parents on my visitors’ list and I wonder if they know what we did.
Georgia, I know I can’t make you talk about what you don’t want to talk about, but you should know what it was that was blocking my throat so I couldn’t hardly talk.
Still, it was beautiful to see you. I love you more than I can say here.
Your husband,
Roy
Dear Roy,
Yes, baby, yes, I think about it, but not constantly. You can’t sit with something like that every single day. But when I do, it is with sadness more than regret. I understand that you’re in pain, but please do not ever send me another letter like the one you sent last week. Have you forgotten the county jail? It smelled like pee and bleach and all these desperate women and kids surrounding us. Your complexion was so gray that you looked like you had been powdered over with ashes. Your hands were rough like alligator skin, and you couldn’t get any cream to stop the cracking and bleeding. Have you forgotten all of that? Uncle Banks had to find you a new suit because you dropped so much weight waiting for your “speedy trial.” You were your own ghost.
When I told you I was pregnant, it wasn’t good news, not in the way it should have been. I hoped the idea would stir you, bring you back to this life. You did come back but only to moan into your tight fists. Remember your own words: You can’t have it. Not like this. This is what you said to me, your grip on my wrist so tight my fingers tingled. You can’t tell me that you didn’t mean what you said.
You didn’t mention a boy named Chickie or your “real” dad, but I saw the forest, if not the trees. This is something that I was sure about at the time, and I’m still mostly sure about now: I don’t want to be a mother of a child born against his father’s wishes, and you made your wishes clear.
Roy, you know I hated to do it. However much it hurts you, remember that I am the one it happened to. I am the one who was pregnant. I’m the one who isn’t pregnant anymore. Whatever you feel, think about what I must feel. Just like you can say I don’t know what it is like to be in prison, you don’t know what it’s like to go to a clinic and sign your name in the book.
I’m dealing with it in the way that I do, through my work. I’ve been sewing like a crazy person, late at night. The dolls remind me of a doll I had when I was little, when you could go to Cleveland, Georgia, and adopt a “baby.” They were a little beyond our means, but Gloria and I went out there to at least have a look. When we saw all the dolls on display, I said, “Is this summer camp for dolls?” And she said, no, it was like an orphanage. I was so sheltered, I didn’t even know what an orphan was, and when she explained, I sobbed and asked to take all the dolls home.
I don’t think of my dolls as orphans; they’re babies that happen to live in my sewing room. I’ve made forty-two so far. I’m thinking I’ll try and sell them at craft fairs, at cost, about fifty dollars each. These are for children, not collectors. And truth be told, I want to get them out of the house. I can’t have them staring at me all day, but I can’t stop making them either.
You asked me who knows. Are you asking me who knows what I did or who knows that you asked me to? Do you think I took out a billboard? If you’re a grown woman and you have more than ten dollars in the bank, nobody understands why you can’t have a baby. But how could I think about being a mother with my husband in prison? I know you’re innocent, there is not one doubt in my mind, but I also know that you’re not here. This isn’t a game, a drill, or a movie. I don’t know that it hit me until I was two weeks late and getting ready to pee on a stick.
I didn’t tell anyone but Andre. All he said was, “You can’t go by yourself.” He drove me and he covered my head with his jacket as we made our way past the chanting demonstrators and their disgusting signs. When it was done, he was waiting for me. Afterward, in the car, he said something that I want to share with you. He said, “Don’t cry. This isn’t your last chance.” Roy, he’s right. You and I will have babies in the future. We will be parents. Like they say, “A girl for you, a boy for me,” or was it the other way around? But when you get out, we can have ten babies if that’s what you want. I promise you that.
I love you. I miss you.
Yours,
Celestial
Dear Georgia,
I know I said that I would let this go. But I have one more thing to say. We took our family and pulled it out by the roots. Reading your letter, you make it sound like I forced you, like you came into the county jail excited to be having my child. You said, “I’m pregnant,” like it was cancer. What was I supposed to say? And besides, let’s say that I did push you in one particular direction, don’t act like you were being an obedient little woman. I’ll never forget our wedding when, in front of everyone, you got into a stare-down with the minister who asked you to say the word obey. If he didn’t back down, we would still be standing at the altar, on the outskirts of matrimony.
That day at the County, we had a discussion. You and me. Two grown people. It was not about me telling you what to do. As soon as I mentioned the idea of not keeping the baby, I saw the relief on your face. I loosened my grip and you snatched the ball and ran with it. Everything you remember is true. I said what I said, but you didn’t try and argue the other side. You didn’t say that we could make it. You didn’t say that this was a child we created. You didn’t say that maybe I could be free by the time he was born. You tucked your head and said, “I can do what has to be done.”
Yes, I get it. Your body, your choice. All of that they taught you at Spelman College. Fine.
But we should have known there would be some consequences. I’ll take responsibility for my role in it, but it wasn’t me by myself.
Love,
Roy
Dear Roy,
Some background:
In college, my roommate told me that men want a woman to be a “virgin with experience,” and therefore you should never talk about your past relationships with a man because he wants to pretend like they never happened. So I know that you’re not going to want to hear this, but I feel like you’re forcing me to share this sad story.
Roy, you know that I spent a year at Howard University before Spelman, but you don’t know why I left. At Howard, I took Art of the African Diaspora, and my teacher, Raul Gomez, was the diaspora himself. A black man from Honduras, he spoke Spanish when he was excited and he was always excited about art. He said that the reason he didn’t finish his dissertation was because he couldn’t bear to write about Elizabeth Catlett in English. He was forty, married, and handsome. I was eighteen, flattered, and dumb as a box of rocks.
When I figured out that I was pregnant, we were unofficially engaged. I had no ring, but I had his word, but—there is always a “but” isn’t it? But he needed to get divorced and he didn’t think that after twelve years of marriage, his wife should have to bear the shame of a “love child.” (And here I was, encouraged that he used the word love.)
I believe that you know where this story is going. It’s clear to me, too, looking back on it. I was recovering when he came to my dorm room to tell me that we were done. He was all dressed up in a dark blue suit and a tie the color of ashes. I was wearing sweatpants and a baggy T-shirt. He showed up outfitted like the Harlem Renaissance and I didn’t even have shoes on my feet. He said, “You’re a beautiful girl. You turned my head and made me forget right from wrong.” And then he left.
He was gone, and I was gone, too. It was like I slipped on a patch of ice on a dark road inside my own mind. I stopped going to his class and then I stopped going to all classes.
After a couple of weeks, one of my dad’s friends from the chemistry department alerted my parents. Black colleges are serious about that in loco parentis thing. My folks were up to DC faster than you can say “civil lawsuit.” (Yes, Uncle Banks was the attorney. The suit was frivolous, but the goal was for Raul to lose his job.)
