Rikers High (7 page)

A
round eleven o'clock, most dudes were just waking up. I was already sitting in the dayroom, among the plastic tables and chairs, looking out of the emergency doors. The doors are there in case of a fire or something, and they're never locked—it's a law. You could go charging through them and no CO could stop you. I even daydreamed about doing that, with my feet in high gear and flames shooting out of my ass. But those doors are hooked up to a loud siren. And if you ever did decide to jet, you'd only be out in the yard with a few seconds' head start and nowhere to run.

I watched the mess hall workers, some of them kids from our house, bringing food in from the main building. There's no real kitchen in the Sprungs' mess hall, so the food comes to us already cooked. They wheel it across the yard on pushcarts packed to the top. You can tell what's for lunch by looking at what the workers spill on the way through. Only they never have to clean it up. The seagulls and cats fight each other over that job.

After lunch, me and some other guys watched from the dayroom as the mess hall workers were getting ready to race those same pushcarts back across the yard.

“Speed Racer from Crown Heights, drivin' the Brooklyn Bomb,” screamed one kid.

“A hundred twenty-fifth and Lexington Ave. in the house,” yelled another one. “Behind the wheel of the Booty Shaker.”

We were hyped to see it, and even started making bets on who'd win.

The workers lined their carts up, and then the CO in charge of the mess hall blew his whistle. They took off screeching and hollering, like they were racing go-carts at some special summer camp for kids from the projects. But the two of them reached the far gate at almost the same time, and everybody watching argued for almost an hour over who'd won.

 

 

The TV in the dayroom had a full house most of the day.

There's no cable in jail, and that's good because the eight regular channels cause enough drama. Kids are forever arguing over what they're going to watch, and sometimes they'll even juggle for it. Some dudes will really want to see a program, but they'll keep quiet about it. They hope someone else will do the fighting for them or that they'll collect off some herb who wants to see the same show they do.

Asking a dude what TV show he wants to watch in jail is like playing cards. You've got to be able to read his face and keep yours still.

“Violence. Violence. Violence. That's the kind of programs you all are addicted to,” lectured Ms. Armstrong. “Like you haven't seen enough of it for
real
in your own lives.”

Nobody argued back at her.

Spanish dudes had their TV time, too. Luis represented them for Brick, and he wanted to keep his customers happy. So we watched the Spanish station on the UHF for a few hours. Black kids didn't mind because all the shows on that station had a woman in a tight-fitting, low-cut dress.

That was one language every dude in the house understood.

After Ms. Armstrong got off duty, some kids even put a blanket over their laps, and got busy with a
Susie
. Almost anything that's soft could be a Susie. Most kids get a new rubber glove from the house gang that cleans the floors and bathroom, and they put Vaseline inside it.

Back in Mod-3 one time, a rookie CO pulled the night tour, and dudes thought she was really hot. After lights-out, the beds all started rocking and she didn't know what was happening. Then kids started tossing their Susies up front where she sat in the Plexiglas bubble. When the steady officers found out about it the next morning, they burned the house from commissary for two weeks.

When the COs in Sprung #3 put the phones out that night, I decided to call home. I talked to my grandma and my sisters during slot time, but Mom was visiting a neighbor in the apartment building across the street.

During prime time, Jersey was watching the phones alone, and it was too easy.

“You wanna have to sit on a toilet again?” I asked, as I strolled by him.

He didn't want to fight and I guess he was too embarrassed to call for Brick. I was talking to Mom when Brick's other doldier, Barnett, saw me on the phone. He went over to Jersey and started grilling him.

When I was finished, I walked right past those two clowns and into the dayroom.

D
emarco was waiting in the hallway of the school trailer on Monday morning. He was tossing off kids' first names again as we walked inside, and I was surprised when he called mine.

“Good morning, Martin,” he said as I passed.

He must have checked the ID cards in the box on Friday. That made me want to smile. But I didn't, because I didn't want to look weak in front of anybody there.

Everyone went to their classes, and Demarco was pointing at me and Ritz.

“This way, gentlemen,” he said.

We were in his homeroom now, the GED class.

If you prove you can read and write on the placement test, they put you in the GED room. Most kids wanted to be in there because you get more props from the teachers, and it's less like a zoo than the rest of the rooms.

Sanchez and Jersey were in Demarco's class, too. And after my stunt during prime time, Brick had cut Jersey out of his crew the night before.

“I'm in and that Jersey kid's out,” Shaky had boasted to the whole north side before lights-out. “I told you I pulled my weight.”

Dudes didn't take him serious till he said it within earshot of Brick, who nodded his head.

Demarco started his English class, and we read a story written by a man who'd been locked up for ten years. He wrote about what he would do if he had just one day of freedom: take his twelve-year-old daughter to the park. Then Demarco asked what we would do if Corrections let us go home for just one day. Some kids said they would see their families. Others wanted to be with their girls or homeboys.

“I'd spend the day on my couch eating my grandmother 's biscuits and gravy,” Jersey said fast, like it was a race. “In Newark, New Jersey—not New York.”

It was the first time I'd ever heard Jersey say anything, besides his name that first night in the bathroom. I was surprised at how he sounded. His voice was high and he talked superquick. I had to replay everything he said in my head to slow it down so that I didn't miss any of the words.

“If I had one day off this island, I'd run off and nobody would ever find me again,” said Sanchez.

“You can't run away from the world,” Demarco told him.

“It's not the world I want to run away from,” Sanchez came back. “It's jail!”

