Fish: A Memoir of a Boy in Man's Prison

by T. J. Parsell

  I'm not sure if Slide Step knew about Scatter and me, because he didn't mention it. And neither did I. Never trust a guy who'll tell on himself. I couldn't wait to get back there, now, especially after what Slide Step had done for me. I wanted to write him and thank him again. But that was Slide Step. He always seemed to look out for me, and he took as much joy in seeing me happy, as I took in having sex with Brett. And I couldn't wait to do something with Brett again, but I'd have to wait for a pre-sentence investigation report, before the judge could sentence me for the Photo Mat.

  The pre-sentence investigations were completed by the Probation Department, and I would be stuck in the county jail until it was completed.

  Inmates loved to talk about how they knew the system inside and out. Even when they didn't know, they talked like they did-so you had to be careful about what and who you listened to. "Fuck all that nu mbo jumbo you hear when you first get there," I said to a con in the bullpen. "However much time you've got-that's where they're sending you."

  "Were you in Gladiator School?" a young white inmate asked.

  For the moment, I was the only one in the bullpen who had been to prison, so having all this knowledge made me feel important. I enjoyed the power it gave nee.

  "Not at M-R," I said, "but I was at Riverside."

  "Is it better?"

  "I heard they have a lot of fags there," another con said.

  "I wouldn't know." I looked at him. "They never bothered me."

  "I'm supposed to go to a camp," the young white inmate said. He had just been sentenced and was on his way to Jackson. "But I still have a couple of cases pending."

  "What for?" I asked.

  "Burglary."

  "You'll be all right," I lied. Burglary carried up to fifteen years, which meant they would have to treat him like lie had been given the maximum sentence, until lie went back to court. That's what happened to me. Though I didn't have the heart to tell him otherwise. He looked younger than me and a lot greener. "Just don't take no shit from nobody, that's all. And whatever you do, don't listen to what that psychologist might tell you in Quarantine." I wished there was more I could have told him, but given my experience-he was in for a rough ride.

  I was glad there was nobody there from Riverside, who could pull my ho' card. And so far, at least, I had been kept in relatively tame bullpens.

  When they called me in for classification, the deputy asked if I was a homosexual. I was expecting the question, because the other cons told me it would be coming. I was quick to say no. I didn't want it on my record, and I damn sure didn't want to be placed in isolation. The cellblock where they kept the queens was locked down twenty-three hours a day. At least in the other wings, you were let out of your cell during the day into the common area in front of the cells, and some wings had TVs. It helped pass the time.

  The deputy said that because I was coming from the state system, I was no longer eligible for the Romper Room-where they kept the nonviolent, first-time offenders.

  "Have a seat in the next pen," the deputy said. "We'll take you up in a little bit."

  When I entered the bullpen, it was quieter than usual. I could sense tension in the air. I sat on the bench, along the sidewall, and then I noticed it. It was a small pool of blood, in the middle of the floor, with a broken tooth. The smell hit at about the same time, causing my stomach to turn.

  "What happened," I said to the guy next to me.

  "Some motherfucker came in here for killing his momma."

  "His momma?"

  "Can you imagine? It's Mother's Day weekend, and this stupid motherfucker comes in here and tells us he just killed his momma."

  "I wondered what she did to him," I said.

  "Boy! Are you crazy?" The black con looked at me. "It don't matter what she did. You don't cone up in here and tell a motherfucker you just killed your momma."

  "And it's Mother's Day," another inmate repeated.

  "They would've killed that motherfucker if the deputies hadn't dragged his punk ass out of here."

  Looking at the blood and broken tooth, I wondered if I'd made the right choice.

  21

  What's My Lie?

  Televisiongame show host Bob Barker had already moved on to The Price Is Right. I remembered him from a few years earlier on Truth or Consequences. It was a program where the contestants were asked a difficult or sometimes even a trick question. If they answered incorrectly, or didn't respond quickly enough Beulah the Bell would buzz, and Bob Barker would say, "Oh, I'm sorry, you failed to answer the question truthfully and now you must face the consequences."

  In 1978, Detroit Recorders Court had a backlog of over 5,000 criminal cases. The Michigan Supreme Court appointed a receiver who instructed judges to plea-bargain their caseloads. But Judge Geraldine Bledsoe Ford didn't believe in bargaining with criminals. She stuck with the old format of doling out justice that seemed to "fit the crime." Mean Geraldine, the newspapers called her, Short on Bail/Long on Time.

  The inmates had other names for her, but mostly they feared her.

  "Shit, that bitch gives out time like its water," one of the cons in the bullpen said. "She told this one motherfucker, who was being sentenced for armed robbery, `Young Man, do you see that clock on the wall?"'

  "Yes ma'am."

  "What time does it say?"

  "Well it's 10:20, judge."

  "Well that's how much time you got, ten to twenty."

  The inmates laughed-at least everyone who didn't have her as their judge.

  Newspapers reported that attorneys and defendants alike would let out a gasp at arraignment hearings when they heard they'd been assigned to her court. One inmate claimed she told him to look out the window. "Young man, do you see a tree out there?"

  "No, Judge. I don't see a tree at all."

