Lying on her back, Cadence stared at the cinderblock walls around her. Three months had gone by and she still didn’t know her new cellmates name. They never spoke to each other, which wasn’t inherently abysmal, but it was tiring and awkward and certainly made the days, weeks, and months drag on. She felt like she was in a literal purgatory, even though she didn’t believe in an afterlife or the concept of sin as a whole. It was obvious she was atoning for her actions, but she couldn’t say that she had sinned, at least not in the biblical concept of the term.
She had exacted judgment, true, unadulterated justice and bitter sweet revenge on her ex. What was so wrong with that? She had done the world a favor by taking him away. All she had done was ensured that he wouldn’t harm anyone else anymore. Likening herself to Jael from the Bible, the one biblical female who Julia regretted talking about, she knew she had done the same thing. Jael had prevented an evil man from spreading more hate by driving a fucking wooden tent stake through his skull. That was a pure badass if she had ever heard of one. How come no one discussed Jael at church? It was less violent to her than it was awesome. She wasn’t punished for her actions. At least, Cadence didn’t think she was, nor was she praised either. It was just sort of ambiguous.
It was whatever. Julia hadn’t come in over a month, not after she had become obsessed with Jael. That woman was the perfect rationalization for what she had done.
“She’s the best,” Cadence whispered to herself. She confirmed it again uttering that Jael was the very best.
“No, she isn’t,” her cellmate replied.
Cadence sat up staring at her. It was the first time she had uttered a word since the moment she had first arrived. It felt like yesterday, but also felt like an eternity. She asked her cellmate what she meant. “I mean how do you even know who she is? What are you like religious or something?”
“Are you?” she scoffed back. “Besides Jael’s nothing more than an overzealous bitch. I should know because I’m named after her.”
“What the hell? You’re named after this obscure Bible character that like no one knows about?”
“What are you deaf? That’s what I just said, isn’t it?” Jael chastised raising her eyebrows. “Besides with a name like that, aren’t I destined to become a violent bitch, too? My ma never thought of that.”
“Why wouldn’t she?” Cadence asked with great anticipation. “What did you do?”
“Nothing worse than what you’ve done.”
Cadence was taken aback by that, but Jael simply nodded her head.
“Oh yeah,” Jael replied. “Word’s been out on you throughout all the convicts. Why is everything about you? Don’t get pure white as snow Cadence upset or she’ll murder you. Well, baby, I can’t top that, but I’m sure as hell just as bad as you.
“See, my ma never thought that her sweet little, black ass daughter had a temper. Mine isn’t as grandiose as yours by any stretch of the imagination. I didn’t fucking hide the bastard for a year. No, in some ways it was more personal. I caught the dipshit cheating on me. The police came and instantly arrested me. The trial was a goddamn joke. I got 20 years in the slammer. There was no mercy, no sympathy. Only smiles laughter and cheers from his family and mine."
“I’m confused. What do you mean, exactly?” Cadance asked. “Are you saying that someone framed you?”
“No. I never said I was innocent, but I sure as hell wouldn’t have been treated like that if I were a little white bitch like you.”
“So, what did you do?”
“It’s less important about what I did than who I did it to. My boyfriend was cheating on me with my own holier-than-thou ma. I always knew she was a goddamn hypocrite, but I just never fathomed how low she’d sunk until…well, I’m trying my best to burn that from my memory. Ain’t nobody should see their ma naked.”
Cadence bit her tongue. The story was compelling, certainly, but she felt like Jael was blaming her saying she got better treatment just because she was white. That wasn’t exactly an iron-clad defense over what she did, whatever it was.
“I’m tired,” Jael said turning on her side.
Cadence couldn’t believe that she was even thinking this, but she knew it was true. It was so obvious that what Julia had stated for months was true. This woman needed hope and the only hope Cadence was able to even think of clinging to was Jesus. Yes, indeed, Jael needed Jesus.
Tears formed in his eyes. This was something Jay should have done a long time ago, but he just never had the guts. He tried it and despite trying to cling to the physical pleasures of it all, it just didn’t work and instead of forcing himself to cling to it because he had no other options, he knew he had to leave and now. The only way he would continue to live his life would be to leave and all he wanted to do was say that he lived with everything he had. No more fear. No more compromises. No more polyamorous relationships.
