After Perfect

by Christina McDowell

  “Clear!” the guard yelled. My heart pounded, and I told myself, Breathe, just breathe. I felt as if I were a criminal, as if I’d broken the law—that I too deserved punishment, indicated by the way they treated us because we were bound by an inmate’s blood. All of us were collateral damage. And this was my initiation into the United States prison system. This was my golden ticket for blame, for sorrow, for madness, my mind swaying from humiliation to fear as we passed through the windowless hallway. Guards stood with their legs spread apart at either end. The door behind us jolted shut and locked. There was no way out now. Images of the riots fluttered through my head, and I turned to look at Josh, who seemed unusually calm and steady for his typically neurotic and emotional self, reassuring me that it would be okay despite the unbearable anticipation.

  His head of gray hair was the first thing I noticed. And also how skinny he was. He’d lost about fifteen pounds since I saw him a year earlier during his “furlough.” I figured it must have been all those endless games of Ping-Pong he played. He was by far the oldest among the inmates lined up next to him in the front of the visitor room.

  They marched in a single profile line, and then stopped and faced forward. But they weren’t looking at us. They weren’t allowed to until permitted. They wore identical khaki jumpsuits. I wondered what the other inmates’ crimes were. Drug dealing? Burglary? Rape? Murder? My father kept his chin down, and his eyes locked on one of the guards. Then he glanced down at his feet. He was wearing tan Timberland boots. These boots were popular among the boys at my high school; they’d wear them unlaced, with their khaki pants hanging down in the middle of their ass so you could see their boxer shorts. Not a good look.

  My father walked over with a mischievous smirk on his face, marching toward me like an unwound toy soldier. It was the look he gave when life wasn’t supposed to be taken so seriously, like the time he mooned our old neighbor, Mr. Anderson, in a dispute over the property line.

  “Christina Bambina!” he cried and then swooped down to give me a hug. His silly walk and smile helped restrain the lump of tears in my throat. I wasn’t going to cry. I held on to him, and he smelled of Dial soap. We were prohibited from hugging for too long. All inmates were. If you showed any great length of affection, you were at risk of being kicked out—or worse, blacklisted altogether from visiting privileges. When he put me down, he grabbed both my hands to look me over. His hands were calloused and rough, and I had trouble looking him in the eye.

  Josh stood up and shook his hand. “Hello, sir, it’s nice to see you again,” he said, nodding his head. “Despite the circumstances, of course.”

  “It’s my Mexican resort!” my father blurted out, trying to make light of the situation. He chuckled while patting Josh on the back and led us outside to one of the concrete benches in the courtyard. “For more privacy,” he said.

  “You look great, Dad,” I lied, hoping he wouldn’t notice how startled I was by his weight loss.

  “I’m down to my old air force weight!” He made it seem as if it were on purpose. As if he was on a diet by choice.

  “So. Bambina,” he continued. Not one of us wanted to talk about the fact that we were inside a federal prison. In fact, we were not in prison anymore; we were at the Four Seasons, waiting for our drinks. “How’s Mom?” he asked, eagerly. “How does her hair look? Is it still fire engine red?” The way he said “fire engine red,” it was as though he owned her; as though her trademark was his trademark. Still his young wild thing that he was madly in love with. All my father wanted to do was talk about my mother.

  “You know, the first time I met Mom, she was wearing the most god-awful dress I had ever seen: some kind of California mumu. We were at a party, and I was in law school at the time—piss poor—and my neighbor Debbie would invite me over and feed me apple pie. She made the best apple pies. And one night she had a party, and Mom showed up, and I could not, for the life of me, understand why this total knockout of a babe was wearing this . . . mumu. And she ignored me the whole night!” My father leaned back on the concrete bench, laughing so hard at the memory of her, his cheeks flushed a rosy color red.

