Detaining Denise

I just got back after twelve months as a private security guard at an ICE detention center. I haven't told anyone I'm back.

Part of me wishes someone would have asked me when I was coming home, but another part of me—the dominant part—doesn't want anyone to know.

They won't understand, I think.

Truth is, I don't understand people. Never have. And a solid year of watching my fellow guards stand on necks and deny detainees clean water or medical treatment didn't make me understand them any better.

My shrink says I have PTSD, but I tell him bullshit on that.

“Everyone has trauma,” I tell him. “I'm no different. The shit I saw wasn't done to me. It wasn't done to anyone I know. So, so what? Why should it fuck me up?”

But I know I'm full of shit and the shrink knows it too. He prescribes an alpha-1 blocker to help with the nightmares and insomnia. I pop two in the pharmacy parking lot and drive home.

The apartment on Poverty Row is exactly as I left it. There is a pile of unopened mail on the floor in the hallway, but everything else is right where it was a year ago.

I go to the answering machine, expecting to spend the evening erasing messages, but the only calls that have come in are from telemarketers and my landlord. I skip through until I reach the last recording.

My douchebag brother, Jared.

“Hey, faggot, it's your brother. Remember you have family or did all that Florida heat fry your little brain? Call me back! And tell me why my wife just saw you crying in a parking lot, Mary!”

Click.

I know Jared's going to want to see me and I know exactly what he's going to do. He'll invite me over for a beer and downplay the fact that he hasn't seen me in a year. Then I'll get over there and find out his wife organized some big, invasive Welcome Home thing with a whole bunch of neighbors and relatives I can't stand, and then he'll spend the rest of the day pissed out of his gourd, taking pot shots at me.

Worse than Jared are the women he lives with—his flag-sucking wife, Jess, and my know-it-all goddaughter, Denise. Jess is tolerable because she's usually too sloshed to argue a point, but together with my cunt brother she's raised her daughter to be an entitled brat.

Still, I'd be lying if I didn't admit to getting turned on whenever my niece and I get into a heated debate. The little bigot turns bright red and the veins stick out on the sides of her neck, and she has a tendency to get herself so worked up that she's sweating by the time she's said her piece.

Frankly, my arguments with Denise have always felt a little erotically charged, which poses a problem. Not just because she's family, but because she's a teenager.

Denise is the polar opposite of her mother in every way but one. Unlike Jess, she is neither bleached blonde nor entirely stupid. She's neither pasty nor artificially enhanced. Instead, Denise has developed a nice little rack all on her own and her lips are naturally plump, not weighted down with filler. Her flesh carries a warm glow punctuated by beauty marks, her cheeks freckled and rounded, and her long chestnut brown hair is thick and wavy where her mom's is brittle and stick straight.

About the only thing Denise has in common with her bitch mother is a love of Daisy dukes and an aversion toward brown people. Ironic given her golden complexion.

She wasn't always this way. There was a time when Denise was curious about other cultures and eager to learn more about the wider world.

As a little girl, she would catch me listening to world music and she'd ask questions about its origins. I'd give her one of my ear buds and we'd listen to shamstep together while I told her about Palestine's tradition of expressive poetic folk music and their celebratory ululations about rural life and harvests.

Everything changed when I took the private security job and start getting deployed to detention centers. Suddenly my apolitical brother began radicalizing, watching hateful, narrow-minded conspiracy videos on Bitchute and indoctrinating his daughter.

Jess didn't need any convincing, she was born into a family who thought anything different was wrong. The only spice in their kitchen was white pepper and their idea of fine dining was a night out at Chick-Fil-A.

But Denise had been born with an innate interest in exotic things and her first years in public school had exposed her to all kinds of people. For her to flip so dramatically during her transitional years seemed concerning.

I remember reading somewhere that a teenager's brain goes through a massive process of synaptic pruning, but I didn't realize that pruning might refer to the figurative withering of a kid's intelligence. As I fought with myself about whether or not to visit Jared's house for the inevitable party, I wondere