Because i had a broken clavicle, i had to wear a figure-eight brace around my shoulders. It was made of foam and cotton with a tiny belt buckle fastener in the back, about a half-inch wide. One morning, as i was eating, the guard came in my cell and took it.
"You can't have this.”
“Why?"
"Because it contains metal," she replied. "You can't have anything with metal on it.” Now, there i was, sitting on a metal cot, drinking out of a metal cup, eating out of a metal bowl, and this policewoman was standing in my face telling me i couldn't have my brace because of this tiny metal buckle. I raised all the hell i could, but i saw that she was, like she said, like they all say, "only following orders."
"If the prison doctor says you need it, you can have it back."
As soon as Dr. Miller came into the workhouse, i asked to see him. Without the brace, my shoulder felt weak and fragile. I could barely hold myself up straight.
"Don't worry about that old brace," Herr doctor told me. "You don't need that thing anyway."
It was all i could do not to kick him in his groin. Luckily, later that week, the bone specialist came out from the hospital to see me. He was a very good doctor and a very kind man. He told the warden in no uncertain terms that i needed my brace and without it i could be disfigured. He gave me a lot of encouragement for my hand so that i could regain full use of it. Finally, they returned the brace.
It was about that time that the miracles started. I was sure now that my hand was coming back to life. I was beginning to be able to tell it to do things and it would actually respond. Each little bit of progress was a miracle. Being able to touch my pinky with my thumb, to pick up a cup, to hold a pencil, to pinch myself were feats that took days of practice and exercise to accomplish. And then the day came when i knew i was almost there. After months of trying, i could finally snap my fingers. Whenever anyone came to see me, i would show them my new talents. I felt like a little kid saying, "Look, Mommy, see what i can do."
Finally a joint conference was arranged between Sundiata and me with Evelyn present. It took place at the workhouse. Sundiata was brought from the new brunswick jail. I've never been happier to see anyone in my life. It was difficult to talk because the guards were practically sitting in our laps. I can't whisper for nothing and Evelyn kept telling me to lower my voice. We talked about the case and decided that it was politically correct to be tried together. Just seeing Sundiata cooled me right out. I was feeling bad and i was real self-conscious about how i looked. I had broken out in a horrible rash from the prison soap and i looked like a lopsided scarecrow with bumps. There is something about Sundiata that exudes calm. From every part of his being you can sense the presence of revolutionary spirit and fervor. And his love for Black people is so intense that you can almost touch it and hold it in your hand. There's nothing put on about him. He is a real folksy kind of person. Every time i see him he looks like he belongs on a porch somewhere down South, breathing in the summer air and bouncing babies off his knee. The truth of the matter is that Sundiata is country. He would deny it to the bitter end, but he is sho nuff country. And when he laughs that giggle laugh of his, it's like a trip to Texas in the backwoods. When the conference ended, i was a different person. I felt much stronger and i didn't feel alone.
I don't know when, but somewhere along the way i started to collect the metal cups we were given to drink from. At first i think it was just my slow way of drinking that caused the cups to accumulate. I was none too popular with the guards, especially the men. Most of them hadn't said boo to me and vice versa, but they hated my guts. To them, i was a cop killer and they were cops. Something told me to be real careful. They had given me a little table to eat and write on, and at night, before i went to sleep, i pushed the table up next to the bars and stacked the cups precariously on top of it. The bars opened into the cell, and the slightest movement would send the whole stack of cups clanging to the floor. I would push the wooden bench behind the table. In that way, anyone who tried to come in would have to apply some real pressure. I went through this routine every night, feeling slightly foolish but compelled.
One night, in the middle of the night, the cups came crashing down. I immediately awoke to find four or five male guards stand ing in the doorway of my cell.
I screamed, "What do you want? What are you doing in my cell?" loud enough for someone to hear me. The guards stood in the doorway like they didn't know what to do. Finally one of them locked the door and said, "We heard a noise and we came to investigate. We were just checking it out." They weren't even sup posed to be in the women's section. The female guard on duty that night, the slimiest one in the prison, was nowhere in sight. After that, no matter what jail i was in, i always found some way to barricade my cell. In prisons, it is not at all uncommon to find a prisoner hanged or burned to death in his cell..No matter how suspicious the circumstances, these deaths are always ruled "suicides." They are usually Black inmates, considered to be a "threat to the orderly running of the prison." They are usually among the most politically aware and socially conscious inmates in the prison.
When Eva came to the workhouse it was something of an event. Usually she occupied the cell i was in. (The rest of the women were housed in two open dormitories.) The guards didn't know what to do with her. She had been in that jail many times before and she was known as a hell raiser. Everybody said she was crazy.
