Rikers High (3 page)

There was nothing to say. Snitching on that kid wasn't good enough. I wanted to cut him back. I wanted to run up and slice him across the face like he'd done to me. I wouldn't care how much time I got for it.

Anyway, that CO didn't really care.

He was just like the ones who were supposed to search that kid who'd cut me before he got back onto the bus at the courthouse. They were all just going through the motions to pick up a paycheck.

The COs in the yard should have seen the kid who cut me. They didn't need to play me for a snitch.

Inmates on Rikers Island have a code: snitches get stitches. I already had the stitches. I didn't need to be a pawn in anybody's game.

B
y the next day, all that medication wore off, and the right side of my face was screaming. It hurt so bad I wanted to rip that metal railing off the side of the bed and go running down the corridor with it cuffed to my wrist, sparking on the floor behind me. I wanted to run through the front gate, across that damn bridge, and all the way home until the pain stopped.

Kids on Rikers are always trying to get sent to the clinic for medication. Most inmates will do anything to get high and kill time. The COs in the housing units can give out Tylenol, and lots of kids build up a supply. Then they take them all at once to get a buzz. Some dudes will even smoke ground-up orange peels, like weed, to get high. They'll dry the peels in the sun, on a window ledge. Then they'll roll up a fat “Sunkist blunt” with pages torn out from the Holy Bible.

But I didn't want any part of feeling good on Rikers Island. For five months I'd just wanted out of jail, and now I wanted out of the clinic.

The COs put the phones out that night.

One of the officers unhooked me from the bed and said, “You should call your family. Let them know you're okay.”

He was right. But I didn't know what I was going to say to them.

I practiced in my head for maybe ten minutes and kept changing it every time. I needed to sound like I could handle it. That getting cut was no big deal. Only I couldn't lay out the words the way I wanted. So I finally just held my breath and dialed.

“I was just thinking about you, child,” said Grandma.

I knew right away from the sound of her voice that Mom hadn't told her what happened. And I wasn't going to either.

“I was thinking 'bout you, too, Grandma. 'Bout how much I miss
you
, even more than your cooking,” I said.

“I'll make your favorite, stew, to celebrate when you get home,” she said.

“I can almost taste it now,” I told her.

Then Mom got on the phone and I could almost feel her standing next to me. My little sisters were calling out my name in the background when she asked low, “How bad is it?”

“Not any worse than the cuts I got when I was a kid, except it's on my face,” I answered. “Nothing to stress over.”

But she wasn't having any of that.

“I'd have been there today if I coulda got off from work at Key Food without getting fired. But I couldn't. So it'll have to be Saturday,” Mom said. “I love you, Martin. I pray for you to come home every night. Just don't do anything stupid to get even with nobody. They'll keep you locked up longer. You hear?”

“I love you, too, Mom. See you Saturday,” I answered, taking the phone away from the left side of my face.

Then I thought about that tattooed kid who'd cut me. I could see every hook and line in that spiderweb inked onto his neck. And I wondered how he'd ever got so close to my family, all the way from Rikers Island.

Later on, I got discharged from the clinic and found out they were changing my housing unit. Maybe they were screwing with me for not snitching or figured that after five months in the same place, I knew enough people to put a price on that kid's head. But whatever the reason, I was getting moved.

It was after nine o'clock when they brought me back to Mod-3 to pack up. Almost everyone was watching TV inside the dayroom, except for a few kids already asleep in their beds. No one from the house had been on the bus back to Rikers with me, so none of them knew what happened. They probably all thought I got released from court. Only there I was, walking into the house with bandages across my right cheek, about to pack all my shit into a plastic laundry bag.

The COs wouldn't let anyone out of the dayroom. They're always worried that somebody will see you moving as their last chance to settle a score. But I didn't have any real enemies, and I could see dudes pressed up against the big windows as I went through my bucket. They were pointing to their faces and looking at me, cutting themselves with a finger to see how it might feel.

I knew some of them were watching to make sure that I only took stuff out of my own bucket. More than one guy had become a sneak thief while the rest of the house was bottled up somewhere.

When I'd finished packing, I tied the plastic bag up in my blanket and threw it on top of my mattress. Then I pulled the mattress to the floor and started dragging it all behind me, like I'd seen other kids do when they moved out.

Up at the Plexiglas bubble, one of the regular house COs gave my card over to an escort officer. I could see my picture stapled to the corner. Only it looked like a picture of somebody else now, somebody without stitches.

I didn't know where I was going and I wouldn't ask.

The escort officer led me out of Mod-3, and I headed down the main corridor, homeless.

At the end of the corridor there was a woman CO at a desk next to an iron door. She looked old and tired, like a grandmother sitting behind a kitchen table.

She stared at the bandages on my face and said, “Honey, why would you let that kind of trouble find you?”

I dropped my eyes to the floor.

She groaned as she got up, and I heard her turn one of the big metal keys on her ring in the door.

Mom would warn me all the time about getting into trouble. Whenever I went out at night she'd tell me to stay home. Sometimes she'd almost beg me. But I
was
at home, sitting alone on the stoop outside my building, when I got arrested.

This muscle-bound dude stepped to me, and I tried to front, acting tough. I was breathing easy when he only wanted to know where to cop some weed. I told him about the spot up the avenue and even felt good about it when he called me,
“my man.”

That undercover cop scored what he wanted, because a police cruiser rolled up my block about five minutes later. I almost couldn't believe those cops were looking for me. But they weren't fucking around.

Mom saw the flashing lights through our living-room window.

