Reading behind Bars

by Jill Grunenwald

  I made a mental checklist. Count inmates. Watch for lights. Call up front.

  “See you tomorrow!” she said, brightly. A chorus accompanied her as the Education team and the recovery services team left the building and headed up front, their laughter lingering in the empty space.

  I went back to the library after my colleagues left, sat down at my computer, and logged in. After checking for any new facility-related emails, I turned my attention to the small wire cabinet of hanging files to my right. Might as well get some reading done while I waited for the evening shift to start.

  There was about an hour of downtime. I used the time to educate myself on the recreation center and Segregation. Then at 5:00, I unlocked the library door.

  “Hey Ms. G.!” a few inmates called out with a wave as they came into the library after dinner. Word had gotten around. I nodded my hello, committing faces of repeat visitors to memory.

  The evening shift was far more subdued, as many inmates opted to stay outside to take advantage of the limited sunlight while they could. Newspapers were read, but not with the same flurry of demand as before.

  Moments after I unlocked the door, my evening porter, Jefferson, arrived. I was starting to think my predecessor had only requested tall inmates be assigned to the library because Jefferson was the tallest of them yet. He was dark as midnight and carried himself proudly, walking with deliberation as he took his seat behind the circulation desk and began checking newspapers out to waiting inmates.

  Time ticked on. Outside my window, the sunlight began to fade to black as night encroached. As Kimberly said, out in the distance near the fence, the sky-high lampposts clicked on, blanketing the yard in artificial light.

  During a lull, my evening porter rolled his chair over, closing in on my desk. “I’m Jefferson,” he said with a smile. His hazel eyes were dazzling like gemstones.

  “Hi Jefferson,” I answered. “I’m Ms. G.”

  Jefferson’s smile widened showing a row of pristine white teeth that gleamed against his dark skin. “I’ll be here every Tuesday or Wednesday evening. If you need help with anything, just ask.” He rolled his chair back to its spot and began organizing the checkout cards from earlier in the day.

  My porter settled, I relaxed. Out of the corner of my eye I saw an inmate leaning over the counter. He was small, his oversized blue jacket drowning him.

  Meeting my gaze, the inmate smiled at me and jerked his head up in greeting. It was like catching a cat mid-hunt. He started to look for an empty chair among the crowded tables.

  “Wait! Make sure you sign in!”

  He raised a single eyebrow in surprise then turned and came back to my desk. He didn’t walk but sauntered, making a big show of it. The coat was so oversized he had to push the sleeves up, his hand hidden among the blue folds. He grabbed the pen with a flourish and signed his name. As he did, I snuck a peek at the ID Badge clipped to the outside of his coat. Jackson.

  Name signed, he again used overly exaggerated gestures to put the pen back on the clipboard before turning to find an open spot.

  About twenty minutes later, Jackson came back up to the front of the library and started to move towards the front door.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Restroom.”

  I shook my head. “Yard’s closed.”

  “But I gotta go.” He raised his voice slightly, catching the ear of every other inmate in the room.

  I hesitated. Yard closed meant yard closed, which meant no inmate movement. Those were the rules and this was an institution that ran on rules. No rules, or disobeyed rules, meant chaos. It meant confusion and safety was at risk. I wasn’t going to screw this up my first day.

  The familiar flush of embarrassment started to creep up my neck, knowing I had twenty inmates watching me, waiting to see what my next move would be.

  Power in prison is in constant flux. Oh, sure, at the end of the day, ultimately the staff and officers have all of the power. Our word is law here.

  But inmates also have power, just of a different kind. There was a reason the library only offered inmates dull-edged safety scissors that required temporarily turning in their identification badge to use. The inmates had the power to inspire fear within the staff. And the thing of it was, we weren’t even working with violent men. We were working with men who drank too many beers and kept getting behind the wheel of the car. We were working with men who could make a much better living selling drugs on the street corners of Cleveland than they ever could flipping burgers at McDonalds, so they kept doing it. The only violent men on my watch were in on domestic violence charges, so while they had exhibited violent behavior in the past, it had been directed at a specific person; they did not have an overarching violent tendency that I needed to watch out for.

  And yet, all of them had to be kept from using real scissors and I needed to be on constant watch to maintain my own personal safety. “Constant vigilance!” as Mad-Eye Moody repeated throughout Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. (Or, well, I guess technically it was fake Moody, but whatever. Details.) At any time, someone could snap out of the carefully constructed drug-and-alcohol rehabilitation narrative the prison had devised and take us all down.

