True Notebooks

by Mark Salzman

  “Kevin Jackson, Jimmy Wu, and Francisco Javier.”

  The large man chuckled. “You got Javier to write? In a class? That I’d like to see.”

  “He writes pretty well,” I said. “All three of them do.”

  “Yeah? Where’d you guys meet on Saturday?”

  “In the library.” Checking quickly, I saw that the library was empty, but before I could suggest using it, Mr. Warren shook his head with such vigor that his chin nearly touched each shoulder. “Oh no! I’m not putting a bunch of HROs in there on Wednesday night. I can’t see over all these people’s heads. No way.”

  The large man chuckled again. “I can see the library from where I’m at. I’ll keep an eye on ’em if you want.”

  Mr. Warren didn’t respond at first, then he rolled his eyes and raised his palms in surrender. “Fine. More chaos. Why not?” Then he threw a towel over his head and stared off into space.

  The helpful staff member, whose name was Mr. Jenkins, told me to go on ahead into the library. “I’ll get the kids for you. If they start acting silly, you let me know.” I thanked him but he waved it off. “Ain’t no thing.”

  A few minutes later Francisco, Jimmy, and Kevin made their way through the crowded dayroom, looking surprised to be released from their rooms. As soon as they made it into the library and closed the door behind them they began talking about a fellow inmate who had just lost his case.

  “Guilty, homes. They found him guilty on all five counts.”

  “But he’s not in the Box. Jenkins just told me so.”

  “That’s ’cause he was on the county hit list. They took him straight there, he’s gone.”

  “Damn, he must be trippin’ right now. He got forty-eight years to life.”

  Jimmy glowered at the table. “Everybody knows he wasn’t the shooter. They even said so during his trial.”

  “It don’t matter, homes. He was there, that’s all they care about.”

  I thought if I waited patiently, the boys would eventually stop talking and let me begin the class. But I was wrong; soon they were arguing about lunch servings.

  “Jackson, how come you didn’t hook me up with an extra sandwich at lunch?”

  “There wasn’t any extras.”

  “Bullshit, I saw you give two to Marshall, what’s up with that?”

  “That wasn’t for him, that was for Rodriguez. He’s locked down.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Good to see you all again,” I interrupted. “Shall we do some work?”

  “Oh—sorry. Yeah, let’s do some work.” Francisco sounded contrite, but he was still looking at Kevin. “You gotta hook me up better, homes. Those fuckin’ sandwiches, there ain’t nothing in ’em but air, I gotta have at least two. Diaz never eats his, man, just let me have that one.”

  “Why should you get two?” Jimmy asked, his voice edgy. “We all have to eat the same nasty-ass food. You’re no hungrier than the rest of us.”

  While they argued, I passed out notepads and pencils and returned their essays from our first session. I also gave each of them a folder, which I told them they could keep. That held their attention long enough for me to say, “OK, last time we had to stop before Kevin had a chance to read his essay, so I’d like to start with that. Kevin?”

  Kevin looked down at his essay and began drumming the table with his pencil. “Could I read it some other time?” he asked.

  “No way,” Francisco said. “We read ours, homes, now you gotta read yours.”

  “The atmosphere’s not right tonight,” Kevin said.

  “What’s not right about it?”

  “Too much chattage.”

  I asked what “chattage” meant.

  “Jackson does that all the time,” Jimmy explained. “He makes up words out of his head. At lunchtime, he says it’s time for eatage. When we get head call, it’s time for pissage. Lights-out, and it’s time for sleepage.”

  “That’s right,” Francisco said, pointing at Kevin’s essay, “and now it’s time for readage. The teacher said so, man, don’t piss him off.”

  Kevin sighed, picked up his essay, and leaned back in his chair. My stomach tightened; I wondered if it was such a good idea after all to push him to read, given the content of his essay. He read it straight through, however, without apparent difficulty. When it was over, he slid the paper into his new folder and started drumming again with his pencil.

  “Damn,” Francisco said, looking subdued. “Sorry to hear that.”

  Kevin shrugged. “Can’t do nothin’ about it now.”

