After Perfect

by Christina McDowell

  “Dad, what do they make you eat in prison?” I stared at my uneaten, now cold and soggy brussels sprouts.

  “Bread and water, Bambina. Now eat your brussels sprouts.”

  “Every day?”

  “Every day,” he said. “Now finish your dinner.” His voice was stern.

  The memory was visceral as I stood in front of the mailbox in the lobby of our apartment building. Children always know things. It was three in the morning. A wad of uncounted cash bulged from my black knee-high boot, and a new run in my stocking that climbed up toward my thigh let the world know I had not made it out of the bar unscathed.

  I flipped through the mail, and my heart skipped a beat when I came across the return address: “Federal Correctional Institute La Tuna.” It was a letter from the Department of Corrections. I ripped it open. Josh and I were cleared to visit.

  Within months of Richard’s arrival, it seemed that Josh and I would get back together and break up every five days. Filled with confusion about the course my life should take, the trust I once had was slipping away from me: trust in Josh, trust in myself. I was jealous and needy when he gave me space, and when he tried to love me, I became distant and cold. I didn’t know how to seep into the gray with him. I didn’t know how to love him. I just knew that I needed him now more than ever.

  I ran upstairs to call him despite how late it was. Which, before, wasn’t uncommon. To check in after work, to fall asleep listening to the sound of his voice on the other line, making me feel like I was safe.

  I sobbed, holding the phone tight against my ear. “I’m sorry, Josh.” Below my swollen eyes, I wrapped an old brown scarf around my neck, hiding the black and blue hickey given to me by a man at the bar who offered me a $300 tip if I went with him to the Standard hotel in West Hollywood after work. It was half my rent. I remember walking into the mid-century building and seeing a young female model sleeping inside of a glass cage in the lobby, not far from two clear plastic swings that were in the shape of half bubbles hanging from the ceiling. “I just want to swing in the swings with you, that’s all,” the man told me.

  “You’re pushing me away, Christina,” Josh said, exhausted on the other end of the line. Exhausted from me. Exhausted from it all. “My mom suggested we go see Sheryl together.”

  “What?” I said, irritated by the suggestion. Couples therapy in our early twenties?

  I had seen Sheryl a few more times but still didn’t think she was “working.” After our sessions together, I would crawl back into bed and sleep for the next three hours until I had to show up for work.

  “We’ve been cleared to visit my dad. I just got the letter. That’s why I’m calling.”

  “Call Sheryl, Christina. I don’t want to talk to you until then.” Josh hung up on me. He could see that I needed help; that I was far beyond his reach. I didn’t want to hear it; I believed that every problem remained outside of myself. But I knew that if I wanted him with me, I’d have to call the therapist and make the appointment. And my father wasn’t going to let me visit him alone. He said it was too dangerous. I was a girl and far too young.

  “I threw up when I got back to the hotel room.” Mara warned me of how it was visiting Dad in prison for the first time. She stood in the doorway of my bedroom, brushing her teeth before bed wearing an old Nirvana T-shirt.

  Mara and Brian had driven cross-country from Dallas to Los Angeles after graduation. On their way out west, they had stopped in El Paso to visit Dad. I didn’t ask for any details about her trip, maybe because I figured I wouldn’t get the whole truth, just as my mother and Chloe didn’t want to talk about it. So I began an obsessive internet search. It kept me awake most nights before Josh and I left. Much to my chagrin, we’d seen Sheryl together, and he had agreed to come with me. I wanted to know everything. I needed to outsmart the fear I had about going to prison, and if I knew what to expect, I figured it wouldn’t hurt as much. I wanted to know what it looked like beyond the visiting rooms. The cells: Did they sleep in bunk beds? The cafeteria: Were inmates chained to the tables? Did they really shower naked together like in the movies? What did solitary confinement look like? Were they locked in cement dungeons like in medieval times?

