Rikers High

by Paul Volponi

  “I heard what you did to Jersey,” said Brick. “I don’t hold it against you. I could use a real fighter on my payroll. We’ll talk later. Okay?”

  But I played him cold and stiff and didn’t say a word.

  That’s when Brick turned to the other kids and said, “Maybe they cut his tongue out, too.”

  They all laughed with him, except for Ritz. I guess he’d got used to standing alone on Rikers.

  Most kids understand what a thug like Brick can do. They don’t want to get caught on the wrong side of him. So they usually play it safe, going along with whatever he says.

  “I’ll check you chumps later,” Brick said, bouncing back out.

  About an hour after that, the COs called the house out for lunch.

  The mess hall workers were mostly kids from our Sprung. Brick and his crew had spots at the front of the mess hall line, while I was almost at the rear. I could see from the mountain of food on their plates that they carried a lot of weight in the house. We had franks and beans all mixed together, with white bread on the side.

  It hurt like anything to eat with those stitches. And even though I’d shoveled everything into the left side of my mouth, the right side moved along whenever I chewed.

  I finished what they gave me and was still hungry. But none of the mess hall workers would serve me seconds when I went back.

  “Who you?” one of them asked.

  “Nobody,” another one answered.

  And I had to stomach watching Brick and his crew toss their trays in the trash, still half full of food.

  CHAPTER

  12

  After lunch, the COs put me and the other new jacks back inside that storeroom. I had just settled into a comfortable spot when a voice from the hall hollered, “Forty, you got a visit.”

  I’d been trying not to think about it, but deep down I knew Mom couldn’t wait till Saturday. Having her see me like this was going to be hard. And I felt worse for her than I did for myself.

  All the anger and frustration flamed up inside of me fast, like a fever. I wanted to scream out loud.

  Fuck that kid for slicing my face!

  Fuck him for putting my mother through this shit!

  And fuck me for getting my black ass locked up!

  I couldn’t get a handle on it until I hit the yard and felt the sun and wind on my face.

  An officer escorted me into the main building, past my old house, and up to the visit floor.

  The COs there took my clothes and gave me an orange jumpsuit and slippers to match. That outfit labeled me an inmate and made it impossible to sneak out with the visitors. And that bandaged cut on my face marked me the same way.

  The open visit floor is always packed with women. Mothers and grandmothers usually wear their church clothes. Wives and girlfriends always dress sexy. Sometimes a guy will pay more attention to another dude’s girl than to his own family. Inmates have even got into fights right there over looking at somebody else’s shorty.

  Women and kids are the only ones who can handle the hassle of coming to see you. Most men would start a riot over the crap they get put through. It’s that crazy.

  First, visitors get a long speech from the captain about smuggling in drugs and razors. There’s even a box where visitors can dump the contraband they brought without getting arrested. Then the COs search everybody for real. If they find anything on you they’ll lock your ass up, too.

  It could all take a couple of hours. Then your visitors only get to see you for a lousy fifteen minutes.

  Forget about your homeboys. They mostly cut you loose when you’re locked down. Mine did. My two best friends from my block, dudes I grew up with, hadn’t visited once. I don’t even mention their names to Mom anymore. It’s like they don’t exist to me now. Only people that really care about you, like your close family, would go through that kind of trouble just to see you.

  CHAPTER

  13

  She was sitting at a green plastic table.

  Her eyes followed me all the way across the floor until the CO let me go. Then Mom jumped up and hugged me tight without letting her head brush against my bandages. She held me like that till we could both keep from crying.

  “You’re still my baby, Martin,” Mom said, stroking the side of my face that was still whole.

  I looked into her sad eyes and thought about everything I ever did wrong to put us there. Then we sat down right in the middle of Rikers Island and were a family.

  She told me about my sisters’ good report cards from grade school. She said that both Trisha and Tina had parts in the school play, and that Grandma’s asthma was getting worse.

  “Maybe there’s one good thing coming out of this,” I said, trying to ease her worries. “I’m starting up high school in a new house. I got more than two weeks left here. Maybe I can take some kind of test to get some credits toward senior year.”

  “Thank you for giving him the strength,” she said, looking up to heaven. “Lord, thank you for his mind.”

  Pops hadn’t been home in seven years after he caught a second charge in prison for nearly killing somebody in a fight. I knew Mom was afraid that would happen to me.

  “I can see the hatred in your eyes,” she said. “Don’t let it burn.”

  “It’s all right,” I told her.

  “I don’t want to hear nothin’ about some damn man’s code,” Mom warned me. “Forget about getting even. I’ve been on too many of these visits in my life. I’m tired of coming to jail. Please, Martin. Let it go. I swear I got enough anger inside of me for this whole family.”

  My sisters made a drawing for me. There was a sun in bright yellow crayon and all of us standing in front of our apartment building except for Pops. He’d got buried so deep in the system that my sisters didn’t even remember him living with us. And since I’d been locked up on Rikers, Mom stopped visiting him upstate so she could see me on Saturdays.

  I asked how she’d got off work from Key Food and she answered, “You never mind that. I do what I have to do for my children.”