  Francisco perked up right away. “Yeah, that’s what I say. No use cryin’ about what happened in the past. Wanna know somethin’ fucked up? Sometimes I don’t even mind bein’ in jail, I can forget I’m here. But when I think about life on the outs, all that shit from the past—that’s when it hurts. It’s like a knife goin’ right into my heart and then gettin’ twisted around, like Chucky goin’ crazy on me or somethin’.”

  “Who’s Chucky?” Kevin asked.

  “The evil doll, fool. That kills people.”

  “So what are we writing about it for, then?” Jimmy asked through clenched teeth. “We dredge up all this painful shit, and it only makes it worse. What good is it?”

  I admitted to the boys that I didn’t know for sure that writing about painful experiences was a good idea. “All I can say,” I told them, “is that from an awful time in his life, Kevin cherishes the memory of his teacher helping him out. By cherishing it, he keeps the teacher’s gift to him alive, and by writing it down, he passes the gift along to us. It makes me feel good to hear it.”

  Francisco brightened. “That’s real! Hold on, I gotta think about that for a while.” He picked up his pencil and tore a fresh sheet of paper out of his notepad. For a moment I thought he was going to start writing without my having to ask, but then he slumped back in his chair. “Damn, I wish they’d let us have conjugal visits in here.”

  Kevin and Jimmy groaned, which egged Francisco on. “It don’t make no sense, homes! They try us as adults, right? They give us adult sentences and send us to adult prison. So how come we can’t have conjugal visits? I’m tired a makin’ Fifi. I want Gina.”

  I asked what “making Fifi” meant, but Francisco—for once—demurred. Kevin pretended to be very interested in something outside the window. Shaking his head in disgust, Jimmy volunteered to explain it for me. “Fifi is an artificial vagina,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone. “You make it using a county towel and county soap.”

  “No fuckin’ privacy,” Francisco complained. “The staff even watches you when you take a shit! There’s no doors on the stalls! You can’t make faces, you know what I’m sayin’? You know how, like, when you’re takin’ a shit, it feels good to make faces? You can’t do that in here. You gotta sit like this—” He demonstrated by staring straight ahead, expressionless, but holding his breath and pushing until his face turned purple. Kevin and Jimmy laughed so hard I worried that the staff would end our class early.

  “Hell,” Francisco muttered after he’d let himself breathe again, “you gotta put on this stone-cold mask even then. That’s what this place is all about. Puttin’ on masks.”

  “That might be a good topic to write about,” I suggested.

  “Nobody wants to read about takin’ a shit,” Francisco argued.

  “No, I mean having to put on a mask all the time. What does it feel like? How does it affect you? Does it make you feel as if you lose track of who you really are?”

  The boys appeared to be considering this when the door to the library opened and the woman who had let me into the building stuck her head in.

  “Any nurse regulars?”

  “Naw.”

  “No.”

  The female guard leaned against the doorframe and crossed her arms over her chest. “So what kind of writing are you guys doing?”

  “We’re takin’ the negative and turnin’ it into somethin’ positive,” Francisco answered. He held up
his essay for her to see, as if to prove that he wasn’t lying.

  “That’s good,” she said. “Writing’s important.”

  “That’s just what we were talkin’ about,” Francisco said, erasing the gang moniker he had doodled at the bottom of the page.

  “Sometimes you can’t think of anything positive,” Jimmy said, his eyes fixed on the table. “All you can think about is the negative, because that’s all there is in your life. What’re you supposed to write about then?”

  The guard looked over her shoulder and waved toward the staff room, indicating that there were no “nurse regulars” in the library. Then she said to Jimmy, “You write about the negative, then. If you can write about it, you get it out in the open. It eases the pressure.”

  “It doesn’t change the reality, though. You’re still stuck in your fucked-up life. Nothing changes.”

  “I disagree,” she said, pushing off the doorframe. “You make the reality. That’s my opinion.”

  When she’d left, Francisco asked me if I knew what a nurse regular was. I said I didn’t have any idea.