The experience broke me down, Roy. I came back to Atlanta and just sat there for a month. Andre would come over and I didn’t even want to talk to him. My parents were seriously thinking about sending me somewhere. It was Sylvia who snapped me out of it. (Every girl needs a wise and reassuring aunt.) I was telling her the same kinds of things that you’re telling me now—how I thought I jinxed my own life. That if I had been brave enough to keep the baby, I would have been rewarded with what I really hoped for, which was to be Mrs. Gomez. That life was a test that I kept failing.
Sylvia said, “I am not about to judge you. That’s between you and Jesus. Sugar, tell me the honest truth—do you wish you had a baby right now?” I really couldn’t say. The main thing was that I didn’t want to feel the way I was feeling. Then Sylvia said, “When you took the test, were you hoping for a plus or a minus?” And I said, “Minus.”
So she said, “Look. What is over with is over with. What are you going to do? Get in a time machine? Go back to last fall and unfuck him?”
And then she pulled out a dozen socks, embroidery thread, and cotton batting. This part of the story you know, everyone does. She showed me how to make the sock dolls that would be donated to Grady Hospital to comfort the crack babies. We went over there sometimes and held the poor little ones who were so strung out that they rattled in my arms.
It wasn’t charity. I sewed those first dolls to work the guilt out of my system. I never thought of poupées, commissions, contests, or exhibitions. I felt like every time I made something to comfort a motherless infant, I was repaying the universe for what I did. After a while, the dolls and DC weren’t connected anymore. I had a weight pressing on my soul and I dolled my way out from under it.
But I didn’t forget, promising myself I would never find myself in that predicament again. For a while, I was scared to try, thinking that maybe I ruined myself, not in a medical way but in a spiritual one.
Roy, I know that we had a choice, but really, we didn’t have a choice. I mourned as though I had miscarried. My body apparently was fertile soil, but my life was not. You may feel that you’re carrying a burden, but I shoulder a load as well.
So now you know. We are bearing two different crosses.
And can we please please please stop talking about it. If you care for me at all, you will never bring this up again.
Yours,
Celestial
Dear Georgia,
Two years down and ten to go. (This is my idea of a joke.)
Finally, Banks will go forward with the appeal. I hate thinking about how much money your parents are shelling out for this. They are getting a “friends & family” rate, but still, I imagine the number clicking by like an odometer. But if things go well with the state appellate court, I’ll be out of here and I’ll take whatever job I can find and pay your daddy back. Seriously. I don’t care if I have to bag groceries.
See, this is why I like letters better than email. Anything I write down is a promissory note and a paper receipt, signed, sealed, delivered. We can only get email in the library for sixty-five minutes a week and there is always someone waiting or someone looking over your shoulder. Besides, I like to use that time to write emails for hire. You know what I got paid with last week? An onion. I know you’re going to think this is crazy, but onion is rare to come by in here and prison cuisine tastes better with a little bit of flavoring. To get it, I wrote a long email for this guy; it was part mash note and part fund-raising pitch. If it yielded the cash he was hoping for, he was going to get me an onion. Of course I split the onion with Walter, since he acted as a broker for the whole exchange. You should have seen it. If the hunchback of Notre Dame could be a vegetable, it would be that funky little onion. You don’t want to know what we cooked up in our cell that night, but I know you’re curious, so I’ll try and explain. It’s a casserole that you make out of ramen noodles, crunched-up Doritos, onion, and Vienna sausages. Everybody chips in what they have, and when it’s done, you divide it up. Walter is the chef. I promise that it tastes better than it sounds.
Another thing about paper letters is that I can write them at night. I wish more folks were in the market for old-fashioned mail, because it could be a little cottage industry. The problem is that people on the outside don’t write back and the whole point of sending a letter is to get something in return. Email is different. Most anyone will at least shoot back a response, no matter how short. You always answer my letters and you know I appreciate it.
Can you send me some pictures? I want some photos from before and a couple of new ones.
Love,
Roy
Dear Roy,
I got your letter yesterday—did you get mine? As promised, here are a few photos. The snapshots from back in the day, you will recognize. I can’t believe how thin I was. Since you asked for them, here are some new ones. Andre is into photography these days, so that’s why they look so artsy and serious. He’s not about to quit his day job, but I think he’s good. I think this is all due to his girlfriend—a twenty-one-year-old who thinks she can make a living making documentaries. (But who am I to talk? I’m in my thirties and I earn my living doll making!) Besides, if Dre likes it, I dig it, and Dre is smitten. But twenty-one? She makes me feel like a senior citizen.
Speaking of old: these pictures. You can see that I have put on some weight. My parents are both so slim, but it’s like some recessive gene snuck up on me and smacked me on my behind. It’s my own fault. I’ve been sewing like crazy, which means I spend the whole day sitting down. But I have so many orders to fill!
Things have reached critical mass and I’ve taken steps to secure a retail space. It’s not quite like you imagined—more boutique than toy store. Think of it as high end for toys but low end for art. I have to say that it’s rewarding to give a pretty brown doll to a pretty brown girl and watch her squeeze and kiss it. It’s different from watching a collector take it away in a wooden crate.
I wonder if maybe I’m compromising. It’s art but not Art.
Look at me, worried about selling out before I even hang out my shingle.
And speaking of money, I think you know what I’m going to say next. I have exactly one investor, and it is my father. Because he is sinking so much capital into it, we put everything in his name. I had to remind him that a silent partner is supposed to be quiet. He wanted the sign to say “Pou-Pays” so people would know how to pronounce it. (Ha! No.)
I know that we planned to start a business ourselves, without assistance, but things happen, and besides, my parents want to do this for me. All this hardheaded independence isn’t helping me or anyone else. Daddy and I went to the bank; we talked to a real-estate broker. Assuming there are no hiccoughs, Poupées will open up in about six months. It’s not our dream, but it’s dream-adjacent. Like Daddy says, I “could make some real money.”
Okay, back to the pictures. I keep changing the subject because I don’t really like the way that they came out. I feel like they show too much. Maybe you know what I mean? This is what I appreciate about Dre’s work, as long as the photos are of other people. He took a picture of my father and you could see the last fifty years in the lines of his forehead. Everything was there, Alabama, fatherhood, his whole black Horatio Alger thing. (He doesn’t like his portrait either, but I think it’s stunning.)
The pictures I chose are all rated PG so you can pass them around, but when I look at them, I really hope you will keep them to yourself. Show your friends the old pictures.
Please tell your friend Walter that I said hello and I hope to meet him. He sounds like a good guy. Does he have family? If you want me to, I can send some money for his books. I don’t like to think about folks in there without any little creature comforts. I can do it under Andre’s name if you want it to be anonymous. I know how proud people can be. Tell me what you think is best.
