Linda raised her hand again. “What was her name, sir? The one in Norristown.”
“The victim? I can’t remember off the top of my head,” he said.
Dr. Shorn looked across the room at Linda, wanting her to shut up. Some of the people in the class around her were looking at her as well.
“You’re very interested in this,” the agent said. “If this whole psychology thing doesn’t work out, you want me to get you an application to the Bureau?”
People laughed, and Linda did as well. “No, that’s fine. I just grew up near Markley Street, that’s all. I was wondering if I knew her.”
And then they were quiet.
* * *
She had not seen him since she left Norristown and was not sure how she’d react when she did. There was inch-thick glass between them and several prison guards on either side of the divider. They’d searched her at the entrance. She’d known they would, and was glad for it, because otherwise, she might have tried to bring in a gun.
In basic training, she’d learned how to use pistols and automatic rifles. She’d always scored high. She’d never told anyone that the paper targets were Antoine.
Two guards led him through the door into the visitor section. He was shorter than she remembered. His skin was ashy now, like gray dust. He was balding. Strange that her most vivid memories of him were of him constantly brushing his hair with a flat brush he always kept in his back pocket. She didn’t remember the specific events of him molesting her. She’d used the trick she’d learned when it happened before. The trick of going to a far-away place and leaving behind whatever was happening to her body.
The anger came from the betrayal. Her mother’s boyfriend and her teacher had been adults. Linda knew she could not have fought back if she’d tried. They used their authority over her and physical strength over her to do what they wanted, and she’d learned it was better to lie there motionless and pretend nothing was happening than to fight back.
She and Antoine had grown up together. They’d played together, and listened to music together. He’d protected her around the neighborhood. She trusted him so much that she told him what had happened with the other men. He was the first and only person she did tell.
“I couldn’t move,” she’d said.
“What do you mean, like they held you down?”
“It was like my mind went to some dark place and didn’t come back until it was over.”
“Every time?”
“The second they start touching me.”
In a way, she fantasized he’d go beat the shit out of them and be her protector. Instead, that night he crawled into bed next to her and stuck his hands between her legs. When she tried to push him away, he put his hand around her throat and said, “Go to your dark place and forget all about this, or else.”
Now, Antoine sat down opposite her and picked up the phone next to the protective glass. He waited for her to pick up the phone on her side. “Hey, Lin. I’m glad you came. You’re all grown up now.”
She didn’t speak.
“I didn’t think you’d come.”
“I came to ask you what the fuck you wanted.”
“Just to talk. Had a lot of time to think about things while I was in here. They’ve got this therapy group I’ve been going to.”
“You? You been going to therapy?”
“Yeah. It’s nothing big. This counselor comes in once a week and a bunch of us sit around and talk about stuff. Really helped me see a lot of things.”
“Like what?”
“Like how much I fucked up. How bad I hurt the people in my family. My mama and grandmama. And you.”
“I’m fine,” she said.
He frowned against the phone. “I heard you went into the army and married some white dude and now you’re in school. Doing real well for yourself. What are you in school for?”
“I’m just in school.”
“All right. You got any kids?”
Her fingers clenched the phone receiver so hard, she thought its plastic housing might crack. “Why, you want to know if I have any daughters?”
She wanted anger back from him. For him to rise up in his chair so she could scream at him until the guards came and dragged them both away. So he’d be so enraged he’d fight those guards and they’d kick the shit out of him then dump his broken body back inside his prison cell. Instead, his mouth opened and he let out a puff of air like he’d been punched in the stomach. Tears came into his eyes and he covered his face with the phone.
She watched his shoulders shake as he wept. The guards near the door watched also. Some of the prisoners walking past looked over. A few of them laughed.
“This punk ass over here crying like a bitch,” someone said behind her.
Antoine wiped his face on his arm, leaving a long, wet trail of slime. He kept his eyes closed as he pressed the phone against his face once more. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for what I did. I don’t expect you to forgive me. I just wanted you to know it’s true.”
“So why did you do it?”
“I don’t know. We talk about it in therapy a lot.” He wiped his face again and opened his eyes but couldn’t look at her. “It had happened to me a few times and I guess I did that shit to you to prove I wasn’t—I don’t know—it don’t matter.”
“Who?” Linda said. He asked her what she meant, and she said, “Who did it to you?”
“Your mom’s boyfriend. Same dude that did it to you. He was doing it to most of the kids.”
“I never knew that,” she said.
He shrugged and looked over his shoulder at the people standing around him, eyeing them. His knees were bouncing nervously as he held the phone. “Anyway, everybody’s got some kind of sob story in this place. Lots of excuses here and nobody guilty of shit. I just wanted you to know I apologize. Thank you for letting me say it.”
He hung up the phone and signaled for the guards. He was led back through the door and gone a long time before she moved again.
* * *
Linda placed her keys, purse, watch, and the metal pen in her breast pocket, in the plastic tray on the counter in front of her. The guard wrote down each item. “Do you have any money on you?”
“Just what’s in my purse.” She patted her pockets to double-check. “Nothing on me.”
