Running the Books

by Avi Steinberg

  Now here they all were, the entire gray ensemble, standing in the expanse of the prison yard, exposed to all. The curtain dramatically lifted. They were poised to play the most charged game of basketball since the infamous 1972 U.S.-USSR Olympic gold medal match. Under the heavy glare of the yard’s stadium lights, it almost seemed as though that were the purpose: to place these men on center stage.

  I looked behind me at the giant wall of cell windows, and up at the women’s tower. Out of habit, my eye tended toward the eleventh floor, to the window from which Jessica used to watch her son in the yard. Jessica’s window, a classroom window, was now dark. It belonged to the world of the daytime, to the concerns of business hours—but now it was night, afterhours.

  The inmates’ personal cell windows were all lit. Each had a silhouette or two or three in it. In the windows closer to the ground, it was easier to see the inmates pointing, laughing, glaring, watching with curiosity. Within a few minutes, word was out over the entire prison. Every inmate with a yard-facing cell, man and woman, was now standing at his or her window. The galleries were packed full. Inmates who didn’t have a view would get detailed reports later. The PC inmates down in the prison yard could see plainly that they were being watched, discussed, reviewed, mocked.

  This was a peculiarity of prison architecture. The late-eighteenth-century prison of Santo Stefano, near Naples, Italy, was constructed in a multitiered horseshoe shape, an architectural scheme borrowed directly from the theaters of that period. But that blueprint was only the most obvious example of a general phenomenon: Prisons are designed for optimal viewing, a security imperative that occasionally produces accidental live theater performances.

  And this was one. It was a rare example of a collective experience in prison. The inmate general population, as one, was viewing a prison freak show under the blazing stadium lights, a spectacle that probably allowed them, as the audience, to feel less like freaks themselves.

  As the painfully awkward basketball game commenced, I made my way along the edge of the yard—the last sight I caught, looking back over my shoulder, was a group of inmates in the 3-1 Unit, standing in a cell window literally falling on each other in laughter. This wasn’t like Jessica, whose window gazing was an intensely private experience—and one that further locked her into her own loneliness. The PC freak show was something else. It was a cruel bonding experience for the inmate majority. A unique opportunity for inmates to look out of prison windows and feel better about their lot.

  The prison’s queers, the Brians and the Katys, are given the option to join this stage show. Or to be in the audience.

  The next day I decided to put a Princess Di biography, and other more directly gay books, on prominent display. My friend and coworker, Mary Beth, had told me of an inmate from 1-2-1 who had fashioned a skirt out of a towel during count time and pranced around like Josephine Baker, batting his eyes, pursing his lips, sidling up to inmates and officers alike. Everyone thought this was a hilarious act.

  Later, when this young man came down to the library, I told him that news of his antics had made the rounds. I asked him if he was a performer.

  “Nah, man, it was just a joke, you know to keep things light,” he smiled.

  Uninterested in my new display, he checked out an old battered copy of The Shining by Stephen King. Then he winked at me and went on his way.

  The Narrow Place

  One of the oddest people I met, the one who least fit in, was the most familiar. I first met Josh Schrieber during the library’s 3:30 period, one wet and overcast afternoon. In our constant effort to lure inmates to the library we were screening Superman II.

  I noticed him immediately. He had the appearance and demeanor that my grandmother would approvingly call eidel, Yiddish for gentle. A trim and gregarious twentysomething, boyishly handsome, close-cropped curly brown hair, and plastic-framed glasses. He reminded me of every boy from my yeshivas and Orthodox summer camps. In fact, he bore such a close resemblance to a certain kid from my yeshiva high school, in nearby Brookline, I wondered if perhaps they were related. It wasn’t every day that a guy who looked like Josh Schrieber walked into the library. I was intrigued.

  When the period ended and the inmates came to the front desk to collect their IDs, I couldn’t help myself.

  “Hey,” I said, taking a look at his ID. “You know what Superman is really about?”

  He smiled and shook his head.

