Lockdown on Rikers

by Ms. Mary E. Buser

  But the assault on Swanday had further implications. It meant possible expulsion from the nursery, with baby Michael sent out to foster care. A meeting was held to determine whether Lucy could remain, but Camille Baxter, noting Lucy’s hard-fought progress, chalked it up to an unfortunate but isolated incident. “Lucy and Michael aren’t going anywhere,” she said. During Lucy’s absence, the nursery staff would pitch in to care for the baby.

  A grateful Lucy said this reprieve would enable her to endure her punishment. A few days later, a captain and a couple of officers arrived to escort her to solitary housing. In a parting embrace with Michael, Lucy was biting back the tears. But while she steeled herself, the baby didn’t understand. “Mama, Mama!” he cried.

  “All right now,” Camille Baxter said, prying the terrified child from his mother. Lucy grabbed her plastic bag of clothes, and as the baby shrieked, she was led out.

  It was a heart-wrenching scene. Slapping Swanday was unacceptable, of course, but solitary confinement seemed like a horrible punishment—not only for Lucy, but for her innocent baby. I thought that something else could surely have been devised that would have taught Lucy a lesson without harming the baby. But this was the one and only jailhouse punishment, a punishment that was meted out every day, in every jail on the island.

  Ugly hallway scenes with a crying, pleading woman being dragged along the floor by officers, en route to the solitary unit, were common. Jailhouse protocol dictated that everyone simply step aside as they passed by. It was an awful sight. But Janet told me that punishment for the women was mild compared to the men. “They get much longer sentences,” she said, “and they don’t serve it in their own jails. They get bused over to the Central Punitive Segregation Unit—they call it the ‘Bing.’ Sounds happy and upbeat—it’s anything but. The place is huge, 500 cells.”

  As Janet described this grim facility, I felt relieved to be working with women and well insulated from such misery, with no inkling that in time I would become well acquainted with the notorious “jail within jail.”

  * * *

  Lucy’s ten days in isolation came and went, and by now it was early spring, though it hardly felt like it. As the days grew longer, the cold only seemed to grow stronger, but the added daylight encouraged some to venture outside. One late afternoon, through the frozen windowpane, I recognized a bundled-up Tiffany Glover sitting by herself, listening to her Walkman in the courtyard. The wind blew her hair around as she swayed to the music, alone with her thoughts. Although quitting STEP had been a big defeat, she no longer seemed as lost, and I also noticed she wasn’t as thin, which meant she was finally eating. Apparently, Tiffany had been doing a lot of thinking, as she arrived for our next session with a surprising announcement: “I want to join STEP again—I wasn’t ready before, but this time I can do it. I know I can!”

  And so Tiffany Glover reenlisted in the STEP program, but this time things were different. She was moving up in the hallway line. No longer greeting me with a weak little smile, she boomed, “Hello, Miss B!” And then Tiffany was right up front, leading the troops through the Rose Singer jail. “Miss B!” she would yell, “look, I’m gettin’ fat!” Reaching into her uniform, she grabbed her midriff to show off a little roll of fat. “Ha, ha!” she laughed. Sure enough, she was actually getting heavy. Like the rest of us, Tiffany would now have to watch her weight. But at least she was in a new realm, having finally broken loose from the grips of addiction, a far cry from the sad person I’d first met in the receiving room. Like Janet had said in the beginning, “You will see these people change.” It was a delight to witness.

  Tiffany was like a new person, bursting with pride at her success in her second go-round. “I knew I could do it, I knew I could!” And then there was news about her case. “I’m taking the one-to-three,” she said, “which means I’ll be locked up for one year, and then I’ll be on parole for two more. So it means I get to stay here to serve the one year. I’m not going to prison! ’Course, if I mess up when I get out, I could be remanded to serve the other two, but that won’t happen! No way! In less than a year, I’ll be home, Miss Buser—home! I talk to my mother and my baby every night. We tell the baby I’m in the hospital. And when I get out of here, I’m taking care of my son—every day. That’s my new rule,” she beamed. “Every single day! I’m going to be such a good mother. I can’t wait! I just can’t wait!”

