Rikers High

by Paul Volponi

  I found the sink that was under the hot water pipe.

  Some kid was scrubbing his socks and drawers there, and it was filled with black water. The pipe was all rusty, and I didn’t even think it could hold Sanchez. His weight might rip that pipe right out of the wall or break it clean in two. Then he’d flood the house in the middle of the night.

  The COs would kick his ass good as a going-away present over something big like that.

  I looked into one of the metal mirrors, thinking about how shook Sanchez must be to get himself into this shit. Like life in Bellevue was going to be some sort of dream. He should just sit his ass down on that bus and go upstate. How much worse than Rikers could it be?

  Then I studied my own face, and was ready to smack myself in the mouth for even thinking I had something to say.

  What did I know about anything?

  Dudes could pick up on how this place kicked my ass from a mile away.

  So what if people thought Sanchez tried to kill himself or that he was too scared to go upstate? All that could change or wear off when he got older.

  My mark was going to stay with me like a neon sign, blinking, RIKERS HERB! RIKERS PUNK! RIKERS THUG!

  Sanchez and Brick stuck close together for the rest of the afternoon, watching TV in the dayroom. They didn’t talk much at all. Brick was going over his accounts, and Sanchez was staring at the screen. It didn’t matter if the program or a commercial was on. Sanchez’s expression never changed. It was just cold and blank.

  At supper, Sanchez was sitting at a table in the front of the mess hall with Brick, and I couldn’t get close. But I saved my milk and orange for him. When we got back to the house I snuck them into his bucket. He might not eat for a while before they took him to Bellevue from the clinic. So I thought he should stuff himself tonight. I was probably the first reverse sneak thief that Rikers Island had ever seen.

  Sanchez got back to his bed and laid down.

  He saw what was at the top of his bucket and looked over at me.

  “What’d I do to deserve this?” he asked, as he grabbed for the orange and started peeling away the skin.

  “For all the help and info you gave me here,” I answered.

  After the outside peel was gone, he picked away at the stringy white threads on the outside. It took him almost five minutes to get that orange just right. But when Sanchez was finished, it was nothing but the fruit.

  “Here’s for all the times you listened to me,” he said, ripping the orange in half.

  We both took our time enjoying it.

  Then I emptied my bucket and put it halfway between our beds.

  We made a contest of trying to spit the seeds into it.

  Jersey saw us and got all pissed off.

  “You know the house gang’s gonna get blamed for your bad aim and have to clean up this mess,” Jersey said.

  Sanchez broke into a half-smile and told him, “That’s what the housemaids get paid for, son.”

  I felt better to think he wasn’t so tight, and could laugh a little.

  When it got late, Sanchez started to walk laps around the house. He would circle around the dayroom, past the beds and phones, and up to the officers’ station. Then he’d start all over again.

  He never once walked into the bathroom or even looked inside.

  It was almost lights-out, and he hadn’t even packed up.

  “What about all your stuff?” I asked, once he stood still.

  He just looked at it and said, “Later, for that shit.”

  It was the first time I ever saw Sanchez with a watch. He must have got it from Brick. That way they could all be organized. It wouldn’t be much of a plan if everybody was just guessing when to move.

  The COs got the house to bed and turned out the lights. It felt like my insides were starting to freeze up solid in the dark. And the waiting that night felt as long as my five months on the Island put together.

  THURSDAY, JUNE 18

  CHAPTER

  36

  After what felt like a couple of hours, I heard Officer Johnson cursing up front. His tour was over and he should have been gone by now. He’d probably got stuck doing overtime when another CO called in sick or something. And having Johnson around wasn’t good news if you were trying to run some kind of game in the house.

  I was lying flat on my stomach looking over at Sanchez. He had his back up against the pillow and his eyes wide open. Sanchez wasn’t even blinking much. But every time I closed my eyes, I saw him with a sheet around his neck hanging from that pipe, trying to call out for help. So I kept my eyes open, too, and wondered about the time.

