Ida B.

Chapter One Dear Brenda,How you doing, Kiddo? Sorry this letter is handwritten, but I couldn't get to the legal library to use the word processor. They've got us on lockdown again because some idiot gangsta wannabe in here shanked some white dude. The fucked up thing is he ain't even know the guy. He just did it to get some respect. Little punk. He's going to get respect all right. Soon as the guards let us all out of our cells he's going to get his ass kicked for getting us all locked up like this over some stupid shit. But don't worry, Kiddo, I'm not even thinking about getting involved in that shit. I'm a two-digit midget. Only thirty-five days and I'm out of this hell hole.I got your letter, and I miss hearing your voice too, Kiddo. But I'm not going to make any more collect calls to you. It hurt my heart when your telephone got turned off a couple of months ago. A father is supposed to help his kids, not hurt them.It's funny, but the closer I am to getting out, the more I reflect about what a lousy father I was to you. The feds have kept me away for twenty-five years, but I wasn't really part of your life even before they threw me in here. I didn't understand what it meant to be a father. What a gift from God children are, and how they need love and nurturing to make them whole. I've got a lot of making up to do. To you and to my grandkids. How's Bootsy doing in summer school? Tell him he'd better get his act together, because Granddad is coming home and I'm going to keep my foot on his neck. Only twelve years old and he thinks he's a man. Harlem will do that to a boy, and don't I know it.I'm going to sign off now because they're getting ready to collect the mail and I want to get this letter out to you today. Give the kids a hug from their old granddad, and tell your crazy ass mother I said hello. And let her know I'm going to kick her ass for letting you have all those kids. (Just kidding!)I love you, Kiddo, and I look forward to being with you and the kids.Love, DadP. S. Write me back real soon! Brenda stood by the long triple row of steel gray mailboxes in the lobby of the Ida B. Wells-Barnett Tower, reading the letter before carefully refolding it, and replacing it in the envelope. She closed her eyes as she slowly moved her fingers over the return address: Jamison Edwards, U. S. Penitentiary, 1300 Metropolitan, Leavenworth, KS 66048. She sighed, and dismally shook her head. She knew his image from photographs she had seen, but as much as she wanted to, she could not actually remember the father she'd not seen since she was two years old. The man who had started writing her only three years before to say that he wanted to reclaim the daughter he ignored while he was free."Ooh, that's good. I'd better write that down," she said out loud as she started shuffling in her pocketbook and pulled out a pen and notepad. "The man who had started writing her only three years before to say that he wanted to reclaim the daughter he ignored while he was free." She looked at the words with a satisfied smile. Oh, yeah. That's really deep."Damn, it's not even ten o'clock and it's already hot as hell out there."Brenda looked up to see a hefty chocolate skinned, middle-aged woman with a slightly skewed honey-blond wig enter the lobby of the Ida B. She was pulling a shopping cart piled high with white plastic bags filled with groceries with one hand, and wiping sweat off her forehead with the palm of the other."How are you doing, Miss Jackie?" Brenda asked as she slipped the envelope and notepad into her pocketbook."Girl, I ain't doing so good. I think I'm having heart palpitations again. I know I gotta bad heart, even though the doctors say there ain't nothing wrong with it. But what do they know." The woman started patting her heaving, but very deeply sagging, bosom as she leaned heavily against the yellow concrete wMiller, Karen E. Quinones is the author of 'Ida B.', published 2004 under ISBN 9780743260015 and ISBN 0743260015.