The Scientist They Framed Comes Back

"Was I ever anything you were proud of?"

The day the court handed down its verdict, I asked my mother that through the bars.

Her eyes darted away, and she murmured under her breath.

"I'm sorry. Your sister can't have a record. She still has to go abroad to study."

"You reform yourself in there. I'll come see you every month."

For those words, I spent three whole years in prison, clinging to the food slot in the door, asking.

Not one visit ever came. What came instead was a diagnosis: terminal cancer.