by Paul Volponi
Besides getting cut, the worst thing that can happen to you on Rikers Island is washing some thug’s socks and drawers every day. I’d never heard of any kid getting ripped off in an adolescent house. Dudes make fun of that shit to no end. They call it “taking your peanut butter.”
Even kids who still sucked their thumbs were safe with other adolescents. But everybody knew it was a different world upstate. When adults are in the middle of serving real time and get hard up, things change. They probably do shit there that you couldn’t pay them to do out in the world.
Ritz walked past and saw me holding the picture of that boy.
“We doing extra on that assignment for Demarco?” he asked.
He saw Sanchez drying his eyes but never said anything about it. Then Ritz went off and came back with Jersey. We were all looking at that picture of the kid swinging from a tree and smiling in his fake-ass cowboy duds. It was hard to believe, but we were doing homework on Rikers Island.
The last time I did homework was in my real house. And I don’t think I ever sat around with three other dudes doing schoolwork outside of class before, not even in a library.
Brick saw us all together and came over with his doldiers, Luis and Barnett.
“So you guys think you’re the new shit?” he said.
He pointed to each of us, shooting off a list of complaints.
“You owe me for the phone. You can’t hold your weight. You’re gonna pay your tab before you ship up north. And white boy better hope he don’t get run out of this house,” Brick said in one long breath.
Right then, I could feel his power start to slip away from him. I could hear it in his voice.
“We’re still running my game,” warned Brick. “Don’t get any ideas that you bums can hold it down around here.”
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 10
CHAPTER
22
The next day in school, dudes were trying to follow the life skills teacher, Mr. Rowe, from class to class. He had the VCR and was showing an animal video with tigers and lions hunting in the jungle. It was like spending the day at the movies, and dudes were willing to do anything for a seat.
Both Dawson and Arrigo had the day off, so Officer Carter, the dude who’d used his money as a napkin to taunt us, was running the show with a woman CO who looked like she’d stepped out of a beauty parlor.
She had long nails and big hair, and spent most of her time on the phone. And I could tell right away that she thought that she was better than us.
“I don’t want to hear a thing out of your mouths that doesn’t start with ‘Excuse me, officer,’ ” she told us.
Kids were scared of Carter and wouldn’t jump between rooms. They didn’t want to risk getting thrown on the wall and kicked in the ass. Instead, they put pressure on Mr. Rowe to take them with him. He’d push the VCR through the hall, and dudes would bang on the windows and come to the doors begging to go along.
Please, Mr. Rowe. I’m your best student.
You promised me last time, remember?
This is my last day. I’m getting shipped upstate.
Carter would karate-kick every door that cracked open when someone tried to peek at what was going on, and he almost took some kid’s nose off when one slammed shut.
Then two quiet kids who mostly got herbed by everybody else started a fight over the last seat in Demarco’s room.
Dudes put a battery in one of their backs, saying, “If you fold up to that little shit, you really are a herb.”
The two kids both took boxing stances with a pencil in each fist, the points sticking out. Dudes were standing on their chairs cheering like they had front-row seats at Madison Square Garden. But the two kids only danced around each other for a while.
“Keep dreaming, sweethearts,” mocked Carter, as he dragged them both by the collar into the hall.
They sat crying on the floor after Carter threatened to write them up and ship them off to the main building.
The Sprungs housed lots of kids charged with petty bullshit. If your classification was too high and you were looking at something like a murder charge or armed robbery, you had to live in the main building. I guess Corrections figured that being outside so close to the fence and bay would tempt dudes facing big time.
So when a kid fucked up in the Sprungs, all a CO had to do was threaten to ship his ass to the building. They’d get all scared and turn to jelly. That’s why it was easy for a thug like Brick to push these kids around.
I had a low classification, but got sent to Mod-3 in the main anyway. I had to put up with more shit from real thugs, but I got off that scared routine pretty quick.
Carter went on break and a big CO I recognized from the building held down his spot. Kids like to always know which COs are on duty. This way they can figure out what they can get away with, and what games to play.
Now both COs were just covering other posts. Neither of them knew what classrooms kids belonged to, and we started to bounce between rooms like a herd of kangaroos.
That big CO must have been doing overtime off the midnight tour. He was sound asleep at the desk when Murray stepped into the hallway.
“Officer, I want you to remove this miscreant from my classroom,” announced Murray, pointing to Shaky.
The woman CO went over to Murray’s door and told Shaky to step out. But Shaky tried to play her off and wouldn’t even get out of his seat.
“Maybe you don’t listen to your mother, but you’ll listen to me!” she went off, pulling Shaky out of Murray’s room by his shirtsleeve.
Then she told him to get on the wall, and he finally did after walking around the hall for a while. She cursed his mother for not listening right away, and he cursed hers back.
“What did you say to me?” she screamed.
“I said, ‘Your mother.’”
The big man raised his head from the desk and hollered, “Watch your mouth, son. If I have to get up, I’ll slap you a new one!”
