Rikers High

by Paul Volponi

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  TUESDAY, JUNE 2

  CHAPTER - 1

  CHAPTER - 2

  CHAPTER - 3

  CHAPTER - 4

  CHAPTER - 5

  WEDNESDAY, JUNE 3

  CHAPTER - 6

  CHAPTER - 7

  CHAPTER - 8

  THURSDAY, JUNE 4

  CHAPTER - 9

  CHAPTER - 10

  CHAPTER - 11

  CHAPTER - 12

  CHAPTER - 13

  CHAPTER - 14

  FRIDAY, JUNE 5

  CHAPTER - 15

  CHAPTER - 16

  SATURDAY, JUNE 6

  CHAPTER - 17

  SUNDAY, JUNE 7

  CHAPTER - 18

  MONDAY, JUNE 8

  CHAPTER - 19

  CHAPTER - 20

  TUESDAY, JUNE 9

  CHAPTER - 21

  WEDNESDAY, JUNE 10

  CHAPTER - 22

  THURSDAY, JUNE 11

  CHAPTER - 23

  CHAPTER - 24

  CHAPTER - 25

  FRIDAY, JUNE 12

  CHAPTER - 26

  CHAPTER - 27

  CHAPTER - 28

  SATURDAY, JUNE 13

  CHAPTER - 29

  SUNDAY, JUNE 14

  CHAPTER - 30

  MONDAY, JUNE 15

  CHAPTER - 31

  TUESDAY, JUNE 16

  CHAPTER - 32

  CHAPTER - 33

  WEDNESDAY, JUNE 17

  CHAPTER - 34

  CHAPTER - 35

  THURSDAY, JUNE 18

  CHAPTER - 36

  CHAPTER - 37

  CHAPTER - 38

  FRIDAY, JUNE 19

  CHAPTER - 39

  CHAPTER - 40

  VIKING

  Published by Penguin Group

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Published in slightly different form as Rikersin 2002 by Black Heron Press.

  This edition first published in 2010 by Viking, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Copyright © Paul Volponi, 2002, 2010 All rights reserved

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Volponi, Paul.

  Rikers High / by Paul Volponi.

  p. cm.

  Originally published in 2002 in slightly different form by Black Heron Press under title: Rikers.

  Summary: Arrested on a minor offense, a New York City teenager attends high school

  in the jail facility on Rikers Island, as he waits for his case to go to court.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-18512-4

  [1. Jails—Fiction. 2. Prisoners—Fiction. 3. Juvenile delinquency—Fiction.

  4. Rikers Island (N.Y.)—Fiction. 5. African Americans—Fiction.] I. Volponi, Paul. Rikers. II. Title.

  PZ7.V8877Ri 2010

  [Fic]—dc22

  2009022471

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume

  any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of

  the author ’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  This text is dedicated to all of the high school students behind bars. Students who face the types of pressures that would break most adults, yet still find the strength to be concerned about moving forward with their education, for themselves and their families.

  Special thanks to Joy Peskin, Regina Hayes, Rosemary Stimola, Jim Cocoros, David Addison, Tyrone Thompson, April Volponi, Mary Volponi, and Sabrina Volponi.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE:

  The overwhelming majority of incidents that occur in this book really happened. I witnessed them firsthand during the six years I worked as a teacher on Rikers Island. The fiction here is the creation of a protagonist who represents the actual experiences of several student-inmates.

  TUESDAY, JUNE 2

  CHAPTER

  1

  Every morning at five o’clock another correction officer came on duty and started to count. For five months it had been the same. One of them would drive in from someplace nice, like Long Island, while another went home. The one coming on would start down the row of beds, counting, before he could steal an hour or two of sleep in the Plexiglas bubble—their little command center at the front of our module.

  They can’t take the count by looking. Just like in the movies, a kid could roll his clothes up under a blanket and be on the loose. So they count by feeling for a warm body.

  There’s nothing worse than waking up when a CO touches you. For a second, you might not remember where you are. You might even think you’re home. Then it all comes rushing back into your brain. You’re on Rikers Island. To fall asleep again is like spending another night in jail.

  “Thirty-six . . . thirty-seven . . . thirty-eight,” the CO muttered.

  The new jack next to me had spent the night before fighting off the wolves for his good kicks. He didn’t know the routine yet, and wasn’t ready for anyone to touch him while he was still asleep.

  “Who’s that?” he screamed, jumping up in his bed.

