Thug in Me

by Karen Williams

  Sitting in that absurdly small-ass room, sometimes I could swear I could see my mama’s face like she was sitting next to me. That shit made me feel like I was going crazy. Then I had dreams about Tyson. His dead body, the image of the knife slicing his neck. I saw it all day long. Sometimes I dreamed about my own dead body. That the skinhead had killed me before I got a chance to kill him. These dreams always had me waking up screaming and sweating like a slave. I would beat on the door repeatedly but nobody ever came. They wouldn’t even let me out for my hour of rec.

  I wish I had some of Deyja’s letters. They seemed to make me feel better about the shit I was going through. But I wasn’t allowed to have shit in there. And I know this shit may sound crazy, but I would sit in those four corners and pretend I was talking to her. It was the only way to avoid thinking of where I really was and that I was alone. I created a fake image of her in my head. And when I jacked off, I no longer thought of Toi, I thought of Deyja, a woman I had never seen before.

  When they decided to release me and some other inmates that were on lockdown, I was pulled out, given a shower and a clean set of clothes. I was surprised to see Lewis there to escort me since he worked with inmates that were on suicide watch. But he told me he was filling in for a staff that called off.

  “What’s up, Chance?” He handed me my mail.

  It was a letter from Deyja.

  “Thanks. This is just what I needed.”

  I tore the letter open as we walked back to our cells.

  Chance,

  I have written you countless times in the past month. I don’t know what is going on but I’m a little concerned. Understand that if this is not something you want to be a part of anymore, that is fine. No harm done. Although I will miss reading your letters. I don’t know . . . They do something for me. They motivate me to let go of some things that holding me back from really living. If you can get up everyday and function like a normal person in the environment you live in, with your circumstance, then I can as well. But Chance, understand that if I don’t hear from you after this letter I will no longer write you.

  Here is a passage: Isaiah 38:18

  Deyja

  I put the letter back in the envelope. The first chance I got I was going to write her. I didn’t want her to think that I was deliberately ignoring her letters.

  Once we made it to my cell, we both noticed Roscoe was standing in front of it talking on a radio.

  He held his hand out to us. “The warden wants to see him ASAP.” He combined all four letters together.

  “But he just got out the—”

  “So? I don’t give a fuck!” Roscoe got all up in Lewis’s face and said, “Do what you told. You don’t work this fucking tier anyway. Matter of fact. I got them; you just escort your fucking inmate to the warden, dumb nigga.”

  Lewis took a deep breath and backed up. “Come on, Chance.”

  Roscoe wasn’t done. “Chance? What the fuck you doing, trying to hug the thugs? Call ‘em by their last name.”

  Other guards standing by started laughing.

  Lewis ignored them. “Come on, man.”

  Now I was worried about what was going to happen to me when they sent me to the warden. Part of me wanted to tell Lewis what had happened the last time I had come there. But I didn’t think it would make a difference. He didn’t have the power to stop it.

  Once we made it to the door Lewis knocked. The warden told us to come in.

  I took a deep breath and did, taking only two steps into the room. I stood in the doorway while Lewis stood behind me.

  Lewis was excused quickly. “You can leave the inmate, sir,” said the Warden.

  Once Lewis did leave, I was told to step closer in the room. I did it slowly, mean mugging the warden.

  Before I could say anything, someone closed the door behind me. I was then grabbed up and pushed further into the room. Then I was shoved to the floor.

  I looked up at the warden standing in front of his desk and staring down at me.

  I looked around the room. Whoever had shoved me stood near the warden. Then three black dudes came from the back room and approached me. From the floor I watched them circle me.

  I stood back to my feet.

  The warden spoke to me. “You made this hard on yourself, sir. I had planned on breaking you in easy.”

  I didn’t respond.

  He aimed a finger at me. “You need to learn something. Whether you are in a field or on your knees, you work for me. And you don’t say no. Do you realize who I am? I am God around here, boy. I can do what the fuck I want to you inmates. Your life is mine! I can have you killed if I want.”

  I glared at him. “Then kill me, muthafucka.”

  He took a deep breath, looked at the guys around me, and nodded at them.

  Before I could make a move they all cornered me. I was shoved in the back room.

  I fought them the best I could but it didn’t make a difference. I was overpowered and I was held down on a bed by two of the dudes.

  “Get the fuck off of me!”

  I was ignored. I watched another dude hold a camcorder up while the other dude stripped out of his clothes.

  I felt his weight on the bed as he inched toward me.

  I struggled and couldn’t break free.

  Panic rose in me as he managed to yank my pants down.

  A camcorder was aimed in my face

  I spit at it and twisted my body on the bed.

  Still, they managed to strip me of my clothes. I continued to fight but it didn’t make a difference.

  The dude positioned my asshole and I couldn’t fight him.

  “Get off of me!”

  He ignored me and asked, “Y’all got him tight?”

  The two men holding me down said in unison, “Yeah.”

  “Good! I’m ’bout to make you one of the warden’s boys.” By “boy” he meant his bitch.

