Fanon (8 page)

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.

You hungry, man. You want me to get you something from the machines.

They changed the rules. We can put in quarters now. Same ole shit in the machines, but they changed the rules about inmates handling money. Always changing the rules, you know, so guys fuck up and they can take away privileges.

Mom, let Rob wheel you over so you can pick out something to eat.

No, no. Fine right here. You two go on.

Want us to bring you anything.

Huh-uh. Thank you, baby. Not hungry right now.

Ima bring you a soda. You know you can't sit empty-handed and watch us eat.

Don't have the appetite I once did. Appetite gets old and tired like everything else.

She didn't have any trouble last night with the smothered chicken, gravy, greens, and yams I brought from the soul-food joint across the street.

G'wan out of here boy and get your food. Good days and bad days for my bones and my appetite. Today not a good one for neither.

Bringing you a pop and a bag of Fritos. Know you like Pepsi but Coke's the kind of Pepsi here so Coke will have to do, okay.

At the row of vending machines I wind up with two bags of popcorn I don't want because I'm too vain to put on my glasses to read the tiny printed instructions. Seventy-five cents apiece for two little bags of air, salt, and grease probably cost five cents to produce. Rob notices me squinting and bashing on a machine, stops me before I commit the same mistake a third time. He's grinning when he says the popcorn won't go to waste, he's always hungry he tells me and
popcorn a good snack after his two packages of chicken wings, two orange juices, two packets of fries.
Motherfuckers brought in a private company for the food service,
Rob had said once.
They hired nutrition experts they say to figure how much a grown man needs to eat to stay alive. Of course the company's paying them so-called experts and you better believe rations round here got real slim real fast. Little stuff you hustle from the canteen—you know, peanut butter and crackers, candy bars, cookies and shit—used to be extra. A treat, you know. Now on a good day hardly nothing on the canteen shelves and you got to bid for it to keep yourself from starving. Ain't nobody I know starved to death yet, but they keeping us lean, bro, mighty lean.

The two of us, my brother and I, make good use of the table that owns the spot in front of our bench.
Wings ain't half bad,
Rob tells us. My mother manages—corn chips open in her lap, a can of Coke steadied by her hand on the arm of the bench.

Your oldest son about to be jammed up in here with me, Mom. Ready to tear up the man's machine cause he wouldn't put on his glasses to see which button for Fritos.

Do youall remember Miss Morris. Esther Morris from over on Kelly Street. An old friend of mine. You would have seen her at church when you were children. Her kids about youall's age. I bet you know the kids if you don't know Esther. Anyway, you've heard me say her name I'm sure. A nice woman. Not one of my close friends but I liked Esther and she was always nice with me. Her kids, Laureen and Catherine, Tank and another boy, Lawrence they called Sonny, I think, Sonny, it doesn't matter, they were near youall's ages so you must remember them. Doesn't matter one way or the other, does it. Nothing to do with the point I'm trying to make about Esther Morris and Fritos. Esther loved fried pork rinds with hot sauce. Every time I see a bag of pork rinds, or Fritos cause they remind me of pork rinds, first thing I think of is poor Esther Morris dead with her hand in an open bag of pork rinds. Found her sitting dead in her
chair just like that, after the doctor warned her with her pressure she better leave fried, salty things alone. Pork rinds not salty enough for Esther. Huh-uh. She'd salt them down and sprinkle on salty red hot sauce. Couldn't help herself, you know what I mean. Had a stroke year after her husband Earl died. Crippled up in a wheelchair just like your mother is now, and the doctor warned poor Esther, told her, Esther you're gon kill yourself if you don't stop eating pork rinds. But pork rinds all she had at the end. Earl gone. No children at home. Couldn't go nowhere unless a kind soul drove her. Found her dead doing what she couldn't help herself from doing. I think of poor Esther Morris every time I see a pork rind or corn curl. Esther dead and reaching for more. Wonder who kept bringing those things to her.

Mom, that's a helluva tale to tell while you're munching on Fritos. I won't be supplying you any more. Huh-uh.

Don't get too smart for your britches. I'm not Esther Morris. Esther barely seventy when she passed. Had her children young. A young woman. She just overdid it. I'm way past killing myself with bacon rinds and hot sauce. With everything that's wrong with me, a few Fritos more or less no big thing. Won't touch a pork rind, though. Haven't touched one in years, not since I heard about Esther with her dead hand in a bagful.