Pucho is smart, he’s, you know, talented, his teacher said he has artistic talent, he has good potential. Give him a pencil, a pen, he can draw whatever you say to draw. He sees a woman or an animal and it comes out on paper—exact. But he’ll add a little something of his own to give it a twist. He drew a complete comic book once.
I went to visit him a few days ago. Juvie is definitely prison, but it’s more like prison lite. I’ve seen the inside of a couple real prisons, visiting my uncle Ramón at Stateville and when my brother did a year over at Twenty-Sixth and California, a.k.a. County. You get frisked three times before going in, but hey, no problem. I didn’t have to go through what my brother did before he got led into the visitor area—cavity search, the whole bit. This is all to humiliate the person—to let him know who has the power. Because they’re watching through the whole visit anyway.
I asked him one time, “Hey, are you sure you want me to come back, because I know what you go through,” and he said, “Yeah, man, come back.” That’s intense, you know? Man is so hungry for human contact from the outside he’ll go through that humiliation. You know what the inmates call the cavity search? They call it “the wave.”
The visitor area is a long hallway, separated lengthwise by real thick glass. The whole place smells like ass. They got these little metal stools screwed down into the floor for you to sit, and for each place to sit, there’s a hole in the glass. One hole covered with a—like a metal filter, and you put your mouth up next to that hole and yell through it to the person you’re there to visit. Then you shove your ear next to it when you want to hear the inmate, your loved one or what have you. Now this hole is the last place in the world you’d wanna put any part of your body. Every non-toothbrush-using, herpes-covered mouth in the city’s been up in that thing. And everybody is screaming because you can’t hear anything. There’s babies crying, mothers screaming at their kids, pissed-off jealous girlfriends all up in a guy’s face through these little holes. The wall under the glass is covered with gang graffiti and there’s all sorta nonsense carved right into it. Right next to where I sat one time, I don’t know why I remember, someone wrote, “Tip Top is a cunt.” Real nice.
But Juvie is no picnic. Those kids are definitely in jail. After you—the visitor—get frisked and go through the thing, the metal detector, you can go sit down at a table and they bring in your loved one and you can play cards and stuff. They do this thing: They got three or four chairs at a table and the backs are numbered. The inmate has to sit in chair number one. At every table, they gotta sit in the number one chair. It’s either a one or an I. Maybe an I for inmate. I don’t know. But they always have to sit in that chair, and they can’t get up at all. They can’t stand even. But you can hang with them for an hour, and it’s not bad.
When they bring Pucho out, I hug him and I can see he’s fighting down some emotion. Tough guy. I wanna go into my “scared straight” routine, but I’m thinking about keeping it loose, letting him talk.
So we sit, and Pucho says, “I thought you were gonna write me off,” and I say, “No, I’m not ever gonna do that. But you know, I’m mad at you because I see you throwing away your life.”
And he tells me what happened, which basically amounts to yes, there were some drugs in the car, but he didn’t know it was there because it was his buddy’s car, and it was reefer.
I’m like, “It was just weed?” But I know it wasn’t. My sister already told me. He was busted with speed and quaaludes and maybe some X—whatever. He goes on about some dude who has it in for him and he is the victim here and—at this point I can’t listen to no more and I say, “Yeah, and you’re guilty.”
I told Joanne about Pucho. She said, “I think the day will come when prisons will be recognized for what they are and they’ll be abolished. They’ll keep some of them around as museums, to remind people of the level of barbarity we’re capable of. I’m serious. It has to end. It has to.”
Uh, Earth to Joanne? Hello? Joanne can be a little nuts sometimes.
