UNVARNISHED
THE BUILDING IS A massive structure, imposing, like a factory. Caroline drove us in her ancient car, which smelled of motor oil and leather and old smoke. We hummed along to an oldies station on the radio and kept the windows rolled down. Even though we didn’t talk much, there was something so comforting about the whole thing.
We had to pass through a series of checkpoints, metal detectors, and wands, forced to empty our pockets, and take off our shoes and belts, and lock up all our belongings in tiny lockers, like the kind they have at bowling alleys or skating rinks. It’s all done in a very orderly and civilized fashion, which I greatly appreciate, the line moving along smoothly and steadily. The officer behind the reception desk checks our IDs and the paperwork Caroline hands her.
“All right. Fill this out. Read over these policies and make sure you understand them. Initial and date the bottom of the page when you’re done. Your visitation supervisor will collect the forms when they call you back. Wait over there. Listen for this number,” she instructs, circling a number on one of the pieces of paper in red pen and pointing to a pair of solid-looking double doors. There’s an old tin sign that reads VISITORS in bold, sharp letters.
Caroline and I sit in a cluster of hard plastic chairs, becoming part of an assortment of people—all ages, shapes, sizes, and colors—each of us here to visit a loved one. Some of them look very average, some scared, and others scary, seeming as if they should be the ones being visited rather than the other way around. What’s most shocking to see, though, are how many kids are here, some who are even younger than Callie, dressed up like it’s picture day at school.
I suddenly remember this thing my social studies teacher said last year. She was talking about how famous works of art or historic landmarks act as these “great equalizers.” How everyone is the same staring up at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, or standing in front of the Pyramids at Giza, or approaching the Grand Canyon. No one is better or less important than any other person, regardless of where you come from, how young or old you are, how rich or poor. At the time I hoped I might experience something like that one day. As I scan all the faces here, I realize that this is another one of those great equalizers—all of us waiting here together for the same reason, no room in the spaces between us for our differences.
The seconds drain out of the minutes so slowly they seem to morph into hours, slipping into years, decades, centuries, before they call us back. The guard stands in another doorway opposite the one we came through, this one looking more heavy duty, more like the type of door you’d imagine prisons to be made up of, doors that are barriers, not passageways.
We follow him through the massive entrance; a steady pulse of buzzes and clicks punctuate the static over the two-way radio clipped to his belt. As the guard leads us down a long, cavernous hallway, he calls over his shoulder, “Bright, sunny day out. Taking you to the outdoor visitation area today. Which is much nicer,” he explains as we cross another checkpoint and are admitted through yet another door that leads to an identical hall.
Then we turn a corner abruptly, and there’s a door right there in front of us. “You’ll have one hour,” he tells us. There’s a beep and the light on the sensor next to the door turns from red to green.
This is it. The moment I’ve been waiting for. And dreading. Part of me wants to keep pretending this isn’t real, this isn’t happening. The door swings open, and at first I’m blinded by the sunlight. I shield my eyes as we follow the guard through one last chain-link gate, which spills out into a wide, open area with tables and groups of people sitting and standing and smoking. A tall fence encloses the whole space, a layer of barbed wire lining the top. The sun leaves no dark corners forming shadows, nowhere to hide—every inch of this place is visible from every other inch.
“Where is she?” I ask Caroline.
“She’s over there,” she tells me, and I try to follow the direction she points in, but my mind can’t make the connection because the only person there is not my mother. My feet move toward her slowly, my legs struggling against a strong current. But as the distance between us closes, I start to recognize her again, underneath the washed-out blue jeans and buttoned-up work shirt and her hair pulled back into a braid. I step forward cautiously, my shoes scraping against the concrete as I drag my feet.
She pulls me in with both of her arms, no longer handcuffed, like the last time I visited her in jail, before the trial. She’s crushing me against her. I bury my face in her neck, and without warning, without permission, I’m sobbing. Not just crying, not just tears, but full-body shuddering. She holds me tighter and tighter as I finally let myself feel the weight of how much I’ve missed her, how much we’ve lost.