  I had come across an old news article about a prison riot. I read about rival gang members creating weapons called shanks made from pencils and pens, sharpened lids from cans, tied locks to socks; each used to swing, slice, and stab one another until those few not left injured or dead were all facedown and handcuffed along that cafeteria floor. Guards outnumbered by hundreds. And I imagined blood everywhere—the smell of sweat, salt, and copper—grown men moaning and crying for help, crying for medical attention where there was none to give. And I thought about my father. I thought about him being nearly sixty years old, barely five foot ten, never owning a gym membership in his life. He didn’t have a violent bone in his body. The fear hadn’t dissipated from my research. If anything, it grew, and my heart sank deeper for him.

  It was the night before Josh and I were scheduled to leave. He was picking me up the following morning for a seven o’clock flight. My father claimed that moving to the minimum-security prison in El Paso, Texas, was for the best. The federal government had set up a program where you could see a psychiatrist, say you’re an addict, and complete a series of drug and alcohol classes that would knock off a few years of your sentence. I had never seen my father drunk or known him to use drugs.

  Mara took the toothbrush out of her mouth and waved it at me like a conductor, lifting her chin so toothpaste wouldn’t spill out. “Luk as ugly as possible. Covu up you entaya body, oh those fuckas will tun you away. Gotta go spit.” She walked across the hall to her bedroom and closed the door behind her.

  It felt strange standing in front of my closet, pushing silk shirts and spaghetti-strap tank tops out of the way, searching for something to wear, my empty carry-on bag on the floor next to me. I never thought there would come a night where I could say to someone “I’m packing for prison.” I had no idea what to bring or what to wear. I never knew anyone incarcerated. Prison was just a distant, imaginative hell that belonged only to villains in movies or serial killers on the news. It was never supposed to be connected to me personally; it wasn’t supposed to be bound to my life in any way. But here and now it was, and tomorrow—would be forever.

  I settled on my baggy “fat” jeans and a baggy sweatshirt that would do a good job of hiding my body. I pulled out my black-and-white Converse shoes and placed them next to the bed. I didn’t even bother packing any makeup or a hair dryer. I felt relieved. It didn’t matter at all what I looked like, as Mara’s words “look as ugly as possible” clung to me for dear life.

  “Girls, over here! Dad wants to get a family photo!” my mother called, waving her arms back and forth in her shell Moschino sunglasses and new Princess Di haircut. We were strolling the sidewalks of Lahaina, shopping for the day. It was spring break, and I had just turned fourteen. We were staying at the Four Seasons Resort on the shores of Wailea Beach in Maui.

  I ran over in my red-and-pink skort and my blue Ralph Lauren bikini top my mother had bought me a few weeks earlier. Mara and Chloe followed behind me, all three of us crowned with pink plumeria leis. My father stood in his Tommy Bahama T-shirt photographing five parrots—red, yellow, blue, white, and red—as they squawked, bobbing their heads back and forth while dancing on wooden perches inside a giant green cage. The owner, an old man with weathered skin, wore a straw hat and had an old 1980s oversize boom box on the ground next to him. My father had convinced the owner to let us take the birds out of the cage so we could get a family photo with them. “We’ve got a cockatiel at home; I assure you my girls won’t be scared.”

  “No problem,” the kind man said. “Their wings are clipped.”

  I kept thinking about that family vacation while Josh drove, and I sat in the passenger seat with my feet up on the dashboard of our silver 2001 Toyota Corolla rental that smelled of vanilla air freshener and McDonald�
��s french fries. To shut out the memories, I turned on the radio, scanning for a decent station but settling for Christian rock for lack of anything better. We didn’t think to bring an iPod or any mix CDs. There was nothing celebratory about this “vacation,” nothing to sing about, nothing to laugh about, nothing to dance about here in El Paso. I looked at the clock, and it was almost noon. Josh and I needed to speed if we wanted to make it in time for the rest of visiting hours.

  The freeway was fast and clear, and I rolled down my window to get some fresh air. Passengers in passing vehicles wore cowboy hats and vests; crosses, some with Jesus Christ, dangled from rearview mirrors. Faith felt dark as I looked out toward the border of Juarez, Mexico, just a mile to my left. Some journalists call it the most violent place in the world outside of declared war zones. And I could see it. I could see the rolling hills of black and brown dirt where dilapidated bungalows stood, and I could feel its passive anger as billows of distant smoke evaporated from piles of trash into the round blue sky. As I looked to my right, I saw the veneer of a safer place, a seemingly innocent place—America, where freedom rings, where endless rows of identical pink brick tract homes lined the vacant freeway. I was shaken by the juxtaposition of extreme poverty paralleling cookie-cutter suburbia. I was lost in the divide of it all, when Josh asked for Bob’s letter. “Did you remember to bring Bob’s letter, Christina?”

