In 2024, my parents visited the day before Father’s Day. We sat comfortably in the air-conditioned visiting room around a small, wooden table laden with honey buns, kettle chips and soda from the vending machine.
Looking across the table at my parents, I remembered how much younger they looked when I came to prison 11 years prior. Now, they were wrinkled.
“Have you been drawing anything lately?” my dad asked.
“No,” I said, hanging my head. Ever since December 2023, when I’d been denied parole, my pencils, drawing board and tortillon had sat untouched. I was barely hanging on.
“Seems like you’ve been in Heartbreak Hotel,” Dad said.
He snapped his fingers and started to hum the Elvis song. His awful rendition of his favorite artist made me smirk.
Father’s Day
After lunch the next day, a frantic-looking officer stood outside the bars of my dorm, shouting my bunk number.
I walked to the bars confused. Did I have a visit?
“Your grandma, Dorothy, said to call,” the officer said. “She said it was an emergency.”
My throat dropped into my stomach.
I walked slowly to the blue payphone on the wall. The silence before the call connected was suffocating. My grandma’s soft voice came through the phone. My parents had been in a car crash. My father was fighting for his life in the hospital’s intensive care unit, but my mother was OK.
After I hung up, I lay in my bunk, staring at paint peeling off the ceiling. I pictured my parents. My mind raced. Would I ever see them again?
Drawing to soothe myself
I quit everything that week: my job, reading, writing. But I returned to drawing. As I sat down to sketch, I placed my earbuds in and hit play on a list of Elvis’ greatest hits. The first song was “Heartbreak Hotel.”
Graphite and charcoal clouded my drawing board with gray. I channeled my hurt in every stroke and shade. The blankness soon started to take the shape of Elvis. I grabbed a 3B pencil and lined a leather strap hanging from his guitar. His body clung to the instrument as he stared back at me from the page.
After finishing the drawing, I sent it to my grandma. I hoped she could sell it and use the funds for my father’s recovery. She tried a few art stores, but had no luck.
Over a year later, my dad is now hunched over and has a stiff neck. He suffered brain injuries that have impacted his problem-solving skills and short-term memory. He recovered enough to return to work, but he is not the same.
This summer, my drawing found a temporary home as part of an exhibition at the University of Houston, Clear Lake’s art gallery.
Professors and classmates congratulated me, but I felt torn. I hated the drawing for the pain it represented. But I also loved it so much I didn’t want to let it go. I’ll get the drawing back once the exhibition ends. I wonder how I’ll feel about it then.