She reads books about prisons. I was over at her place one time and I see this thing she cut out from a—like a magazine. Her favorite magazine called the Plumed Serpent. It’s an article about what the effect is on a person to be in solitary confinement, and that a lot of people in prison have disabilities. It had a section about locking kids up in solitary too. She said even a short time can really fry up a person’s brains. She said the time-out room was a kind of solitary confinement. I never thought of that. Which to me is a shock since she grew up a little sheltered and I grew up the opposite. When I was a kid, I thought everybody had somebody in jail. Family, friends, you know. Neighbors. Or getting out of jail, or who’d served time already or whatever. It wasn’t until I got a little older that I figured out not everybody had that. That there were all these people out there, mostly white people, who didn’t have family doing time.
We ain’t made it yet, made love, you know. I don’t know what the deal is exactly about why she’s holding back. She said she needs to take her time. She’s worried I might not like her body. Can you believe that? That’s like 75 percent of the women I ever been with. Women are always afraid some guy ain’t gonna like their body. Somewhere along the line, a lot of women got some crazy ideas about themselves not being good enough or sexy enough. I know why Joanne feels that way is because of her being in a chair and all that. And I can see why. I mean, I can’t see why, personally, but when we’re walking around, it’s true: People look. They do. Maybe they’re looking because they think she’s hot, maybe they think she’s a freak, I don’t know and I don’t care. I like the whole package. It don’t matter to me. When the chemistry’s there, it’s there.
I’m thinking about all this while looking through that little window watching Pierre asleep in the time-out room. Never went back to see what else Mrs. Schmidt wanted. It’s illegal. Leaving a kid in time-out alone is illegal. They all do it here, but it don’t make it right.
I don’t want to wake him but I can hear kids begin to go into the cafeteria and I don’t want him to miss lunch. I wait awhile longer, then I go in there and call his name real soft because I don’t want to touch him when he’s not expecting it. I did that with him once and he jumped real hard. Maybe someone used to smack him awake in his past. So he comes to and I ask him how he feels and he says, “Can I have lunch?” and I’m like, “Sure, of course, man,” and I offer him to take my hand and he does and I walk him over by the cafeteria and send him on his way. That was the first time I ever touched Pierre, not counting the times I was tackling him.
Michelle Volkmann
Tim and his anorexic wife just got back from their cruise all over the Caribbean and he brought everyone in the office coconuts filled with rum mixed with a chocolate-coconut-flavored stuff which is delicious, plus we all got Visa cards with a hundred dollars on them. He is—oh my God—so generous.
He showed us pictures of him and Gail in their stateroom on their balcony with the most incredible food on a buffet. One picture is this big ice-sculpture fountain and Tim told us that instead of water coming out of the fountain it was vodka.
Tim had this long meeting with Dr. “Call Me Roman” Caviolini today. He is always saying to all the girls here, “Call me Roman, call me Roman.” Which none of us do. He is such a freak. One time a girl here actually did go out with him and he took her to a man’s barbershop at night and it was closed but he had a key and she had sex with him on one of those chairs you sit in when you’re getting your hair cut. Dr. Caviolini is not exactly attractive. He’s like fifty and that’s okay, fine, but he has a potbelly and a mole on his eyelid.
Dr. Caviolini is the doctor for a bunch of the nursing facilities that have contracts with Whitney-Palm. He and Tim have regular meetings about patient welfare and problems at different facilities and that kind of thing. That’s another reason I respect Tim is a lot of people at the executive level are only interested in keeping Medicaid and Medicare off their backs and making money. Not tha
t Tim doesn’t want to make money. People have a right to earn a good living. This is America, et cetera. But just the fact that Tim takes time to meet with a doctor who works in our facilities is something I truly am impressed by.
After the meeting was over, most of the staff got to have lunch with Tim and Dr. Caviolini and Tim had ordered in this amazing lunch for everybody. He does this every couple of months if there’s a special visitor to the office or just for no reason. Today there was a buffet of Greek food with hot gyros and those spinach and cheese pies which I could eat forever and tons of baba ghanoush and a big pan of amazing roasted veggies and that garlic-dill yogurt dip and two dessert trays of custard tarts and baklava. A lot of times Tim gives us his tickets to these galas that the different drug companies do. Like banquets and receptions for doctors and hospitals and nursing-home operators. The food is delicious and sometimes you get these goody bags with Godiva chocolates or fancy soap. The perks here are so good partly because of Tim’s philosophy of running a business and keeping the employees happy and motivated.