My first encounter with Eva was when she came over to the bars and sat down outside my cell and told me she could astro travel. She called it something like astro-space projection.
"I can go anywhere I want to, whenever I want to," she told me. "I've just come from Jupiter."
"How was it?" i asked her.
"Oh, it was fine. They had these cute little people. They were purple with crocodile skin and blue hair. You can go anywhere you want to," she told me. "You just have to project yourself."
"Can you show me how to project myself the hell out of here?"
"Oh, that's easy," she said, "I do that all the time. As a matter of fact, I'm not here now."
"No," i said, "that's not good enough. I want to project my mind and my body out of here."
"You'll be in jail wherever you go," Eva said.
"You have a point there," i told her, 'but i'd rather be in a minimum security prison or on the streets than in the maximum security prison in here. The only difference between here and the streets is that one is maximum security and the other is minimum security. The police patrol our communities just like the guards patrol here. I don't have the faintest idea how it feels to be free."
Eva told me that she knew how i felt. She had to know. Any Black person in amerika, if they are honest with themselves, have got to come to the conclusion that they don't know what it feels like to be free. We aren't free politically, economically, or socially. We have very little power over what happens in our lives. In fact, a Black person in amerika isn't even free to walk down the street. Walk down the wrong street, in the wrong neighborhood at night, and you know what happens.
Eva and i got on famously. A lot of times i didn't understand what in the world she was talking about. But at times she made so much sense i wondered if it was really the world that was crazy. She taught me a lot about prison, and she was forever telling some funny story about her life.
Eva was a huge sister; she weighed about 300 pounds. She had very dark skin and her hair was cut short next to her scalp. People who have accepted white, European standards of beauty would find her unattractive. But to me there was something beautiful about her and i loved to look at her. She is one of the few people that i have met in life who have the courage to be almost totally honest.
Altogether, Eva had spent about ten years in the clinton correctional facility for women in new jersey. She had been there in the old days when the women worked out on the farm. She told me how the women were treated, that state troopers would be called in for the slightest disturbance. She was there during a riot at clinton and had
seen state troopers beat the women mercilessly; once they had beaten a pregnant woman so badly she lost her baby.
Around this time i started taking my little walks. Staying cooped up in that cage all day was driving me up the wall. So when the guards brought my food, i would walk past them into what was called the day room, where the women ate and watched TV. I would walk first to one dorm, then to the other, and then return to my cell. There was no place i could run to since there were two or three locked doors between me and the outside. Most of the guards would nag me to come back into my cell and, after a short time, i would. But none of them got too crazy about it until one day a guard yelled at me, "Get back here! Did you hear me? Get back here!"
If there's one thing i can't stand it's being ordered around, and if there's another thing that makes me go wild it's for a white person to talk to me in that tone of voice. "You make me come here," i told her. "You so big and bad, i want to see you make me come back in there." She made a move like she was going to grab me. "You put your hands on me and it's gonna be you and me. You lay a hand on me and i'm gonna splatter your brains all over these walls." It's a good thing she didn't try me, though, because she outweighed me by at least fifty pounds and i was still pretty much the one-armed bandit. But i would have given her a hell of a fight. I was mad and frustrated and i had already stored up about two or three months of anger. Anyway, i finally went back into the cell, when i was ready. But her attitude made me defiant. Whenever she opened my cell for anything, i would push past her and walk around for a minute. She would stand in the doorway like she was a door or something and i would rear back and butt her out of the way. She was as big as a house, but she didn't have one bit of strength. Finally, she called the male guards. I was in one of the dorms talking to the women, wondering why she wasn't bothering me, when about ten male guards came into the room.
"Who is JoAnne Chesimard?" the head guard asked. Nobody said anything. "Which one of you is JoAnne Chesimard?" They looked like they were ready to leap on somebody. Again no one responded. "All right, I'm gonna ask you again, which one of you is JoAnne Chesimard?"
"I'm JoAnne Chesimard," Eva said. Well, when the guards took one look at Eva and saw how big she was, their tone changed immediately.
"Miss Chesimard, would you please return to your cell?"
One of the guards came from the back and tapped the sergeant on the shoulder.
"I know her," he said. "She's not Chesimard."
"I am who you are looking for, " i said. I didn't want Eva to get too involved in my madness. "I'll see you sisters later. I've had enough excitement for the moment." I walked past them and went to my cell and opened a book.
The next day this same guard managed to tick me off again. "I don't want anymore trouble out of you," she said. "I don’t want to have to call the men again.”
"You can call the national guard, the militia, the FBI, and anybody else for all i care. You can call your mother if you want to," i told her. As soon as she opened the door for lunch, i pushed right past her. I took my tray, sat down with the other women and started eating my lunch. I didn't know what was going to happen but i wanted to see what they were gonna do. I had about three mouthfuls of food left on my plate when the goon squad came in.