Yours,
Celestial
Dear Georgia,
You are the greatest gift of my life. I miss everything about you, even your sleeping bonnet that I used to complain about. I miss your cooking. I miss your perfect shape. I miss your natural hair. More than anything, I miss your singing.
The one thing I don’t miss is how we fought so much. I can’t believe we wasted so much time fussing over nothing. I think about every time I hurt you. I think about the times when I could have made you feel secure, but I let you worry simply because I liked being worried about. I think about that and I feel like a damn fool. A damn lonesome fool.
Please forgive and please keep loving me.
You don’t know how demoralizing it is to be a man with nothing to offer a woman. I think of you out there and there are so many dudes in Atlanta with their Atlanta briefcases and Atlanta jobs and Atlanta degrees. Trapped in here, I can’t give you anything. But I can offer up my soul and that’s the realest thing.
At night, if I concentrate, I can touch your body with my mind. I wonder if you can feel it in your sleep. It’s a shame that it took me being locked up, stripped of everything that I ever cared about, for me to realize that it is possible to touch someone without touching them. I can make myself feel closer to you than I felt when we were actually lying in bed next to each other. I wake up in the morning exhausted because it takes a lot out of me to leave my body like that.
I know it sounds crazy, but I’m asking you to try it. Please try to touch me with your mind. Let me see how it feels.
Love,
Roy
Dear Georgia,
Please forgive me if my last letter was a little “out there.” I didn’t mean to freak you out (ha). Please write me back.
Roy
Dear Roy,
I’m not freaked out. I’m just really busy these last few weeks. Things are really looking up for my career. I hate using that word, career. It always feels like the word bitch is hiding out between the letters. But I know that I’m being paranoid. The point is that things are really heating up. There is talk about a solo show. I didn’t want to tell you about it until things were set in stone, but now they are set in, say, Play-Doh. But here is my news: Remember my Man Moving series? Now it’s called I AM a Man. The show is all of the portraits I have made of you over the years, starting with the marble. They might give me a show in New York. The key word is might, but I’m very excited and very busy. Andre’s doing all my slides and graphic design stuff. Everything looks perfect, but I wish he would accept a real payment. I know we are like family, but I don’t want to take advantage of him.
It has been demanding, but working all day with images of you makes me feel like I’m spending time with you and sometimes I forget to write. Please forgive. And know that you’re on my mind.
Yours,
C
Dear Georgia,
My mother says you’re famous. Confirm or deny.
Love,
Roy
Dear Roy,
I must be famous if word has made it to Eloe, Louisiana. I guess the entire Negro Nation subscribes to Ebony. I don’t know if you have seen the article, but even if you have, let me explain. Even if you haven’t, I want you to understand exactly what happened.
I told you that my doll won a contest at the National Portrait Museum. What I didn’t tell you was that the portrait was of you. Your mother asked for a doll based on your baby picture, the black-and-white studio portrait in your bedroom. I promised it to her and I worked on it for three months to get the chin right. She even provided your original outfit. It was surreal, dressing the doll in the clothes your mother had intended for her grandson to wear. (The whole thing was deep.) I promise that I was going to give it to her, but I left it at home. Just a stupid mistake. So I was going to send it to her for Valentine’s, but I couldn’t let it go. You know how I am, a perfectionist on the commissions. Something about it was too easy, too on the nose. She asked me about it a thousand times and I kept telling her it was coming.
What’s next is complicated, so let me back up.
Since you’ve been away, my mother and I have been spending more time together. At first, it was just so I wouldn’t be alone in the house, but now we visit like girlfriends, talking and drinking wine. Sometimes she even sleeps over. One night, she told me how she and her family came to live in Atlanta. It was a long story, and I was tired, but every time I drifted asleep she tapped me awake.
The story starts when my mother was a baby in a pram. Nana had taken her grocery shopping, which was always stressful because my grandparents had a lot of needs and not a lot of money. Sometimes they took credit at the general store and that hurt my grandmother’s dignity, and you know how debt can spiral out of control. While Nana was in the store trying to calculate the least amount of food she could buy to take care of the whole family, they crossed the path of a white woman and her child. (My mother talks bad about these white people and she talks about them in detail, as if she could actually remember them. She says that they were trashy, smelled of camphor, and the little girl didn’t even have shoes.)
But anyway, the little girl pointed at my mother and said, “Look, Mommy! A baby maid!” And for my grandmother, this was the last straw. By the end of the month the family packed up and moved to Atlanta, living with my grandfather’s brother until my granddaddy found a job. But the whole point is that in that instant in that store, my mama was a baby maid, and this is what made my grandparents move, just that inevitability.
Kind of remember that, okay? It’s important.
I never told you this, but about a year ago I had an incident. Not a breakdown, just an incident. I didn’t tell you because you have enough to think about. Don’t get mad about that. I’m okay.
Andre and I were walking nearby to Peeples Street because we had installed my show at the Hammonds House—these dolls are very ornate, almost baroque, lots of raw silk and tulle. The process was grueling because the topsy-turvy dolls were displayed on movable platforms that I built myself. Andre helped me, but it was hard work and I was about cross-eyed by the time we got it all set up. So the main thing is that I was exhausted.
We were on Abernathy on our way to buy fish sandwiches from the Muslims, which is another factor. I was hungry.
Near an intersection, we passed a little boy walking with his mother. He was teensy and adorable. Kids that size always get my attention. If things were different, maybe we would have a boy that age. His mother looked young, maybe twenty-one, but you could tell she was conscientious, just from the way she held his hand and chatted with him while they walked. Clear as water, I could imagine myself in her position, feeling his sweet little hand, answering his bright-eyed questions. When they got closer, he smiled—those little straight teeth—and I felt a jolt of recognition. That little boy looked like you. A voice in my head that was not my own said, A baby prisoner. I clamped my hands over my mouth and looked to Andre who seemed confused. “Did you see him? Was it Roy?” Dre said, “What?” I feel embarrassed even writing this. But I’m trying to explain what happened. Next thing I knew I was on my knees on the sidewalk in front of a water hydrant, embracing it like a small stout child.
Andre knelt beside me and we probably looked like we were having some sort of domestic dispute. He peeled my hands off the hydrant, one finger at a time. Somehow we made it to the fish place. He called Gloria, then he grabbed me by the shoulders. “You cannot let this destroy you,” he said. Finally Gloria showed up and gave me one of those “nerve pills” that all mothers stash in their pocketbooks. Long story short: I slept it off, whatever possessed me. I recovered and went to my opening at the Hammonds House the next day. I can’t really explain it, but the idea got inside me like a hookworm.
