No One in the World (7 page)

I was in a hurry to get out of there. That place was depressing and so disproportionately occupied with black men. Every time I walked through those corridors, I became more depressed. I know many, maybe even most of them, were guilty of their crimes and had been justly convicted. But I also knew that the legal system was biased against black men, resulting in them often being falsely imprisoned, or when they were found guilty, getting longer, harsher sentences, or being sent away for crimes white men would get probation for. Not to mention the situation they would find themselves in when they finally got out—jobless,
often uneducated, and branded as convicts—it was almost hopeless. No wonder so many went back.

Finally climbing out of my car, I felt dirty and exhausted. All I wanted to do was step into a steaming shower. I caught sight of my mailbox not twenty feet from where I stood. I should check it, I thought. Maybe the letter from the Social Security Administration had been delivered.

I walked toward the mailbox. When I opened it, there was a single letter lying inside. I pulled it out, read the envelope, and it was indeed the letter I had been waiting for.

Finally, a breakthrough.

I went inside, took a shower, and slipped on some khakis, a T-shirt, and my house robe. I went downstairs, poured myself a cold glass of white wine in anticipation of opening the letter and finding the address where my brother was currently living, or at least some information that would make him much easier to find.

I carried my wine and the letter into the dining room, set the letter on the table, and stared at it.

I felt my heart speeding in my chest and urged myself to calm down. I could not. This would be the closest I had come to actually meeting my brother. I wanted it to be a special occasion of sorts.

I took a celebratory sip of my wine, inhaled, exhaled, then tore the letter open. It took me only a moment to find what I was looking for. I read it, set the letter down, then smiled, then forced myself to laugh. I took a giant gulp of my wine before I angrily slung the glass across the room where it shattered against the wall.

I looked down at the letter and again read the line.

Unable to provide requested information.

I crumpled the page into a ball as I yelled into the empty house, “I fucking give up!”

I stood there infuriated, my chest heaving. I took another deep breath and told myself if my brother didn't want to be found, or if the universe was in some way preventing it from happening, maybe it wasn't meant to be.

E
ric Reed lay in his prison cell bunk moments before lights out. His cellmate, in the rack above him, was already snoring. Eric was staring up at the tattered old photo that he had stuck into the springs of that overhead bunk. The picture was of his little girl, Maya. She was two years old then—the most beautiful little brown baby in the world. She had thick black hair, big brown eyes, and the fattest dimpled cheeks.

Eric hadn't seen his daughter, or the mother of the child, in a little more than two years.

As Eric lay in that bunk, wearing jailhouse trousers and a wife beater undershirt, he remembered the days when he was free.

He had dated Jess, a gorgeous, shapely, loving sister for twenty-four months.

Eric loved her and had been honest with her about his upbringing in foster care and his run-ins with the law. Jess said none of that mattered. She felt he was a good man, and as long as he was good to her and stayed out of trouble, she would stick by him.

There were nights when he lay in bed beside Jess after making love, and he couldn't understand why she had chosen to stay with him, why she loved him. He told himself he wasn't good enough for her. He knew that any day she could leave him for someone better.

Eric worked when he could find day labor, pouring what cash he
made onto the coffee table at the end of the day when he walked into the small one-bedroom apartment they shared. There were a couple of days when the ten- and twenty-dollar bills totaled close to a hundred dollars. Most days he barely made twenty or thirty, but Jess would smile and tell him what he gave was much appreciated and would help a lot. Eric knew she couldn't even buy a decent pair of shoes with that money.

Eventually, Jess picked up on Eric's insecurities. She started going out of her way to tell him how much she loved him. She had even bought him flowers on two occasions. None of it worked. One night, before bed, Jess walked over to Eric, her hands behind her back.

“I have something to ask you.”

“What?” Eric said.

“I want you to say yes.”

“Ask me first.”

“Will you say yes?”

“Just ask.”

