Lockdown on Rikers

by Ms. Mary E. Buser

  Just then, the officer stormed out of the bubble. “Get over here, ya ungrateful bitches! Can’t you see this lady’s trying to do something nice for you?!”

  For a moment the silliness and roughhousing came to a stop and all eyes were on me. This was exactly what I did not want. I wanted them to come of their own accord, and I understood that this might take time.

  “It’s okay,” I said to the officer. “I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but it’s okay.”

  “Well, I was just trying to help!”

  “Yes, I know—and I appreciate that.”

  “Whatever!” she sniffed, and retreated to the bubble.

  An awkward silence followed; the girls looked at me and then resumed their horseplay. But two of them, a lithe Black girl and her shorter Hispanic friend, meandered over. The tall girl spoke first. “Hi. I’m Ebony, and this is Diana. Mind if we sit down?”

  “Please do,” I said, offering the donuts, which they happily dove into.

  “So you’re from Mental Health,” started Ebony. “Well, we have a problem,” she said, glancing at the giggling Diana. “Do you do—what do you call it—couples therapy?”

  “Are you two a couple?”

  “Sort of . . . the problem here is that I know how I feel about Diana, but I think that when she gets out of here, she’s going to flip back—and run straight back to her boyfriend.”

  “I am not!” Diana protested. “You keep on saying that, but it isn’t true!”

  Flipping was the jailhouse term for heterosexual women who were in relationships with other female inmates. Although most refrained from sexual dalliances, the sight of couples walking down the halls with arms interlocked was not uncommon.

  As Ebony and Diana bickered, I simply listened and did a little mediating, aware that others were strolling by. One of them asked if she could have a donut. I told her she could, as long as she sat down with us while she ate it, my only requirement. She pulled up a seat and said her name was Crystal.

  As soon as Crystal joined us, Ebony and Diana changed the subject. I could tell Ebony was disappointed, but she made an effort to switch gears, and the four of us chatted about nothing in particular.

  When the hour was through, they asked me if I was coming back the following week.

  “I’ll be coming every week,” I said.

  The three of them seemed a little proud that they’d befriended me and insisted on walking me the short distance to the bubble. As the officer buzzed me out, a stray shout came from the rear of the cellblock: “Good night, Mental Health!”

  On the walk back, Wendy and I compared notes. Her experience had been similar to mine, and we were both excited about our first session. Although most had ignored us, a few were interested. “A good start,” we agreed. Definitely! We then discussed the problem of the well-meaning officer, who’d also yelled at the girls on Wendy’s side. We decided it would be best if we chatted with her a little before things got started. Everything in jail works better if the officers feel included, an interesting lesson we were catching on to.

  On a stretch of dim and lonely corridor, a couple of unfamiliar COs were walking toward us; with them, telltale IDs clipped to their shirts, were three male inmates. This was my first encounter with incarcerated men, but I remembered at some point being told that our jail and one of the men’s jails were connected; this particular corridor was apparently a common hall. As they got closer, the inmates nodded to us. “Evening, ladies,” said the officers. We nodded back and kept moving. When we reached Rose Singer’s brighter, more familiar halls, I felt mildly relieved.

  Since it was evening, the jail was quiet, save for the STEP rehab regiment, which was in full swing. “Hup! Hup!” the women chanted. At the rear of the line was Tiffany Glover, a skinny little figure in an oversized uniform. Every time I ran into the STEP troops, Tiffany was struggling to keep up, the runt of the litter. I waved to her as they passed by, and she managed a weak little smile. Despite her high hopes, this STEP venture didn’t seem to be going well, although she’d never let on in our sessions that she was unhappy. But a couple of days after this evening encounter, her misery spilled over. “I can’t do it,” she said. “All they do is yell and curse at you, and half the time I’m just crying.”

  Squirming in her seat, she said, “Miss B, do you think it would be terrible if I quit?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  Her face lit up. “You don’t?”

  “No. Not everything we try is going to work out. What’s important is that you tried.”

