True Notebooks

by Mark Salzman

  “Aw, fuck her, then.”

  “I’m tellin’ you for real,” Francisco said, his voice shaking, “she don’t know. She don’t know what the fuck she’s talkin’ about!”

  “It’s OK, Francisco—”

  “It’s not OK!” He bolted upright, sending his chair crashing against the bookshelves. “She don’t know you, she don’t know you come down here and help us out, she don’t know shit. Who the fuck is she to judge you? She’s just a bitch, what the fuck does she know about anything?”

  Mr. Jenkins opened the door and leaned in. “Javier, what’s going on?”

  “Somebody fucked with my teacher, that’s what’s wrong!”

  “Sit down, Javier.”

  “I ain’t sittin’ down!”

  Mr. Jenkins let the rest of his body into the room. “You heard me. Sit down.”

  “Some bitch told Mark he wrote a bad book! And it’s his fuckin’ birthday!”

  Mr. Jenkins glanced at me, then at the open box on the table. “Mm,” he said. “Éclairs.”

  “Have one,” I said, feeling worse than ever. “There’s plenty.”

  “Don’t mind if I do.” Mr. Jenkins finished off the éclair in two bites, then asked, “Who said you wrote a bad book?”

  I explained the situation, emphasizing that my editor was on my side and was only trying to help me by being honest. It was her professional obligation to be critical, I pointed out. He nodded and asked if there were enough éclairs to give to the other staff on duty that night.

  “Yeah, there’s a dozen here.”

  “Thanks.” He took a couple out of the box and made toward the door, where he paused and turned around. “Fuck your editor, by the way.”

  “Yes!” Francisco shouted, pumping a fist in the air.

  Mr. Jenkins frowned. “The difference, Javier, is that I can say that without jumping up and down like a fool and busting furniture. You got love for your teacher, I see that, but you gotta learn to control your emotions. Otherwise they control you—and you know exactly what I’m talking about. Don’t make me come back in here.”

  “Fat fuck,” Francisco muttered when Mr. Jenkins had left.

  “So what are we gonna write about on Mark’s birthday?” Kevin asked, changing the subject.

  “Maybe we should let Wu choose the topic,” Benny suggested. “Tonight’s his last Wednesday night class.”

  I looked at Jimmy and he confirmed it with a nod. “I get sentenced next Wednesday, and they’ll bring me straight from court to the Box.” He practically spat. “If I was gonna kill myself, I would’ve done it a long time ago. Sending you to the Box is just one more way of breaking you down. You can’t even have friends around you on the worst night of your life.” He pulled the nub of eraser out of his pencil, then jammed it back in. “Everybody ought to just write what they want. You’re always havin’ to come up with topics for us. We depend on it too much. If we can’t even come up with our own ideas, we can’t say we’re really writing.”

  Jimmy stared at the notepad I’d given him, pencil held against paper, determined to “go out” having written something strong.

  At 7:30 Mr. Jenkins returned to ask if there were any “nurse regulars.” Nathaniel—who I had forgotten was in the room, he had been so uncharacteristically quiet—shuffled out to join the line of boys waiting for psych meds. When he came back, he sat down at the far end of the table and stared out the window.

  By 7:45 it was clear that no one was writing anymore, so I asked if Jimmy would read his piece aloud to us.

  He didn’t answer; he just held up his notepad so I could see that it was blank, then slapped it back down on the table. Part of me wanted to console him, tell him it was OK to be distracted under the circumstances, but another part of me sensed he didn’t want to be fussed over. I decided not to vary from my usual response when a boy told me he had not been able to write, which was to nod and move on.

  “How about you, Benny?”

  “Mine’s kinda weak.”

  “That’s all right. Read it anyway.”

  Yesterday, after the hard rain, while sunlight was leaving the sky, getting ready for the rising moon, a rainbow stood outside our unit. She stood tall, up through the gray clouds. She danced along with the handsome building next to her. They danced and danced until the golden sunlight started to fade. As the song slowly ended, she walked away from her partner and left him only a memory of their dance.

