Stand Tall

by Dewey Bozella

  “I’m not going to do that,” the prisoner repeatedly said.

  Hunlock then grabbed the box, threw the five kittens into the compactor himself, and flipped the switch.

  The inmate reported him, and the officer was convicted of animal cruelty, fired, and sentenced to a year in jail. He was lucky to have faced justice in the courtroom instead of the cellblocks.

  Inmates live by their own code of conduct even in a maximum-security facility like Sing Sing. In one year alone in the early 1980s, there were twenty-one stabbings at Sing Sing—two of them fatal—and weapons seized included homemade icepicks, a kitchen ladle, and a fifteen-inch knife. You could rip a piece of metal off an old radiator, sharpen it, put tape around it for a handle, and you had a shank. There were even armed robberies inside prison—a jewel thief I knew who served as the banker for an inside gambling operation got stabbed in the chest with a 007 switchblade by inmates in ski masks who ransacked his cell in search of the hidden cash. Some other guys and I walked in right after and found him bleeding on the floor. We grabbed one of the stretchers out on the galleries and ran him down to the hospital on the first floor. He survived and was transferred to another prison.

  The yard was segregated by tacit inmate agreement. The Bloods had their section over by the heavy bag where I did my workouts. The Crips eyed them with menace from their own territory across the yard. The Muslims, Jamaicans, Latin Kings, and Aryan Brothers claimed their real estate, as well. I stayed neutral.

  The mood could change in a blue-sky moment. Shit happened so fast. A kid with “white” tattooed on one arm and “power” on the other is suddenly screaming in line, blood pouring from the slash marks that will scar his face for life: Yo, yo, yo, why’d you do that to me? And nobody saying a word until out in the yard a brother laughs. Well, now you got a reason to hate us.

  Out in the yard, you would feel the tension, low and heavy as a ground fog, then everything would explode. All you could do was just try to get out of the way and watch. My instincts were good enough and my feet fast enough that I usually made it, but one time I had the bad luck of being smack in the middle of it. I had been standing with the Muslims when a Blood came up and reached up without a word to slice open this Muslim’s face.

  “Get him!” I heard someone shout, and then all hell broke loose. People were getting bashed with weights, stabbed, beaten with sticks that had nails stuck in them, stomped. A guard in the tower popped off a shot. Officers were screaming at everyone to get down on the ground. I was fighting with some guy when I heard a CO yell at me: “Get down on the floor, Bozella!”

  “Hell, no!” I shouted back. I wasn’t about to lie down in a full-out riot. “I’ll go to the fence,” I countered. The CO could have had me then and there for disobeying a direct order, but he waved me away. I loved him for that. Martinez, I remember his name. As I got up, he called out to me.

  “You know why I let you go, Bozella?” I looked at him and shook my head.

  “Because I know you don’t mess with nobody.”

  I had years of good behavior behind me by then. I was the very definition of model prisoner. The CO knew that if I was fighting, the dude I laid out had to have done something very, very wrong. It was as strange a place as any to get some validation, in the middle of a prison riot, but I have to admit that I felt gratified.

  Another time, we were in the chapel watching a movie, back when they had reel-to-reels in the ’80s. A young brother, a Muslim, got into a fight, and I dragged him outside to break it up. A CO was on him as well and had a baton to his throat. I grabbed the stick because it was choking him out. I was getting ready to pick him up and throw him over my shoulder, get him away from there. Another officer then put a stick on me. I could see everybody coming out of the theater. The mood was ugly. It was going to be out-and-out inmates versus officers.

  “Don’t put the stick on me, man,” I warned the officer. “Look!”

  He glanced behind himself and saw the inmates gathering into a single angry knot. He took the stick off me. I raised my arms to stop the agitated crowd. “It’s aight,” I called out, “everything’s aight.” Everybody went back inside to watch the movie, and I got keep-lock for thirty days. One of the officers spoke up on my behalf before the Adjustment Committee: “If not for him,” he said, “we’d have had an all-out riot.” I was offered a transfer to a medium-security facility as a sort of reward, I guess, but I turned it down. I liked being around serious people, not kids. Sing Sing was a better spot to get my life together.

