1. The Weight of Freedom
I woke up before the sun because my body still belonged to a place I had left behind.
I didn’t need to look at the fancy smartphone Kenya bought me to know.
Time lived in my bones now. I spent twenty-four years counting lights and footsteps.
I had to be hyperaware of the sound of trays sliding through slots and men breathing too hard in the dark.
The difference between life and death was the difference in becoming too trusting of correctional officers who, more than likely, were paid to ignore your demise and set it up to look like self-harm.
Freedom didn’t change the time that lived in my bones. Freedom didn’t reach inside my chest and pull out the schedule. It just gave me a softer mattress to suffer on.
I lay still in my childhood bedroom with my hands folded over my stomach, staring at the ceiling that I used to know by heart. Same water stain in the corner.
Same little crack near the light fixture.
Same glow-in-the-dark solar system stars I was so excited to add when I was twelve.
Hell, even the bookshelf my dad, Andre, had built for me when I was eleven sat there with my favorite Goosebump books.
I remember my dad built it and filled it with books because he said a boy with too many questions needed somewhere to put the answers.
Back then, I thought my father knew everything.
Now I know better. My father was a man who loved God, his church, and simplicity.
After a life of turmoil and hell growing up, he needed a place to put his faith.
But while my dad was building the lives of others up, he was going blind to the hell his family was suffering under his same roof.
The room was smaller than I remembered. Or maybe I had gotten bigger in ways that had nothing to do with muscle. Prison had a way of stretching a man in ugly places. It made your patience longer, your sleep shorter, and made your silence dangerous.
Kenya and Zayden wanted me at their house.
“Just for a little while,” Kenya had said, standing in my father’s living room with her arms folded and her eyes too shiny for comfort. “We have room.”
They had more than enough room. They had a mansion with floor-to-ceiling glass windows, cameras that blinked like eyes, and gates taller than some churches.
But their massive house also had enough silence to make a man feel haunted.
I appreciated the offer. I loved my sister.
The way she sacrificed to ensure my commissary was full and that I had luxuries most could only dream of afforded made me feel indebted to her.
There wasn’t a thing my YaYa could want that I wouldn’t move heaven and earth to try to provide.
But as much as I loved her, after twenty-four years of concrete, steel, and men watching me breathe, the last thing I needed was a house big enough to echo.
I wanted this room.
The one where my feet touched the floor before my mind remembered where I was.
The one where my old basketball trophies still sat crooked on a shelf.
The one where my name had been carved into the side of the desk with a pocketknife my father had gifted me at ten to protect my sisters.
I stared at my initials, J.D. Jared Davis. For so long, I had been referred to as inmate 683245. It was strange to hear my name on the news, and the commentators had positive things to say alongside the word exonerated.
I sat up slowly. The hardwood floor was cold under my feet.
I made my bed before I thought about it.
Corners tight. Sheet flat. Pillow centered.
Then I stood there staring at the bed, jaw clenched.
A free man didn’t have to make his bed like an inspection was coming, but my body had not received the memo.
I stepped into the hallway and paused.
My dad’s house was quiet in a way prison never was. The prison had noises even when it slept. You could hear pipes knocking, men coughing, or even somebody crying into a pillow and hoping nobody heard.
Here, the silence was enough to drive a sane man crazy. But despite the silence, I smiled seeing pictures of my sisters and me on the wall. Dad had removed any photos that had his wife. I guess he wasn’t sure how I would deal with her betrayal, so he wanted to mitigate the risk.
I walked the hall, focusing on the carpet under my feet and the faint smell of lemon cleaner and old wood.
I was home.
The word home still felt too big to hold. I moved down the hallway carefully, avoiding the board near the linen closet that used to creak. I stepped around it out of habit and almost laughed. Some things stayed loyal.
Downstairs, the kitchen light was already on.
I stopped at the doorway. My dad sat at the table in a white undershirt and gray sweatpants, Bible open in front of him, but he wasn’t reading.
His glasses sat low on his nose. His hands were folded, knuckles pressed together like prayer had become something he was trying to remember how to do.
