True Notebooks

by Mark Salzman

  “Maybe girls should cry less, and we should cry more,” Benny suggested.

  Toa rolled his eyes. “This prob’ly be your last class, huh, Wong? Let’s hear what you wrote. Wrap it up for us today.”

  “It’s not about emotions or anything like that,” Benny said. “It’s about time.”

  Dale groaned. “Don’wannathinkabouttime. Time allwegot.”

  “Looka the bright side,” Toa said. “Everybody on the outs say they want more time, never enough time, can’t buy time. Fuck ’em. We got more time than anybody. We rich.”

  THE TREE

  I’ve been housed here at Central Juvenile Hall for nearly twenty-two months. Doing the same routine every day, time seems to have gone by fast but I have just realized how long it has been. I remember there was this one tree by the main school on the other side of this facility. The tree was right by one of the back doors of the school and was possibly a way of getting over these walls. Then one day about two months after I got here, the tree was cut down, I guess because the probation people had realized the possibility of it being used as an escape attempt.

  Recently, as my unit made a routine movement to school, I saw this young, bright, green tree a little taller than me. Then suddenly, I realized that this young tree was actually the tree that had been cut down. It had already grown back. That’s when I started to realize how long I have been inside these walls.

  Victor looked out toward the yard. “If you cut down a tree, you can tell how old it is by how many rings it got inside, right?”

  “Everybody know that, fool.”

  “But I’m sayin’, if it got cut down once, then come up again, does it still got the original rings?”

  “Who the fuck knows.”

  “Peoplegotringstoo.”

  “Huh?”

  “Youcutoffaman’sleg, yougonnaseethemrings.”

  “Fuck no, Jones, that only trees. People got blood vessels and bones an’ all that shit.”

  “No waya’knowin’ howoldaniggagets, then.”

  “You could ask him, fool.”

  Victor frowned. “I still wanna know if a tree that gets cut down got the original rings, or does it start over?”

  “Why you askin’ that, Martinez?”

  He shrugged. “I’m just sayin’, if you get locked up for twenty, thirty years, then get out . . . I’m sayin’, what if you could, like . . . ah, fuck it.”

  “That’s whacked, Martinez.”

  “Hey Mark—you heard anything from Jackson?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Who’s Jackson?”

  “Before your time, fool. An OG from back in da day.”

  “The tall guy with the scar? Who could break-dance on his head?”

  “Nah, the quiet guy who was always cookin’ shit.”

  “On L side?”

  “Nah. K side.”

  “See that?” Victor said, looking at me. “As soon as you leave this place, you’re gone. Forgotten. Who talks about Wu anymore? Or Hall? Or Javier? Nobody. Hell, just now’s the first time I thought about those guys in like a year. That’s what it’s like on the outs for us. Like we never existed.”

  “Might as well be dead.”

  “Not me,” Antonio said. “I’ma live. I’ma squeeze every drop outta this fucker, no matter what happens.” He reached into his pants pocket, took out an egg roll he’d stashed there, then stuffed it into his mouth before anybody could steal it from him. “Like I said,” he mumbled, speaking with his mouth full, “that is some good-ass food, Wong.”

  27 / Dear Friend

  Kevin’s letter arrived a year later. He had been assigned to a maximum-security prison near Sacramento, about five hundred miles north of Los Angeles. Heeding my oft-repeated advice to write in specifics rather than generalities, he described the layout and furnishings of his cell, a typical day’s schedule, and a few representative menus from the cafeteria. (The food in prison was better than at juvenile hall, he reported.) He also told me that his cell mate was an older fellow and that they got along well. He asked how I was doing, if I was still teaching at Central, and if I’d ever finished that book about the nun.

  I wrote back and told him that I was fine, the class was going strong, and, yes, I’d finally finished the book about the nun. It happened unexpectedly, after nearly six years of groping my way from one unsuccessful draft to the next. I’d been invited to spend a couple of months at an artists’ colony in New Hampshire where I was supposed to write, of course. By the time I got out there, I was so fed up with my book and with writing in general that I decided to relax instead.

  Maybe it was the silence—my cabin was isolated from the others by acres of forest and had no radio, television, or telephone in it—maybe it was the fall colors, or maybe it was the Wine-in-a-Box I’d set up next to my chair on the porch; whatever the reason, within a few days my mind did begin to relax. I started to think playfully again, and one afternoon while playing with ideas I realized what had been wrong with the nun story all along. Once I’d seen the problem, its solution came effortlessly; I sat down and started writing and by the time I left New Hampshire the book was done. I told Kevin that the lesson I’d learned from this was that I had no idea how creativity worked, none at all.

  I also told him that, while at the colony, I gave a brief presentation about our writing class at juvenile hall. I shared several examples of the boys’ work with the audience, including two of Kevin’s essays. The response was overwhelmingly positive, but one woman wanted to know why I chose to volunteer at a detention facility, rather than at, say, an after-school program in a troubled neighborhood.

  “I think what you’re doing is wonderful,” she said, “but wouldn’t you be having more of an impact if you worked with kids before they become serious criminals?”