  The chapel uprising was nothing compared to a personal test I faced in that same place right after my second conviction. I had come down to find some peace one morning, and when I went inside, there was Stanley Jackson. Aw shit, I swore to myself, how in the hell am I supposed to deal with this? Are we gonna have to fight? Half the people inside the chapel knew this was the guy who had killed my brother Ernie, and I could feel everyone watching me. I looked at him, didn’t say a word, and got the hell out the first chance I had, the past flashing in front of me all the way back to my cell. I wanted to rip his head off. The galleries started to crackle with excitement and blood lust. Everyone assumed that I would come for Stanley Jackson. And it’s true: I had wanted to kill him for years to avenge Ernie’s murder. I used to fantasize about beating the life right out of Stanley Jackson. With my opportunity finally at hand, all the old hurt came back to me.

  The code of the street is: Go get him, get even, you better leave him with a mark. Prison code is: Yo, man, we know that nigger did your brother; hit him upside the head with a metal pipe, stab him with a 007 knife or shank, there’s a job for you to do. We waitin’. If you did nothing, you would be marked yourself: punk, coward, pussy, sissy, faggot, all the things not a man.

  Three days later, I was going to school one afternoon, and there was Stanley out on the flats. But here’s the catch: You got three tiers above the flats with guys looking down because they knew all hell was about to break loose. They were waiting for a show. The pressure’s on me to deliver. I’m not trying to say Stanley’s a punk. He was going to fight back. The only question was: Do I want to live by prison code, or be my own man and say, let this shit go, live my own life? I walked up to Stanley and planted myself in front of him. I could feel a hundred eyes watching.

  “First, I just want to know one thing,” I said. “Why? Why did you murder my brother?”

  Stanley Jackson shrugged.

  “I was young,” he replied.

  I did the unthinkable, then. I hugged my brother’s killer.

  “I forgive you,” I said, then walked away.

  Even my closest allies were infuriated. An inmate imam upbraided me at services. That was your brother! Your brother!

  “Yo,” I answered back with measured respect. “That’s between me and my God. It’s got nothing to do with anyone else.”

  Fuck the prison code. Fuck the code of the street. That was the birth of my true identity. That was my true test as a man and human being. I wanted to move on with my life. I had to forgive if I wanted to be fucking forgiven.

  9

  WHENEVER IT CAME OUR TURN FOR A CONJUGAL VISIT AT THE TRAILERS—once every three or four months—Trena and I seized the chance to pretend for a fleeting weekend that we were just like any married couple, settled and comfortable in our life together. It was a play in one act, based on the shared fantasy we both needed to believe in to escape the harsh realities we each faced when it was time to return to our separate worlds. Trena packed comfortable clothes for me to change into and arrived with bags of permitted groceries, including the prison-inspected ingredients for her homemade lasagna. Everything had to come into Sing Sing factory sealed. That they were so worried about what contraband might slip into Sing Sing in a casserole was pretty laughable, considering that drug operations were already flourishing in the cellblocks. Trena never complained about the searches, and her pleasant demeanor bought her some slack from the guards, which gave her the chance to sneak in
her cell phone to stay in touch with Diamond. Bustling about in that tiny trailer kitchen, fixing supper for her husband, Trena had a softness to her that allowed me to believe we would be the exception to the accepted wisdom that prison marriages never last. It’s not so much that these marriages crumble under the stress; it’s more that they never have a chance to grow in the first place. Relationships get boxed in, trapped by the routine and restrictions, with no space to flourish. You can’t learn the intricate footwork of your dance together—you can’t squabble over household chores, or tease each other out of a bad mood, or debate what kind of car to buy, or even talk about the movie you just saw together. You can sign the piece of paper legally declaring you husband and wife and you can wear your rings, but at the end of the day, you’re forced to live your separate lives, and your marriage exists mostly in your mind. I had seen the way most prison wives would come through the visiting room, wearing their resentment or resignation like their jeans, so tight they could barely breathe. In the cozy cocoon of our trailer, I convinced myself that Trena and I were smart enough and devoted enough to hold on until I won my freedom. Music playing, pots clanging, the smell of lasagna wafting from the kitchen—I felt the worry unhitch from my mind and gorged myself into a contented stupor on Trena’s cooking and conversation, settling into the temporary rhythm of what I imagined an ordinary life to be. For two days, we would make love and talk and fall asleep in each other’s arms without the sharp command of visiting room guards forbidding us to touch or kiss or hug too close or too long. I could wake up in the middle of the night and raid the refrigerator for leftovers when I was hungry, or pour myself a glass of orange juice when I was thirsty, drinking as much as I wanted. I could turn the lights on or off when I felt like it, or stay in the shower until the hot water ran out. I could hear silence again, feel it sweep through my mind like a stream, crystal clean.

