Doing Time

He gave me a “Then why did you hire me?” look. There was a long pause. The Colombian kid mimicked a gun with his fingers, pointing them at another guy with a Mickey Mouse T-shirt and heavy acne scars. They both laughed. We looked at each other through the smudged Plexiglas.

  “I’ll see what they say.” The Colombian kid genuflected as he left the bullpen to go down the stairs.

  “See-oh! Ten-ta-six Suicide on the mutha-fuckin’ gate!” I shouted it loud and slow like the announcer at the beginning of a prizefight. This time the C.O. was nearby and led me quickly through the routine of sign-in and gates until I was secured on B Side. Clang.

  First I went into the dayroom, where I set down my Tupperware bucket, which again contained cookies and whatnot. The M.O.’s were watching Penitentiary HI for maybe the fourth time that week. “No way anybody could jump that high …” Ernesto said in a slightly effeminate voice, looking at my face, hoping I would defend him in an argument about one of the characters: an animallike, nonspeak-ing, chained-up black dwarf with superhuman strength. Later on in the movie, he would be chained up in the penitentiary basement and made to watch violent movies while smoking crack. Some of the M.O.’s were dozing in their chairs, tranquilized on Thorazine, Prolixin, Sinequan…

  “You’re right, Ernesto, no way — he ain’t smoked that crack yet,” I told him and some guys stirred in their seats and laughed. Ernesto stamped one foot in anger, and then turned away with a hurt look. He prided himself on being a cut above the others, with more vocabulary and suave mannerisms. He had been robbing cabbies while strung out on crack himself, using a cap pistol. It was a miracle he hadn’t got shot. He’d slit his wrists once while he’d been on the M.O. tier, but it hadn’t been a real deep wound, and they had simply bandaged him up and sent him back from the infirmary a few hours later. I warned him never to pull a stunt like that on my shift.

  I couldn’t watch the damn movie — it was just too bizarre for me, so I took a walk down the tier, like it tells you to do in the S.P.A. manual. You come in, go take a simple test the first Monday. Guys help each other openly; if you can’t read, the C.O. reads it to you, you pass — everybody does — and presto! you’re an S.P.A, I stopped at Stymie’s cell. “Sm~cide” he said cheerily. He was a young black kid, stringbean tall with one unbendable leg, the result of being hit by a car as a small child. He was afflicted with grand-mal epilepsy. He sold a lot of crack; this was his third time in, and he’d go upstate for sure. Standing up off his bed, he hopped up to the bars. “Suicide, tell the C.O. crack my cell, I’m gonna go watch the movie.” I told him I’d get it done on my return run.

  Next I went by 8 Cell, with Lemar, a huge, lumbering southern black man who’d strangled his wife. Lemar was listening to his radio, monitoring the news. He suffered from Parkinson’s disease. He shook as he reached to remove his headphones. “H-h-how z-zit g-goin’?” he asked. I smiled at him.

  “How ya doin’, Lemar? Any good news?” Lemar had once gotten fifty dollars from his lawyers for Christmas. It was a fifty-dollar bill stuck in an envelope with a card. The C.O. that did the mail that day — a boozy, red-nosed, balding nobody — watched Lemar as he shuffled up to the gate upon hearing his name called out.

  “Wanna touch it, Harris — feel the money?” He handed Lemar the bill through the bars like a peanut to a monkey, and watched as Lemar grinned, clutching the bill and shaking it with his Parkinson’s tremble. “Feels good, huh? Might be the last money you ever touch.” The C.O. took it back to put in Lemar’s account, and went on with the mail call, unable to disturb Lemar’s peaceful smile. Fifty dollars is a lot of money in prison. Sometimes I let Lemar wear my vest off of my suit setup. He’d walk down the cell runway, feeling real dapper, though the vest was awful tight. It seemed to brighten up his day. Lemar had been at Q.H.D.M. for a hell of a long time.

  “Lock it in!” the C.O. bellowed precisely at ten fifty-five. He unlocked the gate and entered the runway in front of the cells, walking along and slamming shut the cell’s gate if the occupant was inside. I grabbed my Tupperware bucket out of the dayroom and took a spot in front of 1 Cell, where a shaft of light hit so I could read. After everyone was locked in, I spread out my blanket on the grimy cement floor. The C.O. checked his cell-locking panel on the gallery — old Decateur cable-and-puiley hardware from the 1930s, controlled by levers and wheels. “Thirteen cell! Take that off back-lock and don’t do that shk again!” he yelled and was answered with a clang. “That’s better.”