Caroline’s hand is on my back, rubbing a gentle circle, sturdy and sure.
When we pull apart, Mom is smiling. And she looks more beautiful than ever.
“Mom,” I finally say, still holding her hands, which feel more solid than before, no longer thin and soft and delicate. She looks tough, strong somehow—unvarnished in this way that I’ve never seen before.
“Come. Please, come sit down.” She leads us over to a circular picnic table where we sit and stare at one another, no one knowing where to begin. “Look at you, honey. You look so much older. How is that possible?” she says with a laugh. She reaches out and tucks a stray strand of hair behind my ear.
I try to frame out the question in my head, not sure how to ask, as I look around at the other inmates. “Mom, how is it here? I mean, are you okay?” I ask, barely able to get the words out.
She looks around too, then nods. “It’s okay,” she finally answers. “I’m okay. I really am.” She looks up at the sky, shielding her eyes with one hand, and breathes in deeply. I track where her eyes lead, but there’s nothing there. Not a cloud passing overhead, no distant planes drawing white lines through the sky.
She looks down at her lap and I watch her swallow hard, like she’s downing a mass of words—all the secrets about herself that she’s never told me, secrets about what happened, secrets that maybe she’s even kept from herself. Tears start to pool at the corners of her eyes, and I can see something beginning to separate in her, from the inside out, like stitching coming lose, revealing a glimpse of something vibrating low and deep inside of her.
“Why don’t I give you girls a minute,” Caroline offers, patting my mother’s hand before she stands and walks over to an empty table several feet away.
Mom clears her throat and wipes her eyes. “You know, I never thought things would end up like this. This isn’t what I dreamed my life would be when I was your age. I had goals, plans, dreams. None of them involved this.”
“You shouldn’t be here.”
She shakes her head and looks down again, says, “Maybe, maybe not, but I am.”
“Tell me it was an accident, Mom,” I whisper.
“It was, of course it was. I didn’t wake up that day thinking that was how it was going to end. It’s so hard to explain. He pushed me too far and I reacted. I wasn’t thinking about what would happen next, I just . . . ,” she gasps, running out of breath. “I was always thinking. I never stopped thinking, not even for one second, not even in my sleep. I was always worrying, constantly, trying to plan out ways to keep the peace, to make things better. That was my whole life.”
She stops, and just when I think she’s about to spill open, she pulls the edges of herself back together and looks me in the eye. I want to tell her that I know what that feels like—it feels like a straitjacket, like you’re suffocating, like you can’t breathe, ever.
“But not then,” she continues. “Not in that moment. I needed to do, not think, just do . . . something. It was an accident, honey—I swear it was. And it was wrong. So I’m okay with being here.” She takes my hands in hers and holds on tight, forcing me to look at her. “He wasn’t an evil person, I hope you know that.”
“I do,” I say, barely.
“I didn’t want him to die,” Mom continues. “I just needed to live. I don’t expect anyone to understand that.”
I swallow hard. I feel my head nodding, but I can’t find any words to say—there are no words that are enough. Nothing I could say would explain all the ways that I understand, or all the ways I never will. There’s nothing I can say to explain how losing Dad—something that made no sense—has ended up making everything else make sense. How it’s shifted everything in all our lives, everything inside of me, forever.
“You don’t have to say anything,” she answers for me.
I feel closer to her than I’ve ever felt before, yet there’s this vast distance between us, all at the same time, with love and hate and everything in between. I want to leave her here the way she’s left us, but I also want to hold on and never let go. She’s like a stranger in this one way, but in another way she’s more real than she’s ever been, more alive than I’ve ever seen her. Not only my mother, but someone else, someone more than my mother could ever have been, someone bigger, more honest, stripped down in this way that’s raw and powerful and terrifying and fragile. She’s free now, in her way, somehow.