  “I saw that rainbow yesterday!” Francisco said.

  “Me too! It was there for like fifteen minutes.”

  “My room faces the wall. I don’t see nothin’,” Nathaniel muttered.

  “You do so. You see that billboard.”

  “What—you mean that fuckin’ fool with the crown and the cape? ‘The King of Beepers’? Fuck that shit.”

  “I wish I had my old beeper. The cops jacked it when I got busted. Bet he’s usin’ it now.”

  “I’d rather have my gun. Adios, incarceration facility.”

  “Yeah, more like Adios, Hall. They’d need dental records to ID your ass after the SWAT team got ya.”

  “Better to go out that way than rot in a cell. This is night-of-the-living-dead shit. If I’ma have death, I want dead death, not this lame-ass, eyes-wide-open death.”

  “I’d be happy if I could just make faces when I shit.”

  “Patrick? How about you?”

  One day my mom picked up my younger brother and me from our house to go and stay at her house for the weekend. She was driving through Santa Monica Boulevard and Virgil when she asked, “What should we do today?” I wanted to go somewhere I had never been before, so I said the cemetery. We went to Forest Lawn.

  We passed through the black gates into a narrow path that went through the cemetery. There were a couple of graves that had flowers on them because a few days before was Memorial Day. We parked and walked around. There were thousands of graves and a few people visiting their lost ones. My mom called me over to see one particular tombstone. It was for a one-day-old baby. Next to it was the mother.

  So many graves. Is it like this, to be dead? Many seem to have been forgotten. I passed by a few graves, reading the tombstones and finding the oldest one. I brushed some twigs off a tomb to keep it nice.

  Afterwards, we rested at a large, green, clear area. My brother was running around playing. I watched him, noticed how alive he was, and realized that death doesn’t care if you’re old or young. It doesn’t care about your race, or if you are poor or rich. It will take anyone, and if it does, you’ll probably be forgotten like many people in Forest Lawn. But I know that maybe, just maybe—probably once in a decade—I’ll get an unknown visitor passing by and reading my tombstone.

  “We supposed to be cheerin’ Mark up on his birthday, now we talkin’ about cemeteries.”

  “Oh yeah? What did you write, Mr. Cheery-ass motherfucker? Half an hour ago you was ready to smoke his editor.”

  “I didn’t write nothin’. Sorry, Mark. I let you down on your birthday.”

  “How about you, Nathaniel?”

  “Huh?”

  “Did you write anything?”

  He seemed caught up in his daydream about blasting his way to freedom. Spittle had formed at the corners of his mouth. “Me? Oh yeah. I got somethin’ for ya.”

  In my knowledge quest I search for the secrets of the mind. I start with psychology. With a perfect understanding of the way the mind works and reacts to certain situations I will be able to interpret a person’s actions and react in a way that will cause the desired response or cause the person not to respond.

  Another prospect of my quest is gaining an understanding of the most arcane being on this planet: females! An education in the field of psychology will help me understand the behavior of women. Understanding their behavior and way of thinking will allow me to seem caring and understanding.

  The final prospect is being able to manipulate people into doing what I desire.

  “Is that really th
e final prospect, Nathaniel? Being able to manipulate people?”

  “What else is there?”

  “How about being respected or loved?”

  He shook his head. “Everybody wants to manipulate everybody else. Most people cover it up with nice-sounding shit until you even fooled yourself into believin’ it. But underneath all that talk about doin’ right and lovin’ your neighbor, we’re just animals lookin’ out for number one. In prison the truth comes out, that’s all.”

  “I disagree,” Benny said. “I don’t think love is always about manipulating people.”

  “How would you know, Wong? You were still wearin’ pajamas to bed when you got busted.”

  Benny ignored the teasing. “I’m not cynical, that’s all. Just because some people only care about themselves doesn’t mean everybody does.”

  “Fuckin’ Wong! This why you always getting your shit jacked! You always gotta say no when a nigga say yes.”

