Cuz

by Danielle Allen

  When Michael asked me about my own writing, he was asking me what I needed, how I was doing, if I was tending to my own flame, just as he would ask his mother if she was taking care of herself.

  Now he was ready to try again at his own writing. Once more, we set off on Lit 141, and this time Michael turned out one gem of an essay after another, readings of those epic texts that were full of insight and personal connection to the ancient stories. He didn’t turn these essays out quickly. He did it at something like two-to-four-month intervals, but he got it done. He was finding his voice. Reading and writing released him to speak; his voice took wing like a butterfly. The stammer, now nearly gone in his speech, never showed up on the page. To watch a voice emerge, as from a chrysalis, is a beautiful thing, a teacher’s greatest privilege.

  ELIZABETH ECKFORD TURNING AWAY FROM HOSTILE CROWDS OUTSIDE OF CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL IN LITTLE ROCK, ARKANSAS, SEPTEMBER 4, 1957

  This is how I came to know that for him prison was, in his own words, an Inferno.

  16.

  INFERNO, IN MICHAEL’S WORDS

  TWO HELLS:

  IN SURVIVAL, FINDING ONE’S SELF

  There was a time I had never thought of Hell outside of Christianity. I had never heard of the Odyssey and only heard of the Inferno from watching Jeopardy. Since reading these two books life for me has an added new meaning. For instance: Dante’s Inferno creates an all too detailed visualization of Hell and what it may be. While reading the Inferno I’ve often put myself behind Virgil and Dante walking through Hell. I don’t take kindly to seeing myself in Hell, but Dante’s writing makes it impossible to just read without visualization. In my opinion Hell is under-rated. It is not taken seriously, even by people who say they believe in God or, as some candy coat it, a higher power. The Inferno reminds vividly of a culture that I have been religiously a part of for over the past 7 years. It is the life I live in Prison which to me is Hell. In many ways prison is like Hell. There are differences but they do not underscore the Hellish reality of Prison.

  The Inferno is constructed like a prison. It is especially similar to the eighth circle. The souls are in pits which are guarded by beasts and demons. They are being punished in accordance to their sins on earth. Prison is the same way. The sins we committed as citizens are judged according to law which is based on universal principles. We, who are in prison, had to answer for our sins and our lives were taken from us. Our bodies became the property of the state of California. We are reduced to numbers and stripped of our identity. To the state of California I am not Michael Alexander Allen but I am K-10033. When they want to know anything about me they do not type my last name in the computer but it is my number that is inputted. My number is my name. I am K-10033. In the Inferno those who are inquired of are asked [their names]. Here is one of the differences between my hell in prison and the Inferno. The souls in the Inferno are called by name. To some, it may be a matter of filing but to me, it is a means to keep anyone with the potential to be great, mentally enslaved.

  The suffering in prison is almost an exact replica of circle six, the 2nd ring. Those who were violent against themselves are without identity. Because they committed violence on their own selves they are without bodies. Instead, they are imprisoned in trees and bushes. They bleed in pain when so much as a branch is broken or a bush is trampled by dogs. So it is the same with inmates who are tried and tested every day. Inmates bleed when they are unable to protect themselves. They become trees, susceptible to abuse and left writhing in pain, mentally and physically.

  The suffering varies in prison. Mentally, the suffering is unbearable. It’s a constant beating on my sanity. My emotions feel as if they’re in a river full of tears, raging with unfed paranhas. I think of circle 4 when the hoarders and wasters are pushing weight against each other. This struggle is done for an eternity. I’m left with thoughts of never making it out because that which I struggle against is at most times incomprehensible. The subjection and oppression my mind takes seems to be an eternity. I think of Dante’s use of ice as nothing but a mere deception. Ice within itself is enticing to the burning soul. Ice can get so cold that it burns flesh. And it’s parallel to any sin committed on earth. The root of sin is lust and the desire to satisfy that lust. Lust becomes a sin when it is against human Nature. Lust only creates wanting and wanting creates greed and greed burns Flesh. It is lust that causes us to believe we have to have something at all cost. This is my suffering, this is my hell. 24 hours all night. There is no day. My soul in its entirety is in darkness.

