True Notebooks

by Mark Salzman

  She handed the microphone to the boy, who apologized to everyone for his inappropriate behavior. “Especially to the females. I’m sorry for the disrespect.” Sister Janet touched him gently on the shoulder, then allowed him to sit back down at his table. “Mario gave us such a beautiful opening prayer this morning. Now I’d like to ask Nathaniel Hall to close for us. Would you?”

  Nathaniel walked to the podium and accepted the invitation. I crossed my fingers.

  “Can I ask that we all bow our heads?” he began. The room fell perfectly silent, just as it had during Mario’s invocation. “First of all, we all want to thank God for this wonderful day. For this opportunity to listen to each other, to learn, and to show that we can do good. For this wonderful day of creation.”

  He unfolded a sheet of paper and read aloud from it:

  “When we came through that door, we found ourselves amongst writers and poets, not just fellow inmates. We had a chance to shed the restraints placed on us by this place and feel free, even if it was for only one day. We want to thank the staff and the administration for letting us do this. Sometimes we make mistakes, sometimes we slip up, but you don’t give up on us. We thank you for that.

  “Finally, we want to show appreciation to our teachers for what they do for us. They help give us something we never had: a voice that we could use so we would be heard by people that make the decisions that affect us. With our newfound voice, we can give our opinions on the way others are guiding our lives. With that voice we can explain to the people who have never been in our situation who we really are, and why we do the crimes we do. Amen.”

  After the prayer, the staff instructed the inmates to observe silence and line up by unit. The girls filed out first, followed by my group and then the rest, clutching their folders behind their backs, mementos from their day of creation.

  15 / Busted

  “The retreat was cool, Mark.”

  “I’m glad you liked it.”

  “How’d we do?”

  “You did great. I was proud of all of you.”

  “Yeah, but Rocha and Barreda were the best. Let’s face it, they killed with those letters.”

  Francisco punched Victor in the arm. “We shoulda wrote that shit, homes! Why didn’t you think of it?”

  Victor punched Francisco back. “ ’Cause I grew up in Mexico, fool. I never heard a you till I got here. Those woulda been some short fuckin’ letters.”

  Francisco rested his head on the table. “I’m tired, Mark. I was in the holding tank at court all day today.”

  “I hate the fucking tank! It smells like piss.”

  “And all they give you to eat is a damn orange! You can’t eat the sandwich they give you, it’s all moldy and shit. And you can’t get that orange smell off your fingers, it stays there all day. It’s fucked up.”

  Nathaniel didn’t look tired. He still looked fired up from the retreat. “When’s the next one, Mark?”

  “I don’t know. It depends if the staff let us do it again, I guess.”

  “Of course they’ll let us do it again! Why wouldn’t they?”

  “It got a little hairy toward the end.”

  “Aw, you mean that fool who rapped about killin’ and shit? That’s nothin’! We went a whole day without a fight, that’s what counts.” He folded his hands behind his head and stared contentedly out the window. “Bein’ around so much creativity, I had to step up on my stories so I could be in the same class as the rest. Since there were so many beautiful women there, especially at my table, I had to stand out so I would be remembered. I don’t know if I achieved my goal, but I tried.”

  “You achieved it, Nathaniel. That was a great closing prayer.”

  “I know it,” he said, grinning. “Sometimes I just want to kiss myself.”

  “Hold on a second—where’s Jimmy?”

  Nathaniel drew a finger across his throat. “Wu’s gone. You won’t be seeing any more of him.”

  “He’ll be back,” Patrick corrected, clicking his tongue. “He’s just in the Box.”

  “I heard they sent him to county.”

  “They’re just saying that to fuck with us.”

  “What’s he in the Box for?”

  No one seemed to want to tell me. “Did he get in trouble?”

  Francisco looked as if he was trying to keep from smiling. “Yeah, you could say that.”

  “He got cracked.”

  “Cracked for what?”

