Tapestry

They were separated, as always, by a thick sheet of glass. She smoothed the wrinkles from her skirt as she sat. That morning, she had deliberated in front of her closet for two hours before settling on the blue striped dress. He didn’t have such a choice – he had worn orange for the last year. She thought he wore the jumpsuit handsomely, though. As well as anyone could.

They both unmounted the thick black phones from their receivers.

He thought her face was more wrinkled since their last visit. Her hair was a touch more gray. Her eyes were tired, and seated deep within new sags. They were scanning his face for bruises, he knew. Instead, she found a point of interest on the underside of his jaw.

“That’s new,” she said, pointing at the tattoo. It was a swastika.

Her expression didn’t change – and the complacency angered him. The ink was for the gang, not for her. But when the dirty needle had been digging into his skin, he wondered what she would say. If she would be furious. If she would cry like she had before when she’d seen the black teardrop stamped by his eye or the fresh stitches across his throat. He often wondered how close she was to giving up on him. If she could give up at all.

She was crumbling inside. When she looked at this wiry, muscular man on the other side of the glass, she still saw her son. The hardened exterior he had built was just a façade to her. The prison brands and the shaved head were but a thin blanket thrown over the boy still inside.

He saw this recognition in her eyes. The boy is dead, he wanted to say. I am all that’s left.

“Are you fitting in?” she asked, stoic but voice quivering.

He studied her face, unblinking. The laugh lines were gone. How could that happen? He could barely recognize the old woman across from him. She visited once a month, each time more disheveled. The next time you see me, he thought, my body will be a tapestry.

“Let go,” he said, and hung up the phone.