  A lot of yelling and kidding came cascading down from the dormitory upstairs, its wire-mesh wall shared with the cell runway downstairs, creating no audio resistance. You could hear everything. A couple of guys upstairs were teasing Shakey, a down-and-out street bum, who begged for cigarettes constantly and smoked the butts off the floor. “Hey, Shakey — do my laundry tomorrow, I’ll give you three cigarettes …”

  “Five…” Shakey called back up, and the dorm broke into convulsive laughter. Ernesto called out from his cell, and I walked over. “Kerry, I wish they’d get rid of Shakey, ship him to Brooklyn General — he’s such a dirt bag,” he whined.

  “Hey, Ernesto — he’s got a right to be in jail, just like you and me. Get arrested, get three hots and a cot, medication to boot — this is a great country, Ernesto.” This got him laughing, but suddenly he stopped.

  “You know, Kerry, if they try to send me to a max when I get sentenced, I’ll kill myself, I swear I will…”

  “Listen — nobody kills themself on my shift — besides, suicide is a C felony, they take you back downstairs and book you again, up your bail …” I heard Fitz laughing from 15 Cell. Then, from the middle of the tier I heard an ominous thud.

  I ran down the line peering into each cell, but already I knew what was wrong. Stymie was having a seizure. I stood in front of 6 Cell holding both my hands over my head and pointing at the cell like a beach lifeguard, yelling “See-oh! Crack six cell! See-oh! Crack six cell!” The C.O. ran down the D Side catwalk and to his Decateur con-trot panel. I heard the cell door unlatch. Click.

  I ran in and squatted down. The foot attached to Stymie’s stiff leg was beating a fast, chaotic rhythm on the stainless-steel toilet. I took his head in my hands, then grabbed a blue N.Y. Giants knit cap that was lying on his bed and stuffed it into his mouth to keep him from biting his tongue. Then I found a sweatshirt also within easy reach and fashioned it into a pillow, the whole time holding his chattering head in my lap. His legs twitched spastically. The C.O. stuck his head in the cell. “Good job, Suicide. I’ll call upstairs…” We’d all been through this before.

  Stymie surfaced into groggy consciousness just before the nurse and captain came to take him to the infirmary. “Suicide — I dreamed you was playin’ cards…” he said in a soft, disoriented voice. “… You had jacks and queens. Did… did I have me a fit?” he asked, and I told him yes. They helped him into the wheelchair and took him upstairs for the night.

  I talked with Fitz afterward, about fighting fires, marriage, raising kids, and sentencing, and shared some Oreos with him. Ernesto asked for some aspirin. Then Shakey asked if I would pick up a few butts off the floor for him — I refused and conned a cigarette out of 2 Cell instead. Finally everyone went to sleep, some calling to the C.O. to turn out their cell light from the control panel, some asking me to ask him.

  I lay on my blanket, head propped against the bucket with a pillow, all butted up against the filthy bars. I stuck my book in the shaft of light — Bonfire of the Vanities. When the C.O.’s nighttime snack wagon came, he gave me an ice cream. I dozed off at one point, and woke up suddenly to a fluttering at my eyelid: a mouse was checking me out at close range. The mouse looked huge, larger than life, in the moment that I opened my eyes. It ran off quickly, more frightened than I was, and scrambled into each cell, then darted out, unhampered by bars and shopping for tidbits. Morning came with the noise of the nearby expressway’s traffic buildup, and I helped with the chow wagon and breakfast, ending off by cleaning trays. I went
and locked myself in my cell, and lay down for sleep to come over me. Another day.

  I sat with Chris one day, a young white kid who worked the upstairs M.O. while I worked the cells downstairs. The M.O.’s were lined up at the gate for meds. Each one would hand an I.D. card through the bars to an attractive Jamaican nurse, and in return receive a Dixie Cup with pills or liquid Thorazine or whatever, then maybe a cup of water to wash it down. The whole time the nurse would answer their remarks with varying responses, most distilling to “Just take your medicine, please.”

  Chris sat glued to the TV, always making stupid comments like “I’d like to fuck her .. .” at the Excedrin commercial spokespersons. After saying something profound he looked up at me. “Hey, maybe someone’ll hang up tonight, we’ll save ‘em, split the fifty dollars .. .” His face beamed the bright shine of too many acid trips.

