I thought about how frightening Annie’s pretreatment life must have been. Contrary to popular belief, schizophrenia is not a “split personality,” but rather a disturbance in perception, often resulting in auditory, and sometimes visual, hallucinations. I find the very word itself, schizophrenia, scary. A cruel condition, it renders the afflicted unable to discern the real from the hallucinated. With such impairment in basic functioning, the schizophrenic can’t move past futile attempts at organizing the brain. Without treatment, anything resembling a normal life is impossible. I thought schizophrenia must be a living hell and had all the more compassion for Annie Tilden and the legions like her who struggle with this horrific affliction.
* * *
So far, all of the women I’d met had stories and plights that I could, in some way, empathize with. Honestly, they didn’t seem like “real criminals” to me.
But with the assignment of a new case—Rhonda Reynolds, one of the few Rose Singer inmates charged with murder—that was about to change. “A little more of a challenge for you,” Janet said.
Janet had already done the initial evaluation and suggested we meet with Rhonda in her house. As we stood in her cellblock waiting for her to emerge, I was chewing on my pen. Janet had been so casual about the murder charge; I supposed that as a jailhouse veteran, very little fazed her. But I didn’t have long to fret. An upper cell door popped open and a wiry woman glowered down at us, her hardness softened by an oversized fuzzy blue headband. As she descended, her irritated demeanor transformed to that of a debutante making a grand entrance. Taking her time, she slowly made her way over to us. She gave me a coy little smile and looked squarely up at Janet.
“Hello, Rhonda,” said Janet. “I want you to meet Miss Buser. She’s a student intern and I’d like the two of you to start working together.”
“Uh-huh,” said Rhonda in a low, raspy voice.
Inching closer to Janet, I smiled at Rhonda. In turn, she sized me up. “Yeah, you can call me.”
Gee, thanks!
With that, Rhonda Reynolds turned away and faded back up the stairs.
“She seems like a tough customer,” I commented, resuming my pen chewing.
“Not as tough as she seems,” said Janet. “She’s facing a lot of time upstate, but she’s in complete denial about the trouble she’s in. She may be someone you’ll work with for just a few sessions, or she could be long-term. Either way, she’ll be here long enough for you to find out—it’ll take forever for her case to resolve. The wheels of justice move very slowly, Mary, especially for serious charges.”
A few days later, Rhonda Reynolds arrived at the clinic for our first session. Along with the fuzzy blue headband, she wore her hair in little girl pigtails. Giggling loudly in the waiting area, she was the center of attention.
“Your client is here,” Overton announced, rolling his eyes.
As we settled in, I wasn’t exactly sure how to begin, but I needn’t have worried. Rhonda Reynolds got right to the point. “I’m here for murder—you believe that? I didn’t murder anybody. Let me tell you what happened. A bunch of us were hanging out on the corner, just messing around, and this girl jumps on my back. Everybody’s laughing, but it wasn’t funny. I can–not have anyone crowding me like that. So, I yell at her to get off. When she didn’t, I pull out my handy knife and cut her—not hard, just to let her know I wasn’t kidding around. When I saw the blood, I told her to wait while I got some peroxide and a Band-Aid. But did she wait? Nooooh! She decided to go home and bleed to death along the way. I told her to wait, but she did what she wanted. Not my fault she died.”
With that, Rhonda Reynolds sat back and probed my face for a reaction.
She had to be kidding. Her story was ridiculous. Obviously, she’d killed this poor woman. But her denial was rock-solid. If I challenged her, any hope of a relationship would have ended then and there. About all I could think to say was, “Do you always carry a knife?”
“Yes, I carry a knife!” she growled. “Where I live, you need a knife! Being a White girl and all, you wouldn’t understand that!”
Ignoring the racial jab, I said, “It must be hard to not feel safe.”
“It is! Everybody carries something—you have to! And now I’m in this place and all I feel is stress. Stress, stress, stress! What you need to do is get me sleeping pills.”
To this, I explained the department policy, but didn’t quite have the nerve to pull out our handout, “Natural Techniques to Fall Asleep.” Not this time.
She leaned forward and banged her fists on the desk. “You get me sleeping pills!” And then, pointing both index fingers at me, “That’s your job!”
She was intimidating, but I held my ground. “I’m sorry, but I can’t help you there.”
“Well, then, why’m I here?” she said, slumping back.
“What happens when you try to fall asleep?” I asked.
“I have nightmares, that’s what. Okay? Nightmares that wake me up.”
“What are the nightmares about?”
She hesitated for a moment, then said: “Pools of blood. Okay? Happy now?”
When I asked if the pools of blood meant anything in her waking life, she became withdrawn and refused to answer any further questions. Not nearly as upbeat as she’d been when she’d arrived, the session ended and she flounced out of the clinic, but not before I asked if we could make a follow-up appointment. “I’ll think about it!” she snapped.
