Contraband
You need cream, peach, and blush to build a face with light skin.
Golden ochre and burnt sienna where brown skin reflects the sun. Mahogany and espresso for deep tones.
Cool gray and lavender for the shadows under the jaw.
Pink and coral for the warmth in lips and knuckles.
They move you by bus, a cage on wheels. But your property goes some other way. Slow boat. Pony Express. Act of God.
So there you are: new joint, new yard, new rules. Same ragged boxers, same worn socks, boots, same blue pants gone shiny at the knees.
You sleep in them. You sweat in them.
You wait.
Then one morning, a callout slip appears on your cell floor.
PROPERTY ROOM.
So you pace your cell. Walk the yard. Wait your turn.
You carry it past the gun tower, the control center. Through the door into a cage, where the property officer takes his coffee and his time.
Slicked hair. Thick neck. Rolled cuffs. Forearms shaved smooth over fresh ink.
He lets you stand.
Then, when he’s good and ready, he eyes you up and down. Glares like you tracked mud into his house. Belches.
“Number?”
He drags your duffel from the shelf. Drops it on the counter.
Faded green canvas, frayed at the seams. Light as a child’s backpack. He unclips the strap, loosens the tie, tips it over.
Your belongings slide out in a pile.
He fingers through your life with latex-covered hands.
Clothes. Books. Legal papers. Letters soft as cloth from being folded, unfolded, read, and reread until the creases gave up.
He scans each one with a smirk.
Your Koran, worn cover, cracked spine, held together with rubber bands.
He squints into your eyes. Sets it face down on the steel countertop. Waits.
“Got a Hobbycraft card?”
You do.
He points to a placard on the wall. “That’s what you’re allowed.”
In Max, you got forty-eight colored pencils. Seventy-two crayons. An 18-by-24-inch sketchpad.
This ain’t Max.
Twelve colored pencils. Twenty-four crayons. 9-by-12-inch pad.
“Anything more goes to an address,” he says.
There ain’t no address.
“Goes to the trash.”
He spreads it all across the polished steel.
“Sort ‘em.”
You start with the graphite.
Hard to soft. Pale to dark.
The ones you reach for when you’re not sure yet, feeling for the shape before you commit.
The middle grades for contour. Proportion. Where the jaw ends, where the light begins.
Soft grades, all gone to stubs. Shadows. Hollowed eyes. The dark crease at the corner of a mouth.
Line them up one last time.
Then the crayons.
Wrappers peeled back. Bare wax, smooth and finger-polished. Tips worn oval. Some flat from being worked sideways across the page.
“Twelve and twenty-four!” he barks. “Every little stub counts.”
Your colored pencils.
Wax-core, most of them. A few oil. You can tell by the drag. Wax glides, oil bites.
Labels gone on most. You know them by feel.
“Let’s go, convict. I haven’t got all day.”
Peach. Light peach. Apricot. Cream.
You line them in rows.
Beige. Sand. Tan. Light brown.
“You deaf? Let’s go.”
Golden ochre. Terra cotta. Burnt sienna.
Sienna brown. Cinnamon. Chestnut. Caramel.
Every stick worn to a nub. Some still sharp enough for an eyelid. Some only good for shadow. Some too short to trust between your fingers.
Cocoa. Mocha. Walnut. Dark brown.
Sepia. Mahogany. Espresso. Black.
Pick each one up. Hold it. Rub the tip with the whorls of your thumb.
Coral. Her mouth after biting down too long on what she meant to say.
Light peach. The place where a ring used to sit.
Cream. The blanket we kept folded in the back seat.
Burnt sienna. Cemetery mud on dress shoes.
Apricot. Pill bottle on the sink at dawn.
Golden ochre. Sunday morning light on your mother’s cheekbone.
Sepia. The oldest photograph in the house, faces already gone to smoke at the corners.
Espresso. Your brother’s eyes when he was tired, both hands around a cup gone cold.
The cop leans in.
“That’s it. Time’s up.”
Mahogany. Your father, in a doorway, counting dollar bills, licking his thumb between them.
His hand comes down on the counter.
Your fingers go still.
He slides what’s in front of you across the counter with the back of his hand.
You pick up each one. Turn it. Check the tip. Test the weight.
The ones in the other pile you don’t touch again.
He sweeps the rest into the trash can without looking.
They rattle against the bottom.
—
You can only keep twelve.
Choose.