by Mark Salzman
“So how’s your class going?” he asked me.
Delighted by this opportunity to brag, I told him something about each of the boys and even read a few examples of their work aloud. At some point—I think it was when I offered to read one of Jimmy’s essays aloud a second time— I realized I sounded like a proud, blathering parent. That stopped me cold.
Duane smoked and I stared at the handful of papers in my hand. “Do you like the kids in your class?” I asked him after an awkward silence.
“Sure. They’re likable kids.”
He admired the sunset while I tried to figure out what had happened to my common sense. My students were violent criminals, but I no longer thought of them as bad people. In fact, I felt almost no curiosity at all about what they had done to get arrested; all I cared about was what they wrote and what happened during our meetings. Was that healthy? Was it fair?
A familiar voice called to us from the far end of the parking lot. It was Sister Janet, carrying a box full of paperwork. As soon as she caught up with us we offered to carry the box for her, but she declined cheerfully. “I need the exercise! I spend too much time on the phone these days.”
She put the box down while Duane finished his cigarette. “I was hoping I’d see you two on the way in. I have good news! But first, tell me how your boys are doing. Is everything OK? Do you need anything?”
“Everything’s fine,” Duane said.
Sister Janet nodded. “I’m just so grateful for all you’re doing. Two more writers have been in touch with me about teaching here. The word is getting out about our program.” She pointed down at the box. “Are you ready? A lawyer friend has offered to help establish nonprofit status for us! She’ll handle all the paperwork for free. One day we’ll have enough money to reimburse you for all the supplies you buy, for your travel, and we might even be able to start a newsletter. I’d like to see the kids stay connected to the program even after they leave here.”
Sister Janet savored the thought of this bright future for a moment, then peered at me over the rim of her glasses.
“Is it true what I’ve heard?” she asked. “That you play the cello?”
“As a hobby, yes.”
“Do you think you might play for the children here one day?”
“Sure,” I said, confident that this would never actually happen.
“I’m so glad! I hope you won’t be angry with me, but I’ve already mentioned your name to the woman in charge of special events here. She was very excited to hear you would play.”
Duane smiled at the palm trees.
“You already told her I’d do it?”
“She’s planning an arts festival for Halloween. The holidays are especially depressing for incarcerated children. But if you’d rather not do it, for any reason at all, I’ll understand. I’ll explain to Mrs. Washington that it was my mistake.”
“How many of them would I be playing for?”
“No more than a hundred. That’s all they can seat in the chapel at once.”
If I played the drums or the electric guitar I might have felt more enthusiastic. Only the accordion is a more uncool instrument than the cello; the last time I played the cello for a group of kids was at a birthday party where the birthday boy kicked my end pin and declared that the cello was stupid.
“Sister Janet, have you ever been to a school assembly where classical music is on the program? It can get ugly.”
“Ah,” she said, smiling, “but that’s school. The kids here would never behave like that.”
“Wha’chu gonna dress up as?” Francisco asked.
Kevin stroked his chin with his thumb and forefinger. “I’m thinking of dressing as . . . a prisoner.”
Francisco pouted and tugged at his orange outfit. “I’m gonna be a fuckin’ pumpkin. Prisoner or pumpkin, that’s the choice this year. I hate these tired-ass county clothes! They oughta let us wear our own clothes, homes. What’s the difference? We’d still be locked up.”
The boys had been given permission to decorate the library for Halloween. They had already covered the windows with construction paper, thrown bedsheets over the bookshelves and tables, and sprayed fake cobwebs everywhere—you had to duck to keep from getting them in your hair. “We’re turning it into a haunted house,” Kevin explained. “The units are having a contest to see who does the best decorations for the season, and we plan to win.”
“Yeah, we gonna have live ghosts and everything.”
“How we gonna have live ghosts?” Nathaniel asked. “We ain’t got any white guys in here—they all in the sex offenders’ unit. No offense, Mark.”