Andre Davis looked like me, or rather, the church mothers used to say, “you look just like yo daddy.”
We had the same deep brown skin. The same chiseled square jaw and thick brows. I was once told that my father had eyes that made people tell the truth before they were ready.
Andre Davis was older now and still had a strong build.
I got my discipline to run daily and weight train from him since I was a kid.
Now, dad’s beard was mostly gray, while mine had speckles of salt and pepper.
As much as I should have seen myself when I looked at him, all I saw was the man who could fill a church and would preach about love and blessings, but who had my younger sister selling drugs to carry the financial weight of the family.
He looked up when I stepped in.
“You up early?”
“So are you.”
His mouth twitched, but it didn’t become a smile. “Old habit.”
“Same.”
That sat between us. A small word carrying too much weight.
I walked to the cabinet and opened it. Then I stopped.
There were too many choices. The plates were stacked neatly next to way too many bowls, mugs, glasses, and Tupperware.
Freedom apparently came with six different cup sizes, and I hated how long it took me to pick one.
While I knew this cabinet was what normal ones looked like, all I could think about was how wasteful this shit was.
I knew I probably looked crazy standing there, indecisive, but Andre didn’t rush me.
That was one thing I appreciated about my father.
Even when his whole life was falling apart, he knew when not to move.
I picked a mug from the back of the cabinet.
It was a blue mug that read “Crestwood High School.”
“You still drink coffee?” he asked.
“I drank whatever they called coffee inside.”
“That bad?”
“Yeah.”
I poured water into the kettle, then opened the pantry.
My stomach tightened at the sight of all the food.
There were several boxes of cereal, about 8 flavors of oatmeal, Cream of Wheat, Pop-Tarts, and Toaster Strudels.
The next row had rice, pasta, and a bunch of seasonings.
There were tons of snacks, both savory and sweet, and so many canned goods lined up like nobody worried about commissary limits.
My throat got tight for no damn reason, and I panicked as if I had to make a choice quickly, and grabbed a pack of ramen.
My dad watched me. I could feel him judging my food choice, but he didn’t comment.
I put a pot on the stove, broke the noodles in half, then reached for the hot sauce.
My dad’s brow lifted. “You know I can make breakfast.”
“I know.”
“Is what you’re making what you want to eat?”
I looked down at the ingredients.
A gourmet prison meal. That’s what Xavier had called it when he came to visit and caught me doing the same thing two nights ago.
“You free now, big bro,” X had said, voice light but eyes careful. “You can eat real food.”
I wanted to tell him that real food didn’t feel real yet. I wanted to tell him that after years of making something out of nothing, abundance felt suspicious and like a setup. I was worried that at any minute somebody would come snatch the plate and laugh at me for believing I could keep it.
Instead, I told him to mind his business.
This morning, I looked at my father and shrugged.
“It’s what I know.”
Andre closed his Bible.
“I’m taking a sabbatical,” he said.
My hand stilled over the stove.
I didn’t look at him right away. “From the church?”
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
“As long as it takes for me to rebuild with my children.”
I stirred the noodles slowly. The Ark of Salvation Missionary Baptist Church had been my father’s heartbeat for as long as I could remember.
That building raised us as much as he did.
Sunday service, Monday night Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, Tuesday Choir rehearsal, Wednesday Bible study, Thursday church cleanup, Friday night worship services, and Saturday community pantry consumed our every day.
My father had missed birthdays, dinners, sleep, and sometimes common sense behind that church.
For him to step back meant something in him had cracked clean through learning about what his wife had done.
“You don’t have to do that because of me,” I said.
“I’m not just doing it because of you.”
That made me turn.
Andre removed his glasses and rubbed both hands down his face. He looked tired in a way sleep could not fix.
“I’m doing it because I don’t know how I could have ignored my children’s suffering for all of those years.”
The kitchen went quiet. The kettle began to hiss faintly. He looked toward the window over the sink, though it was still dark outside.
“Your mother—” He stopped.
I waited.
He swallowed hard. “Your mother made a fool of me.”
I turned off the burner. At the mention of Sharon, my appetite had moved somewhere else.
