A Place to Stand

by Jimmy Santiago Baca

To the snarling guards that broke loose from their chains,

  To the crumbling houses of the poor,

  Through the scorpion-tailed magnums and carbines

  Held at their heads by death squads,

  Healing Earthquakes comes up from the debris and rubble,

  Splitting its own body and heart

  Into a million voices and faces,

  Mumbling below in its own discontinued winds,

  Threading slowly my torn soul in a grip of fury,

  To the eye of its mark it leans undaunted.

  I am Healing Earthquakes

  Not in the swirling commotion upward of the atom bomb,

  Nor the blast and heraldic upshoot of a rocket,

  A lesser man by all the lawbooks,

  A man awakening to the day with a place to stand

  And ground to defend.

  14 AUGUST 1977

  When that force

  shrieks out of me my chains rattle

  like a great footstep on brittle cornstalks,

  my soul came forth

  to me like cold water upon my sleepy face,

  and ivory words turned dark in my breath

  like a fountain of such ancient rock wet with dew

  and a few trickles crackling the silence

  and round and hovering thick uncasual branches

  with leaves dropping swaying softly

  round my toes,

  this was a thirsty man’s pleasure

  to bathe in my soul’s cool water

  and sleep in its shade

  and hear its motions

  silver water drop

  contently to measure time

  extend a day into a dream.

  That’s how it came to me, loosened from its sorrow

  like nails plucked from its shoulders and knees

  it withdrew its sorrow of silent spikes

  and with them penned a poem across my heart

  and sang that song that silent tears silenced

  such silent tears such storms

  that washed and pounded and hurled out and up every single thing

  and left me standing with a song, the long hush

  of waves destroying and rising to swallow up my life,

  gave my voice a sing, and snapped those chains. . . .

  My soul came forth,

  dripping wet and cool and vibrant

  a handful of butterflies let loose

  to flutter like harmonica notes

  on blue-jeaned breeze

  worn at the knees and buttocks, sliding down hills

  while a band of whirling butterflies

  unfolded rose-twirled wings

  my soul came forth.

  It came

  flute music footsteps and its touch a simple happiness,

  felt through my feelings

  to see them different than others had

  their fullness stuffed, now before it starved,

  cleaned, revived, emptied, and drought-mouthed,

  It came then.

  It came

  strong and warm to my eye, then deeper to my soul,

  became part of me, with its great force

  like an earthquake, tornado, or erupting volcano,

  Wake up!

  For months cons had been talking about a riot. Guards were using five-point hold-downs, harassment shakedowns, classifying people as gang members and locking them down, cutting time on family visits, and writing up cons for minor bullshit infractions. Then one day my sessions with Chelo were interrupted when a guard was killed in CB1. The guard, who went out of his way to harass cons, had been walking the third tier on count time when, for no perceptible reason, he collapsed and died. I found out later that a con had moistened magazine pages and rolled them tight into a hard cone that would act as a dart blower, about three feet long. He scraped a bobby pin to a needle and melted the end to a plastic Bic cap. He molded the Bic cap so it fit perfectly down the dart blower chamber. The guard came on the tier screaming at cons because their toilets were flooding over. The whole tier had jammed towels along the floor and bars so the water couldn’t run into the tier. When the guard came to the dart blower’s cell, he puffed and the pin went through the guard’s beige uniform shirt, into his heart, and out his back. The blue plastic Bic end of the dart pin came off on impact and fell on the tier. It was washed away when the towels and blankets were taken out and flood waters rinsed the blood and floated the corpse down the middle of the tier to the entrance of the stairwell. The paper blowgun was burned and flushed.

  The cell block erupted in high-pitched staccato yelps of victory, and an hour later it went up in smoke. Reserve units and off-duty reinforcements gathered in the main yard, putting on gas masks, carrying shields, clubs, and pistols, preparing to storm the cell blocks, but they held off. Cons were burning and ransacking cells. Smoke billowed from the windows and the whole prison was on level-five security lockdown. Electricity was turned off, water shut down.