  Ice is Dante’s enticing deception. Deception is darkness. Whichever lust (ice) that convinced me I needed something at all cost, was my deception and therefore the reason for my present darkness. My present darkness is this prison. A culture of hellish existence that I have suffered over the past 2,700 days. There is no sure thing as surviving, just barely existing. My lust is like the hoarder of circle 4. My flesh is like the wasters who are fighting against the hoarders in circle 4. Internal light cannot be extinguished except by the possessor thereof. Virgil is my internal light. I accept and build on whatever reasoning I can comprehend from Virgil (my subconscious). I’m trapped in a hell with whom society decrees to be the worst of living and better off dead. Robbers, rapists, child molesters, carjackers, murderers, and dope fiends who would spend their mother’s monthly rent for a quick fix. And here I am, amongst them. As much as the mere thought disgusts me, I am one of them. Just another number, not deserving of a second chance. In this hell where I have lived with thousands of different, nasty, confused, perverted, sorry, pathetic, evily slick, and heartless wraiths, I do have a second chance. In this hell, where I have come across dozens of Virgils, Shakespeares, Martin Luther King Jr.s, Einsteins, Alex Haleys, and Dantes, I have a second chance. In this hell I am Dante. Dante was not in hell due to a fatal sin but somewhere in his life he strayed onto the path of error, away from his true self. I, K-10033, strayed away from my true self: Michael Alexander Allen.

  And like Dante I am forced to descend lower into hell to achieve a full awakening. I am forced into depression, scarred by obscenities, war after war, but each war that I survive I am a step closer to a full awakening of self. My hell is no longer demonstrating what I am capable of doing in order to survive. It has become what I can tolerate and withstand in order to live. I cannot help but to judge those around me. I am one of them but we are far from the same. Like Dante I am cursed with a spirit of discernment which allows us to see the truth for what it is. There are most whom I despise who are truly sick beyond healing and they should never leave this place. Then there are those who await to fulfill their destiny. I see in them a sincere and apologetic heart for their ill misdeeds. They are the one who will change the world positively or positively change someone’s world. Hell cannot hold the latter of the two opposites but in time will only spit them back out into society to do what is right. The hell that I live in cannot hold Dante. Hell can test and try one’s self but it cannot hold Dante and it will not hold me. In the Inferno, the dead are trapped forever. Surely, the biggest and most important difference in the Inferno and my hell called prison, is that I have a way out.

  17.

  VISITING 1.0

  If many of my memories of Michael’s time in prison involve coaching him over the phone through his writings about canonical texts, a good portion of the rest involve long visits with him and, most often, with my aunt Karen, in Norco’s barebones visiting room and prison yard. These visits possessed an emotional rhythm: the sense of steeling yourself against the difficult as you started the early morning drive from L.A., the rising anticipation as you got closer; the quiet joy of the visit; and the aching disappointment that inevitably came with departure, with leaving one’s loved one still inside.

  Once one arrived at the prison, visits had an intensely ritualistic quality, the underlying purpose of which is control. You might want to say control of the inmates or control of their families, but that wouldn’t seem quite right. The ta
rget of the rituals felt more indiscriminate. The object is simply control in its own right.

