Ephraim and Malik

I was a young, dumb kid when my son Malik was born six years ago. His mother Michelle was on point and tried to get me on the right track. To finish school. To find a job. I love her, but I wasn’t trying to hear her back then. In my defense, I did know that my son was all that really mattered. I was just stupid about how I tried to prove it. Unless I was working, me and him were inseparable and dressed in matching clothes, sneakers, boxers, and Caesar cuts. I thought keeping him in Hilfiger, Rocawear, and Nikes would let him (and everybody else) know that I was a good father.

The cops that busted me had a good laugh when they went through my book bag. They found a copy of The Very Hungry Caterpillar, a new pair of little Timberlands, and the rocks I had planned on selling that day (enough to get me a ten-year bid even after a plea). As the cuffs clicked and tightened around my wrists, I finally understood what Michelle had tried to tell me—Malik wouldn’t care that the boots, books, and toys never made it to him. It’s me that he would miss and need. A lesson learned too late.

I worked hard for two years trying to convince Michelle to bring Malik up here for a visit. She always refused, saying she didn’t want Malik in some sweaty room with tough guys with dirty tattoos, or gang tattoos, or shaved heads.

“It’s not gonna be like that,” I had told her. “It’s a special visit just for kids.”

“I just don’t think it’ll be good for him, Ephraim. Being in there. Seeing you in there.” She held her ground as usual.

“I know, ‘Chelle, but it’s not like it’s only been six months. I’ve been gone two years. If I’m gonna do what I can to teach him, and actually be his father, we gotta see each other, not just talk on the phone.” I wanted to say more. I wanted to beg. But the hard, impatient eyes of the guys in line for the phone forced me to keep it together.

Michelle was silent. I heard the hospital floor swirling around her: the beeps, the intercom pages, and the murmur of voices. I’d never seen her in her real nurse’s scrubs. I’d gotten busted a few weeks before she finished her associate’s degree.

“It’ll be alright, ’Chelle. I wouldn’t bring Malik into anything that would hurt him,” I went on. Silence always meant she was softening. “We painted the visiting room. We wrote letters and some stores donated cookies, juice, games, crayons and coloring books. There’s even gonna be a clown.”

I waited, nervous and desperate, through more silence and more beeps. She’d said no for so long, I was shocked when actually she said yes.

Thirty minutes into the two-hour visiting period, Michelle and Malik still hadn’t shown up. I can’t even tell you how I was feeling. I sat there alone at the folding table reserved for my family praying that she hadn’t changed her mind. The other fathers looked over with nods of support. They read picture books to the sons and daughters in their laps or oohed over a report card or a newly drawn picture that would soon get taped to the walls of their cells. My stomach cramped and my hands sweated so much I nearly rubbed holes in my pants to keep them dry

I imagined everything that could have gone wrong from Michelle’s little Honda breaking down on the expressway to the chicken pox. I had let myself get too excited. For weeks, from wake-up to lights-out I told all kinds of stories about my little man. When we lifted weights in the yard, I’d tell the guys how Malik could hold his own even before he could walk. My favorite was the story about the time one of my [End Page...