Rikers High

by Paul Volponi

It was twenty after ten by then. It’s always lights-out at ten o’clock. But most inmates lie awake in the dark for a good part of the night. This house was no different. They’d been stirring like mice since I walked through the front door. They were sizing me up, trying to figure out where I fit in their food chain.

  I remembered how tough it was when I first got to Rikers, carving out a place for myself and trying not to become anybody’s herb. I’d learned plenty in the past five months about how it all goes down, and I was hoping to get some space without having to fight for it. I had been in Mod-3 for so long, new jacks watched me to see how it would go.

  Out here, I was going to have to do all the watching for a while.

  CHAPTER

  8

  The count was low on the north side, and when the COs looked at my ID card they saw the number forty staring at them.

  “Bed forty is open on the north,” said one of Johnson’s partners. “All we got to do with this kid’s card is change Mod-3 to Sprung #3.”

  My world had been kicked upside down since yesterday, but on Rikers Island I was still going to be called “Forty.”

  My bed was in the back of the house, near the bathroom. I tossed my shit into the bucket, put my mattress on the frame, and got into bed. There was a CO watching our side from a desk up front. He spent most of the night reading a newspaper with his feet up, like nothing ever happens out here.

  I wasn’t convinced, and I stayed up for a few hours staring at the high ceiling. There were big fans that hung down from the top of the Sprung, and I watched the blades turning slow. I could feel the air moving all around me. And I kept the blanket away from my face so I could see anyone coming.

  There was no Plexiglas bubble for the officers to hole up in, where the phone and emergency alarm were in case the entire house went zoo. Here, the officers’ desk was right out in the open where kids could just rush it if they wanted. But the COs didn’t seem uptight about it.

  COs inside the jail don’t carry guns; only the ones patrolling outside the gates do. If they had guns on the inside, inmates would forever be scheming on how to wrestle one away. But the COs inside aren’t scared, because they stick up for each other. That uniform connects them like one big gang. Only they’re more dangerous than any gang I know, because they have badges and the courts to back them up.

  Inmates have the COs outnumbered, maybe thirty to one. But they’re all apart, fighting over every little thing, and the COs are too much together. Even if some COs don’t like each other, they hate inmates even worse.

  The only time a CO has to worry is if a bunch of inmates jump him all at once. And every CO has a personal alarm clipped to his shirt. When he hits the button, a signal goes off in a control room up at the front of the jail. The riot squad comes running on the double. And those animals will hit anything that moves, including kids with their hands up in the air.

  Two kids on the midnight suicide watch came through. I could see they were checking me out. One of them even flashed some fake-ass gang signs at me, but I looked right through him.

  Midnight suicide is a good job for an inmate, but you got to have some juice to get it. The COs have to like you and think you’re down with their program. Lots of times they’ll give their enforcers the job as a reward for helping to keep the house in line. Other times the house snitch will be on midnights. But they’re usually all down with Five-O in some way.

  The kids on midnight get to stay up all night and sleep most of the day. Besides the fifty-cents-a-night pay, you get $150 put into your account if you stop an inmate from trying to kill himself. In Mod-3, we used to talk about having a fake suicide so we could all split the money. But no one ever wanted to get turned in and have to go to Bellevue Hospital for observation in the mental ward.

  “Yo, Forty,” whispered some kid from the next row of beds. “We need a new Maytag in the house. Wash all our clothes in the bathroom sink, and we’ll let you live around here.”

  That kid didn’t know a thing about how I carried myself around a house. He was just going by the first thing he saw—that somebody had sliced me like a Thanksgiving turkey.

  I heard a couple of them laugh when I called for the officer.

  They probably thought I was looking for protection. But I said in a voice loud enough for the whole north side to hear, “CO, I need to use the bathroom.”

  The laughing stopped.

  I was calling out anyone who wanted to follow me inside. I wanted to see the layout of the bathroom, too, before morning, when it would be full of kids. Then I couldn’t get jumped so easy.