  “I don’t care what you think. I’m gonna get out of this place someday, and when I do, I’m gonna live a normal life. If you tell yourself love is all selfish, then it will be. If you tell yourself it isn’t, then it won’t be. You make your own reality.”

  “Jesus H. Christ!”

  “Fuckin’ Wong!”

  “How about you, Victor? Did you write something?”

  Victor’s face and hands were covered with some sort of medicine; he suffered from persistent rashes in addition to his acne. “Damn, this shit itches,” he said, dragging the back of one of his hands against the underside of the table.

  “Don’t scratch it,” Benny advised. “That only makes it spread.”

  “Wong, I swear—”

  “What did you write, Victor?”

  “It’s shit.”

  “Will you read it?”

  “Yeah.”

  I hate to see someone leave because it feels like my heart goes with them.

  I hate to see someone leave because I will never know if I will keep in touch with them.

  I hate to see someone leave because I get so lonely when I’m not with them.

  I hate to see someone leave because I don’t know if it feels the same way for them.

  I hate to see someone leave because I know it will always happen to me and them.

  I hate to see someone leave because it always happens in my life, and it happens to them.

  I hate to see someone leave.

  Mr. Jenkins tapped on the glass, giving us the signal to leave. Kevin held his pencil out like a conductor’s baton and said, “OK, guys. You know what we gotta do now.”

  “You start it.”

  “This is for you, Mark.”

  They sang “Happy Birthday” for me. When the song ended, they all cheered and shook my hand and offered advice from the hood about how I should spend the rest of the night. If I followed it, I told them, I would have to have my stomach pumped, my heart defibrillated, and my crotch sprayed with penicillin.

  “So? You only live once.”

  “You deal with that other shit when it comes.”

  Eventually the revelers filed out of the room, all except for Jimmy. “Thanks for letting me be in your class,” he said, pausing at the door. “Sorry I didn’t write as much as I wanted to. I guess that’s just me, huh?”

  “You wrote plenty. You’ll be in class on Saturday, won’t you?”

  “I hope so. But the way things work around here, you never know. So just in case—thanks for everything.” He shook my hand once more, then crossed the dayroom without looking back.

  17 / Family Life

  “Didn’t anybody tell you?” Mr. Granillo asked. “There’s some kinda play going on this morning. We’re just gettin’ ready to head over to the chapel.”

  All of the inmates were sitting against the wall of the dayroom. Jimmy was right; he hadn’t been sent to county or to the Box, but wasn’t going to have another class with us after all. I saw him sitting beside the water fountain with Patrick and Benny flanking him. I nodded at him, and he nodded back.

  “I think Sills wants to talk to you about something. He’s in the office.”

  When I stepped into the office Mr. Sills waved and gestured for me to sit down. While he finished a conversation with a new member of the staff, I noticed an oversized ledger on his desk containing the names of all the boys in the unit. Next to each name was a three-digit number. Virtually all of the numbers were the same: 187. I knew from watching cop shows that this was law enforcement code for murder.

  “You nosing around in my books?” Mr. Sills asked. I had been so fascinated with the ledger I hadn’t noticed he was staring at me. I must have blushed, because he laughed. “You know what those numbers mean?”

  “Only 187.”

  “When I first started working here, it was a big deal when they brought in a 187. Hell, we used to go over to processing just to gawk at ’em when they came in. Now, it’s a big deal when we get kids in here who haven’t killed somebody. And that’s only ’cause they were lousy shots.”

  He offered me a cookie from a paper plate on his desk. “I got something to ask you. You got a minute?”

  “I’ve got all morning.”

  “Good—then you can help me unload some stuff out of my car later.” He gestured to Mr. Granillo, who cupped a hand to his ear.

  “Bring me Jones,” Mr. Sills called out.

  Granillo nodded.

  “Here’s the thing,” Mr. Sills said. “I like what you’re doing with the kids. I like the results you’re getting. I got somebody I want you to have a look at. He won’t cause trouble. But hell, you can hardly understand a word he says. The boy mumbles. And the teachers at school tell me when he tries to write, it comes out all mixed up. So I was thinking maybe you could work with him a little. As a favor to me.”

