There’s an officer in the front lobby that verifies I’m on the inmate’s approved visitor list in his computer. He has trouble finding it, and it takes a while.
Once that’s done, I’m taken into a room and searched by a female guard. She asks me to take my hair down from the messy bun and shake it loose. She feels my scalp to make sure I’m not smuggling in anything, then frisks me and makes me pull my bra off and hand it to her. She checks it to make sure there’s no contraband hidden inside. Finally, she gives it back to me to slip on. The whole process is degrading and humiliating.
She leads me over to another desk.
“Hold your hand out, palm down,” the guard says.
I do, and he puts a stamp on my hand.
Then I’m led through the locked doors by a different guard. The sound of the heavy metal doors locking with a loud clank jars me and reminds me that I’m now locked inside the prison. I follow the guard down a long hallway. It’s drab with institutional green walls.
The visiting room officers are waiting for me.
“Put your hand there,” one snaps out in a gruff voice, pointing to an ultraviolet light. He seems impatient with the fact that I don’t know what to do without having to be told. Somebody woke up on the wrong side of the bed, although, I’d be a grump too if I had to work in this depressing place.
I do as he says, and my stamp is illuminated. He verifies my identity again before I’m allowed to enter the room.
When I do, I find that the visitation room reminds me of a high school cafeteria without windows. There are only four other visitors so far, but I know more are coming.
I take a seat at a table off to the side near the vending machines.
I get a couple bags of chips and some Cokes, remembering what Nessa said about the machines emptying out quickly when everyone gets in the room. I get myself a cup of coffee. Probably not the best choice since my nerves are already frazzled. I return to my seat, take a sip of the horrid brew, and wait. The room slowly fills up with more visitors.
I’m nervous to see my father again. I was eleven years old the last time I saw him. That’s when I went to live with my mother’s parents, who raised me from then on. My mother was a wild child, stubborn and headstrong like her father, and they often bumped heads.
My grandparents were all too happy to take me in when she was no longer capable of raising me, and my life with them was happy and much more stable than it had ever been with my rebellious mother and my biker father. I had love, attention, structure, and positive encouragement—things I had little of before that summer my mother overdosed and the hospital called her parents because my father was off on some club run. One thing I’d learned at a young age: the MC always came first for my father.
When my mother met him he was the VP of the Devil Kings MC’s Atlanta chapter. By the time I went to live with my grandparents, he had risen to President.
I remember little of him except that when he did come home, he would be drunk and usually bring other members of his club. They would continue to drink and party into all hours of the night. They were loud, obnoxious, and cussed a lot.
I would stay locked in my room and read the books I’d brought home from the school library, which were the only books in our house.
My grandmother would come over every Thursday night, when my father was gone at his club meetings. I loved when she came; she would always bring us food.
My mother would lean against the kitchen sink and smoke a cigarette, giving her the stink-eye, her voice drenched in bitterness as she snapped, “I don’t need your charity.”
Grandma would ignore her, put the food in the fridge, and then she would hug me and ask my mother if I could come and stay with them for the weekend. Sometimes my mother would let me, other times she refused. Now that I’m older, I’m sure it was just to spite her mother, because she was always glad for the times I was out of her hair.
My mom would never say thank you for the food, but I always did, because I knew without it I would probably go hungry. After Grandma left and my mother returned to the living room with a glass of whiskey, I would sneak the tin of chocolate chip cookies Grandma baked into my bedroom and hide them. I often hid food because if my dad’s biker club came over, they would eat everything in the house.
It wasn’t that I was afraid of my father; I just wanted nothing to do with him.
Now, as I sit here waiting, I wonder what I’ll feel when I see him again.
Finally, they lead the inmates into the room. They file in, dressed in the Georgia State Prison uniform of white pants and shirts. The pants have navy stripes down the side of the legs and the shirts have navy collars and plackets. Across the back, emblazoned in big letters, are the words, State Prisoner. The men disperse around the room, and I get my first glimpse of my father. He’s changed so much since that last time I saw him that I hardly recognize him. If it weren’t for the short snippets of his arrest and trial from the news, I wouldn’t. But seeing him in person is still shocking. He’s overweight, his hair is graying, and his face has sagging jowls. The man I remember from my childhood was handsome, even though he rarely paid attention to me, and was always gruff.
This man looks tired, beaten down, and bitter.
I read all that as his eyes zero in on me, the only remaining visitor still sitting alone. His eyes sweep over me, and he trudges toward my table.
He settles his big body in the chair across from me, leans his elbows on the table, and runs a hand over his mouth. His knee begins to bounce up and down, the only sign that this visit is affecting him.
My throat is dry, and I don’t know what to say. We don’t exchange the allowed hug of greeting like other visitors and inmates. There are no smiles, because there is no love lost between us. This man is a stranger to me, and I to him.
I slide one of the cold cans toward him, condensation dripping down the side. He takes it, his eyes on me, and pops the top, then chugs down a good portion of it. Then he reaches for a bag of chips and rips it open. He eats three before he speaks.
“Why’d you come?”
“Hello to you, too,” I bite out. I still have a little of my mother’s spunk and that Covington stiff spine my grandfather had, after all.
“I know you didn’t miss me. And I know you don’t give a shit about me, so why you here, Tess?”
“Don’t you want to know how Mother’s doing?”
His eyes shift to the side, scanning the room. “Nope.”
“You’ve been together thirty years. The woman fell apart when you were sent here. None of that matters to you?”
“Why the fuck do you care? You haven’t been around for years.”
My coffee is already cold, but I still want to throw it in his smug face. Did this man ever love me? Ever love my mother? Ever love anyone but himself? I shake my head. “Even now, you’re going to be a dick?”
He eats another chip and looks away again. “We had a fight.”
“So I heard.”
“She pissed me off.”
“She always does.”
“How is she doin’?” Finally, the bravado drops.
“Hanging on by a thread. Losing you, losing the club… It’s all she’s known since she was nineteen. How do you think she’s doing?”
“She send you here?”