Reading behind Bars

by Jill Grunenwald

  Watching them together, they reminded me of Red and Andy in Stephen King’s Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption. Minus, y’know, the contraband and escape and all of that.

  Although Red was played by Morgan Freeman in the film version, in the original story, he and Andy were both white, just like Booker and Hoskins. Like Red, Hoskins was far more extroverted. He loved the people-to-people interaction that came with working the circulation desk, and while he would put the books back on the shelf when asked, it wasn’t his favorite thing to do. He much preferred the conversations that came with the desk, and was naturally loud when he spoke.

  Booker, as previously mentioned, was quiet and introverted, just like Andy Dufresne.

  They were two peas in a pod and yet complete opposites. Then again, isn’t that how so many friendships are? They complemented each other well and their shared energy served the library and its patrons tremendously.

  I also had hired a new employee for the law library. Jackson was still there, but Koch had been released, so now I had McDougal. He was loud and brash, and some of the other inmates found him abrasive, but when it came to the law library and the information inside of it, McDougal knew his shit. With the law library in particular it was important to have someone who knew how the system worked. Who knew which forms to provide, which court cases to look up to help solidify an inmate’s case.

  That said, not all of my hiring choices were successful.

  Hoskins once told me that the library was the most popular place to work. Everyone wanted a job in the library. It was indoors, with heating in the winter, and while we didn’t have air-conditioning, there were big box fans that I kept circulating through all of the warmer months. But there were also chairs for the porters behind both the circulation desk and the law library desk. I didn’t think much of this until I realized that there were very few job assignments where the inmates could just sit. Hell, there were very few places in the prison in general where the inmates could just sit and be. They were herded, like cattle, around the camp, always told to keep moving, no loitering.

  Plus, Hoskins told me, I had a good reputation as a manager. I was firm with the rules, both for my workers and the men who used the library, but I was also fair. I was consistent in my firmness: I wouldn’t allow one inmate to get away with something, only to draw the line with another.

  Because of this, the waiting list to get a job at the library increased with each month, but as established inmates were released and gaps were created that needed to be filled, my choice in which inmate to choose always came down to the race of the inmate that had left, since I was required to keep a racially balanced group.

  Morton had been on the wait list for months and after Jefferson—the inmate that had allegedly had an inappropriate relationship with my predecessor—had been released, I was finally able to bring Morton on board.

  Unfortunately, Morton was one of those inmates who only wanted to work in the library because he thought it was an easy gig, what with the whole indoor seating part of the position. He was combative and resistant to instruction. Even training him was a struggle, as he didn’t like being told what to do, even within the context of his job. Maybe his distaste was because the instructions were coming from me, a woman, or from one of the other inmates who had been at the job longer that I had tasked to show Morton the ropes.

  But removing an inmate from a job assignment was a bureaucratic nightmare of paperwork, so I admittedly chose the path of least resistance and assigned Morton to the minimum required amount of hours. It was the easiest solution.

  There were others, of course: Webb, the diminutive man with the raspy voice of a smoker who looked like Denis Leary; Conway, all gangly limbs and red hair, his white skin giving away his Irish heritage; Carlton, with a pick in his afro and wearing thick retro glasses long before hipsters; and Peck, quiet and attentive to details, the circulation cards quickly alphabetized with the speed of a card shark in his dark hands.

  After six months, I honestly wasn’t sure I liked being a manager, but if Morton’s attitude was my only issue, I think I was fairly okay at it.

  Chapter 10

  Bat out of Hell

  Program/work supervisors may make referrals to the Program/Work Assignment Committee for non-routine program/work assignments for inmates. The committee shall review all requests and complete the assignment unless sufficient reasons exist to make an exception.

  —ODRC Policy 54-WRK-02

  “Yo, Ms. G. I thought you quit.”

  I turned from my spot at the newspaper station to look at Doyle. He stood in front of the circulation desk, badge in hand, ready to hand it over. His blonde hair had been washed by the sun, lighter even than normal. “Nah,” I said, grabbing the latest edition of the Cincinnati Enquirer for him. “You aren’t going to get rid of me that easy.”

  Doyle guffawed. He flapped his hand in the international sign of “oh, you” and took a seat in the back.

  Orientation was officially over. At least for this year—every year going forward I’d have to sit through a brief refresher course going over the most important talking points. On the final orientation exam, I—the only one not on the security side—was also the only one to get a 100 percent on the test, which delighted Highland to no end.

  I also managed to earn us a few bonus points right before the exam when Lieutenant Hall asked us a trivia question: What was the name of the first music video to air on MTV? While my colleagues offered up Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and a-Ha’s “Take On Me,” I loudly and vehemently proclaimed the correct answer was “Video Killed the Radio Star.” There was one holdout, who was convinced it was Michael Jackson, but he was outvoted by the rest and we went with my answer, which, of course was correct.