Ritz talked about splitting the day in half and seeing his two girlfriends.

“Both of them are pregnant,” Ritz said. “So I don't want to choose one over the other.”

Then dudes said if they ever found out that either girl was black, they'd kill him.

I didn't have a steady girl, and only Mom came to visit. So I said I'd take her someplace nice for dinner—that I wanted to pay the bill and bring her back and forth by cab, instead of the subway or bus.

Right before Demarco's class was over, there was fussing in the hall right outside the door. Kids ran over to the big plastic window to see what was happening.

The COs had pulled some dude out of class and threw him on the wall. You could tell by the way they dragged him out that he must have really pissed them off.

Demarco was already in the hallway talking to Miss Archer, the math teacher.

Sanchez had told me all about her. She was a dime piece with straight brown hair, and she wore long skirts that showed off the curves of her hips.

A kid from another room snuck over to ours, and he couldn't stop laughing. He said the dude on the wall got caught jerking off to Miss Archer. And that he was really into it when she saw him and called for the COs.

The classrooms are real small, and there's only room for two rows of chairs. So he couldn't have been more than ten feet away when she nailed him.

Someone yelled, “Captain on deck!”

Kids scrambled to get back in their seats, and everybody got silent.

Captain Montenez walked into the trailer and just ripped into the dude. “You lowlife bastard!” he screamed. “You won't be living in my Sprungs much longer!”

By the time the COs were ready to send that dude back to the house to pack up, he was flat-out bawling.

Captains wear white shirts to stand out from the COs, who dress in blue and report to them. I had seen Montenez operate in the building before. He always acted real cool in his captain's duds, until he exploded on you. Montenez was tall and lean. He would wave his arms and scream at dudes until his shirt almost came out of his pants. Then he'd fix himself up and walk off like he owned the jail.

The COs called the whole house into the hallway and we deuced it up.

“Keep your dicks in your pants!” yelled Montenez. “If you masturbate in class, it's a sexual assault on staff. That's not just bing time. That's a new charge. It means you get rearrested, right here on the Island.”

Then he paced up and down the line looking for kids to crack a smile or suck their teeth, so he could run them out, too.

The bing is the place they send you when you really fuck up. It's like solitary, and you're locked down twenty-three hours a day, with an hour outside for exercise. But they can't just send you there. They have to write you up and serve you with the papers. Then the bing court captain hears your case, like a judge. It's never fair because he could be good friends with the captain who wrote you up. They give you a chance to tell your side of it, too. But I never heard of an inmate beating his case. Once you're there, you're guilty. Plain and simple.

We went back into the classroom, and Demarco came with us. It was Miss Archer's time to rotate into our room and teach us math, but she was still in the hall with Montenez.

“I don't know what that dude was thinking,” some kid said. “She's
my
girl.”

A couple of us laughed low, and Demarco said, “Wait here, I'll tell the captain she's yours!”

The kid begged him not to and nearly freaked when Demarco walked out the door. But Demarco only crossed over to teach his next class, shooting us all a big smile through the window when he got there.

Miss Archer came in and put some math problems on the board. She didn't look half as shook as I thought she would be.

Right away, kids tried to make her feel better.

“That dude played you too dirty,” one kid told her. “He's lucky that he got packed up or we woulda put a beating on him for you tonight.”

“That's just stupid talk,” Miss Archer said. “Please, never hurt anyone over me. All right? He shouldn't get rearrested for that either. And I'll speak to the captain about it later.”

I heard that out of her mouth and wondered how she could stand teaching in jail, where everybody was beat down and had been arrested for something.

B
esides Officer Carter, our steady COs during the day were Dawson and Arrigo. They were both white, too, but I liked their act because they told you what they wanted up front. The first time you fucked up, they'd talk to you.

“Tell me what you did wrong, kid,” Dawson would say, playing good cop.

“Now, what do you think we should do about that?” Arrigo would follow, cracking his knuckles.

The next time, they smacked you around. So when they hit you, they figured you had no one to blame but yourself.

Dawson was tall and thick, and leaned off to one side when he walked. Arrigo was short, with greasy black hair and arms like steam shovels. He showed them off every chance he got and had a tattoo on his right bicep that read, TNT.

“You don't want to get hit with dynamite,” Arrigo would tell kids.

The Department of Corrections has signs up that say inmates are in their “care and custody.” But most COs would rather keep you
near and in fear
.

Arrigo came to the classroom door during math with Miss Archer and screamed, “Forty, clinic!”

I went into the hallway and waited at the officers' desk for an escort.

There were always kids in the hall that had been thrown out of class. Mr. Murray, that crooked-nosed history teacher, would toss most of them for total bullshit.

Instead of having inmates hold up the wall, Dawson and Arrigo liked to play games. They had one called “London Bridge” for kids who wanted to fight each other. Any pair caught beefing had to lean as far forward as they could, forehead to forehead. Then they had to sing “London Bridge Is Falling Down.”

After five minutes of that crap, kids would be begging to make up and go back to class.

They had Barnett and Shaky out there playing patty-cake, Rikers-style.

“You act like babies, we'll treat you like babies,” Dawson said. “Now do it again till you both get it right.”

Barnett was pissed because Shaky kept screwing up the crossover and missing Barnett's hand.

I watched them do it four times and loved every one.

Some COs would go easy on Brick and his crew because they helped keep the house in line. But Dawson and Arrigo played them the same as everybody else. And the other kids respected that.