The Seven Doors
I went to see my friend Jarvis, a wrongfully convicted longtime resident of Death Row, Saturday. I put what I was allowed to take with me--one key, my driver's license, change for the vending machines, an N95--in a clear container and went through the first door.

That door leads into the building where visitors wait in a long narrow corridor. Maybe because it was a later appointment, it was pretty empty. It's often got ten or twenty people, mostly women, mostly women of color in it, with sometimes a child and very occasionally a man.

The second door leads into where the guards screen visitors. The room like every other room I've been to there is somehow miserable in its dimensions and materials, as if the paint congealed rather than dried, always dull colors, worn surfaces, rough textures, a sense of grime.

The third door, once you've passed security--a bit like airport security--lets you out into this wide-open space from which you walk parallel to the shoreline. San Quentin has spectacular views which the prisoners rarely see and the Death Row inmates never--

The fourth door is outside the visiting area for Death Row. A guard you cannot see makes it slide remotely . It has no handle. Then you're boxed in in a small space with another door on your left that only the guard, high up behind thick plexiglass, can open.

Beyond the fifth door is the visiting area, which is two rows of cages of thick wire like cyclone fencing, thicker wire, smaller diamonds,with guards circulating both inside and outside. There are vending machines against one wall and two microwaves for heating things up.

The sixth door is the one you step through to be locked into a cage, which contains two plastic chairs, a plastic table, and a plastic trash can.