  "Well, there will be-by the time you're let out again."

  Others claimed she kept a coffee can filled with coins and at sentencing time she'd reach in and grab a handful, doling out a year for each one as she counted them out aloud "One, two, three ..."

  "That bitch has got some pretty big hands too," another con said.

  When she refused to plea bargain, the state tried to reassign her to a lower court, but then there were literally protests in the street. She was the granddaughter of a slave, her father was a civil rights activist, and she was the first black woman in the state to become a judge.

  "You'd think she'd cut the brothers some slack," the guy next to me said.

  "Shit! She's whiter than that white boy," the other nodded at me. I didn't know what he meant at first, but he didn't need to point, since I was the only "white boy" in the bullpen.

  It's not like I wasn't aware of it, but this was the first time someone had commented on it in front of me. I lowered my eyes in silence. It wasn't the only difference -the other difference was easier to hide, and I had hoped that no one would figure it out.

  I lied when the Intake deputy asked if I was homosexual. I didn't want to be placed in the lavender tank with a bunch of queens. Miss Pepper said it was like being in placed in Administrative Segregation-the hole. And the longer I waited in the bullpens, the more I began to wonder if saying I wasn't gay was even a lie at all, especially since the only sex with men I had had was forced. The fact that I enjoyed it with Scatter and Brett was a secret I wasn't about to share. And once I got out of there-I wouldn't even admit it to myself. Miss Pepper had warned me. "Once it's on your record, honey. It's there for keeps."

  I started to wonder whether I could keep up my self-denial any longer, especially given how much I enjoyed what I did with Scatter and Brett. It was pretty clear to me now what I was-and now that I had a taste of it-it awakened an appetite I couldn't ignore. I shifted in my seat on the bench, and had to cover my crotch from view. Those thoughts would have to wait, until it was safe again. I wished I could have taken Slide Step with me to the county jail. There were twenty-eight of us inside the fifteen by twenty-foot holding tank which was probably b
uilt for no more than a dozen men. There was a concrete bench along each sidewall and an open toilet and sink in the rear. Two of the four lights were out, so it was dark toward the back of the cell. We had to take turns stretching out on the floor to sleep, but there wasn't any order to it. You waited for someone to sit up or move and then you slowly had to slither into place. Some shifted more cautiously than others, depending on their size and shape.

  It was Sunday afternoon, and I'd been there since I arrived on Friday. I stayed near the front of the cell, where there was more light and it was easier to breathe. The inmates' clothes had absorbed the pool of blood that had been in the middle of the floor-from the guy that had killed his mother-and his tooth was probably embedded in the bottom of someone's shoe. The stench was overwhelming. The toilet had backed up again, and the deputies were slow in coming around. We heard them laughing down the hall and knew it was because we had to piss in the sink and hold our dumps until they were good and goddamn ready to bring us a plunger.

  The bars felt cool on the side of my face, as I sat on the floor and leaned against them. I had a headache from lack of sleep, the smell of body odor, and from holding my shit since I first arrived. It had nothing to do with the toilet; I was hoping to wait until I got up to a single cell.

  I tried to take my mind off the situation by reflecting on different times. I remembered the locker room at my high school, the musky smell of sweaty boys and stinky feet mixed with the clink of a closing padlock and of the hollow crashing of a locker door. I recalled the softer sound of a sneaker's squeaking on the court, and of the sharp shrill of a whistle echoing in the gym and the rhythmic thump of a basketballs. But none of that worked, because all the sounds and smells of jail kept bringing one back. The clamor and noise of jail or prison was unlike anywhere else in the world. A drunk on the other side of Intake had been shouting for over an hour-something about Castro and Cuba and the CIA. The others finally gave up on yelling at him to shut up.

  A deputy with a clipboard came to the front of the cell and shouted, "Open Five." He rattled off several names, ordering us out. "Turn around and face the wall." Nine of us were being taken upstairs to single cells. The guy standing next to me said, "They don't be releasin' nobody on Saturday and Sundays, so there wasn't no reason we had to stay in that fuckin' bullpen all weekend."

  "You're right," the deputy said. He placed the inmate back inside the pen. "Close up Five," he yelled behind.

  "What?" the inmate pleaded. "I didn't mean nothin' by it."

  "You can just wait," the deputy said, "and maybe by next Sunday we'll have a cell for you."

  A few minutes later, as we got on the elevator, we could still hear him screaming. "Aw, c'mon Dep, I was just kiddin' around. OK, OK, but can I please have a plunger?"

  I didn't remember it being so dark upstairs, but then everything from my first time through felt hazy to me. I was terrified when I first got here, not knowing what to expect-so I went in with blinders on-trying to block out as much as I could and hoping I'd come out the other side OK. But I was lucky back then, because the deputies had placed me inside a cellblock with other nonviolent, first-time offenders.

  This time, they put me in a cellblock for inmates who had been found guilty and were either awaiting sentencing or being transferred to the state prison system. There were twelve cells along the right, with a set of showers on the far end. The open area, to the left, was about fifteen feet wide and spanned the length of the cellblock. Two built-in tables with a metal bench were situated on each end. Because of the layout, the deputies weren't able to see inside a cell unless they stood in front of it. We were locked into our cells at night, but were let out during the day and free to move about within the confines of the common area.