I had my doubts as to whether Rhonda Reynolds would return, but when I called her the following week, she arrived promptly. In a rerun of the first session, she demanded sleeping pills, referring to the nightmares. When I again tried to probe, she abruptly switched gears, launching into tales of an idyllic childhood filled with birthday parties, Easter baskets, and warm family gatherings. Of course, none of this added up to the woman sitting on Rikers Island charged with murder. But she had her own reasons for portraying this happy image, her own reasons for denying she’d killed someone. I didn’t know where any of this was going, but it seemed to me that despite her outward gaiety, Rhonda Reynolds was deeply troubled, and for that very reason I was actually hopeful that we might make some progress. Emotional turmoil, uncomfortable as it may be in the moment, is an impetus for change. Even twelve-step programs talk about “hitting bottom” before any real change can occur. I had the feeling that, for Rhonda Reynolds, the bottom was getting closer.
* * *
If emotional angst prompts change, then its absence may have at least partially explained my stalled relationship with Millie Gittens. Despite having lost custody of five children and now being behind bars, which for most people would have been hitting bottom—many times over—when Millie Gittens put her head on the pillow at night, she slept soundly.
As much as I hated to admit it, Millie and I weren’t making any progress. She remained fixated on sleeping pills, and that was when she bothered to show up. She rarely made her appointments, showing up just often enough to keep the busy Camille Baxter placated. Determined to make this relationship work, I would storm down to the nursery, only to find her sprawled out on the couch, protesting that she couldn’t find anyone to watch Calvin, or that she’d gotten mixed up on dates and times. Always an excuse.
During my weekly hour of formal supervision with Janet, my “Millie struggle” dominated every conversation. Janet suggested various strategies for engaging her, and though I tried them all, nothing worked. Millie’s disinterest in therapy flew in the face of my belief that with a little patience, everyone would come around. Yet no matter how hard I tried to forge some kind of therapeutic alliance with her, I was unable to do so. Even worse, I often wound up as her adversary. In one of our infrequent sessions, she revealed how she’d lost her two youngest children to the Bureau of Child Welfare. She told me she’d been living in a hotel in downtown Manhattan. “I did a
lot partying down there,” she giggled. “Anyway, middle of the night, my three-year-old gets up, leaves the room, and gets down to the street. The police found him on the sidewalk, so they called BCW and they just took both of them away from me. You believe that?”
“It must have been hard for you to lose your children like that,” I said, trying to meet her “where she was.”
“It was! It really was. And it was all BCW’s fault!”
“Well . . . now . . . do you see a problem with a toddler being alone on the streets at two in the morning?”
“’Course I do! But what are they blaming me for? Huh?”
“You’re the baby’s mother, Millie. You’re responsible for him.”
“Now you sound just like BCW, and like I told them, don’t you think I would have done something—if I was awake? Ah, duh!”
“Do you think that maybe the partying might have something to—?”
“No, no, no! I was just asleep—that’s all. How’m I supposed to know the baby’s goin’ out the door if I’m asleep? Duh!”
“But, Millie—”
“Ah, DUH! Ah, DUH!”
With that session, I saw the light. My belief that everyone could be helped was naive. Even the ever-optimistic Janet agreed. “It looks like Millie’s just not receptive to help, at least not at this point in her life. The simple truth is that you can’t help someone without their participation—no one can.”
As soon as Janet deemed the situation hopeless, the floodgates of relief opened up. No more maddening trips to the nursery, no more struggling for magical words that would turn this disinterested person around. Best of all, Janet didn’t view it as my fault—something I’d worried about. “You can’t help someone without their participation—no one can.” A great burden was lifted. The Millie struggle was over.
But not quite. Janet also noted that Millie hadn’t been in any trouble since I’d been meeting with her and wanted me to continue doing so. “At the very least, she knows she’s being watched—and let’s not forget she’s going to a program soon. Let’s just give her the added support till she leaves.”
It was with mixed feelings that I kept Millie on my caseload, still finding it hard to accept that we can’t help someone who just doesn’t want help.
* * *
But this defeat was offset by a growing sense of competence. As I handled the daily referrals, Janet was looking over my shoulder less as I was making accurate assessments, transferring only those in true need to the more protected Mental Observation Unit.
My mornings were spent with referrals, with afternoons devoted to follow-up sessions. The faces on my caseload came and went—usually to Bedford Hills Prison. But Lucy Lopez, Tiffany Glover, and Annie Tilden had developed into my long-term cases, and as they took wobbly steps forward, I delighted in their progress.
Once Lucy Lopez asked for help, she never looked back. Once a week, she could be heard running down the hall for her session, her jail-issued red plastic slippers slapping hard on the linoleum floor. Lucy always managed to find another mother to babysit her son, underscoring her level of motivation. The challenges she faced were formidable: Lucy’s father had been shot and killed when she was two, and her mother had been in and out of jail while she was growing up. She was raised by her grandmother, a solid caregiver. Tragically, her loving grandmother passed away when Lucy was nine, and then it was on to foster care. But the memory of her grandmother’s love was Lucy’s life preserver, pulling her back from the brink of destruction. “Sometimes,” said Lucy, “I feel like I can hear my grandma talking to me—You can do better than this, Lucy—you can do better!”
