We had risen early that morning, skipping breakfast in our haste. We arrived much too early to the courthouse and waited impatiently, anxiously, for our meeting with the judge. They warned us not to talk to the prisoner. Would they whisk him away or find us in contempt? I couldn’t remember.
“I love you,” I said under my breath as I passed the defense table. It was instinctual. “I love you,” I said again, this time with only my eyes as I mounted the witness stand and took an oath to tell nothing but the truth. My children were seated attentively in the back row of the spectator area, each dressed respectfully in dark suits and good shoes. My mother, his sole protector, had already been escorted to an ancillary room, isolated from testimony.
He was 40 now. But when I noted his thick brown hair, combed thoughtfully for this occasion, I remembered him at 8, the year our grandfather died, his face, wet from tears and heartache. And I remembered him at 12, the year we moved to Texas, his eye, swollen and bruised for being new. And I remembered him at 26, in an orange jumpsuit, his hand, steady against the glass, eager to greet my two-year-old son.
He wore a dress shirt tucked neatly into black slacks, his hands folded quietly on the table. He sat composed, offering a tender optimism, smiling only slightly, politely, mindful of the judge. Perhaps he too was reflecting on our divergent destinies or our departed father or our devoted mother. Perhaps he was subtracting 7 years served from a 37-year sentence, silently pleading for this hearing to fix it. “I love you,” he whispered, never taking his eyes off of me.
It was a brief interaction but our first in 14 years. I had abandoned my mother’s house long before he went away for the first time, the fifth time, the last time. I had only heard about the addiction, the diagnosis, the wrongful imprisonment. I had only heard about the lawsuit, the corruption, the mistreatment. In the middle of my own life crises, my own self-consumption, I had only heard about it. In those years of solitary confinement when he wrote to me, he didn’t say he’d lost a tooth. He didn’t say he’d lost his innocence. He didn’t say he’d briefly lost his faith. But I had heard about it.
I couldn’t hug him as I left the courtroom. I couldn’t tell him to hang in there. I couldn’t introduce him to my daughter, whom he'd never met. How trite that all seemed, how inconsequential. I could only whisper, “I love you,” one more time.
They called my mother next, leaving me in that room to pray for good news. I cried as I waited, silently pleading. And I cried after when good news was postponed.
My children hugged us as we exited the courthouse, their compassionate embraces an encouraging gesture. We talked about how the prosecution questioned us and the evidence the defense presented. We talked about the money and the years it had cost. We talked about the letters he had sent and the poems he had written and the life he had lost. We talked about faith and better days ahead.
At lunch, we ordered too much food on empty stomachs, each of us silently knowing that David had been returned to a cell where he would eat alone, if at all, while he awaited transport to medium security. We bowed our heads for her to pray for him. For us. And we ate, wishing he was there.