I.And I have to decide to answer. When I clickto pick up, this is the way it goes. There’s that blipof echoed air and I say hello, hello? before his newmama, disembodied white female middle Americanall-purpose monotone, informs me I have a collect callfrom an inmate of the Middlesex House of Corrections.And in the silence left open for his name, my son barksDamon! gravel and guttural and studied badass, and oh,I realize, blindwalking into what now passes for ritual,it’s just my son again, his cage gracelessly unlatchedso that he can mumble, reach temporarily into other air.My cellie says he’s going to kill me in my sleep.Then I’m just another drooped mama in a ceaselesssnaking line, summoning my cinematic coo (lately,everyone’s child is always, always about to be murdered).Only seconds later, I’m treated to a blow-by-blowchronicle of the shaving of his head, the sloppy gougewhen the distracted barber’s razor dug deep, and mama,ha, ha, there was blood everywhere, but it look all rightnow. Wait till you see, I’m baldheaded! In the next breath,I’m scared. Mama, I’m sick. I cough all night. Then,as if he hadn’t just swift-whispered that weakness, he shiftsto a sputter of jailhouse legalese, bringing me up to dateon his creaky version of hope—since I never been in jailbefore and since I been staying out of trouble in hereand since I been doing everything they say and since itwasn’t my gun—but does it matter what grace the systemgrants, if he’s eating well or wrong, if the sentences runtogether or top of one another, if he’s crazy about hismama? Because when dark drops and my son can nolonger fight sleep, a man, savagely focused, will arcover him, hefting a sock swollen with dead D batteriesagain. Because of the dozens of times he swears it’sabout to happen, I’ve become an expert at visioning myson’s already nicked skull collapsing and slick with itself.Two hundred miles away, I wince, gamely wear his wound.II.There’s a picture of Damon, snapped over twenty years agowhen he was 2. It’s black and white, just one unkemptmoment in the life of a kid, a snap only a mother cravingan unburdened memory could love. His gray sweatsuitis caked with grime, his crown impossibly kinked. Staringat the photo, I long to plunge my hands into those raucousnaps, kiss his nose and scoop his resisting wriggleinto my arms to snort that rusty meld of sugar and funk.A voice interrupts. Ma, Ma?It is twenty years later again.I should have never picked up the phone.III.I can get in my car and drive toward him, filling threehighway hours with Motown’s begging men, brown liquorAretha songs, and those damned insistent pictures of myboy the way he used to be—deadpan jokester, gigglinggumcracker, stupefied by rockets and girls. Then, withoutmercy, he sprouts upward, dons cavernous denims, stowsaway screw-top wine and morphs into OG, cocked cannon,baby maker, rhymebuster, lemming, lemming, lemming.The last picture, the one of him I hate the most, stays withme the longest—there’s the grasping whiner who reallyneeds canteen money but never thanks me for raising hisfour-year-old daughter. He’s the single-syllable grunt, headscarred, grossly swollen from prison workouts, who Iavoid mentioning to friends whose sons are waving gradschool acceptance letters or touring France with their jazzbands. The most I will let on: He’s in Boston, on his own.I don’t say: He’s locked up, but the phone rings sometimes.IV.The waiting rooms are always too hot. I don’t lift my eyesoften, but when I do, I see faces that mirror my own. Ourwhole bodies sigh and sigh. We are in sweatshirts and jeans,graying hair pulled back, eyes straight ahead, waiting forour sons on the fresh-air side of bulletproof glass. A buzzersounds and a door slides open for their strained parade,They shuffle as if shackled by boredom, plump and sinewswathed in jumpsuits the color of storm. They are missingmolars, sudden bellies, downcast gaze, gang love scorchedinto biceps. Numbed and innocent, numbed and guilty,they stream in, scanning the drab room for mama or baeor m’dear or maybe somebody, anybody, from the block,somebody who remembers them free. Like toddlers, theyhug awkwardly, check out who else has come to seewho else, slyly size up their tribe, and greedily eyethe vending machines, broken and bulging with poisons.I scour faces, wonder if my son’s homicidal cellmate hasallowed him dawn. And then there he is. Damon, damnhim, serves up that grin, guaranteed to slap my heart open.He sputters a few words, See how big my arms are getting?,then shuts to a silence, waiting for mama to come through,mutter a flimsy bandage, make it all better. Looking downthe long, sorrowful row, I see that expectant hush repeated,repeated. All those mothers wanting desperately to be therebut wishing they hadn’t come. If only we’d stayed home,letting the phone ring and ring and not picking up. We couldjust keep staring from our own cells into the next dawn,loving the disappeared, and waiting for our sons to rise.