  Four inmates looked up from a card came as I walked past carrying my bedroll. I noticed three more talking in a cell. I was also carrying the carton of cigarettes I brought in with me.

  "Hey, Slim, got a smoke?"

  Several jumped up optimistically.

  "Sure," I said. "Just let me get settled in my house, first."

  The racial mix wasn't as lopsided as it had been in the bullpen. I spotted at least three other whites and two of them were young like me.

  "Good lookin' out," one of the blacks said, as I handed out a few cigarettes. "The commissary doesn't come till Tuesday, so its tighter than a motherfucker in here."

  I had to be careful, because I couldn't replace them when the commissary cart came around. I should have asked Rick to put money in my account, but he probably would've whined to me about being broke again.

  The others seemed friendly, except for one-a black guy, who kept staring as if sizing me up. He slid off the bench and swaggered over, carrying his stocky frame with an edge that said he was almost too comfortable in there. Since everyone had a cigarette, the air was clouded with smoke.

  He was in his mid-twenties or so, and older than most of us there. I was in my cell, making my bed, as he watched from the doorway. "Are you back on a writ?" he asked.

  A writ of'habeas corpus was the legal term for bringing an inmate from prison back to Court. In Latin, it means "you are to have the body."

  I guessed he could tell by my state shoes, that I was coming from the prison system. "Riverside," I said.

  "They got a lot of fags there?"

  "I wouldn't know." I shrugged, trying to sound indifferent. He was making me nervous, especially the way he glared at me with his steady gaze. There was scar just below his right eye that extended diagonally across his cheek, and another on the left of his neck. My bed was almost finished, but I continued messing with it nervously. "You?"

  He reached in the cell and handed me his prisoner ID card.

  I looked at it and handed it back. It was from the Michigan Reformatory. His name was Nate.

  "Did you notice where it's from?"

  "Yeah." I looked at him. I wasn't' sure what he expected me to do. He thought I should be impressed because he was at Gladiator School. Or perhaps intimidated.

  "You back on writ too?"

  "Yeah, I've got a murder charge pending," he said. "And you?"

  "Armed robbery," I said. My voice cracked, and I cleared my throat, pretending like I had something stuck in it. "I go for sentencing tomorrow."

  "You had your PSI done yet?"

  "PSI?"

  "Pre-sentence Investigation," he said. "The Probation Department has to do the PSI before the judge can sentence you."

  "They did one the first time," I said, "when I was sentenced on my other case."

  "I don't think so." He shook his head. "They need to do one for each case."

  For a second, I felt a little dizzy. "How long does that take?"

  "It depends, the motherfuckers are all backed up. But then there's the hundred and eighty day rule. How long has it been since you got busted?"

  The hundred and eighty day rule was a well-known law. It referred to your right for a fair and speedy trial. In Michigan, it meant they had to have you to court by 180 days. If not, theoretically, your case could be thrown out. "But if you cop a plea," he said, "they'll rarely do that. So chances arc, what will happen to you tomorrow is they'll go for a postponement until your PSI is complete." I wondered why he was being so talkative, and I started to notice a few more nicks and scars on his body. He seemed to enjoy the uncomfortable look on my face. He looked as if he'd been through quite a few fights. He was muscular, so I doubt he lost very many. "I've been here for three and half weeks," he said, "and I'm still waiting."

  Three weeks! I'd go mad. There was no fucking way I could stay in there for that long. "Why don't they send you back to M-R?"

  "Because probation officers can't travel outside of the county. And so it looks like you're stuck here with me, pretty boy, until they get off their asses and do it."

  I hoped he was wrong, but he wasn't. The next day, the judge postponed my sentencing until the Probation Department could complete a PSI. My lawyer agreed to the continuance, and
the judge ordered the Probation Department to move post-haste. My sentencing was rescheduled for three weeks time.

  When I got back up to the cellblock, Nate was waiting with a smile and a sneer. "What'd I tell ya?Your ass is up here with me baby boy."

  I didn't like how he said it, but I ignored him and went into my cell. My cigarettes were gone.

  "Who took my cigarettes?" I yelled out. No one answered.

  I stuck my head out. "Who took them?" A couple of guys looked up from a card game, but no one said anything. I looked the other way. Nate came out of his cell.

  "Somebody took your shit?"

  "Yeah!"

  "That's tucked up. Just now?"

  "That's right. And it's pretty fucked up too. I'd been sharing with these motherhickers, and they turn around and take my shit!"

  "I got your back," he said.

  I looked at him, not liking the sound of that.

  "Don't worry. I'll get 'em back." But I was more afraid of what that would cost me. He cut me off before I could say anything. "Don't worry. You'll get your shit."

  Maybe I could split them with him.

  The guys at the card game were grinning. I didn't like the looks of that either.

  Sure enough, about an hour later, Nate came into my cell with four of the six missing packs. I'd gone through four already, giving them away or lending them out to guys who would pay me back on Tuesday.

  "Where'd you find them?"

  "Don't worry about it." He sat down on my bed. "I run things around here."