The length of these bolted-to-the-floor, orangish benches varies. They are staggered in uneven rows, separate islands of seats with plastic cushioned backs, shared wooden armrests, rigid seats affixed to one another, aligned so they all open in the same direction, and in order to speak face to face with the person next to you, you must twist sideways in your slot, talk across the hard armrest, or if you wish to say anything to someone two places away, you must scoot to the front of your compartment and lean past the person next to you to meet the eyes of the person you're addressing, prisoners and visitors tilting up and back as if davening before an invisible Wailing Wall. You must work even harder to have a conversation including more than one person at a time. Shout past the person next to you to be heard up and down the line of seats your group occupies.
In this case the group consists of me, my brother, and our mother, whom I've positioned as close as I can to my brother, angling her wheelchair at the end of our four-holer bench. The mobility of her wheelchair could serve as an advantage, but it doesn t. Each unmovable orange bench fronted by a low table that poses as a convenience for holding snacks purchased from the vending machines, and since there's a rule against moving tables, they also function as barricades, so I must plant my mom's wheelchair at the end of a unit of bench and table, stranding her as each bench is stranded and isolated yet also an intrusion upon the others, all visitors in each other's way, a perverse outcome so finely, successfully calibrated it must be intentional, perhaps computer generated to maximize exposure of every seat in the room to the raised platform where a guard oversees the visiting area, but also an arrangement designed to minimize intimacy between prisoner and visitor, preventing comfort, touching, privacy. No room for maneuver down at the end of our module, where I angle the wheels of my mother's chair as best I can to achieve a feeling of closeness, and there she is, stuck for the duration of our stay though her seat's the only one in the house, besides the guard's tall stool, not fastened to the floor. The clever floor plan has anticipated the variable of a visitor confined to a wheelchair and renders my mother's chair as useless as her flesh-and-blood limbs. Technology trumping technology. Her wheels immobilized, her poor hearing worse in this low-ceilinged, concrete-walled airplane hangar space where sound eats itself, everybody's words slamming into unforgiving surfaces, messages chewed up and spit out, mangled, transformed to a harsh, deafening collective din that frustrates listening or speaking when the visiting room crowds up on weekends. I doubt my brother hears much of what my mother says, and I catch almost none of his words when his back's to me. I can't tell if he's addressing her or both of us and that's probably much more sense than she can make out of my attempts to speak to her and I wonder if my mother actually hears Rob, though his mouth is only a couple feet from her ear.
Almost thirty years ago I tried to write a book I hoped might free my brother from a life sentence in the penitentiary. It didn't work. Everything written after that book worked even less. Now my brother's face is turned away from me because the three of us, me, him, our mother, sit lined up side by side in that order inside the State Correctional Institution of Pittsburgh (SCIP) and in order to speak to our mother parked at the end of this compartmentalized bench constructed of wood and molded, indestructible, orangish beige synthetic, he must turn his back to me. His polished bald skull a marvel—a shiny hive of buzzing busy invisible business. Many colors and textures on a canvas stretched tautly to define each ridge of bone, each phrenological knot and bump, his brown skin thinned nearly to transparency. If you had no knowledge of a skull's hardness and durability you'd think you could crack this bright shell with a single flick of a finger the way your fingertip could shatter a crystal goblet, the way I popped my brother Rob's hard bean-head Gotcha when we were kids to remind him I was Big Brother and merciless when I wanted to be, pop-pop-pop, hurtful, stinging to tears forget-me-knots upside his big head or playful teasing flicks and pings, presumptive strikes, punishment, revenge, affection, nuisance—pop—Got you, little brother, and you better not never forget, boy, you better not even think about trying to change who's on top and always will be. I'm fascinated by the innocence of his gleaming skull, shaved clean or almost clean, a bluish five o'clock shadow here and there, and on closer inspection nicks, dents, blemishes, scrapes, healing scratches and scars, rough patches of chicken skin where the razor's worked too hard, too often, and I look away, embarrassed like I am by those telltale raw, prickly stripes where a woman's cleaned up her crotch for a bikini, embarrassed that I'm looking, ashamed for her sitting with her thighs cocked exposing her not very skillful, not very beautiful grooming, her not very secret secrets I don't desire to share on display and I avert my eyes, sorry for both of us, trying to think of something nice about her, something unprivate so next time our eyes meet, mine won't hold shame or pity, or any detectable trace of my spying or of what I noticed, what caused me to wince inside at the hopelessness and sadness of all the small vanities and disguises I cultivate, just like my brother, like the woman, like everybody, wasting time to keep other folks from seeing us the way we see ourselves, as if my cheeks freshly scraped each morning or clothes covering my nakedness convince anyone I'm not what they know I am beneath whatever cover story I piece together for the public. My brother's bare skull admonishes me. A rock fragile as breath. Beyond judgment or blame as any breath any person sucks in to remain alive.
