A Hope in the Unseen

by Ron Suskind

  “Just try it!” Rob shouts back, right up in Cedric’s face, clearly knowing the proper response to that one. “Just fucking try it!” This time Cedric, who hasn’t punched anyone since eighth grade, storms out of the room.

  Roaming the halls, he searches for someone to talk to about the confrontation. Rob, it seems, is a friend of nearly everyone on the hall. Cedric knocks on Chiniqua’s door. No answer. She’s been visiting friends at Harambee a lot lately.

  He runs down the hall. Zayd understands the dynamics of the unit, and he’s not close to Rob. Zayd will understand. But while Cedric—pounding Zayd’s locked door—has few cards in his hand, Zayd has many. Standing there, Cedric tries to figure out where Zayd might be. He could be visiting Bear Beinfeld, a popular sophomore who is Zayd’s childhood friend and offers easy access to a more diverse, nonfreshman world. He could be visiting one of many women, lots of them in upper classes, that he already knows. He might be meeting a professor on Thayer Street. No way to find him; he could be anywhere.

  Deflated, Cedric writes a note on Zayd’s message pad with the grease pencil. “Zayd, Need to talk, quick,—Cedric. It’s IMPORTANT. YOU CAN COME BY LATE!” Then he flees from the dorm, walking for hours around the dark campus, feeling like a fugitive and wondering what it would be like if he just dropped out and went home.

  Cedric Gilliam stands on the edge of a graveyard at 19th and E streets, Southeast, Washington, and checks to see if he has time for a cigarette. He’s a little ahead of schedule this warmish autumn evening, and he leans against the cemetery’s low brick wall, slowly sucking and tasting each puff while he runs through the string of events that landed him here.

  Maybe he lost his head a little, let things get out of hand. Everything was going so well in the first few months out, his hair-cutting and a little side dealing balancing out just fine, the women happy that he could now stay the night, an open-ended expanse of freedom up ahead. The problem was the heroin, or not so much the beloved stuff itself as what it did to the rest of things. He started doing a little too much of it. Just a little extra. And, by spring, things were starting to fray with him and Leona, where he was living. They got in this huge fight—she doesn’t do drugs or anything—and she threw him out. He thinks she also tipped off his parole officer, because right after that fight, it so happens, the guy brought him in for a surprise drug test, which he failed. Then the guy was all over him, all righteous, and he had to go into a program and get tested all the time, until he got his last chance to test clean at the end of June. When he failed that one, there was nothing to do but lay low. By then he was living with Sherene, who’s been real nice to have him, considering the U.S. marshals have already been by his mom’s house. Real nice, that is, until last Friday, when she told him she’s got too much to lose—a nice new apartment and a new job—to risk having him around, having marshals come by her apartment or office looking for him. Not that she was ready to abandon him; she just told him it was time to turn himself in.

  He yelled and cursed at her, all the time suspecting that she was right. Last weekend, sleeping where he could, looking for friends to shack up with, and scratching up just enough cash to get by did its part in nudging him along. But there was something else. Over the long weekend he also thought a lot about Lavar. They had some good talks over the spring and early summer. Real friendly. They laughed a little and would have gone to that concert if Barbara hadn’t stood in the way. He thought about all that, and how the boy’s a little bit like his ol’ dad. Not that he’s tough in the usual ways, but he’s got a tough craftiness about him. Figures out where he wants to go, figures out a way to get there. Doesn’t back off of things—goes right at them. And thinking about that on Sunday, sitting on a stoop in an out-of-the-way part of Northeast, he started thinking about Brown, how that boy is sort of showing him up by managing things—handling classes at a famous university and getting settled, far from home—while his father is running away, ducking and hiding. And that was it. Yesterday, he placed a call to Captain Roy Grillo, a parole supervisor he has known since he was a guard at Lorton in the mid-1980s. They set a place and time.

  The cigarette is only half finished when an unmarked blue sedan from the D.C. Department of Corrections rounds the corner on 19th at 6:15 sharp. Cedric considers snuffing and pocketing what’s left—a prison habit but something he hasn’t done in the last ten months of freedom and relative plenty. He looks intently at the butt for an instant, not sure what to do, then drops it, and stamps it hard under the heel of his freshly shined shoe.