  “Dope. They caught him with a pipe and a lighter.” Francisco started laughing; Patrick swatted him with the back of his hand.

  “You can get that kind of stuff in here?” I asked.

  “Any drug you want, you can get in here easy,” Nathaniel said. “It’s pizza we can’t get.”

  “I ain’t laughin’ at Wu for bein’ in the Box,” Francisco explained. “It’s how he got busted, is all.”

  “Well—is somebody going to tell me how he got busted?”

  “It’s kind of embarrassing,” Patrick said.

  “It was a shitty way to go out,” Victor deadpanned, drawing a laugh from the others.

  Seeing that it was futile trying to keep the secret any longer, Benny explained it in a matter-of-fact way. “The staff smelled the dope after he smoked it in his room, so they called him out. He tried to hide the stuff in his underpants pocket, but the staff saw it. He gave up the pipe but tried to keep the lighter. The staff made him strip naked and told him to squat. That’s when the lighter dropped out.”

  “Of his ass!” Francisco roared, in case I hadn’t figured it out.

  “His sentencing hearing is just two weeks away,” Benny said. “He shoulda waited until after that to get high. Taking the risk now—it wasn’t very smart.”

  “Fuckin’ Wong. Everybody’s gotta be smart according to you, huh?”

  “I think it is smart,” Kevin argued. “When you stress in here you get desperate, ’cause there’s no relief from it. Getting high is a smarter way to deal with it than fighting. How you think I’ve been here a year without a fight?”

  “Either that or the psych meds,” Victor said. “The staff’d rather you be fucked up on those than stomping somebody’s ass.”

  “But those psych meds are nasty, homes. You take that shit, you’ll be a fuckin’ zombie.”

  The irony of it! A group of delinquent teenagers weighing the merits of smoking dope in jail—at the risk of adding more time onto their sentences—as opposed to accepting the psychotropic medications handed out by the nurses. The legal drugs, the boys felt, were too dangerous.

  “How’d you like my closing line?” Nathaniel asked, his mind still on the retreat. “With our newfound voice we can explain to the people who have never been in our situation why we do the crimes we do. That’s real. You can’t fake that shit.”

  Patrick rolled his eyes. “We do the crimes because we’re criminals. Duh.”

  “You’re a criminal, Chumnikai. I’m a political prisoner.”

  “Hall’s just sucking up so we can have another retreat soon,” Patrick stage-whispered. “He wants more pizza.”

  “That’s all right with me, as long as he does the writing.”

  “Hall’s right,” Francisco said. “Writing gives us a way of telling people what it’s like, growin’ up with violence all around, no positive role models, crazy shit happenin’ all the time at home–”

  “Knowin’ nobody gives a shit whether you live or die!”

  “Feeling like there’s nothin’ to look forward to. So you stir shit up, just to pass the time.”

  “Yeah,” Nathaniel said, his eyes narrowing, “and check it out: the only people you know who get any respect are the guys slangin’ and bangin’. They get the best-lookin’ girls, they make the most money—fuck it, they got exciting lives. They always talkin’ about goin’ on missions, about representing the ’hood, about outsmarting the cops, about bein’ watchful—if you slip, you die. It’s like . . . you know it’s wrong, but it makes you feel alive. Nobody
wants to feel like a fuckin’ nobody.”

  “But Nathaniel, look where you are now,” I said. “Did you ever think that you might end up in a place like this, and lose everything?”

  He shook his head emphatically. “Never. You never think it’ll happen to you.”

  “You don’t think about it because you can’t,” Francisco said gravely. “If you did, no way you’d be able to do the shit you gotta do to prove yourself.”

  “It’s the first rule of life on the street: act first, think later. You never think first, or you lose your nerve.”

  “Why you think gangbangers always gettin’ high?” Kevin asked me. “It shuts your mind off. You gotta act on instinct.”

  “On the outs, I never thought about the future. You’re just thinking about today, what do I gotta do right now. That’s it.”

  “You guys have to write this down,” I said.