  “It was created by two Jewish guys from Cleveland. It’s about how even a skinny neurotic with glasses can be a total badass sometimes. You with me on this one, Schrieber?” I said as I handed him his ID.

  “Yeah, I’m with you.”

  It wasn’t the right thing to say. I’d outted him. I shouldn’t have said it in front of the other inmates. It had made him wince.

  Later I asked Mary Beth, who worked in the prison’s Offender Reentry Program, which was based in Schrieber’s unit, “So who’s the Jewboy in 1-2-1?”

  She knew exactly who I was talking about and briefed me on his background. From the western suburbs. Into some bad stuff. Heroin. He was in for larcenies and breaking and entry, common charges for cash-strapped addicts. Within the month he would be wrapping up his bid to the streets, meaning he was being released, on probation, but left to his own devices. No halfway house or sober home.

  She told me that he was a very friendly kid who got along well with everyone. A bit too well. Desperately eager to please, Schrieber carried out every order with conspicuous diligence. Never lingered when told to lock-in, never gave anyone any problems. Seizing on Schrieber’s obedience—and sensing that he was different and without allies—a certain officer, had decided to take advantage of the situation.

  In the presence of his fellow inmates, the officer had deputized Schrieber, bestowing on him the dubious honor of serving as the officer’s sidekick. This meant doing tasks—tasks that were the job of the officer alone—such as summoning inmates from their cells, even aiding with lockdowns. Schrieber was caught in a no-win situation. He was too cowed to defy the officer. But, by following these particular orders, he was severely compromised among fellow inmates who could turn violent on him.

  He’d been tenuously accepted by the white guys in his unit. By these semi-friends, he was routinely called, “the Jew,” to remind him of his place. He wasn’t a total pushover, but he also wasn’t an Italian or Irish tough guy from the inner city. He was permitted entrance as a guest, but only by his strained effort to pass. Now, with his new deputy honor, he’d be officially isolated, and put in danger. Everyone would assume that Schrieber was not only a Jew lackey but a snitch.

  This was the last thing Schrieber needed. He could get severely beaten or stabbed; once he hit the street it could mean getting shot. Indeed, it wasn’t long before a fellow inmate turned hostile on him. He and the other inmate had to be separated to avoid a battle. His list of enemies, which is officially called “the keep separate from” list, was five names long, a high number.

  I felt bad for Schrieber. He needed some allies. The next time I visited the 1-2-1 unit, I called on him. He seemed surprised to see me out of the library. I introduced myself.

  “I hear you’re a brutha,” I whispered.

  He smiled. “Yeah,” he said.

  I told him about my background, that I had been raised Orthodox and attended yeshiva in Israel. I told him that it was a good idea to roll with the Irish and Italian guys, but if he ever wanted to keep it real, he should come to the library some time and talk. I added the infamous Jewish nudge: “No pressure.”

  We agreed to meet. He seemed genuinely interested—though, of course, he was a pleaser.

  But before we had a chance, he was released. I happened to have been passing through the prison’s front lobby at the moment he was walking out to freedom. He was dressed in his street clothes, a sweater and jeans and a black leather jacket. We chatted for a moment. I wished him good luck. Just then, his ride showed up.

  I knew this g
uy. He was a former inmate from 1-2-1, a junkie who used to steal newspapers from the library. It had been a running joke with him (I found it less funny). In the lobby he gave me a big, toothless grin. “Hey, Avi, got any Revere Journals fa’ me?” he asked.

  “Nothing changes, hey Hescock?” I replied.

  It was all perfectly clear to me. Schrieber, despite what he had told Mary Beth and his mentors in the reentry program, was on his way to get high with his old buddy from 1-2-1. A little junk to celebrate getting out of the joint. I wanted to shake him. But instead I leaned in and said, “Avoid bad friends, it’s the only way, Josh. Or you’re going to end up dead—or, if you’re lucky, back in this shithole.”

  I would never have spoken this frankly to an inmate when I first started my job. At this point, however, I felt not only able, but responsible to say such things. I’d officially turned into a tough-love prison-mentor type. He looked down at the floor. And that was it. He and Hescock went out together into the darkness.

