Me For You

Picture day with a middle schooler. It’s like she throws on her scrappiest clothes just to piss me off.

“At least put on a sweatshirt that doesn’t have holes in the neck,” I say.

“Whatever,” Sophie eye rolls back, but shuffles to her room to change.

She’s a sweet kid going through a typical adolescent tug-of-war. Happily nestled in the safety of family one minute and an angsty teen trying to prove she’s independent the next.

We pull up to her school and she eyes a group of friends.

“Love you mom,” she blurts out before slamming the car door and running off.

She’s my entire world and I know she loves me. She just has no idea that I’m not her mom.

When my identical twin sister, Iris, got pregnant something in me shifted too. I’d always tried to protect her, an impulsive spirit guided by intuition and magical thinking, and now a little one had been added to the mix. Iris was convinced everything would work out as she drifted along without a plan but I knew she needed money. Maybe it can’t buy happiness but it can buy a helluva lot of diapers.

I started selling after our mom passed a couple of years earlier. Small stuff. Mostly pills. Making enough to get by and help Iris when she needed it. With a baby on the way I needed to step up my game and like every arrogant dealer, didn’t think it would catch up with me. The myths that were passed around convinced me it was worth it.

“Cops have bigger fish to fry.”

“My cousin got off with community service.”

“We’ll post bail.”

Lies upon lies I was dumb enough to believe.

I had money stashed away the cops hadn’t found but Iris needed it. Besides, my public defender told me my sentence would be light being my first offense and all. Of course I got the judge whose son had OD’d six months earlier. Gave me 15 years at Beaumont Women’s Prison in southeast Texas and before I knew it, the cell door slammed. I still feel the echo in my bones.

Sheryl, the guard who locked me up had this hard-ass exterior but I had learned to read people pretty well on the street. I sensed a vulnerability in her and knew that could come in handy. After overhearing that she was passed over for another promotion, I doubled down on treating her with respect. Always calling her ma’am. Never looking her in the eye.

“After 21 years busting my ass they give it to that new guy still wet behind the ears,” Sheryl sneered to another guard. “All those years working nights at their beck and call. Missed most-a my son’s games. Family dinners. Now he’s fixing’ to graduate and how’m I supposed to pay for college on what they pay me?” They laughed it off but her eyes weren’t smiling.

Iris visited every week and it killed me to see her so thin, baby Sophie balanced on her bony hip. Doctors told her it was too late for treatment and she joked that God was just another man who had done her wrong. Joking was her go-to coping mechanism but on one visit she got deadly serious.

She glanced around the room, a beehive of other families visiting other inmates. No one was paying attention to us but she still leaned in and lowered her voice as she laid out her crazy plan, what she called a vision. When she got to the part about needing an insider to help carry it out, Sheryl was the obvious choice. She needed money and we were willing to take a risk to find out how far she would go to get it. On her way out, Iris slipped her a note asking if she was interested in doing security at an event.

They met at a coffee shop on the other side of town. Sheryl found out the event gig was fake but the chance to make some serious cash was real. Turns out she wasn’t nearly as loyal to the prison as she had been before getting passed over for that promotion. Iris and Sheryl mined her 21 years of experience inside Beaumont to sketch out the what-if scenarios. Once satisfied it could work, Sheryl agreed to $10,000 upfront and another $10,000 after it was completed.

On her next day off, Sheryl went to Iris’s apartment with one of my prison uniforms. They rehearsed exactly how the day would go and what Iris should do. Wear a long dress that covered the orange fabric and sandals she could easily slip off. The dress should have a pocket for the locker key to minimize the fumbling that attracts attention. No underwire bra or jewelry — they can set off the metal detector and lead to a physical search. No makeup. No nail polish. No fancy hairdos. They repeated the drill until Iris could repeat it without hesitation. Then, Sheryl drove off with a duffle bag in her trunk filled with more cash than she’d ever seen at one time.