  I had to admit that, yes, early intervention programs for at-risk youth are highly effective, whereas rehabilitation programs for chronic offenders show poor results. But I told her that, in all honesty, my primary goal with the boys at K/L had never been to save them or improve them or even to get them to take responsibility for their crimes. I was there because they responded to encouragement and they wrote honestly; surely that sort of interaction between teacher and student has value, even if it does not lead to success beyond the classroom.

  “But doesn’t it depress you,” another colleague asked, “knowing that they’ll have this brief time with you, where they’ll get in touch with themselves and bond with you and each other, only to be sent off to prison?”

  It was my father’s question all over again. Before I could answer, someone else added, “And do you ever worry that you might actually be making their lives harder? I mean—they’re facing a brutal environment in prison. You’re teaching them to become vulnerable, which is important for life in society, but won’t they have to unlearn it to survive where they’re going?”

  All valid questions. Since starting the class two years earlier, I’d had plenty of opportunities to wonder: What is the value of a positive experience if it is only temporary? How do you weigh the advantages against the disadvantages of affection, or of aspiration? After all I’d been through with the boys—some of it wonderful and some of it terrible—all I could say was that a little good has got to be better than no good at all. That, I wrote Kevin, was my answer to his question of why I went there: not because I always enjoyed it, and not because the boys always enjoyed it, but because most of us seemed to agree that it was a good thing to do. Even Jose, who claimed it had all been for nothing, had never skipped a class.

  I reported that all of the boys Kevin had known from class were gone: Victor, Dale, and Toa had all been convicted and sent to prison. Benny Wong was home and doing well, working for his father’s company and taking classes at a community college. Duc Bui had gone to prison, but before he left he surprised us all by walking into class one day with a huge smile on his face and a Vietnamese-American magazine under his arm. “I get publish!” he said, and it was true; the
boy who could barely speak English when he entered juvenile hall became the first member of the class to appear in print. Copies of his poem “This Is My Life” circulated around Central for months afterward.

  Sal Frontuto fell victim to the county hit list and disappeared one day, only to come back six weeks later with a gruesome scar across his neck. A gang of adult convicts had attacked him and slit his throat from ear to ear but somehow missed the jugular vein. After he’d been sewn together the authorities sent him back to juvenile hall “due to safety concerns.” He rejoined the class and became something of an elder statesman to the younger inmates, but whereas his writing had once been searching, it turned hopeless and angry after the attack.

  Carlos Bours puzzled me at first. His writing went all over the place, from tender love poems one week to violent, self-hating manifestos the next. Then, one day, he wrote about a Little League game where he’d made the winning play in front of his dad:

  . . . As I stepped out of the dugout I was stopped. “Good game, son.” Thanks, Dad. You’re such a good dad when you’re not beating me, is all that kept running through my adolescent mind.

  A week later he wrote a poem about crouching in a corner while his father beat and cursed him. The poem ended:

  But yet I smiled to everyone,

  As if nothing was wrong,

  Now two and a half years later,

  My wonder years are almost gone.

  I’ve now learned to always

  Speak what’s on my mind,

  But I think what I’ve learned

  Is just too late this time.

  Not long after that he wrote an essay titled “The Dream,” but would not read it aloud or let anyone read it aloud for him. He simply handed it in and asked me to type it for him.

  The dream my dad had for my life ended on June 27, 1997. It died with him. For the fourteen years prior to that, that was all I had lived for and his dream had become my dream. It was like I was living his life over again for him. But on that day the dream left both of us. Late that night I was arrested for murder.

  A religious volunteer confirmed what I was beginning to suspect. “Does Bours ever write about his father?” he asked me.

  “Yes, sometimes. Why?”

  The man shook his head. “I hope there’s such a thing as a ‘battered child’ defense. That boy should be in a safe house somewhere, getting counseling, not in here facing life in prison.”

  I described the newest members of the class to Kevin: a Russian-speaking Armenian with terrible stage fright; a boy with a stuttering problem who told me that what he really wanted out of the writing class was the opportunity to speak with me about his writing—about anything, in fact—as he had so few chances while incarcerated to talk; a boy from a group home who had beaten one of his fellow foster kids to death after an argument, and whose deadbeat father (the man had abandoned his son to be raised by grandparents when the boy was only two years old) showed up at the trial and gave the following quote to a Los Angeles Times reporter, which appeared in the next day’s paper: “I would say he is pretty mean. I know kids that are raised by grandparents and they came out just fine. Sometimes kids are just bad kids. The prisons are full of them. It’s not necessarily anyone’s fault but their own.”

  In closing, I told Kevin that things were more or less the same as always, but that I missed having him in the class and wondered if he still wrote sometimes.

  Two months later I received his answer:

  DEAR FRIEND

  Hello there old friend

  At the moment I’m kind of down

  It seems as though this is the end

  I haven’t had the chance to see you around.

  I’ve been sitting here bereft,

  Alone, locked down

  But now I have a window

  And see you every night.

