But looking at her, I could tell she was already older in the face than she really was. And looking at her made me realize what had happened to me and how I was somebody different then. Somebody she was afraid to know. The feeling I had started up again as I was about to leave the visiting room. I thought my eyes was playing tricks on me and shit. Like I was high and the pounding in my head was making everything bent out of any shape or sound I could recognize. They saw me. I knew he was a friend of Metro’s. I could tell by the way he looked at me. He had a woman with him and black guys from the inside talking with them. The thing was that I had to walk past them to get out, to get away from Moms’ shrieking at me like I was something she was afraid of. Like her crying out about the chances I never had could help me any when I was trying to tell her with just my swollen eyes and lips and no words that I took my chance, shit, and look what I got.

Nobody helped. Not even the guards. Then he said something to me. She said something to me. And the two black guys from the inside just looked at me like my face and name was burning into their minds, just like my head was burning from the pounding blackness all around it. Lips and eyes. Lips calling in my mother’s voice, “Chance? Christ Jesus! He ain’t never had a chance.” She had said the same thing at night court when they brought me in by myself, and she kept on saying it when the cops brought in the others and we had to stand in front of the night judge and get arraigned for murder. I hated that voice. It never shut up. No wonder Pops wanted to build walls all the time or work in other peoples’ homes. He had to get away from that voice. I bet he heard the leaves, too. Didn’t he? The goddamn leaves keep falling, and they lay on the ground in a dry spell even longer than they’re supposed to. Everything’s a bitch. Ain’t nowhere to hide. Not even from the things you thought you forgot a long time ago. ’Cause they come back, just like the leaves come back. And when you on the inside, you remember everything.

“I have a friend, Lonny.”

“So what.”

“Don’t you want to know about him?”

“Naw, man.”

“He’s black.”

“Shit.”

“What’s wrong with that? Where I come from there are black people everywhere. We’re the ones in the minority.”

“Where’s that?”

“Louisiana.”

“Huh?”

“Louisiana. Lafayette County. You all don’t know about it up here.”

“I never heard of it.”

“I came East to go to school. I’m a newspaper reporter now.”