Running the Books

by Avi Steinberg

  Perhaps, like creating a mosque, or using books as mailboxes, this was one of the unique improvisational properties of a library in prison: a space in which to reconnect, in some way, a mother and son.

  When Jessica showed up to class again, I adjusted the seats so that the group was situated closer to the windows, and Jessica seated strategically. As the session went on, she gazed down eleven stories, watching her son walk circuits around the prison yard, shoot hoops, crack jokes with the officers. She kept her end of the agreement, humoring my assignments and bringing her attention into the discussion.

  I rolled with the window-gazing concept, even integrating it into the class. I asked the women to observe and describe the view through the window. A similar assignment had previously borne some fruit with the men, when I had asked them to describe the scene through their cell windows. With a painterly eye for detail (the single perk of being a jilted lover) one inmate described a crushing scene. It was a late afternoon in February. The city was enveloped in a bright white cloud. It was beginning to snow. Big, succulent, slow-drifting flakes. It must have been at just the freezing point. From his cell window, which faced the front of the prison, he saw his woman, who had just brought their five-year-old son to visit. Her new boyfriend walked with her and the boy. They stopped momentarily. She said something to the new boyfriend. He leaned over, unzipped the purse she was holding, and pulled out a scarf for her. A scarf that he, the inmate watching this, had given her. Then the new boyfriend combed back her hair with his fingers, wrapped the scarf around her neck, and zipped up the purse. The three of them walked away. Witnessing this tiny moment of intimacy destroyed him, he said. He cried, he confessed, “like a little bitch.”

  Jessica dutifully described her view through the window. The pigeons, the seagulls, the tiny birds whose fearlessness she admired. (Sometimes too fearless for their own good.) She described the sky, the moon, the clouds. Anything but her son in the yard below.

  Short said she “wasn’t in no mood” to look out the window. This was not uncommon. Inmates were often ambivalent about windows facing the world. Window gazing in prison is not neutral. From up in the Tower, one could see not only the yard but the world beyond prison, the city’s buildings, and even some details from the city streets. It was just too tantalizing to be reminded of what you couldn’t have. In the library, Pitts had told me he was happy to have a cell window that faced the yard. He didn’t want to look at the world while he was in prison.

  And then there was Tanisha, a nineteen-year-old gang member and library regular. A window view inspired her to begin writing a book. It happened during her first week in prison. From her cell window in the prison tower she could see her entire neighborhood in the distance. She’d never had a bird’s-eye view of it. But there it was—the whole picture, her entire life framed in a single window. A prison window. Perhaps it was the sudden experience of objectivity, of seeing the familiar places of her life at once—the churches, the corners where she used to hang out, the high school where she’d nearly graduated, the houses of friends and enemies, streets where she’d witnessed shootings, the building in which her mother, a homeless addict, once showed up to buy drugs from her, unaware that this particular drug operation belonged to her own teenaged daughter. Seeing everything suddenly small and silent. Something about this new vantage point, this literal new perspective, made her life and those places seem like a story—and she, standing in that tower, its narrator. After seeing her neighborhood from up there, she told me, she’d immediately opened up a notebook and didn’t stop writing until lights out. Four hours straight. And then every day since.

  In one of her window-gazing assignments, Poor noted that the prison looked like a hotel. Sometimes she liked to imagine that she was on a trip, staying in a nice hotel, waiting for room service, like in the movies. She’d never actually stayed in one. I was amazed at how many different perspectives could be brought out of one prison window.

  As an introduction to these assignments we read Plato’s Allegory of the Cave from The Republic. Socrates imagines the world as a cave and all its human inhabitants as chained prisoners who “see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave.” These prisoners’ view of reality is fundamentally skewed, and yet they cannot realize it. In class, we discussed this problem not as a general allegory but more literally, as a description of actual prison life. It wasn’t hard for the prisoners in my class to relate to the problem. They lived their lives right on the edge of the “seeing problem,” as one of them described it.