Jess raised her hand from behind her back, opened it. In her palm was a plain, dull gold wedding band. “Will you marry me, Eric Reed?”

Eric had nothing. He was no one. He took Jess's hand in his and softly closed her fingers back around the ring. “You know I love you, right?” he said.

“And I love you, too. That's why I'm asking you to marry me.”

“That's why I gotta say no. Just for right now, until I can be the man I need to be for you. Will you understand that for me?”

“Only if you stop acting like we don't belong together and believe me when I tell you I need you with me.”

Eric smiled. “Yeah, okay.”

A week later, after coming in from standing on the corner all day, hoping for work and not getting it, Eric found Jess sitting in the living room, a smile on her face.

“What?” Eric said, smiling too, after closing the door.

“Come here.”

He walked to Jess, sat down beside her. She took his hand, kissed Eric's lips.

“What?” Eric asked again.

“I'm pregnant,” Jess said softly. Eric could feel her practically trembling
with excitement. “I had a doctor's appointment. I'm one month!” She threw her arms around Eric's neck.

“That's great news, Jess,” Eric said, hugging her back. He didn't mean it. The money Jess made as a supervisor at Target was enough to take care of the two of them, allowing the little bit he gave her to seem like a meaningful contribution. But once a baby and a number of new expenses came, Jess would see just how little Eric was doing for them. It would make even plainer the fact that she had to find a better man than him.

Every day up until the baby's birth, Eric wished the pregnancy away. Then Maya was born. It turned out to be the happiest day of Eric's life. He stood in the delivery room, wearing a white gown, holding his baby for the first time and smiling through his joyful tears.

For the first time, Eric felt good about not having a job and being home, allowing them to save on child care. The first eight months, he cared for Maya full time, feeding her, changing her, bathing her. He grew very close to the little girl. Many days he would just hold her, marvel at how beautiful she was. He never knew he was capable of helping to create someone so perfect. He loved that little girl so much. At times, it made him wonder how his mother could've put him up for adoption and just walk away.

“I'll never leave you, baby,” Eric said that night, leaning over and kissing his sleeping child on the cheek. “I'll always be here for you.”

Soon, the bills began to stack. Eric would see the frustration on Jess's face when it came time to try to pay them all. Utilities were soon to be cut off, and Jess had been hinting to Eric for a number of months that he would have to find employment.

While Jess was at work during the day, Eric would cart Maya with him down the street to the public library and search online for job opportunities. Jobs he was qualified for were almost nonexistent, and with his criminal record of theft convictions, he quickly realized he had no chance at anything legal.

The next day, Eric got in touch with two friends of his, a guy named Luck and a chubby guy who insisted on being called Skinny Steve. In the past, the three of them ran small crime jobs together. They never amounted to huge money, but Eric was hoping they'd be on to bigger things by now.

The next night, when the guys got together, Skinny Steve said to Luck and Eric that he knew a guy who ran a chop shop.

“He'll give us five hundred to two thousand dollars a car, depending on what kind of rides we bring him.”

“That ain't shit,” Luck said, wearing a do-rag tied over his head.

“It's better than what we got now,” Skinny Steve said. “And we can make as much as we want. Just keep on bringing in cars.”

“Steve's right,” Eric said. He was already counting the money in his head, thinking about what it could provide for Jess and Maya.

On the night of Eric's first job, he told himself things were going to work out just fine. That was until, while speeding down Stony Island Avenue in the Ford Expedition he had just stolen, he saw the blue lights of a Chicago police car flash in his rearview mirror.

Luck and Skinny Steve were in Luck's beat-up Mustang, trailing Eric. They quickly made a left on Seventy-ninth Street when they saw the cops on Eric's tail.

Standing in front of the judge, Eric could hear Jess bawling as he was sentenced to four years in prison.

The first year Eric was in, Jess and Maya came often. It was the only thing that made prison tolerable. They were his link to the outside, something to look forward to.

On his year anniversary of being incarcerated, Jess came to visit Eric alone.