  “Every night a nurse comes in with psych meds. The guys who want ’em line up over there.” He pointed to a line of boys standing with their backs to the far wall. One at a time, they went into the staff room and came out a few seconds later.

  “What kind of psych meds?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, but they’re strong as fuck. It comes in a little paper cup. You take ’em and you be like—” Francisco’s face went slack, his tongue lolled out of his mouth, and he started drooling. “I’d never take that shit. It turns you into a fuckin’ zombie.”

  “If I was stressed enough, I would,” Jimmy said. He stuffed his essay into his folder and looked out the window at the yard. “I mean, what good does it do us to hope for anything? It doesn’t matter what we do anymore. Nobody cares about a bunch of criminals. When I was on the outs, I never thought once about people in jail, so why should I expect anybody to think about me?”

  “Don’t say that kinda shit, Wu,” Francisco said, hunching over his notepad and writing as he spoke. “You gotta have hope, otherwise you go all crazy and shit. Fuck it, I’ma write something good tonight.”

  “How can you do that?” Jimmy asked.

  “ ’Cause there’s shit-all else to do, that’s how.”

  “No—I mean how can you write and talk at the same time?”

  Francisco snorted. “ ’Cause I gotta fucking split personality, which is what I’m tryin’a write about, so shut up already and write, otherwise Mark ain’t gonna come here no more ’cause all we do is fuck around.”

  Kevin smiled. “Not enough writeage.”

  “Yeah. So write another one of them depressing stories, Wu. Fat-ass Jenkins said he was gonna make sure we all wrote something tonight, or he wouldn’t let us come outta our rooms next week.”

  The boys settled down and wrote for twenty minutes, but the noise from the dayroom was a distraction. They kept looking up from their work to see what was going on out there, and to mouth silent questions to cell mates and friends. When it looked like they had all finished, I asked who would like to read aloud first.

  Once again, no one volunteered. “Do I always got to be the one who goes first?” Francisco complained. Before anyone could respond, he said, “Fuck it, I’ll read. I call this ‘Collision,’ ’cause it’s, uh . . . well, ’cause it’s . . . fuck it, if I tell you what it’s about, then what’s the point a readin’ it? I’ma just read it.”

  The angel is coming at full speed in one direction, while the devil comes in the other. The devil with his pitchfork, running at full speed, aiming to hit the angel in the chest, all of a sudden stops with the force of the angel’s power. The devil tells the angel that he is going to kill him and that he is going to go to hell, but the angel responds, “I am with God, and the only place where I’m going is to His paradise.” The devil then strikes him, sending him to eternal fire. The angel on his knees, weak, all of a sudden gets his energy back and strikes the devil with his wings and sends him to heaven. There they are, throwing blows, wrestling, doing what they can to win.

  All of a sudden they’re running full speed towards each other when they collide and become one. That one is me.

  “That’s real,” Jimmy said. “Everybody in here wakes up in this place hoping that at last, the bad part of him is gone and everything’s gonna turn around. But something always happens. Somebody says something, or looks at you a certain way, or you remember that you’ve ruined your life, and the bad part all comes back. You’re back where you started.”

  Kevin raised his arms over his head to stretch, then yawned, his face settling into a weary smile. “It’s a collision all right, but it’s like watchin’ a car crash on video where the replay button is stuck. They keep crashin’ over and over, but the people in the cars never get it right.”

  “Yeah! Sometimes I wish I could put my whole life on pause, homes. Just make everything stop for a while so I can figure shit out.”

  “Not me,” Jimmy said. “I want mine on fast-forward. I just want to get to the end. Fuck it.”

  “What did you write about tonight?” I asked Jimmy.

  He looked at the piece of paper in front of him, considered it for a moment, then crushed it into a ball. “I’ll try to write something on Saturday. I can’t think straight tonight.”

  I told him not to worry, that he didn’t have to write something every session. I said that writing was hard to do and that all of us have days when we feel stuck.

  “So that leaves Jackson at the end again,” Francisco said. “Hit us with it.”

  Kevin stretched again, then slid his essay from the table onto his lap.