  Schrieber got lucky. A month later, he was back in prison. I was frankly surprised it took that long. That week, I visited him and arranged a meeting. He wanted to study Jewish texts, he said. He started with a question.

  Why does the Jewish tradition require mourners to cover the mirrors in their house during the shiva?

  A random query, but an interesting one. As a yeshiva-boy-cum-obituary-writer, I felt uniquely qualified to answer it. It is a strange custom and there was no obvious answer. I told him that there were undoubtedly some deep-seated folk fears regarding mirror images—especially in a house of mourning, which already has ghosts swirling around it. Mirrors exacerbate these anxieties.

  But there was also a more directly psychological reason: to focus the attention of the mourners away from the world of appearances and into their thoughts, their memories, their souls, their mortality. They are not to concern themselves with the mundane during the shiva. Every worldly issue is handled by a friend. For seven days they inhabit an internal space and need not be concerned with their hair looking perfect. Or if their ass is too big.

  Schrieber asked about the Passover Seder, which was imminent. I told him that to understand what leaving Egypt means to Jews, you have to know what the word Egypt means. In Hebrew it’s Mitzrayim, which the rabbis interpreted, as usual, through a pun: it means the Narrow Space (meitzar). It’s not a specific country that existed in the Iron Age or a historical event that may or (more likely) may not have happened. It’s a state of mind.

  “You know what I’m talking about, right?” I asked Josh. “The Narrow Space: You know all about it. It’s a very hard thing to break out of. It’s as hard as a miracle. But it can be done.”

  Ever since he was a kid, Josh told me, he had identified with the legendary second-century sage, Rabbi Akiva, particularly the story of the great rabbi’s dramatic martyrdom.

  This startled me. I’m not a shrink, but when an imprisoned heroin addict tells you that his hero in life is a righteous man who was arrested and thrown in prison, where his skin was flayed (meaning, peeled off layer by layer using red-hot irons), one gets to wondering. What did Josh see in a man who refused to renounce his God even as he underwent torture?

  Surely having a Rabbi Akiva–complex might be a sign that a person expects, perhaps hopes, to die soon. Considered alongside his question regarding mirrors in the house of mourning, it was all grimly revealing. This was a man, aged twenty-nine, deliberating over his own imminent death.

  Something about Schrieber really got me. I felt a strong urge to watch out for him. A part of me felt guilty for these feelings. Why should Schrieber elicit any more sympathy than any other inmate? He, of all inmates, was lucky. Although deeply mired in addiction, he did have a loving family who cared for him. He spoke of them often. He had role models, knew what a stable life looked like. He wasn’t an orphan of the streets like so many other inmates.

  But I couldn’t help it. We were roughly the same age. His sister and mine shared the same unusual Hebrew name. He grew up in a suburban community like mine, with the same expectations. The accent, the humor, the cultural references, the hangups were very familiar to me.

  But there was something else about Josh that gave me pause. At my friend’s wedding roughly two years earlier, my run-in with Rabbi Blumenthal had inspired me, half in jest, to consult the prophets regarding my decision to work in prison. It had occurred to me that many of the prophets were either criminals, or prisoners, or had spent time among criminals. It had seemed mysteriously significant.

  Now, I couldn’t help but wonder if it was related to this uncomfortable familiarity I felt with Josh. The prophets crossed the boundary into the realm of the criminal not to comfort themselves by discovering the essential humanity of the criminal—in that Hollywood way of ennobling the prisoner, of dramatizing how they’re just like us—but rather to unveil the essential criminal in the human. To expose a darker truth: We’re just like them. When the prophets crossed over, they discovered just how familiar it looked, how much it resembled the world of the supposedly upright.

  Wasn’t this the unsettling truth behind the theater spectacle that night in the prison yard? The prison mainstream got more than mere cruel pleasure in watching their own outcasts from the Protective Custody unit dramatically exposed under the lights; it allowed them to feel self-righteous. To feel less like outcasts themselves. Even criminals look for ways to conveniently distance themselves from criminals. When I looked at Josh, his face, his life, I wasn’t able to conveniently distance myself.