If there was any year from his life so far he wished he could just erase, it was this one. He had wasted so much time in pursuit of losing his virginity that he lost sight of what he truly cared about and wanted. Nothing enticed him more than intimacy and vulnerability with men. All he had with Gil and Francis was sex, sex, sex.
His grades weren’t terrible, but they were certainly down from last year. Oddly enough after he had sex, while there were still moments, he certainly wasn’t as on as he had been previously. Also, losing his virginity wasn’t anything he thought it would be cracked up to be. It was intense, awkward, and painful. Nothing about it was romantic or even intimate as crazy as it sounds standing naked in front of someone else, but there was no sense of trust, only aggression, passion at the most animalistic rudimentary sense of the word.
As he had done previously, he wrote out his feelings. Hoping he wouldn’t have to run into Gil and Francis ever again, he placed the letter on the kitchen counter. All of his pent-up frustration over how he was ignored, mistreated, and just used for his body was all in the letter.
Grabbing his suitcase, backpack, and placing the duffle bag strap over his shoulder, he took a quick look around the apartment. This place would forever be in his memory as the place he lost his virginity, the place he took a risk and tried something new. It would forever be the place where he had his biggest regrets.
Taking all the memories in, he exhaled letting this year go. He couldn’t erase his past, but he hoped with all of his might that he would never make the same mistake again. In particular he never wanted to have sex just for the purposes of having sex, but only for true, committed intimacy with another man who wanted to be with him just because. There was only one man on his mind who might fit that description, but he still hadn’t said the words, three simple words to make this even possible. The dreams hadn’t stopped. If anything they had become more frequent, more explicit.
Jay walked out the door. As he walked down the street he saw Gil and Francis drive into the parking lot. Stepping to the side, hiding behind a tree, he waited to see what would happen. The scream, a horrible, guttural scream uttered from Francis’s mouth. He wanted to block out how he knew how Francis screamed. In that moment, he knew he made the correct decision. He would never speak to them again.
Pulling his cell phone out, he dialed Gus’s number. He hoped it would go to voicemail because he just couldn’t handle a full conversation at this time. At long last it finally went to voicemail.
“Gus, it’s Jay,” he said. He added that he must already know that. “I, well, I just wanted to say. Oh, hell…I forgive you.”
Kerass bit his tongue as he called Kathleen. He had promised that he would call during spring break, but he just couldn’t bring himself to call, not while he was visiting his father again. Despite how awkward everything was, he had determined to stay for Christmas. It was really nice, if not unbelievably awkward. He still refused to go to his father’s church, so he went to the Catholic church down the road, which was a major, massive mistake. All that happened was people chanted things that he didn’t know in perfect unison and then they tried to convert him to Catholicism. What a waste of an evening. He was a believer, in spite of how he may act or think at times, but he didn’t need to be converted to any denomination.
Before he could think any more, Kathleen answered the phone.
“I didn’t think you’d ever call, which wouldn’t be awful, but it would’ve broken your word and that would be awful.”
“Are you quite finished?” Kerass asked, adding that she had dragged it on for an unnecessarily long time.
“I think I have,” Kathleen conceded. “What’s happening?”
“Well, you know I’m at my dad’s.”
“Yes.”
“Yeah, uh, he, um, he wants me to go to his church again. I haven’t been there since, well since-”
“Since your mother’s funeral,” she added gently. “I know, you’ve told me this story before, multiple times.”
“How could you be so insensitive?”
“What’s insensitive is that you haven’t moved forward and it’s been years. I get it that you’re a young believer, but this is something you don’t necessarily need to condone by any stretch of the word, but you do need to move forward. Take a first step and stop stalling.”
“You’re saying that I need to go to his church then? Because there ain’t no way in hell that’s happening.”
“That’s exactly my point. It’s that kind of reaction,” she sighed, “that’s preventing you from true growth in the Lord.”
“What do you expect me to do? Just move on from the fact that my mother was killed, murdered by the removal of power? That is something I cannot do. That’s too much that God is asking of me.”
“I never told you to get over it. I told you to move forward. Is that so hard?”
Kerass exhaled, scratching the back of his head refusing to respond.
“No, what I’m saying is quite simple.”
“What?” he asked agitated.
“You need to forgive him.”
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