There are no pictures or even upbeat slogans on the walls, only tattered paper signs repeating rules and cautions to visitors.
No foul language.
No suggestive clothing or conversation.
No food or drink allowed.
No cameras or phones.
Stay seated during the visit.
No touching of any kind.
Aw, no hugs for Ricky, I guess. What will I do with all this sisterly affection coursing through my veins?
Ricky was always a terrible brother. Always. If he’d been loving and protective, I might not have turned out this way. Though I know my shitty genes helped the process along, I remember feeling scared as a child. Hurt. Vulnerable.
Some people are born sociopaths, but some are created in childhood. I think I felt too much at one point. Those memories are a strange recurring nightmare now. I can remember them existing, but they make no sense in the daylight of my current life. Someone else felt those emotions. Not me.
My lip lifts in scorn at that memory of weakness. I was pitiful, left at the mercy of my neglectful, narcissist parents and my heartless older brother. Abandoned for days to fend for myself and stifle my tears into a blanket at night. I scrounged for food and begged for attention.
Sometimes my parents provided both. Sometimes they took off for days at a time. I was left in the care of a brother who considered me a worthless nuisance. Or I was left with someone worse.
After years of bouncing back and forth between need and fear, my brain learned a better way. A stronger way. And now that it’s stopped developing, I’m permanently wired to look out for myself and only myself. Some people aren’t so lucky.
Eventually I’m led through a steel door into a cement-block hallway. Our footsteps echo above the distant, droning rumble of men’s voices. A door slams somewhere, and then we turn left into a room dotted with school cafeteria–style tables, round with little stools attached for sitting. No loose chairs around that someone might throw.
A female guard in the room points to a table and I sit there. She watches me impassively for a moment before sliding her eyes away.
When Ricky enters, I barely recognize him. Ten years ago he looked bulky and mean, a literal redneck, his nape already leathered and wrinkled from the Oklahoma sun. Now he’s thin and mean, a bushy beard covering most of his pale face. He’s on pills, no doubt. Everyone is these days. It’s a lot easier to get high when you can pick up your drugs from a legal clinic instead of hoping something makes it across the border.
My brother looks around the room blankly, trying to figure out who’s come to visit. “Good afternoon, Ricky,” I drawl.
He turns a frown on me and glares. “Jane?” he finally barks out too loudly.
“Yes! It is I, the prodigal sister!”
He’s not happy to see me. He’s not disgruntled either. I never meant anything to him, and I’m a break in his long day, so he shuffles over. “What the fuck,” he huffs as he sits down on one of the round seats, the words half question and half philosophy.
“I’ve come to visit my big brother!”
“What the fuck?” he ponders more loudly.
The female guard takes a step forward, but I hold up an apologetic hand and scrunch my face into a sheepish smile before turning back to my brother. “Keep your voice down, idiot. I got a call from someone that your daughter is missing.”
Ricky shrugs one shoulder. “I guess. Whatever. She took off.”
“That’s not what your ex thinks.”
“Joylene? That fucking nosy drama queen. She came by here last week. Jesus.”
“So you’re utterly unconcerned that your sixteen-year-old daughter has fallen off the face of the earth.”
“That bitch can take care of herself, believe me. She’s like a vicious goddamn cat.” He smiles, seeming triumphant that he managed a simile; then his lips widen into a grin, revealing that his upper teeth on the right side are dark brown and dying. He probably got punched there and damaged the roots. Or maybe it was a purposeful injury, a good source for a pain pill prescription. “She’s a hateful bitch,” he says, “just like you always were.”
“You still mad about that time I kicked you in the balls in front of your friends, Ricky?”
His grin snaps to an ugly thin line in his ugly thick beard.
“Fuck you, you whore.”
“You were the one commenting on your own sister’s ass. Who exactly is the whore in this situation, you goddamn felon?”
He rolls his eyes and crosses his arms. “What are you doing here? You don’t live here no more. And don’t give me any shit that you care what happens to Kayla.”
“No more than you do, certainly.”
He’s unmoved by the criticism of his parenting. His eyes don’t even narrow. “She’s been thinking she’s grown since she was eleven. If she wants to be grown, she can take care of herself. All I know is I’m not paying any more child support.”
“So you were really keeping up with those payments until now, huh?”
“Fuck off.”
“I just came here for her address. I don’t actually assume you’d know anything about your daughter. I’m going to guess there weren’t any Saturday guilt trips to the arcade whenever you were briefly out of prison.”
“You want her address so much, you’ll have to pay for it. Put twenty bucks in my commissary account.”
I almost laugh in his face at the lowball demand, but better to save that until after I get the address. “Did Dad die yet?” I ask instead.
“Nah. He’s scamming for all the help he can get. Seems fine to me.”
“Of course.” My mother called a year before, demanding help for my father after a stroke. She got a little too sassy for her own good, though, so I simply changed my number and left her behind. Apparently dear old Dad had pulled through without my help. A cozy country miracle.
“Give me Kayla’s address and I’ll put twenty in your account.”
“Go do it now.”
“So they can take you back to your cell and leave me high and dry? No way.”
“That’s the deal.”
“Jesus Christ, Ricky, I’m pretty sure I can find her mom’s address without your help. This is just my first stop. Give me the information or I’ll drive straight to Mom and Dad’s to ask them and you’ll be out twenty dollars. Those pills are rotting your brain, and you didn’t even start off smart.”
Ricky grunts at the insult, but he finally gives in and recites an address I recognize as a block of two-story apartments a couple of towns over. “Great. I’ll go see if I can track down your missing daughter for you. Cheers, Ricky.”
“You’re a bitch,” he grumbles as I signal to the guard that the visit is done.
I walk out of the room without any trouble or any parting hug. There are no searches on the way out, and I have nothing to collect, so I breeze past the checkpoints and stop to sign out at the front window. There’s a plaque there with instructions on depositing into an inmate’s commissary account.
I walk out to my rental car and get in. It’s dinnertime and I hope my favorite restaurant isn’t closed. I want chicken-fried steak and mashed potatoes and coconut cream pie for dinner.
I imagine Ricky’s fury when he goes to buy a bag of Doritos and discovers his balance is still at zero. He can kiss my sisterly ass.