  “Man, you sure this is what you want to do?” says Grillo through the lowered passenger side window as he pulls to the curb.

  Cedric looks at him a moment, surprised by the question. “Yeah, ummm, I guess,” he says finally. “I just want to go ahead and get this shit over with.”

  He thinks about that exchange—about how Grillo seemed to offer a free man’s choice and how he opted for the responsible course—a thousand times over the ensuing month. At first it felt sort of good being the stand-up guy, taking his medicine. But week to week it gets harder. For one, it seems like knowing that he could still be outside hustling, eluding the U.S. marshalls, actually makes his days back at Lorton feel harsher, more depriving, than any time he can remember.

  Then there’s his placement—a bed in the most dangerous facility in the complex, a miserable, medium-security zoo where he’s cut off from all the scams and good contacts he built up in minimum security over most of the 1990s. So he talks to almost no one and counts the days.

  At three o’clock on a cold morning in mid-October, he hears the fat night guard’s boots tapping along on the cell block’s concrete floor between a row of beds. “Don’t worry, I’m already up,” Cedric says in a loud whisper, sitting up, as the wide silhouette nods from behind a flashlight’s glare. “I don’t need the high beams, I been up for hours.”

  There’s a lot on his mind. Today, finally, is his parole revocation hearing. It will be a long, tense journey through the D.C. criminal justice system. Depending on how things break, it could mean a few more months in prison … or a few more years. During the morning’s preparations and bus trip to D.C., Cedric’s mind locks onto strategic either-ors, multiple-choice answers to hypothetical questions and considerations about how much he’ll be able to lie. It’s not until 9 A.M., when he’s led into a waiting area near some hearing rooms in the D.C. jail, that his furious calculations momentarily stop.

  “Sherene, baby,” he says, standing there in his orange jumpsuit, sounding more breathless than he’d like to. “Real good to see you.” He bends forward and pecks her on the cheek, smelling some perfume she’s wearing and feeling dizzy, his just uncuffed hands fumbling forward.

  She pulls away, looking at him with mock disapproval, and introduces a tall slender black guy to her left in a black suit and boldly patterned tie.

  “Idas Daniel,” he says, giving Cedric an overly hard handshake. “I think we’re in good shape.” Cedric had heard about Daniel from someone in minimum last year, and Sherene had to pay him $300 in advance to handle this hearing—something she’s complained mightily about. The lawyer loops a long arm around Cedric’s shoulder and starts whispering something about dirty urine and various D.C. drug treatment programs and how Cedric should keep quiet in the hearing, but Cedric barely hears. His head is buzzing. He thinks about how a hit of heroin would be bliss at this moment, just to ease him out. But there’s no time to think, or talk, or even hug Sherene again. Cedric Gilliam, 158706, is the first hearing scheduled this morning.

  A guard leads the trio into a tiny cork-walled room where a leggy black woman in a short skirt sits next to a fortyish Hispanic guy in a brown suit. The guy must be Enrique Rivera, the parole board member, Cedric figures, and the woman is clearly some sort of corrections assistant who’ll implement whatever Rivera decides.

  Rivera? Rivera. His mind races. Inmates pass time discussing the board’s five members, analyzing their tics and prejudices to make
informed predictions about what might happen in these tiny hearing rooms. The inmate handicapping of Rivera: he’s supposed to favor Hispanics over blacks. There are no cordialities, and Cedric can’t meet Rivera’s gaze as he sidesteps through the doorway and sits. The leggy woman begins reciting Cedric’s criminal history and various incarcerations, highlights from the forearm-thick folder, or “jacket,” on inmate 158706. He already knows every word of that file—every arrest record, court filing, psychological assessment, and rendition of his troubled family history.

  His mind wanders, flipping backward until he fixes on something from way back, thirty years at least, that’s always bugged him. A lady from child welfare visited his house and wrote that Maggie, his mother, was a “bitter, discontent, distraught individual who took out her frustrations on the children with various forms of rejecting behavior.” It’s in a report he once read. The social worker added that Maggie encouraged authorities “to ‘put the boy away,’ with institutionalization being viewed by her as the only meaningful alternative for her son.” He always remembers that, every word.