  I couldn’t stop him, though. I tried.

  He took a deep breath and without reprieve, he shoved his dick up my asshole.

  To keep from screaming out, I bit down on my lip, felt it pop and blood run in my mouth.

  He tore my asshole apart and continued stuffing himself in and out of me, despite how rigid my body was. Despite how much I struggled.

  And yet, despite how much it hurt, I refused to make a sound.

  I saw the warden’s shoes on the floor by the bed as I was rocked back and forth by the man who was forcing himself inside of me.

  I could feel my skin tearing with each stroke.

  The man behind me was breathing harshly like he was really enjoying this.

  And somewhere along the way, they switched positions and another man was raping me.

  Then another.

  Then the warden.

  And somewhere in the midst of the warden raping me . . .

  I checked out.

  Chapter 21

  The doctors and nurses knew what happened to me. It did not take a fool to know I had been raped. But still, they asked me questions I didn’t want to answer because I didn’t want to relive it all over again. They didn’t care.

  They took X-rays of me and everything. They said they never saw a rape as severe as mine. I was full of blood and lacerations. They even took pictures.

  I stayed in the medical unit for damn near a month. It was hard at first because it wasn’t just my body that was damaged from that shit. I was damaged psychologically as well. For the first few days I wouldn’t talk or eat. I would not bathe and when I took a shit, I would smear it all over my body. I figured if I smelled like shit and had it all over me no one would touch me ever again. Eventually some guards forced me to shower. Then they moved me back to suicide watch and had me in mechanical restraints.

  Lewis was the only one I trusted and he was the only one I would cooperate with.

  “Chance, I don’t know what the fuck happened to you but I’m guessing you were raped. And I’m guessing it was bad. But either way, you can’t carry on
like this. Them guards can say you gassed them and that’s assault, which leads to more charges,” he told me.

  “What the fuck I care about more charges for? I’m not getting out of here,” I said. “Yeah, but you don’t need to spend those days strapped down like you crazy when I know you ain’t fucking crazy. And you giving these guards the green light to fuck you up and the inmates are gonna think you soft and you gonna become they boy.” He didn’t mean boy like a homie but it was another word for they bitch. Then they would have a green light to take my ass as well.

  He lowered his voice. “Look. It’s fucked up, but move on, nigga. They took your ass.” He held him arms wide. “You can’t do shit about it now. Get your revenge like a man.”

  He was right. One way or another I had to. And that became my mission. And some way, somehow, I had to get the fuck up out of this prison.

  Chapter 22

  “Look at this shit right here.”

  I ignored Roscoe as he came and stood in front of my cell as I did push-ups on the floor.

  “You bunking with a punk muthafucka yo,” he told the guy that was next to him.

  No comment from me.

  After all the years that I had been incarcerated this man was still fucking with me.

  “How your mama doing with her fine ass?”

  He knew my mother was dead. Still he wanted to say some shit that would touch me.

  But over the years, I had built up enough tolerance to not only ignore him, but not even acknowledge what he said. “Take the bottom bunk, Charleston” he ordered to the nerdy-looking black dude standing next to him who looked like he was scared for his life.

  Yeah, Randy managed to be a ghost after I got off suicide watch and was sent back to normal pop. He was totally moved off of the tier that I was on. And with him went my letters and anything I had accumulated over the years. He was a dirty muthafucka. The only thing that was valuable to me were the letters from my mom, Calhoun, and Deyja. Now I had none of them. He even took my stamps and envelopes. I wanted to write Deyja so bad. But I had to put her on the back burner for now. My motivation was now on how to get the fuck out of there. I had to find a way.

  The new guy, Charleston, didn’t say anything to me. I watched him get punked left and right. He wasn’t a kiss-ass like Randy was and he couldn’t fight. I remember how I used to be. But I knew he wouldn’t always stay that way. I was far different from the person I used to be. I had killed a man, had been raped. Naw. I wasn’t the same, wasn’t nothing innocent or trusting about me like Charleston.

  I wanted to help the dude but the last thing I needed was to get attached to him, like I was to Tyson and he die. Or get cool with him and he betray me like Randy did.

  So I did nothing but watched. He never talked to me and I never talked to him. And at night he never went to sleep. He probably thought I was going to rape him. He didn’t have to worry about that shit.

  But as more time went by I watched him become subject to the same bullshit I was subjected to. So I felt like I had to say something.

  It was like déjà vu, seeing him get punked for his food. Just like what happened to me, he was checked by the blacks for giving up his food. They came to our cell and cursed him out like they did me. And, yes, he was subject to getting jumped just like me.

  But unlike all the blacks who sat around and watched, I tried to go over and help him but I was pulled back by the same black dude who had showed up at my cell when I had first got there.

  “Get the fuck off me,” I told him.

  He looked at me, surprised. “You trying to run something?”

  “Naw. But I can’t just sit here and watch him get fucked up like y’all watched me get fucked up.”

  “We don’t need no shit on us, that’s why. Today is Sunday and I got a visit coming. It’s too many of them anyway. Let them dig a hole for themselves,” he said.