  “Yo, thirty-nine!” the CO shot back, pinning his shoulders to the mattress. “I’m just takin’ the count, kid. Grab a fuckin’ hold of yourself!”

  It seemed like half the house was awake for a few seconds, until they saw it was nothing.

  “Forty, court!” the officer hollered, and shook me with one hand.

  I was going to court this morning. I got my best clothes—my cleanest jeans and collared polo shirt—from the plastic bucket under my bed. Then I got dressed in the dark.

  I didn’t tell anyone I expected to go home. Some inmates will start trouble with you because they’re jealous or think you won’t fight back and chance getting a new charge. The ones you owe from juggling commissary will want to settle right away. Anyone who owes you will put it off, hoping you don’t come back from court. And the sneak thieves will be looking for your blanket and what’s left of you
r commissary and clothes before your bed gets cold.

  I walked up to the bubble where the COs sit, and I got in line with the other courts. A CO pulled my ID card from the box and threw it on top of the pile of black and brown faces. It read, “Martin Stokes—Adolescent Reception and Detention Center, Mod-3, North Side #40.” I had been answering to “Forty” for so long, it was almost like that was really my name. I would only hear “Martin” when I called home, or when Mom came on a visit.

  The picture stapled to the corner of the card was taken my first day on the Island, two weeks before I turned seventeen. I thought I’d be here for a hot minute then. It was such a bubble-gum charge. I thought Mom could make my $5,000 bail, or I’d get a program and probation when I got to court. But my case was put off twice for bullshit.

  First, my lawyer had to tell the judge we weren’t ready. Then the judge got held up on another case. Now it had been five months since I was out in the world, and I was hungry to see it again without peeping through a chain-link fence.

  There was a bang at the steel door to our mod.

  It was a woman CO who’d come to collect me and four other kids. We eyeballed her up and down. She was pretty enough. But women don’t have to look too good in jail to get a lot of attention. Most times, inmates, especially adolescents, are just happy to be anywhere near one. Only I was thinking more about Mom, and getting a chance to see my little sisters, Trisha and Tina, and Grandma again.

  We deuced it up in the hall, getting into two lines. That woman CO had inmates from other houses out there, and we were already mixing with adults, who have their own modules.

  Then she marched us down the main corridor. Except for other officers standing their posts, it was totally empty. And with the sun coming up behind those barred windows, I started to think about how it’s almost peaceful on Rikers that early in the morning, when the only movement through the halls are the courts.

  CHAPTER

  2

  We got to the yard, and I was shackled to another inmate by my foot and wrist, so it would be that much harder for either of us to run. They loaded us onto a blue and white bus with the word CORRECTION painted on the side. Like people on the streets wouldn’t figure it out from the metal bars and plates on the windows. Then the bus started up, and we passed through the big gates and over the bridge that separates Rikers Island from the world.

  There were fourteen pairs of inmates shackled together and two officers along for the ride. One CO stays with the inmates, and the driver sits on the other side of the bars so no one can take control of the bus. There’s even a cage that the CO can lock you up in if you start trouble or need protection. The mood on the way to court is usually pretty good. But the ride back can be long and hard if enough dudes get smacked down by the judges.

  We crossed the bridge and were on the streets of East Elmhurst. It felt good to see people walking in any direction they wanted, without a CO to stop them. And I wanted to be that way again, too.

  I saw a man picking up after his dog on a corner, and I thought about my first trip to the Island. Maybe I was ten years old then. Mom took me on a visit with her to see Pops on Rikers. But we got off some city bus and couldn’t find the jail.

  She stopped a white man walking a black Rottweiler and asked, “How do you get to Rikers Island?”

  The man just laughed and said, “Rob a bank, lady. Rob a bank.”

  I know where the Island is now. I know the bus route from the jail to the Queens Criminal Courthouse and back. I’ve taken that ride so many times on this one case, I could close my eyes and tell you where the bus is by the bumps and turns. From the streets to the Grand Central Parkway, through the exit ramp and the turn onto Queens Boulevard, I could feel it in my bones.

  At the courthouse, we were put into the pens. You pick up a lot of skills in jail, and in the pens you need them all. The pens are big cells, with maybe fifty inmates inside of each one. That’s where everybody waits until their case gets called. There’s an open toilet, a sink, and benches bolted to the floor so nobody throws them. The COs in charge aren’t interested in what you do because they don’t have to live with you for long. They don’t really want to come inside and stop anything, either. It’s up to you to take care of yourself. As long as you come out in one piece to see the judge, they did their job.