The second part was trickier. I was eligible for private family visits but they only got approved every few months and there was no rhyme or reason to who got those coveted visits. Sheryl told Iris she would take care of it and our job was to be ready when it happened. She told me to eat as little as possible from now on to get closer to Iris’s weight.

On the day of the last visit, Iris left her purse in the locker, put the key in her dress pocket, and gave Sophie an extra long hug before carrying her through the metal detector. Instead of being taken to the group visiting room, she was led to a small room where I sat at a table and Sheryl stood against the wall. She had been sure to secure the room with a broken camera that couldn’t record the far corner.

As planned, Iris put Sophie down in that corner and pinched her until she cried. She pretended to quiet the baby while quickly taking off her dress and shoes to reveal the prison uniform underneath. I asked Sheryl if I could help quiet the baby and she nodded approval. I walked to the corner, pulled on the dress, and switched my plastic prison sandals for Iris’s flip flops.

In 30 seconds we had morphed into the other as naturally as when we were kids tricking our teachers at school. I picked up Sophie and the three of us walked back to the table. To anyone watching on camera, nothing was amiss. To the four people in that room, the future had forever changed.

The conversation was strained with both of us becoming teary so Sheryl ended the session early. We had come too far to let emotion give us away. She called for the guard who ushered me to the visitor’s entrance and Sheryl took Iris to my cell. Sheryl knew that the priority at Beaumont, a private prison, was keeping heads in beds. She had done nothing to change that.

My hands shook as I fumbled with the locker key, took out the purse, and walked to freedom tightly clutching my niece. It wasn’t until I got to Iris’s apartment and put Sophie down for a nap that I was able to take a full breath, but still unable to comprehend that Iris and I would never see each other again. Sheryl was adamant that me coming back to Beaumont was too great a risk.

I sat at the card table in her tiny efficiency and picked up a small black notebook. It had a soft cloth cover and elastic band that held it shut. It was the fanciest notebook I’d ever seen. Iris had probably splurged on it knowing what was being written inside was far too important for a flimsy spiral notebook meant for children’s homework and grocery lists.

As I read the contents, I cried until I thought my heart would break open. Iris had written down everything she could possibly think of that I would need to pass as her, with heart and flower doodles dancing on the pages. Sophie’s milestones and schedule and how to get her to sleep when she’s fussy. The names of the neighbors and their children and pets. Former bosses and co-workers and details of the jobs she had done. The landlord’s name, the amount of the rent, bank accounts, usernames, and passwords. My sister’s entire life neatly bound in a little black book.

In the back was a piece of paper I unfolded to discover that Iris had taken out a $500,000 life insurance policy on me.

She passed away a few weeks after the switch and folks at the prison agreed with Sheryl that it seemed like a bad case of pneumonia that came on suddenly. When family doesn’t question a death, there’s no reason for the prison to draw attention to it. She was cremated before the life insurance investigators came snooping.

My newfound freedom was tempered by the immense weight of loss. I set up a meager altar on the card table with candles and pictures and things she’d collected over the years. Heart-shaped stones, crystals, and driftwood. I ate Iris’s favorite bubblegum ice cream and told Sophie stories about her mom. She gurgled back between small licks from my spoon. In that moment I was willing to believe Iris had been right about a beautiful world existing on the other side and I pictured her and mom catching up.

I took Sophie and the insurance payout and moved to Seattle. Surely a place with all that rain could wipe the slate clean and let us make a fresh start. I don’t see any upside to telling Sophie the truth, and there’s another person I vowed to protect. Every annual school picture I send Sheryl affirms that vow, and the reality of her vibrant life justifies our choices and absolves our sins.

Sheryl still works at Beaumont but only day shifts since Iris died. Too many ghosts at night. She used the $20,000 to send her son to college. After all she missed, at least she gave him that. He’s now an attorney with a successful practice, not realizing its foundation was built on illegal oxy, shattered dreams, and the things mothers are willing to do to give their children a better life.