His eyes lit up. “Thanks, Miss G.!” he exclaimed. He grabbed the scissors and tape and stuffed them into the pockets of his winter coat. Turning on his heel, he bounced out of the library and back to the dorms.
Within the next few minutes, the inmates all left and I fell back into my seat, body deflating. Now, sitting alone in the empty library, a sense of unease washed over me. Had I reacted too hastily with Andrews? He was antsy to leave and I was ready to close up the library, but in my impatience had I made a misstep?
There was nothing to be done about it now, though. My days off were in sight.
Chapter 5
Weekend Reading
In an attempt to most efficiently use the resources available within the Department, every effort shall be made to redistribute surplus library materials prior to discarding these materials. Any library material in such physical condition as to render it unusable shall be disposed of with regard to institutional library procedures.
—ODRC Policy 58-LIB-03
“Z675.P8 C55. Z675.P8 C55. Z675.P8 C55.”
Muttering to myself, I referenced the scrap of paper in my hand again, then peered at the tiny letters and numbers printed on the spines of the books in front of me. When the alphanumeric combinations began to resemble something vaguely familiar to the one in my hand, I slowed my pace. My finger walked along the white line of labels before stopping at the one that matched my piece of paper.
I pulled the book off the shelf. Library Services to the Incarcerated by Sheila Clark and Erica MacCreaigh. At only 250 pages, it didn’t seem large enough to contain all the nuances that came with prison librarianship, but as I thumbed through, the chapter headings caught my eye: “Facilities and Equipment,” “Understanding the Patrons,” and “Understanding Yourself,” among others.
Now that I’d found one, I turned to the second call number on my piece of paper and my finger traced the books until I found its match. Down for the Count: A Prison Library Handbook by Brenda Vogel. This was an even slimmer volume, less than 200 pages, but seeing chapters with such intriguing titles as, “Prison Libraries: How They Came To Be” and “Collection Management and Corresponding Woes,” appealed to both my personal love of gathering information and my professional struggle with our physical collection of books.
Yes. Both of these would do just fine.
I tucked the books under my arm and climbed down the narrow metal steps to the main reading room floor. It was Monday, essentially the Sunday equivalent of my workweek. Having a regular weekday off afforded me more freedom than I had anticipated. I could run errands with lines that were so short when compared to a busy weekend. To my delight, Cleveland’s iconic West Side Market was practically empty (at least when compared to the Saturday suburban surge) on Mondays, so I had now decided to add the Cleveland Public Library to my routine as well.
I’d been at the prison for a week and in all of my interactions with staff and inmates, I was beginning to see the entire experience as a shining beacon of opportunity. And not just in terms of what books and materials I provided—this was the kind of job I had gone to library school for, the kind of position where I could both encourage reading and literacy and make a positive impact on others. Five days in, though, and I also knew that there were opportunities for me to learn more. If I wanted to be effective at my job, I needed to do a little research.
Contrary to popular belief, librarians don’t have all the answers. But we do know how to find the answers, which is how I ended up deep in the stacks of the main branch of CPL.
Built in 1925, the historic main branch of Cleveland’s library is a stunning example of Renaissance architecture in the heart of downtown, a palace of marble among the busy city streets. While I had a local branch that was slightly closer to my apartment (and with far better parking), that location didn’t have the books I was looking for. The Main Branch downtown did, however, which is how I ended up tucked into the far reaches of the library’s collection retrieving them.
With my books safely in tow, I headed out of the reading room and towards the sweeping marble staircase that would take me downstairs to the lobby. I was so absorbed in the hallway’s mini art gallery that I didn’t notice the tall blonde gentleman until he was nearly right in front of me.
“Jill?”
I forced my gaze from the painting. I was so startled it took my brain a second to catch up with my vision.
Standing before me was Anthony, former assistant director of the library in my hometown. Several years ago he had taken a job in the literature department of Cleveland Public, and I had not been in touch with him since.
Of all the libraries in all the world, why’d I have to walk into his?
Anthony furrowed his brow. “You . . . emailed me a while back, didn’t you?”
Indeed I had, since Anthony was part of whatever limited library network I belonged to. As I recalled, Anthony had not responded. Forcing a smile, I nodded. “Yes, I had just graduated with my MLIS and moved back to town. I had emailed to see if you knew of any job openings.”
“Ah.” He shifted the stack of books in his hands and walked a few steps up, closer to me on the staircase. “Unfortunately not.”
“Oh,” I waved my hand. “That’s okay. I got one. I’m working as a prison librarian on the far west side.”
Anthony’s eyes widened. He again shifted the stack of books in his hands and leaned against the wide marble handrail. “You know, I had considered doing that decades ago.”
“Really?” I had a hard time imagining Anthony wrangling inmates. Then again, he probably was thinking the same thing about me.
“Well,” Anthony said with a nod, “I’ve got to get these books back upstairs. It was nice seeing you.”