  And yet, this prison did have a few windows. The window writing assignments turned out to be an addendum to Plato’s seeing problem: that, given a window, a person’s sense of sight might actually be heightened in captivity. That’s why some inmates refused to look. But those who did tended to see the world more vividly, and certainly differently, than a visitor to the prison.

  All of this served only to increase my curiosity about what Jessica was seeing.

  So I asked her. It happened one afternoon after class. I was reluctant to quiz her on it but she seemed to want to talk. We stood in front of the window. She pointed her son out to me. He was playing basketball. I asked how she knew it was really him. She had friends on the outside who knew the boy, she said. They’d told her he’d be showing up in prison.

  She didn’t write about him for class, she told me, because she didn’t trust the other women to “check their mouths.” But she was happy to tell me. He hadn’t changed at all. He’d been a happy child, friendly, physically precocious, affectionate, mischievous. Just from watching him in the yard, she could still see all of these qualities on display: the way he talked and laughed with the others. People seemed to like him. She’d always known he’d grow up to be that kind of guy. And he was so handsome. She choked up a bit. She thanked God that he was still a happy person after all he’d been through. She didn’t want him to end up like her, in prison forever. That was all she could say. She cried.

  And then, in a brutal, self-lacerating gesture, she swallowed up her emotions. There was something else she wanted to say. She dreamed about him. “In the dream,” she told me, “he’s playing basketball in the prison yard.”

  There is no one else there. He may or may not be wearing a prison uniform. It is a peaceful scene. The boy is in no rush. There is an indefinable sense of his somehow existing happily in this place. He glides in long, savory motions, as though skating gently over a frozen pond. The light is purplish and lush. He dribbles the basketball, fakes out invisible opponents, makes shots, misses shots, collects his own rebounds, leaps up—as though floating for a moment—and gently tips the ball into the hoop. It’s like a dance. His body is pure joyful movement, unconstrained. The ball itself seems to move of its own volition, floats into and through his hands, weightless. The sound is the boy breathing, the ball bouncing, a satisfying rhythm. Inhale. Ball to pavement. Exhale. Ball to pavement. A deep humming silence as the ball arcs through darkness. And as the ball meets the net, a swoosh, like wind in trees. She hears it, feels it pass through her lips. His breath is her breath.

  That shared breathing sensation is familiar to her from dreams she’d had when she was pregnant with him, she said. Until now, she’d forgotten about those dreams. Every night she goes to sleep and prays that God will send her the breathing dream. Sometimes he does.

  Skywriting

  Kites continued falling out of library books, bringing me messages almost by the hour. Eavesdropped bits. The occasional saga. Commentary on the latest prison incidents, geopolitical events. The notes also continued to fill gaps in my knowledge of prison culture.

  Skywriting, for example. Starting from my first week in prison, I’d noticed the phenomenon, though I wasn’t sure what it was. As I walked through the prison yard, I’d spied male inmates standing at their barred windows, furiously signaling skyward. The signals involved large sweeping hand motions—formal, almost nautical—that
I later learned were letters scripted backward. I followed the invisible trajectory of these messages and found their recipients standing in barred windows way up in the Tower—the women inmates. Through the silent darkness of the prison night, there were at least five conversations soaring back and forth. This was skywriting, sometimes known as window-writing. Along with gambling, fighting, basketball, chess, and sending kites, it was the biggest prison pastime.

  As with kites, the word skywriting had a poetic sound to it. Indeed the word sometimes appeared in inmate poetry. One of Nasty’s haikus:

  cell in late winter

  skywriting to skinny dude

  darkness in the yard

  That darkness in the yard, together with backlighting from the cells, made skywriting a dramatic spectator sport. Or perhaps more like a puppet show or silent movie. It was a dialect as mesmerizing to observe as sign language. I often recognized the skywriters. But they rarely noticed me. Too busy reading the signals and responding, which, I was told, takes a great deal of concentration. Though aware of the existence of skywriting—anyone working the night shift would be—I could only guess what was being said.