So I dolled it. I stripped the doll out of the john-johns and used waxed cotton to make a diminutive pair of prison blues. Dressing the doll in these clothes was just as difficult, but it felt more purposeful. In the baby clothes, it was only a toy. In the new way, it was art. That’s the doll that won the contest. I hate that you had to hear it from your mother and not from me.
When I was interviewed on stage, I didn’t tell them about you. They asked about the inspiration and I talked about my mother being a baby maid and I spoke about Angela Davis and the prison-industrial complex. What is happening with you is so personal that I didn’t want to see it in the newspaper. I know you will understand what I mean.
Yours,
Celestial
Dear Georgia,
A few months ago, you said you were dream-adjacent, but it looks like you have been living your real dream behind my back. The shop, that was my idea, but your fantasy involved galleries, museums, and white-glove installations. Don’t treat me like someone who doesn’t know you.
I understand what you’re saying and I understand what you’re not saying. Are you ashamed of me? You are, aren’t you? You can’t go to the National Portrait Museum and tell them that your husband is in prison. You could, actually, but you won’t. I empathize — it’s a lot to get used to. Before, we were living that Huxtable life. But now where are we? I know where you are and I know where I am, but where are WE?
Send me a picture of the doll. Maybe I’ll like it better when I can actually see what it looks like, but I must tell you that I don’t care much for the concept. And even if what you said in the article is true, about how you “want to raise consciousness about mass incarceration”—let’s say this wasn’t bullshit—please explain to me what a baby doll is going to do to help anybody in here. Yesterday, a dude died because nobody would give him his insulin. I hate to break it to you, but no amount of poupées is going to bring him back.
Look, you know I have always supported you in your art. Nobody believes in you more than me, but don’t you think you crossed a line here? And to not even tell me or mention me? I hope that prize from the National Portrait Gallery means a lot to you. That’s all I’ll say.
You know, if you’re not comfortable telling people that your husband, an innocent man, is incarcerated, instead you can tell them what I do for a living. I’ve been given a promotion. I push a trash can around Mars, picking up garbage with giant tongs. It’s a sweet gig because Parson prison is also an agri-business site; before, I was picking soybeans. Now I work inside, and although I’m not wearing a white shirt and tie, I do have a white jumpsuit. Everything is relative, Celestial. You still have your upwardly mobile husband. In here, I’m white collar. No need to be ashamed.
Your husband (I think),
Roy
PS: Was Andre there? Were the two of you going around telling everybody how you have been best friends since you were two little babies taking a bath in the sink? Was everybody saying how cute that is? Celestial, I may have been born yesterday but not last night.
Dear Roy,
Your last letter upset me so much. What can I say to make you see that this isn’t about shame? Our story is too tender to explain to strangers. Don’t you see? If I say that my husband is in prison, that’s all anyone can focus on, not me or my dolls. Even when I explain that you’re innocent, all they remember is the fact that you’re incarcerated. Even when I tell the truth about you, the truth doesn’t get delivered. So what’s the point of bringing it up? This was a special occasion for me, Roy. My mentor flew in from California, and even Johnnetta B. Cole showed up. I couldn’t bring myself to talk about something this painful on the microphone during the Q&A. Maybe it was selfish, but I wanted to have my moment to be an artist, not the prisoner’s wife. Please write me back.
Yours,
Celestial
PS: As for your remarks about Andre, I will not even dignify that silliness with a response. I’m sure by now you have come to your senses and I am accepting your apology in advance.
Dear Georgia,
According to Walter, I am being a jackass for not looking at things from your side of the bed. He says it’s unreasonable for me to expect that you would constantly reiterate that your husband is incarcerated. He said, “This ain’t The Fugitive. You want her to go running after the one-legged man?” (See why we call him the Ghetto Yoda?) He says that your potential for advancement in your profession will be greatly diminished by having your brand associated with incarceration, which evokes troubling stereotypes of African American life. Except he said it like this: “She is a black woman and everybody already thinks she got fifty-eleven babies with fifty-eleven daddies; that she got welfare checks coming in fifty-eleven people’s names. She got that already to deal with, but she got the white folks to believe that she is some kind of Houdini doll maker and she even got them thinking that this is an actual job. She is working her hustle. You think she supposed to get up there talking about her man is in the hoosegow? Soon as she say that, everybody will start looking at her and thinking about the fifty-eleven everythings and she might as well go on back home and work for the phone company.” (Again, these are his exact words.)
My exact words should be I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to guilt-trip you. But it’s heavy, Georgia. You don’t know what it is like in here. And trust me, you don’t want to know.
I went to the library and pulled up the article and the photo one more time. You wore a smile on your face and my ring on your finger. I don’t know how I didn’t see it before.
Love,
Roy
Dear Celestial,
Didn’t you get my letter last month? I said I was sorry. Maybe I didn’t make it plain. I’m sorry. So write back? Even email is fine.
Roy
Roy O. Hamilton Jr.
PRA 4856932
Parson Correctional Center
3751 Lauderdale Woodyard Rd.
Jemison, LA 70648
Dear Mr. D,
I don’t suppose that this is what you pictured when I came to you and asked for Celestial’s hand in marriage. There I was, all serious, trying to do things the right way, and you said, “Her hand is not mine to give.” At first I thought you were kidding, but when I determined that you were serious, I tried to backtrack, pretending it was all a joke, but inside I was mad and embarrassed. I felt like I was eating with my fingers when everyone else was using a knife and fork. Her hand wasn’t yours to give, like you said. But at the same time, I needed to approach you as a man to another man. I was asking if I could be your son-in-law.
I am very close to my own father. Maybe Celestial shared with you that technically he is my stepfather, but he is the only father I have ever known and he has been a positive male influence. I am his “junior” in every way. But he doesn’t know much about the world I was living in in Atlanta, even though his sacrifices made it achievable. Big Roy has always lived in one small southern town or another. He didn’t finish high school, yet he provided a secure home for our family. I respect my father more than anyone else in the world.
I came to you because we have a lot in common. We are both immigrants to Atlanta, if you know what I mean. You’ve been there longer, and I’m just off the boat, but our backgrounds are almost the same. You are rags to riches and I was rags on my way to riches. Or at least that’s the way it felt at the time. With my present condition, who knows what will happen to me. But when I asked for her hand, I was seeking your blessing, as her father, but also as a mentor. With Celestial, I was punching above my weight, and I guess I was hoping for a clap on the back, but I ended up feeling like a dummy.
And maybe I’m a dummy for writing this letter at all.