I waved and took my books down to the circulation desk to be checked out. As I watched the Cleveland Public Library employee scan my books, I realized how far I had come. Ten years ago, I started working at the public library as just an after-school job, not really expecting it to go anywhere. But now, I was a librarian, in charge of my very own little library. All of the people I had worked with back then, including Anthony, had been instrumental in showing me what a library could be, inspiring me to take this path. Running into Anthony here seemed like serendipity.
My new work schedule took some adjusting. In college I worked the front desk of a dorm and would occasionally work weekends and for at least one semester worked the overnight shift, requiring me to arrive at work at 4 a.m., but now I was working early every Saturday. Waking up before six on a Saturday meant Friday nights out with friends would be few and far between: going to work in a prison on a mere three or four hours of sleep would not be wise.
The Saturday before my own personal visit to the library had broken as bright and early as all the other days preceding it. I stumbled around my kitchen, willing myself to wake for the last day of my first week at the prison. Coffee had become a daily necessity.
Ninety minutes later, I arrived at work to a lobby already full of waiting visitors, chairs claimed even at that early hour. Families of all sizes, and spanning several generations, waited patiently. Like staff, all visitors were searched and walked through the metal detector to prevent contraband from coming into the prison. Walking past them, I wondered if any were related to my porters, and as my eyes quickly scanned the room, I looked for signs of familiarity. I didn’t know what it was like to have a family member in prison, but if the crowded visiting room told me anything, it was that many of the men at our facility had families who loved and supported them. In this way, they were luckier than many other prisoners.
I bypassed the line and took my items up to the front counter to be searched before making my way down to the library.
The Education staff were all off today—I was the only one required to work Saturdays—so I had the entire department to myself. Even the general staff and number of correctional officers seemed smaller than it had during the week.
The library itself was far more su
bdued and quiet on Saturday, especially during the first shift in the morning. No one waited outside for me to unlock the door, save for my porters. The inmates, it seemed, also took advantage of the weekend to sleep in. My workers and I passed the hours in silence, and I used the downtime as an opportunity to really dig into the prison policies in my filing cabinet.
During the mid-morning break, I referenced the sheet Dr. Harald had brought back from the previous day’s Seg visit, and took the requested books down to Segregation. This time, alone, I had to wait and track down one of the higher-ups with a key to be allowed in. The RIB office was closed, as Donnor was also off on the weekends, so it was up to me to distribute the books directly to the inmates through the same slot in the door that Dr. Harald had used the day before.
Because the newspapers only arrived on weekdays, there weren’t newspapers to draw patrons in during the afternoon shift. That, coupled with inmates having visitors, meant the afternoon passed as quietly as the morning. At 3:30 p.m., I ushered the inmates back to their dorms for count, shut down the library, and headed home, grateful to officially have my weekend started.
After having spent the past few days waking up long before the sun, I was so happy to sleep in on Sunday and have a day of doing absolutely nothing, only sweetened by having the satisfaction that I had survived my first week.
Over the weekend, as I talked with family and shared cocktails with friends at a local bar, I was faced with a barrage of questions, all of which could be boiled down to the same single query: What’s it like?
“Oh,” I said, demurely, waving the question off. “It’s really not that much different from all the other libraries I’ve worked in.”
“Really?” they countered, fascinated and disbelieving at the same time. And they were right to detect the hint of falseness in my voice, although, to be fair, it so far really wasn’t that much different from the other libraries. Maybe there were some more rules, or, at least, more complex rules, but the way the library functioned was the same.
The one key difference was the way I was seen. More than once over the next two years I would hear inmates joke that they had to be there, the staff chose to be. So who were really the crazy ones in this situation? I was an outlander. Maybe not the time-traveling kind, but someone from the outside who had chosen to go inside, go behind bars.
On the outside, to friends and family, I was an equally rare bird, because to them I had been on the inside. I had been on the other side of the bars, I had walked the halls of a prison and come out on the other side. My friends and family all had what they considered to be mundane jobs compared to mine. Nothing worthy of a game of twenty questions and exciting enough for party small talk. I was the belle of the ball. Or, of the bar as it were.
I took my new position seriously, setting myself up to regale them with all sorts of stories and to set the record straight on what it was like in prison. After all, I’d been there for a full week and had done my due diligence by checking out a book about it, so obviously that meant I knew everything there was to know, right?
“Well.” I took a deep breath, preparing myself. “You know, there are the regulars who are always waiting outside for the library to open and stay late, and the inmates really just come in and sit and read like any library. Newspapers and magazines are super popular. They love James Patterson. Love him. I can’t keep his books on the shelves. Really, if you can ignore the guard next door you can forget you’re even inside prison.”
Seven days in and I felt like some white knight coming in astride my trusty steed, Confidence. Just about the right time for hubris to kick me in the ass.
“Grunenwald,” I answered, picking up the phone in the library.
“It’s Kim. Did you tell Andrews he could take scissors and tape from the library?”
“Y-yes.” I stumbled over the word as a cold rush passed over me.