“Check it out: when the judges come, it’s gonna be dark in here, homes. We’re gonna play some scary-ass music, and some of us’ll take turns hiding behind tables, with sheets over our heads. When the females come through, we’ll scream and throw fake blood on ’em.”
“They ain’t gonna let us throw fake blood, Javier! Get real.”
Francisco’s eyebrow flatlined. “Then we’ll throw spiders an’ shit. All I know is, we’re winnin’ that contest.”
“What’s the prize?” I asked.
“A lame-ass trophy. That don’t matter, it’s the pride of the unit on the line.”
“I’m surprised,” I said. “You’re always talking about how much you hate this place. Where does the pride come in?”
Francisco threw up his hands. “Aw, come on! A contest is a contest, you gotta try and win it. Yeah, this place sucks, but we’re stuck here. We gotta make the most of it.”
“It’s human nature,” Kevin said. “We know the guys in the other units are the same as us, but a little competition breaks up the monotony.”
“It’s because we’re institutionalized,” Nathaniel announced. “They set all this stuff up to turn us into house niggers, that’s all. It just a way of keepin’ us distracted.”
“Duh, let’s see,” Patrick said, slumping his shoulders and letting his mouth hang open. “Do I want to sit in my room and think about how my life is over, or do I want to have fun building a haunted house? Duhhhh . . .”
“Yeah! If you don’ like it, Hall, you don’ gotta help. We don’ need you.”
Nathaniel grinned. “Oh yes you do! If you wanna win, you need me. Wanna know why?”
“Not really.”
“ ’Cause you need a theme.”
“Aw, fuck you, Hall.”
“You need a theme, brotha. And I’m the brotha for the job.” He slid his chair back until he reached the wall and asked for a beat. Kevin obliged him, pounding out a rhythm on the table with his left palm and right fist.
Screams of terror echo through the night
Silhouettes in the sky of birds in flight
Kids walk the streets oblivious to danger
Things unheard of lurk in the shadows, enveloped
in anger
The streets are dark in spite of the full moon
Police are on standby, knowing someone will die soon
Mothers herd their kids from door to door
While some kids eat candy, never to breathe no more!
The boys approved of Nathaniel’s theme. I tried to get them to settle down and write, but between the excitement over the contest and the contagious beat Nathaniel and Kevin had set in motion (by now most of the boys were drumming on the table and making boom box noises with their mouths), I met with little success.
“I can’t concentrate, Mark!”
“Yeah, me neither. We’re all restless tonight.”
“Do you think it would help if you guys stopped the drumming?”
“It’s the beat of the street,” Nathaniel explained gleefully. “You can’t stop it, any more than you can stop our hearts from pumping!”
“But your hearts pump inside your bodies, not outside. Can’t you drum in your heads, and maybe write something while you’re at it?”
“He burned you there, Hall! Ha!”
Nathaniel made a bowing, salaaming gesture—the kind B
ugs Bunny would make when appearing to defer to Elmer Fudd—and said, “The beat shall be internalized. The pen shall be activized. The truth shall be realized. The—”
“Shut up, Hall, I can’t concentrate.”
“Look, guys—let’s try to write for just fifteen minutes. And I have a topic for you.”
“What’s that?”
“Since Halloween is on your minds, why don’t you write about fear.”
“Oh yeah! This is gonna work!”
It did work, but with mixed results. Nathaniel wrote a fictional story about a trio of gangsters named Hitman, T-Bone, and Ric Dog who discover an evil spirit in a haunted crack house and end up shooting each other while trying to kill the ghost. Most of the story was devoted to loving descriptions of the gangsters’ weapons.
Jimmy wrote about finding himself in bed with a beautiful woman, only to wake up and realize it had only been a dream. He said that it frightened him to think that this was the only intimacy he could look forward to for the next eighteen years.
Francisco wrote an essay titled, “I Still Remember the Day I Got Shot.” Unfortunately, the date was all he seemed to remember about it:
It was December 26, 1994. It was like around 8:30 in the morning. Ever since that day, my life hasn’t been the same. The end.
