The Lifer

This is how I remember her. She spoke always in a voice that never rose beyond a mildly raised tone, even when angry. She fit the same sized prison uniform, never gaining or losing significant weight. I’d been visiting her for several years and her weight, skin tone, the way she tied up her hair, her walk, had all remained constant. Sure, as the years ticked by, I noticed the gradual increase in the grey strands in her hair. And, when I sat opposite her under the sodium light of the visitors’ room, her crow’s feet grew more noticeable each year. She was serving a life sentence. I knew why but what got her into prison is not important for this conversation.

She was 35 when she began her incarceration. I volunteered at her facility, going in every other month to teach how to make handcrafts. It was simple stuff and safe. No sharp objects were allowed. I’d have ready-made strips of paper and glue and teach interested prisoners how to make colorful cubes for mobiles. She was one of the regulars and I’d always stop to chat with her because she was the most well-adjusted of the lot. We’d sit together during breaks [my sessions lasted 4 hours every month for two consecutive days]. She’d talk about the outside world and what she knew was going on as well as what she missed. Unlike the others, who were either too quiet to share their thoughts or unable to hold a decent conversation, she was as normal as it was possible to be in her circumstances.

Once we talked about places to interest in Europe and she had a lot to tell me about her favorite: Kew Gardens. She’d read up on the layout and attractions – the glass house, the Japanese gardens – and wished to visit one day in late summer to see all the varieties of flowers. Her face glowed when she spoke, eyes closed as she imagined the sights she’d see.

I realized that she was a reader. I think her reading allowed her to travel. In her mind, she’d visited and experienced all the lovely places she’d wanted to go to. She’d experienced different lives and challenges in the pages of books. Despite serving a life sentence, she seemed to possess the light presence of someone who was just passing through life, although she would most likely be spending the rest of her’s behind bars.

This was true until my visit on January 3rd, 2013, which came after a long break from my previous visit, due to some health issues which had kept me away. For the first time in the dozen years I’d known her, she seemed a different person. The lightness in her demeanor was gone.

In fact, when the prisoners walked in for class, I did not recognize her. I’d started with my typical intro for beginners and handed out papers and glue, demonstrated a few basic moves and eventually, began walking around. There was a thin woman hunched over her table, struggling to hold the colored paper strips in position. Her uniform looked two sizes too big for her. Her hair was almost completely grey. There was strain on her features as she tried unsuccessfully to duplicate what I’d just demonstrated. I approached her and offered to help. She looked up at me. It was her. At least, she had the same eyes of the woman I’d once known.

I sat with her during the break, away from the rest, and asked her what had happened. Had she been ill? Had the prison doctor seen her? She had her eyes lowered, with perceptibly shaky fingers hovering on the colored papers. 

It seems, for something she’d done, her privileges had been taken away.

What were her privileges? I asked.

Reading and writing, she said.

Since how long?

Eight months.

I couldn’t believe it. Eight months without books for a reader was like depriving a patient of medication.

What did you do that they took away your right to read and write that long ago?

She looked to the gate where a guard was standing with her back to us, out of earshot. Her voice was much softer than I remembered.

I got in a fight with a guard.

That’s all?

I stabbed her.

I drew a deep breath. I didn’t know what to say.

Break ended and I went back to the front of the class, thinking hard.

She’d adjusted to prison life. She had been doing fine. Going about her business – serving a life sentence – with as joyful a spirit as I would think was possible for any human being to muster. Why did she have to get into this situation now?

I saw her on my way out and told her to hang in there. The next day, I returned with a book and passed it to her surreptitiously. She looked bewildered at first, then placed the book safely out of sight under her uniform. When I walked out later, I saw her grateful look.

That’s how it started. I returned the month after and she gave me the book and I replaced it with a new title. Always, although we never formally made an agreement, the books were thin volumes, easily hidden and finished within a month. I remember the titles. The Happy Prince. The Diary of Anne Frank. The Alchemist. Plenty more.

There was no immediate visible change, to be honest. In fact, it took several years. Every month, I’d go to the prison for two days, teach my class and drop off a book and pick up the previous one. For a long time, she remained the frail, broken figure, struggling to hold things and dreams or look people in the eyes again.

Maybe I’d stopped paying attention to her other than when conducting our secret book exchange. That would explain why, a few years later on my fiftieth birthday weekend, I walked into prison and saw once more, the woman I’d known during my earliest visits to the facility. The lightness, or at least a glimmer of it, was there to be seen. Hair now all white, but someone who still walked erect, had complete possession of her limbs and faculties, who laughed out loud and raised her voice to ask questions on behalf of her fellow inmates.

That day, she returned ‘God’ by Deepak Chopra to me. And I gave her a book by the Dalai Lama. Something about managing anger. She got the irony.

photo from unsplash.com by Carles Rabada