  “Don’t got a title for it,” he said. “I just thought of it while we were talking before.”

  Late at night when the reality of being locked up starts to set in, I begin to wonder why was I ever created if I’m gonna spend the rest of my life in prison? The feeling of meaninglessness starts to set deep within my soul as each day goes by. . . .

  I know that if I do get the blessing of receiving my freedom back, I will try to do something that will help me to feel like I have a meaning on this earth, but I only have one problem with that, I don’t know what I want to be. I don’t feel that I’m very good at anything and that just adds to my stress. Sometimes I almost believe myself when I say that I’m a good-for-nothing piece of shit.

  “But your life ain’t meaningless,” Francisco objected. “The Bible says so.”

  “Yeah, I know. But so far I just can’t see it.”

  “God loves you, homes, you just gotta love him back and then he’ll tell you what to do with your life.”

  Jimmy’s eyes narrowed. “My brother loves God and look at all the good it’s done him. He got a disease that’ll kill him before he’s twenty years old.”

  Francisco threw up his hands. “All I’m sayin’ is, Jackson’s life ain’t meaningless, OK?” He looked at me. “Help me out here, you’re the teacher! Tell Jackson his life ain’t meaningless.”

  “If I did that, he would know that I was saying it just to be nice. He has to work it out for himself, which he’s already doing. My job is to encourage him to keep working.”

  Francisco’s brow scrunched up for a moment, then relaxed. “That’s right,” he affirmed, putting his name on the folder I’d given him. “Whatever you just said, that’s what I fuckin’ meant.”

  6 / Here I Am

  By ten o’clock that Saturday morning the temperature had reached ninety degrees. The sunlight reflecting off the concrete buildings blinded me; as I approached K/L unit, I couldn’t see anything through the windows. I leaned in close, shading my eyes with my hands, with my nose pressing against the glass. When my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I saw the inmates sitting with their backs to the walls, legs splayed out in front of them. They were stripped to their underpants and socks. I felt embarrassed at having invaded their privacy and backed away from the ent
rance. I sat down on the steps, thinking the staff would wait until the boys were dressed to let me in, but a few seconds later the door opened. I kept my eyes glued to the floor because it seemed unfair that I was clothed and the boys were practically naked. I went straight to the control room, where Mr. Sills sat at his desk, feet propped on a file cabinet, talking on the phone. I waved at him and got the usual response, a disinterested nod.

  Mr. Granillo, meanwhile, stalked the dayroom like a football coach at halftime. “You think this is tough?” he thundered, glowering at the boys from under the bill of his cap. “You think we’re hard on you? You wanna complain to somebody? Well, lemme tell you something. You got a wake-up call coming, gentlemen. And when it comes, you are gonna wish—you are gonna cry—for the days when you were here.”

  He stalked some more, then jabbed the air with a meaty finger. “When you get to the pen, everything’s gonna change. You’re gonna be boys surrounded by men. Hard men, who’d just as soon shank you as say hello. If you wanna survive, you’re gonna have to grow up fast, and you’re gonna have to toughen up! You may curse me now, but the day will come when you’ll thank me. The day will come.”

  The boys were drenched in sweat. Mr. Granillo picked up a clipboard and walked over to the staff room. “They’re ready, Sills.”

  Mr. Sills nodded, told the person on the phone that he had business to attend to, then stood up. As he passed by me I saw that the top of my head barely reached his shoulder.

  He paced the room slowly, looking at each one of the boys but without saying anything. When he’d come full circle, he paused at the head of the room and was silent for nearly a minute. At last he nodded and said, “OK.”

  “Take it down,” Granillo ordered. The boys jumped up and filed silently down the corridors to their rooms. During all of this, none of the boys had made a sound. When the last of the boys had disappeared, Mr. Sills approached me. “You go on into the library. My kids need to get cleaned up.”

  The unit’s ventilation system did not reach the library. When I opened the door to step inside, the heat sent me reeling. Sunlight poured in through the windows, turning the small room into an oven. I propped both doors open, hoping the air-conditioning from the dayroom would circulate through.