  Soon Brick started making little throat-clearing noises, like he was ready to go. Sanchez never budged or even bothered looking at his watch. Then the dude from the midnight crew walked through and kicked the leg on Sanchez’s bed.

  None of it moved him.

  Sanchez sat there for a long time. Then he jumped out of bed all at once. He headed straight for the bathroom and disappeared inside. I figured it would take a while for him to set everything up. So I started counting Mississippis in my head. I was up to three hundred when the dude from the midnight crew walked into the bathroom. But he came right back out again, and I couldn’t figure out what was going on.

  I was worried about Sanchez and wanted to go rushing in there. I didn’t give a shit about their plan. I just wanted to make sure that he was okay.

  As many times as I ran it over in my head, I never got up because another side of me kept saying, He’s doing what he has to do.

  At five hundred Mississippi, the dude went back inside. The sound of my heart beating got louder with every number I counted off.

  Then, suddenly, that midnight suicide dude busted out screaming for the COs.

  “Help! COs! Help!” he yelled, with his voice running through me cold, like a ghost.

  It wasn’t the scream of a kid that was running some scam.

  It sounded too real, and out of control.

  I ran to the bathroom and got there with the COs and a bunch of other kids on my heels. I looked up and Sanchez was hanging from the pipe with the sheet wrapped tight around his neck. His face was horrible and twisted. He looked nothing like the kid I knew, and I would have sworn it was somebody else.

  I never saw a body in so much pain. And I almost heaved right there.

  Officer Johnson bulled his way through the bodies at the door.

  When he saw Sanchez hanging there he started hollering, “You idiot kid! Look what you fucking did! Look at what you fucking went and did!”

  The other COs pushed kids back outside and the alarm went off.

  But I just spun back around and stayed in the bathroom, close to the wall.

  I watched Johnson cut Sanchez down from the pipe and loosen the sheet around his neck. He put his fingers on Sanchez’s throat to feel for a pulse. Then he exploded, pounding his fist on the floor.

  “Damn you!” Johnson yelled. “Damn you!”

  Johnson hit the floor so hard he split one of the tiles in two.

  He saw me standing behind him and smacked me hard in the head.

  “You seen enough?” he hollered, with his voice echoing off the walls.

  Johnson wrapped one hand around my neck and dragged me out of the bathroom. He passed me off to another CO, and I got pushed into the dayroom with everyone else.

  My ears were ringing and I couldn’t stand.

  I just collapsed to the floor.

  Sanchez was gone.

  He wasn’t going upstate. He wasn’t going to the mental ward at Bellevue. And he was never going home again. It didn’t make any sense.

  Every CO in the Sprungs who wasn’t tied to a post rushed to our house. They had kids pinned down at tables in the dayroom. Then the Turtles showed up and rushed a doctor from the clinic straight into the bathroom.

  No matter how many COs watched us, they couldn’t stop kids from talking. Enough dudes had seen Sanchez hanging there that word spread quick.r />
  For all the bullshit we threw at each other on the Island, no one wanted to see another kid get hurt like that. And no one wanted to believe somebody could really die in the Sprungs. But when they wheeled Sanchez out with a clean white sheet over his head, they could have thrown a sheet over every bullshit threat that kids ever laid down out here, too.

  Right then, it seemed like no one wanted anything but peace. And all of a sudden, that dayroom became more like a church than a jail.

  Jersey and Ritz came over to where I was sitting on the floor.

  “Did you—see him in there?” stuttered Ritz.

  I couldn’t answer.

  They must have been able to tell I had from the look on my face, and didn’t ask again. They both sat there next to me, taking turns keeping a hand on my shoulder. And I appreciated that.

  Lots of kids had tears in their eyes. But I knew they were crying for more than Sanchez. They were crying for everything we ever did to each other on the streets and in the Sprungs. And they were crying because they were scared of what could happen to them on Rikers Island, too.