  “Oh, thank you, Miss Buser! I just don’t want people to be disappointed in me.”

  “I’m not disappointed in you. I think you made a good effort here, and that’s what counts.”

  “Would you mind telling that to my mother?” she said, grabbing the desk phone and placing it in front of me. “Here—I’ll dial.”

  “Now wait a minute, Tiffany! Hold on! This is a call that you’ve got to make.”

  Tiffany bit her lip, and with trembling hands retrieved the phone. I stepped away to give her some privacy, just catching the words, “Hello, Mommy. How you feeling today?”

  * * *

  The weekend after Tiffany Glover’s decision to quit STEP, the city was hit with its first major snowstorm of the year, and the island was blanketed in downy whiteness. For a brief moment, the cold collection of jails could have been mistaken for a serene picture postcard. But the winter wonderland was thawing fast, and it wasn’t long before the barbed wire was poking through the snow, glinting in the winter sun. The following Monday, as I trekked through a distant corridor, droplets of melting ice were pinging on the tin roof. My destination was the infirmary, always referred to as “way, way over at the other end of the jail.” A long walk.

  I hoped to make this a brief visit. Just before the semester break, Janet had assigned a new case to me—a woman named Daisy Wilson. In the late stages of AIDS, Daisy was waiting on her “Compassionate Release,” a court-issued edict that would allow her to go home to die. Although I’d worked with several women who were HIV positive, Daisy was the first who was so gravely ill. I’d already met with her twice, and in those two sessions she’d made an impression on me—an unsettling one. With a moon-shaped face and wide roving eyes, Daisy Wilson was pretty—save for a missing front tooth. In our first session, it was through a thick Haitian accent that she told me she’d contracted HIV through a dirty needle and didn’t know how to tell her family that she had AIDS. She also said she wanted to make peace with God before she died. This would have been a rich starting point for our work together, but then she abruptly abandoned the topic to boast about her burglary skills!

  I was a little taken aback, but I went along with it for the moment, finding myself easily drawn into her stories. If nothing else, Daisy Wilson was a skilled storyteller. I was especially taken with the rather amazing circumstances that had landed her at Rikers. “It happened while I was robbing a house in Brooklyn,” she stated quite matter-of-factly. “After I filled my shopping bags, I got hungry and fixed myself a little something to eat. Then I noticed these cute little stuffed dogs. They weren’t worth anything, but I liked them and wanted them for me, so I packed them up. Then I sat down and smoked some crack, and that’s when everything got crazy. Those little dogs, they jumped up out of the bags and started barking at me! I ran up the stairs, but they were right behind me—barking and barking! So I ran back down, but they had me up against the wall. I was scared! I panicked! So, what do you do when you’re in trouble? Think about it.”

  I shook my head faintly.

  “You call 911.”

  “What?”

  “Yup—I called 911. Not too smart, huh?”

  As I tried to comprehend this crazy scenario, she moved right along. “Next thing I know, cops are at the door. I’m coming down from the smoke now
and realize I just made a big mistake! So I opened the door . . . prob’ly shouldn’t have. But anyway, I did. I told those officers, real polite, that I didn’t know anything about any problem—that I was just the domestic, and that maybe they had the wrong address. They were just about to leave when one of them pokes his head in and sees my pipe on the kitchen table. Shit! So I say to them, ‘Look, I feel terrible telling you this . . . but these people who live here—they’re drug addicts.’ And you know—they almost bought it. I was this close!” she grinned, holding up thumb to forefinger. “But then they called up the homeowners at work to check out my story, and, well, here I am.”

  When the session ended, I felt like I’d been on some kind of a wild ride. But I just assumed that the next time we met, we could set all this aside and focus on her illness.

  But the next meeting was a repeat of the first. This time I tried to cut her off and get us on some kind of therapeutic track. But she simply ignored me, and off we went. After that, I didn’t see her for a couple of weeks, although I regularly summoned her to the clinic. When someone repeatedly failed to show up, we assumed they weren’t interested in therapy, had them sign a refusal form, and closed the case.