“Right, okay, so they aren’t allowed to have that back in the dorms. Finch found it during a random bunk search.”
“He told me that Carol said he could.” The pitch of my voice went higher at the same time I was trying to keep my voice low, not wanting to be overheard. “I thought . . .” my words faded off. My shoulders were up around my ears as I tried to make myself small.
“It’s contraband,” Kim said. There was a pause, then: “Finch also found the note you wrote telling Andrews he could have it.”
This was bad. This was really bad. This was bad on an epic level.
Andrews had contraband in his dorm. Contraband he had gotten from the library. That would be bad enough on its own, although Andrews himself would be the one most affected. But I had taken it a step further: I’d actually given Andrews permission and had put it in writing. I realized that I didn’t have the power to give him that permission. They were library supplies, yes, and I was the librarian and this was my library, but contraband was dictated at the state level and no amount of slips of paper with my signature was able to trump that. So not only had I basically given an inmate carte blanche to break a state law, I had given him proof that I had also broken state law.
Bad. Really bad. Really, really bad. Like, possible termination from the job bad.
I’d never been fired before and my anxiety spiked as my brain began firing off a million questions in every direction. What was I going to tell my parents? How was I going to explain how I got fired? Would I have to file for unemployment? How did that work? What was I going to tell my boyfriend? My getting a full-time job in Cleveland was the first step towards him moving out here and us starting our life together, but if I didn’t have a job, then what? I have no idea how I managed to get lucky enough to get a job when all of my classmates were still struggling and now I’d gone and wrecked my one and only opportunity—
“Jill.” Kim’s snap punctuated my thoughts.
“Yes. Here.”
“I said Finch already destroyed the note.”
Wait. What?
“She . . . destroyed it.” I repeated Kim’s words back to her, feeling them in my mouth. As they passed between my teeth, the worry dissolved away like a piece of candy on my tongue.
“Yeah. She’s supposed to write up an incident report and report it to Admin, but she destroyed it and called me instead. Andrews is still getting written up, Finch just isn’t going to mention the note part.”
My whole body collapsed from relief. The past few minutes had been spent in a state of shock and anxiety, my bones propped up on sheer adrenaline.
“Listen,” Kim said, but I was barely listening. “I gotta get back to work. Try not to worry about this. I’ll see you later this afternoon.”
Still in disbelief, I hung up the phone. Finch had, without a doubt, saved my ass while also risking her own. If Admin ever discovered my own misstep and then discovered what Finch had done to cover for me, we’d both be in even bigger trouble.
I turned back to the library and inmates in front of me, trying to cast the situation out of my mind. I couldn’t mess up like this again.
That afternoon, Andrews hurried into the library. The line of incoming inmates made it impossible for him to reach my desk, so he positioned himself at an odd angle near the circulation desk. “Miss G.!” he said loudly, projecting his voice above the crowd.
With a deep breath, I stood up from my seat and turned to face him. “You lied to me, Andrews,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest.
“No!” He furiously shook his head. “No, I didn’t, Miss G., I swear.”
I cocked my head to one side and narrowed my eyes. In my best stern librarian voice, I said, “Andrews.”
“Miss G. I swear. She let me have that stuff —”
“But you knew you weren’t supposed to.”
“Miss G.—”
“I trusted you and you put me in a really difficult position.” Shaking my head, I raised my hands, palms up. “I’m sorry, Andrews. I can’t have you repairing books anymore.”
His whole body sagged, like a balloon deflatin
g. Andrews’s head bobbed up and down a few times, eyes still on the floor. “I understand, Miss G.” Without another word, he turned and shuffled back into the library, finding an open spot at a table.
From my standing vantage point, I looked down and saw my circulation staff and the line of waiting patrons all standing still, watching me. When our eyes locked, they all jolted back into the regular rhythm of library services. It was jarring; comedic, even, like a scene from a movie, when everyone goes back to pretending that everything is fine and nothing is amiss. It was also the first time I’d shown any real authority in front of my porters. Up until that moment, I’d been a fairly passive manager, mostly letting them guide the way, as I was still trying to find my place. But now they knew that I had no problem laying down the law when necessary.
Since Finch worked first shift and left the prison a couple of hours before I did, it was a few days before I happened to cross paths with her.
“Thanks,” I said when I caught up with her in the yard one day. I tried to keep my voice light and casual in an attempt to play this off as just a normal, everyday conversation.
Finch looked at me. This was the first time I’d really ever spoken to her, although I could easily recognize her head of tight, blonde curls from across the yard. The female correctional officers were few and far between, making them easier to spot. She and I were roughly the same age, build, and complexion. But just standing here, taking her in, I immediately noticed there was a hardness to her, an aloof and intimidating exterior shell that seemed tough to crack. I suddenly realized how complicated it must be to be a female correctional officer in an all-male prison.
“Thanks for what?” she asked, eyes wide.
I furrowed my brow. “For the other day.” Lowering my voice, I leaned in closer. “With Andrews.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she replied and walked away.
Reading behind Bars Page 8