Dear Roy,

I’m writing this letter sitting at the kitchen table. I’m alone in a way that’s more than the fact that I am the only living person within these walls. Up until now, I thought I knew what was and wasn’t possible. Maybe that’s what innocence is, having no way to predict the pain of the future. When something happens that eclipses the imaginable, it changes a person. It’s like the difference between a raw egg and a scrambled egg. It’s the same thing, but it’s not the same at all. That’s the best way that I can put it. I look in the mirror and I know it’s me, but I can’t quite recognize myself.

Sometimes it’s exhausting for me to simply walk into the house. I try and calm myself, remember that I’ve lived alone before. Sleeping by myself didn’t kill me then and will not kill me now. But this is what loss has taught me of love. Our house isn’t simply empty, our home has been emptied. Love makes a place in your life, it makes a place for itself in your bed. Invisibly, it makes a place in your body, rerouting all your blood vessels, throbbing right alongside your heart. When it’s gone, nothing is whole again.

Before I met you, I was not lonely, but now I’m so lonely I talk to the walls and sing to the ceiling.

They said that you can’t receive mail for at least a month. Still, I’ll write to you every night.

Yours,

Celestial

Roy O. Hamilton Jr.

PRA 4856932

Parson Correctional Center

3751 Lauderdale Woodyard Rd.

Jemison, LA 70648

Dear Celestial, aka Georgia,

I don’t think I have written a letter to anyone since I was in high school and assigned a French pen pal. (That whole thing lasted about ten minutes.) I know for sure that this is the first time I ever wrote a love letter and that’s what this is going to be.

Celestial, I love you. I miss you. I want to come home to you. Look at me, telling you the things you already know. I’m trying to write something on this paper that will make you remember me—the real me, not the man you saw standing in a broke-down country courtroom, broke down myself. I was too ashamed to turn toward you, but now I wish I had, because right now I would do anything for one more look.

This love letter thing is uphill for me. I have never even seen one unless you count the third grade: Do you like me yes no. (Don’t answer that, ha!) A love letter is supposed to be like music or like Shakespeare, but I don’t know anything about Shakespeare. But for real, I want to tell you what you mean to me, but it’s like trying to count the seconds of a day on your fingers and toes.

Why didn’t I write you love letters all the while, so I could be in practice? Then I would know what to do. That’s how I feel every day here, like I don’t know what to do or how to do it.

I have always let you know how much I care, right? You never had to wonder. I’m not a man for words. My daddy showed me that you do for a woman. Remember that time when you damn near had a nervous breakdown because it looked like the hickory-nut tree in the front yard was thinking about dying? Where I’m from, we don’t believe in spending money on pets, let alone trees. But I couldn’t bear to see you fret, so I hired a tree doctor. See, in my mind, that was a love letter.

The first thing I did as your husband was to “sit you down,” like the old folks say. You were wasting your time and your talents doing temp work. You wanted to sew, so I made it happen. No strings. That was my love letter to say, “I got this. Make your art. Rest yourself. Whatever you need to do.”

But now all I have is this paper and this raggedy ink pen. It’s a ballpoint, but they take away the casing so you just have the nib and this plastic tube of ink. I’m looking at it, thinking, This is all I have to be a husband with?

But here I am trying.

Love,

Roy

Dear Georgia,

Hello from Mars! That’s not really a joke. The dorms here are all named for planets. (This is the truth. I couldn’t make this up.) Your letters were delivered to me yesterday. Each and every one, and I was very happy to receive them. Overjoyed. I am not sure even where to start.

