Page 49 of The River Is Waiting

“This place gets easier after you’ve been here awhile. That’s been my experience anyway. You sentenced yet?” He shakes his head, still not looking at me. “Well, you might want to get over to the med unit. Have one of the nurses put some antibacterial ointment on that.” If he’s cutting himself, maybe they can connect him to one of the visiting shrinks.

“You a doctor?” he asks, turning and facing me.

I smile. “Far from it,” I tell him.

“Then why don’t you mind your own motherfucking business?”

Angel lets out a laugh. “Dang! Little fuckboy just bitch-slappedyou, Ledbetter.” So much for my fatherly instincts. Now I feel like jacking up the little shit for embarrassing me. Guess I’m getting institutionalized.

Praise leans in. Warns the kid that things will go easier for him if he loses the attitude. “I had to learn that lesson the hard way. Came in here when I was eighteen and had to get the badass attitude beaten out of me three or four times before it sunk in. How old are you, anyway?”

Instead of answering him, the kid crosses his arms and rolls his eyes. Up at the front of the line, the Sikh just shakes his head. But Praise—Cornell—hasn’t given up yet. “You got a name?” he asks.

“Yeah.”

“So what is it then? Rumpelstiltskin?”

A half-grin betrays the kid’s sullen act. “It’s Solomon,” he says.

“Well, get wise, Solomon. It’s hard enough in here. Don’t make things harder for yourself.”

The door buzzes. We enter the visiting room and take seats at the long,wide tables. That’s the rule: inmates seated before they let the visitors in. Once they enter, we can stand for a quick embrace, but then everyone sits, with our company on one side, us on the other, everyone’s hands on the table where the guards can see them. I don’t recognize either of these two. The Black CO’s probably a newbie. Young, butch-looking, her pant legs tucked into her boots. She’s wearing that fresh-out-of-the-academy scowl to let us know she’s not taking any shit from us. They must teach them that face before they let them graduate.… The white guard’s older, probably a transfer from another facility. He’s got the Gen X essentials: goatee, gut slackening into middle age. Looks like the type who was more into Nine Inch Nails than Nirvana back in the day. Probably did a couple of semesters of college before he packed it in. Decided to become a state cop instead but bombed out at the police academy and ended up here. Hates his job, cheats on his wife, smokes a little weed after work.… No. Stop it, Ledbetter. Don’t be such a smart-ass. What’s he done to you?

Okay, here come the visitors into the sally port. The steel door they’ve just passed through closes behind them and they stand there, waving and waiting to be buzzed in to where we are. I don’t see who my visitor is, but not everyone is visible in that window. The Indian-looking woman has to be Mrs. Sikh. Someone’s brought an antsy little kid with them; I see his head bobbing up and down. Little dude looks like he’s about four, maybe a year and a half older than Niko.… I can’t believe I still do that sometimes. Forget he’s gone. Must be denial still. Last time we talked, Emily said when she goes into CVS to get diapers, she sometimes has to remind herself that a box of thirty-eight is going to last twice as long as before. I told her I was surprised Maisie’s still wearing diapers, since she’d started to master toilet training a year ago.

“Well, she’s regressed, okay?” Emily snapped. “Her pediatrician said it’s probably because of the big changes that have been foisted on her, and that I shouldn’t make an issue of it. And frankly, I’d rather change a diaper than have to wash and dry the wet sheets and make the bed with clean ones. If that’s cheating, then too bad.”

“Babe, I wasn’t criticizing you. I’m sorry if it sounded like that. I know you’re stretched to the max. I’m in awe of everything you’re handling by yourself while I’m in here. Jesus, Em. It must be exhausting. I don’t know how you do it all.”

“Everything except toilet training,” she said.

“No, Dr. Ritchie’s right. She’ll use the toilet when she’s good and ready.”

“Oh, shut up, Corby.” It was pretty much monosyllables after that until our ten-minute phone call was up.…

Goatee Guard signals to some invisible CO who’s working the door. Our visitors are buzzed in. As they enter, Butch calls out the rules like she’s issuing threats. I still don’t see anyone I know.

The gray-haired woman walking toward Cornell is the one who’s brought the little guy. Must be his grandma. She’s wearing a work smock; probably drove here from her job at a nursing home or whatever. The little dude breaks free and runs toward Cornell. “Slow down, Ezekiel! They don’t want nobody runnin’ in here!”