“No weapons or drugs?”
“No.”
“Phones, pagers, or recording devices of any kind?”
“No, nothing.”
The guard pointed at a blue sign on the wall behind him. “You’ll be going through that metal detector. It’s a criminal offense to bring contraband or the below listed items into a Pennsylvania State correctional facility. Doing so will result in you being arrested and charged. Do you understand?”
“I understand.”
The guard passed her a visitor’s badge and told her to keep it displayed at all times. “Pass through that metal detector and stand on the other side in front of the door.”
Linda clipped the badge to her shirt and walked through the machine and it did not beep. She looked back at the guard. He reached under the counter and pressed a button. The thick metal door in front of her clicked and the guard said, “Go on through.”
The floor and hallway were fashioned from smooth, polished, concrete. Both were gray. The floor and ceiling were darker shades than the walls. No doors or windows. She followed the tunnel to a set of metal bars with a hinged gate in the center of them and stopped. She wondered if anyone monitoring the security cameras could see her waiting. An inmate walked past her pushing a tray of dishes. He was draped in what looked like a plastic from a garbage bag. His afro was covered in plastic. His shoes were covered in plastic booties. His legs swished together as he walked.
When she was growing up, people in her neighborhood would cut armholes and head holes in garbage bags and wear them when it rained. She remembered her fat neighbor shuffling along the sidewalk in her bedroom slippers, with dirty water going over her bare ank
les, draped in the largest size Hefty bags they sold.
A group of inmates walked past Linda in a single file, all of them dressed in dull orange jumpsuits and plain white sneakers. They looked at her but did not speak.
The gate clicked. Linda pulled it open and stepped into the hallway. There were red lines painted on either side of the floor, forming narrow lanes that ran the length of the wall. Another group of prisoners was coming toward her, this time led by a guard. She saw that all of the prisoners stayed inside the red line closest to them, but the guard stayed out of it and walked in the middle. She stepped out of their way. “Excuse me,” she said. “Can you tell me where to find Dr. Harmon’s office?”
“Ask at the main station,” the guard said. “Go down till you see it.”
There was nothing but gray tunnel in either direction. She waited for the prisoners to pass and moved to the other side of the hall, safely behind the opposite red line, out of reach.
“Prisoners only in the red zone!” a voice barked from behind her. She turned to see a guard leading another group of prisoners from the opposite direction, headed her way. Linda stepped into the middle section. The prisoners laughed quietly as they walked past. “Where are you headed?” the guard asked.
“The main station.”
“Follow us after we go past and stay outside of the red zone.”
She did as she was told. As they reached the main hub, the red lines stopped and prisoners roamed the area freely. There were interview rooms along the hall for prisoners to meet with their attorneys. They were small rooms with two plastic chairs and a table bolted into the floor. There was a well-lit barber shop where inmates used electric clippers on other inmates, only able to cut their hair short, very short, or shaved, because they weren’t allowed to have any scissors. Opposite the barbershop was an empty lunchroom. She could smell beef and tomato sauce cooking inside.
Noise filled the hub. Voices all around her echoed off the concrete walls. The wheels of a cart carrying a stack of empty lunch trays squeaked so loudly she winced.
In the middle of the hub was the guard station. An octagon-shaped, walled-off structure, with shaded windows. Inside, she could see computer monitors and computer consoles that blinked green and red. She saw the shadows of several guards moving within. One came to the window in front of her and the speaker next to the window crackled. “Can I help you?”
She had to lean forward to hear it over the noise in the hallway. “I’m Linda Shelley. I’m here to meet with Dr. Harmon.”
“He’s in admin. Go around to your left and take the ten o’clock corridor. What I mean by that is, go past the first hallway on the—”
“I know which one you meant. Thank you.”
She went around the station and passed the hallway to her left. That was the nine o’clock. She’d come down the six. The next major hallway was the twelve. In between was a more narrow corridor marked ADMINISTRATION ONLY. There were no lines on the floor and the walls were painted canary yellow.
A guard sat on a plastic chair ten feet down the hall, leaned back with his arms folded across his stomach and his feet crossed. His eyes flicked toward her badge, making sure it was there, and then he went back to staring at the corridor. “Hello,” Linda said.
“How you feel?”
There were offices on either side of the hallway. Dark wooden doors set within the yellow, and no windows on either side of any of them. She came to the last door on her left, marked DR. DANIEL HARMON, MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES. She knocked on the door. “Dr. Harmon?”
“Come in.”
She put her head into the office. “I’m Linda Shelley.”
“Welcome!” Harmon was a middle-aged, burly man, with a full gray beard. He wore a purple sweater vest over a striped blue button-down shirt, under a brown blazer. He glanced at the time on his computer monitor. “You’re early.”
“It’s a habit from the army,” she said. “Early is on time and on time is late.”
“You’re former military?”
“Yes, sir. Were you?”