Mr. Davenport, Celestial has not come to Louisiana to visit me in two months now. We have not had any significant arguments or disagreements. I was expecting her in September, but she didn’t show. She sent word that she was having car trouble, and I expected her the following weekend. But I have not seen her at all, nor have I received any correspondence. Mr. D, I’m hoping that you will speak to her on my behalf. I know you will say that I should reach out to her myself. Trust me, I have tried.
When you sent me away, you said that maybe I didn’t know her well enough to marry her. This is why I’m turning to you now. I obviously do not know her as well as I thought. You, on the other hand, have known her all her life, and maybe you will know what to say to her to bring her back to me.
Please tell her that I understand that being married to an incarcerated man is a major sacrifice. I am not accustomed to asking for things. I have worked for everything I have. I wouldn’t have been bold enough to show my face in your house if I hadn’t put in the effort. In my current position, there is no work that I can do to win her love. There is no work I can do to convince you, as her father, that I’m worthy. Before, I had my good job and my gold cuff links. What do I have today? Only my character. I know she can’t wear my character on her left hand, and I know it doesn’t pay bills or father children. But it’s what I have and I believe that it should count for something.
Thank you, sir, for reading this. I hope you will consider my request. And please do not share this with Celestial or her mother. Let this please stay between us as men.
Sincerely,
Roy O. Hamilton Jr.
Franklin Delano Davenport
9548 Cascade Rd.
Atlanta, GA 30331
Dear Roy,
I am pleased to hear from you, as I think of you often. My wife fancies herself a “prayer warrior,” and she pleads with the Lord for you on a regular basis. No one here has forgotten you. Not me. Not my Gloria. Not Celestial.
Son (and I use the word deliberately), I think you are misremembering our exchange when you came asking for Celestial’s hand. I didn’t refuse you. I merely explained to you that my daughter is not my property. I almost chuckle to remember it. You came here as proud as a peacock’s daddy with that velvet box tucked in your jacket pocket. For one bewildered second, I thought you were about to propose to me! (That is meant to be humor, by the way.) I was glad to see that you were serious in your intentions, but I didn’t think I should see the ring before Celestial did. I could tell that your feelings were a little bruised when you left that day, and frankly, that was a positive development. You said in your letter that you are not accustomed to asking for things, and that was apparent, not from your gold cuff links (Authentic! Who knew!) but from the sway in your walk. You were not asking me for her hand (and I still assert that it wasn’t mine to give). Instead, you were telling me that you were marrying her—and she hadn’t even agreed. I surmised that your strategy was to get on your knee, whip out the ring (and I assumed it was a whopper), and announce that she had won the marriage sweepstakes. I was honest when I said that you didn’t know her very well if you believed this approach would be successful.
Here is an anecdote from my personal history: I proposed to Gloria three times before she said yes. The first instance was, admittedly, a bit awkward as I was encumbered with my first wife. Gloria is a refined woman, but these were her exact words: Hell no. The second rejection was kinder: No, not yet. The third time I wasn’t down on my knees—neither literally or metaphorically. I presented my modest token and asked her to share my life. I apologized for my transgressions. I laid myself low. I didn’t involve her father and I didn’t ask her best friend to help me make the scene right. I took her hand, telling her the truth of my soul. She answered with a nod. It wasn’t this hooting and hollering and jumping up and down you see on TV. None of this proposing via billboard or at halftime at the Rose Bowl. Marriage is between two people. There is no studio audience.
All that said, I’ll speak to Celestial about why it is that she has put her visiting schedule on hiatus. In the spirit of disclosure, I admit that I was not aware of this until now. But I must make it clear to you that I cannot speak “on your behalf.” I can only talk to her on behalf of myself, as her father.
I hope you will not interpret this as rejection, because that is not my intention. You are a part of our family and every one of us holds you in highest regard.
I feel obligated to tell you as well that I will be sharing your letter with Celestial. I am her father and I cannot collude against her. She is the joy of my world and my only living blood relative. But I can tell you this: I know the sort of woman we have raised her to be. Her mother was loyal to me, even when I didn’t deserve it, and I feel confident that my daughter will be no less steadfast.
Please write to me again, son. I’m always glad to hear from you.
Sincerely,
Franklin Delano Davenport
cc: C. G. Davenport
Dear Celestial,
By the time you get this letter, Mr. D will have narced on me. I hope that you’re not upset that I wrote to him. I’ve felt close to your daddy since the first time he invited me to that big house (I always think of it as the Mothership), back when you and I were feeling each other out. I’ll never forget it. It was cold outside, but Mr. D wanted to sit out on the wraparound porch. I was freezing, but I didn’t want to be a chump. I was ready to tell him that my intentions were honorable and all of that, but he didn’t even want to talk about you. I got there, sat down, and he promptly started rolling a blunt! It was crazy, I felt like I was on Candid Camera. Then your old man said, “Don’t act like you don’t smoke. I can see it in your eyes!” Then he whipped out this tall fireplace lighter and damn near singed off my eyebrows, blazing me up. I took a hit with him and it was like Welcome to the Family.
Celestial, you know I have a thing about fathers.
That’s the real reason that I’m writing. I planned to send you another letter begging you to come visit. But for one thing, I’m sick of begging. You’ll come see me when you come see me. That’s what I got between the lines of your daddy’s letter. You’re grown and nobody can make you do anything you don’t want to do (like I needed somebody to tell me that).
I’m writing to you now because something has happened that has my head all messed up. I know that you’re on “hiatus,” like your daddy said, but what I’m telling you is burning a hole in my pocket. I got to tell it to somebody, and Georgia, the only person I trust with it is you.
You remember the last day we were together and I carried you to down to the stream to hear the bridge music? I planned to tell you then and there that Big Roy wasn’t my biological father. I lost my nerve, but I had to eventually come correct because it wasn’t fair for us to be talking about growing a family without you knowing about a genetic joker in the pack. I wanted to do what was right, although I know I should have told you before we even got married. I started to bring it up a couple of times, but I could never make myself spit it out. We fought hard over it and that particular disagreement led up to the predicament that I find myself in now. I have to confess that although I apologized to you for not telling you sooner, it’s not until now that I see how it feels to not know somebody that you think you know.
Forgive the cliché, but I hope that you are sitting down. You might want to pour yourself a glass of wine because this will blow your mind. Not only is my Biological incarcerated in this very same prison, he is none other than Walter, the Ghetto Yoda.
This is how I found out: As you know, a brother with my verbal skills is in high demand in prison. I can write letters, decipher documents, and even do a little jailhouse lawyering. By a little, I mean a little. But I can do better than most (my Morehouse education at work—Benny Mays would be so proud). Anyway, I was doing some work for Walter and I happened upon his face sheet and there across the top was his full government name: Othaniel Walter Jenkins. There is only one man in the world with that name, but there once were two. Before Big Roy made me Roy Jr., I was Othaniel Walter Jenkins II. My mother kept Othaniel as my middle name for the sake of history, I guess.