  Josh and I laughed with him, more out of discomfort than humor. I could see the fear across my father’s face: the fear he felt of losing her, neither one of us wanting to believe she was already gone for good. Although I knew, of course, that my mother was now with Richard, a part of me wanted my father to keep talking about her: because indulging in their love story fueled my belief that maybe he could win her back. I wanted to believe in true love. I wanted to believe that my parents were meant to be together—“like fate,” I remembered my mother saying.

  It was inevitable that the subject of Richard would come up.

  “Dad—” I said, about to tell him that Mom and Richard were moving in together. But before I could speak, he put up his hand and waved it in front of his chest. “Ah-ah-ah,” he said. “Don’t say his name, Bambina. We refer to him only as Le Asshole.” He leaned across the table. “How much money do you think this guy is worth, eh? What kind of car does he drive?” I turned to Josh for help.

  “All right, all right, all right.” My father waved his hand again. “I don’t want to talk about Le Asshole anyway.”

  “Do you want anything from the vending machines?” Josh asked, attempting to change the subject. “We brought a roll of quarters.”

  “Oh, that’s good; yeah, that’s a good idea,” my father said.

  “I’ll go, I’ll go—what do you guys want?” I stood up from the table, desperate to get some space.

  “I’d go with you, Bambina, but the mullahs won’t let your old dad near a roll of quarters or a vending machine. Grab me a Snickers.” He looked at Josh. “My favorite.”

  My father had started referring to anyone working for the American government as “the mullahs” to imply our country’s hypocrisy, ignoring America’s rampant oppression of minorities and the poor, and its mass incarceration crisis.

  “You want anything?” I asked Josh.

  “I’m good,” he replied. “You want me to go with you?”

  “No, no, I’m fine. Be right back.”

  When I walked through the courtyard, I couldn’t help but look around at all of the other inmates and their families. Underneath the shaved heads, tattooed necks covered in gang signs, and hardened bodies, I saw vulnerable men sitting with their mothers, girlfriends, sons, and daughters. One of the inmates I saw while I stood in line for the vending machines looked younger than me. Maybe all of eighteen years old, with an innocent, round face. He bounced a baby in his lap. She wore a pink dress, and a matching pink scrunchy headband encircled her soft bald head. Her tiny hands patted his plump lips with excitement as he whispered nurturing words to her in Spanish, laughing occasionally, and looking to the woman next to him, who appeared to be his mother. She kept resting her head on his shoulder.

  I felt embarrassed suddenly at how obvious my “prison outfit” was. Based on all the violence I had seen and read about on the internet, and had seen in the news and in Hollywood films about villains and prison, I had assumed that all inmates were somehow exempt from the human condition. But here I was, watching men with families like mine: mothers, daughters, sons. And the men themselves were fathers, sons, grandsons. I had been so misguided, believing that because of where and how I was raised that it made us separate from one another, and I was beginning to see how wildly untrue this was because there was a depth I saw, a commonality of pain that I saw. Everyone had a story to tell. I wanted to know what it was, how each inmate ended up here, and what had led them astray.

  I grabbed the Snickers bar, a bag of Fritos, and a Coke, and headed back to the courtyard. Josh and my father were quiet. I figured they were probably talking about me. I set the Coke and Fritos on the table, handed my father the Snickers bar, and pretended not to notice.

  “What’s happening with your case, Dad?” I asked.

  “We’re filing another appeal. Remember, the wheels
of justice turn slowly, Bambina, but a leading professor of securities law and a summa graduate of Harvard Law School recently submitted an affidavit to the court arguing that not only did I not commit a criminal offense, but I did not commit a civil offense.” He took a bite of his Snickers bar.

  “Well, that sounds good,” Josh said.

  “Yeah, that’s great, Dad.”

  “Yeah, I’m feeling good about it. Real good about it.” He popped the rest of the Snickers into his mouth.

  I tried to stay present, but I couldn’t stop staring at the concrete walls surrounding us, and the razor wire fence that looked like jagged V-shaped knives looping around the top ready to slice through soft flesh even if grazed slightly. And I couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that I didn’t recognize my father, and it scared me. And there was a gash on his arm. I saw it, and I know Josh did too, and neither one of us addressed it. I didn’t want to be there anymore. My perception of the truth was seesawing, and all I wanted to do was run for the past.