  Because of this, some of the correctional officers wielded their own power with a heavy hand. They wanted everyone to know that they were in charge and acted accordingly, as if the black uniform didn’t already give it away.

  As a civilian staff member, I found myself at a crossroads. I was part of the staff, the people with the true power. But as a librarian, that wasn’t my job. That wasn’t even in my nature. I wasn’t here to demand respect or flaunt what limited power I had just because I could. I was here to run a library. I was here to make sure the educational and recreational needs of the inmates were met. I was here to help.

  There were two kinds of staff members here: those drunk on power, seeing the inmates in their care as beneath them, and those who were here to help, who saw the inmates as men just trying to do their time and get out. I knew which one I wanted to be, but which one was I going to be?

  I picked up my desk phone.

  “Womack,” he answered from next door.

  My eyes never left Jackson’s face. “I have an inmate who needs to use the restroom. Can I send him over?”

  There was a pause. In the background, I could hear the hustle and bustle of inmates joking and laughing as they attended that evening’s Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous meetings.

  “Yup,” Womack finally answered.

  I hung the phone up. “Next door and then back. That’s it.”

  The corner of Jackson’s mouth turned up in a slight smile as he exited the library. It’s possible I had made the wrong choice, but only time would tell.

  At 7:14 p.m., just a minute before closing, I counted the number of inmates remaining in the library. They made it easy for me, lining up in front of the circulation desk, ready to go.

  “It’s Grunenwald,” I said into the phone. “I have twenty-six inmates leaving the library.”

  “Where are they going?” the guard up front in the control center asked.

  “What?”

  “I need to know where they are going.”

  Damn. That had not been part of Kimberly’s instructions. Just count them she said. Just count them and call up front to let them know. And now, the inmates were pouring out of the library and into the closed yard, scattering like rings in a puddle.

  The officer on the other end of the phone, perhaps realizing I was the new librarian and had no idea what I was doing, spoke again. “Tomorrow, find out which dorms they are going to after leaving the library. 5 to A, 10 to B, that sort of thing.” Grateful, I hung up the phone.

  With a heavy sigh, I collapsed into the chair behind my desk. My day was officially over at 7:30 p.m., so I had fifteen minutes to sit and catch my breath and collect my thoughts and—

  The door of the library opened. “We’re closed!” I called out, wearily.

/>   Two inmates walked in. “Yo,” the shorter one said. “I’m Santiago. We’re here to clean. Can we get into the closet?”

  Right. The cleaning supplies. I stood up and went to the restroom, using the correct key to unlock the door. Santiago grabbed a spray bottle and rag, while his companion used the restroom sink to fill up the bucket.

  I watched the two men work. Their work was haphazard and casual. This was not a professional cleaning crew, but I was so startled by their appearance I didn’t know how to respond and, besides, I was so anxious to leave, to have my first day officially over, that I was happy to let them do whatever they needed to do to clean the library and be done.

  “Thanks,” Santiago said, as I locked the closet back up.

  They left, and I quickly gathered my belongings, ready to get home. I locked the library door and headed up the path to the control center. A few yards beyond the library, the bright lights from inside the recreation center lit my path, and I was able to see a large, open space that had a variety of activities available. I spotted inmates crowded around a pool table, while others sat around a board game.

  The yard was empty, except for a few second-shift correctional officers on rounds. They nodded in greeting and I hurried up the path.

  At the control center, it was the reverse of the morning’s routine. I gave the correctional officers behind the tinted windows my keys, chits, and ID badge at the exterior window. The outer sally port door buzzed open, then the inner sally port door. Once again, my bags were searched and I went under the metal detector. This morning, the concern had been me bringing things into the prison. Now the concern was me taking things out.

  I walked around to the interior control room window, where my ID badge was waiting for me in the drawer.

  I slipped it into my purse and walked to the main lobby doors, exiting into the fresh night air.

  I had done it. I had survived both my first official day as a librarian and my first day as a librarian in a prison.

  As I walked towards my car, searching for it among the others, the exact parking spot I’d picked long forgotten in the haze of the day, I knew that this job was going to be far more challenging than I had anticipated. I always knew, or at least thought I knew, that this wasn’t going to be like any of the previous library jobs that I had had, but I was so not prepared for what I didn’t know about this job.

  Chapter 4

  The Hole

  The institution library staff shall visit all special population areas of the institution at least once per week to determine inmate needs regarding legal and reading materials.