“Did it hurt?” I asked him.
“Naw, it happened so fast. One minute I was standin’ on the corner with the homies, the next thing I hear, like, pop-pop-pop, and then I was down. I didn’t even know I was shot until I tried to get up.”
“How long were you in the hospital?”
“Coupla weeks. They don’t give you enough food in the hospital, Mark! I kept tellin’ ’em, ‘I’m a youngster, you gotta feed me more than those old fucks,’ but I still got the same fucked-up tray with, like, Jell-O on it.”
“Did coming so close to dying make you feel differently about being in a gang?”
“Naw, not really. It was like—all the feelings I had, they got turned into just one. Anger! All I could think about was getting out and finding whoever did it to me.” He shrugged. “But instead I got locked up for somethin’ else. Pretty sad, huh?”
“Not for the guy who shot you,” Nathaniel said. “Think about it: you be prayin’ every day, ‘God, thy will be done but please help me beat my case.’ Meanwhile, that fool must be prayin’ every day, ‘God, thy will be done, but put that crazy-ass Javier away or he gonna smoke my ass!’ God got his hands full with you two.”
“Well, at least he don’t have to worry about where to send you, Hall.”
“How about you, Patrick?” I asked. “What did you write?”
“It’s called ‘Twenty-four Hours Left.’ Just so you know, I had a bad day at court today. My story’s kind of twisted. You still want me to read it?”
“If Hall could read his twisted shit every week,” Francisco said, “then you could read whatever you want.”
1:00 a.m.—I was released from prison. I was sentenced to
life in prison and was given twenty-four hours on the
streets and then I have to return back to prison. I pack
up my stuff and left my TV and radio on cause I’ll be
back tomorrow.
3:00 a.m.—I’m at home showering.
4:30 a.m.—Finished and dressed up.
5:00 a.m.—Visit my family and tell them I love them. I eat
breakfast with them and watch a movie.
7:00 a.m.—Kick it at Citywalk, rob some people, then buy
my family a TV and a car. An Accord wagon for my
mom.
8:00 a.m.—Go to my homeboy’s house. Kick it and tell
them to get some guns for tonight.
9:00 a.m.—Go to Magic Mountain. Go on every ride.
10:00 a.m.—Finished. Went to every ride. I cut through
lines and put a gun to people’s heads to let me go first. I
go to Disneyland next.
12:00 p.m—Took longer because I was kickin’ it with Min-
nie Mouse and Daisy Duck.
1:00 p.m.—Eat at Beverly Hills with my mom.
2:00 p.m.—Tired, so I sleep.
9:00 p.m.—Shit! Slept too long! I’ve only got three hours
left. I go to my homie’s house.
9:30 p.m.—At homie’s house. I get a gun and I go to the
enemy’s neighborhood.
10:00 p.m.—Shot six gang members, two innocent people,
and a dog.
11:00 p.m.—Shot five more enemies and an innocent boy.
11:59 p.m.—Shot by an enemy. I’m paralyzed. I wish I
was dead, but the doctors saved me.
12:00 a.m.—Back at the pen, sitting in my wheelchair
watching TV. Three guys rush in my cell with knives,
but I can’t move.
“Damn, that is twisted!” Francisco complained. “How come you put in that stuff about shootin’ innocent people? That’s cold, Chumnikai.”
“Put it in a story, and everybody says it’s cold,” Patrick said. “It happens for real, and what do people like us say? ‘It was an accident.’ ‘The other guy shot first.’ ‘Those people shoulda got outta the way.’ Which is more twisted?”
No one rushed to answer the question. I asked Patrick what made someone else an “enemy”; what were the gangs really fighting over?
“Nothing at all,” he answered immediately. “It’s exactly like a video game, where you’re just racking up points and trying to end up with a higher score than anybody else. That’s your rep. The fact that it’s dangerous only makes it a hundred times more fun. An enemy is anybody who’s playing against you.”