When I saw the name, I knew it was him. Remember what he said to me when I first got moved into his cell? “Us bowlegged brothers got to stick together.” And he looked at me to see my reaction. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but he was pointing out the family resemblance. You know, they call him my pops, but I thought it was some prison shit. People make families in here, and Walter did look after me like I was his own.
Let me back up. This is the story that Olive told me: She said that when she was sixteen, she finished high school in Oklahoma City, hopped on the Greyhound with the intention of living in New Orleans. She had taken a typing class and figured she was qualified to be a secretary. On her way through, she met my Biological and got sidetracked in a little town called New Iberia. She was almost seventeen and he was thirty or something like that. He wasn’t married, but he was a father many times over, so Olive stressed that I should be careful when I meet girls from Louisiana, Mississippi, or east Texas. (When she said that, I pictured him Johnny Appleseeding all over the region.) Long story short—he took off and left her broke and pregnant. But you know Olive wasn’t going to go out like that. She stayed in New Iberia until she was ready to pop, then she went off in search of her man. She went all over town, leading with her stuck-out stomach until sympathetic old ladies gave her whatever little information they had. Finally, someone at the butcher’s told her that somebody said he was in Eloe, working at the paper mill. (Mama said she should have known it was faulty information since it involved the word work.) When she got to Eloe, Walter was long gone—but she hit upon the three things she says a woman needs: Jesus, a job, and a husband.
And as far as Olive was concerned, that was all the story that I needed to have. For me, that was all the story I required. I had Big Roy, and everybody in Eloe knows me as Little Roy. Why would I feel compelled to chase down some rolling stone?
Well, sitting there, it was like that stone rolled right upside my head. When library time was over, I went back to my cell. Where else I was going to go? Not like I could go sit under a bridge and think. When I got there, he was using the commode. Life ain’t right, Georgia. I find out the man is my Biological and he’s standing there with his dick in his hand. (Pardon my French, but this is a story that must be told in full.)
He finished his business, turned to look at me, and read me like a newspaper. He said, “What? You found out?” I told him about the face sheet, and he said, “Guilty as charged,” and even smiled a little bit like he had been waiting all his life for this conversation.
I wasn’t even sure what it was that he was “guilty as charged” about. Was it that he was guilty of being my father or guilty of not telling me? He was over there grinning like all of this was good news, but I felt like a sucker.
He asked for a chance to tell his side of the story, and that’s what he did. You have no privacy in prison, and let me tell you, these dudes in here gossip like bitches. Walter was talking loud, like he was saying his Easter speech. His version was not all that much different from my mother’s. They met on the run—Olive from her father and Walter from a woman (or the woman’s husband, to be precise).The scene is the colored section of a Greyhound bus. Fifteen hours is a long time to be elbow-to-elbow, and by the time they passed into Louisiana, my mama was gone, head over heels over head. Walter sweet-talked her into staying with him for a while in New Iberia. (At this point he said, “I was a pretty nigger in my day.” He actually said that.) Olive and Walter literally shacked up. In a shack. Running water was the only amenity. Anyway, it was a matter of a couple of months before she got pregnant. Like any pregnant girl, she wanted to get married, and like any trifling motherfucker, he ran off and left her. When he was telling me this, he switched into Ghetto Yoda mode: “When a woman tells you she is having your baby, your first mind is to get the hell out. It’s like if the house is on fire. You don’t think to escape, you just do. It’s human nature because you know she is asking you for your whole life. And a man don’t have but one life.”
It was bullshit and I knew it was bullshit, but something about his little soliloquy stuck in my throat like a fish bone.
Celestial, I think it was because I know I wasn’t there for you when you told me the test was positive. I said, “What do you want to do?” What I did was the same as leaving town.
Anyway, Walter saw me sitting there snuffling back my thug tears and he tried to defend himself, swearing up and down that he never beat my mama, never stole from her—even though her pocketbook was right there on the chifferobe. He said it wasn’t even personal, that he had left other women with big bellies. That this was the way things were then. But I wasn’t thinking about him, Celestial, I was thinking about you and what a piece of shit I am. This is the truth.
I was sitting on the bed, having my own private come-to-Jesus, while Walter was getting more and more agitated. He said, “You think it’s a coincidence that we are in this cage together?” He said his buddy Prejean, who is from Eloe, told him who I was, and he checked me out on the sly. He said, “They say that fruit doesn’t fall far from any particular tree. But I didn’t know which tree you fell from, me or your mama’s.” Then he said that he saw me and decided that all I got from him was “bowlegs and nappy hair.” And then he paid good money to get me moved to his cell before I was beat up any more than I already was. He said: “Admit it. Things got better for you once you moved in with me. You got to give me some credit.”
Celestial, I want to be mad at him. He left my mama like a two-dollar trick, but he would have been a terrible father to me in my real life. He wouldn’t have sacrificed to get me to Morehouse. Still, I have to give him the credit he asked for. If it wasn’t for him, I could be dead by now or at least a lot worse off. Walter isn’t the Don Corleone of the prison, but he is an old head and people stay out of his way. He didn’t have to take me in, but he did.
It’s complicated. Last night, when lights were out, he said, “I can’t believe she let that nigger change your name. That’s disrespectful.”
I pretended like I didn’t hear him. To say even one word would be a crime against Big Roy. He made me his junior with more than his name. He was my father, or should I say he is my father. But Walter is my old man in here.
This world is too much for me, Celestial. I know I said I wasn’t going to do any begging in this letter, but I will ask you once more. Please come and see about me. I need to see your face.
Love,
Roy
Dear Roy,
I’m writing this letter to ask you to forgive me. Please be patient. I know it has been a long time. At first it was because I was going through a lot, but now my reason for staying away is boring and uncomplicated. It’s just that the holiday season is here and I’m slammed at the shop. My assistant, Tamar, is going to cover for me weekend after next. (She’s a student at Emory, with talent to burn. She has a gorgeous gift for quilts. Just breathtaking.)
So while Tamar minds the store, Gloria and I are going to drive up. She wants to give your mother one of her famous blackberry jam cakes, and I could use the company.
I know that you’re mad at me. You have a right to be frustrated. But I hope that we don’t waste our visit being angry. When we sit down together, our time is precious. If you can forgive, please forgive me. If I explain, will you listen? Tell me what I need to do to make it better.
