Chapter 65 — Stay for the End | Jailbirds In Flight

Rachel and I returned to the dorm buzzing from the mediation. Our nervous systems were set to fight-or-flight. We’d seen who had caught a glimpse of what we’d been pointing to, of what was possible. And whatever had shifted in that room hadn’t settled yet. The air still felt charged. The dorm kept its hackles raised. Through the afternoon I could feel its eyes on us—some direct, some side-eye, a few soft. Rachel called my name from the kitchen and I moved toward it at a measured pace, full-body radar on. The kitchen lights were out. She stood there with four women. “You have to hear this.” Mari. Ramona. Alma. Jingyi. Mari had welcomed us on arrival, she’d broken through her shyness to teach yoga classes.

Jingyi had opened up to us in her quiet way and her White Tara self smoothed Dakina in moments, offering something to the whole dorm. Ramona and Alma speak mostly Spanish; Jingyi speaks Chinese and is learning Spanish to talk with them. They aren’t in the mix. Some call them “stuck up” or “superior.” I’ve been scolded for doing yoga with Mari or meditating with Jingyi—violations of the invisible boundaries that line the dorm. Alma was one of the first women to arrive at MDC after Rachel and I did. The experience of my own arrival was fresh in my mind and I had wanted her to feel held, the way you hope any new woman will be held when she lands on this planet.

You’re coming out of one life and being born into another. Who you were no longer exists. And then you get dropped into cinderblocks and pink paint—hell’s own palette. Alma’s eyes had a stunned, saltwater sheen that day. Caramel highlights, chic glasses, a rosy tan. There was nothing I could fix, but I wanted to let her know there was someone here for her—even if all we can trade are “Buenos días” whispered across the divide, the extent of our sustained connection these past months. Mari had been our own ferryman—the first person we met in the holding cell. It made sense she’d be here again after this death and rebirth. She’s the woman of the in-between. She reminds me of Mary Magdalene.

My friend Ed sends me images of Black Madonna from around the world and I always share them with her. Ramona keeps a perimeter around her that only this group of women have been allowed in. People said all kinds of things about her—jungle, guerrilla, don’t mess—but in prison, stories grow like vines. She could just as easily have been a nun. I’d only once ventured across the line she holds, offering a small, sad prison cake Rachel and I had made for her birthday. And as we had stumbled through our Spanish to sing “Feliz Cumpleaños,” she had let us in with a smile. In the dark kitchen, Mari translated while Alma spoke, their voices soft. “She’s saying,” Mari translated, “to put her in the book.

She wants to be in your book.” I looked from face to face. “We want to support you,” Mari continued. “We all want to be in the book.” “Nic, they want you to write about them,” Rach translated the translation for me; I think I was in shock. This is why non-attachment is the bomb. Not because you get so holy you float above your life on some cloud of detachment, but because there are forces at work that are simply wiser than my little gripping mind. Clutching is what jams the gears. I used to say, “My God loves me too much to let me keep going down the wrong road.” In that moment, when I was actually able to loosen my fist—to stop insisting it had to be these women, this outcome—almost immediately a crack opened.

In walked women who were not only willing, but genuinely excited to be written about. It reminded me of that cheesy cartoon I used to roll my eyes at: Jesus asking a little boy for his torn-up teddy bear while hiding a big, new teddy bear behind his back. Corny? Sure. But in that kitchen, it felt exactly right. Jingyi added, “We will translate to Chinese.” Alma—through Mari— added, “And Spanish.” I lifted my head and finally met Ramona’s gaze. For a second, the veil dropped. Her face held so much concentrated mercy I could barely look at it. In that mercy, I let my own face be seen—awkward, awed, newly innocent. The kind of tenderness that comes to get you out of hell, lay a cool cloth on your head, and murmur, “There, there.

You’re all right.” The world is full of hidden light—and when you ask, one face of that light steps forward. That’s what it felt like in that kitchen. The face stepped forward. Tamara had been gone at court while the mediation happened. She came back in the evening, bone-weary, her eyes looking like someone painted the rims with red eyeliner. She’d missed the excitement. But the “dorm phone”—our name for the sweep of gossip—had already brought the headlines to her. Even in her exhaustion, she rolls down the sheet that separates our beds and provides a little privacy. As she does, I hear her say, almost to no one, “Put me in it.” “Huh?” I ask, through the hanging bedsheet. “Put me in it.

If you’re writing it, I want to be in it. I like being seen through your eyes.” “Tamara,” I say quietly. “I told ’em, I know who you are. Knew the first day. People don’t always recognize light.” I turn over and peek at her bed. We’re both a little shocked to see the sadness in the other’s eyes. She does what we do when it gets too honest: makes a joke. “The only thing…can you make me ten pounds lighter in the book? Maybe it’ll carry over into real life.” “Happy to,” I say. Later that night, after count, heading off to sleep, I say, “Tamara?” “Yeah?” “Thanks.” “No problem,” she says, like a customer service agent who’s just cheerfully accepted a return.

You don’t know until you know. And you’ll never know if you leave before the miracle. That’s the punchline, isn’t it? A woman walks into a life full of difficulty. She agrees to sit down in the middle of it. Terrors and tremors arrive. A few delights. Some scary faces. She keeps sitting. The sun breaks through. The rainbow laughs: “I’ve been here the whole time. Thank you for waiting for the clouds to pass.” There, in that raw intimacy of stripped-bare nakedness, you find yourself reunited with the one and only lover—in love with life. You don’t know until you know. And you’ll never know if you leave before the miracle.