I haven’t even been here three months, and already I have had three cell partners. The one I have now says he’s here for good, and he says it like he has some type of inside track. His name is Walter. He’s been incarcerated for most of his adult life, so he knows what’s what around here. I write letters for him but not gratis. It’s not that I’m not compassionate, but you get no respect when you do things for free. (This I learned in the workforce, and it’s ten times as true in here.) Walter doesn’t have money, so I let him give me cigarettes. (Don’t make that face. I know you, girl. I don’t smoke them. I trade them for other things—like ramen noodles. I kid you not.) The letters I write for Walter are to women he meets through personal ads. You would be surprised how many ladies want to pen-pal with convicts. (Don’t get jealous, ha ha.) Sometimes I get irritated, staying up so late answering all his questions. He says he used to live in Eloe, so he wants me to bring him up to date. When I said that I haven’t lived in Eloe since before I went to college, he says he has never set foot on a college campus and he wants me to tell him all about that, too. He was even curious about how I got the name Roy. It’s not like my name is Patrice Lumumba, something that needs explaining, but Walter is what Olive would call “a character.” We call him the “Ghetto Yoda” because he’s always getting philosophical. I accidentally said “Country Yoda” and he got mad. I swear it was an honest mistake, and it’s one I won’t make again. But it’s all good. He looks out for me, saying that “us bowlegged brothers got to stick together.” (You should see his legs. Worse than mine.)

So that’s all I got in terms of atmosphere. Or all that I want you to know about. Don’t ask me questions about the details. Just suffice it to say that it’s bad in here. Even if you killed somebody, you don’t deserve to spend more than a couple of years in this place. Please tell your uncle to get on it.

There is so much here that makes you stop and say, “Hmm …” Like there are about fifteen hundred men in this facility (mostly brothers), and that’s the same number of students at “Dear Morehouse.” I don’t want to be some kind of crazy conspiracy nut, but it’s hard not to think about things in that way. For one, prison is full of people who call themselves “dropping science,” and second, things here are so bent that you think somebody must be bending it on purpose. My mother wrote to me, too, and you know her theory—“the devil stays busy.” My dad thinks it’s the Klan. Well, not the Klan specifically with hoods and crosses but more like Ameri–KKKa. I don’t know what I think. Besides thinking that I miss you.

I finally got to make my visitors’ list and right at the top is you, Celestial GLORIANA Davenport. (They want your full government name.) I’ll put Dre on, too—does he have a middle name? It’s probably something religious like Elijah. You know he’s my boy, but when you come the first time, come by yourself. Meanwhile, keep the letters flowing, baby. How did I forget that you have such a pretty handwriting? If you decide not to be a famous artist, you could go be a schoolteacher with that penmanship. You must bear down on the pen because the paper buckles. At night, when the lights are out—not that they are ever really out—they make it dark enough that you can’t read but too light to really sleep—but when they cut the lights off, I run my fingers over your letters and try to read them like Braille. (Romantic, right?)

And thank you for putting money on my books. You have to buy everything you think you might want in here. Underwear, socks. Whatever you need to try and make your life a little better. This isn’t a hint, but it would be nice to have a clock radio, and of course the main thing that would make my life a little better would be seeing you.

Love,

Roy

PS: When I first started calling you Georgia, it was because I could tell you were homesick. Now I call you that because I’m the one missing home and home is you.

Dear Roy,

By the time you get this letter, I will have already been to visit because I’m mailing it on the way out of town. Andre has filled the tank and the car is stocked with snacks. I have practically memorized the visitors’ guide. There are clothing regulations and they are extremely specific. My favorite detail is that “gauchos and culottes are strictly prohibited.” I bet you don’t even know what those are. I recall them being very fashionable when I was in the fourth grade, and thankfully, they have never come back in style. To summarize the dress code: show no skin. Don’t wear an underwire bra unless you want to fail the metal detector test and get sent home. I imagine it’s like going to the airport … on your way to a convent. But I’m ready.

It goes without saying that I know this country and I know history. I even remember a man who came to speak at Spelman who had been wrongfully imprisoned for decades. Did you see him? He spoke along with the white woman who pointed the finger at him in the first place. They both got saved or something. Even though they stood right there in front of me, they felt like a lesson from the past, a phantom from Mississippi. What did it have to do with us, college students piled in the chapel for convocation credit? Now I wish I could remember what they said. I’m bringing this up because I knew that things like this happen to people, but by people, I didn’t mean us.