  Mom wanted to see my face under the bandages, but I said no.

  “I haven’t even looked yet,” I said. “I’m gonna wait till it’s healed more.”

  Then she kissed me on the forehead one time. Mom said she still hadn’t told my sisters or Grandma what happened, and I was glad for that. I knew she wouldn’t tell Pops because he’d get crazy mad over it, and he had enough problems to worry about already.

  It’s only on a visit that you want the time to go slow when you’re in jail. After a few more minutes, the CO came back and told Mom it was time to leave.

  CHAPTER

  14

  By the time I got back to the Sprungs, school was over and the whole house was in the yard for rec. There aren’t many times when the north and south sides of a house get mixed. It happens in the mess hall—only there the COs can eagle-eye you good at your table. In the Sprungs, it happened in school, too. But I could already see that some of those teachers, like Murray, probably had their noses in everybody’s business.

  When a house is at rec, lots of things between inmates get taken care of. That’s because the jail has rec officers on patrol, and they don’t really know you. They only care that kids don’t throw down and fight. The regular COs stay back at the house with anyone who just wants to lie around. That gives inmates from different sides a chance to take care of business.

  There were two games of hoops going on in the yard.

  The egg-shaped basketball that kids were using on one court didn’t have any grips left. There were bubbles pushing out of the seams, and it even bounced sideways sometimes. It was strictly welfare.

  That was the game for the guys without any juice.

  Ritz was playing there, and even with that piece-of-shit ball he was all right. I guess if a white dude wanted to get some respect on Rikers Island, passing the ball to somebody for an open layup is a good way to start.

  Brick was standing on the sideli
ne under the right basket, where dudes there were playing with the good ball.

  He had a couple of oversized doldiers with him and was going over a list of what he was owed, right out in the open.

  “Dude owes me six cigarettes and seven beef sticks,” Brick said, pointing to his paper. “This one owes two whole packs of cookies. And this joker right here owes me a two-liter Pepsi.”

  Like any thug, Brick was smiling and laughing with kids. There’s always good times as long as everybody knows their place and pays off.

  I would have tried to get into one of the basketball games, but I was worried about my stitches. I didn’t need to take an elbow to the face, by accident or any other way.

  There were fifteen Spanish dudes living on the north side of our house, and they had control of the handball wall. That was their turf, and I wasn’t looking to push my way around over there either. So I threw myself on the ground and started knocking out push-ups.

  I started off by doing twenty-five, with my face beginning to throb. Then I took a short break. Halfway through the second set, my arms were trembling from the strain, and I needed to grit my teeth to make the last few, stretching the muscles in my cheek till I thought my stitches were going to bust wide open.

  That night in the house, almost everybody was sitting in the dayroom watching TV. A kid called Shaky was squeezing the two ends of the antenna together so the picture would come in clear. He had to do it from behind the set or no one would be able to see. There wasn’t a chair high enough for Shaky to sit down on and still reach the antenna. So he spent the night standing up and looking out at us from behind the set. And after a couple of hours of that, kids started flipping him cookies as pay.

  I could tell straight off that Shaky wasn’t right in the head.

  During commercials, they would mute the sound and let Shaky tell stories about all the dudes he’d beat up.

  “I cracked him with my loco power, and then karate-kicked him in the nuts. Bam!” Shaky said, nearly falling over from showing the kick.

  Kids would poke holes in his story, and he’d start to shake all over, getting nervous.

  “It’s true,” pleaded Shaky, kissing two fingers on his right hand and touching them to his heart. “Word to mother. All true.”

  Sometimes when a kid is off like that he gets adopted by the house. They use him for a clown and try to take care of him. And I could tell that’s what was happening with Shaky.

  I spent half the night watching TV and half watching the three inmate phones by the officers’ desk. The COs ran slot time from six o’clock to seven thirty. That’s when everybody in the house gets five minutes on the phone. It’s also when a lot of herbs get ripped off for their pin numbers. Another inmate can surf over your shoulder and pick up your code. Then he’ll be dialing on your account for free until it’s empty.

  Seven thirty to nine o’clock was prime time, and you had to have some juice to dial. That’s when a doldier from Brick’s crew was always hanging around the phones, collecting from kids who wanted to make another call. His boys took turns on and off, and I got to see his whole posse on the north side.

  Barnett was a big black dude. He looked kind of soft, but he was too big to fight without a good reason. Luis was smaller and more solid-looking. He dealt with most of the Spanish dudes for Brick. Then there was Jersey. I didn’t expect that Brick would send him my way again.

  In all the time I watched, not a single kid challenged the system. And I wondered if Brick had it locked down like that on the south side, too.

  FRIDAY, JUNE 5

  CHAPTER

  15

  After we got to the school trailer the next morning, an assistant teacher rounded up the new jacks from all three Sprungs and brought us over to the mess hall to take a placement test.

  He handed out the test facedown and then gave each of us a fresh sharpened, full-size PROPERTY OF DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION pencil.

  “We collect every one of these,” he fussed, waving a pencil. “If even one disappears, we’ll have the officers search you all. Understand? We’re not here to supply you with weapons.”