  As Michael, known to the system as K-10033, wrote, inmates went by numbers, not names, and visiting days were allocated to sets of numbers. Half of the evens on one Saturday. Half of the odds on Sunday. The other halves of each set the following week. Before you could even begin to visit, you first had to apply for permission to enter. You had to get your name “on the list.” This could take months. And then the visits themselves were odysseys. We generally set out at about four or five in the morning, in the half-dark of predawn, and drove straight toward the rising sun, in order to get to the prison by 6:30 A.M. There we would join the line of waiting cars snaking from the parking lot past a row of suburban baseball fields that bordered the prison. This was a good time for heart-to-hearts between Karen and me. What were her aspirations for her ministry? Who did she have living on her couch and why? What was happening with my marriage to Bob? There was a funny story about an earthquake hitting while she was high from a time, decades earlier, before she’d gotten sober. If we went on a Saturday, there would often be Little League games in play as we drove away past the fields in the afternoon.

  AERIAL PHOTO OF CALIFORNIA REHABILITATION CENTER–NORCO

  At 7:30 A.M. the guards would let a parade of Kias and Hyundais, Chevys and Dodges, into the parking lot, and then you would sign in at a lectern at the front of a canopied structure with wooden benches that looked something like a tent revival meeting. Hosts of mainly black and brown women, but white women, too, and many children, and some men, flitted in the shadows under the canopy. We could take in up to $30 in quarters or singles in plastic Baggies, and we always took the maximum. The point of this was to purchase treats for the inmates from the row of vending machines dispensing, as it turned out, quite disgusting microwaveable cheeseburgers and burritos along with mystery meat plates.

  It also mattered how you dressed. You couldn’t wear blue denim because that’s what the inmates wore. You couldn’t wear beige or khaki because that’s what the guards wore. You couldn’t wear tight clothes or clothes that showed cleavage or skirts shorter than two inches above the knee or sleeves shorter than two inches below the shoulder. If you were dressed wrong, you weren’t let in. You always took a backup set of clothes, just in case.

  If there was a focal point of the control, I suppose it was the attempt to target desire. The lines of women who lined the benches under the canopy of the faux revivalist meeting pushed back. In an inmate family chat room, one wife wrote:

  I always dress up like i am going on a hot date . . . cause i am. . . with my hubby!!! :D I usually wear a dress and high heels . . . just make sure the dress is no more than two inches above the knee . . . this is true even if you wear leggings underneath. When i wear pants, I usually go with dark black jeans or black or chocolate color slacks or pedal pushers (they show off the heels real good;)) with a pretty top. Pink and purple are always safe choices. I wear red a lot. . . . Do your lips right before your process in and he will be drooling the second he lays eyes on you!!;) Have fun lady!!:

  And another chimed in:

  I must say I agree with Hisprettygirl and Jackjack—I always dress to impress because I like to remind him what he’s got waitin for him at home;)

  Karen and I always kept it pretty basic and simple, loose-fitting pants and comfortable T-shirts or sweaters. We weren’t really the objects of the policy. We were there to see a son, a cousin, not a lover.

  After the waiting, the signing in, and the clothing check, one waited again until a guard called the number of the inmate you happened to be visiting. Then, all at once, the eight-foot-tall metal gates underneath the front guard tower would roll open, clanging, and let you into a small pen.

  The gates would then clang again, snapping behind you now, like a drawbridge, and then another set of gates in front of you would open, to let you onto a short walkway that led into the nondescript processing room, a stand-alone hut-like structure, its interior like any other undecorated, institutional waiting room. There you’d wait again and then hand over your ID and your Baggie filled with coins and single bills to be checked, before receiving your pass and proceeding through a metal detector into the prison yard, a scant place with little vegetation and scraggly grass, to cross over a short walkway to the visiting hall.

  Entering the hall, the smell of bleach would wash over you. To your right was another guard station, this one a raised booth. There was a row of vending machines directly across from the guard station. You’d reach up to the guards to hand over your pass, and they would phone the dormitories to call your inmate for his visit. If you’d gotten into the line of cars early, the room would be empty, filled with only low round tables and small chairs, like the kind they have in kindergartens. If you’d gotten into the line of cars late, you’d enter a room already swimming with men in blue jeans, blue shirts, and tattoos, each with a little circle of color surrounding him, the whole space incongruously like a small Italian piazza full of merrily buzzing café tables.