  That’s where the kites helped. They were full of references to these nightly window dramas. As I learned by reading the kites, these airborne conversations were full of passionate promises, jealousies, quarrels, and reconciliations. From the earliest inklings of courtship to the bitter residue of breakups.

  Lady Dee to Bill, says: “Well let me say yes I was upset cause I thought you was writing someone else at the window, but who am I to get upset cause we’re just friends.”

  Another woman to Papa Duck: “One of my celly’s just told me you were sky writing her in May, so know one thing my friend, I’m on to you Mr. Loyal!” In case her point hadn’t been clear enough, she concludes, “Stay the fuck out the windows, I know everyone here.”

  A woman of conflicted emotions: “You are so sweet to me I love you baby. Why are you talking smack in the window. I’ll bite ya dick off, don’t play.”

  Mario to T-Baby: “I did see you in the window last night (Sunday July 23) again getting your flirt on. Why? Daddy ain’t enough for you!!! You act as though I’m second hand smoke. Please check my pedigree. For the last time, I’m a thoroughbred. Well I trust & demand you got the message and the dumb shit stops now. I know your window. It’s the busiest window upstairs. You obviously ain’t writing me because you ain’t sure what cell window is mines yet or if it’s me you’ve made contact with. And if you did notice me last week you couldn’t understand me or I couldn’t understand you because I’m new to this shit and honestly if it weren’t you upstairs I wouldn’t play myself out with this window writing bullshit!! My window writing skills suck so we must go slow and be patient with eachother until we get better. On Wednesday, we have a window date. Be there! Fuck who’s outside in the yard!;) Post up in your cell window. When I see you I’m gonna click my lights five times (5) and then shape two hearts. Wait for you to do the same back to me (5 clicks, 2 hearts). Feel me! Then to be exactly sure it’s us and to throw off any possible pranksters & haters who may be playing the window after you signal me back I’ll do two more clicks and one more heart and wait for you to do the same (2 clicks, 1 heart) and then you’ll be sure it’s me and we can start to show love.”

  A lady: “I like putting on a show for you, but I hope you know I ain’t just a show, daddy.”

  Killa Kim, who is actually a killer, reflecting on a past window love: “I really did fall for him hard. But I couldn’t stay out of the window forever.”

  On page 9 of his letter, one of Killa Kim’s numerous pen pals indulges in some window nostalgia: “I’m thinking about the closeness we share and all the good times we’ve spent in the window.”

  Shaheed: “Please don’t deny that you ain’t been in the window talkin please. I was in the yard waiting and I KNEW you were there in the window looking. Now, any other time you’d be there signaling your ass off, but today nothing. But you know what, I understand, your friend may get mad. It’s cool.”

  Lauren to Baby Boy: “If you sit on the last bench near the 4 bldg. gate I can see you. I’m the second window from your left when you look up at the towers.”

  A pimp: “I ain’t with that window writing shit, leave that for those niggas who got nothing better to do.”

  Iyssyss to Big Willy, on a change of address: “Oh, and babe, just to let you know I moved out of the window. I am in the brown unit now. 1-11-1. So, holla!”

  Again, Shaheed: “Anyhow baby how can you question my fidelity? Don’t you know I ain’t studdin none of those women in the window. So they telling you I’m saying ‘let me c’? See what?! They out of shape asses need to stop. It ain’t nothing to ‘c’. Like I told you already, they envy what we got. They don’t understand or comprehend how what we have is very real. It ain’t window talk & just something to do.”

  A worried woman: “I guess this will give us time to work on ourselves cause God knows I was real busy in the window! I might lose my child to DSS for crissakes. I need to get my head together.”

  K*Shine to Lady D: “You just opened up to me on Sunday the day we was dancing in the window.”

  Killa Kim on evolutionary selection in skywriting: “He wasn’t good at skywriting. I couldn’t understand a word he said. He’s not as good at it as you daddy.”

