15 for 15 Contest --- Closed

Crenshaw, Lester T. stared at the little girl behind the glass and she stared back. She had familiar eyes.

He tried to see who was with her. He leaned over to look to the left of her and then the other way to look right. He saw a pink wall in the background and a linoleum floor and over against the visitor’s door he saw three guards. The three guards stood out. They were each looking at him, as the little girl was looking at him; waiting.

Crenshaw, Lester T. picked up the phone. The girl did the same.

She had quick blue eyes and her hair was blond and needed brushing, or cutting, or something done to it. Maybe it was just dirty. He could hear her breathing into the phone. Her eyes moved back and forth across his face. She stared with such lack of fear, or hesitation, or even unease, that he wanted nothing more than to hang up and call the guard and end this all right now. His right leg began bouncing.

She was—God knows—ten?

He sat with twenty other inmates, side by side. They were all wearing matching white pants, and faded blue shirts, orange socks, and light blue slippers.

“Yes?” Lester T. finally asked into the phone.

Monica’s heart was racing and her mind was racing and she found she had nothing to offer. Whatever plans she had formed and set into motion evaporated the instant the old man with the gray hair and the gray goatee sat down and stared at her through the smudged and filthy window. She had wanted to just hear his voice. He mother said she wished she would change her mind, but Monica wouldn’t, couldn’t, didn’t. Now, she had heard enough. He was just like they all said. Everyone was right. This man had no place in her life. He was a stranger more strange than that woman on Fifth Street that screams at cars.

“You don’t know me…” Monica replied. She returned the hard gaze through the glass. The phone felt sticky against her ear in such a way that she wanted nothing more than to run from the room and to not throw-up.

“I know you,” he said. “How’d you get here?”

“Alan brought me.”

“Who’s Alan?” he asked.

“He’s my father,” Monica said. “Well… he’s...”

“I know,” said Crenshaw. “He’s a good man.”

“You know Alan?” her forehead curled in confusion.

“I hear things,” Crenshaw said. “He’s a good man!”

“When are they going to let you--”

“Never.”

She looked at him and he shook his head.

“Never,” he said again.

The electronic buzz came that signified their time was up and Crenshaw felt a hand on his shoulder.

“You got a raw deal, kid,” he said. “We can’t all be winners.”

“Who can’t be?”

“Some of us,” he said. “Me.”

In the end, before he was taken away through the doors, he looked back and saw his daughter still sitting there, her eyes watching him. He smiled at her just before the doors closed and chose to believe later, over time, she had smiled back.