  Pro tip: if you’re building your own trivia team, consider adding a librarian to the mix. Our heads are filled with the most random pieces of information. In fact, in grad school, my classmates and I spent every Wednesday at a bar near campus for Trivia Night. Our team was called the Do Me Decimals (as in Dewey Decimal. We were so clever) and we consistently drank our share of free beer for winning.

  Pro tip: If I am the librarian on your trivia team, listen to me when I am adamant about an answer. Like, obnoxiously, insistently adamant. Because I only get obstinate about things I know are right. So even if everyone else on the team is pretty sure Dead Man Walking was directed by Sean Penn and I’m in my little corner insisting it was Tim Robbins, please listen to me. (What? No, I am not still salty about that point we lost. Why do you ask?)

  Whatever. The cheese stands alone.

  Because staff orientation ran Monday through Friday, by the end of the two week break, I had earned a three-day weekend. But, it was now Tuesday and I was back in the library. During my absence, the library had been covered by my coworkers. Kimberly continued her usual Monday coverage but the rest of the days saw a rotating door of coworkers sitting at my desk, many of them from Administration. It had probably been years since several of them had crossed the bright red “no inmates beyond this point” line and entered the yard.

  The subs’ only role was to maintain order. They were overpaid babysitters, even more so than Kimberly on her regular day. Kimberly at least had a vague, general idea of how the library functioned and she’d been doing it for years. For everyone else, this was way outside both their comfort zone and job description.

  One coworker in particular, Ms. Driver, worked in Administration and while she only had to sacrifice a few hours total to covering the library, she had decided to use that time to reorganize and rearrange my work space. Whatever setup I had wasn’t working for her, so she just took it upon herself to change it. “You’re welcome!” she indicated on the note left on my desk. The hand drawn smiley face did not alleviate my annoyance.

  But, after two weeks away, I needed to jump back into the job. The work space would have to be dealt with later.

  Ten minutes after we opened for the afternoon, Lincoln hustled i
n. He pushed his way past the standing line of inmates waiting for newspapers and joined me behind the desk. “I’m sorry I’m late, Ms. G. They were giving me trouble back at the house.” He began taking badges from inmates and exchanging them for newspapers.

  “It’s fine,” I said, taking a step back from the newspapers and letting him take over. “Did I miss anything?”

  Lincoln shook his head. “I’m just glad you’re back. That Driver, man.” He raised a hand and gestured to the new arrangement.

  I grimaced. “I noticed.”

  “We couldn’t really stop her—”

  “No, no, it’s okay.”

  He opened his mouth but before he could say anything more, he was interrupted by another inmate calling my name.

  “Ms. G.! You’re back!”

  I turned from Lincoln to see Woodson standing at my desk, a tremendous grin spreading across his face like a rising sun.

  “I am indeed,” I said, rolling my chair back towards the counter.

  “Man, Ms. G. Don’t ever leave again, okay? Those people who were in here had no fucking clue what they were doing.”

  I suppressed a smile. “I will try my best.”

  Woodson hovered, not leaving. I waited. Woodson was one of those inmates who had made the library his first stop when he arrived at the prison a few months ago. Oh, eventually everyone wanders into this room full of books at some point, but only a select few make this their destination. Just a few weeks ago, in fact, I had an older gentleman come in, fresh off the bus, looking for The Brothers Karamazov. He was absolutely delighted to discover, 1) I knew how to pronounce Dostoevsky; and 2) the library had a copy available for him to check out.

  Let this be a lesson in the little things in life.

  The silence stretched. “Is there something I can help you with?” I asked Woodson, raising an eyebrow.

  “I need a job, Ms. G.,” he finally confessed. It rushed out in one breath: IneedajobMizzG, as if he had been holding onto it in his mouth all this time. “I’m on grounds crew and . . .” His voice faltered.

  Grounds crew was an extremely labor-intensive job. The yard was huge and needed to be maintained: mowing the lawn during the spring and summer, and shoveling the walking paths during the winter. Thankfully, all trees were outside of the fence (lest, of course, someone climbs one and attempts to jump over) so there were no leaves to rake during the autumn, but still. Grounds crew was physically demanding and while some of the inmates were more than happy to take on a job of manual labor, not all were. Woodson, it seemed, fell into the latter category.

  Along with coming to the library on his first day at the prison, Woodson also put his name down on the porter wait list during the original visit, too. I pulled the blue binder from its spot on the bookshelf behind my desk and opened it.

  My eyes scanned down the page, looking for Woodson’s name and found it at the top

  I couldn’t make any promises. Even when I put in a request for a specific inmate, it was no guarantee. Administration still had to approve the transfer to the library. But, none of my previous requests had been denied.

  Spencer—the inmate who had helped me survive on my own very first day six months ago—was getting released soon, which meant I would have an opening and Woodson was next on the list. But, because I couldn’t make any promises, I had to be vague.

  I closed the blue binder and replaced it on the shelf. I looked at Woodson. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  Woodson left, temporarily placated.

  The next few days passed without incident or issue. For the most part, the majority of inmates seemed happy to have me back. If nothing else, the “On This Day” whiteboard started getting consistently updated again. Despite having left my binder of historical dates, only one of the subs had bothered to update the board.