  Prison Windows: A Short History

  Like everything in prison, window-gazing has a long history. In the old days, prisons were designed to bring the attention of inmates toward a focus in the yard. Based on the design of monasteries, some eighteenth-century prisons placed an altar or a chapel at the center of the yard. Some prison cells had no windows at all, only a long shaft that blocked out everything from view—everything but the altar.

  This was intended as an object lesson: criminals are alone in the world, cut off in the dark cell of their sin. But not completely. The way of God and repentance was represented literally as the single tunnel out, the sole source of light. This was also intended to remind these sinners that God, in turn, was still watching them. As far as a prisoner in one of these cells could see, God—or the Church—was the only thing that still existed in the outside world.

  In later prisons, a governor’s house or some creepy all-seeing eye—a guard booth—was placed in the yard. This was both a security measure and a reminder to the inmate that a dread sovereign stood over him, that this ever-present ruler watched him, that he could be free if, and only if, he’d bend to the ruler’s laws. These concrete symbols of God or the State and, in some cases, both, were placed directly at the focal point of the prison. These prisons had clearly delineated visual centers.

  At the prison where I worked, which was typical of the modern American prison, the center of the yard was anchored neither by an altar, a governor’s residence, or a guard booth. Instead, there was a basketball court.

  It wasn’t clear what this was supposed to symbolize. Or, in what direction it was meant to turn the mind of an inmate. Perhaps it was an example of moral neutrality: the prison’s job is not to offer any object lesson nor to impose any sense of dread, but only to allow you to stay healthy while in custody. Or perhaps it was a sign of the modern prison’s identity crisis—it doesn’t know what its job is. It has no core. Or perhaps the basketball court was not intended to arouse any feeling, but the opposite: to lull, to distract.

  The basketball court at the center of the prison yard struck me as a failure of imagination. But for some inmates, this wasn’t so. These courts were, after all, their Nature. Their only earth and sky. The place where seasons were observed, if not quite experienced. By default, the prison basketball court figured into the imagination of some inmates, and often appeared in writings and drawings. For Ming, a recent addition to the inmate library staff, the court was a recurring image in his poetry. Most notably in his poem Sightseeing:

  The sightseers in us like the way

  the rain or sun keeps coming down—

>   outside the alarm-rigged windows, the pigeons

  will not fly, and without their uniforms on

  briefly my fellow convicts leap toward

  the hoop, crowned by rings of sweat,

  the heated plumes of youth unfurling

  at gunpoint.

  But it was Jessica, and her vivid godsent dreams, who had the most immediate stake in the imaginative properties of the prison basketball court. Her prison was built around a focal point; her prison yard had a definite center. From a window in the prison tower she beheld not a symbol of the Church, but a son. Her lost son. An altar would have been superfluous.

  Sabbath Children

  During my supper break, I take a walk outside. I brave the sallyport, the heavy security doors, and make my way to the front of the prison. It is a chilly Friday night. The sun, like all day-shifters, rushes toward night. Even though I don’t observe the Sabbath, this remains a spiritually charged moment, when workaday concerns vanish, when the vicious voices and petty falsehoods of the week glide away, and a divine breath drifts over the world, caressing all of creation. If one is tranquil enough, one will feel it. Even in my skepticism I can’t deny it. I still make a habit of being outside to receive it.

  I cross the treacherous highway interchange. An ambulance wails helplessly in traffic—it is stuck behind a hearse. Some drivers think this is funny. Some don’t. I walk past the Boston Medical Center and into the South End, a rough Boston neighborhood that continues to gentrify. By day, the park on Washington Street is full of nannies pushing fertility-treatment twins and triplets. In the evening, children are attended by parents. By night, the park is given over to fiends and hookers.

  I arrive at dusk. The park is full of young families. A pack of neighborhood hipsters—whose clothing lends them the look of nineteenth century circus performers—loiter by the gate.