“Don’t look so excited to see me,” Papi teases as soon as I slump into my seat and pick up the banged-up phone on the wall beside me.
I can’t help but smile as I toy with the phone’s cord. I can feel my cheeks warm as I focus my gaze on a squashed bug on the edge of the table instead of facing Papi. He’s always had a way of seeing right through me.
“Something happen?” he asks without missing a beat, proving my point.
Lying has become a regular part of our conversations. Mami always warns us not to tell him about the words painted on our house. The things thrown at our windows. The whispered taunts whenever we linger outside for too long. Things are hard enough for him. We all know how guilty he feels for everything that’s happened—we don’t need to weigh him downwith another burden. Still, there’s something different about giving him a plastic smile when I know I’m planning something that would tear Mami apart.
“Something at school?” Papi presses when I don’t answer, leaning as close to me as he can without pressing himself up against the glass. Somehow, I can still feel his warmth.
Against my better judgment, I glance up at him. While it sucks coming here, I can’t find it in me to turn down the chance to see him. To memorize the lines of his face just in case they start to slip away from my memory.
He’s aged a dozen years in the few months he’s been here. The gray strands that used to peek at his hairline have taken over, thick and coiled tight like my curls in high summer. His light brown skin is worn, blisters lining his cracked palms. Once the only wrinkles he had were from laughter—lines around his mouth from all the times he let out those big belly laughs that were sometimes funnier than the joke itself. There’s a new strength to him, too. In his arms—the muscles tight beneath the sleeves of his faded brown uniform. In his jaw—probably from the twenty pounds he’s lost since he got here. It’s strange, how much he looks both like the Papi from my memories and a stranger. Prison has made him into the type of man people expect him to be—someone with worn hands and hard edges.
“Things okay with your mother?” he asks, and my stomach tightens. I still don’t say anything—just the thought of coming up with an excuse makes my gut churn painfully. Hard as I’ve tried, I’ve never been able to pull off lying to Papi. He can tell something is off, though, given the way he sighs. “Go easy on her. You know how hard things have been for her,” he says. Making more excuses for her, the way he always does.
Things have been “hard” for Mami since they first met. Him, the golden boy of Millcreek High despite his troubled past, and her, the wallflower who could go an entire school year not speaking more than a dozen words to anyone—a wallflower that began to bloom after they met in the rec room of the group home they were both placed in. They’d only overlapped for a matter of days—him between fosters, her in temporary custody while her mom waited to hear back on a DUI charge. But a matter of days was all it took for them to fall fast and hard.
He loved her endlessly—more than even her own family ever did.
“He was my family,” Mami told us a dozen times when we begged her for fairy tales before bed and got their story instead—it was our favorite happily ever after.
While their classmates taunted her for her secondhand dresses and her mother punished her with bruises and burns for daring to take up space in their cramped apartment, Papi saw who she could be when someone treated her like a person instead of an annoyance. Lifted her up instead of punching her down.
He’s been protecting her with all his strength ever since.
I know better than to argue with Papi when he’s defending Mami, so I stay quiet. I’m sure he’d find a way to justify her forgetting about my birthday. That she’s overworked and struggling, or she’ll probably remember later, even though we both know she won’t.
We hold each other’s gaze for what feels like hours. We don’t say anything, just look into each other’s eyes—mine a perfect mirror of his. Part of me has always been comforted by how much people say we look like. That we have the same nose and eyes and laugh. That I inherited his kind soul and easy smile.As hard as it might be now, I don’t think I’ll ever regret all the things that tie me to him. That I’ve inherited all his best parts.
Something shifts in his expression, and for a moment I wonder if he’s going to finally,finallybreak down like I’ve been expecting him to ever since they took him away, but instead he leans in with a smile.
“Go get something from the vending machine,” he says with his signature mischievous smile, nudging his head toward his outstretched hand.
I glance down and bite back a gasp. Through the slot in the glass between us, he’s slipped me a tightly folded stack of dollar bills.
“But—”
He holds up a finger to his lips before I can protest, smirk still in place as he points toward the vending machines lining the opposite wall. Quickly as I can, I pull the money through the slot and shove it into my pocket—making sure none of the guards perched at each end of the room noticed before rushing over to the wall of machines.
The pickings are slim. Two machines are completely empty and the other three are in desperate need of a restock. Nothing new has been added since we started visiting, but then again, most people aren’t in the mood for snacks when they’re here. I’m not sure how long the snack cakes, candy bars, and chips have been sitting in these machines, but you can’t be picky in a place like this. I shove in the crumpled dollars and punch in the numbers for a cinnamon bun clinging to the top row because it’s the only thing that looks like it won’t get stuck on the way down.
Papi is grinning by the time I make it back to my seat, cinnamon bun clutched tight against my chest. He gestures for meto unwrap it, waiting until I have it sitting open in front of me to pick the phone back up.
“Happy birthday to you…” he begins once I’ve picked my own phone up. It’s already uncomfortably hot in the room, but my cheeks go so warm, I’m worried I’ll pass out when I realize what he’s doing.
As he continues, he amps up the volume. Until he’s loud enough to catch the attention of the other groups seated around us. To his right, an inmate with a shaved head and a neck tattoo joins in. Then another, and another. Then an older woman wiping her tears away two rows down from me. Until almost everyone in the room has joined in for a rousing chorus of “Happy Birthday.” The guards eye us warily but don’t interject. As much as they might try to take it away, happiness isn’t off-limits. I can’t help but look around in awe as everyone stumbles over themselves when they get to my name, Papi proudly proclaiming “Dina!” for everyone to hear.
So many of the places in my life feel devoid of joy. School. Sunny Hills. Home. Here. But in those few moments when everyone in the room sings “Happy Birthday” to me, I feel it. The blush in my cheeks slowly trickles away. My heart stops pounding. I’m not overwhelmed by the sudden attention or weighed down by my fears. All I feel is that same fleeting happiness as when Kai asked me to the dance. I know it’ll be gone soon, but it feels so good to have it for even a moment.
Papi looks incredibly proud of himself when the song comes to a close and several people give me a polite round of applause.
“Happy birthday, mija,” he says with the same beaming smile from all the photos we once had on the mantel. The same smile that the media twisted into something wicked. The same smile as mine. “I know I’m a few days late, but…” Hepoints to the cinnamon bun and gestures for me to help myself. The first bite is so sweet it should make me wince, but all I can do is grin. The dough is harder than it should be—stale, most likely. But just like the cupcake Mikey gave me, it’s perfect. “Hopefully this makes up for it.”
“Definitely,” I tease, wishing I could nudge my elbow into his ribs like he always did when he teased me.
I wonder if I’ll ever be able to touch him again. Ever feel the warmth of his hand on my shoulder or the strength of his arms wrapped around me, twirling me in a circle. It’s a sour enough thought to make the sugar in my mouth turn to ash. My smile falters as I shove those thoughts to the back of my mind. That’s the kind of thing meant to haunt me in the middle of the night, not now when I should be enjoying my few moments with him.
If Papi notices the shift in my smile, he doesn’t comment on it. Instead he props his chin up on his closed fist as I pick at my cinnamon bun. “School been all right?”
