Free Something Like Beautiful by asha bandele

But of course that described nothing. If I were simply tired, I could get in bed, rest, sleep, come back out swinging the very next day. But there was no next day, there was no nothing. Nothing for us, nothing for Rashid, nothing for our family.
    There would be no more fantasizing about the day we would be there, standing at the prison gate one morning, waiting as Rashid exits the facility for the final time. No more dream of walking these Brooklyn streets together doing what normal couples do—errands, a stroll in the park, playing hooky and sneaking in a weekday matinee and a slice of pizza afterward. There would be no coming-home party, no looking for a house together, no fashioning an oasis inside a concrete box in an overpriced apartment in an overpriced city. No lounging in bed together—our own bed, not a prison bed—with my family on some rainy or cold Saturday morning, reading the paper, making hot chocolate, eating popcorn, watching videos. No more hope that there will be more babies, maybe a dog.
    It was all gone. All the dreams, all the stories that I had told myself for ten years, the stories I told to sustain myself, every part of them, eviscerated. And they were gone at the very moment that they most needed to be here, because here was Nisa and when we knew she was coming, we talked it through and we agreed yes, the first couple of years of her life, Rashid would be away, the first couple of years would be challenging, but what beauty lay on the other side of patience! Nisa’s memory of her father would not be shaped by distance and bars.
    And that’s how we did it, that’s how I did it, that’s how I made it through the nine months alone but not lonely, alone butnot broken. It’s how I made it through labor and birth. That’s how I did not lose my composure when I came back to my apartment with my baby that first night, the night without my husband, and all we had was the phone and he called and sang the “Adon” in her ear and we felt close and we felt as though, no, no, everything wasn’t as we wanted it, but that part, the as-we-wanted part, it was just around the corner. This is how I kept my sanity in proximity.
    But now, what? What do we say to ourselves in order to make it across the rocky days? What tool did I have? These are the questions I would not ask of Rashid, the words I would not speak. That every piece of the life we had knitted together over the last ten years, everything we waited for, everything we believed in, sacrificed for, were gone. And if all our dreams were gone, all the dreams and all the pieces of dreams, then how could I not be gone too?
    I asked girlfriends, a therapist, anyone who would listen, that very question. “Because of Nisa,” was always the quick answer shot back at me. And of course, of course. I wanted my love for Nisa to be enough to set aside the hurt, to crowd it out. And of course I did everything I could to compensate for all I was feeling. And of course too, it wasn’t enough. Not really.
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    I MET A YOUNG man once who had only recently reintroduced himself to his son. He kept the child now every weekend, and from what I could see, he appeared to be a very devoted and loving father. But as we chatted, he went on to confess to me that he had hit a rough patch, and during that time—a year,he told me—he didn’t see his boy. According to him, he hadn’t been involved in his son’s life at all, not emotionally, physically, or financially. For mothers, for most of us anyway, there’s no such option, no way to check out for a year or so while we get ourselves together, grieve, organize our finances, meditate, teach ourselves to breathe again. I don’t imagine that many of us would even want that, but if we did, where would we go to take a break?
    As much as I wanted to crawl under a bed, hide in a closet, escape, I couldn’t. Both the joy and demands of motherhood each day