I Can Take it from Here by Lisa Forbes

Author:Lisa Forbes [Forbes, Lisa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Steerforth Press
Published: 2022-06-07T00:00:00+00:00

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On December 30, 1999 — my “out date” — I left prison. I exchanged my navy-blue prison uniform for a pair of jeans, gym shoes, a sweater, and a winter coat. My hair was a mess. I combed it straight back, but I had no band to tie it into a ponytail. I didn’t care. I just wanted out.

I carried a toothbrush, toothpaste, soap, deodorant, and a small jar of Vaseline in a trash bag. I had packed a few belongings into boxes the day before, and the guards had moved them to the prison entrance: a TV, my Walkman, some clothes. Over the years, I had sent most of my papers, magazines, and books to my mother for safekeeping.

My last day in prison should have been one of joy, but as in the past, I was overwhelmed; everything felt dreamlike. I worried about my relationship with Mercedes. She had grown up while I was in prison. How could I reconnect with a sixteen-year-old stranger? I would have to get to know her first. I also recognized the influence that my parents had on her. They had baptized her as a Jehovah’s Witness. At that point, she was their daughter, not mine. Her beliefs and thoughts belonged to a world I had rejected years ago. My mother believed the world would end soon. I thought it was just beginning.

I walked to the front gate. A guard said, “See you later!”

“No, you won’t,” I replied.

The guard laughed.

My sister Net and her husband met me at the gate shortly after 9:00 A.M. We hugged for a long time. I climbed into the back seat of their car and headed to Chicago. Net called our mother. “We got her,” she said. They drove around the city, showing me how things had changed. The Chicago Housing Authority had demolished the Lake Michigan High-Rises and most other high-rises the year before, amid concerns that the city’s public housing had been a social engineering mistake — a “no-man’s-land” of broken windows, stabbings, and drug deals.

In their place stood rows of new three-story buildings. The sidewalks were clean and lined with newly planted trees. Everything looked so different. I felt disoriented. Everything I knew was gone.

Net’s relationship with our mother had changed, too. For a while, Net had read the Watchtower magazines and studied the Bible with our mother. While she was “studying,” as the Witnesses call it, Mama visited her all the time. Then Net changed her mind. She told Mama she wouldn’t become a Witness, and she didn’t want to “study” anymore. Mama never set foot in her house again.

We drove to Mama and Daddy’s place, a first-floor apartment in a two-story building on South Green Street on the South Side of Chicago.

I hugged my parents. My father wiped his eyes. Everything seemed surreal. Mercedes was in her room, asleep. I opened her bedroom door, walked to her bed, and whispered her name. She woke up with a start and reached out for me. When

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