  Adolescents are mixed with adults in the pens, and guys that fly the same colors stay together and act tight. By eleven o’clock, the COs serve you a slice of bologna between two pieces of bread for lunch. Inmates call them “cop-out sandwiches” because you’d be willing to confess to anything just to not eat that crap. After a while, the floor of the pen gets covered with bologna and stale bread.

  I tried to look hard, with my chest puffed out and eyes squinting. I was as worried about the next few hours as I was about my case.

  Some guys had bullied a weak kid over in the corner into doing the pogo—jumping up and down in the toilet on one foot in his shoes and socks. It’s mostly the adolescents who do stuff like that because they want to show other kids how tough they are. The only time an adult will step to an adolescent is if the kid is acting real stupid. And when adults fight, there’s no playing around. They’ll pull burners quick and try to stab each other to death.

  The dude standing next to me was practicing hand signs, and I thought he was down with one of the gangs. He saw me watching him and said, “This is what’s gonna help me beat my case.”

  Then he ran down the whole show for me.

  “All the judges are Masons,” he said. “If they see you throwing up the right signs, they won’t find you guilty. That’s why you don’t see white people going through the system. Most of them are Masons, and they know the signs. But there are black Masons, too. Even a white judge knows that.”

  I just nodded. You never want to argue with a dude when he has his hopes riding on something crazy like that. Not while he’s waiting to see the judge and is all uptight.

  There were two kids starting to jaw in the corner of the pen. They were fighting over which outfit ran their neighborhood, and it was starting to get heavy. They both had on their best ice grills, and one of them had backup.

  “You’re talkin’ to me like I’m some sort of punk,” said the one standing alone.

  He put his fists up and stood with his back to the bars, so no one could yoke him from behind. But that crew had him surrounded and other inmates in that part of the pen started to move away.

  It was about to be high drama when an officer came up to the bars and shouted, “All right boys and girls, listen up! Fuller, Douglas, Stokes, and Wallace, let’s go!”

  “That’s me, Martin Stokes,” I told the officer, as his key rattled the lock on the door.

  CHAPTER

  3

  I hadn’t seen my legal aid lawyer since the last time I went to court, fifty-one days ago. I’d called her plenty since then, and so did Mom. But she was never there and wouldn’t get back to us. That happened so many times we got to know the message on her answering machine by heart and would tear it to pieces on visits.

  “I’m either in court right now or on the phone. Leave your name and case number, and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.”

  One time, I just screamed “Forty!” into the phone and hung up.

  I’d only met her five minutes before I saw the judge on my first trip to court. Until she said my name, I had no idea she was my lawyer. She was young and black, and I thought she was the girl or sister of somebody on trial. Then I noticed the briefcase in her hand.

  “My name is Gale Thompson,” she said, inside of a small conference room. “I’ve been assigned to represent you in this matter.”

  Before she even asked me what happened, she started to explain how I was guilty and what kind of deal she could get me.

  They had me for “steering”—telling an undercover cop where to buy weed in my neighborhood. I told her I did it, but that it was really a setup. How the dude who walked up to me was diesel,
and I was afraid not to tell him anything or he might start to beef with me. I told her that she had to tell my side of it, too, before I got anywhere near calling myself guilty.

  We argued back and forth for a while. Then she just threw her hands up and sent a note to the judge saying we weren’t ready. He didn’t like that, and I had to wait almost ten weeks to come back. That’s when I thought Mom would do anything to make my bail. But she didn’t have the money and had to worry about supporting my sisters and Grandma.

  I didn’t see Miss Thompson again until the next time my case came up.

  “I hope you’re through with all that nonsense and we can get down to the business of getting you home,” she said. “I’ve got a lot of cases to handle, and this one is cut and dry.”

  By then I’d seen lots of kids go home on more serious charges. I just wanted to be done with jail and to get my ass out of this stinking parade. So I kept my mouth shut. But the judge got caught up in some case that went to trial, and I never even made it into the courtroom that day.

  Now I was glad to see Miss Thompson. I was happy to get out of the pen before it exploded and finally go home. The CO took me to a side room where she was sitting at a table, studying her papers.

  “I’ve arranged for you to go home and get off this public support.” she said. “The assistant DA has agreed to probation, but the judge is out sick and we have to come back in a couple of weeks, on the nineteenth.”