  “Yeah, we gotta get word out!”

  “Yeah!”

  The boys picked up their pencils and frowned at their notepads, but then Victor saw something out in the yard that got his attention. “Mira!”

  A female officer had just stepped out of the building opposite ours. “Oooh, baby! Come on over here!”

  “Yeah, that’s it! Don’t turn around, baby!”

  She walked right up to our unit, but then opened the door to M/N, where Duane’s class met.

  “Aw, shit!”

  “Naw, you don’t wanna go up there, baby! You want what’s down here!”

  “Damn! Now those punks upstairs get a look at that ass all day. K/L sucks.”

  The boys spent the rest of the hour talking about sex. It was as if that brief discussion of their misguided lives was all they could handle, and now, to protect themselves from the reality of it, they had to fantasize for a while. I was annoyed with Victor for spoiling the moment, but at the end of class, he was the only one who had written anything. It was a poem, only two sentences long:

  I fear that what I’m saying won’t be heard till I’m gone.

  I fear that what I’m trying to do won’t be felt until I’m gone.

  Jimmy returned to K/L a week later. He looked shaky after his time in the Box. He sat at the far end of the table and stared out the window with a vacant expression. His eyes looked glazed and watery. When Mr. Jenkins stuck his head into the library to ask, “Any nurse regulars?”—meaning boys who wanted the psych meds—Jimmy stood up and joined the line formed outside the staff room.

  None of the other boys said anything when he got up, and none said anything when he came back.

  I pulled a chair over and asked how he was doing.

  “I guess you heard what happened, huh?”

  “Sounds like you had a rough week.”

  He tried to laugh, but it came out sounding like a cough. “You know the way a baby cries? That all-out kind, where it sounds like he’s gonna die? I didn’t know I could still cry like that, but I did in the Box.”

  An argument behind us interrupted our conversation. Victor had drawn a picture of a low-rider automobile, and someone had asked him where they were built. When Victor said they were exported from Japan, Benny insisted that this was not the case, that Japanese cars were banned because they had right-side driver’s seats.

  “They make ’em both ways, ya little fuck,” Victor snarled.

  “Nope,” Benny said calmly. “The steering wheel’s gotta be on the right. That’s the law in Japan. You just don’t know the law.”

  “Fuck you, Wong! I got a picture of a club in Japan at home, and the steering wheel is on the left!”

  “The picture must have been reversed. That happens all the time in magazines.”

  Victor looked ready to strangle Benny. “Goddammit, Wong! Why you always gotta do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Be such a fucking punk?”

  “So you’re saying it’s better to be ignorant?”

  “It don’t matter if you’re right about that shit! It’s the way you say it!”

  “I’m just telling you a fact. I’m trying to help, and you call me a punk. Maybe you’re the punk.”

  Francisco’s eyes lit up. “Ooooh! Wong just dissed you, Martinez! You gonna let Wong dis you?”

  This was what happened if I spent too long talking to one boy at the expense of the group. By the time I had gotten Victor and Benny to stop arguing, I returned to check on Jimmy and saw that he was writing something, so I left him alone. At the end of class he declined to read it aloud, but let me take it home to be typed up.

  ANOTHER SCREW-UP

  I just came back from the Box. Upon entering the unit, I felt that everything was somehow . . . different. The kids looked at me funny, I didn’t have any personals, and the room that I had occupied housed a different person. I wasn’t really surprised ’cause I knew that I had messed up pretty badly.