Dr. Caviolini thinks he’s hilarious. He’s always telling stupid jokes and he told us he went to high school with some guy in the Mafia. No one believes him. And he’s always saying stuff to me which I guess is supposed to be funny like, “When are you getting married? The first or the second?” and I say, “I don’t know,” and he says, “The first chance you get,” and then he bursts out laughing like it’s so hilarious. I have no idea what he’s talking about. And it pisses me off that he talks about the Mafia because Chicago has a bad reputation and I think people really believe there’s still a Mafia here. One of the girls who works here saw a reality show about Chicago Mafia wives. I’m not really a TV person. My parents spent every spare second screaming at each other when I was growing up and they would turn the TV up superloud so I couldn’t hear them as much which of course was so not helpful. I don’t know why they stayed together as long as they did, but it didn’t really help that they got divorced because they just kept screaming at each other every time my dad brought me home from the weekend or if they were on the phone. I have a TV because my mom wanted a new one, so she gave me her old one when I moved here, but I barely ever watch it. When I turn it on it makes me think of them fighting. Maybe its good that it happened though, because now whenever I’m in a stressful situation I’m good at just making my mind go away. Really. It’s like nothing bothers me.
After Dr. Caviolini left we all got new assignments and Tim increased my recruiting responsibilities. I have no idea how I’m going to recruit more people than I already am but he also gave me a list of new sites. Some of the sites are on the South Side which that’s fine but I really do not know my way around there very well. I told Tim I was uncomfortable thinking about getting lost, so he said the company would pay for a navigation system. And he said if I showed higher recruitment numbers he would increase my bonus from $300 to $350 per bed filled or he would buy me a new Smart car if I filled ten beds in three weeks. Which would be amazing except it would also be a miracle because there’s no way I could ever fill that many beds in three weeks or six weeks. He said he wasn’t telling anyone but me, but the company was expanding and buying a couple new facilities and there were exciting things happening that he couldn’t tell me now but it might affect me in a good way.
I would really love a Smart car. The only reason I still have my grandma’s gigantic Pontiac with two hundred million miles on it is because she gave it to me when I lived in Merrillville. Where I haven’t lived since I got my associate’s degree. Then I got this job with Whitney-Palm which is practically all driving. My tires are totally shot and I probably need new brakes and the window won’t even open on the driver side which is fine most times but last summer I thought I was going to puke from the heat. I cannot even imagine how fabulous it would be to park a Smart car after having to park this boat in the city of Chicago which I’m sorry but it’s like musical chairs because there are twice as many cars as spaces available.
So here I am at Oscar Mayer Children’s Hospital at another parent’s night at seven thirty at night recruiting my butt off. There’s not much of a turnout, only about six parents and the rest are Oscar Mayer staff or other people kind of like me, people who aren’t from here but have products or services the parents might want for their kids who are patients. It’s a really nice place actually. They have all these toys for the kids and giant pillows that I guess the other children, the brothers and sisters of the handicapped kids, can jump on while the parents are at these educational nights. It’s sad because the parents all look really tired. They don’t ask many questions, so I don’t know what they’re getting out of this. They’re probably pretty poor because it’s a charity hospital. Some of them don’t even speak English.
After this I’m going to a shelter for women on Cottage Grove which is on the new list. I’ll basically be lucky if I’m home by ten o’clock. Sometimes I feel like all I do is work, go to sleep, wake up, and work.
Jimmie Kendrick
Yessenia has a picture taped to her shelf of a young woman standing behind a little girl with crutches. They’re standing on the sidewalk, snow piled up all around. With all those greystones it has to be Chicago. Logan Square maybe. The young woman is leaning over the girl with her arms around her like, you know, like she is showing the girl how to wave at the camera. The two of them are laughing. That look on little Yessie’s face was making me smile too.