  As Mr. Granillo brought the boy in, I glanced at the ledger on the desk and found his name: Jones, Dale. 187. He was black, stood about medium height, and had a prominent scar on his face. He entered the room but kept his eyes on the floor.

  “Jones,” Mr. Sills said. “This is the writing teacher.”

  Jones didn’t move.

  “Look at me when I talk to you, Jones. Don’t stand there like you’re stupid or something.”

  Jones looked up, his face expressionless.

  “This is the writing teacher. I’m recommending you for his class, and he says he’ll take you. You interested?”

  The boy brought a hand up to the back of his neck and rubbed it slowly. “Mm . . . mumble-mumble.”

  “I can’t hear you, Jones, speak clearly.”

  Jones shook his head and mumbled some more.

  Mr. Sills frowned. “What do you mean, No? You mean, No, I can’t speak clearly, or No, I don’t want to be in the class?”

  “I . . . don’ wanbein . . . de class.”

  Mr. Sills looked appalled. “I give you an opportunity, and this is what you do with it?”

  Jones looked back down at the floor.

  Mr. Sills glared at the boy in disgust. “Get out,” he said.

  Jones glanced up at Sills like a boy whose father has just disowned him.

  “You heard me. Get the fuck outta here.”

  Jones rubbed the back of his neck again, then turned around and shuffled back into the dayroom.

  “Sorry to have wasted your time,” Mr. Sills said, rearranging some papers on his desk, then returning his attention to the boys out in the dayroom. “Granillo, lead ’em out. But keep Jackson here, I need him to help with lunch.”

  “Got it. Gentlemen, form a line at the door. Jackson, you stay put.”

  “Mark, you come with me.”

  When the unit had emptied out, Mr. Sills led Kevin and me outdoors. We walked around to the side of the unit where Mr. Jenkins was standing next to a barbecue grill fashioned from a fifty-gallon oil drum.

  “Jackson, help Jenkins set up while I get supplies. C’mon, Mark. Let’s take a walk.”

  He led me out of the facility to the par
king lot. On the way, he apologized again for Dale Jones. “That really has me upset,” he said, and I could see that he meant it. “I asked Jones yesterday if he’d be interested in the writing class, and he said yes, he’d be interested. When I go out of my way for a boy, I expect him to follow through. He could at least have given it a try.”

  “Why do you think he changed his mind?” I asked.

  “Oh, fear of making a fool of himself. He hates himself, that’s what it boils down to. He needs to find something he can do that he can be proud of. He’s not into sports, and he’s not like Jackson, he doesn’t want to be a messenger. I haven’t figured that kid out yet, but I will. First thing, though, is that he has to understand: if he tells me he’ll do something, I expect him to follow through. He has to know I’m disappointed if he lets me down. You might think it was cruel of me just now, yelling at him like that, but it’s exactly what he needs. It’s what he never had growing up. To know that somebody cares enough to get pissed off.”

  We stopped beside a pickup truck, where he had two giant coolers in the cab buried under a mountain of clothing.

  “This is my home, right here,” he explained, tossing the clothes aside. “If you ever need me at night, I’m usually parked under the connector where the 10 and the 405 freeways meet.”

  I tried not to seem shocked. He handed me one of the coolers and took one himself, then started laughing. “I’m just playin’ with you, Mark. I run a clothing drive for a homeless shelter. Man, you are too easy to play.”

  When we returned to the unit he opened the coolers. One contained sodas packed in ice; the other was jammed full of chicken pieces marinating in barbecue sauce. “Homemade,” he pointed out. “You can’t get this out of no bottle.”

  “Amen,” Mr. Jenkins said.

  “These kids don’t get a whole lot of real food around here, so I supplement their diet every now and then. You look like you could use a little feed, too. You gonna break bread with us today, Mark.”

  He handed Kevin a pair of hospital gloves and showed him how to lay the chicken out on trays in preparation for grilling. “No, Jackson! You call that a straight line? Do it like I showed you.”

  “This is how you showed me.”