True Colors

“Oh. Dallas Raintree.”

The woman punched some keys into her bulky beige computer, waited a few moments, then said, “P Cell. Visitation begins at three and ends at four.” She pointed one stub-nailed finger down the hall. “Second door on your right.”

“Th-thank you.” Vivi Ann began the long, slow walk to the jail. When she got there, another receptionist was waiting for her.

“Name?”

“Dallas Raintree.”

“Not the inmate’s. Yours.”

“Vivi Ann Grey Raintree.”

“Identification, please.”

Vivi Ann’s hands were shaking as she opened her purse and extracted her driver’s license from the wallet. The receptionist took it, wrote some things in a logbook, and handed it back.

“Fill out this form.”

As she stood there, Vivi Ann heard people come up behind her, forming a line of sorts. It forced her to write faster. “Here you go,” she said, handing the sheet back to the receptionist.

“Over there,” the receptionist said, tilting her chin without looking up. “Put all your personal items in one of those lockers. No purses, wallets, food, gum, keys, et cetera. The metal detector is at the end of the hallway. Next.”

Vivi Ann walked down the quiet corridor. At the end of the steel-gray lockers, she stowed her purse, and then headed toward the metal detector. A huge uniformed guard stood by the entrance, with his booted feet planted apart and his arms loose at his sides. He wore a gun on each hip.

She handed him the locker key and moved cautiously through the detector. Since she’d never flown anywhere, this was the first time she’d ever been through one of these devices and she wasn’t quite sure how it should be done. Slowly made sense, so she inched forward. A high beeping alarm sounded; Vivi Ann’s heartbeat kicked into high gear. She looked around; now there were three uniformed guards around her. “I—I don’t have anything on me.”

A woman guard came forward. “Over here. Spread your legs.”

Vivi Ann did as she was told. Even though she knew she was fine—had to be—she was afraid. Sweat broke out on her forehead.

The guard passed a flat black paddle in front of her. It beeped again at her bra and at the buckle on her shoe.

“You’re fine,” the guard said. “That way.”

Vivi Ann moved forward again, to another desk, where her hand was stamped and a VISITOR tag was hung around her neck. She followed another uniformed guard down another hallway to a door marked VISITATION.

“You got one hour,” he said, opening the door.

Vivi Ann nodded and walked into the long, low-ceilinged room. A row of Plexiglas cut the space in half; on either side were cubicles. Each one had a black telephone receiver and a chair.

She went to the last cubicle on the left and sat down. The fake glass was clouded with thousands of fingerprint smudges.

She wasn’t sure how long she sat there, alone, but the wait felt endless. At one point another woman came in, took a seat at the opposite wall. Through the distorting series of Plexiglas cubicles, their gazes met and then looked away.

Finally, the door opened and Dallas was there, wearing an orange jumpsuit and flip-flops, his long hair falling lank across his bruised face.

He came over to the cubicle, sat down on his side of the dirty Plexiglas. Slowly, he reached for the receiver.

She did the same. “What happened to your face?”

“They call it resisting arrest.”

“And did you?”

“Oh, yeah.”

She didn’t know what to say to that, so she said, “I’m looking for a good defense attorney. It takes so much money, though. I’ll keep trying. I can’t—”