  Bob, Mara’s godfather, had sent us a letter with directions to the prison attached. It was a be-forewarned-let-me-prepare-you-for-this letter. It had been years since we’d seen or heard from Bob, and only after my father left for prison, did we reconnect. He and my father were air force buddies and had remained best friends ever since. For my father’s fortieth birthday, Bob gave him a gold plaque that read “If You Ain’t a Pilot, You Ain’t Shit.” My father displayed it behind his desk in the library.

  Just under two miles ahead is where your dad is. When you go in, leave everything in the car except your driver’s licenses, your car keys, $2 or $3 of change (for vending machines). You can’t take anything to him. I offered him a Life Saver yesterday, and he couldn’t take it. Don’t take your wallets. These guys are on a power trip and depending on the individual, they will enforce the above to the letter. It’s just easier to play their game. You will get the back of your hand stamped and then you will proceed outside and through 3 gates to get to the building. Once through the first gate, you will have to pass the back of your stamped hand under an ultraviolet light (same when you leave). Once in the last building, you will walk across the room and hand your sign-in paper to the man at the desk. He will then call for your dad. There have always been other visitors in front of me at the last sign-in site, and these guards have no interest in expediting the process. When you tell him a time, don’t be late. He’s not going anywhere (as he would say). I hope so much you have a wonderful day with him. It will mean the world to him. I look forward to the next time I can see you and your sisters.

  Love,

  Bob

  Josh veered off the freeway onto a long dirt road. The road felt pointless against miles and miles of flat land around us as we accelerated toward the prison entrance. “Low La Tuna Federal Prison” was painted on a series of consecutive brown rocks. I could see the building. At first glance, it appeared beautiful and historical-looking, which I found unsettling, like an abandoned, maybe once-elegant medieval Spanish villa still with its original molding and arched windows and doorways in the middle of a vacant desert. Only now it was forgotten about: saddened by the outskirts of brown wooden power lines and barbed-wire fence where tiny boxed windows were carved out of white cement walls—no breathing sign of vegetation. Isolated and cold. As it should be.

  “How you doin’, kiddo?” Josh glanced over at me. I stared out the window as I felt the truth retract from my throat. How could I possibly answer such a loaded question? We were rushing into one of the most physical acts of survival, other than war. It was prison. There was no time to feel. Yet I found myself fixating on the word he used—kiddo—endearing but patronizing, close but distant. In our session with Sheryl, Josh had agreed to come with me to prison, but that didn’t mean we were getting back together. I couldn’t help but wonder what we were doing there together. I wanted to say “So what are we, Josh?” I fixated on anything but the truth, which was only that he was there to protect me, to take care of me, to support me. And I resented him for that because it meant that I was fragile, that I was unstable, which I could never admit to myself was true, though it was. Anything Josh said to me I would find a reason to twist, turn, and spit the words back at him as if he were the cruelest human being on earth, as if it were his fault.

  “I’m fine,” I said.

  “You sure?”

  “Really, I’m actually okay.” I smiled at him.

  We pulled alongside a beat-up security house. There we came face-to-face with an overweight correctional officer dressed in a uniform similar to that of the US Marines. His combat boots added an escalated element of fear, and his belt was complete with a gun, other various weapons, and handcuffs, which were buckled appropriately to his waist. His hand was clinging to his belt.

  “Remember to call him ‘sir’; call him ‘sir.’ ” I nudged Josh, reminding him what my father always told me when I first got my driver’s license: “If you are ever pulled over by a cop, Bambina, it’s ‘yes, sir,’ ‘no, sir,’ or ‘yes, ma’am,’ ‘no, ma’am.’ They like to be treated with respect.”