  The leggy woman is almost up to the present, talking about how Cedric checked into drug detox in April, was given a last chance to stay clean by his parole officer, then failed the urine test in June.

  “The basic case,” says Daniel, “is my man couldn’t get off the stuff.” Rivera nods along, and they discuss how hard it is to place an inmate in one of District’s crowded drug treatment programs. Cedric watches the men chat, chummy and complacent, his eyes darting from one face to the other.

  “I’d like to say that the violation committed by me was wrong!” he blurts out, drawing Rivera’s gaze. The man stares at him, saying nothing, and Cedric starts rambling. “I maintained a job, cutting hair, a regular job … and tried to clean myself up … but, you know, being incarcerated, it’s a point of fact, that the Department of Corrections facility is drug infested … and that’s why I’m asking for an inpatient program … where I can get away from everything that’s a problem for me.”

  He stops abruptly. He knows he should have let Daniel do the talking instead of babbling on, looking like what he is—a desperate man not ready to be on the outside. Daniel murmurs something compensatory, trying to redirect, but Rivera is just looking at Cedric, like he’s trying to dig inside him with his eyes. This time, at least, Cedric looks back, but—goddammit!—his left eye starts to twitch and he can’t stop it. Fighting the spasm, he hunches forward, looking like he’s going to say something, and everyone seems to wait on him. He looks once around the room. “I’m basically asking to be given another chance,” he croaks finally, feeling the breath go out of him.

  Rivera smiles a sort of melancholy smile, a smile of pity. A moment later he’s making a recommendation that Cedric go back to Lorton until his needs can be assessed and a slot in a one-year inpatient drug treatment program can located.

  And then it’s over. Leaving the room, Cedric nods thankfully toward Rivera. He feared it would be worse, that he’d be reprimanded and sent back to serve more time. But this is different, an order that he be placed in a treatment program—the kind of program he’s needed—soon as that can be arranged. Daniel, grinning and jokey, huddles with Cedric in a foyer area outside the hearing room.

  “They’re gonna have a real tough time finding a year-long treatment program, with cutbacks and all. But that’s what Rivera will recommend anyway. So when they talk to you at your assessment at Lorton, be flexible that six months is what you really need. It’ll be easier for them to find you a bed that way.” Cedric listens, trying to find in Daniel’s tone and inflection a confirmation that this was a victory. Yes, it is a victory, he decides, and spots a guy he knows from minimum security in an orange jumper, waiting for his hearing. “Joe, Joe, can I have a cigarette?” he asks, and he snatches the cigarette the guy passes to him, artfully slipping it into his breast pocket. Of course, the cig’s not free—nothing is around here—and Joe wants some intelligence about Cedric’s hearing, about which board member is on today.

  “It’s Rivera, and I was worried, because he supposedly favors the Puerto Ricans. But he was okay. For me, it was dirty urine, and it’ll mean six months, I figure,” he says, venturing a prediction. “Yeah, six months, tops, in an inpatient drug treatment program, and then I’ll be out.”

  It’s time for Daniel and Sherene to be led out, and Cedric moves toward her quickly, grabbing her hand. “You’ll party tonight, be celebrating and all?” he asks, smiling, and kisses her cheek again. She pulls away, but not briskly like before, and purses her lips, playfully. He wants confirmation. “Well, will you be?”

  “Okay,” she says, giving in. “I guess so.” Savoring this small victory, he nods. “Well, then, I can think about you being out, having fun.”

  It only takes a few weeks back at Lorton for Cedric Gilliam to feel mocked by the idea of a celebration. Celebration? Celebrating what? he mulls, lying on his cot one evening as November approaches. He’s checked on the availability of one-year inpatient slots. It’s a joke. Inmates are waiting three months just to be assessed for placement, and then it’s another six months, maybe even longer, to find a bed. Rivera ordered something that’s not findable. Cedric’s not going anywhere.