  All of us got swept into the violent hysteria. We burned mattresses, blankets, beat the bars, hammered, and shook the iron cage gates, trying to get out of our cells. Somebody finally succeeded and opened the control cage on two tiers and then racked open the cells. Chelo came by and gave me an ax, the blade a piece of porcelain cracked off from a toilet tied to a cell broom handle with a torn strip of sheet. I cut holes in my bedsheet, soaked it in water because of the fire heat and smoke, and wrapped it around my face. I threw my blanket over my shoulders as a serape to deflect any shanks that came my way, and then I stepped out on the tier in ankle-deep sewage and billowing smoke.

  Some of my friends took control of the back half of the tier. There was Clifford, Skunk, Wedo, Luis, Wizard, Gumbo, Ray Ray, Spray Can, and Snoopy, my celly.

  Wedo and others were ripping off the mesh screens that enclosed the tier. Some cons were dragging out suspected child molesters or snitches and stabbing them. Others grouped in packs on the tier, ready to defend themselves. Across the landing cons were chiseling at bars on cell gates with angle iron, hammering with prison brogans. I thought it was impossible for them to cut through reinforced iron, but over the next eight hours they had cut through the bars, squirmed out, and opened more cells. Twenty-four hours after the takeover, the National Guard and prison officers attacked with fire hoses, shields, rifles, and tear gas—and took the block back.

  They had us lined up naked against the wall on the ground floor, as they stood with rifles aimed behind us. On the tiers above us, goons went cell to cell, hurling down TVs, stereos, and anything else they found. National Guard officers ordered us not to move, but Ray Ray turned and they shot him. His blood spattered over my arm and the side of my face, but I couldn’t move to wipe it off. I couldn’t help him. I wanted to scream that this was madness. I wanted to scream that this shouldn’t be happening. With my arms above my head against the wall, I put my head down and saw the officer kick what Ray Ray was going for. “Check the frame for drugs,” he said to another guard. Through the corner of my eye, I saw it was a shattered family portrait of Ray Ray with his wife and kids. Later, I dealt with Ray Ray’s murder the only way I could. I wrote a poem for him and sent it to his family.

  Following the riots, politicians promised in the media to do something about the overcrowding and inhumane conditions. It was ironic that Mad Dog Madril was one of the guards who escorted legislators through the blocks. They were so fearful they were visibly stiff and could hardly do anything but look straight ahead and mutter oh yes, oh yes as Mad Dog explained the cells, tiers, and the way the block worked. They couldn’t wait to get out to the parking lot again. Sweating in their nice clothes, they looked up, around, and down, with an air of important resolution. They were instructed not to talk to the convicts. When they came down my tier, most of the cons were telling them to do something. I don’t know why, perhaps partly from shame or anger, but I turned my back to them. I didn’t want them to see me like a caged animal behind bars. They had only come to get votes to ge
t reelected or out of perverse curiosity to see human beings who had become animals. Nothing would change.

  We were put on indefinite lockdown. The block sounded strange with no TVs or stereos blaring. My guitar and typewriter were trashed and I was back to writing on paper with pencil. I’d study every day, past midnight, with cons yelling back and forth in the block, the dark giving anonymity to voices cursing, joking, talking trash, and greasing the rumor mill. You couldn’t see their faces, just hear voices.

  “I am the spirit of Malcolm X, I am the spirit of Malcolm X,” one con repeated over and over again until somebody replied.

  “I got your number, punk, you better strap down on the yard ‘cause you gotta see the devil tomorrow!”

  “Quit putting your business on the tier, bitch!”

  “Got any coffee, Louey?”

  “I need some soap to wash my clothes.”

  “Let’s go to the canteen tomorrow.”

  “Yo momma, I’m gonna fuck you, punk!”

  “Quit sand-bagging, bitch!”