The woman CO walked over to Shaky and out of nowhere threw a wild punch past his head. The two of them got tangled up and started to wrestle on the floor. She landed a couple of good shots and her partner went charging over there.
Kids were all pressed up against the windows and doors of their classrooms to watch. The big man grabbed Shaky from the pile and slammed him back against the wall, twisting his arm behind him hard.
Everybody thought it was over for Shaky. It should have meant bing time, after those COs wrote up what happened their way.
But it all changed fast.
The woman CO kept jawing with Shaky.
“You think you know who you are. I’ll teach you,” she said. “You’re a damn inmate.”
Shaky was all upset, and the spit was flying from his mouth. “No, I’ll teach you,” he said back. “Bitch!”
That’s when she just lost it.
She took the fire extinguisher from behind the desk and ran at him. I thought she was going to hit him over the head with it, but she turned it over and soaked him good instead.
Some dudes were rolling on the floor laughing, but others were burning mad.
Both Demarco and Mrs. Daniels were standing in the hall in front of their classrooms.
That woman CO knew she’d screwed up, and after a while she sent Shaky back to class. He sat there the rest of the morning, dripping wet.
When Carter got back, the teachers told him what happened.
He took that woman CO off to the side and had some quiet words with her.
Then I couldn’t believe what happened next.
Carter called Shaky out and said his partner wanted to talk to him.
“Look. I lost my head. I’m sorry,” she apologized.
Kids had never heard anything like that from a CO before and didn’t know what to make of it. Shaky was just glad not to get written up.
After lunch, Carter was on duty with Ms. Armstrong.
That woman CO came back and set Shaky up in the computer room with Chinese food
. He was sitting there like a king eating beef and broccoli.
The COs canceled computer class while he was in there and wouldn’t let anyone else in the room. Brick was wild that one of his crew had scored big and he couldn’t get his cut.
“That CO could lose her job over what she did,” said Demarco.
And Mrs. Daniels was trying to get the other teachers as witnesses against her.
Big Johnson came on duty at four, and you could tell from his walk that he was steamed over something. He swung his arms more than usual and dropped his shoulder like he would smack anything that moved.
Before we went to supper he deuced up both sides of the house at the front door. Sometimes when a CO wants to give a speech he has to wait for everyone to settle down. But no one was even thinking about making a sound with him in that kind of mood.
“The captain says this house looks like a pigsty!” snarled Johnson. “And if I got it figured right, that makes me a pig farmer! Now does anyone here want to explain to me how I turned from a corrections officer into a fuckin’ pig farmer in his eyes?”
Johnson fired half the house gang that does the cleaning and called the others “no good slackers.” Jersey kept his cleaning job but heard it from Johnson because the clothes he’d washed were still drying on the vents from last night.
“I’ll put this house on permanent burn if you slobs can’t get it clean,” threatened Johnson.
No house wants to lose its privileges. That means no commissary, no extra phone time, and no TV. It would be just jail and school.
After supper, on the way back to the house, Johnson lined us up outside the mess hall. Captain Montenez was standing off to the side. But some of the kids didn’t see him there and were horsing around.
This dude from the south side was standing five feet off the line, drinking a milk.
Johnson called his name and the dude mumbled, “Yes, sir,” without even taking his lips from the carton.
“Yes, son? You called me son?” raged Johnson.
Then Johnson ran up to that dude and smacked him across the mouth.
The dude was stunned. His mouth was hanging open and milk was dripping down his face like his mama had just popped him off her tit.
“So I’m your son now?” Johnson kept on. “Explain that.”
“I said sir,” the dude pleaded. “Not son. Sir.”
But Johnson didn’t want to hear it.
Then Captain Montenez stepped in and told the dude that there was no food allowed outside the mess hall. He said if the dude wasn’t drinking a milk in the wrong place, there wouldn’t have been a problem.
“Nice work,” Montenez told Johnson as he lit a cigarette. “Now if you can just keep that house clean, I’ll be satisfied.”
When we got back to the house, everyone was cleaning, not just the house gang. The COs took the antenna off the TV in the dayroom, so you knew they were serious. Kids were either mopping the floor or cleaning the bathroom with scrub brushes.
“I’ll pound the shit out of anyone who doesn’t pull his weight and gets us burned,” warned Brick.
He had the most to lose, because it would cut into his business big-time.
I was scrubbing sinks in the bathroom with Ritz.
There’s work you do in jail that you would never even think about doing at home. Mom and Grandma did work like that every week for my sisters and me. I never once helped them. But there I was, cleaning for Johnson so he could get himself a gold star.
All of a sudden, I heard jawing, and saw Barnett and Luis shoving Jersey around in the far end of the bathroom. I jumped up and went over before they screwed it up for everybody. I was surprised when Ritz followed behind me.
Then Brick walked in and we were all crowded together.
Everyone had a grip on a mop or a brush, except for Brick.
I could see by their faces that his goons didn’t like the numbers. They were used to better odds and waited for Brick to make a stand.
“So you’re their leader now? All up in my business!” Brick shouted at me.
It was just noise and no action. He had every chance to set it off and didn’t. Then Ms. Armstrong marched inside to see what was going on.
