room when I was a child. I realized that that anger was the largest part of my heart and if I ever wanted to be my own person, my own Mardi, I’d have to do something…extreme.”
I wanted to ask but my breath wasn’t acting right.
“I wrote another letter,” she said. “It was very short and I wrote it in pencil because I erased it a dozen times until it was exactly what I wanted to say.”
“And?”
“I wrote, ‘I forgive you’ and signed it ‘M’ because when you call me M I always feel that you’re my father. And so I was your daughter letting go of that old corroded anchor that was pulling me down.”
I don’t know how long the silence was that followed those words. I don’t remember reaching out but at some point I realized that we were holding hands.
“And,” I said. I had to clear my throat. “And did he answer?”
“He sent another letter. It was the same old gibberish. Me growing into a fine woman and how much he’d learned and thank you about a hundred times. I didn’t read it very closely. I just wrote him and said that I was coming to visit; that I was only coming one time and so he should know what he was going to say.”
“Wow.” For some reason I thought about my earlier sparring session with Chin Wa. If he’d had Mardi’s will I’d’ve never won that match. “And so you went last week.”
“It was horrific,” Mardi said. I’d never heard her use that word before. “They took me to what they call an isolation hut and had me meet him in a room with two guards standing on either side of his chair. Before they’d even let me in I had to let a woman guard give me a body search.”
The conversation stopped for a minute while all the experience and feeling coalesced in the young woman’s mind.
“He had aged twenty years,” she said. “His hair was gray and falling out. He had scars from a knifing and over the left side of his face where somebody had thrown acid on him. He’s blind in his left eye and something’s wrong with his right hand. It was curled up like a bird’s claw.”
“Yeah,” I said, nodding. “Nobody likes a child molester in prison. Nobody.”
“He was pathetic. They had him in isolation because otherwise he’d be dead. You know, I wondered why he didn’t mention anything about his troubles in the letters and then I understood that he was trying to pretend that nothing ever happened.
“We had forty-five minutes and talked the whole time. I don’t remember anything we said but he asked if I would kiss him good-bye and I said no.”
That was the end of her story. Her posture was saying that she needed to get up and walk away from the tale. But she stayed in the chair because of me and my relationship to her self-enacted deliverance.
I still wanted to know about Twill but couldn’t bring myself to question her further.
“You’re a strong woman, Mardi Bitterman,” I said at last.
“You think I did the right thing?”
“Every moment since the day you were born.”
11
T he rest of the morning was spent behind my big ebony desk going through the mail that had piled up while I was down in Philly. The bills all had checks attached to them, filled out with everything except my signature. Mardi was thorough in that department too.
I endorsed the back of the check given me by Camille Esterhouse for the return of Eddie Martinez and put it, along with the fifteen hundred-dollar bills Marella gave me, into a black envelope that I placed in the outbox on the right front corner of my desk. Mardi knew by the color that she had to make a deposit.
There were phone messages on little pink pieces of paper, phone messages on the service, and e-mails by the score. But there was nothing important, nothing I felt that had to be answered immediately.
At some point I sat back in my chair and swiveled around to look down on southern Manhattan. I had lived on the island my entire life; running wild, committing almost every crime imaginable. For the last
I wanted to ask but my breath wasn’t acting right.
“I wrote another letter,” she said. “It was very short and I wrote it in pencil because I erased it a dozen times until it was exactly what I wanted to say.”
“And?”
“I wrote, ‘I forgive you’ and signed it ‘M’ because when you call me M I always feel that you’re my father. And so I was your daughter letting go of that old corroded anchor that was pulling me down.”
I don’t know how long the silence was that followed those words. I don’t remember reaching out but at some point I realized that we were holding hands.
“And,” I said. I had to clear my throat. “And did he answer?”
“He sent another letter. It was the same old gibberish. Me growing into a fine woman and how much he’d learned and thank you about a hundred times. I didn’t read it very closely. I just wrote him and said that I was coming to visit; that I was only coming one time and so he should know what he was going to say.”
“Wow.” For some reason I thought about my earlier sparring session with Chin Wa. If he’d had Mardi’s will I’d’ve never won that match. “And so you went last week.”
“It was horrific,” Mardi said. I’d never heard her use that word before. “They took me to what they call an isolation hut and had me meet him in a room with two guards standing on either side of his chair. Before they’d even let me in I had to let a woman guard give me a body search.”
The conversation stopped for a minute while all the experience and feeling coalesced in the young woman’s mind.
“He had aged twenty years,” she said. “His hair was gray and falling out. He had scars from a knifing and over the left side of his face where somebody had thrown acid on him. He’s blind in his left eye and something’s wrong with his right hand. It was curled up like a bird’s claw.”
“Yeah,” I said, nodding. “Nobody likes a child molester in prison. Nobody.”
“He was pathetic. They had him in isolation because otherwise he’d be dead. You know, I wondered why he didn’t mention anything about his troubles in the letters and then I understood that he was trying to pretend that nothing ever happened.
“We had forty-five minutes and talked the whole time. I don’t remember anything we said but he asked if I would kiss him good-bye and I said no.”
That was the end of her story. Her posture was saying that she needed to get up and walk away from the tale. But she stayed in the chair because of me and my relationship to her self-enacted deliverance.
I still wanted to know about Twill but couldn’t bring myself to question her further.
“You’re a strong woman, Mardi Bitterman,” I said at last.
“You think I did the right thing?”
“Every moment since the day you were born.”
11
T he rest of the morning was spent behind my big ebony desk going through the mail that had piled up while I was down in Philly. The bills all had checks attached to them, filled out with everything except my signature. Mardi was thorough in that department too.
I endorsed the back of the check given me by Camille Esterhouse for the return of Eddie Martinez and put it, along with the fifteen hundred-dollar bills Marella gave me, into a black envelope that I placed in the outbox on the right front corner of my desk. Mardi knew by the color that she had to make a deposit.
There were phone messages on little pink pieces of paper, phone messages on the service, and e-mails by the score. But there was nothing important, nothing I felt that had to be answered immediately.
At some point I sat back in my chair and swiveled around to look down on southern Manhattan. I had lived on the island my entire life; running wild, committing almost every crime imaginable. For the last
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