  You’d spend your time talking, trying to avoid eating crap, or, if the weather was decent, you’d spend the time outside, walking in tight circles in the yard or sitting at a picnic table. Sometimes you would get your picture taken all together by a guard serving as prison photographer, who stood on duty snapping one Polaroid after another. There were a handful of board games around for the kids. Now and then the loudspeaker would sound for the count—every inmate in the prison had to be counted every so often—and all the men would file off, emptying the room, only to return twenty or thirty minutes later. You would stay for three or four hours and it would feel like a blink of an eye when they called your inmate back to his cell.

  Then you would reverse your itinerary to the exit. Past the vending machines and raised guard station. Out the door. Across the scraggly grass. Through the metal detector. Wave to the guards in the processing room. Wait for the guards up above to open the pen. Into the pen. Wait for the guards up above to close the gate behind you and open the gate in front of you. Listen to it clank behind you, the drawbridge shutting yet again. I’m not sure if we ever waved at the guards in the front tower. I don’t think so. But maybe we did now and then.

  In the early afternoon, you would drive away past the baseball games, echoing with the cheers of what looked like happy suburbanites, and if you had managed to avoid eating any of the microwaveable junk from the vending machines, you’d turn the corner from the prison and drive a couple of blocks into town to have a meal at Wendy’s or Burger King. They were a major step up from what was on offer in Norco. And then you would head back to Los Angeles, quiet most of the way, drained and defeated once again.

  You never once would have seen the lake beside which the luxury hotel was built in 1928, although they were both still there. The hotel now serves as the women’s prison, visible up on the hill above the parking lot and looking grand, like some old-time mansion.

  By this point in his incarceration, Michael seemed “secure in himself” to Karen. His mother could tell that he was proud of his accomplishment with his college classes, and she was relieved that he never turned into a tough. “No, he didn’t get tough in prison,” she recalled, adding, “Later he got tough for the lifestyle he wanted to live; but in prison he was still gentle, smiling, Michael.” He got tough during his second stint, for his parole violation, and in those final months of his life. But in Norco, not yet.

  Michael did become, Karen says, “a little more lax, less wound up, a little cocky.” She tells a story about one disappointing visit. “I’ll never forget, they’ll call him in for a count. He goes out. I wait and he doesn’t show. One of his buddies tells me, he’s not coming back out because he had chewing gum in his mouth.” She lost the rest of her visit with her son that day because he’d gotten cocky.

  But he never turned into a tough, although there were plenty of those to be seen in that visiting room.

  18.

  VISITING 2.0 />
  Time for my own confession. I wrote that last chapter like an academic. Which I am. The description of visiting that I gave you wasn’t about me. It was about some disembodied “you.” To write that chapter, I stepped into the perspective of an outside observer, the luxury afforded to academics when they travel the world encountering pain and injustice. To be an academic is to acquire an excuse for not owning the pain

  you see.

  Take a look at what I wrote:

  “Visits had an intensely ritualistic quality, the underlying purpose of which is control. You might want to say control of the inmates or control of their families, but that wouldn’t seem quite right. The target of the rituals felt more indiscriminate. The object is simply control in itself.”

  Abstraction. Distancing. Those are my first tools of self-protection. Athena’s spear and shield.

  I will have to try again to describe what visiting Michael meant to me.

  The fact that I told the story as an academic already tells you everything you need to know. That wound of visiting Michael in prison goes so deep that somehow, even in writing this book, I have found it hard to own up to one simple fact. I went to prison. I was in prison.

  No, I don’t mean that I have been arrested or convicted of a crime. I have avoided that because thus far in life I have had that combination of goods that the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle thought was necessary for a happy life: resources, decent character, and luck.

  My father and mother gave me the first two items from that treasure chest. The Lord, my God, whom I believed in as a child, and then did not believe in, and then came to believe in again as I emerged from periods of great pain, has given me the third.