  “Yeah, Cyclone, what you doing? Is that all you ever do is fucking read?”

  My lamplight on, pacing back and forth in my cell with a grammar book in my hand, I called back to the con, teasing him. “Studying you, Felipe.”

  “What do you mean, studying me?”

  “Yeah,” I’d say. “Studying you in this book.”

  “What do you mean in that book? What kind of book is that—better not be my court transcripts!”

  “Says here in the book that you are a human being.”

  Felipe asked, “Does it got me in it?”

  “Says,” I would continue, “you’re a noun.”

  “Don’t fuck with me,” Felipe threatened.

  “I’m not. A noun is a person, place, or thing. You are a person. A human being. And you, Flaco, you are a verb, fastest thing on two legs, all action, brother. And García, you’re an adjective: flair, pizzazz, and color.” It was my way to visualize grammatical abstractions. I could remember them by applying the grammatical terms to cons who personified the elements of grammar. Picturing certain cons in my mind helped me recall what a verb or noun or adjective was.

  “Cyclone, read us one of your poems,” Chelo called out.

  I read one about the legislators coming through the block.

  They Only Came to See the Zoo

  Our muscles warped and scarr’d

  Wrap around our skeletons

  Like hot winds

  That sweep the desert floor

  In search of shade,

  Sleeping each night

  In the hollow of petrified

  Skulls.

  And from our mouths

  Words of love would come

  If we let them,

  Like molten stones shrieking

  From the belly of a volcano.

  But standing at these bars

  We watched you leave

  And only wondered. . . .

  You looked up at us with passion

  As we stood at the bars.

  A vacuum swelled and our hands

  Went pale, our fingers cold.

  The gray pity of our lot

  Made you turn away.

  But our spirits met that moment

  Faraway in the land of Justice

  And we whispered with our eyes,

  “Come closer,”

  But you did not.

  It’s been so long now

  Since you left.

  Did you tell them

  Hell is not a dream

  And that you’ve been there?

  Did you tell them?

  After the block quieted and cons gradually dozed off, I’d stay up reading, enjoying the calm, until one or two in the morning. I tried to sleep but, behind my eyelids, memories would light up the faces of my brother and sister and how our lives had moved so far apart we were all but strangers now. It was as if a curse hung over our family. I had less than nine months to do, and I was twenty-five years old. After my release I wanted to see us all together—aunts and uncles, mother and father—but it was wishful thinking. No one got along, my mother living in fear that my father might find her, my father still haunted by his delusions of winning her back. I ached in my heart to turn back time and change the way things had been.

  Not long after the guard was killed, Mad Dog Madril escorted me one morning to the warden. I’d been expecting it. Convict after convict had been pulled out of his cell and interrogated about the guard’s murder. I was dreading the possibility that the warden might try to implicate me or blame me for the stabbing and beatings that happened to cons alleged to have been snitches or child molesters. When I walked in I told myself to remain calm, answer his questions, and keep my responses short.

  I stood before him and showed no emotion. I expected him to get worked up, but he didn’t look upset or aggravated; in fact, he was relaxed and easygoing.

  “Hot weather, ain’t it?”

  I didn’t answer, caught off guard by his statement.

  “Listen, I’ve got something to tell you. Your father passed away.”

  He was trying to get me to react and by chance get me to admit that I knew something about the murders.

  “Your father passed away,” he repeated.

  I could feel my face blanch with a crushing sense of shocked helplessness. Stunned by this unexpected news, I detached myself from the person receiving it. The warden wasn’t speaking to me but to someone else.

  “You don’t care? Just as well, because your family doesn’t want you to attend the funeral services. It’s our policy to allow you and we’re willing to do so, but”—he paused—“not even your family wants you.”