  I thought about that kid who’d cut me and how I wanted to slice him back. Then I thought about how Mom must have felt when she heard I got cut, and how his mother would feel if it happened to him.

  I just couldn’t get the sight of Sanchez hanging there out of my head. How his face was in so much pain.

  I knew that Sanchez’s mother was already dead. That would be one less mother getting a bad phone call and crying.

  Brick was sitting at a table trying to blend into the scenery. He looked more worried than upset. Kids were talking about what happened to Sanchez, and Brick was listening like it was all news to him. I always thought of Brick as just another jail thug running his bullshit games. But right then, I started to hate him with some real heart. Not because his whole fucked-up plan went wrong, but because he didn’t give two shits about Sanchez. Even when it all broke down to nothing, he only cared about himself.

  I wasn’t really sure if Sanchez had killed himself by mistake or not. Maybe something went wrong with the plan, or Sanchez just had enough of everything in his life. I knew that he was scared, and sometimes fear can push you too far.

  Unless the dude from the suicide watch came clean, everybody was going to think Sanchez went in there to kill himself, straight-up. The COs had that dude at the officers’ desk filling out reports. But I couldn’t see him sticking his own neck out for Sanchez now.

  I’d already made my choice not to tell Demarco. There was no going back on that. I knew that Sanchez got caught up in the traps and holes on Rikers Island, big-time.

  Maybe I did too by keeping my mouth shut.

  A couple of kids fell asleep in the dayroom. But most dudes just quit on sleeping that night. The COs didn’t let us go back to our beds until every last investigator and photographer had packed up.

  Most of the extra COs who got sent to our house that night were respectful. They saw right away that no one was going to wild out. Kids were too shook for that. So they talked to us.

  “It’s a shame what can happen,” said a CO I’d never laid eyes on before. “I got a son almost his age. This cuts deep.”

  I didn’t want to go back to my bed. I didn’t want to look over at Sanchez’s blanket and pillow anymore. I could see them from the dayroom, and that was close enough for now.

  Johnson was still doing paperwork on Sanchez when the morning tour of COs came on. All of them knew what had happened before they even got to the house. They either heard about it at the front gate or at roll call.

  I watched Ms. Armstrong walk across the yard through the windows of the emergency doors. She held her palm flat against her mouth the whole way.

  Dawson and Carter came in together. They were both acting stiff and did everything in slow motion that morning.

  After an hour or so, Dawson called me up front.

  “Forty, you slept next to Sanchez,” he said, handing me a plastic laundry bag. “You know what belonged to him. Pack it all up so they can send it to his family. I heard he had an aunt and uncle in the Bronx.”

  I was about to tell Dawson that I didn’t want any part of it, when Brick came up from behind me.

  “I can handle it,” Brick said, reaching out his hand.

  I spun around hard, tightening my grip on the bag. Then I walked right through Brick’s shoulder to the beds. I wasn’t about to let him go through any of it.

  Sanchez’s bed and bucket were just like he’d left them.

  No one was going to sneak-thief from a kid who’d just died.

  But I couldn’t stand his bed being all messed up. It was like he was coming back from the bathroom to fix it. I even touched his sheet, thinking it might still be warm.

  Only it was cold.

  I took a deep breath and started to make his bed before I did any of the packing. I took my time with it until all the corners came out even.

  I folded Sanchez’s clothes and put them into the bag. I didn’t know what to do with the leftover food in his bucket, so I started in on his books.

  Brick came over and stuck his hand in the bucket. He grabbed the milk I gave Sanchez the night before.

  “You can’t pack this. It’ll go bad,” he said, opening it.

  I just flipped. I hit that bastard dead square in the chest, and he went straight down.

  The COs came charging over and I backed away.

  They didn’t lay a hand on me. But Dawson grabbed Brick around the collar and threw him on the wall.