My strongest desire after passing into the visiting area through the last remote-controlled sliding steel gate is to see my brother's face appear in the little window of the door next to the guard's platform. The next strongest wish is to leave, get the hell out. I want the visit to be over, a good visit concluded with a big hug like the bear hugs of greeting. I want to be freed by the steel gate clanging shut behind me. No one wants to be here. But the alternative of not visiting my brother would be worse. Much worse. So the instant I arrive I would leave—flee—if I could, but I can't, don't, not so far anyway. The visit's oppressed by contradiction, squeezed between conflicting desires. Is the visit actually happening. Will I be able to handle it. This familiar turf. These terms out of my control. This prison reality forcing its rules on me. Unreal and irresistible. A woman you love hopelessly who announces she doesn't love you any longer and opens her arms for one last embrace.
In spite of my need to visit I bring the cold distance and detachment of the streets into the prison with me. I'm an outsider inside for a minute. An imposter, a traitor. Nobody can be in two places at once. Who am I. Where do I belong. Why am I here one minute, gone the next.
Rob's told me more than once he doesn't think he could make it without visits. Another time near the end of a visit, leaning back, legs shot out straight from his seat, speaking quietly with his head bowed, eyes front, addressing the emptiness the benches address, he said, You know something, man, he said, I just about made up my mind last week to call Mom and tell her to tell everybody to stop coming here. Believe me, he said, I understand how hard it is for anybody to visit this goddamn place, especially Mom now she's old and crippled up and I hate to think about all the trouble I'm still causing all youall. Tell the truth though, man, it ain't about youall. It's about me. I made up my mind to stop visits for me, for my benefit. To save me, bro. Great to see Mom and you when you're in town and everybody else who goes through the hell of getting here. Ain't no words for the good feelings when I see my people. And looking forward to visits, hey, almost good as the real thing. But see, that's the problem. Cause visits and looking for- ward to visits ain't the real thing. The real thing's the time I got to do. And I got to do it alone. Nobody, nothing I can depend on besides myself. In here you got to fight every minute of every day to survive. I ain't just talking about watching your back with all these fools and the games and the evil guards round here. You got to stay strong inside yourself. And the truth is nobody can help. You got to stay strong inside. Fight every minute of every day. Awake and asleep cause your dreams fuck with you too. What I'm trying to tell you, he went on
to tell me, visits make me weak. And suddenly he was the elder brother and the deep lines in his face made me think, Damn, mine must be deeper than his.
Everybody leaves, he said, then I got to start all over again, working myself up to deal with being alone. The stopping and starting's too hard. Better to let visits go. Keep it real or I'll lose my grip and die in here. And I don't want to die in here. No. No. No. I ain't gon let them kill me in here. If visits break me down, then visits got to go. That's what I decided laying in my cell, tossing and turning instead of sleeping one night last week. Give up visits, just like I gave up jailhouse hooch and reefer in here. I love everybody as much as ever, more than ever, believe me, man, but surviving comes first. Then, maybe, maybe I can do my time and git back in the world and git with my people, my brother said to me and meant it, though he didn't phone our mother because here we are. He meant what he said that day no more or less than he means it when he says he couldn't survive without visits.
A rectangular space, maybe thirty feet by twenty feet, serves as a waiting area or bullpen at the front end of the SCIP visiting room. It's bound by cinderblock walls on three sides, its other side a waist-high iron fence open at one corner so there's a small entrance into the main area. Visitors are supposed to remain inside this enclosure until the inmate they've come to see emerges from a door adjacent to the guard's platform and is cleared for a visit. Sometimes a visitor spends a long time in this bullpen. Maybe the guards can't locate your inmate or maybe they don't choose to look. Maybe he's hiding. Or dead. If you're unlucky and your arrival coincides with a botched inmate count, you can cool your heels an hour or more. Even on the best days it can seem forever before a familiar face appears in the slot at the top of the door beside the guard station. Another eternity some days before a guard glances up at the slot and decides to punch the button that permits an inmate entry into the visiting area.
A few visits ago I'd been stuck in the bullpen over forty minutes, no word of explanation from the guards, enough time for low-grade paranoia to kick in—had I been duped—am I a prisoner too. I knew better than to show up at count time, so a misfired count not the problem. I also knew better than to ask questions. Just sit tight and keep your goddamned mouth shut. Be grateful you're granted those privileges. Remember, the prison says, the state says, it could get a lot worse. For instance, as bad as the prison yard or those cells full of dangerous animals. So shut up. Mind your own business. Who the fuck do you think you are anyway. I'd heard it all before, the very clear message the prison, the state beam to citizens who ask questions. That stalled day a bulky woman, heavyset, my mom would say, sat on a bench catty-corner to mine, her small feet in white sneakers planted wide apart on the stone floor. She hadn't raised her eyes when I joined her in the bullpen and we hadn't spoken during nearly an hour of waiting. She probably resented my presence just as I resented hers, shared misery bad company for us both. She had fidgeted at first, a wedge of dark flesh stuffed into a baby-blue jogging suit at the periphery of my vision, conducting a busy, silent conversation with her hands before she went still. Dozing off, perhaps. I was surprised how quickly she stood, how light on her feet after the guard barked an inmate's name and she stepped toward the opening in the black fence. At the threshold of the visiting area proper she hesitated, scanning back over her shoulder as if she'd forgotten something in the bullpen. When she started up again, she took her own sweet time. Well, not sweet exactly—steps dripping with attitude, the reluctant steps of a balky child nudged on by an adult. Noncommittal, random little up and back and sideways shuffles, then a full stop, hands on mountains of hips, her body telling anyone who cared to watch that she was tired of this shit, of dealing with a half-assed, good-for-nothing black man got hisself jammed up in this sorry slam. Bosom thrust out, shoulders swaggering, head wagging, sighing audibly, she took minutes to cross a few yards of floor between the bench where she'd been slumped and the inmate standing beside the guard who'd hollered his name. When she's almost close enough for the inmate to touch, she jerks back, poses again, hip cocked, daring him to cross the last couple feet separating them. The man stares at her as she mumbles, cuts her eyes, jabs her fingers at him. He leans away, letting her shit fly past, then steps toward her, soft-talking, copping a plea, his body bent and swaying Baby, baby, reaching out while she bobs and weaves, agile as a boxer avoiding his hands. The man stops, retreats one large soap-opera step. Hisses loud enough to be heard in the far corner of the visiting area, Fuck you, bitch, before spinning sharply on his heel and pimp-strutting without a backward glance to the door beside the guard's platform, waiting there to be buzzed out as he'd been buzzed in a few minutes before.