  The bathroom is the best place for inmates to fight, away from the eyes of the COs. During the day, kids watch the door and let you know when the COs are coming. I walked through the open doorway and looked it over. It was bigger than most, maybe fifteen feet wide and fifty feet long. None of the stalls had doors, and the showers were way at the end and up a few steps. You could have a real war in a cave like this, and the COs up at the front of the house would never know.

  There was a row of polished metal mirrors over the sinks. All mirrors on Rikers are made of metal. They don’t allow glass in jail. It’s too easy to smash and break into a thousand weapons. You could use a match to burn a sliver of glass into the end of a toothbrush, and it would be just as good as a razor.

  I looked at myself in one of the mirrors. And if I could, I would have ripped it straight off—not only because of the bandages on my face, or the pain I was in, but the way I looked older after all the time I’d shitted away.

  Then I leaned up against a stall and waited to see if anyone would show.

  Less than a minute later, a skinny kid walked inside. His name, “Jersey,” was barely out of his mouth when I stepped to him. Jersey wasn’t a fighter, just a kid they could amp up into trying me.

  I tackled his ass, pinning him to the floor. He couldn’t have been more than sixteen. I had a year and at least twenty pounds on him. My eyes were locked onto his, and he was staring up at my face. We stayed like that without saying a word until I yanked him up by the front of his shirt.

  “Stay right here till one of your crew comes and gets you,” I said, sitting him down on a toilet seat. “Tell your boss I’m a peaceful dude. But I’m not gonna be pushed around.”

  The sweat was rolling down his face as he nodded his head. And when I knew I could turn my back on him, I went over to one of the urinals and took a piss.

  I left the bathroom and coughed a couple of times just to let everyone know I was the one still standing. Then I spit into the garbage pail and got back into bed.

  Another kid went inside to find out what had happened to Jersey. I could see by his shadow that he was big and slow. He wasn’t the boss, just another “doldier,” a combination doer and soldier. Then the kid came back outside, with Jersey walking even slower behind him.

  After that, I tried to catch some sleep a little bit at a time.

  THURSDAY, JUNE 4

  CHAPTER

  9

  The sun came up and the whole north side went from dark to light. There are no window shades or curtains in jail, so anyone wanting to sleep past daybreak had to bury his head beneath a blanket or pillow.

  I sat up in the light and looked around to see if anyone was still interested in me. There were only a handful of kids awake, and none of them wanted to even trade looks. Jersey had given his crew the lowdown by now. And anyone that hadn’t heard yet could tell by my face that I had a history.

  Inmates get cuts on their faces for different reasons. You might get in deep juggling and decide not to pay. Sometimes a crew gets a real stranglehold on a house and you’re down with another outfit. Maybe you’re a herb that somebody used to prop himself up, or you’re a snitch and somebody was getting even. I didn’t fit into any of that. But people were going to try and place me somewhere. That’s just how it is in jail. Everybody has a place, and nobody wants you to fuck up the order, especially if it puts you on top of them.

 
“Breakfast,” a CO called as low as he could.

  Only two kids got up to eat.

  The COs call breakfast real early, when almost everybody is still asleep. This way they don’t have to hassle with getting half a house back and forth to the mess hall. They never have it easier than when everyone is sleeping, so they try to keep it like that as long as possible. That means most inmates are thinking about lunch from the moment they wake up. I usually bought stuff for the morning during weekly commissary, like cookies and soda, using the money Mom put into my account. But there were no snacks in my bucket now.

  Most dudes spend their account money on cigarettes and live off jail food. But I’d rather have a settled stomach than a smoke any day. Besides, there’s always a cloud of smoke hanging over the dayroom that you can suck in for free. Dudes who don’t even smoke buy cigarettes because they’re easy to juggle and you can get almost anything for them. And the jail will sell you cigarettes in commissary even if you’re under eighteen. If kids didn’t smoke, they’d be wired all day and there would be nothing but fights.

