Total pages in book: 27
Estimated words: 25416 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 127(@200wpm)___ 102(@250wpm)___ 85(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 25416 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 127(@200wpm)___ 102(@250wpm)___ 85(@300wpm)
“Have a seat,” she says, gesturing to the barber’s chair.
Not yet, I tell myself, pressing my lips into a thin line. I sit, at her mercy, as she reclines the chair so that my head hangs over the shampooing sink.
She turns the water on. “Not too hot, is it?”
“It's fine,” I grunt.
Tatum wets my hair, and then she touches me. She massages my scalp as she works the shampoo into a lather, and I feel as though I could melt into a puddle and be sucked straight down the drain. She’s tender but firm, working with an easy sureness that shouldn’t surprise me, but it does, given how freely she writes about her anxieties.
Sometimes I feel like I'll never be as good as the other stylists here. I try to remember that they all started out where I am now, but it feels like an impossible mountain to climb. Most days I wonder what I'm even doing here. If I’ll ever be good enough…
The sharp recollection of her letters brings me crashing back to reality. I came here to tell her the truth about the letters she wrote, and about the ones she got back. She deserves to know who she’s been sharing her hopes, dreams, and opinions with all these years, like she deserves to understand why any future letters she sends will go unanswered.
She shuts the water off and gently squeezes the excess moisture out of my hair, before draping a towel around my shoulders and helping me to sit up.
“Thanks,” I mutter, rising to my full height, which is at least a foot taller than she is. She smiles up at me.
“Right this way.” She points to another barber's chair in front of a broad mirror, and I move over to it, dodging a pile of shorn hair as I go.
I sit down and examine my reflection in the mirror. Prison hasn't been particularly kind to me; I look like I've aged a dozen years in the six I've been gone. Still, I’ve gotten used to the salt-and-pepper hair, and I don't altogether mind the lines that bloom at the corner of my eyes when I smile. One thing all that free time in prison did afford me was the opportunity to work out every day. I’m more chiseled than I've been in my entire life, and it feels good.
So why, then, am I having a hard time looking myself in the eye?
“All right,” Tatum says, placing her hands on my shoulders. “What brings you into my clutches?”
Ah, that’s right. I’m lying to this beautiful creature.
Two years into my sentence, I got paired with a new cellmate, a transfer from another prison upstate. Gene Fitzroy was a nasty son of a bitch, just as likely to curse your name and spit in your face as to say hello. Fortunately, the gangly bastard took one look at me and decided I was just a little bigger and meaner looking than he was willing to mess with. This made for a copacetic, if cold, living arrangement, which suited the both of us just fine. But everything changed for me the day I found the birthday card from Tatum.
I hadn’t seen them deliver the card to Fitzroy, but I’d watched the man crumple it in his fist and drop it to the floor. There isn’t much to do in prison besides play cards, read books, work out, and attend Bible meetings. Sometimes a volunteer would come in and put on a yoga class or a writing workshop, but those were short-lived. Suffice it to say, the mustard-yellow card with a cheese grater on the front and the words, Happy Birthday to a GRATE dad, piqued my interest. I snatched it up when he wasn’t looking, smoothed it out, cracked it open.
I know you probably won’t respond to this card either, but Happy Birthday, Dad.
Enclosed was a photograph of a cherub-cheeked teen with braces and braided pigtails. On the back, someone had scrawled, Tatum, 16, in the bottom right corner.
That card and Tatum’s sweet face were the first things to charm a smile from me in the two years since my sentence had begun. But instead of feeling like the luckiest father alive, that son of a bitch Fitzroy had tossed his kid’s photo aside like a piece of garbage.
At sixteen, I was already living with my grandparents, my folks long gone, probably high or looking for a way to get there. Studying Tatum’s photograph, I remembered what it felt like to simultaneously hate my folks while still craving their love and attention. I recalled the emptiness, like a chasm in my chest, begging to be filled. That feeling was what made me pick up a pen and paper. I kept it brief.
Thanks for the birthday card. I’m sorry I’ve been such a disappointment. It’s not your fault. You deserve better and I hope you find it.