I felt an insistent tap on my shoulder.
I shook it off. My hand tightened its grip on the telephone receiver and pressed it firmly to my ear. From where I squatted, I lifted my eyes over the ledge of the barred window into the guard office. The clock clearly showed I still had four minutes—so why is this woman interrupting me?
I leaned my body a little closer to the wall, away from the intruding inmate. The tiles felt cold against my arm.
My Dawli International calling card, which gave me twelve minutes to the U.S., had not cut me off yet. I was well within my allotted phone time.
I covered my ear more tightly with my free hand but I couldn’t hear what my mom was saying on the other end, hard as I tried to ignore the scolding in Arabic and to maneuver around the hand tugging at the curled coil of my phone cord.
Finally, I turned my head sharply and signed for her to be quiet. I pointed to the clock. “Not time yet,” I mouthed in English.
Her words came faster. “Halas, halas,” she hissed. Finished.
My mom was still talking.
“Hold on, can you repeat that?” I turned back to the wall and spoke into the receiver while attempting to shrug off long, skinny fingers.
Suddenly, those fingers came down hard on the phone unit.
I reached out to intercept her hand—but too late. The dial tone pulsed in my ear like a blinking red light.
I shook with the audacity of it all. A phone call cut off in the middle of a minute meant losing the whole minute. Dialing and reconnecting cost another full minute. I yanked the phone out of her hand and sheltered the unit between my body and the wall. I frantically dialed again.
Two minutes left—and I was going to use it all.
That girl would have to wait.
In my haste, I skipped a digit punching in my phone card code. Cancel, enter again, breathing hard.
I made myself slow down.
When my mom picked up, I calmly apologized for the interruption and continued our conversation until time expired. I sat for a moment with the dial tone. After a studious glance at the clock, I slowly, deliberately clicked the receiver into place on the phone unit, turned to the woman behind me—“your turn”—and walked away.
Even before I reached the end of the hallway, I felt horrible.
I acted like I belonged here.
My hand reached for the top rung of my bunk bed ladder, ready to pull myself up, but I couldn’t.
Did I need phone time as if I did not expect to go home soon and talk freely, for as long as I want—face to face? Did I really believe that I had family and friends who cared enough to provide for my needs? Did I believe what I claimed—that God the King was my Father?
Or did I need to fight for every piece of it on my own?
I paced up the corridor again, where now, the skinny fingered woman and her friends crouched around the telephone.
I paced back down.
She should not have cut off my call and wasted my minutes, I thought, still angry.
But do I belong here?
By the time I had walked back to the rung of my ladder again, I knew what I needed to do. I climbed up.
Reaching for a little red gift bag beside my pillow where I kept my most valuable possessions: toothbrush and toothpaste, contact lens solution, a notebook, and phone cards, I pulled out a Dawli international card.
She would be able to call Ethiopia, her home, with this card.
Before I could change my mind, I made the trip down the hallway once more. The Ethiopian woman was not on the phone, but still crouched beside the unit with her friend. Most likely, she did not have her own phone card and waited for minutes her friend could spare.
I approached and thrust the Dawli card at her. “I’m sorry.”
She stared at me.
“I’m sorry,” I tried to sign, and left the card in her hands.
I don’t think she understood at all.
But I did.
I was free.
I am free.
When I don’t belong, I don’t need to wrap my fingers around every minute and every scrap of comfort the place affords.
When I don’t belong, I can pursue justice and mercy here with joyful boldness and wild generosity.
And I can fight like I don’t belong.