  “Now don’t be giving these kids any bad ideas,” snapped Ms. Armstrong, the CO with us. “They’ve already got too much nonsense on their minds.”

  I almost couldn’t believe what I was holding. I touched the lead point with one of my fingertips. It was so long and sharp, you could stab someone clean through.

  The dude sitting to my right had a tattoo of a cross on his neck. In my mind, I imagined it was that spiderweb on the kid who’d cut me. And for a few seconds, I gripped that pencil tight inside my fist, till that wave of anger passed.

  House COs only give out pencils about the size of your thumb for writing letters. Even the pens you buy in commissary come without a hard, plastic cover. They just sell you the metal point and the tube filled with ink. So if you tried to stick someone with that, it would bend before it ever broke skin.

  Ms. Armstrong was a combination CO and housemother. Inmates want this kind of women officer because when something breaks down, like the hot water, you can put it in their ear that it’s not right. They’re usually real sensitive about kids being locked up and not getting services. They’ll keep dialing the phone till somebody comes out and fixes what’s wrong.

  She was black, with a round face and big hips. Most kids had a mother or aunt who looked and acted just like her.

  “I got a son in junior high right now,” said Ms. Armstrong, reading the test over our shoulders. “I help him with his homework all the time.”

  “He ever been locked up?” a kid asked.

  “I didn’t say I busted his ass, did I?” she came back.

  Then Ms. Armstrong caught somebody just filling in the blanks without even looking at the questions.

  “You want people to think you’re stupid, boy?” she said, slapping him on the back of the head.

  Halfway through, Demarco walked in and told us to put our pencils down. The assistant giving the test got all nervous about it and went to the door to watch for who might be coming. I guess he didn’t want to get in trouble for letting Demarco interrupt us.

  “Look, even the teachers got to watch the door in jail,” cracked Ms. Armstrong. “Only it’s not the COs they’re fearful of; it’s the principal.”

  “I’m Demarco Costa,” he said. “But what’s really important is who all of you are. So let me hear your names.”

  Then Demarco pointed to us one by one, and kids said their names.

  When Ritz said his new tag, everyone from that Sprung #3 storeroom broke up laughing.

  Demarco looked at him funny and said, “Is Ritz your last name?”

  “No, somebody called me a cracker. Then dudes decided I would be a Ritz because of my obvious style,” he explained, with Demarco grinning from ear to ear. “But my real name is Walter.”

  When it was my turn, I said, “Forty.”

  “I might as well call you table or chair,” Demarco said. “I’m not interested in knowing you like that.”

  I didn’t know what to say back.

  Then the next kid took his turn and it continued down the line.

  I felt like I’d missed out on something good.

  Demarco said that the test wasn’t all a waste of time, and that if we wanted to get put in the right class level or try for a GED, we should take it for real.

  “I know it’s not easy to think about school when you’re locked up,” he said. “But you want to show people, like a judge, that you’re serious about what you do. And you don’t want to fall behind everybody your age to get things, like a good job to support yourself and your family.”

  After hearing that, lots of kids were looking at Demarco like he was too good to be true for this place.

  Demarco wasn’t white, but he wasn’t dark enough to be black either. Kids asked him what he was and he answered, “I’m a teacher.”

  The assistant started flapping his arms, like a bird that’s about to take off,
and came running back from the door. We picked our pencils up and everyone got quiet.

  Demarco was looking up at the ceiling when a thin, middle-aged black woman in high heels and a dress that hung down to just above her bony knees walked into the mess hall and said, “Good morning, Mr. Costa.”

  She looked us up and down and said, “I’m Ms. Jackson, the principal here. Let’s go over a few basic rules. When you’re in class, you are to be respectful of”—blah . . . blah . . . blah.

  I wanted to tell Demarco my name was Martin. But he moved behind the principal while she was talking, giving us all a thumbs-up before he slipped out the door.

  CHAPTER

  16

  When school finished that day the COs took us shopping. A house never gets more excited than when it’s going to commissary. Everybody has a list of what they want to buy, and it almost feels like Christmas.

  We deuced it up and marched across the yard into the main building. The COs who work the corridor stopped us at the first gate.

  The main corridor is maybe two city blocks long, with iron gates every hundred feet or so. This way if something big ever jumps off, the COs in the control booth can close the different gates with an electric switch and keep the fighting pinned down to just one area.

  We were waiting because there was traffic up ahead. The corridor is like a highway. There’s a line running down the center and you always walk on the right side, no matter which way you’re headed.

  Even though it happens, COs never want two houses to pass each other in the hall. Even when you’re marching right up against the wall, there’s only four or five feet between you and the dudes on the other side. If the two houses had bad blood and wanted to fight, there’d be no stopping it. The COs playing the centerline would get caught in the middle, and most inmates would enjoy that.

  Sprung #2 was on its way back from shopping. They were all smiles, holding big paper bags filled with commissary.

  “We bought all the food there was,” said one of their kids. “Nothing left for you Sprung-bunnies. Sold out.”