“This your mom?”
Yessie says, “Yeah. My tía Nene. She was my mom though.”
I had passed her room earlier and I slowed up when I saw her sitting there and she called out my name and asked me did I want to come in.
“You guys look like two peas in a pod,” I say. “She’s pretty. You look a lot like her.”
Yessie didn’t say anything back, so I looked at her and she was just smiling and nodding.
I say, “How old were you in this picture?” I wanted to ask her where her mom, or her auntie or whatever, like, where was she? Because it kind of didn’t seem like Yessie had anyone.
She says, “I guess I was about three. She didn’t get sick till I was ten. She didn’t get really sick till I was thirteen.”
“Can I ask you—”
“She died. Last year. She had cancer.”
“Oh,” I said. “I’m really sorry to hear that. You guys must’ve been—I mean, you can see from this one picture how close you were. For real though, I’m sorry for your loss.”
She shrugged. “Yeah, right. Whatever.”
I say, “I lost my mom to cancer too. I was older than you though, about twenty-two at the time.”
She looks at her lap then and rubs her legs back and forth with her fists. She says, “I’m sorry.”
I say, “Hey, you ain’t got nothing to be sorry for. Not a thing.” I close the door. “Nothing to be sorry for.”
She says, “What kinda cancer?”
“Did my mom have? Breast.”
“Mine too.” Her face started to crumple up.
I put my hand on her shoulder.
She started to cry. I stood there for a minute and patted her shoulder. I mean, I didn’t want to rush her. I was trying to think what I could say next that might help. Even though I know there’s nothing really.
“I know it might not feel like it,” I say, “but you’re going to be okay. It’s crazy but the pain you feel kind of changes into something else. I’m not saying you’ll stop missing her. You’ll always, always miss her. But you’ll miss her in a way that doesn’t hurt. If that makes any sense.”
She says, “How long until the pain changes?”
“Well, you’re on the right track with what you’re doing now. Talking about her, keeping her picture close, crying out some of that pain. You’re doing just what you need to be doing. Time takes care of the rest.”
“How long did it take you?”
“Wow. I don’t remember exactly,” I say, “but I wanna say maybe two years.”
/> “Two years?”
“Well, okay, I mean, it’s not like you can put a date to it. It’s different for different people.”
“It could be longer than two years?”
“No, no,” I say. “Two years is probably at the most. But it’s different for everyone. One day you wake up and you just don’t feel as sad.”
“Two years,” Yessie says.
“At most.”
“Sometimes I miss her so bad I feel like I’m just gonna blow up or—I don’t know.”
“Hey, losing your mom—uh-uh. That’s the hardest thing I ever had happen to me,” I say. “So if you ever feel like you need to talk, or even if—if anything, I’m there.”
“Like friends, right?”
“Yeah. And I’ll tell you about my mom too, because there’s times I really want to tell someone about her but I don’t know who to tell.”
“Jimmie?”
“What?” I say.
“I hope you don’t think I’m crazy but I felt like the first time we met when you was pulling me offa Benedicta? I felt like, ‘She and me is gonna be friends.’ I really did.”
“Well, I pretty much felt that way too,” I say. “So I guess that’s how it’s gonna be.”
Joanne Madsen
Ricky stops by my office every day after he drops the high school kids off. Usually he closes the door and we immediately start making out like we’re giving simultaneous resuscitation. But I still see him touch other people—other women. I guess he’s just a person who touches. Women flirt with him a lot. He is fairly adorable. I guess I’m a little anxious about that.
Ricky’s comfortable with people in general, but I stay hands off until I get written permission. I never know if I’m reading people’s signals correctly. I might assume someone is interested in me and come to find out they’re just pondering how I go to the bathroom.
Good Kings Bad Kings Page 7