“Thirty-six . . . thirty-seven . . . thirty-eight,” she counted.
She got to Sanchez's empty bed and said, “Bless that child's soul, Lord.”
Then she saw my face looking back at hers.
“Forty,” she whispered and touched my shoulder.
I had put on my clean pants and shirt before she even started. I was just lying there waiting for her to round up the courts.
“I see you're ready this morning, honey,” she said, and kept moving.
When she made her way back past my bed, I got up and followed her to the front of the house. There were a couple of other dudes headed to court, too. But they were either still getting dressed or cleaning up in the bathroom.
Ms. Armstrong pulled my card from the box.
I sat down in an open chair, and she said, “Stand up, please. This is not a hangout.”
I jumped up like my own mother had told me to move.
Then she looked at the unscarred face on my card, and her eyes got sad.
“How did this happen, Martin?” she asked.
When she called me “Martin,” everything I'd been holding back just wanted to come flooding out.
“I got cut on the way back from court. They wanted some other dude, but I got caught in the middle,” I answered.
She shook her head, and I really believed she was sorry.
That was the first time I had told anyone on the Island. I never thought I would breathe a word of it inside the house. Only the inmates on that bus, the COs who saw it go down, and the kid who cut me knew the story. But I wasn't going to play Ms. Armstrong out in the cold, not now.
She flipped that card out on the desk, and I prayed it would be the last time anyone would think of me as “Forty.”
“Once you make it home, I don't ever want to see you out here again,” she said.
She was always talking to kids about her son in junior high. I thought he was lucky to have a mother who was a CO. He could hear all about what it was really like in jail. Then it would be his own damn fault if he didn't listen.
When the other dudes got up front, Ms. Armstrong dropped that kind of sensitive talk with me. I knew she was being respectful of my privacy.
One dude was so nervous about his case he couldn't stop talking. He replayed the whole thing a couple of times.
I couldn't concentrate on anything except what was ahead of me, and his words just flew right past. I was busy looking out at the house, thinking about all that had happened here. I was thinking how I never wanted to see this place again. But I knew that I was going to carry it with me forever, like this mark on my face.
The only thing that stuck with me about that dude's case was Ms. Armstrong telling him, “Pray for the best, child. Just pray for the best.”
My kidneys were starting to burn, but I wasn't going into that bathroom. I just wanted to hold out until I got to the pens.
The escort picked us up. We walked through the front doors of the house and it was over. Sprung #3 was behind me now. Then we moved across the yard, past the school trailer. I thought about Demarco trying to prove he knew every kid's first name. That lifted me up inside. Maybe he wasn't the best teacher I ever had for teaching verbs and nouns. But he was the best kind a kid on Rikers Island could run into. He was nothing but real, and he understood how kids were feeling.
We stopped for inmates at some of the mods inside the main building, and our group doubled in size. I began to feel tight about all those other dudes. But I told myself,
It's just the same old building game. Dudes want to look hard and walk tough. That's all it is.
In the transportation yard, the COs patted everyone down.
I was shackled by the wrist and foot to one of the adults. He looked calm enough, and I was relieved to see that he was my partner. But when the shackles closed shut, that whole slashing came roaring back at me. I almost couldn't breathe and my heart was pumping out of control.
My legs and feet turned numb and I could hardly walk. That adult tried to pull me along a little, but I couldn't go any faster. The sweat was falling off my face and I probably looked like some dude facing the electric chair, instead of going home.
“Ease up, kid. You're making this hard,” my partner said.
I wanted to scream out at the top of my lungs for the COs to take those damn shackles off. But they wouldn't have listened. They're deaf to shit like that. And I was so shook that maybe nothing would have come out of my mouth, even if I'd opened it.
We got on the bus and I was sitting next to a window. I closed my eyes tight and listened to the sound of the big engine cranking up. Then the bus started to roll past the checkpoints to the main gate. I counted them off blind in my head with every stop.
The Rikers Island Bridge came up fast, and I could feel the slight incline as we picked up speed. I finally opened my eyes, and there was nothing out the window but blue water and sky.
The bus hit the streets of East Elmhurst and rolled toward the highway.
I kept opening and closing my hands, trying to get the feeling back into my fingers. I'd made the trip from Rikers to the courthouse and back three times before. Every bump and turn was part of my memory. But I couldn't find my way now. Everything was out of place. The sweat was stinging my eyes and I kept seeing buildings I would have sworn we'd already passed.
The dude sitting behind me moved to get himself straight, and I nearly jumped out of my seat.
It felt like it was a hundred and fifty degrees and that bus had become an oven.
We turned from Queens Boulevard into the courthouse yard.
The COs ran us off the bus and through the system quick.
But that fever burning inside of me didn't stop until one of them turned a key and those shackles finally came off.
Once I got put into the pen, I headed for the toilet in the corner. I must have stood there for almost two minutes emptying my bladder.
After that, I found a quiet spot in the back, near the wall.
The pen filled up fast, and was crowded as anything.
By nine o'clock, the COs started to call a few inmates out for their cases. I was just waiting out my time, hoping I was getting ready to walk free.
Then one of the COs came up to the pen with some kid in a headlock. Another officer turned the key and pushed open the gate. Together they shoved his ass inside.
“Start any more trouble,” the CO told him, “and I'll chain you to a parking meter outside like a dog.”
The kid said some smart-mouthed shit back. But I wasn't listening to his words. I was glued to his face. It was the kid who'd cut me. I kept looking to make sure. I needed to be positive. Then I saw the spiderweb tattoo on his neck.
