"Your Visit"

I arrive with a pepper box full of Chinese food and someone bellows “Ian your visit is here!” then the side door opens to admit me.
I am greeted with a kiss and an admission that he was worried that I wasn’t coming.

A large black woman pulls us aside and asks in a librarian’s tone would I please, while we have our lunch, have a discussion with him about disrespecting. I have to lay my hand on his chest twice and remind him to let her talk. He talks over us anyway as I try hard to focus on her voice while she tells her story about a refusal of medication and his harsh words in response to her insistence.
In the end, I stand between them while they talk out their perspectives and I remind him to apologize and he does.

Usually, we go to the ping pong room and I’m ready with a new set of paddles and a dozen new ping pong balls since the last time I was here, we got a little enthusiastic and lost the ping pong ball in the eaves. This time, his roommate is at home for the weekend and we can go to Ian’s room.

I put the box of take out down on the desk on his side of the room. “It’s a little messy.” He says. There is popcorn all over the floor, and his bed is unmade, and the closet is topsy-turvy but it doesn’t look anything like the room at home. The room I left the way it was so when I miss him, I can open the door and remind myself why he needs to be away.

We talk again about his medication and he says he didn’t want to take it because he didn’t want to be sleepy when I got there and his hands shake while he rifles through the box of food for the white rice he knows is there. They shake like his father’s hands. They shake like my father’s hands. I push those thoughts aside.

This time will be different. This child will be different. This time we know more. This child will not drink himself to death or end up an unemployed hermit battling a world who doesn’t understand.

We talk about his week. He shrugs and doesn’t offer much detail.

After lunch, I offer to help him clean up his space and he goes in search of a vacuum cleaner. We find it in the closet. Here, there are shelves lined with plastic bins where they keep their shower supplies. His is not there. When I ask about it he says he doesn’t want to give them the chance to steal his soap any more. Two bars in a week.

We clean his room and I notice a scrawl in blue permanent marker on his desk. I WILL NOT AWOL EVAR AGAIN. I ask about it and he says there is nothing stopping him from jumping out the window and running and the other night, he really wanted to, but wrote that on the desk instead.

There’s nothing but trees around you for miles, I remind him. “Yeah, you’re right.” he says. “Besides, they took my shoes anyway. I wouldn’t get far on flip flops in the middle of February.”

His room clean, we play ping pong for a while and one of the balls gets away from us. A small, black boy in Chuck Taylors walks by it, picks it up and examines it. He tucks it into the inner pocket of his jacket and disappears down a hallway. Ian says he’ll get it back later or maybe he’ll let him keep it. He hasn’t decided yet.

Soon, he grows tired of ping pong and we go back to his room and we are met in the hall by a boy dressed in leafy camouflage who speaks and walks as if time moves faster than it does. “Ian you have a visit. I haven’t had a visit since Christmas. Not since Christmas” he says admiringly.

“Maybe they couldn’t get time off.” My son offers.

“No!” he shakes his head. “My father is a cop. The Chief of Police. And he could get off anytime he wants but they haven’t come to see me since Christmas, but that’s okay because the staff are going to bring me a PS2 cord because I don’t get visits that often. Do you like Techno or Metal?”

I look at Ian who I can tell isn’t really sure what Techno is.

“I think you’re more of a Metal kind of guy.” I suggest and Ian accepts it.

“Yeah, Metal.”

The young man moves to speak again when a staff member calls down the hall that he’s to leave Ian’s visit alone.

Back in his room, we spend some time blowing a ping pong ball back and forth at each other across the desk and I notice the paperback of Lord of the Flies I brought him last time. I ask what he thinks of it and he says he hadn’t started it yet and asks me to read some.

A few times the flow of the story is broken by commotion from the hallway. Staff bellowing about broken rules and altercations between kids. “That’s why you’re on bathroom precautions! I don’t want you in there looking at my ass when I’m in there you fucking faggot!”

I say “There’s always something going on, huh?”

He shrugs and motions me to start reading again.

We come to the part where they find the conch shell and the boys come from out of the forest onto the beach and the skull-splitting tempo of techno comes loudly through the wall. Ian bangs on it with the back of his arm but the volume doesn’t change. Ian bangs again and there are answering knocks and increase of volume.

He sighs and his face becomes set. “This is disrespectful.” He shuffles himself of the bed and walks to the neighboring room where the music is so loud that he needs to knock twice. I follow in case things get heated. The door opens and the cop’s son’s face appears in the crack of the door.

“Oh, sorry." You’re still with your visit.” He says to Ian. “I’ll turn it down. I apologize.”

I wonder out loud as we walk back to his room “When did I become a visit? I thought I was a person.”

“You are a person.” Ian says. “You’re my mom.”