My foster mom, Diane, glances over at me, her brown eyes magnified by the bifocal glasses she wears only for driving. I am surprised that she offered to take me this time. Usually she fights me tooth and nail on any type of privilege. Though visiting your father in prison is hardly a picnic, I think sourly. My monthly visits are on the calendar, but for some reason she forgets every time, and her list of excuses is long and pointless. I either don’t go or I ask my boyfriend, Justin, to take me, since he has a car.
“You okay?” She turns down the oldies station she prefers to listen to, the static cutting through the Beatles as they croon about yesterday. I don’t long for the day before so much as I wish for my childhood, when it was one of my parents I’d be sitting next to in the vehicle, not this strange woman whom I can’t relate to.
I can’t speak without my voice breaking, so I nod my head. I don’t know if she even notices, and her own unease is clear by the way her shoulders stiffen as she spots the nondescript sign that announces Huberton Correctional Institution. Swiftly, she moves her hands to finger the rosary beads hanging from the rearview mirror, then resumes her tight grip on the steering wheel in one fluid gesture.
What sad shit has the luck of having a prison named after them, I wonder.
I can’t imagine a politician asking for their legacy to include a destitute building in the middle of vacant farmland named after them. I almost chuckle out loud, considering the reaction a trust fund kid would have if that were their inheritance. Picturing the wealthiest pupil in my twelfth-grade class, Connor Knowles, I envision the conversation between him and his grandfather: Look, Connor, I’d like to honor you with not money, not a vintage Corvette, not real estate, but your name stamped on the outside of a chain-link fence where men go to die. I bite my lip as redheaded Connor Knowles’s face appears, freckled and outraged, his nostrils flared at the injustice of this as he has a full-on meltdown, just as he did when someone spilled a beer on his expensive polo at a kegger last summer.
As soon as we approach the spiked metal of the guard gate and the surly-looking men with no-nonsense attitudes, the radio’s switched off and we both clam up, intimidated by their guns and stern composure.
As we drive in silence through the open rusted gates, a huge green sign motioning us in the direction of visitors’ parking stands tall. Diane’s old Buick heaves into a spot, and she thrusts the car with more emphasis than is needed into an empty space.
“I need a cigarette,” she states matter of factly, her hands reaching for a half-empty pack of Camel Lights in the console. After thrusting her door open, she fumbles with her lighter as she murmurs, “This place is so depressing. Do you mind if I wait in the car?”
Glancing at her, I unbuckle my seat belt, then turn to reach into the back seat, not only for my small purse but also to scope out what Diane plans to do while I’m visiting my dad. I clasp the faux-leather strap of my satchel and sweep the floor mats, looking for what I know I will find.
A small metal flask is shoved underneath the passenger seat.
“Diane,” I say sternly.
Her head swivels toward me, and I have the evidence in hand. She shrugs, her dirty secret no longer a secret with me. After all, I live with her. There’s not much she can hide.
“Only one,” she says, the cigarette dangling between her lips.
I consider my options and decide to use this to my advantage. “Only if you let me drive home.”
“You don’t have a license.”
“I do have a license,” I say pointedly. “I just don’t have a car. At least let me drive until we reach the interstate.” That would give me about twenty miles of empty roads, allowing me to get behind the wheel and have some much-needed practice.
“You want me to let you drive from a prison, where there’re more law enforcement than people?”
“Hardly.” I stare her down at this obvious embellishment. “Or you could drink and drive, putting us in danger.”
“Okay, fine.” Diane reaches for the flask. “But if you are reckless, I’m gettin’ back behind the wheel.”
I giggle, the idea of Diane preaching about proper driving as funny as inheriting a prison. If it weren’t for me, she’d have lost her license years ago, since drinking is the one constant in her life. That and gambling.
“What’s so funny?” The wrinkles above her upper lip scrunch as she glares at me, aging her. Diane’s in her early fifties but looks seventy. Smoking hasn’t done her any favors, and neither has the bottle.
“Nothing,” I moan.
“Just go inside and get it over with.” She steps out of the faded beige LeSabre and comes around to my side, pulling on the handle, the only way to open the passenger door. We lock eyes as she flutters her hand out like I’m some sort of queen getting the royal treatment. Awkwardly she brushes a hand across my shoulder for support.
Taking a final breath, I push myself out of the seat, stepping onto the concrete. Instantly, I shiver, both from the chilly weather and from the nervous anticipation—of not only walking into the prison but also this overdue conversation with him.
The guard gate looms ahead, and I take slow steps, peering over my shoulder at Diane, who is now half her size and perched on the trunk of her car, as if knowing I’d need one final reassuring wave or I’d make a run for it.
There’re four levels of men here, minimum to maximum security, each housed in a different wing. I shuffle to the minimum security tower, palms sweating like I just greased them with baby oil. Wiping them on my pants, I wait to inform the guard I’m here to see inmate 107650. Since names don’t matter anymore, you’re just one more bastard among the prison population. My announcement is the same as everyone else’s, and the bored corrections officer barely makes eye contact, scanning my ID and pushing a visitor’s badge underneath the glass partition.
I wait to be patted down, a woman guard instructing me to hold my hands out to the side and scanning my body with a metal detector, her gloved fingers poking and prodding me.
The dress code here is strict. Visitors are not allowed to wear blue denim like a lot of the inmates do, or green and tan, since that’s the workers’ uniform. No strappy sandals or flip-flops, no revealing clothes, minimal jewelry, and the list goes on and on.
My purse isn’t allowed in, so I leave it at the front, signing my name and a waiver.
A stampede of us make our way toward the visiting area. If you didn’t know where you were, you would mistake it for a school cafeteria, with plastic chairs and scratched tables, light-blue paint, and a mural of people holding hands along one wall, vending machines against the other.
If you stand near the opposite end, you’ll notice that the artists of the mural are inmates and the art is focused on diversity and human kindness. It’s not until you observe a few wooden podiums that line the front of the room, each equipped with a microphone, that you feel the tension in the air. Each one is positioned with a guard, seated on a high stool, trained to look for contraband and suspicious behavior. If they see someone breaking a rule, they announce it on the microphone, which is your only warning.
The first time I came here, my former social worker, Loretta, joined me, and the whole process terrified me for life. The armed guards barking loud orders, the never-ending rules like being able to hug or kiss only at the beginning or end of a visit. When the guard screamed at me for trying to get closer, I lost it, tears streaming down my face.