  To cut the story short, I was sent to the Box for two days and I had all of my personals taken away. I am also unable to receive personals from my parents when they come to see me during visiting day for an uncertain amount of time. As for the hygiene equipment, books, and all of my other belongings that had been taken away, I will not see them again until the staff feels that I deserve them. What a bummer, huh? Well, that’s not all. When I was in the Box for those two extremely long days, I had my contacts in my eyes the whole time because the staff forgot to bring me my eye equipment and that was not very nice of them. Not only did I have to have my eyes constantly bugging me, but I also cried and had suicidal thoughts for the first time in twenty months. Suicidal thoughts, I’m sure you understand, but for the crying, let me explain to you. I’ve been in this institution for almost two years and I have met a lot of people that I have become friendly with. This place is like a home to me and I was thinking about how it would be if I was to leave. Do you understand why I shed some tears now? I’m sure you would do the same if you were to really think about it. I mean, come on, I never expected to have a friendship with anyone in here and some of the teachers and staff . . . geez, they surprised the hell out of me by their kindness and good hearts. I’m really gonna miss these people when I shake the spot. But anyways, I don’t want to get too sentimental so let me get back to the story.

  I came back from the Box, went to school, and found out that not only did all of my material things get taken away from me but I was also now out of the play that I was participating in. The day that I got cracked, the staff gave me an ultimatum. They said that if I was to snitch and tell them who had the dope in my unit, they would just keep my personals for a while and that would be all. If I was to keep my mouth shut, however, I wouldn’t be able to use personals for an undetermined amount of time, spend a day or two in the Box, and not be able to participate in conversating with volunteers or attend the writing class. Now, is it just me or is that a really fucked-up choice? Hmmm . . . what a hard decision, huh? I made up my mind not to say shit and now I get all my privileges taken away from me. I personally think that that’s really scandalous, but as most people would say, that’s the way life goes.

  A couple of days have passed already and things are pretty much cooled down by now, which is a good thing. I guess I can’t do much about what happened except regret my stupidity and look towards the future. Leave the past in the past. I mean, there’s no use stressing now . . . is there? It’s not like anything’s going to change, right? I think that I’ll eventually forget another screw-up in my life. (How many are there going to be, dammit?) For now, I’ll have to deal with the jokes that these ignorant fools make. Ha! Ha! Ha! See, it’s so damn funny. Damn, I’m so stupid! Ha! Ha! Ha! That thing fell out of my butt! Ha! Ha! Ha! (They don’t know how close I am to transforming myself from a nice and decent guy to a multiple murderer.) Ha! Ha! Ha! I’m such a spot burner! Ha! Ha! Ha! I can take their clowning. I could do this. Ha! Ha! Ha! . . .

  16 / Happy Birthday

  My birthday fell on a Wednesday that year. I should have been in a celebratory mood, having just finished
a draft of my novel about the nun. The boys’ reaction to my confession of discouragement had shaken me out of my writer’s block, and their willingness to bare their souls at the retreat gave me the courage to send the manuscript off to my publisher. Unfortunately, inspiration and courage had not saved me from writing a bad book. My editor’s puzzled reaction to the manuscript led me to read it once more, and by page 50 I wanted to slit my wrists. When, at last, the story reached its improbable yet unsatisfying conclusion, I wondered: How could I ever have thought this was good?

  My wife, knowing I was inconsolable, did not insist that we celebrate that year. Before I left for juvenile hall that night, she stopped at a bakery and picked up some éclairs for me to bring to the kids. When I got to the unit and the boys had all sat down, I opened the box and saw to my horror that she had spelled out the phrase “Happy Birthday Mark” on one of the éclairs with candy letters.

  “It’s your birthday?” Kevin asked, looking pained. “Wha’chu doin’ here?”

  “You should be out partying, Mark.”

  “Damn, you shoulda told us.” Francisco’s eyebrow bunched up. “We woulda got you a card or somethin’. Man, now I feel bad.”

  I felt an explanation was due, so I told them about the set-back with the book. “I’m not discouraged, though—just not in a ‘happy birthday’ mood, that’s all. Don’t worry about it.”

  The boys fell silent. Francisco was beginning to look dangerous; he was staring, red-faced, out the window with a clenched fist pressing into his thigh. Then he let it out:

  “Fuck your editor!”

  “Yeah, Mark!” Kevin agreed. “Fuck him, you can go somewhere else.”

  “My editor’s a woman.”