  Three times a day, the phone would ring to make sure I hadn’t escaped. I was expected to answer with my name and rattle off my prison ID number. One time, Trena grabbed the phone before I could get it. She lowered her voice as deep as it would go: “Bozella, 84A0172,” she barked, hanging up just in time before the two of us busted out laughing. The CO on the other end was either the weakest link in Sing Sing’s security system, or smart enough to know that there was no way I ever would have even considered bolting and leaving Trena behind. The state had its definition of maximum security, and I finally had mine.

  We both dreaded saying good-bye. Trena would try to detach gradually, busying herself by packing up everything to go, and I would change back into my inmate clothes. But we never really bought our own nonchalant act, and we always wound up snuggling together in a chair by the door, listening to “Sunshine,” the Babyface track I had claimed as our song after the first time we met. The phone would ring again. “It’s time,” the bored guard on the other end would say. Watching Trena head for the parking lot while I walked back to the cellblocks was harder than just walking back to the gallery on a regular visiting day. This felt more like saying good-bye to the life I was supposed to have, the one that was unjustly taken from me. Every time she left, I wondered how many years more we would have to live like this. On the day Trena married me, my first parole hearing was still eight years away, and there was no guarantee the board would grant my release. Ever. Twenty years to life, I didn’t need to remind myself. To life.

  I knew Trena was struggling to scrape together a decent life for herself and Diamond on the outside, and it hurt not to be able to take care of them the way I wanted to. I had an old-school idea of how a man should be: I wanted to be the benevolent ruler of my kingdom, the strong but loving provider who fulfilled his family’s every need and shielded them from any possible hurt or harm. I’m not trying to pass judgment on anybody, but the truth is, for a sizable majority of the men behind bars, women are just another hustle. I understood why Trena’s brother and father had had their reservations until they got to know me. Better to presume a con is shady until he proves otherwise. I wanted to be Trena’s benefactor, not her burden. Showing that to her and her family was going to be a challenge, I knew, but I refused to feel helpless and hopeless, no matter how bleak things got. Go down that pity road, and there are no U-turns.

  I resolved to do whatever I could for my new family. I wasn’t looking to break any laws, but circumventing certain prison rules was another matter, and I approached it the same way I did boxing—you just had to stay focused, anticipate your opponent’s moves, and always, always keep moving. The respect and admiration I’d won both as an unbeatable fighter in the ring and a useful peace broker in the prison yard kept the COs at bay long enough for me to conduct my business. My little convenience store had expanded beyond chips and candy bars, and now my cell was more like an underground Walmart neatly hidden beneath my bed. Inmates who were looking to buy new long johns, cigarettes, or a hot chicken dinner were constantly streaming in and out. I started building up an illicit savings account that I buried deep inside my mattress. Trena brought me small gifts I could use for my hustle. The extra socks and sweatsuits she gave me could be flipped into high-ticket items at Sing Sing.

  I figured out a way to conceal a couple of twenty-dollar bills in my sneaker without getting detected in a strip-search, and I started sneaking cash to Trena on visiting days. We would sit next to each other and I would stoop down to tie my shoe. Here, I’d whisper, swiftly pressing the money into her hand when the guards weren’t looking. Luckily, she had a good poker face. She was always grateful, but I knew it wasn’t making much of a difference. Even the five or six bucks we used to spend for a vending machine lunch date was a splurge for us: a Big Az cheeseburger for me, a fish sandwich or hot wings for her. Put them in the microwave and it was a Thanksgiving feast. Add a Snickers or Mr. Goodbar for dessert, and it was Christmas.

  Once, when she was visiting, Trena mentioned a bus trip her church was taking to North Carolina.

  “You wanna go on that trip?” I asked. I could see by the wistful look in her eyes that she did. She shook her head.

  “It’s a hundred and twenty dollars,” she said.

  Business was good for me. At one point, I had over fifteen hundred dollars hidden in my mattress. I slipped Trena her bus fare a few bills at a time. She was surprised and grateful. I felt proud that I was showing her that I could take care of her and provide for her, even while I was locked up.