What does Walter have to say about all of this? I hope you haven’t talked about me too badly. I don’t want to meet my father-in-law for the first time and make an unfavorable impression. (I’ll get to meet him, won’t I?) How are you two dealing with this shocking development? I guess you’re the only one who’s shocked, but I’m sure that it has changed things between you. Did you tell Olive? There’s so much to unpack here. In the meanwhile, give me his information and I can put something on his commissary for the holidays.
I know you’re proud, but let me do that for him and for you. He’s family. I’ll see you soon.
Yours,
Celestial
Dear Celestial,
Thank you for coming to see me; I know the journey is long and I know that you are a busy woman. You look different. I thought maybe you lost weight because your face had more shape to it. But I don’t think the shift is on the physical plane. Are you all right? Is there something happening that I should know about? This isn’t a backdoor way for me to ask if you’re seeing somebody else. That’s the last thing on my mind. I’m just asking what is going on. When I saw you, I was looking into your face, but I didn’t really see you.
I don’t have the right words to explain.
Roy
Dear Roy,
How am I expected to respond to your last letter? Yes, I have dropped a few pounds. Some on purpose—I’ve been flying to New York a lot these days and you know they are a little bit leaner up there. I don’t want to show up looking like the unsophisticated chick from “down south” with the folk art. If my dolls are going to be taken seriously, I have to look the part. But I don’t think my waistline is what you’re talking about.
Am I different? It has been close to three years, so I guess I have changed. Yesterday I sat under the hickory tree in the front yard. It’s the only place where I find rest and just feel fine. I know fine isn’t a lot, but it’s rare for me these days. Even when I’m happy, there is something in between me and whatever good news comes my way. It’s like eating a butterscotch still sealed in the wrapper. The tree is untouched by whatever worries we humans fret over. I think about how it was here before I was born and it will be here after we’re all gone. Maybe this should make me sad, but it doesn’t.
Roy, we’re getting older. Every week or so I pluck one or two gray hairs from my head. It’s a little early for dye, but still. Obviously, we are not elderly, but we’re not teenagers either. Maybe that’s what you saw—time getting away.
Am I seeing someone else? You say you aren’t asking that, but you asked it anyway if only to say you weren’t asking. Your ring is on my finger. That’s what I will say.
Celestial
Dear Celestial,
Olive is sick. On Sunday, Big Roy came to visit without her. As soon as I saw him sitting on that little bitty chair, looking like a bear sitting on a mushroom, I could tell that there was news and it was bad. He says she has lung cancer, although she hasn’t touched a cigarette in twenty-three years.
I want you to go and see about her. I know it’s been a long time since I have been able to do for you in return. I feel like I’m running up a tab, just like with Morehouse and my student loans. At one point I estimated how much it cost me per day, then per hour, then per minute. I know you aren’t keeping a scorecard, but I am. I need you to come see me. I need you to put money on my books. I need you to keep your Uncle Banks on his toes. I need you to remind me of the man I once was so I don’t forget and become another nigger in here. I feel like I need and need and need and it’s wearing a hole in the fabric. I’m not crazy, I can see it. I know you don’t come around like you used to. I know what true feeling looks like, but I know what obligation looks like, too. What’s in your face, that’s all duty.
This that I am asking you, I know it’s a lot. I know the drive is far and I know that you and my mother have never been friends. But please look in on her and tell me what my daddy won’t.
Roy
Dear Roy,
This is the letter I promised that I would never send. Before I go any further, I want to tell you that I am sorry. I want to tell you that even typing these words is killing me. I won’t say that this will hurt me more than it hurts you because I know how much you’re hurting every day and no matter what is happening to me, it will never compare. I understood that I’m not in the same agony as you are, but I’m in pain and I cannot continue to live this way.
I can’t go on being your wife. In some ways I feel like I never even got to try my hand at that role. We were only married a year and a half before lightning struck, counting off the time in months like you do with a baby. I have done my best to be married without actually being a wife for three years now.
You’re going to think that this is about another man, but this is about the two of us, about our delicate cord that has been shredded by your incarceration. At your mother’s funeral, your father showed what the connection is between husband and wife. If he could have, he would have gone into the grave instead of her. But they lived under one roof for more than thirty years. In some ways they grew together and grew up together, and had she not died, they would have grown old together. That’s what a marriage is. What we have here isn’t a marriage. A marriage is more than your heart, it’s your life. And we are not sharing ours.
I blame it on time, not on you or me. If we put a penny in a jar for each day we have been married, and we took a penny away every day we’ve been apart, the jar would have been depleted a long time ago. I’ve been trying to find ways to add more pennies, but our visits in that busy room at that sad table send me home with empty hands. I know this and you do, too. The last three times I have visited, we said almost nothing to each other. You can’t bear to hear about my days and I can’t bear to hear about yours.
I’m not abandoning you. I will never abandon you. My uncle will continue to file appeals. I’ll continue to keep your commissary up to date and I’ll visit you every month. I can come as your friend, as your ally, as your sister. You’re a part of my family, Roy, and you will always be. But I can’t be your wife.
Love (and I mean it),
Celestial
Dear Georgia,
What do you want me to say? Am I supposed to say that I’m okay with us just being friends? Maybe it’s me, but I made a different interpretation of “till death do us part.” Because the last I checked, I wasn’t dead yet. But you do what you have to do. Be an empowered woman or whatever they taught you in college. Leave a brother when he’s down. I never thought you would be this kind of person. There are women around here who have been coming to see their men for decades, riding buses that leave Baton Rouge at 5 a.m. Walter has women he never even met in person and they come to see him, and when they get here, they do more than talk. Some women bunk in their cars in the parking lot so they can be in the visiting room as soon as it opens. Before she died, my mother was here every week. What is it that makes you think that you’re so much better than all of them?
Don’t come here talking about you’re here to be my friend. I don’t need friends.
ROH
Dear Roy,
I didn’t expect you to receive my very honest letter with confetti and a ticker-tape parade, but I did at least expect you to take a moment to consider my perspective. Are you really comparing me with the women who crowd the crack-of-dawn bus to prison? I know them, too. I’ve met them myself. They organize their whole lives around coming to Parson; besides working, it’s all they do. Every week they are strip-searched. More than once, I’ve had to let some guard put her hand in my panties just so I can sit across the table from you. This is what you want for me? This is what you want for my life? Is this the way you love me?
You always talk about how you understand that this is hard. You slump in your chair, admitting that you can’t give me what I need. But now you act like you’re confused. For more than three years, I’ve been there in body and in spirit. But I’ve got to change the way I’m doing things, or I won’t have any spirit left. I said in my last letter and I’ll say it again. I’ll support you. I’ll visit you. I just can’t do it as your wife.
C
Dear Celestial,
I am innocent.
Dear Roy,
I am innocent, too.
