With Love from the Inside by Angela Pisel

hear him say anything else, so I guessed this time she listened.
    â€œCount all clear,” he said, presumably to Officer Jones. She’d said she was working this evening.
    â€œThe doors will open in ten minutes, ladies. You can go to the dayroom or stay in your cells. The choice is yours.”
    I put my tray in the slot, thankful my cell door would finally be opened. The truth was, though, I didn’t feel like talking to anyone. Icared only about writing to Sophie. Jada and Carmen must feel the same way. I haven’t heard a word from either one of them all night.
    â€œYou coming out?” Roni asked after our doors unlocked. Inmates weren’t allowed to congregate in any area other than the dayroom. She kept moving down the hallway as she talked. “I was hoping we could write.” She waved a few letters at me in the air.
    â€œBe there in a minute,” I answered. Something love-worthy will do us both good.
    Roni received mail several times a week. When her first letter arrived, we were sitting together. I watched her stare at the envelope, taking in the front and then the back. She even put it up to her nose and smelled it.
    â€œWho’s your letter from?” I had asked her after several minutes of this strange behavior.
    She’d looked up with her tight eyes fixed squarely on me. I wished I could take back my question.
    â€œSorry. None of my business.” I put my hands up in surrender and scooted my chair over.
    She still didn’t answer or look away.
    I’d done it this time. I sprung up, praying she wouldn’t follow me, but she grabbed my arm and pulled me back down.
    â€œI’m sorry, Roni.” My eyes stuck on her this time, begging her not to slam me against the concrete floor. “I won’t ask again.”
    She took her arm off me. “I don’t know who it’s from.” She threw the letter in my lap. “You look.”
    I rubbed my arm for a few seconds before picking up the letter, which was now lying faceup on the floor.
    Roni can’t read,
I figured out, since the name was written plain and clear.
    â€œIt’s from a Carl Cooper,” I told her, trying to gauge her reaction before I said any more. When she didn’t respond, I said, “He lives in Alabama.”
    She still didn’t say a word. After a few long minutes, she snatched the envelope from my hand and tore it in half.
    A few weeks later another letter came. She asked me to read it to her when we were eating lunch together in the dayroom. I wasn’t sure why she’d changed her mind, but I removed the paper from the open slit in the top of the envelope.
    â€œDear Roni,”
it started,
“I didn’t hear back from you. Did you get my last letter?”
    She stared at her sweet tea, stirring it with her plastic spoon. I continued:
“I heard what happened to you. I’m so very sorry.”
    She took her spoon out and put it beside her drink. Her head slumped over the table.
    â€œI know I haven’t been a part of your life”
—I glanced up from the page to see if I should go on reading—“
but I’d like to change that.”
    Roni lifted her head up and stiffened her back against the chair. She pushed her half-eaten egg salad sandwich to the center of the table.
    â€œI’d like to meet you.”
    She cocked her rigid head and fixed her gaze, staring at something or someplace I couldn’t see. Red lines formed in the corners of her eyes. She took the letter from me before I had a chance to finish.
    I opened my mouth before I thought better. “Who’s the letter from?”
    She answered this time, but her voice sounded brittle. “My father. My biological father.”
    She didn’t say another word and I didn’t, either. The letters continued to stack up until one day when Carmen was in the infirmary and Jada paced in her cell, Roni asked me if I would help her write him back.
    So