In the visitors' room, she really looked nice. She wore a lavender skirt and a floral print shirt. Her hair was freshly done. It was shiny, straightened, and hung to her shoulders. She looked good, but she looked sad.

“You okay?” Eric said.

“Yeah.”

“I got a surprise for you.”

“What is it, Eric?”

“I know I got two more years up in here, but I was thinking. I'm ready to say yes to your marriage proposal.”

Jess didn't do a backflip like Eric had been expecting. She didn't shriek with surprise or throw herself into his arms. None of that. She just smiled a little, as if someone she didn't know had told her she looked nice that day.

Eric didn't know what was wrong. “Is that a yes?”

Jess nodded. “Yes,” she said.

Three days later when Eric tried calling her phone, Jess didn't pick up. That was the case for the next two weeks. On her regular visiting day, she didn't show. The next time Eric tried calling Jess, her voicemail didn't even pick up. The phone just rang.

Eric stood there, the phone in his hand, looking stupid and feeling betrayed.

Now, lying in his cot, looking up at his child's picture, he told himself,
yes, it's been a little over two years since I've seen my child or my baby's mother.
He had no idea what happened to them. Did Jess stop loving him? Did she and his child die in some horrible car accident? He had looked her name up on the Internet and searched Facebook trying to find her, but she just disappeared.

Earlier that afternoon, Eric sat in the cafeteria, hunched over a metal tray of chili-mac. The old tattooed man Eric sometimes ate lunch with was spooning some of his chili-mac onto a slice of white bread.

“You find your girl and your baby?” the old man asked. Eric didn't know what his real name was, but inside everybody called him V.C.

“Not yet,” Eric said, picking at his food. “But I'm still lookin'.”

V.C. set down the half sandwich he made. “You better not stop.”

Eric heard what the man said but wasn't paying him much mind. He was too lost in his own thoughts.

“Look at me, boy,” V.C. commanded.

Eric looked V.C. in the face. The whites of his eyes had yellowed. Several teeth were missing from his mouth, and a scraggly beard grew spotty from his gaunt face. “You told me how much you loved that woman and that child but didn't feel you deserved them. You ever think if you told yourself different, your mind woulda been so on proving that, you woulda done everything to keep from being locked up?”

“No.”

“You ever think that without you, your little girl might have a fucked-up life like you got and might end up in here one day, too?”

Eric concentrated more on the old man, then said, “Yeah, I think about that all the time.”

“I had a son once,” V.C. said, staring into his memory. “He was eleven
years old. I hadn't seen him since he was six, but I had two months to go on a five-year sentence, and I promised myself when I got out, I was gonna be the best goddamned father I knew how to be. But his mama would write me, tell me he was runnin' them streets. I told her to keep him in the house, but the boy was wild and he'd get out there. Every night I prayed that he'd be okay till I got out. I would tell him that I loved him, teach him that all he needed was in here,” V.C. said, pressing his fingertips to his heart. “But two weeks before I was released, his mama called, told me he had been shot and killed and left on the street. Garbage man found him the next morning on his route.”

V.C. wiped a tear from his face. “It was all . . .” he tried to speak, but his voice cracked with emotion. He cleared his voice and said again, “It was all my fault. He was trying to be like his old man, and look where it got him.” V.C. reached across the table, clamped Eric's forearm with a dirty wrinkled hand, and held tight. “You be a man, find that little girl, and be a father to her again. You hear what I'm sayin'?”

“I hear you,” Eric said, his voice soft.

In his bunk, Eric told himself he didn't need V.C. to tell him what to do. He had realized it sometime ago, but the pain in that man's eyes, the regret that dragged him down was something Eric couldn't get out of his head.

He would be getting out of prison on parole in just three days. He would find Jess one way or another and tell her he wanted his family back.

A
usten sat at her dining room table. She was working from home today, but not by choice. She had no clients to take out to show properties. She had no closings scheduled, which meant no money coming in.