Dear Celestial,
I guess it’s my turn to send a letter I said I’d never write. I want you to know formally that I am discontinuing our relationship. You’re right. This marriage isn’t a two-way street. How can I argue with that? But you cannot argue with this: I only want you in my life as my wife because in my head and heart I’m your husband.
Please do not come visit me. If you disregard my wishes, you will be turned away because I have taken you off my visitors’ list. I’m not being spiteful, I’m trying to figure out how to live with this new reality.
ROH
Roy O. Hamilton Jr.
PRA 4856932
Parson Correctional Center
3751 Lauderdale Woodyard Rd.
Jemison, LA 70648
Dear Mr. Banks:
This will be your last act as my attorney. Please remove the following person from my visitors list:
Davenport, Celestial Gloriana
Sincerely,
Roy O. Hamilton Jr.
Robert A. Banks, Esq.
1238 Peachtree Rd., Ste. 470
Atlanta, GA 30031
Dear Roy:
This is a response to your letter of last week. Without violating privilege, I have spoken with the Davenport family, who indicate that they will continue to retain me in my capacity as your attorney. If I don’t hear otherwise from you, I will continue in my duties on your behalf. As per your request, I have drafted the documents amending your visitors’ list, although I urge you to reconsider.
Roy, in my years as an attorney, I have won cases and I have lost them, but none of them upsets me as much as yours, not only because it has left my niece disconsolate but because of the damage done to you. You remind me, actually, of Celestial’s father. He and I have been friends ever since he had holes in his shoes. We worked the graveyard shift at a box factory, clocking out just in time to run to school. Franklin got where he is by the sheer force of his determination. Your will is like his. And so is mine.
I know it was disheartening to have our appeal denied by the state appellate court. It is disappointing but not surprising. I know Mississippi is the favored contender for “worst of the South,” but Louisiana isn’t far behind. The federal courts are much more promising because there is a chance of encountering a judge who isn’t drunk, corrupt, racist, or some unpleasant cocktail of these variables.
There is hope. Do not give up.
Pride should not cut you off from the Davenports. Prison, as you know, is very isolating. You are staring down the barrel of a long sentence, and while I am working to find a solution, I urge you not to disconnect from the people who remind you of the life you once had and the life you want to live again. That said, I am including here the document I mentioned that will bar my niece from coming to visit. If you choose to post it yourself, you may. As your attorney, our correspondence will be confidential, of course, but I felt that I must offer my advice.
Sincerely,
Robert Banks
Roy O. Hamilton Jr.
PRA 4856932
Parson Correctional Center
3751 Lauderdale Woodyard Rd.
Jemison, LA 70648
Dear Mr. Banks:
I know that you are right, and with this letter I am unfiring you as my lawyer. I will leave Celestial on my visitors’ list, but I am asking you, as my attorney, not to mention this to her. Should she come to visit me, she will find her name there. But to tell her implies that I’m asking for a visit and I’m not asking her to do anything.
These years have been rough on her, I am sure. But you know that they have been rougher on me. I try to see her side of things, but it’s hard to weep for anyone who is out in the world living their dream. All I wanted from her is that she honor the promise we made when we said to have and to hold, etc. I asked this of her, but I won’t plead (anymore).
Please continue pursuing my case, Mr. Banks. Don’t forget me in here or think I am a lost cause. You warned me not to be surprised by the outcome of the appeal, but how can I keep hope alive if I’m not allowed to be optimistic? I feel like people are constantly asking me for things that are impossible.
And, Mr. Banks, I know that your services are not free. Any more the Davenports pay you, I’ll repay to them, and after that I’ll give you the same sum as soon as I am able. You’re my only hope. I never thought I would be saying this to you, someone I really don’t know that well. My mother is gone and my father is here, but what can he do? He’s a hardworking man with values but without money. Celestial seems to have moved on. All I have is you, and it pains me to know that you’re being paid with her daddy’s money, but you’re right: it’s stupid to put pride ahead of common sense.
So this is my letter saying thank you.
Sincerely,
Roy O. Hamilton Jr.
Dear Roy,
Today is November 17, and I am thinking of you. Maybe on this anniversary of our first date, you will answer my letter. When it was our “safe word,” we used it to bring communication to a halt. Now I hope it can restore our connection in some small way. This isn’t how I want things to be between us. Let me care for you in the way that I can, as one human being to another.
Love,
Celestial
Dear Roy,
Merry Christmas. I haven’t heard from you, but I hope you are okay.
Celestial
Dear Roy,
If you don’t want to see me, I can’t force you. It is unkind that you would cut me off because I can’t be exactly the way you want me to be. I’ll say it again: I’m not abandoning you. I would never do that.
C
Dear Celestial,
Please respect my wishes. Up until now, I have lived in fear of this happening. Let me be. I can’t dangle from your string.
Roy
Dear Roy,
Happy birthday. Banks tells me that you’re fine, but that’s all he will say. Will you give him permission to give me news?
C
Dear Roy,
You will get this around Olive’s anniversary. I know you feel all alone, but you are not. I haven’t heard from you in so long, but I want you know that I am thinking of you.
Celestial
Dear Celestial,
Can I still call you Georgia? That will always be my name for you in my head. So, Georgia, this is the letter I have been waiting five years to write, the words I have been practicing. I even scratched it into the paint on the wall beside my bed.
Georgia, I am coming home.
Your uncle came through. He went over the heads of these local yokels and ran it straight to the fed. “Gross prosecutorial misconduct” basically means they cheated. The judge vacated the conviction and the local DA didn’t care enough to retry. So, as they say, “in the interest of justice,” I will soon be home free.
Banks can explain it all to you in more detail. I have given him permission, but I wanted you to hear it from me, to see it in my own handwriting, that I will be a free man one month from today, in time for Christmas.
I know that things have not been right between us for some time now. I was wrong to take you off my list and you were wrong not to fight me about it. But this is not a time for blaming each other for what we cannot change. I regret not answering your letters. It has been a year since I have received any word, but how can I expect you to keep writing when you thought I was ignoring you. Did you think I forgot you? I hope I didn’t hurt you with my silence, but I was hurt myself, and also ashamed.
Will you hear me when I say that the last five years are behind me and behind us? Water under the bridge. (Remember the stream in Eloe, the way the bridge makes a song?)
I know that we can’t “start love over.” But this is what I do know: you have not divorced me. All I want is for you to tell me why you have chosen to remain my lawfully wedded wife. Even if someone else is occupying your time, you have chosen to keep me as your husband these many years. In my mind, I picture us at our same kitchen table, in our same comfortable house, passing quiet words of truth.
Georgia, this is a love letter. Everything I do is a love letter addressed to you.
Love,
Roy