  Things were certainly looking up for Tiffany. The one-year sentence did mean that she could stay at Rose Singer, as sentences of a year or less were permitted to be served at Rikers. But just when it seemed that nothing could sully this ever-brightening picture, it did. And it happened in a surprising twist that I never saw coming. During our sessions, Tiffany was speaking more and more about one of the officers who’d taken an interest in her.

  “You seem very fond of him,” I remarked.

  “He’s helped me so much,” she said. “Right after I quit the first time, he kept coming up to me in the halls, telling me to try again.”

  “So, he’s been like a coach?”

  “Yeah, he really has,” she said, twirling her ponytail. “And maybe a little more.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She said nothing, but stared at the floor and blushed.

  “Tiffany . . . what’s going on here? Has he tried to kiss you or something?”

  “Kiss me?” she laughed. “We’ve been having sex!”

  “What!”

  “Sure. Outside in the back, there’s these trailers—”

  “Tiffany!”

  “Don’t worry, he’s very responsible. He always uses condoms—always.”

  “Oh, I’m sure he does! He’d have a tough time explaining your pregnancy!”

  Tiffany’s sunny smile was gone, replaced by concern. “You can’t tell anybody, Miss Buser. You told me when we first started meeting that everything we talked about was confidential. You can’t tell!”

  “Tell” was exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to go straight to the warden and report this predator. The idea that this guy would abuse his authority like this was sickening.

  Tiffany’s eyes bored into mine. I had to get hold of my anger. She’d raised an important issue, and it was one that I could not ignore: confidentiality. A therapeutic relationship is a privileged relationship in the eyes of the law, meaning that all conversations are confidential unless the client has a plan to kill himself, to kill another, or is involved in any type of child abuse. We were required to disclose this clause at the outset of therapy, a disclosure Tiffany had well remembered. Having sex with a correction officer did not remotely fit into the criteria of killing oneself, killing another, or engaging in child abuse. I was bound to keep this bombshell to myself.

  Reluctantly, I said, “No, I will not repeat this.”

  “’Cause that wouldn’t be right,” she said. “After all, I’ve been talking to you freely. I always thought I could trust you.”

  “Yes, I know. And you can,” I said, with a little more conviction. “You can. But this is still a big problem.”

  “He’s a good guy,” she protested. “He’s helping me. We have plans.”

  “Tiffany, this isn’t a good way to start a relationship. You’re not on equal footing, and he’s taking advantage of that. My concern is for you.”

  But she could see none of it. From her perspective, she’d found a way to get special treatment in jail—no small feat. But from my standpoint, her relationship with this guy was a replication of her affairs with drug dealers in the streets. There, it was sex for drugs; here, it was sex for priority treatment.

  But her jaw was set. She was on top on the world, and I was bringing her down. Although I tried to get us back on a more familiar track, the session ended awkwardly. The following week she missed her appointment, and she never showed up again. I can’t say I was surprised, but I still h
ad a hard time believing the relationship was over. Out in the halls, I tried to get her attention, but she stared straight ahead. No more yelling out to me, no more big smiles. Looking back, I realized that I’d broken the cardinal rule of refraining from judgment. If I’d been a more experienced therapist, maybe I wouldn’t have reacted as strongly. But as I was forced to accept that it was over, I took comfort in knowing that through our work together, Tiffany Glover had still come a long way.

  12

  With stars splashed across an early April sky, inside a dreary Rose Singer housing unit the adolescent group started out quietly. To add a bit of structure to the group, I’d started bringing in coloring books, and the girls were happily coloring. As they shaded in outlines of bunnies and tulips, much of their “tough girl” facades vanished. The coloring seemed to bind up their energy, and I noticed they were a little more thoughtful and contemplative with this added bit of structure.