  “There ain’t no fifty-dollar reward. That’s just a goddamn myth,” I told him, picturing him at a Grateful Dead concert — which was where he was busted at — talking about Jerry Garcia or inter-galactic travel plans. He was a real piece of work. I watched him refo-cus on the TV after I had squashed his attempt at conversation: It was a movie — Death Wish with Charles Bronson.

  From downstairs came a thud. Not very loud in itself, but loud enough within the relative quiet that developed whenever the nurse’s wagon appeared. I didn’t like the sound of it. I dropped the newspaper and ran down the stairs. There was still a line for meds, and I saw Stymie in it. I walked briskly down the line of cells, one, two, three… I got to 12 Cell, and rushed it — luckily it was unlocked.

  A young Arab guy lay with his head bleeding into his Puma sweatshirt and a long-sleeved shirt tied tight around his neck. I loosened it. He breathed. Chris looked over my shoulder. “Get the see-oh, tell him to call the infirmary,” I told him. It was a half-assed suicide attempt: Evidently the kid had tied the shirt around his neck so tight he passed out while standing up on his bed. The thud I had heard was his head cracking against the sink as he fell. He’d be all right. “TwentyTive each, right?” Chris said and vanished before I could curse him out. I was sick of hearing about the supposed reward for saving guys. I doubted the jail was giving fifty dollars to anybody for anything. I wiped the Arab’s temple with another shirt handy. “He all right?” came Fitz’s voice from 15 Cell, locked in, which he preferred.

  “Yeah, he’ll be okay,” I said. I heard an M.O. complain that Chris was cutting in line as he sought to get to the gate and grab the C.O.’s attention among the thrusting hands clutching I.D. cards and raucous ribbing of the pretty Jamaican nurse. I stood up and looked out the window at some trees whose leaves were turning, and it occurred to me I’d been here, doing this, for ten months.

  Going back to court later that month, I wound up being shackled to one of the M.O.’s from the upstairs dorm. He kept singing the refrain from a currently popular song: “The girls, the girls they love me, the girls the girls they love me.” I stared out the bus window at morning traffic I used to detest.

  Back in the courthouse bullpen, I felt the dread of the appearance pulling my stomach apart. The suit jacket felt like a straitjacket. I’d gotten my vest back from Lemar the night before, working my shift even though I didn’t have to the night preceding court. I always did — it kept my mind off of it all. “Are y-y-y-you g-g-going t-to trial?” he asked. “I don’t want to,” I’d told him.

  I didn’t get taken to the courtroom by lunchtime, and lunch was highlighted by my bus partner setting on fire the little Styrofoam cups our tea came in. The black smoke pissed off a few guys, and the mood in the bullpen grew ugly and tense.

  My attorney came up just before I was to go down. He told me nothing, really, just shook his head and complained about the unwavering D.A., who “wouldn’t play ball,” I felt homesick for the sixth floor, that’s how bad it was.

  I went down finally to face more screaming, more crying, more nothing. Postponed. I wanted all this to come to an end. Bad.

  There was someone new in the bullpen when I got back up there, and he stood looking out of one of the windows to the street below, the sun radiating through his dirty long blond hair and darker beard. He turned around and looked at me as the C.O. shut the gate. “How’d it go?” he said, real polite-like, not bullpen jaded or tough. Two black guys were beating out a rap rhythm on the bench — “You, you got what I needed …” The long-haired freak almost seemed to know me. “Not good,” I told him. His eyes were clear blue like mine.

  “What happened?” he asked. He wasn’t asking about the preceding courtroom drama, but my crime.

  “I got drunk, driving on the wrong side of the road, and this poor kid ran out in front of me …” I said.

  “You’ll be okay. I can tell you never meant to hurt anybody,” he told me matter-of-factly. We stood quietly while the pounding continued, both now gazing out the window. He lifted his arm and pointed to a mother with a baby carriage, fussing with the infant’s little blue hat as they sat in the courthouse square among the park benches and drunks. The rappers came to their chorus and sang, “…say he’s just a friend, say he’s just a friend …”

  I moved off to a corner and took off the suit jacket, spread it out on the dirty bullpen floor and lay down. I’d been up a long, long time, what with working the nighttime suicide shift. I shed my vest and used it as a pillow, and dozed off for what must have been a couple of hours. When I woke up, the C.O. was jangling his keys and opening the gate. It was time for the bus ride back. The long-haired freak was gone. I asked the rappers. “Went back to Brooklyn General.” He’d come from the hospital, evidently. Probably a “bug,”

  “What are you, crazy?” Ernesto was playing chess with Lemar. But he was speaking to a guy named Checkers. He was called Checkers because he was always picking up a checker piece off the playing board, putting it in his mouth, and grinning. Now he deviated a little from his regular modus operandi, and had the black queen peeking out from his grin. He could screw with the checker pieces all day, and guys would just replace the piece with whatever was handy, a scrap of paper, a matchbook, or whatever.