Mr. and Mrs. Sikh share a polite embrace. She touches the bruise under his eye with her fingertips. I swallow hard; tenderness isn’t something you see much of around here.

Angel’s sitting a couple of chairs down from me and here comes the hot girlfriend, tossing back her long, multicolored braids. She’s wearing skintight jeans and a blouse that stops just north of her belly button. From the way her boobs are wobbling around under there, I’m guessing no bra. The room is hers and she knows it; even the two COs on the platform are watching the show. As she passes by me, I get a whiff of her perfume and a head toss that makes those braids go flying. Nice ass, too. Shit, man, I’m getting as bad as all the other horndogs around here.

What I don’t get is why they called me down here if I don’t have a visitor. Juvie’s got the same situation. Well, I’m in no hurry to go back. Manny’s been gassy all afternoon and there’s no avoiding the sound or the stink of it, so I’ll just sit here until it dawns on someone that I’m chillingin the visiting room without a visitor. I wonder who stood up Juvie. His mother? Father? That kid’s messed up.

At the next table over, Cornell and his wife are holding hands and praying. His back is to me, but I can see she’s got her eyes closed. The little guy grabs his opportunity. Scoots off his chair and goes running between the tables toward the place where they keep the kids’ toys. Cornell’s wife’s eyes pop open. She gives the guards a quick look, then shouts “Ezekiel! Get back here or thosepolice up there gonna arrest you!” Then it’s Cornell to the rescue. “Hey, Zeke. You wanna see a magic trick?”

It’s fun watching this kid, but it’s painful, too. Emily said she wouldn’t consider bringing Maisie here to visit. That’s another thing I’ve tried not to pressure her about. In the pictures Emily sends me, her face is getting more angular and her hair looks thicker. Mom’s taken care of her a few times—not as often as she’d like to, she says. Betsy’s the alpha babysitter. Mom said Maisie’s talking a blue streak now. “And singing, too. ‘Row Row Row Your Boat,’ ‘The Eensy Weensy Spider,’ the ABC song.”

“Do you think she misses me?”

“I’m sure she does, but she’s doing fine, sweetheart. Don’t worry.”

Iwanther to be doing fine. I just don’t want her to forget me.

When Emily finally visits me again, she’ll be surprised that I’ve grown a beard. It’s come in pretty good—darker than the hair on my head, more brown than auburn with a little bit of gray in it. Not much, just a patch. I like the not-shaving part, but it gets itchy. You can’t have scissors here, and I’ve given up trying to trim it with those stupid little nail clippers, so I’m just letting it grow. The Mountain Man look is in around here anyway. The only other time I grew a beard was when we were living out in California. Emily liked it—said it made me look sexy. Sometimes I think if we had just stayed out there instead of moving back east when Betsy got sick, then all the bad shit never would have happened.…

It’s all women visiting tonight. Wives, girlfriends, moms. I think women are just braver than men. They’ll put up with the pain of seeing one of their own stuck inside this place out oflove. Most men won’t. Orcan’t. Instead, they make excuses. My dad was a world-class excuse maker long before I landed here. That day he moved out on Mom and me, he sat down next to me on my bed, all buddy-buddy, and tried to convince me that his leaving was Mom’s fault, not his, because she was a pothead and because our house was always messy and he just couldn’t take it anymore. What was I? Thirteen? Even then I knew he was full of it. What Icouldn’tdecide was whether he believed his own bs or whether it was just something he was trying to make me believe. Either way, I got it. Accepted that some kids got a soccer-coach-and-take-you-fishing kind of dad and some of us got the short straw. The indifferent dad and, in my case, the tenured professor who had gone off to play house with his pregnant grad assistant who lost the baby anyway. I mean, Jesus Christ, he had to leave because the house was messy? Hire a fucking cleaning lady! A professor screws his student and knocks her up? Use a condom, you fucking cliché!… Okay, stop! That stuff’s ancient history. And anyway, what good does it do to keep prosecutinghimwhenI’mhere because of my own way-more-colossal failure as a father? I mean, fuck, Corby, when it comes to fathers who failed their kids, look who’s talking.…

---