  I saw in the newspaper that some kid in Texas sued the jail out there after he got cancer. He was only seventeen, but they sold him stoves anyway. They had to pay him millions because he saved all his commissary receipts and could prove it.

  Dudes are always talking about suing the jail. But for all the times the COs beat our asses without a reason, they get bagged for selling cigarettes to a minor. I guess that’s the way this fucked-up justice system works.

  Nearly two hours later, a CO hollered at the top of his lungs, “Let’s go, ladies! Rise and shine!”

  I was shocked. It was just before eight o’clock and the COs were serious about getting the whole house up.

  “I warned you yesterday about moving your lazy ass!” yelled a CO, before flipping the bed over on a kid who didn’t get up fast enough.

  Now I knew there was some kind of schedule to keep.

  Most kids were still walking around in a daze. They were either heading for the bathroom or taking down their washed clothes, which were drying on the air vents.

  I made my bed, waiting for the count.

  The entire north side of Sprung #3 could see my face now, and kids were starting to say shit as they passed.

  Dude must be havin’ his period on his cheek.

  That’s why all the Tampax.

  He got done up like cold cuts at the deli.

  Other kids just shook their heads because they knew it could happen to them, too.

  The CO blew a whistle and everybody stood by their beds, counting off. Most of the voices were tired and weak, fading into the high, round ceiling of that tennis bubble. But I could tell right away which dudes were part of the main crew. They knew I was listening and wanted to count off like they were somebody.

  “Twenty-seven!” boomed the voice of the dude who’d said I was going to Maytag for them. He was short and squat, but his muscles were really chiseled. And he sounded like he stood, cocked and ready to go.

  I waited my turn and loudly said, “Forty!”

  After the COs told us to deuce it up, we marched out of Sprung #3 and into the yard, with the south side following behind.

  I saw the back end of Sprung #2 disappearing into one of the trailers. Sprung #1 was at the gate of their house, waiting for us to pass, and a captain in a sharp white shirt was eyeballing it all.

  The COs took us across the basketball courts, and then we stopped in front of another trailer. One of the kids at the head of the line had the box with all of our ID cards, and one of the COs was carrying the logbook. So I knew we’d be out of the house for a while.

  A civilian walked past with a yellow ID card clipped to his shirt.

  One of our dudes called to him, “Yo, mister, pick me for the GED.”

  That’s when it hit me. We were going to school.

  Out in the world, I’d finished my junior year at Jamaica High School in December, right before I got locked up, even though it took me an extra semester to get there. I’d held a 70 average, and had even passed the English statewide exam a year early. But now here I was, walking into some beat-up school trailer on Rikers Island with almost a hundred other inmates.

  My old house had a GED teacher that came by a couple of times a week. But I wanted to graduate from high school for real, and I always thought I was just about to go home. So I never bothered with it. But Sprung #3 was a legit schoolhouse five days a week.

  There was an olive-skinned teacher with tight, curly hair just inside the door of the trailer, sitting on top of a table like he was in his living room. He was calling inmates by their first names as we walked in, making a real show of how many he knew.

  “Michael, Dontel, Julio, Rodney,” he said, without missing a beat. “I got Sprung #3 names on lockdown.”

  Some dudes slapped his hand as they passed and said, “Demarco, the best.”

  I heard him call out “New jack, don’t know you yet” to kids before and after me. But he looked me square in the face without the comedy and said, “My name’s Demarco. Good to meet you.”

  The whole house was deuced up in the middle of the hall when a CO screamed, “Cockroaches disappear!”

  Kids scrambled for their classes, but us new jacks were still standing there. One of the COs was holding open a door and pointing inside.

  “In here for today,” he snapped. “The next placement test is tomorrow. Just stay quiet, and whatever you do, don’t fuck up.”