I resist the urge to flick my finger against my brother's naked head. Instead rest my hand on his shoulder, lightly, so he doesn't think I'm demanding his attention. When he finishes speaking to Mom, I'll tell him how I let him slide. Didn't take my big brother's prerogative to pop him upside his noggin. He'll probably cut his eyes at me: Watch out now. I don't play that dumb old shit no more, smiling cold gangster menace from back in the good old bad days, the days I bet he's sharing with our mother right now so I don't want to distract him, pop him or lay my hand too heavily on the orange jumpsuit pumped up by the bulk of his weightlifter's shoulders. Would the chalky color come off on my fingers. The cotton cloth smells freshly laundered, soft to the touch, and I wonder if jumpsuits are personal property—as much as anything can be personal in prison—or if the men dirty them and toss them into a massive, funky pile to be washed, dried, folded, and stacked, distributed the next week willy-nilly.
Rob twenty-four years old, twenty-eight years ago when the cops picked him up and never let him go. When Mom and Rob get together, sooner or later they go back to this beginning, or end you might say, almost thirty years ago, when they last lived in the same house, Robby just barely maintaining himself on the civilian side of prison walls. Back to those days when she knew him like a book, Mom claims, and also admits he knew precisely how to squeeze her heartstrings and play her for whatever he wanted.
Oh, that boy always could make me feel sorry for him. Don't care what he did, he knew how to come up to me looking all puppy-dog sad like his world's about to end . . . Mom, Mom . . . I'm sorry, Mom, he'd whine, and I'd give the rascal whatever I had. Forget about how mad at him I was and dig down in my purse for the dollar rolled up and hid down in there.
Just before he turns slowly in my direction I overhear my brother repeating the mantra he depends on to keep our mother alive. Remember, Mom. You promised me you ain't going nowhere before I get outta here. Don't forget, old lady. You promised me.
Mom looks good today, don't she, bro. You gon stay around a good long while, ain't you, Mom. Lots of mileage in the old girl's tank.
Your hair's grown back nicely since the chemo. The way it's styled really does look pretty.
This old gray stuff. Your sister dragged me along last time she went to the hairdresser. I told the girl, Cut it short. Cut it all off, for all I care. A wig would do just fine. Or bald. Child looked at me like I was crazy, a poor, crazy old lady. Thought she might cry. So I said cut it short, dear. And she did a pretty good job, I guess. Trimmed it up neat and even, anyway. Stuff more white than gray now.
Hey, it's nice. Hairdresser did good. Short makes you look younger.
Girl'd need a hot comb to straighten out the wrinkles in this tired old face. Enough of this silly talk. You two can leave my hair and looks alone now.
Maybe the prison barber fix you up like chrome-dome Rob here.
Better ask the barber to take a turn on that toilet seat of yours, older brother. Grandpa and Daddy and now all my brothers be wearing that fuzzy toilet seat on top they heads, don't they, Mom.
That's when I sneak in a pop. Pop. One finger snapped on his bald head but Rob's laughing too hard to care, floating way up high somewhere looking down on his dead grandfather, dead father, his live brothers, all except him branded with that semicircular crown of hair inside which
nothing grows, the ring of hair he fired before it quit.
Running out of hair, running out of time, running out of quarters for vending machines, running out of things to say because the floor of the visiting area is steeply pitched and as soon as you enter and sit down everything starts running away, draining away, running out, racing down a slope so steep it takes your breath away sometimes, your eyes tear up, you fear shortages, a crash, everything speeding, no turning back or slowing down, everything in the visiting room slip-sliding away, including you and your mother and brother strapped in your seats, everything rushing by, you thought you were safe on your little island, believed you were sitting still while you teased and talked at each other, but the sea's carrying you with it, slipping, sliding down the slippery tilted floor, no way to stop, nowhere to grab and cling, things running out, running down, out of time, out of all the missing things you can name and can't name, things running down and out, spilling over the edge.
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