grocery bag that I kept in their laundry room. I had my life pared down to the bare essentials. Two pairs of black pants, two black T-shirts, and two white button-downs for work, my laptop. Everything else I owned, my books, my mementos, the rest of my clothes, were in a box in Ray Lampert’s garage, which in the end I never returned to get. It was just not worth it to have to look at his face.
I would have visited Bunny in prison right away, but being approved as a visitor takes time. It took time for Bunny to be assigned to a prison, time for her to go through the reception process, during which she was not allowed visitors, then time for me to fill out an arcane application, send it in, time to have my background check run and approved, time for them to notify Bunny and then for her to notify me. (Why couldn’t they notify me? Why did it have to go through her? Such questions have no answers.)
When, finally, we had secured that much, I discovered that I had to schedule my visit with her specific prison and that visiting hours were booked for the next two months straight. The prison was open for visits only on Saturday and Sunday, as well as four holidays throughout the year, and it booked up well in advance. I made an appointment for the first Saturday in June, the earliest I could get, and waited, carefully reviewing the extensive rules Bunny had forwarded to me.
I did not remember rules like this when my mother was in prison and we would visit her, but perhaps I was not aware of them because I was a child. Any bag I brought must be made out of clear plastic. I was not to wear denim pants or a blue chambray shirt. I was not to wear an orange top, orange pants, or an orange jumpsuit. I was not to wear a red shirt. I was not to wear forest-green pants or a tan shirt. I was not to wear camouflage. I must dress modestly. I was not to wear hats or gloves. I was not to wear shorts that were two inches above the knee. I was not to wear jewelry. I was not to wear a layered outfit. My keys must be no more than two in number and on a key ring with no attachments. I could bring a small unopened pack of tissues. I could bring up to fifty dollars, but it must be in one-dollar bills. I could bring ten photographs. I could bring a document no more than ten pages in length. If I violated any of these rules, I would be turned away from the prison and not allowed to see Bunny for our visit.
While some of these were easy to comply with (I did not own nor did I desire to don an orange jumpsuit), there were still so many instructions of what not to wear that I felt anxious I would forget one and accidentally wear a blue shirt or green pants. The list made me very upset. The list signaled a kind of crushing bureaucracy and micromanaged oversight that I had last experienced, in a much more mild form, in school. I felt dread that Bunny was living inside such a place.
The day of our visit I was extremely anxious. She was at California Institution for Women, which was in Corona, a full hour’s drive from Terrence’s house in Carson. I had never driven that far before, and I was still a relatively new driver, so the drive alone was terrifying to me, let alone worrying I would hit traffic or be otherwise delayed and miss my visitor’s appointment. If I was even ten minutes late, I would not be allowed to see her.
As I drove, I began to feel that this was insane. This level of scrutiny, of meaningless protocol. Why were visiting hours only on the weekends? What about people who worked on the weekends? I had had to get my shift covered by a coworker. Why were even the visitors of people in prison being punished? Because it was present in every communication from the prison I had received. This disdain for me. This weird fetish of control over me, and I was not even the one who had committed a crime.
And then I would think: She’s in for murder. She’s a murderer. You’re about to go