Ever noticed a poppy unwrap in the morning when night burns off? The beads of condensation evaporate and the flower stiffens to life. The petal’s edges turn minutely to face the rising yellow orb. Life begins.
So it is in any prison parking lot on a weekend morn. Weekends are visiting day. The moms, girlfriends, sisters, aunts, and female friends all blossom in a similar fashion. They have slept or attempted to sleep in cars, trailers, pickup trucks and a lucky few in campers. Overwhelmingly they are Latinas, a smattering African American, the occasional gringo is evident, the rare Polynesian stands out. Like black crows testing their wings in the morning, they stretch, flex, and massage sore, tired, cramped muscles.
They climb out of their vehicles in ones, twos, or more. Hair is matted, sometimes wet. They stand a few feet from their cars. Doors are left open. Feet firmly planted, they grab their hair in one hand and brush or comb it with the other. Long hair dangles toward the asphalt below their feet. Hair is braided, unbraided, dampened, sprayed, dried, brushed. The women squat, or bend, and lean forward to use the vehicle mirrors to accommodate their preening. Glove compartments open to reveal; eyeliner, mascara, eyelash curlers, lipstick, deodorant, and all accouterments of female grooming. Children peck, whine, and chirp at them like hungry baby birds.
The women tend to be tattooed, overweight, heavily made up and covered in black. The parking lot looks as though a funeral has transpired. And in a sense it has the living dead reside within the walls. Black clothing dominates. Black will get you in the prison. Most other colors are forbidden – red and white are gang colors and will get you kicked out. Greens, yellows, and oranges are the colors of Correction Officers – therefore expressly verboten. To wear them will induce a pink, Visitation Denied paper and a quick exit from prison.
At the edge of the visitor’s parking lot, guard towers silhouette the horizon every two-hundred feet. Connecting them is the first perimeter of twenty-foot high razor-wire tipped fencing. A second row of wiring lies three feet beyond that, closer to the prison. It is electrified; signs in English and Spanish inform those on both sides that contact means immediate death. Symbolic pictures show a person touching the fence and dying. They are placed at thirty foot intervals for those who can’t read. A feral cat tempts fate and meanders between the two fences, one of the few creatures able to wander both worlds freely.
A white prison vehicle circles the prison every three minutes on a dirt road. Supposedly the Correction Officers are looking for footprints, but in actuality they ogle the women in the parking lot. The same is true in the guard towers. The shooters entombed there, armed with M-14s which have been placed on the floor, tightly grip their long range binoculars, scanning the younger women among the flock. The Corrections Officers remember the choice ones from previous visits.
Ever so slowly the women collect themselves, physically and mentally and head to the northern most section of the visitors’ lot. There, they must wait in line until a Correction Officer comes and confirms they are on the approved list. Verify their inmate has not committed an infraction that will deny him a visit, corroborate that the inmate is still at this prison, and finally confirm that he is still alive.
Like crows lingering for the sun to rise farther in the sky and provide more light and warmth, these women wait too. They pull their sweatshirts, blouses, and jackets tighter. They will wait many hours. They will flock back next week, and the week after that, and the week after that, until their inmate is released, transferred, or expires.
The black crows of mourning.