  “I told Forty to pack that boy’s shit,” said Dawson. “What were you doin’ over there? Huh? You got an answer for that? You were doin’ business, right? You little grave robber!”

  Jersey and Ritz were both giving me the thumbs-up for belting Brick, but I didn’t want to get caught up in that. I just went back to packing Sanchez’s things.

  Ms. Armstrong pulled a chair over to where Brick was holding up the wall. She gave him a speech that lasted the whole time he was there.

  “Maybe you heard the words do unto others, but they just passed right through your ears,” she started out.

  Kids were tuned into that and started running Brick down, too.

  I didn’t think we were going to make it to school that morning. We were already a couple of hours late and it was the last day of classes.

  Dawson said we were going over anyway.

  “The teachers and the guidance counselor want to talk about last night,” he said.

  Carter called us to our beds to take the count.

  The numbers began to build up slow and I could feel it coming. By the time we hit the thirties, I was holding onto myself tight from the inside.

  The kid two beds down said, “thirty-eight.”

  Then I called out “forty,” without any break in between.

  CHAPTER

  37

  Demarco met us at the door to our class. His eyes were swollen, and I could tell he’d been crying. The chairs were in a circle in the middle of the room. I was glad because I didn’t have to think about sitting next to Sanchez’s empty seat.

  The guidance counselor, Mr. Green, was going into rooms and talking to the different classes. But for now, it was just us and Demarco.

  “Does anybody want to talk about what they’re feeling?” Demarco asked.

  Most kids just said it was a shame what happened. They talked about how Sanchez never bothered anybody, and how kids thought he was okay.

  I didn’t want to say anything out loud. I was afraid that I would have screamed out about how much I really knew.

  Lots of kids were getting up to use the bathroom. I got in line, too. No one had wanted to use the one back at the house because of Sanchez. But that had to wear off sooner or later. This was the last day of school, and kids on the north side couldn’t hold out from moving their bowels through the summer.

  The bathroom in the school trailer is about the size of a closet and has only one toilet. You’re in there by yoursel
f, but after two minutes the CO will bang on the door to keep the line moving. I took as much time as I could get, and kept pushing until I felt empty. I was hoping that I could last until the pens tomorrow morning. I didn’t think I could ever step inside the bathroom in the house again without seeing Sanchez hanging there.

  When I got back to the classroom, Demarco had Sanchez’s folder out on his desk.

  “Are you all right, Martin?” he asked.

  I nodded my head, and deep inside it felt good to hear someone call me by my name.

  Then Demarco and me looked through the folder together.

  Sanchez’s copy of his GED diploma was right on top.

  You need a score of 225 to pass. He’d got a 285, making it by plenty. But I guess you could be pretty smart and still get caught up in dumb shit, too.

  Carter came in with the guidance counselor, and I was surprised when Carter wanted to talk first. He stepped to the middle of the room and cleared his throat.

  “Let me say this,” Carter began with his voice cracking. “I know a lot of you think that COs are a bunch of monsters. Right or wrong, sometimes we think the same about you. But what happened to Sanchez last night is bigger than all of that crap. We’re here to protect you. I got two kids myself. And I wouldn’t want to get a call that something like that happened to one of them. The counselor and teachers are here so you can talk. But remember, this badge doesn’t make us monsters. I want you to know that you can talk to the officers in this house, too.”

  That was the first time I ever saw Carter be real, and not a freaked-out robot. Carter introduced Mr. Green, and he then took a seat with the rest of us.

  Green told us about his bid upstate and how he’d seen lots of fucked-up things like what happened to Sanchez.

  “You’ve got to focus yourself on what’s ahead. You can either be sad or angry over something like this. You can feel anything you want to feel about it. But you have to stay focused on what’s ahead of you. You have to keep it right for you, and your family,” Green said.

  I could see why Sanchez liked him so much and didn’t want to let him down. Green wasn’t about any kind of bullshit. He looked kids straight in the eye. And I swear he never once gave the scar on my face a second look.