And Lucy was doing better. She pushed herself. Therapy was just the beginning of her personal improvement campaign. She was the first to show up for jailhouse Narcotics Anonymous meetings, and she took full advantage of the Mental Health Department’s weekly meditation group. “It really helps! When I get out of jail, and find myself getting uptight and wanting to get high, I’m going to meditate instead. It’s just another tool I’m learning,” she smiled. When Lucy wasn’t immersed in various therapies, she was busy with the Social Services Department regarding another child, her four-year-old son, Junior, who’d been in foster care during Lucy’s years of drug use. Despite Lucy’s valiant efforts behind bars, her older child was being readied for adoption. The prospect of permanently losing Junior terrified Lucy, and she was making every effort to prove herself a responsible mother. Social Services was assisting her in negotiating the vast Bureau of Child Welfare, helping her to file petitions and gather letters of recommendation. She was also trying to arrange for a visit with Junior in the Rose Singer visiting room. It was an uphill battle, and with fingernails bitten to the quick, she told me how she lay awake at night, agonizing about how all of this would play out. “I worry about how long I’ll be sentenced, whether or not I’ll get my children back after I’m released, and if I do—hope of hope—then I worry about where we’ll live, what I’ll do for money. I dropped out of high school and don’t have any skills. It’s all so scary. But what scares me most is that it’s all too late, and that in the end I’ll lose my children anyway. And then I get so depressed I don’t even want to get out of bed. So I try not to go there. I can’t look too far ahead—it’s too scary. So what I do is, I just do the best I can every single day, and leave everything else in God’s hands. That’s all I can do, Miss B, that’s all I can do.”
Lucy’s steely determination was admirable, and I just hoped something good would come her way. Though I kept my thoughts to myself, I had to agree that her future was daunting. Despite Lucy’s progress, it was not with open arms that the world would greet an ex-con and recovering crack addict. Still, some things have to be taken on faith, and sometimes the only thing to be done, as Lucy said, was to leave it in God’s hands.
Tiffany Glover was more fortunate in that she didn’t have to worry about losing her son, who lived with her mother, a woman who prayed for her daughter’s recovery. After the drug program fiasco, it was as though a dam broke, and everything bottled up inside Tiffany began to flow. “I cannot believe I was a down-and-out addict—me! You just don’t realize what’s happening to you when you’re in the middle of it,” she said, shaking her head. With Tiffany’s acknowledgment of her addiction, her mood lightened, so much so that being on the Mental Observation Unit was no longer warranted. Janet noted Tiffany’s improvement. “She’s doing a lot better, Mary—time for her to go to GP.”
Except for severe psychiatric impairment, the MO is temporary, just long enough for sustained emotional stability, followed by a discharge to general population. “It’s healthier for them to function in GP,” Janet explained. “Not to mention the need to free up beds for the newcomers.”
While this policy only made sense, the MO was viewed as a safer, softer haven in jail, and transfers from the protective unit to general population were met with fierce resistance, and in this regard Tiffany Glover was no exception. Although I tried to frame the move as a milestone in her improvement, she didn’t buy it. “But I’m afraid of GP!”
“I think you’ll do fine,” I said. “You and I will continue to meet, but it will just be in the clinic, that’s all. You can do it!”
Her eyes welled up with tears and she stared at the floor, her demeanor reverting to that first day in the receiving room. For a moment, I wondered if this really was the right move. But then she bit her lip and nodded.
A day later, her meager belongings packed up in a clear plastic Hefty bag, Tiffany Glover dragged the bag through the corridors as she was led to a GP dorm.
Although the transition to GP was initially difficult, Tiffany began to thrive in her new environment, another plus for her. She made friends with the girl in the next cot, a girl nicknamed Lanky who’d given birth just prior to her arrest. Tiffany told me that Lanky had been so desperate to get high that as soon as her
baby was born, she’d jumped out of the hospital bed and run down a side stairwell. Tiffany said Lanky was just now wondering what had happened to her daughter. “At least I never did that!” Tiffany declared.
With wide brown eyes and a full pretty smile, Tiffany Glover stood out as a beauty in the Rose Singer halls. She’d had numerous boyfriends on the outside, many of whom were drug dealers. “That’s how I got my fix,” she explained.
Reading between the lines, I surmised the arrangement with these men was sex for drugs, an all too common bartering arrangement among the female inmates.
One afternoon, Tiffany arrived for our session with a big announcement: “I want to join STEP.”
STEP, an acronym for “Self-Taught-Empowerment-Pride,” was a jailhouse drug rehab program. The STEP participants lived in the same dorm and were often seen marching through the halls in military style. Upon completion of the program, certificates were awarded. “Some of the girls told me they have a graduation where your family comes,” said Tiffany, “and I was thinking that could be really nice. If I can get through this program, I think it will help me when I go upstate, and I know my mother would be proud of me. They have a new class starting and I’m going to check it out. What do you think?”
Lockdown on Rikers Page 7