“God, no.” He smiled. “Please, grab a seat. You know, I’ve never actually had a student ask to do their supervised visitation here, before. I read your essay on why you want to study in this environment, though, and I have to say, this is a breeding ground for the type of trauma you’re interested in. Most of the people here have PTSD of some sort, and I’m not just talking about the inmates. You know, I once gave a psychological test to a volunteer police officer in Florida. They have them, down south, you know. People who are given guns and badges and uniforms and they go out and be cops but don’t get paid for it.”
“I never heard of that,” Linda said.
“Florida has them. Louisiana has them. Probably other places too. Anyway, this guy had been a volunteer police officer for five years and decided he wanted to make it his full-time job, so he took the written test and passed all the interviews with flying colors and got hired. They send him to me and I give him the psych and he fails. He fails bad. Like lock him up in the funny farm on the spot, bad.”
“You’re kidding,” Linda said. “And he’d been carrying a gun all that time?”
“Here’s the thing. He never told me he was a cop for five years. I thought he was a brand-new hire. I based my whole test on him having all the baseline normalcies and mores of a regular, upstanding citizen. When I found out, I retested him, and he passed easily.”
“What changed?” she asked.
“My scoring. You can’t score someone who’s been exposed to that level of humanity the same way you do everyone else. The same as you can’t score any of the correctional officers or staff here the way you do anyone else. You have to remember, they’re all in prison too. They just get to leave for a few hours each day. You have to be careful of that during your time here.”
Linda laughed. “There’s nothing these corrections officers can do to me that men in the army didn’t try. I can handle myself, no problem.”
“I wasn’t telling you to be careful around them. That just goes without saying. I was telling you to be careful about what it does to you.”
* * *
She closed her folder and set it on the floor next to her chair. “That’s all for today, gentlemen. I’d like to thank each of you for sharing. Please remember to write down anything you want to bring up at our next session. Let’s close out with our breathing and affirmations.”
She laid her hands on her thighs and sat up straight. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath and held it in her chest.
The seven prisoners sitting in a circle around her did the same.
“I’m in control of myself. I’m in control of what I say and do,” she said. They repeated the words as she spoke them. ”My mind is a train station, and my thoughts are just trains, passing through. If I find myself on the wrong one, I can just get off, anytime I choose.” They repeated the words as she spoke them.
She opened her eyes. “Thank you so much.”
The prisoners stood up to leave. Linda grabbed the chair nearest her and slid it against the wall, under a long row of windows. When she turned to pick up another one, one of the prisoners was standing behind her with two chairs at his side. “I thought I’d help you clean up.”
“That’s very nice of you, Miguel, but I’ll be fine. It’s time for you to go to lunch.”
“I’m not too hungry.” He was taller than she was by a foot or more. Jesus was tattooed across the top of his forehead in cursive, along with two large black crucifixes beneath each of his eyes. They were cover-up tattoos. The black teardrops he’d once worn, for the length of his prison sentence and the people in his family who’d been killed and the people he’d killed, were now hidden beneath each cross. The cursive scrawl of the word Satan on his forehead could still be seen underneath the word Jesus. Miguel said he liked it that way. It was his way of showing that the power of Christ had overcome the devil.
He stacked the chairs against the wall and she bent ove
r to pick up her folder. When she stood up, his eyes were fixed on her. “I wanted to ask, are you married?”
“Miguel, as your counselor, it’s not appropriate for me to talk about my personal life. You know that.”
“I bet you’re not married,” he said. “Otherwise your husband would never let you in here with us animals.”
“I don’t think you’re animals and I am ending this conversation now, Miguel. Go to lunch. I hear they’re serving hot roast beef today.”
After Miguel left, she collected her things and opened the door. The hallways were filled with prisoners making their way to the cafeteria. Lunch was a main event for them. It helped mark the passage of yet another day. For some, it was a significant step toward freedom. Short-timers, with only a handful of days left before they’d go home. They each knew how many more lunches, how many more hours in the yard, how many more times they’d have to wake up in prison before going home.
It had been the same in the army. People coming to the end of their contract talked about all the things they were going to do once they were free. All the places they’d visit. For them, the army was like a leash around their neck, only ever letting them get so far away before yanking them back. The bizarre thing was, the ones who complained the loudest were the ones who most often reenlisted. The money to reenlist was too much to pass up.
Just like in prison, many of them were institutionalized, just in different ways. For the prisoners, the prison was the most structure they’d ever had in their lives. What a sad fact, she thought. For the soldiers, especially kids like her, the army was their family. Maybe their only family.
She’d done studies on soldiers, cops, gang members, and now prisoners. All of them possessed the same tribal instinct. We are This and the rest are Other.
She turned down the admin hall and said hello to the guard as she walked past. “How you feeling?” he said, the same as he said it every other time she walked past, without looking at her.
Dr. Harmon’s door was shut but unlocked. She checked her watch. He was on his lunch break. She was allowed to use the office computer for her schoolwork, and it would not be unusual for her to do research on the prisoners who’d signed up for her program. It would be unusual for her to pull up files on anyone else. All activity on the computer was monitored and recorded, or so they said, she thought.
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