Anything hard that was ever inside of me came boiling up to the top. My fists squeezed tight, and my brain was all static.
Some guys I'd never seen before were zeroed in on that kid, too.
Then one of them said something to him.
I was working my way closer to them, when it all broke loose.
Three of those guys grabbed the kid and rushed him to the back while the others blocked the COs' view up front.
It was like the devil had sent him to me, special delivery.
There were hands around his throat, and his head was pushed hard against the wall.
“You're the one who cut my cousin Frankie,” growled one of those guys. “You think I wouldn't recognize you?”
The kid was struggling to breathe and get loose, and I could hear him squeal. I was sizing up the bunch of them. Numbers didn't mean shit to me anymore.
I stepped over to where they had him pinned.
“Maybe you don't remember this face,” I said.
My voice took two of those dudes by surprise and they jumped back. That let the tattooed kid tangle himself up good with the guy who was fighting for his cousin.
They both had a solid grip on each other now, and neither could break free from the other.
“This prick cut you, too?” asked the guy that was tied to him.
But I couldn't answer. I was hooked on looking through that tattooed kid.
I could see everything working inside of him. His blood was pumping hard and the veins up and down his spider-webbed neck were ready to explode.
“Give it to 'im,” the guy grunted, pushing his chin at me.
One of his friends cupped his right hand and brought it over to mine. He pushed a razor blade flat into my palm. I closed a fist around it tight and felt how cold it was.
I moved the blade between my thumb and fingers. Every bit of the last five months on Rikers was crammed into that space with it.
I raised that hand as high as my cheek, with that spiderweb in front of me.
A piece of light hit off the blade, shining into my eyes.
I could feel the kid's heart go numb and see it in his face as I followed through.
Every trap and hole this fucked-up system had to offer was right there.
I was standing on a ledge they'd set up for me out in the middle of nowhere. And the only thing I had to fall back on were the people who'd tried like hell to save me.
For a split-second I thought about Mom and I saw her face.
I crashed my elbow into the kid's forehead, knocking him loose from that other guy. The blade went flying across the floor. I smothered that tattooed kid in my arms, wrestling him to the front of the pen.
“COs! COs!” I screamed, and they came busting in.
In a split second, I'd decided that nobody was going to get cut today.
They dragged us out of the pen, pulling us apart.
No matter which way they turned me, I kept fighting to look at that tattooed kid's face. I wanted to see everything he was feeling. I wanted to see what it was like for him to walk that ledge, too.
He owed me plenty, and I didn't want to be cheated out of a thing.
We both got put on the wall.
I couldn't tell the tears from the sweat pouring off his face.
And I felt like I'd collected enough from him to let it go.
CHAPTER
40
T
he COs sent me back to the pen alone. I don't know where they put the kid with that spiderweb tattoo, or what they did to him. Those guys who knew each other had gone in different directions inside the pen. There was a blade on the floor and none of them wanted to be connected to it.
I stood at the bars like a rock, harder and cleaner than I'd ever been before. My eyes searched for the dude who'd stood up for his cousin. He was in the back sitting on a bench with his head to the floor.
I stayed on him until he finally looked up and saw me standing there.
He looked more scared than angry now.
“You owe me, too,” I blurted out.
I had just picked us both up and stepped around one deep hole. The kind that's so dark you might never find your way out.
A CO called my name and opened the door for me.
An officer cuffed my hands, but I wasn't going to sweat that now. Whatever had me so tight about being shackled before was either gone or I had it beat down to nothing.
We crisscrossed the hallways through the courthouse. I was praying we weren't going to one of the conference rooms. I didn't want to hear any more bad news about my case from Miss Thompson. But we rounded the last corner and walked out into the front of a courtroom. I stepped around the flag and saw the rows of benches in the back. Mom was sitting in the first one. And she raised herself up off the bench a little when she saw me walk through that door.
Miss Thompson was waiting at the lawyers' desk. I hadn't seen her since before I'd got cut. She looked as uncomfortable as could be, watching me.
When the officer took off the cuffs, she stood up and shook my hand.
“I'm sorry about what happened to you,” she said, looking at my face.
“Just get me home,” I said.
I looked over at the DA. He was a skinny black dude in a suit and tie. He probably wouldn't last two minutes on the Island. But that was the dude who had every kid on Rikers shook. That's because he had the power, and held a good part of your life in his hands.
The DA could drop the charges against you or push all the way for the max. He could threaten you with serious time over bullshit, and might get you to cop out to something you didn't even do.
And before you could decide anything, you had to figure out if your legal aid lawyer needed a Seeing Eye dog or not.
The judge came in and everyone stood up.
He was wearing a black robe and looked old and tired climbing up to his high desk. He cleaned his glasses while an officer read out my case number, name, and the charge against me.
“Counselors?” the judge asked.
There was a meeting up at the judge's desk with the DA and Miss Thompson. They talked for a while, and I kept looking over my shoulder to see if Mom was all right.
Miss Thompson came back and said we were all straight.
“When they ask you, just plead guilty,” she said.
So I did.
I felt bad about myself when the word “guilty” came out of my mouth.
And I felt even worse for Mom.
The judge said that a year of probation and a drug program on Saturday mornings would make the state square with me. But I didn't know that anything was ever going to make me even with the system again.
“Did you learn anything from this, young man?” asked the judge.
I nodded my head and said, “Yes, sir.”
But I knew that he didn't understand anything about what I'd picked up. Maybe he knew all those law books cold, but he probably didn't know shit about how it really worked. He couldn't know, sitting way up there. It was too clean and safe, like out of some storybook. A book where you only lose the time a judge gives you, and nothing else.