  Josh told me that he had been the quintessential “good Jewish boy.” Everyone had loved him, all the community ladies wanted to set up their daughters with him. “I was a good catch,” he said with a little laugh. The one problem: his secret hobby. Once he tried heroin in college, that was it. For a while he led a double life.

  “At first,” he said, “I was a put-together college guy. I was dating this great girl. A beautiful girl.”

  She’d had no idea that he was a dope fiend, until one night, when his secret spilled out. Literally. On a date, he excused himself to the bathroom, for a quick, surreptitious shooting session. Upon returning to the table, the girl stared at him as though she were beholding the devil. Her expression terrified him—recalling it still spooked him. This was his nightmare: to be recognized, exposed. He looked down and saw blood trickling out of the puncture wound on his arm. Right there, at the table.

  That night, he lost more than the girl. The shame of that experience threw him into a crisis. “It changed everything,” he told me. From then on, he no longer saw himself as Josh, from the Schrieber family, son, grandchild, friend, neighbor.

  “When I made that decision,” he said, “that I was no longer a part of that community, that I had let everyone down so fuckin’ hard, that I literally wasn’t that person they thought I was. That this was who I was. Who I really was: I wasn’t Josh, I was a fuckin’ dope fiend. When I made that decision, it was over. I became that person completely. I went from living a relatively normal life to fuckin’ living in abandoned buildings downtown. Within one week, Avi.”

  He was crying now.

  “Josh,” I said, “it’s true that you made that decision then, but listen to what you said: You made a decision. That means you have the power to make decisions. And that you can make other decisions now.”

  I wasn’t sure whether this was a helpful or really idiotic thing to say.

  Josh suddenly bolted up with an odd, slightly terrifying, fake smile plastered on his face.

  “Hey,” he said, adopting an upbeat, sporting tone, “did you see what Francona said yesterday?”

  He was referring to Red Sox manager, Terry Francona.

  “Um, no,” I replied. “What did Francona say?”

  “Ah, man,” he said. “It was hilarious.”

  He launched into a manic monologue about all the wild shenanigans happening in the world of the Red Sox. He was all smiles now, spinning anecdotes and jokes, peppering his
stories with commentary. Soon he was telling me about this crazy girl he once knew … He went on, breathlessly, until we were safely miles and an ocean away from our previous conversation. He simply didn’t want to talk about his reality. Perhaps he thought I was preaching to him. Perhaps he was right.

  As he walked out of the library that day, after successfully filibustering our conversation, he told me he wanted to apologize for abruptly and weirdly changing the subject. That he would like to continue “that conversation.”

  “Really?” I asked. “You don’t have to, if you don’t want to. And you don’t have to apologize.”

  I wasn’t good at the tough-love mentor thing; I considered giving it a rest. Giving us both an out. But this time, he persisted.

  “No, I’m serious, I really want to. You’ll be like my rabbi here.” He said this with a wink.

  I have to admit, this comment left a vomitty zing in my mouth. A rabbi was the last thing I wanted to be. He knew this. I’d told him as much. That’s why he’d said it. A little revenge for making him cry.

  As I stood momentarily locked in the sallyport—I was going to my parents’ Passover Seder—I considered what the rabbis said about the holiday: that when you recount the story of the Jews’ exodus from Egypt, you must feel as though you yourself made that journey. You must tell their story as if it had literally happened to you. The story of the Israelites’ escape from Egypt is probably not factual. But it is factual that my family has been telling this story, in this way, forever.

  Sitting in his cell upstairs, Josh would not be telling this story with his family. He was still deciding whether he could overcome his personal Narrow Place and live to tell the story.

  I’d met many inmates who were figuring out their life story, determining their role in shaping that narrative. Some chose to leave it all behind, like Jessica. Chudney had emphatically decided to script his future, but the decision was ultimately clinched by someone else. Like Josh, Too Sweet was sitting in his cell at that very moment. He, however, was busy writing his story, page by page.