Do you ever think about the one who accused you? I wish I could have a sit-down with her. Somebody attacked her in that room. I don’t think she’s making that up, you could tell that just from her voice. But that somebody wasn’t you. Now she’s gone back to Chicago or whatever, wishing she never stopped in Eloe, Louisiana, and she isn’t the only one. But you don’t need me to tell you this. You know where you are and you know what you didn’t do.

Uncle Banks is preparing the first appeal. He reminds me that it could be worse. Many people have run-ins with the law and they don’t live to tell the tale. There’s no appealing a cop’s bullet. So at least there’s that, but it’s not much.

Do you know that I’m praying for you? Can you feel it at night when I get down on my knees beside my bed like I did when I was a little girl? I close my eyes and I can picture you the way you were when we were last together, all the way down to the freckle over your eyebrow. I have a notebook where I wrote down every word that we said to each other before we fell asleep that night. I wrote it down so when you get home, we can pick up where we left off.

True confession: I am extremely nervous. I know it’s not the same, but it reminds me of when we were first going out, when we were trying to be a long-distance couple and you sent me a ticket. After all the buildup with our phone conversations and email, I wasn’t sure what to expect when we finally saw each other again. Obviously it all worked out, but I feel the same way writing this letter. So I want to say in advance that even if things are awkward between us when we finally lay eyes on each other, please know that it’s because it’s all very new and I’m so agitated. Nothing has changed. I love you as much as I did the day I married you. And I will always.

Yours,

Celestial

Dear Georgia,

Thank you for coming to visit me. I know it wasn’t easy to get here. When I saw you sitting there in the visitor’s room, all classy and out of place, I have never been happier to see anyone. I could have cried like a little girl.

I won’t lie. It was strange to have to see each other for the first time in front of so many people. And the truth is that I was quiet because you said that you didn’t want to talk about what was really on my mind. I didn’t push it because I didn’t want to ruin our time together. And it wasn’t ruined. I was very glad to see you. Walter teased me all the next day about being lit up like a Christmas tree. But I’m sorry, Celestial. I have to tell you what has been troubling my soul.

I know that I said that I didn’t want any son of mine having to say his daddy was in jail. You know I don’t know much about my biological father except his name and that he is probably a criminal. But since Big Roy raised me as his own, I didn’t have to wear shame around my neck like a giant clock. Sometimes, though, in the back of my mind I could hear that clock ticking. I was also thinking about this kid I knew named Myron whose father was in Angola. Myron was teeny-tiny and his clothes were all donated by the church. One time I saw him in one of my cast-off jackets. They nicknamed him “Chickie” because his daddy was a jailbird. To this day, he answers to “Chickie” like it’s his real name.

But our kid would have had Mr. D and Gloria, Andre, and my family, too. That’s a village and half right there to take care of him until I win my freedom. He would have been something else for me to look forward to.

I can see why you didn’t want to talk about it. What’s done is done. But I can’t stop thinking about him. Of course, I don’t know that the baby was a boy, but my gut is telling me he was my junior.

This is painful to ask, but if we had more faith, would things have worked out differently? What if it was a test? What if we kept the baby? I could have made it home in time to see him crown into the world, innocent and bald-headed. This whole ordeal would just be a story we would tell him when he was older, to teach him how to be careful as a black man in these United States. When we decided to have the abortion, it was like we were accepting that things weren’t going to work out in the courtroom. And when we gave up, God gave up on us, too. Not that He ever gives up, but you know what I mean.

You don’t have to answer this. But tell me, who knows about it? It doesn’t matter, but I’m curious. I put your parents on my visitors’ list and I wonder if they know what we did.

Georgia, I know I can’t make you talk about what you don’t want to talk about, but you should know what it was that was blocking my throat so I couldn’t hardly talk.

Still, it was beautiful to see you. I love you more than I can say here.

Your husband,

Roy