“Better drop those attitudes,” she demanded.
And we all went back to cleaning.
THURSDAY, JUNE 11
CHAPTER
23
On our way across the yard the next morning, a family of cats followed us to the school trailer. The teachers weren’t there, so we had to wait outside for them. They’d got caught up in an alarm in the main building and there wasn’t any movement through the jail. Miss Archer usually fed the cats in the morning before school, and they were waiting, too.
Families of cats live underneath the school trailers in the Sprungs, and most kids like having them around. The cats would stretch out in the sun on the hot concrete, like they owned the place. Seeing them made dudes think about their pets back home.
“My moms had to give my dog away ’cause there was no one to walk him,” some kid said. “That cuts to the heart.”
Sanchez said that whenever a cat died under the trailer, all the classrooms smelled like dead cat. It happened twice the month before, so the captain gave the order that they had to go and that nobody was allowed to feed them anymore. But that didn’t stop Miss Archer or the mess hall workers from putting out scraps. And I knew the only ones 100 percent happy to see the cats go would be the rats.
The teachers finally were escorted out to the Sprungs, and kids gave them a little cheer.
“Sometimes we’re locked down, too,” said Demarco, heading into the trailer ahead of us.
We’d lost most of our time with Demarco waiting outside. But he put a word puzzle on the board while he got all his things together.
“I’m not into school today, Demarco,” said some quiet kid from the south side. “I feel sick to my stomach.”
“Put your head down and rest awhile,” Demarco told him. “Maybe you’ll start to feel better.”
On Rikers, you can’t get out of school by being sick. When the house travels, the COs can’t leave you behind, because there’s no one left to watch you. Sick call isn’t until ten o’clock. Besides, you’d have to be bleeding or half dead before the COs sent you to the clinic. There’s just too much paperwork involved.
The pain I was feeling on the right side of my face was mostly down to a whisper. And I had to check myself from running my fingers over the scar, feeling for it all the time.
Kids asked Demarco why he stood in the hall while that woman CO beat on Shaky and didn’t do anything to stop it. They wanted to know if he was going to report her to the deputy warden, like Mrs. Daniels.
“I always want to be out there when something happens,” Demarco said, superserious. “Somewhere in the back of their minds, the COs know we’re watching and hold back. Teachers make good witnesses. That’s why the COs like it so much when we write you guys up. But Shaky’s still in one piece. So I’m not going to get crazy over this. If I did, the powers that run this place would find a way to ship me out. And I don’t know what kind of teacher would come to take my place.”
The principal shoved open the door, screaming at that sick kid Demarco told to put his head down, “You’ve got to be awake, young man! Get up right now or else! And you keep him awake, Mr. Costa! That’s your job!”
Demarco took a deep breath and turned away. Then all of a sudden he just blew.
“You don’t care what his problem is or what he’s about, do you?” popped Demarco.
“Mr. Costa,” she interrupted.
But Demarco kept right on going.
“All you know is that when his head’s down you don’t look good!” he hollered, chasing her back into the hallway.
The two of them disappeared into the teachers’ room making all kinds of noise. Dawson and Arrigo were laughing hysterical over it.
“I told you. This school shit is better than any soap opera on TV,” Dawson to
ld his partner.
There are lots of reasons an adolescent might sleep through the day on Rikers Island. He could be stressed about his case and the time that’s hanging over his head. He might have a problem with his family at home, or his girl, or his baby. A dude with a baby is always taking heat from his baby’s mom because she’s doing all the work while he’s locked down.
Some herbs are under so much pressure from thugs, they might even be afraid to sleep at night when the house is dark. So they do the Rip van Winkle during the day when it’s light and the COs can see more.
I couldn’t understand why the principal got so uptight about kids sleeping in class. It’s not like you could hold school on Rikers Island and make the jail part go away.
Ms. Jackson was black, but it was like she didn’t know anything about us. That’s why dudes called her “Ms. Jerk-off.” The black COs like Johnson and Ms. Armstrong were part of the system and had to play you for an inmate. But she was supposed to be there to help kids. Go figure.
“If we were out in the world, the principal would never act like that,” said Jersey. “Only with these cops to watch her back.”
“You don’t get it,” said Sanchez. “We’re not students to her, just inmates.”
Maybe that’s why Demarco didn’t get along with her. He saw us as people, and not total fuckups.
We were doing math with Miss Archer when a black staff member I hadn’t seen before called Sanchez out of the room. Other dudes wanted to go, too, and a couple of them even begged.
“You know what, I’m here for everybody,” said the man, without bending an inch to that pressure. “But right now it’s this young man’s turn. If there’s time today, I’ll be back for a few more.”
I was surprised when the COs let him and Sanchez walk right out of the trailer. Jersey told me the man’s name was Green, and that he was a guidance counselor, just like in a real high school.
“Mr. Green’s got an office in the next trailer,” said Jersey. “He’ll bless you and let you use the phone to call your family or lawyer. He done his own bid upstate, too, and tells kids what to expect when they get there.”