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audacity when I asked, death mask on, whether she was demanding to become the boy’s kin. I said, “Do you mean to say you’re engaged to be married?” was my question. She seemed to lose her mind when I asked that, and turned to the weepy mothers with their clipboards and questionnaires and cursed them and threw the ledger to the floor. I don’t know why I was so cold to her. I suppose I may have been envious. No one had ever tried to rape me, after all. I’d always believed that my first time would be by force. Of course I hoped to be raped by only the most soulful, gentle, handsome of men, somebody who was secretly in love with me—Randy, ideally. Once the girl had left and I had a free moment, I pulled her rapist’s file. The photograph showed a pimpled, sleepy black boy. His rap sheet included stealing laundry off a neighbor’s line, smoking marijuana cigarettes, vandalizing a car. He didn’t seem so bad.
    Another part of my job during visiting hours was to tell the guards which boys were being summoned for visits, one by one.The two guards I remember most clearly were Randy, of course, and James. I think James must have had brain damage or some sort of nervous condition. He was always agitated, sweated constantly, and seemed utterly uncomfortable in anyone’s company. The job became very difficult for him when he had to interact with the boys or appear in front of the weeping mothers. When he was alone he had an ominous kind of stillness, like a slingshot being pulled back too hard. He seemed to sit like that, rigid, about to explode, for hours at a time when it was his turn to guard the hallway. This was a ridiculous waste of man-hours in retrospect, since there was another guard farther down the hall who sat by the door to the residential facility, or whatever we called the place where the boys lived and slept and paced around and read the Bible, or whatever they were supposed to do.
    What was also ridiculous—I’m just remembering this now—was how I was put in charge of administering the security test for the women visitors. Since there were no female guards or officers, I suppose, it was my duty to pat the mothers down, lazily tapping around their shoulders and hips, a small pat on the back. It was the most intimate moment of my day, tapping these sad women. Randy would be there, too, usually standing guard at the door of the visitation room, and sometimes as I touched those women I imagined it was Randy I was touching, Randy, who like those women, seemed to barely even notice me. I was just a pair of hands flashing nervously through the air. These were all very sad women, passive and remorseful, and never violent. Of course in all my pathetic pat-downs, I never once came across a concealed knife or gun or vial of poison in askirt pocket of any of those sad mothers. The guards hardly seemed concerned either. Men rarely visited. Most likely that had to do with work schedules, but I think many of the boys in the prison lacked fathers, which was part of the problem, I suppose. It was all pretty grim.
    The bright spot in the misery of visitation hours was the chance to be close to Randy. I remember the peculiar scent of his sweat. It was strong, but not offensive. A good-natured smell. People smelled better back then. I am certain this is true. My eyesight has deteriorated over the years, but my sense of smell is still quite keen. Nowadays I often have to leave a room or walk away when a person near to me smells bad. I don’t mean the smell of sweat and dirt, but a kind of artificial, caustic smell, usually from people who disguise themselves in creams and perfumes. These highly scented people are not to be trusted. They are predators. They are like the dogs who roll around in one another’s feces. It’s very disturbing. Although I was generally paranoid about how I smelled—if my sweat stank, if my breath was as bad as my mouth tasted—I never