“That’s not true!” Francisco objected. “An enemy is somebody who disrespects you, or who disrespects your neighborhood.”
Patrick shook his head. “Racking up points.”
Francisco shook his head. “Getting respect.”
“Think about it! How does a homie get respect? By proving himself. How does he do that? By disrespecting the enemy! You go into his territory, you tag a wall, you mad-dog his homies, you look at his girl like you wanna fuck her. That gives him an excuse to retaliate. When he retaliates, he’s dissing you, man! You gotta do something back to represent. I’m telling you, it’s a fucked-up game. Now it don’t seem fun anymore, so of course we want out, of course we say we want to change. But it’s too late! We fucked up. And anyhow, we deserve what’s coming. They oughta lock us up forever and throw away the key.”
“You did have a bad day at court today,” Jimmy said.
“Fuck it.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing.”
“It musta been somethin’, make you trip like this.”
Patrick began rearranging the papers in his folder. “My mom said she was going to be there at the hearing, but she didn’t show.”
“She musta had a reason, homes. She probably had car trouble or something, or got stuck in traffic an’ shit.”
“It don’t matter anyway, because nothin’ happened. I sat in the holding tank all day, got called out to the courtroom, sat down for five minutes, then got told to stand up and come back here.”
“You gonna call your mom tonight?”
“What’s the point? I’m never goin’ home again, why should she care what happens now?”
The talk of mothers had a sobering effect. Several of the boys stared out into the dayroom—most of the religious volunteers were middle-aged women—and Patrick began drawing a clown.
“We haven’t heard from Action Jackson yet,” Nathaniel pointed out, breaking the silence.
Kevin looked sheepish. “Mine’s kinda twisted too.”
Francisco buried his head in his hands and groaned.
“I call it ‘Plot Gone Bad.’ It really happened, though. It’s kinda scary, but kinda funny too, except the joke was on me. See what you think.”
It was around 9:40 on a humid Tuesday night. Me and my homeboy Tray were on the front porch
talking about the day when we came to the idea of going to the store to get something to eat. We had a real bad case of the munchies but the only problem was, we had spent all our money on the weed we had just smoked. I thought about going in the house to cook something but I was kind of high and didn’t really feel like it so we just walked around the corner to my brother’s house to see if he was there. Due to my luck he wasn’t, so I just went in his garage and got two new bikes he had bought about three weeks before. Me and Tray came to the conclusion that we were going to rob the first sucker walking down the street, but before we even finished talking about it, we saw a lady on a bus stop waiting for the bus. Immediately we both gave each other a knowing smile. When we approached her she already knew what was happening because she had her hand tightly clenched on her purse. The homie jumped off the bike and told her, “This can be easy or hard, either way we are gonna get what we want.” We were unarmed except for our fists and I wasn’t about to hit the lady but I wasn’t too sure about my friend. She started to reach in her purse when out of nowhere she pulled out a li’l .25 caliber. I was kind of shocked at first, then she said she just wanted us to leave her alone. I thought about snatching the weapon from her but by the time I built up enough courage to do it she jumped on one of my brother’s bikes and rode off into the night!
To this day I think her gun was unloaded.
The boys and I laughed so hard Mr. Jenkins came in to check on us. “If somebody told a joke in here, I want to hear it,” he said. “No fair you guys having fun in here while I’m working out there.”
Francisco explained that we were laughing over a story Kevin had just read aloud, not a joke.
“So read it again, Jackson,” Mr. Jenkins said, folding his arms over his chest and leaning against the door. Kevin read the story once more, and the boys enjoyed it as much as they had the first time. Mr. Jenkins shook his head. “I don’t see what’s so funny about it. That lady could have been my sister. Or one of your mothers.”
The laughter died down and the boys looked ashamed; even my face was red.
“What’s the moral of that story?” Mr. Jenkins asked.
