Save Me

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It's been five years.

Five years since I've walked freely down a street. Five years since I've been in a moving vehicle. Five years since I've sat down to eat a meal with my family...

Though there was that one time, my first Christmas inside, I was allowed to share a meal with my mother. Granted, I was cuffed to a stainless steel table in a room with several other families also visiting their children, but we shared a meal nonetheless. Everything started out fine, there was very little crying and the food was even good that day, but when a fellow delinquent had suddenly become too rowdy our dinner came to a screeching halt. And I mean literally. Guards flooded the room, batons swinging with little mercy, even the innocent kids were ripped from their seats and forced on to unforgiving concrete.

The screams from both mothers and children haunted me to this day. It was not uncommon for a correctional officer to be unnecessarily rough, but to do it while parents watched made it surreal. Kids were terrified, mothers cried, fathers shouted, it was chaos. Several of the kids came out with scrapes and bruises. One even had his arm broken. Granted, that particular guard found himself immediately unemployed, but the damage was done. Many parents quit visiting after that, the treatment of their children too painful to witness. A rare few of them came more often, as if needing proof their child was alive and well. My mother was one of the latter.

At first she requested daily visitation, when denied her demand, she settled on an every two days arrangement. That lasted about two months. Then life began to get in the way and it became a once a week visit through glass and plastic telephones. There was never an opportunity for physical contact again after that day. All holiday privileges were yanked for a year after the incident, rules became more strict, and guards cracked down harder than ever. All because one teenager wanted an extra roll with his Christmas dinner.

Life never stopped moving. That was one of the things I learned on the inside. Whether you were present, or not, life continued moving forward. A week after I was brought in, my mom received divorce papers in the mail. Three months after that, I received word that my father had been caught trying to cross the border into Mexico. At the Christmas dinner, before things had erupted, my mother told me he was arrested without any hope of bail. She had then went on to tell me that she was engaged.

A year later, she married a man kinder and sweeter than any she had ever met, or so she told me. He never came to visit, but who wants to meet their new stepdaughter in a juvenile correctional facility? By the time the following year came to a close, my mother informed me she was pregnant, expecting a little boy. And just yesterday, she had come home from the hospital with baby number two.

Life had kept moving, that was for certain. I had missed out on a lot of the important things. But no more. Never again would I have to sit out a birthday or anniversary. Never again would I sit in a cell while everyone cooed over a newborn family member.

"Michello! Front and center!" One of the correctional officers bellowed from down the hall. A buzzer blared as the door to our cell slid open. Turning toward my roommate with a sad smile, I dropped what little belongings I had collected over the years on to the bed and lurched forward. Wrapping my arms around the girl who'd quickly become my bestfriend, I tried hard to keep the tears at bay.

"It's been real, Lex." The quiver in her voice noticable even to my ears as she returned the embrace.

"I'll never forget you."

"You better not, or I'll hunt you down and kick your ass." She shot back, squeezing me tighter just before letting go. Laughing quietly as I stepped back a bit, I handed her a slip of paper.