By Jedidiah Evans. Published in Issue 10 of Paper Chained in June 2023.
Hannah is serving coffee to a line of trendy kids. There are always trendy kids at this café. It’s one of those cool, suburban places. Kids who want to live in the Inner West—or, who don’t to want to live in the Inner West—but enjoy shopping malls, living with their parents, and the clean lawns of the outer suburbs. They like coffee in misshapen ceramic mugs, cold concrete seats, and austere waitstaff who shift between flirty and standoffish depending on your level of cool.
Hannah is cool, or cool-seeming, but she’s also uncommonly friendly. I’m standing behind one of the cool ones, who briskly orders and then departs in the middle of a conversation with Hannah. Or rather, she leaves as Hannah starts that kind of polite, small talk you expect from your barista. We share a laugh, one of those “Well-I-guess-some-folks-are-busy” laughs. Hannah’s laugh is warm and expresses a form of solidarity shared with people—like me, I want to believe—who feel like politeness is necessary, but who try not to demand it too much from others.
Hannah asks me the question that her previous customer left dangling: “Busy day ahead?”
It’s a question that could be insipid if not asked with the kind of warmth Hannah adds to the word “busy,” like she assumes that I probably am, and feels the burden of busyness, and hopes that the day is lovelier than anticipated.
“Well, not busy, but a stranger day than normal” I offer in response. I have a habit of oversharing. I’m always adding those leading statements, eager to start up a conversation anywhere I go. And then I tell her why it’s strange.
“I’m teaching a prison writing workshop at Parklea Correctional Centre today.”
Teaching in a prison is a weird, universal conversation starter. Sometimes, the conversation is terse and uncomfortable. My audience squirms in obvious discomfort when they learn the person in front of them spends time with criminals. Other times, the conversation is warm and illuminating and full of helpful questions and clarifications and—let’s be honest—I’m probably always fishing a little for that glint of admiration or interest that fuels my ego in less saintly moments. Which are frequent.
Hannah doesn’t look uncomfortable, nor does she take the bait and say the typical, “Oh, how interesting” or “What got you into that?” which are my typical conversational diving platforms. No. Instead she looks sad and suddenly older and serious. It’s not a look you expect to see on strangers. It’s rare to see on the faces of young and beautiful people—Hannah is young and beautiful, like everyone in the café. It’s that look that reminds you that people have lived longer lives than you in a shorter time. That age and experience are not the same thing, and never have been.
“Oh,” she stumbles, “this might be oversharing, but... my brother is actually in Parklea.”
And then suddenly I am a doddering, awkward fool who has no good words left, and no kind comfort to share, and nothing that will mend whatever violence and pain lives under those words. What’s worse, I know how tough Parklea is—how unlikely it is that Hannah’s brother is doing okay, that he is coping, that he is with good people, that he is rehabilitating.
So now I’m the guy who has been inside the place that I learn later Hannah has never been, and while she’s pleased to learn that services like mine exist, I foolishly blather to her that my class is a rarity, and that remand prisoners like her brother have little access to services, and that sentencing will help, probably, but how can I really know that? And so I ramble and ramble and realise that teaching writing to a group of men inside a prison doesn’t heal whatever hurt Hannah feels.
Why did I lead with my impressive story that I teach prison writing workshops, if all I can say to someone with a brother inside is that he’s probably having a hard time, and things might get better, and that I could look him up?—but at that she looks afraid and I stop saying anything at all.
Hannah is warm and kind and she asks for my order, and I get some mushroom thing, and I sit down, and she brings me my food and coffee, and our conversation lingers like an aftershock, and I cannot say what I want to say. Which is this.
I am sorry. I don’t understand. I’m scared for your brother. I need to believe that there are ways forward, even for him. But you are doing so well. You are luminous and lovely and whatever pain your family harbours, you exude warmth and light and that’s a miracle. You are a miracle.
But instead, I drink my coffee and eat my mushroom thing and try to avoid eye contact with Hannah, because what do you do with that kind of naked vulnerability and pain when you’re standing at a counter, ordering coffee?
There were better ways to respond. Truer things to say. All I know is that I shouldn’t start conversations with strangers if I’m afraid to stare headlong into the beauty and depravity and hope and hopelessness of their lives.
Hannah isn’t afraid. Maybe I still am. Even after all this time.