  “Maria,” I said casually, “your hair looks a little different today. Are you wearing it in a new style?”

  “Yes, but I won’t leave it like this for long. I’ll change it back.”

  “Can’t keep razors in a style like that one,” chided Ebony.

  “Shut up, Ebony.”

  As Maria colored, she cleared her throat. “When I’m out on the street, Miss Mary, I keep razor blades in my hair.”

  “Why?”

  “Protection! The streets are dangerous.”

  “Yeah,” chimed in Polite. “Just before I got locked up, I was out late and I hear, pop-pop! pop-pop! Next thing you know this kid comes crawling around the corner. He was on his hands and knees and he crawled right up to me, and there was blood pouring out of his ears, and he says, ‘Help me, help me,’ and then he just kind of fell on his stomach and didn’t say nothin’ else.”

  “Was he dead?” asked Michelle.

  “Dead as a doornail!”

  They all laughed.

  “Well, get this,” said Diana, “I was at this club one night and a guy asks this girl to dance. And when she says no, he pulls out a gun and shoots her in the face. Party over!”

  “Yeah,” said Ebony, “and I saw a guy get shot up on the roof—the force of the bullet knocked him clean off the building. Splat!”

  They all laughed again.

  “Miss Mary,” said Carly. “Haven’t you ever seen somebody die in front of you?”

  I shook my head. “I can’t say I have. How many of you have seen someone die?”

  Every hand shot up. I was stunned. Not only by the violence, but their numbness to it.

  “Hey, life in the big city,” said Crystal. “No big deal.”

  There were knowing nods as they fell into a terse silence, grinding the crayons into the bunnies and tulips. Despite the grim dialogue, the hour ended on a mellow note, and in what had become a closing ritual they walked me to the bubble, their parting words a key part of the ritual. Ebony cleared her throat and began: “Be careful of the bushes when you’re walking home tonight, Miss Mary, and if anybody jumps out, then you tell them”—and here she would cue the others with an invisible baton—“that—you—got—friends—on—Ri–kers Island!” And we all laughed.

  On our way back, Wendy and I talked about the violence. “Can you imagine?” I said. “The thing is, we’re not in some third world country here. All this shooting and killing happens right here—upper Manhattan, Queens, Bed-Stuy, the South Bronx. It’s a whole other world, right under our noses—a world that the rest of us don’t even know exists.”

  “I know,” Wendy agreed. “Same with the girls on my side. It’s unbelievable.”

  On the stretch of corridor common to the men’s jail, our conversation was interrupted by angry shouts. To our left were long rows of bars, and on the other side empty patches of darkened space. Behind the bars, four or five COs were surrounding a male inmate. “No, man! I didn’t do nothin’!’” shouted the inmate.

  “Shut the fuck up!”

  They were pushing the young man into a corner where a set of bars intersected. All we could see of him were his jeans and sneakers as his legs were being spread apart—“Nooh!” he shouted. Just then, a white-shirted captain coming down the hall spotted us. “Move along!” he ordered. No smile, no “good evening” nod. We hesitated momentarily. “Keep moving!” We did just that. As we neared the end of the corridor, Wendy said, “They’re going to beat the crap out of him.”

  As much as I tried to think up another explanation, I knew she was right. I felt dazed. The next day, I told Janet about it. She just shook her head, and for the first time my wise mentor didn’t have a ready answer. “Some bad things do happen in here, Mary—there’s no denying it. We do the best we can,” she sighed. “We do the best we can.”

  After a couple of days of dwelling on what I had seen and heard, I decided to let it go. I didn’t know his name. I didn’t even know for sure if he’d been beaten. Obsessing about it was only keeping me upset while doing nothing for him. I just hoped he was okay and that this was an isolated incident. Years later I would learn otherwise. But then, I simply said a little prayer for him and tucked it all away.