  Times are hard, but I’ll be all right.

  Gun towers, barbed wire is all I see

  No matter how far I travel

  I glance up, and there you’ll be.

  It’s good to have a friend like you

  At times you help me shine through.

  I still have a long journey to go

  But I’ll be free again

  I’ll use this time to grow

  In not just one way, but all

  There’s a lot for me to learn

  So I’m gonna start like a baby, with a crawl.

  Though the road may seem

  Long and far

  Eventually I’ll make it

  Dear old friend, North Star.

  Author’s Note

  This is a work of nonfiction, but not of journalism. I did not use a tape recorder or take notes during my visits to Central. The dialogue in this book has been re-created from memory. Naysayers in the sciences—and, sad to say, even in the humanities—insist that human memory is unreliable. Hard evidence supports this claim but I can cite dozens of personal anecdotes to refute it, and anyway it is a bleak view so I say pshaw.

  The examples of student writing reproduced here are unaltered except for the spelling and punctuation corrections I suggested during class. Where alternate spellings, grammar, and so on were used deliberately, I left them alone.

  Some names have been changed, but most haven’t.

  A Note of Thanks

  I first went to juvenile hall because Duane Noriyuki invited me and I couldn’t think of a way to say no. I went a second time because Sister Janet Harris invited me and—well, you try saying no to her. Duane and Sister Janet have become mentors, role models, gentle critics, tireless supporters, and great friends to me; they are all that and more to countless young people who might otherwise feel completely alone in the world. It has been my privilege and pleasure to work with them.

  I’d like to thank the staff of K/L unit for their patience and support. Volunteers are needed in places like juvenile hall, but some, like me, come with broad smiles and good intentions but no prior experience. Others show promise as mentors only to disappear after a few weeks. The K/L staff had good reason to be wary of me at the beginning, but with their help the class evolved into something valuable and then they did everything they could to make me feel welcome. I forgive Mr. Sills and Mr. Granillo for making fun of Schubert’s Quintet in C Major. The poem “Window Tappers” appears here courtesy of its author, Ms. Tory Brigade.

  On behalf of all the teachers and students in the Inside Out Writing program, I would like to thank the Los Angeles County Probation Department for the opportunity we have been given. Special recognition must go to William Burkert, former superintendent at Central, and Dr. Arthur McCoy, principal of L.A. Central Juvenile Hall School, who supported and promoted the program from the beginning. Tragically, Mr. Burkert was killed in an automobile accident in 2002. He is fondly remembered by all of us.

  Most of all, I want to thank the boys who participated in my class over the years, who dared to make themselves vulnerable and who have so generously allowed their work to appear in this book. I hope that writing serves them as a tool for exploration and discovery for the rest of their lives. Although I don’t touch on this subject in the text of the book, I’ll say it now: they made me decide to have children of my own. It’s a debt I can never repay.

  A Note About Inside Out Writers

  The nonprofit Alethos Foundation and its program, Inside Out Writers, has professional writers teaching classes in detention facilities and public schools throughout Southern California, and is recognized statewide for its results in education and violence prevention. The Alethos Foundation received the Child Welfare League of America’s 2002 Award for Excellence in Community Collaboration for Children, Youth, and Families. It has published a book of student writing titled, What We See: Poems and Essays from Inside Juvenile Hall, and publishes a literary magazine, the InsideOUT Quarterly.

  For information concerning publications, volunteer or donation opportunities please contact:

  The Alethos Foundation

  23679 Ca
labasas Road #621

  Calabasas, CA 91302-1502

  Tel: 818-710-7469

  e-mail: InsideOutWriters@aol.com

  web site: www.insideoutwriters.org

  MARKSALZMAN

  True Notebooks

  Mark Salzman is the author of Iron & Silk, an account of his two years in China; Lost in Place, a memoir; and the novels The Laughing Sutra, The Soloist, and Lying Awake. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, the filmmaker Jessica Yu, and their daughter, Ava.

  ALSO BY MARK SALZMAN

  Nonfiction

  Lost in Place

  Iron & Silk

  Fiction

  Lying Awake

  The Soloist

  The Laughing Sutra

  FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, SEPTEMBER 2004

  Copyright © 2003 by Mark Salzman

  Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to Little, Brown and Company, Inc.,

  for permission to reprint an excerpt from the poem “Our Own True

  Notebooks” from The Lost Notebooks of Loren Eiseley by Kenneth Heuer.

  Copyright © 1987 by the Estate of Mabel L. Eiseley (Unpublished Loren

  Eiseley Material); Copyright © 1987 by Kenneth Heuer (Edited,

  Introduction, Reminiscence, Conclusion, Notes and Captions).

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:

  Salzman, Mark.

  True notebooks / Mark Salzman.

  p. cm.

  1. Juvenile delinquents’ writings, American—California—Los Angeles.

  2. Creative writing—Study and teaching—California—Los Angeles.

  3. Teacher-student relationships—California—Los Angeles. I. Title.

  PS572.L6S25 2003

  808’.042’071079494—dc21 2002043435