  “I want this bird, I want this bird!” Chloe cried, jumping up and down in her green Jelly sandals. She was pointing to the white parrot perched at the top of the cage. Mara was holding her parrot, green and black; she was puckering her lips and pecking his beak. The kind man reached his arm deep inside the cage and grabbed the white parrot for Chloe.

  “He reminds me of Sammy,” I said.

  “He does look like Sammy!” my father exclaimed. Sammy was the parrot who’d lived at the bottom of the pink hotel in Boca Raton, Florida, where we lived for a few months while our house in Virginia was being built. My father had been doing business down there at the time.

  “Look, girls!” my mother said. The blue parrot was standing on her head as she tiptoed around in a small circle showing off for us with her arms spread like wings. Suddenly the blue parrot jumped from her head, flapping his wings as he tried to fly away, but his feathers were no longer shaped for the direction of the sky, and the force of gravity pulled him to the ground as he landed and tumbled over his feet.

  Josh placed his hand on my back to get my attention. I noticed the energy shift. Family members started saying good-bye as a guard stepped outside to notify us we had only a few more minutes left together.

  “That’s our time; we better head inside now,” my father said, getting up from the table. It rattled me to see him so quick to obey. Never had I seen him report to anyone before.

  “Do you know much about the stories of the guys in here?” I asked as he stood up.

  “That guy over there.” My father averted his eyes, but nodded imperceptibly in the direction of the inmate sitting one bench over from us. “Doing ten years for setting back the odometer of a car.”

  “Ten years?”

  “Oh, you bet. There are many, many sad stories here. I’ll have to save them for another day.” When my father spoke seriously, he squinted his eyes and nodded his head. “You know, in 1985, the year you were born, Christina, there were 450,000 incarcerated Americans. Today there are 2.1 million. I’m telling you, the mullahs and fundamentalists are running this country now, and it’s only going to get worse.”

  My father led us back inside to the chairs where we’d originally waited for him. “You two must wait here. Inmates have to line up and exit first,” he explained. Guards began calling out numbers and names as inmates lined up at the front of the room again. My world was spinning, and I didn’t know what to say—how to say good-bye, what to make of any of it. Had I said enough? It didn’t feel like enough.

  “Sir”—my father extended his hand to Josh—“always a pleasure.”

  “It was great to see you, Tom.”

  “And Josh . . . thank you for being there for the girls—my family—when I haven’t been able to be. Your kindness and support have been much appreciated.”

  “It’s my pleasure. I love your daughter very much.” Hearing Josh say those words to my father twisted my heart even more.

  “I’ll try and give you a call tomorrow, Bambina. I love you, and what a great time I had with you today.”

  “I love you too, Dad.” We hugged good-bye, and the lump in my throat grew bigger.

  The guard shouted a number. “That’s me,” Dad said. He kissed me on the cheek, and that was it. I didn’t know when I would see him again. I watched him get in line, his arms stiffly at his sides like a soldier’s. I studied him once more. The look on his face seemed brighter than before—almost childlike as his eyes held steady on the guard.

  Josh put the key in the ignition but didn’t start the car. A moment of silence between us.

  “Are you . . . are you going to say something?” he asked cautiously.

  “I don’t really know what to say, Josh. I just saw my dad in prison.” I gazed at the bare horizon in front of me, affectless.

  “You know, it’s okay to cry, Christina.”

  I had hated this about Josh, so welcoming of intimacy and vulnerability, and I felt repulsed by it. And I felt guilty for feeling repulsed by it. And then I felt defective because he loved me, and it wasn’t his fault. But I couldn’t help feeling physically ill from it, like I would be admitting to some sort of defeat; that it would make me weak.

