The Fine Line

Prologue

It’s what divided me from them. It was the door that allowed me to pass freely and the door that kept them bound. It was everything I never imagined existing in this world.
“Para los servicios religiosos.” The bars gently opened, guided by the hand of a guard. He reeked of his own indecency, the way he leaned over and casually pursued his job, as if every visitor belonged in a grand heap of nothing along with the nothings we came to visit. The authority of his thin, black uniform had a sickening effect on his attitude and a sickening effect on me. He wore his uniform like armor. They all wore them like armor. I scanned the guards briefly as this one began his tedious routine. His large ink stamp licked the inner side of my left arm. I blew the dark ink dry and flung my borrowed bags to the counter. The counter separated the guards and I, the only real separation I would desire in this place. They barely looked through my bag, never really caring. Never really suspecting that my innocent face could conceive of committing a crime.
I stepped through the familiar closet door into the little barren room where she sat. She shamelessly looked me up and down, beneath the bounds of my bra, through the creases in my pockets, to my panties. She filed her nails away; she filed her life away; she filed me in as number 32.
Number 32. The small square of white paper fit snuggly in my back pocket. Another day. I waited as Marco took a bit longer to be searched today. They were even less inquisitive with him. His guitar case was always opened with a jaunt of nonchalance. The guitar itself admired for a moment, then just simply handed to him. No glimpse inside or a pat down, just another easy-access day.
It was rare that I finished first. The men coming in were far fewer than the women. Their motives were less obvious than the fancied-up females waiting for a reaction from their man or any man for that matter. The women who frequented the grounds were detectable. They knew the routine. Their stomachs prompted them to bathe in perfume to mask the odorous air, and their faces knew smiling at one another showed weakness, vulnerability, emotion perhaps. Emotionless were those women who cared not if their men became free but only if the walls remained open to ease their insecurities. The security that life on the inside didn’t have to merge with life on the outside. The security that their man was faithful this time around. Most of all, the security of always being wanted, needed, longed for. This was, of course, the place for that. A thousand Hispanic men bumping into a thousand Hispanic men. The thrill of a tight pair of brightly colored jeans hugging the thighs of any female was enough to send them out of their cages and into the squelching heat.
I glanced at the others who chose to spend their Wednesday morning in such a place as this, curious of their intentions. Wives? Girlfriends? Sisters, perhaps? Marco smiled at each guard as he came out of the little room, not fazed by the search. For him it had been years of this old routine: the walls, the guards, the numbers, the ink stamps, dirt sweeping into your eyes with a simple shift in the wind, the black entrance, and all that awaited on the other side. For me, the procedure hadn’t yet become routine.
Marco gently raised his eyebrows and nodded toward the dry dirt before us. He wore a simple straw sombrero to block the heat we would all be dodging in just a few blistering hours.
A beaten path of dirt and slivers of weeds led to a solid black wall, as tall and thick as they come. A glassy-eyed guard flipped the circumference of my wrist to reveal the inkblot on the other side. I felt for my number in my back left pocket one more time, making sure I could exit. As the guard opened the thickest black door, I stepped one single step through.
Men sat in grass, in dirt, against a tree. One after another – everywhere I looked. Shoeless, shirtless, tanks, t-shirts, well-posed, humped-over. I stepped around them, trying to follow the lead of an unfamiliar face, a mere boy. The boy’s smile calmed all but my eyes, which never ceased to absorb this place. I heard conversations, even joined in, but the images forever clouded my eyes. Images of hope attached to desperation. Smiles connected to lost eyes, eyes looking frantically for eyes to meet theirs, to pause, to connect. Souls starving to be accepted, to be functional, to have a purpose for this day, this moment, this life.
The men swarmed to help us carry anything. And everything. A moment to do something with nothing. Grabbing. Reaching. Touching. Greeting. Smiling. Offering. Marco casually motioned for them to give us space as he lovingly patted a back, put his arm around a familiar shoulder, and smiled no differently than in his own home. He briefly glanced in my direction before heading forward with a few new faces. His demeanor instantly put me at ease, and I walked a few feet behind him, absorbing this side of the wall. I followed them as they followed the pathways formed by a chain link fence, guards scarcely present.
And that’s how it happened. I missed the fine line. The line that defines right from wrong, worthy from unworthy, clean from dirty, the loved from the unlovable, the every day Jane from the branded criminal. It was the line that all others saw the moment the black door opened. And the line that I somehow missed.