  Sherene visited yesterday and they just sat on the little, mustard-colored plastic chairs in the visitation hall—a big gymnasium—not saying much. He tried to describe to her how dangerous this place is, how there was a stabbing a few nights ago, and how he feels like he’s lost his bearings. These young guys, some doing endless time on three-strike felonies or murder raps, are just looking to exact some punishment, to take it out on somebody. A few weeks ago, they had four stabbings in one night. Guys are making shanks out of toothbrushes, bits of metal, table legs. Some guard got busted for smuggling in guns. Maybe being out for almost a year made him soft, maybe it’s just age and fatigue. But he’s not sure he has the energy anymore to put up a deterring facade, to spot potential threats and fend off attacks. All he knows is that he’s tired of always being jumpy, with no trusted guys over here to back him up and no connections to score drugs.

  Sherene didn’t seem to want to hear any of it. She just kept looking up and down the rows of facing chairs, with inmates hugging and kissing the girls visiting them, people wrapped up in each other like pretzels.

  “Aren’t you happy to see me, after I’ve come all the way out here? What, you’re just not in the mood?” she asked, after a long silence. He just grumbled. It’s hard to get “in the mood,” he mulled darkly, when you know you’ll have to leave the gym floor in a few minutes, walk behind a screen on the stage, and take off all your clothes. You want a cold shower? Try having some guard running his rubber-gloved hands all over your cold body and then ordering you to bend over and part your cheeks. The only thing worse than having it done is having to talk about it. So he said nothing. Sherene left in a snit, and he, of course, walked behind the screen to peel off his sky-blue jumpsuit.

  The days start to run together. There’s nothing to do here. Movement is tightly restricted, unlike at minimum, where you could get a pass to go to the library, or some class, drug treatment counseling, job training, or whatever. A little excursion like that can make a whole day. Here, there are no programs to speak of. Cedric spends every day bumping around cell block 18, a fifty-man open dorm area. Once in a while he plays Scrabble with a guy named Zack. But they’re not all that close; Cedric doesn’t even know why he’s here or for how long. On good days, he might score a newspaper to read—that helps—but they’re scarce.

  It’s raining hard today, a day in early November, cutting off the option of going outside into a small courtyard near the cell block. There’s nothing to do, simply nothing, and Cedric bums a piece of notebook paper from a guy across the room. He takes it to a bare table near the blaring TV, pulls a plastic pen from his hip pocket, and sits on a metal chair with a torn fabric seat.

  He sits there a long while, staring into the whiteness. He can’t re
member the last time he did this. Years, at least. He draws a line on his palm, to make sure the pen is working, and then presses it to the paper.

  “Dear Lavar,

  I know I haven’t written to you in a real long time, but I was thinking about how things were going for you at college. It’s not so good for me here. For the first time in a long time, I’m really feeling down.

  But I was wondering about you and how it is going. What classes you are taking. What the other kids are like. I know the Ivy League must be hard. But I’m sure you’ll do good because your studious and determined.”

  He reads over what he’s written a dozen times.

  “I remember when you visited me here when you were 12. You said you wanted to go to Princeton. I remember thinking that you were crazy, shooting too high.”

  He stops. No need to rush it. He wants to get the words just right. Thinking back on that Princeton thing—maybe it was more than six years ago—sends him into a minefield of memory and regret. It ends further back than he usually reminisces, to when he was just a kid— maybe thirteen—and his father, Freddie, visited from Philadelphia. Hasn’t thought about that forever. That’s what getting depressed will do, he thinks, unearth stuff you forget about. The old man had disappeared when he was seven. Left town, no one knew where he’d gone. Then all of a sudden, he’s there, coming by the house and saying he’s in Philly now, like no one ever got beaten and nothing ever happened. He took Cedric down to a flea market on H Street. Bought him a round cap, checked, with a nice fabric, that kind of hung to one side. It was the early ‘60s, and that was a very cool hat. Had to cost $10. Then he was gone, just like that—no forwarding address, just vanished. Whole thing made his mom crazy, like he’d never seen. She threw the hat away in some garbage someplace, where he couldn’t find it. God, he loved that fuckin’ hat.