  “M-m-m-my q-q-q-quwween!” Lemar yelled, furious. His big arms trembled as he stood up and grabbed the slightly built Checkers by the throat real hard, and lifted him up in the air, feet dangling. Left alone, Lemar would kill Checkers. The black queen became a projectile that hit Lemar squarely in the chest and clattered to the floor. Checker’s face tried to form a scream but couldn’t, and saliva tan down his chin while his face turned beet red. I bumped Lemar real hard with my shoulder and distracted his murderous choking. “C’mon, it’s your move — you’re holdin’ up the game.” He let go, still trembling, and Checkers hit the floor and took off like a cat out of a bathtub, out of the room and up the stairs to the dotm. Most of the time, Checkers never spoke, except for once in a while he’d be clinging to the bars like a koala bear, arms and legs wrapped through and up off the ground, and he’d scream, “Where’s Petey?” followed by a Hollywood madhouse laugh. He was on a lot of medication.

  The chess game resumed and soon Lemar was content to lose, moving foolishly as Ernesto proceeded to checkmate him. Ron returned to his cell and put on his headphones to listen to the news. Ernesto scouted the dayroom for more challengers. Everybody was absorbed watching The Price Is Right or dozing after meds. I was over there during the day because the regular daytime S.P.A. had court and I had decided I just plain liked it over on the M.O. tier better. I’d become state property soon, get transferred into the State Correctional System. I was sentenced, packed, waiting for the call any day. I’d given my vest to Lemar because he would probably go to a hospital for the criminally insane where he might still wear street clothes. I wanted to move on — it felt like I’d been on the sixth floor forever.

  Stymie limped in and sat down. “Nineteen thousand five hundred twenty-nine dollars for the Chevy Blazer/’ I heard from the TV; I had always wanted a Blazer.

  “Who’s gonna watch me after you
go, Kerry?” The look on Stymie’s face was one I’d never seen before. He was dead serious.

  Ernesto chimed in. ‘‘Yeah — who’s gonna take the night shift, bring us cookies?”

  I almost started to cry, but I caught myself. I think it was because, just at that moment, 1 remembered Stymie, one of the first nights 1 was there, saying to me, after listening to me tell the story of the night of my crime, “You the one needs a soo-cide watch on yo’ ass.” The words, spoken in that downhome ghetto accent, slashed through me then, and I swore I’d never appear to be anything but …strong.

  “Don’t worry, gang, they’ll find somebody. It ain’t like you clowns are that crazy,” I said, reached out and grabbed the white knight, stuck it in my mouth, and spit it out at Ernesto.

  “That’s dis-gusting,” he said with a flourish and a foot-stomp, and we all laughed loud as hell as bells went off, announcing that somebody had won the Blazer.

  1994, Mid-State Correctional Facility Marcy, New York

  Reading and Writing

  “If you give a nigger an inch, he will take an ell. A nigger should know nothing but to obey his master — to do as he is told to do. Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world. Now/’ said he, “if you teach that nigger [speaking of myself] how to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave.”

  — Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, 1845

  In his classic autobiography, Douglass overhears his master thus instructing his wife. “From that moment,” Douglass says, “I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom,” In a similar way, for the dispossessed young Jimmy Santiago Baca, coming to own language and to inhabit it, was overwhelming and repeatedly empowering as his tumultuous memoir here attests.

  In prison, 19 percent of adult males are illiterate, and 40 percent “functionally illiterate” — which means for example that they would be unable to write a business letter — as opposed to the national rate for adult Americans of 4 percent and 21 percent respectively. Learning disability rates, too (11 percent in prison compared to 3 percent in the general population), have contributed to the fact that over 70 percent of prisoners in state facilities have not completed high school. If illiteracy, as some believe, is a major cause of crime, literacy provides a means to see oneself, one’s life and condition, and to imagine alternatives.