8:15 am / Unit 8
I’d been laying on my bunk, reading a book when I heard the Unit Officer announce my name: “Davis, report to Central Control for visitation and make sure you’re property dressed.”
I immediately jumped up and threw on a grey scrub top and my boots and headed to the officer station – a small wooden desk enclosed within Plexiglas walls next to the front door of the unit – to be buzzed outside.
“Go straight to Central, Davis,” the officer commanded as he let me out onto the yard.
Once outside, I walked along the cracked and crumbling sidewalk – a warm breeze gloating in from some faraway place of unknown freedom and an uncompassionate sun blazing down upon my skin – past the other housing units, tall brick structures whose dispirited architecture was likened to that of inner-city tenement buildings with bars over the windows.
I was dimly aware of their presence, however, passing it all as if in a dream. My thoughts and mind were elsewhere, focused on seeing my daughter and on all that that would entail.
The last time I had spoken with her on the phone was awkward and I could feel her distancing herself from me. It was like we were two strangers with neither of us knowing what to say beyond a minimal and heartfelt “I love you” and “I miss you.”
We often hung up without saying much more than that. My guilt and shame kept me from saying all of the other things I wanted to.
This was several months ago and since then I’d heard nothing from her. I’d called and wrote letters but neither were ever answered. She’d ghosted me.
But then my Mother had informed me that she was planning on bringing her to see me and after what felt like the longest wait ever, the day had finally arrived.
And I was so nervous that my stomach was folding in on itself like some sort of demented origami. My anxiety brought on by this extreme juxtaposition of differing emotions swelling up inside of so intense that if felt as if any moment I might be ripped in two by the conflict.
You see, I was excited to see her but also scared that she would be cold and unresponsive and honestly I didn’t know I would be able to handle her rejection if she was.
As I reached Central Control – a squat, red-bricked building that houses the central base of security operations and the upper echelons of the prisons administration department – there was another person already waiting outside of the heavy steel door, an inmate who everyone called Junky Jerry.
And he said he’d already been waiting for more than ten minutes to be buzzed in and was cursing about the inconvenience the guards were causing him.
Apparently he was expecting a package of contraband from his sister during visitation. And though this was information that I had no desire to know, he was more than willing to volunteer it. Perhaps he thought I would be impressed by his daring criminal prowess. But I wasn’t.
Then after just a couple of minutes we were let inside the heavy steel door.
8:30 am / Visitation Room
I saw her before she saw me.
She was sitting next to my mother at a table facing the door with her head down. And at first all I could see was her thick mop of blonde hair falling down around her face and shoulders until she looked up and gave a distressed smile in my direction.
And usually her smile was no less brilliant than a supernova, but this one looked forced and uncomfortable. Almost like it hurt her.
I walked over to her as quickly as I could and embraced her as she slowly got up from her seat. And it felt so good to hold her in my arms. But she only responded perfunctorily and hung her arms limply around my back as I squeezed her like an unyielding pimple, holding on until she began to push away.
She didn’t want to be there and it was obvious. My eight-year-old daughter didn’t want to see me.
My mother spoke first, then my daughter:
“Hi, son.”
“Hi, Dad.”
“Hi, guys, it’s so good to see you both. it feels like it’s been forever,” I said.
It has certainly been quite some time, Charles,” my mother said as she was getting up from the table. “I’m going to the vending machine to get us some snacks and give you two a couple of minutes.”
After she walked away, I turned to face my daughter to get a better look at her, focusing in on her big milk-chocolate colored eyes and the oversized ink glasses outlining them. And as I stared she granted me the slightest hint of her toothy little grin; her smile bright as Chiclets and filling me with hope.
And in the precious moments alone, I tried getting her to talk to me, but by the time my mother had made it back I had barely pulled ten words from her. My normally loquacious and bubbly daughter was silent and subdued and I couldn’t help but think of my role in her dramatic change of personality. And I also knew she was angry with me and had every right to be. But it also seemed as if she was harboring other negative feelings, and those feelings were weighing her down as well.
Eventually we began to talk about school.
“So what have you told your school friends about where I am?” I asked.
“Really it’s like I don’t even have a Dad so I just pretend to everyone that you are dead,” she replied matter-of-factly.
And to this day, six years later, I still haven’t completely processed the implications of her words from that afternoon. I’d failed her in so many ways and now she had to suffer through that stigma of having a incarcerated father on top of everything else.
Her words were devastating to me but she was just coping the best way she knew how; by pretending that I didn’t exist anymore. And I guess it must have been better than having to accept the fact I was alive but because of the choices I made was no longer in her daily life. So she killed me.
We visited for a little while longer with my mother trying desperately to elevate the mood of the visit. It was a futile attempt and the rest of our time together was as melancholy as a funeral.
Then it was time for them to leave and for me to go back to my unit. And I knew that that was probably the last time I’d see my daughter until I got out. She promised she’d write me when I wrote to her, but I knew she wouldn’t. Finally we all hugged and parted ways. I waited until I got outside before I silently began to cry.
Junky Jerry’s visit had ended at the same time and he was following behind me on the sidewalk.
And by the time he caught up with me, I had stopped crying. But he still noticed. “It’ll be alright, bro. Just be glad you gotta see ‘em today,” he said in a surprisingly compassionate tone.
“I am. I always am when I see them,” I said, continuing my walk back to my unit feeling every bit as dead as my daughter pretended me to be.
Charles Davis
Oklahoma, OK
#406399