  “Driver’s license,” the guard demanded.

  “Here you go, sir,” Josh said.

  “Is this a rented vehicle?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Rental car agreement and vehicle license plate number.” His face expressed nothing. He was apathetic. Numb. There was no please, no thank-yous exchanged, no “Hello, how’s your day going, must suck having to visit your dad in prison today” conversation. It was no place for empathy, no place for compassion, no place for feeling. I was nothing but a speck of annoyance in this man’s day—just another notch on his belt, another statistic added to the United States Federal Bureau of Prisons. “Here’s another one, boss. Poor baby, welcome to prison, sweet girl. You are not special; just collateral damage now” is what ran through my mind as I was officially handed someone else’s shame.

  I smiled again.

  “Straight ahead into that lot, then get in line.” He signaled for us to drive through.

  Per Bob’s direction, we left everything in the car except our driver’s licenses and a roll of quarters for the vending machines. I felt confidently ugly in my oversize sweatshirt, baggy jeans, and Converse shoes, my hair tied back in a loose bun, and wearing no makeup. Josh wore a gray hoodie, jeans, and his Converse shoes too. Despite our best efforts to fit in, we still looked out of place for prison. We were the only Caucasians other than some guards. We stood at the end of the line, and I noticed that Josh was also one of the few men. The line consisted mostly of Hispanic women and children—mothers, daughters, and a few young sons—walking hand in hand upstairs to another holding area that looked similar to a bus stop. There sat a young girl who looked like she was my age. She was pregnant and reading a novel. She’d been there before, it seemed. A pretty girl, with curly black hair. She was calm and cool, exuding peace and acceptance. I didn’t know it then, but I envied her fearlessness.

  We continued waiting like cattle until we were called through the first gate of the prison. There we had our right hand stamped. Then we proceeded toward the second gate, where I placed my hand under the ultraviolet black light, just as Bob had said. Next, we arrived at the official security booth, where we had to pass through metal detectors. I watched the families before me pass through first. Every time the buzzer went off, indicating something metal or illegal, it echoed throughout the waiting area. A few white-painted benches stood along the wall, but not one person sat down. All of us remained silent, cooperative; eager to pass through as efficiently as possible.

  I was next in lin
e when the guard whose job it was to motion individuals through stopped the woman in front of me. She was heavyset, with gray streaks in her hair; she looked like she was wearing her Sunday best. The guard wagged his finger at her, motioning the woman to step toward him. As she did, he felt below her breast, staring at her with intimidation. He didn’t blink. The woman’s young son—or grandson; I couldn’t tell—was standing behind her, watching.

  Through the fabric of her dress, the guard stuck his finger underneath the underwire of her bra. Then he flicked it.

  “You either take this bra off and leave it right here, or we are going to have to cut out the underwire,” the guard said, leaving no room for negotiation. There was a sudden wave of humiliation across the woman’s face, as she turned back to acknowledge her young boy, waiting with the rest of us.

  “But,” she pleaded, “this bra . . . this bra is Victoria’s Secret. It cost me a lot of money, sir. I am not hiding anything. It is just a bra.”

  I knew the type of bra she was talking about. They cost anywhere from $50 to $65, easily the cost of a tank of gas to get to and from work for the week. And if she took off the bra, it would deem her inappropriate, and she would be turned away, forced to come back wearing something else. By the time she returned, visiting hours would be over.

  “Step aside, ma’am,” he replied. Until she could make a decision, she was of no use to him. She meant nothing. She was nothing but another speck of an annoyance, like me. An inconvenience in this man’s workday, and he could dismiss her because recreant power allowed him to do so.

  I placed my hand beneath my own breasts and sighed with relief, thanking God I’d remembered to put on a sports bra. I didn’t want this man coming near my body, let alone touching any inch of it.

  Josh and I passed through the metal detectors alarm free. We waited in front of a series of dark-tinted windows next to what looked like a large automatic metal door. I felt eyes on me but couldn’t see them. It smelled of metal too and disinfectant—the way a hospital smells. The floors were dusty, scattered with folded gum wrappers and dirty tissues. Testimonial laziness is what I’d call it.