  I was so confused about what exactly it was that Josh thought it was okay to cry about. With specks of doubt circling my conscience, I felt numb, and the tears wouldn’t come. Because wasn’t my father supposed to be an innocent man sitting behind bars at the hands of the American government? Wasn’t he supposed to be the rule maker? The disciplinarian? The authoritarian? The lawyer! Lawyers, police officers, and politicians—they didn’t go to prison, right? How could someone of the law and for the law break the law? How could this be? I was naive.

  I turned to Josh and looked at him doe-eyed. He looked back at me, ready and waiting to catch the emotion—any emotion. And so I did what I did best: I faked it. I assumed my role—the victim—and then I focused. I replayed the tape of what I had just seen: my father in his khaki jumpsuit, his gray hair, his bowed head and calloused hands, the concrete bench and barbed wire fence. And then I remembered: I remembered how he once put a pumpkin over his head on Halloween, and peas up his nose at dinner, and I remembered his Eskimo kisses, and the tickle monster, and when he first taught me how to ride a bike without training wheels. I pushed—pushed—as hard as I could for those tears, because they were expected of me, and because if I didn’t cry, it would mean I wasn’t human and that I didn’t love my own father.

  As the perfect tears rolled down my cheeks, I was suddenly Holly Golightly from Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Scarlett O’Hara from Gone with the Wind. An amazing actress! And Josh, he reached over, like the hero, and he held me, and he wiped away my tears. And all I wanted to do was scream “This is fake! It’s the moments when I’m alone at night, naked, with my hands and knees on the porcelain shower floor while the water smashes my back, with my mouth gaping wide, and my stomach muscles clenched, because my real tears are so heavy they silence the gushing gasps of my breath, because if you really knew the truth—if you really knew who I was—you would leave me. You would leave me and break my heart.

  “Just like my father did.”

  Mom, Dad, Mara, Chloe, and I stood clumped together underneath the coconut tree, giggling with our arms around one another as we finally each got a parrot on our shoulders, squirming, wings flapping, whacking us as we tried our best to pose for what would be our perfect family Christmas card.

  “Say cheese!”

  “Cheese!”

  -18-

  Christmas 2007

  “I’ll give you a hint.” My father, wearing a Santa hat, leaned back in his leopard-covered chair. Bing Crosby’s “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas” played on the surround sound. He crossed his legs, twisted his black mustache, and made his eyes big and wide like a cartoon character, striking a flamboyant pose.

  My father was always teaching us fun facts about history, art, film, or Greek mythology—the gods and goddesses—quizzing
us later and bribing us with money. A $10 bill if you could spell Mary Poppins’s supercalifragilisticexpialidocious! Or a $20 bill if you could say the entire Greek alphabet or name the Greek goddess of wisdom. “Athena!”

  “Salvador Dali! Salvador Dali! Salvador Dali!” Mara screamed, jumping up and down in front of the warm fireplace. My older sister and I had been in his study playing Uno and Go Fish while he worked at his desk until he took a break to quiz us on his art. Chloe was helping Mom decorate the front hall banister with Christmas garlands. Little red bows, candy canes, and glitter covered the floor in the foyer. And mounds of presents in red-and-white wrapping paper surrounded the Christmas tree in the loggia.

  My father arched one of his bushy eyebrows so that it was higher than the other, a trick he’d do at the dinner table to make us laugh. He looked at Mara. “Affirmative!” he replied in his military voice while smoothing out the ends of his mustache. He dangled a $20 bill in front of her. She yanked it from him and did a little victory dance around his mahogany desk.

  “Oh, man!” I huffed, feeling defeated.

  “Now,” he continued, “Salvador Dali is the artist, but what is the name of the piece?” Mara and I gazed up at the painting, which hung above the fireplace as we sucked on swirly green, red, and white candy canes.

  It was the image of an owl. The owl’s eyes were black and twisted like the epicenter of two tornadoes, but its wings were folded toward its chest like lungs filled with tar. The sky, blue and black, and below the owl was the sketch of a man in a state of enthralling passion, his arm raised, suggesting an argument. He stood before a murderer, a thief, or maybe an innocent man, or a jury, and they were splattered in red paint, and it looked like blood.