She stuck her head out and yelled, “Martin, get your ass upstairs now!”

That's when she saw them cuffing me. By the time she got outside, I was already in the squad car. The cops told her I was being charged with steering. She had no idea what that meant.

I remember her screaming at them, “My son didn't steal any car!”

If she wasn't crying so much, it might have even been funny.

I
stepped through the iron door and was surprised to suddenly be outside in the cool night air. The smell of the jail was gone. That funk that comes with the dirty laundry and rotting garbage was behind me now.

It was tight between the buildings of the jail, and the cement path was lined with a tall fence covered in razor wire. The path led out to an open yard I'd never seen before, beneath the clouds and stars. There were rows of lights shining high up on the tops of poles, two basketball courts laid out side by side, a handball wall, and some bleachers.

I felt like I was back home on the playground, and my mood just picked right up. It felt like I'd carried my mattress from my
real
house to camp out overnight in the park. And maybe those were even the same stars I used to wish on when I was a kid.

The officer told me to sit in the bleachers while he showed my paperwork to the CO on duty in the yard. I sat there looking up at the sky, wishing I could do my time on those bleachers. I would sit through the longest night that anyone could imagine. Then the sun would come up and I could go home.

And despite the pain I was in, it felt that sweet.

The yard was surrounded by six white bubbles, the kind people play tennis in during the winter. I never saw anyone walking around the jail with a tennis racket, so I figured that's where they keep the inmates in this part of the jail.

The bubbles sat together in pairs and had a big “N” or “S” painted on them. I knew from living in the main building that it meant the north and south side of each house. The sides were connected by a little station, and that was probably for the COs.

I knew I'd be starting all over again. I'd be walking into some strange house like a new jack, with a fresh cut on my face and a lot to prove. For another sixteen days, until I went back to court, I'd have to buckle down and keep it real.

The officer came back to the bleachers and said, “You've been assigned to Sprung #3,
my man
.”

 

 

I put my hands up against the wall and Officer Johnson kicked both my ankles out hard. My feet were spread as far apart as they could go and still be standing. In front of us was a set of double doors that led to the officers' station in Sprung #3.

That's where I'd spent all of thirty seconds before Johnson brought me outside for a private introduction and to hear his house rules. Behind us was another set of double doors that led back out to the yard. We were in
his
private jail now, a ten-foot space where he made all the rules and kept them with his fists.

Johnson was big and black, and looked more like a grizzly bear than a CO.

“I'm here from four till midnight, five nights a week,” he growled. “Do the wrong thing and I will personally shit on you. This is my house and you're only renting. I don't know what you did to deserve that cut. But try any of that nonsense out here and I'll ship your ass back to the building where they can take another piece of you.”

He ended his speech by slapping me in the ribs with a huge open hand. When I caught my breath, I stood up and followed him back inside.

It was twenty after ten by then. It's always lights-out at ten o'clock. But most inmates lie awake in the dark for a good part of the night. This house was no different. They'd been stirring like mice since I walked through the front door. They were sizing me up, trying to figure out where I fit in their food chain.

I remembered how tough it was when I first got to Rikers, carving out a place for myself and trying not to become anybody's herb. I'd learned plenty in the past five months about how it all goes down, and I was hoping to get some space without having to fight for it. I had been in Mod-3 for so long, new jacks watched
me
to see how it would go.

Out here, I was going to have to do all the watching for a while.

T
he count was low on the north side, and when the COs looked at my ID card they saw the number forty staring at them.

“Bed forty is open on the north,” said one of Johnson's partners. “All we got to do with this kid's card is change Mod-3 to Sprung #3.”

My world had been kicked upside down since yesterday, but on Rikers Island I was still going to be called “Forty.”

My bed was in the back of the house, near the bathroom. I tossed my shit into the bucket, put my mattress on the frame, and got into bed. There was a CO watching our side from a desk up front. He spent most of the night reading a newspaper with his feet up, like nothing ever happens out here.

I wasn't convinced, and I stayed up for a few hours staring at the high ceiling. There were big fans that hung down from the top of the Sprung, and I watched the blades turning slow. I could feel the air moving all around me. And I kept the blanket away from my face so I could see anyone coming.

There was no Plexiglas bubble for the officers to hole up in, where the phone and emergency alarm were in case the entire house went zoo. Here, the officers' desk was right out in the open where kids could just rush it if they wanted. But the COs didn't seem uptight about it.

COs inside the jail don't carry guns; only the ones patrolling outside the gates do. If they had guns on the inside, inmates would forever be scheming on how to wrestle one away. But the COs inside aren't scared, because they stick up for each other. That uniform connects them like one big gang. Only they're more dangerous than any gang I know, because they have badges and the courts to back them up.

Inmates have the COs outnumbered, maybe thirty to one. But they're all apart, fighting over every little thing, and the COs are too much together. Even if some COs don't like each other, they hate inmates even worse.

The only time a CO has to worry is if a bunch of inmates jump him all at once. And every CO has a personal alarm clipped to his shirt. When he hits the button, a signal goes off in a control room up at the front of the jail. The riot squad comes running on the double. And those animals will hit anything that moves, including kids with their hands up in the air.

Two kids on the midnight suicide watch came through. I could see they were checking me out. One of them even flashed some fake-ass gang signs at me, but I looked right through him.

Midnight suicide is a good job for an inmate, but you got to have some juice to get it. The COs have to like you and think you're down with their program. Lots of times they'll give their enforcers the job as a reward for helping to keep the house in line. Other times the house snitch will be on midnights. But they're usually all down with Five-O in some way.