"All right, get up and get in your cell.”
"As soon as i finish what i have on my plate.”
"Now!" they ordered.
"I only have two spoonfuls left.”
"Now!" They beckoned to the female guard. "Remove the prisoner to her cell." She came near me with her hands stretched out.
"Don't you put your hands on me," i told her. "I'll walk to my cell."
"Remove the prisoner to her cell," they ordered. She went to grab my arm and all at once the room was in motion. Chairs, tables, cups, trays were flying in the air. Everybody was either running to get out of the way or fighting. The female guard made a wild dash for the door. The male guards jumped on me. I was hitting, kicking, scratching, punching, biting, and i don't know what all else. They finally managed to get me in my cell and the other women locked in their dormitories. None of the women was seriously injured. I had a few nicks and scratches, but otherwise i was fine. And i felt fine. Some of that anger pent up inside me had been released. One of the guards was wounded. Somehow his face had got cut. He was the same little runt who had sat across from me in the hospital, pointing a shotgun at me and switching the safety on and off, talking about how he liked to kill animals. Nobody knows how he was cut or who cut him. But everybody knows that the hunter got hunted.
Later that day they brought a photographer to photograph the evidence. The local newspaper later reported a "riot" at the work house. Some police and the sheriff came around and searched the jail. They said they were looking for the weapon that had cut the guard. They didn't find anything. That night they came and got Eva. They took her to the Vroom Building, the new jersey "hospital" for the criminally insane. She spent about three weeks there before she came back. The night she left i felt sad and guilty. Here i had got her caught up in my madness. I was sitting and thinking about her. So i sat down and wrote this poem:
Rhinocerous woman
Who nobody wants
and everybody used.
They say you're crazy
cause you not crazy enough
to kneel when told to kneel.
Hey, big woman-
with scars on the head
and scars on the heart
that never seem to heal-
I saw your light
And it was shining.
You gave them love.
They gave you shit.
You gave them you.
They gave you hollywood.
They purr at you
cause you know how to roar
and back it up with realness.
Rhinocerous woman.
Big momma in a little world.
You closed your eyes
and neon spun inside your head
cause it was dark outside.
You read your bible
but god never came.
Your daddy woulda loved you
but what would the neighbors say.
They hate you momma
cause you expose their madness.
And their cruelty.
They can see in your eyes
a thousand nightmares
that they have made come true.
Black woman. Baad woman.
Wear your bigness on your chest like a badge
cause you done earned it.
Strong woman. Amazon.
Wear your scars like jewelry
cause they were bought with blood.
They call you mad.
And almost had you believing that shit.
They called you ugly.
And you hid yourself
behind yourself
and wallowed in their shame.
Rhinocerous Woman-
This world is blind
and slight of mind
and cannot see
How beautiful you are.
I saw your light.
And it was shining.
Most of the women benefited from the "riot," though. Over the next few days almost everybody was released or sent to some kind of program. The jail was practically empty. It's strange how things work. When it suits the government's interest, they put people in jail for rioting. And when it suits their interests, they let them out of jail for the same thing. Afterward, the outer door to my cage remained shut at all times. This was no great deprivation since it had remained closed most of the time before anyway.
One day they brought me a big bushel of stringbeans. (They grew a lot of their food at the workhouse. The men worked in the field.) "Here, we want you to snap these stringbeans."
"How much are you gonna pay me?" i asked.
"We don't pay no inmate nothin', but if you snap these beans we'll let your door stay open while you snap them."
"I don't work for not
hing. I ain't gonna be no slave for nobody. Don't you know that slavery was outlawed?"
"No," the guard said, "you're wrong. Slavery was outlawed with the exception of prisons. Slavery is legal in prisons."
I looked it up and sure enough, she was right. The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution says:
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punish ment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Well, that explained a lot of things. That explained why jails and prisons all over the country are filled to the brim with Black and Third World people, why so many Black people can't find a job on the streets and are forced to survive the best way they know how. Once you're in prison, there are plenty of jobs, and, if you don't want to work, they beat you up and throw you in the hole. If every state had to pay workers to do the jobs prisoners are forced to do, the salaries would amount to billions. License plates alone would amount to millions. When Jimmy Carter was governor of Georgia, he brought a Black woman from prison to clean the state house and babysit for Amy. Prisons are a profitable business. They are a way of legally perpetuating slavery. In every state more and more prisons are being built and even more are on the drawing board. Who are they for? They certainly aren't planning to put white people in them. Prisons are part of this government's genocidal war against Black and Third World people.
Assata: An Autobiography Page 8