  So I fell back.

  But one day I did step in on a decision he was about to make.

  A few months had passed since he had been there and we still had not developed any type of relationship. Those few months had pushed me into my fifth year of being incarcerated.

  Charleston had come back like a kid in a candy store and was ushered with some other inmates that were escorted to their cells.

  “Hey! The warden had me come up to his office,” Charleston said, all excited. It was the first time he had tried to initiate a conversation with me.

  The mention of the warden caused me to freeze up. He didn’t notice and continued.

  “All I had to do was fix some stuff on his computer and he put money on my books. So I got all this stuff from the canteen.”

  I hopped off my bed and leaned over his face.

  He jumped back like he thought I was going to hit him.

  “Stay the fuck out the warden’s office,” I whispered.

  “Why?”

  “Man, don’t worry about why. Just do what the fuck I say or you’re gonna regret the shit!”

  He studied me for a long moment. “And why should I listen to you? You don’t even talk to me.”

  I shook my head impatiently. “Because I know what I’m talking about.”

  He frowned. “Well, what are you talking about?”

  I couldn’t bring myself to mention what had happened to me. Nobody else talked about it, either. It was like a secret society among some of the inmates. I never heard them talk about it. Even the ones that it happened to. I mean, rapes happen here all the time under the staff’s nose and they never know. Many get raped by other inmates and say nothing, but bear the shame. But it was a little different when the warden was doing it and taping it. I wondered if it went on in the women’s prison as well. It probably did.

  My silence made him doubtful. “Man, you just mad because he called me up there and not you. He knows that I’m not really a criminal. I was a straight-A student in high school on my way to an Ivy League college before this happened to me. Yeah, you probably jealous that he didn’t pick you.”

  I looked away.

  He smirked and mumbled, “hater.”

  “Well, muthafucka, I warned you,” is all I could bring myself to say before hopping back on my bed.

  And he did go . . . the next time. Bright and early in the morning.

  And didn’t come back to his cell. That’s how I knew something had happened to him.

  When a guard walked by I called him back.

  “What’s up, Chance?” he asked.

  I nodded and asked,” Where is Charleston?”

  He looked at his clipboard and confirmed it for me by saying, “I don’t know what happened to him, but according to the population sheet he’s in the infirmary.”

  And instantly a plan came into motion that I had never thought of before!

  Chapter 23

  He was gone for a period of two weeks. Shorter than the time I was gone, but two weeks nonetheless.

  The noise of him coming in the cell woke me that early morning.

  When he got settled, silence was all I heard from the bunk underneath me.

  “You wanna get that dirty muthafucka?” I whispered.

  Then nothing. No response. No movement. It was like he froze. He was probably wondering how I knew what had happened to him. He probably felt the same mixture of emotion that I had felt. Shame, depression, anger. The desire to just not exist anymore.

  So at first I didn’t even think he would wanna bother with it.

  So I almost gave up hope.

  Then I heard his faint whisper: “Yes.”

  That word put the plan into motion.

  Lewis had me in one of the solitary cells. He had pretended to some other guards that he was taking me somewhere else. Instead we ended up there so we could have privacy to talk in one of the cells.

  That’s when I told Lewis everything. How it wasn’t just a random inmate who raped me, but some inmates that were instructed by the warden to rape me. How the warden also took a turn. His eyes were wide. I tol
d him how it was taped and now the same thing had happened to Charleston.

  He shook his head and said, “Corrupt muthafucka.”

  I nodded. “What can I do with this?”

  “What do you want?”

  “To get the fuck up out of here! To expose a dirty warden gotta bring some kind of favor my way, don’t it? Then maybe I can bring exposure on my situation: How my trial was never fair; how I’m in this shithole for some shit I didn’t do. How I ain’t never done shit my whole life that would warrant me being up in here for even a day.”

  “Chance, you know information is power. If this shit can play out right you can use this as a bargaining tool for your freedom and if not that, then a reduced sentence. Because they are going to want to make this go away as quickly as they can. If not, it’s gonna be all up in the news, it’s going to launch so many investigations and civil rights suits and can cost their ass some serious money.” He pointed a finger at me. “It may not work. But then again, the shit might. It maybe a lot of niggas that he did this to. But how many are going to speak up?”

  I took a deep breath, relieved that there was even a small possibility.

  “But I need to be able to prove it, right? With medical documents? The actual video? Charleston is down. But we can’t do this shit by ourselves.”

  He stared at me for a moment before asking, “Do you understand what you are asking me to do?”

  “Look, I know the risk I’m asking you to take. But I’m trying to get out of here. And now you tell me this gives me the chance? I can’t spend the rest of my life behind bars, but I don’t know all the proper channels to go through.” I took a deep breath. “That’s why I need you.”

  Lewis believed that I was innocent. I knew he did.

  He stared at me for a long time before finally nodding. “You can’t mention any of this to anybody, not in letters and not in your visits, to no one except me and Charleston!” He took a deep breath like he was regretting what he was going to say next. “What do you need me to do?”