  He had nothing more to say. As I walked back across the main yard toward the block, it was as if I were a little kid again, holding my mother’s hand, walking down that county jail corridor in Santa Fe to see my father. Except it was I who was now screaming inside for him not to leave. Instead of his voice pleading for me to return and save him, I heard my own voice begging for him to return. As a child, visiting him in jail, I was terrified of the dark gloom that inhabited those cells, haunted by those hopeless eyes that stared so bleakly at me. The jail he was in stank of suffering and despair, but I had grown up and was not afraid of shadows anymore. I was now joined to my father through the misery and oppression we had both endured. I may have been a criminal in society’s eyes, but privately, to honor my father’s memory, I vowed never to let them break me. To honor his memory, I would never let them take my pride from me, never give them the pleasure of seeing me beg for mercy.

  We could have lived together, walked along the Rio Grande river trails, laughed and watched football games, read the Sunday paper, worked on the roof, planted a garden, loaded wood in the mountains, gone piñon picking, roasted and peeled green chile, traveled, but none of this was going to happen. When a tide of grief welled up in me, I closed it off. When I almost cried, I held back the tears. When I felt myself wanting to get into a fight, I turned away.

  My writing became the receptacle for my sorrow. I wrote even when I didn’t want to, because I knew that, if I didn’t, my sorrow would come out in violence. I wasn’t able to express my grief. It felt as if my heart was bound like a kidnapped hostage. I silenced its voice, but the more I wrote in my journal, the more I felt deserted by everyone. My family’s not letting me attend the funeral only added to the pain. I kept to myself, afraid of the growing emptiness in me.

  I sincerely wanted to mourn him. He deserved at least that, at least one person on earth to forgive him for all his unfulfilled promises, all the expectations never achieved, for a life littered with broken bottles and lies, tears, outbreaks of rage and violence. I crouched in my cell, trying to weep, but I couldn’t. I was mad at myself for not crying for my father, and I butted my head against the sink, repeating, “Cry, cry, cry!” I knocked my forehead against the cell wall. I kicked my bare foot against the steel bed leg, trying to create enough pain for tea
rs, but I couldn’t. I paced back and forth, slamming my fist into my open hand, commanding myself to weep, but I couldn’t. I hit the steel toilet with my fist until the flesh around my knuckles split to reveal chipped bones. And then a calm coldness came over me. A chill fury exploded in my heart and became the numbing determination to beat up a guard. I was anesthetized with a wrath that even God could not quell. I felt prepared to destroy my life in a frenzy of violence. Because, even as I looked at my reflection in the stainless steel, I saw no tears. Life in prison had killed a part of me.

  I received a letter from my sister, explaining the real reason why I couldn’t attend the funeral. Julian, Aunt Jesusita’s husband, had called the warden and said I had threatened him, and it was best for the family if I stayed away. It didn’t make sense to me. What I didn’t know at the time was that my father had left me a twenty-thousand-dollar insurance policy, with instructions to use it to hire a good lawyer. Julian, however, convinced my Uncle Santiago, who has the same name as mine, to fly with him to San Francisco and sign the insurance check over to him so he could use it—ostensibly for paying a lawyer to get me out. Of course, he never intended to do that. After the money was deposited in Carlos and Julian’s account, it was used to buy a liquor license or some such thing and never mentioned again, but I didn’t find out about any of this until I had left prison.

  TWELVE

  CB1 had been thoroughly trashed during the riot, and civilian construction workers were brought in to repair the damage. Prisoners were reassigned to different blocks and during all hours of the day guards would yell, “Pack it! You’re moving! Up an’ at ‘em! Hubba-hubba!”

  Sometime in November 1977, Mad Dog Madril called our numbers, and about a dozen of us packed and were escorted out of the block. We crossed the main yard, and went out the security gates at the west end toward the field, and turned left. Beyond the two rows of fencing was the minimum-security area, with a cluster of gray block barracks. Cons in white khakis carried books and moved easily along the complex sidewalks; some were probably attending GED classes. We went down a narrow road, enclosed with coils of razor-wire across the gravel and above, creating a tunnel of thorny spikes. At the end was a small new two-story cell block.