“I stood on that pulpit preaching stewardship while she was washing drug money through accounts I signed off on.” He laughed once, dry and bitter. “I prayed over building funds, youth programs, outreach ministries, and thought the Lord was expanding our territory.”
His eyes found mine.
“All that time, I was just another man too proud to check the books.”
“You trusted your wife.”
“I trusted the wrong spirit. A man of the cloth should have discernment, son.”
I leaned against the counter, arms folded. Being in prison taught me how to read a room by studying what people didn’t say.
My father was angry and hurt, but more than that, he was humiliated. I also think I sensed fear. He was probably fearful that the life he gave God had been used by the devil wearing his wife’s perfume.
“You know I never trusted her,” I said.
My dad closed his eyes.
“I know.”
“I tried to tell you things felt off.”
“I know.”
“When Alan Price kept showing up—”
“I know, Jared. You were in kindergarten, I thought you were mistaken.”
His voice sharpened, then fell apart into silence.
I let it be. A younger me would’ve pushed. The younger me had a mouth full of rage and no respect for timing. That young man got buried somewhere between sentencing and year five. The man standing in my father’s kitchen knew grief didn’t need help cutting.
My dad inhaled slowly.
“I keep thinking about when you were little,” he said. “You used to watch her like you were waiting on her to turn into somebody else.”
“She did.”
“No,” he said quietly. “I think she was always that person. We just loved around it.”
That was the first honest thing he’d said all morning.
I looked back at the pot. The noodles had softened too much. Figures. Freedom gave a man choices, and I still overcooked ramen.
My dad stood and came beside me. He took two bowls from the cabinet without asking and set them on the counter.
“You gon’ share that prison masterpiece or just punish yourself with it alone?”
I glanced at him. The corner of his mouth lifted.
I chuckled despite myself.
“You sure your pastoral palate can handle this?”
“Son, I ate government cheese and mayonnaise sandwiches before your Mama’s bougie ass walked into my life.”
That made me laugh hard. My dad looked at me when he heard it, and for a second, his face changed.
He looked relieved that some sound from before still lived inside me.
I split the noodles between two bowls and added the hot sauce.
We sat at the table together while the sun began to gray the windows.
He prayed before eating.
I bowed my head out of respect. When he finished, he didn’t say amen right away.
His voice stayed low. “Lord, teach me how to know my son as he is now. Not as the boy the system took. Not as the man I imagined. As he is. Amen,” he said.
I stared down at my bowl.
“Amen,” I muttered.
We ate in silence for a while.
The ramen was too salty.
My phone buzzed on the table.
I looked at it as if it had threatened me.
My dad glanced down at the phone.
“You gon’ answer that?”
“I hate this thing.”
He smiled faintly. “Kenya said I’m a better texter than you.”
“Kenya talks too much.”
“She always did.” That brought a chuckle out of both of us.
The phone buzzed again.
I picked it up carefully.
Kenya and Channy had spent forty-five minutes teaching me how to use it like I was somebody’s granddaddy, both of them fussing over me while Xavier laughed from the couch and Zayden pretended not to record.
I hated needing help.
I hated liking it more.
There was a message on the screen.
Camilla.
My chest tightened before I opened it.
Camilla: You awake?
I stared at those two words longer than I should have.
Andre watched me from the corner of his eye, pretending like he wasn’t being nosy.
I typed slowly.
Me: Been awake.
Three dots appeared.
Camilla: What are you up to today?
I could hear her saying it. Twenty-four years had passed, and Camilla still had the power to make my pulse fantasize about things my body had no business remembering at breakfast.
Andre cleared his throat.
“That Milla?”
“Have you seen her yet?”
“Yes, but with the whole gang, not by ourselves.”
“You want to?”
I put the phone face down.
Want was a childish word for what Camilla still was to me.
Want didn’t cover the years.
The letters I wrote and didn’t send.
The money I pushed through my best friend, Kai, so she never knew the lights stayed on because of me. The nights I told her not to wait while praying, she loved me enough to disobey me, and I hated myself for it.
“I have to make a stop before seeing Milla. My daughter had waited twenty-four years. I’m going to Cherry University.”