  It was a storeroom where they kept extra tables and lockers. There were seven of us standing against the wall. We spread out as best we could, and for a while nobody talked or even moved much. Then one of the kids put two tables together for a bed and stretched himself out on top. Somebody else started trying all the lockers. One of them even popped open, but it was only filled with schoolbooks.

  There was a tall, wiry white dude with us, and from what I saw he was the only one in the house. Just a few of them had passed through Mod-3 in all the time I was there. White dudes are usually real quiet in jail and keep to themselves, because they’ve got no power and nobody to watch their backs.

  He was sitting on the floor when one of the kids asked, “How the fuck did you ever get locked up? Didn’t you tell that blind judge you were a cracker?”

  It got tense for a second, but the white dude looked that kid right in the eye and answered, “I didn’t know I was a cracker. Am I a Ritz or a saltine?”

  The kid who was trying to sleep on the tables laughed so hard he almost rolled off. And after that slick comeback, everybody there gave that white dude a free pass.

  I liked the way he handled himself and decided to call him Ritz, because it rolled easier off the tongue.

  CHAPTER

  10

  After a while, a small white officer with a pinched face came inside and pulled a chair to the middle of the room. He took a store-bought ham and Swiss cheese sandwich out of a paper bag and started to unwrap it. Our eyes were glued to that sandwich like he was taking the clothes off a beautiful woman.

  “For all of you losers who can’t read, my name is Mister or Officer Carter,” he said, pointing to the nameplate beneath his badge.

  He took a big bite out of the sandwich. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of bills. Carter wiped the corners of his mouth with the cash and said, “I guess you guys haven’t seen any dead presidents lately.”

  “Can I just touch one?” somebody asked.

  “Sure, kid, it’s probably what got you here,” he answered.

  “Mr. Carter, why are you torturing us like this?” asked the kid fingering the bills.

  “Because you’re inmates, sweetheart. And as long as you keep praying to this green god, you’ll be coming back to jail and I can support my family. I just feel sorry for your mothers, that’s all,” answered Carter.

  A teacher with little glasses hanging off the tip of his crooked nose came in and walked right past us to his locker. It was like we were all inv
isible or maybe he was some kind of robot.

  “Mr. Murray,” said Carter, still waving his bundle around. “Teach these guys about supply and demand in your class, will ya?”

  “I teach history, not economics,” he said. “But if you boys don’t walk a straight line in my room, I’ll put you out in the hall with Carter and you can hold up the wall all day.”

  “That’s right. Fuck up in school and your asses are mine,” warned Carter.

  On his way back out, Mr. Murray stopped at the door. His four eyes settled on a kid in the corner and he grinned wide.

  “Didn’t this one get placed in a class last week?” he asked, pointing him out.

  Carter grabbed the kid by his ear and twisted hard.

  “Back to class, asswipe,” snarled Carter.

  He took his sandwich in one hand and dragged the kid out of the room with the other, kicking him in the behind as they went.

  Then Murray looked at us with a fucked-up smile and said,“You boys never learn, do you?”

  CHAPTER

  11

  A minute later, that kid with the chiseled muscles bounced into the room like he owned it.

  He looked us up and down and a couple of the kids even took a step backward. I was sitting on the floor, leaning up against the wall, so I didn’t move.

  “The name’s Cedric, but everybody calls me Brick,” he said, flexing a forearm. “That’s ’cause I fall down hard on people.”

  Brick probably wasn’t any stronger than a lot of kids with a decent build. He just looked harder, and had his thug act wrapped supertight.

  I kept my eyes on him as he talked. And once it looked like he had everybody else in that room backed down, he began to bark at me.

  “Don’t listen to what the COs tell you. I run this house. You want to use the phone during prime time? You need a loan till commissary comes? That’s all me,” he bragged.

  I’d seen kids like him before. He was a straight-up gangster in what was looking more and more like a soft house.