  Even in the face of my possible life sentence, Trena held fast to her belief that we would have a good life together someday. Her faith reinforced mine. I would go back to my cell and reread my collection of motivational books and make lists. I had five-year plans. Ten-year plans. Twenty-year plans. From the dog-eared pages of my personal library, Donald Trump, Cus D’Amato, Allah, and Jesus Christ—all urged me on. Education was the constant in my life; what I had squandered on the outside, I hoarded on the inside. In 2000, the Christian Ministry Program helped me enroll in a program to earn a bachelor’s degree. I was more naturally inclined to study business, but the program only offered theology, and I thought that was a good fit, too. Hell, it could have been zoology, and I would have jumped at it. I just wanted to be back in school. State and federal budget cutbacks and public resentment over free college educations for convicted felons had pretty much decimated the educational programs in prisons, and I had already earned practically every certificate offered—from prep cook to peer counseling. There wasn’t that much left for me to do. Bob Jackson had left the Corrections Department to spend his retirement training fighters at the legendary Gleason’s Gym in Brooklyn. I turned my attention instead to martial arts, which I could practice and perfect without attracting much attention. There were inmates who were highly skilled in mixed martial arts—guys who were fourth- and fifth-degree black belts. They knew where the blind alleys were in the galleries and they would hold their secret classes there, the inmate pupils taking turns as lookout. The swiftness and precision the sport demanded was the best survival skill you could hav
e in prison; a single spearlike panther punch to the throat could lay a man flat. It was a thing of beauty to me, and I was equally drawn to the Eastern philosophy behind it that prized self-discipline and respect. I was beyond excited when Trena smuggled in an illustrated 409-page book on Chinese martial arts. It instantly became my most treasured possession. I studied that book like a scholar, practicing each technique until I had it as close to perfect as I could get. My physical training is what kept my mind sharp, and it also kept me motivated. It takes focus and discipline to fine-tune your body, to push through the pain and exhaustion of working each muscle group into compliance, and then, when you think you’ve achieved peak performance, to raise the bar again and keep working. God tells us that the body is our temple, and I do believe that in my soul, but I also came to understand that the body serves as a teacher, too. Mine was a daily reminder that we have the power to change and to make ourselves stronger or let ourselves grow weaker. We can envision a certain outcome and then work day in and day out to realize it. Whether it was boxing or martial arts, I wanted to be the best. I pictured myself as a champion. Just practice until you’re ready, I told myself, and then when you get your chance, fight until you win.

  AS TRENA AND I ADJUSTED TO OUR NEWLYWED LIFE with its regulated routine of authorized visits, censored letters, and brief collect phone calls, Diamond sensed that something had radically changed. I was more than a big playmate she happened to visit now and then over in that noisy place full of men, with vending machines and a toy room. Even as a kindergartner, her territorial instincts were sharp, and within a matter of months, she was pushing me away and howling instead of reaching up to hug me: I was competition as far as she was concerned, and after having Trena to herself her whole life, there was no way Diamond was about to share her mama. Trena didn’t force the issue, and I tried my best not to either, much as I yearned to be a father figure to Diamond. There were times that she would run up to me, sit in my lap, and want to snuggle close, but then she would scurry away into her whole separate little world, and it felt like she needed to safeguard her affection. I could see her hurting and understood why she was putting her guard up. One time, when she and Trena were leaving, Diamond stopped and looked back at me with her dark eyes. “When are you getting out of here?” she wanted to know. “I’m working on it,” was the best I could tell her. Trena always tried to be honest but vague when Diamond asked about me, but keeping me emotionally present as a part of the family when I wasn’t there physically was like trying to put on a puppet show with strings but no dolls. Sometimes Trena folded under the pressure. The worst time was when Diamond was going to appear in a little play at her school. She had badgered Trena, asking whether I was going to come see her. “Dewey will be here,” an exasperated Trena finally said, just to placate her. She knew it was a mistake as soon as the words left her mouth, but thought she could get away with the white lie just once. Of course, Diamond looked out from the stage to see if she could spot me. “Where’s Dewey?” she asked her mother afterward. “You said he would be here!” Trena tried to convince her that I had been there all along, standing in the back, that she just hadn’t seen me before I had to leave, but Diamond knew better. Her trust had been broken, and the betrayal, in her eyes, was mine; I had betrayed her. I knew that she had to kill a certain part of herself to deal with me. Diamond had become a part of my world through no choice of her own, and she had to become cold to survive it or have her small heart broken over and over again. I got it. But that didn’t make it hurt any less, and no matter how many times I said the words or wrote I love you to her in a card or letter, Diamond never allowed herself to say them back to me. All I could do was keep loving her in the hope that she would come back around. Trena warned me that I was in for a tough journey.