  Tucked under my arm was one of these forms. When it came to Daisy Wilson, I had an uneasy feeling. There was something very different about this woman, and as much as I hated to admit it, I didn’t like her. I felt guilty about this, as I had just assumed that there would be no one about whom I couldn’t find something to like. But rather than trying to sort out my feelings, I figured it made better sense to just close the case. I certainly wasn’t helping her to make peace with her death, and besides, she was leaving soon and would probably be relieved to sign the form.

  “Comin’ in, miss?” An officer’s voice stirred me from my thoughts. He held the door open and I stepped into the infirmary, thoroughly unprepared for a grim site: long rows of cots with white sheets covering listless women who were coughing, moaning, quietly staring. Wheelchairs and canes cluttered the aisles. The eeriest part was that they appeared young—most suffering from AIDS, I surmised. In the center aisle, a veritable skeleton with hair was shuffling along with the aid of a cane. She stopped to look at me, the round brown eyes of her hollowed-out face seeking me out as if there was something she wanted to say. As we gazed at each other, I realized that she wasn’t more than thirty years old. This was terrible. Through the small windows was the river, and just across from it the city, bursting with vibrancy and promise, impervious to this death house in its midst. In the distance, nurses were quibbling about a coffeepot. The skeletal woman never said anything, but planted her cane and resumed her lifeless trudge.

  I’d never seen anything like this before. I had to get out of here. I grabbed the refusal form and scanned the beds for Daisy. “Hi, Mental Health!” she waved.

  The manner in which she addressed me was irksome, and I disliked her all over again, but I managed a professional smile. “Daisy, I haven’t seen you in a while.”

  “I know,” she said, using her arms to hoist her legs over the edge of the cot. “I know you’ve been calling me, but I’ve been too sick to make that walk to the clinic. And now you came all the way down here to see me. I wanted to talk to you so bad—for my therapy. There’s some chairs in the dayroom. Let’s go.” She stood up slowly, steadying her small frame.

  I felt a pang of guilt and folded up the refusal form.

  “By the way,” she announced, as we sat down, “my name’s not really Daisy Wilson. I have an aunt by that name who told my family not to let me in the house ’cause I was stealing stuff. On account of her, I wasn’t allowed in my own mother’s house. You believe that? But I got her back, all right—I took her name, so when the police are looking for me, they try and arrest her!”

  Great!

  After she recovered from a coughing fit, she waved her hand at the women in the cots. “These girls are disgusting. You really shouldn’t talk to them—they’re prostitutes,” she hissed. “They’d do anything for drug money. Trash! That’s what they are.”

  “But Daisy,” I pointed out gently, “you were addicted to drugs yourself.”

  “True. But in all those years, I never, ever prostituted myself. I wasn’t raised like that! What I did was—you know the parking lot behind Sears in Brooklyn?”

  “No.”

  “I’d go to the corner there, get into a car with an old man and let him think he was gonna get a blowjob.”

  “Daisy! We need to talk about your illness and—”

  “Oh, we’ll get to that. So then, I’d tell him to go into the parking lot—this was at night, see, so there weren’t any cars around. Then we’d park and he’d lean over to undo his fly, and I’d pull out my handy rock and POW—bash him in the head with it! I was good at it—one shot usually knocked ’em right out. Then I’d go through their pockets.”

  “Daisy!”

  “But it’s very important that it’s an old man,” she mused. “That’s the trick.”

  “Do you see anything wrong with this?” I asked, my anger growing.

  “I’m just explaining to you that I was never a prostitute. I pretended to be, but I always stayed pure.”

  “Pure?! You hurt people!”

  “Afterwards I would take a cab home,” she said, ignoring me. “I always made the cabbie drive by the parking lot, and sometimes I’d see—you know, the flashing lights.”

  “You may have killed someone.”

  She said nothing but gave me an almost smile, and we both knew that she had.