  Not all of the inmates were pleased to see me back behind the library desk. Unsurprisingly, these were the ones who always viewed the rules more as, shall we say, suggestions than actual rules. Who knows what they had been allowed to get away with in my absence.

  On Thursday, almost as soon as I had entered the Education department after the morning shift, Kimberly cornered me. She had news. “Did you hear?” she asked.

  I shook my head. I’d been out of the gossip loop for so long, I was still catching up on all the old news. There was no way I was ahead of the curve on the new news.

  Kimberly smiled smugly. “Pam got walked out.”

  I froze, water bottle inches from my mouth. I finished my intended sip and forced a swallow.

  “They found letters,” she continued. “Routine bunk search—they were in the box of one of her kitchen workers.”

  “Love letters?”

  Kimberly nodded. “He kept them. Who knows what else she was doing with him besides writing letters,” she added with an eye roll.

  I barely knew Pam and hadn’t interacted with her since graduation day. I guess I couldn’t say, one way or the other, if she was the type that seemed like she would have an inappropriate relationship with an inmate. Then again, I didn’t really know what I imagined that “type” to be.

  I also couldn’t help but be reminded of my own incident with Andrews and Finch. It seemed so long ago now and I was, once again, grateful that Finch had covered for me.

  I was so lost in my thoughts, I didn’t hear Kimberly as she continued speaking.

  “—married.”

  “What?” I asked, shaking the thoughts from my head.

  “She’s married,” Kimberly repeated, enunciating the last word. She let out a puff of air, shaking her head. “Imagine having to go home and tell your husband not only were you fired today, you were fired for gettin’ it on with an inmate.”

  Kim’s frankness startled me, and yet I have to admit I had wondered the same thing. People get fired for all kinds of reasons, sure, but getting fired for writing love letters to a man who is incarcerated at the prison where you work is all kinds of awkward.

  Since Highland’s one visit, I had been slowly, but actively, making a dent in the donated books. Most of my time was really spent just sorting them into two piles: appropriate books and inappropriate books.

  Part of my education in becoming a librarian involved many a classroom discussion about why librarians shouldn’t judge the reading choices of their patrons. A professor told us a story about how she was working the reference desk one day and a patron came in requesting literature that was pro-white supremacist. Personally, the professor took issue with that viewpoint. But professionally, she had to put all of that aside: she had a patron standing in front of her and he wanted a book and, as it happened, the library did carry materials that met that patron’s information needs. So, as much as it personally pained her, she got up and took him to where the books were.

  Also in grad school, I learned about the Five Laws of Library Science, as outlined by S. R. Ranganathan in 1931. One of these laws—number two, as it were—is “Every Reader His Book.” Every member of a community, Ranganathan argued, should be able to walk into a library and find the material they want. Libraries should exist for all patrons and provide a collection that meets the needs of everyone in that community, not just certain demographics. It’s a great standard for most libraries.

  Yeah, so, that’s not a thing behind bars.

  Prison libraries have an entirely different set of rules when it comes to access of materials. Freedom of information doesn’t exist in prison. Patron privacy doesn’t exist in prison. Outside, if a patron came to me and asked for, say, a book on bomb making, I would never in a million years dream of reporting that to anyone. Librarians on the outside, when faced with a demand to break confidentiality from law enforcement, have fought back and they have fought back hard by pushing against requests for private information about patrons.

  But those real-world freedoms don’t hold in prisons. All books that were deemed unacceptable were identified as such because they posed a security risk to the institution. Like, say, books
on bomb making. Anything too sexually or violently graphic was an automatic no-go, the belief being the materials would encourage sexual or violent thoughts and actions in the inmates. So, included in all of my documentation was a list of books that were not allowed inside. The process of books being deemed inappropriate often started in the mail room, when copies would be sent to the men inside, whether from family or an approved vendor. Like all incoming mail, packages were searched. Potentially problematic titles were sent to a committee, which determined whether or not they were allowed inside. If a book was not allowed at one prison in Ohio, it wasn’t allowed at any prison in Ohio. Books stayed on the list for four years and then dropped off; after that, they were allowed inside unless challenged again.

  Every day, when an inmate requested a book we didn’t have, I had to check it against the list. Every day, as part of my job, I practiced censorship.

  I hated it. I didn’t become a librarian in order to keep books away from willing readers. I became a librarian because I believe, with my whole heart, in the freedom of information and access to information. But, as a matter of security, I had to follow the rules, and I had to follow the list and keep out books that weren’t allowed.

  But while some of the banned titles made sense, there were some books that were bizarrely deemed acceptable.

  Shortly after the ILL program was up and running, two white inmates came into the library and hovered at my desk. Their eyes kept darting around, as if they were afraid they would be seen or heard.

  “Hey,” one of them whispered, waving me over. “Hey, Ms. G.”

  I rolled my chair over to my desk. “What can I do for you?”