  * * *

  There was always some sort of drama in the jail, and the three of us were constantly jumping up from our table to investigate. One afternoon, Overton was leaning out the doorway, checking out some hallway commotion. We jumped up just in time to see a gurney flying by with a shrieking woman on board. “I told them the baby was coming! I told them!” Overton shut the door and scrambled over to the inner door leading to the medical side of the clinic. He unlocked it and we plowed through, joining a growing mob of nurses, pharmacy techs, clerks, and officers, along with a crowd of inmates who’d abandoned their waiting room seats. “Sit the fuck down!” the officers ordered the inmates. But no one budged and the orders became halfhearted, and then they stopped. For a moment, duties were ignored and hierarchies dissolved, as everyone was pulled toward something much larger.

  “Ambulance on the way!” shouted a nurse.

  “Too late!” yelled the chief physician, stepping out from behind a wall of white curtains. Pulling on a long gown and fastening on an elastic face mask, he ducked back in. The crowd waited, held back by a three-foot-high cement partition. The doctor barked, “Push harder! One more time—push harder—harder! One more! There we go!” And then the dingy clinic was filled with the sweet sounds of an infant’s first cries. Everyone was beaming, from high-ranking correctional personnel all the way down to the lowly inmates, many with hands over their hearts. Even the mirthless Captain Murphy looked a little misty. After a few moments, the doctor stepped out from the curtains and raised his arm high up overhead. In the palm of his large hand he held the tiny new life for all to behold.

  13

  The air was finally warming, and purple and white crocuses were pushing up from the thawing earth, and the Canada geese had returned. Bus drivers were slamming on their brakes to avoid the fluffy goslings meandering along the island’s roadways.

  “Spring is here,” said Allison, pulling out her trusty calendar. “And that means we’ll be out of here soon.”

  Wendy and Allison were counting down the days, but I was in no hurry for the year to end. Regardless, the weeks were, indeed, winding down; we were no longer assigned new cases, but rather called upon for quick referrals only. Janet started pushing me to discuss my impending departure with the patients on my shrinking caseload, particularly Rhonda Reynolds, whom I suspected had forgotten I was a student. “She’s come a long way with you, Mary, and this is going to be tough on her. She needs time to process this.”

  After Rhonda had finally revealed the source of her nightmares, she talked of nothing else, needing to express every aspect of the brutal attack that she’d barely survived. As we talked it through, I helped her to understand that although she was a drug addict a
nd needed to address this, she bore no blame for the assault. Slowly, she began to view things differently, shifting the blame to where it belonged. She never stopped pushing for sleep meds, but her requests were halfhearted. “Hey, I gotta try!” she smiled. And as she spoke more freely, initial reports of an idyllic childhood gave way to uglier memories—beatings with extension cords, a stepfather’s drunken tirades, of growing up in constant fear. Her eyes glazed over as she talked, but she was on a determined path to releasing so much pain, to getting it all out.

  And then on an ordinary morning, her demeanor was strangely different when she arrived for her session. She was looking at me, but somehow seemed far away.

  “Are you okay, Rhonda?” I asked.

  Gazing into the distance, she softly whispered, “I didn’t mean for her to die.”

  “What, Rhonda? What did you say?”

  And then, louder, “I didn’t mean for her to die. I never thought she’d die. I just made up my mind that no one would ever hurt me again—no one was ever going to jump on me. But I never meant for that girl to die.”

  “I know you didn’t.”

  “But she’s dead.”

  “Yes.”

  “And I killed her.” Rhonda dropped her face into her hands. “Oh! God! Oh! God forgive me! God forgive me! Oh! . . .”

  It was a moment of profound sadness. Sadness for a young woman who never could have known that innocent horseplay would cost her her life, and sadness for Rhonda, who was now headed to prison for an act that was borne not of malice, but of perceived self-protection.

  When she slowly lifted her tearstained face, she said, “My lawyer’s trying to get the charge reduced from murder to manslaughter, but even so, it’ll be ten, fifteen years. Why did this happen to me, Miss Buser? Why? How can so many bad things happen to one person? I thought the rape was the worst thing ever—but this? Why?”