  When the session ended, I marched straight to Janet’s office. When it came to Daisy Wilson, I was at a complete loss. She wasn’t like anyone else I’d met. All of the others tried to justify or explain their criminal behavior, insisting that it didn’t jibe with who they really were. But not Daisy. This is exactly who she was—and proud of it!

  As I described Daisy and her boastful tales, Janet calmly sipped her tea. “You know what you have here, don’t you? A remorseless conniver? No conscience?”

  I hadn’t yet put the pieces together, but in that moment I did. “A sociopath?”

  “Yup. And you’re right. She’s not like the others—and never will be.”

  With the revelation that I had a full-blown sociopath on my caseload, I naturally assumed Janet would deem me too inexperienced and relieve me of Daisy Wilson, forthwith. So I was stunned by what she said next: “This is good for you, Mary—a lot to learn here.”

  A lot to learn! “But Janet,” I said carefully, “I’m not sure I can handle this. I’m not helping her. I feel like she’s in charge and I’m being dragged along for the ride.”

  “Then take charge. Part of the reason you’re having trouble is because you’re expecting her to be something she’s not. Stop being outraged. Get past it. Yes, she’s a bad person, but look at it this way: she’s the one sitting on Rikers Island dying of AIDS, and that’s what you need to tap into. You’re doing fine.”

  I wasn’t doing fine, not by a long shot. But I knew better than to argue with this stern taskmaster. Janet was a stickler about everything. If I wrote “Patient depressed” in a chart note, she handed the chart right back to me. “No, no, full sentences—‘Patient presents as depressed.’” The charts had to be as polished as Janet’s carefully chosen suits. It was all becoming way too much.

  But I wasn’t completely without hope. My secret wish was that Daisy Wilson’s Compassionate Release would come through and that she would just go home.

  10

  If my relationship with Daisy Wilson was going nowhere, my little adolescent group was picking up steam. Maybe it was to escape boredom, or maybe it was to enjoy a donut, but whatever the reason, when I arrived each week more of the girls were pulling chairs up to the group table. And as I became a familiar weekly figure, they took to calling me “Miss Mary.” That, h
owever, is where the civility ended. As soon as I placed the donuts on the table, a mad lunge followed. “Hey, that was my donut!” “Fuck you!” Rather than getting upset, I repeated calming words: “There is always enough for everyone in our group. There is always enough.” When the scuffle ended, they sat back with squished donuts and scowled. Although the behavior was primitive I didn’t mind. All I cared about was that they were coming—and even better, after the treats were gone, they were staying.

  Coincidentally, I was taking a class on group therapy where I was learning more about group dynamics. The group is a powerful unit; its inherent draw is that it offers a sense of belonging, a universal human need—which explains much of the allure of gangs. Between my formal training and my own natural instincts, I approached this adolescent challenge with relish. In the early going, the mood of the group was light as the girls chatted, giggled, and talked about nothing in particular. I listened carefully, mindful of who was talking and who was silent. If someone was being overshadowed, I made sure she had her moment. I gave each speaker my undivided attention and managed to offer relevant feedback so they knew they’d been heard. And as I focused on one person at a time, I noticed that the others started to keep quiet. I can’t say they were actually listening, but they at least remained silent when someone else was speaking. I was surprised at how quickly this restraint developed, but I suspect it was because they realized that with this method they, too, could have their golden moment—their moment to be heard. And as I knew so well, everyone needs to be heard.

  These little rudiments of socialization were not only a beginning, but a necessity. If these girls were going to get anywhere in this world, they needed to develop a little basic courtesy—which was not part of their repertoire. Streetwise and battle-scarred, the crew around this table were products of the worst of foster care and group homes. Ebony grew up with a foster family who kept not only the refrigerator locked, but the entire house locked until midnight. Cast out to the streets, Ebony survived by working as a lookout for drug dealers. Peering around street corners and hovering on rooftops, her job was to watch for approaching police. A modern-day Artful Dodger, Ebony lived by her wits and intuition. The others did the same, struggling to survive, growing up way too fast. But behind their tough bravado, in many ways they were still children.