  —ODRC Policy 58-LIB-01

  BEEP BEEP BEEP!

  The relentless sounds of my alarm clock jolted me awake. I opened one eye and stared at the blurry red digits through the pitch black of my bedroom. Outside my window, the Cleveland skyline stood silent and dark; even the city that I love was unwelcoming this early in the morning.

  5:40 a.m.

  I groaned internally. At least it was Friday, right?

  Except for me, it wasn’t the end of my workweek. Per state policy, the library was open six days a week, which obviously had to include weekends. Each prison was allowed to define their schedule, and for my library, Monday through Saturday hours were the norm. State policy also required the library be open two nights per week as well, all of which explains why my first day started on a Tuesday and I had to stay there late.

  My colleagues in the Education department all had a standard Monday to Friday, 7:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. schedule. As the librarian, I was not so fortunate. My hours were much more erratic.

  Tuesdays and Wednesdays, I arrived shortly before lunch and stayed until 7:30 p.m., which, you know, was fine. I got to sleep in on those days and maybe run some errands before driving out to Grafton. Then, on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, I worked 7:30 a.m. until 4:00 p.m. That was okay, as I got home at a reasonable hour despite the long commute. Sundays and Mondays comprised my weekend, which meant I got one traditional weekend day off and one weekday off, which was helpful for general errands.

  The issue was that, of course, when my friends would want to go out to the bars Friday night, and I’d have to beg off, or go home after only one drink. Cinderella here had an early alarm clock calling her name. Saturday nights were a bit more reasonable because I could sleep in the next morning, but after several days in a row of 5:40 a.m. wake up calls, I was exhausted and would still skip going out, or go home after only a drink or two.

  Then again, I’m a somewhat antisocial introvert, so it honestly wasn’t that bad of an arrangement to me.

  My boyfriend at the time lived on the other side of the state so the only times I even attempted to pretend to have a social life was when he was in town. Otherwise, I was quite content with my 10 p.m. bedtime no matter what day of the week it was.

  In my absence on Mondays, Kimberly worked in the library. It was a task, I was discovering based on the complaints from inmates, she only did because she had no way of getting out of it. She’d huff and puff her way through the day, putting off as much work as she could by telling the inmates to come back in on Tuesday when I returned.

  I was starting to get into my groove of the new job, but after my first Thursday at work, I knew Thursday mornings were going to be the bane of my existence. With an hour commute each way, I got home at 8:30 p.m. Wednesday night only to have to turn around and leave the house by 6:30 a.m. Thursday morning. Again, as an introvert, there was almost no time to decompress from all the interactions I had done the night before and then I had to turn around and be back at it again.

  This morning was still early, but it at least wasn’t on the heels of a late night. So while today was Friday, that glorious end of most people’s workweek, it wasn’t my Friday, since I still had a 5:40 a.m. wakeup call tomorrow, too. And I only had the ridiculously early wakeup call because my apartment was so far away from work. I lived in a downtown Cleveland area known as The Flats. My loft-style apartment was in a converted warehouse that had previously been a sewing machine factory. Faded white letters were still visible in the brick, remnants of a past life. I loved it.

  The only downside of my location was that it added a significant amount of time to my commute. I’d never before been envious of people who lived on the west side of the city, but now I imagined how nice it must be to wake up at a relatively normal time and have a nice, short commute to work. If nothing else, at least I was driving against the usual morning rush-hour traffic.

  Aside from cutting into my sleep, commuting also made me sympathetic to the visitors who traveled to our facility several times a month to visit incarcerated friends and family. During the sentencing period, there are several factors that determine which prison an inmate is assigned to as their permanent institution. Incredibly, location of home and family is not one of those things taken into consideration, and inmates can end up very far from their support system back home, as well as any news from home.

  That’s why the prison had subscriptions to newspapers from all over the state of Ohio; to specifically meet the reading and informational needs of the inmates. Especially the informational needs of the inmates who didn’t live in Northeast Ohio. Clevelanders had the benefit of also having access to local radio and television stations that would keep them up to date on the news from the area, but for those who lived elsewhere in the state, there were limited resources available, which is where the library newspapers come in. Everything came via Pony Express. Not really, but it sometimes felt that way. Outside the razor-wire fence, information was available instantaneously via broadband internet and Wi-Fi. Inside, however, there was no internet access. Everything had to come via the good ol’ United States Postal Service. Neither rain, nor sleet, nor snow, nor prison bars either, it seems.

  Family and friends were the inmates’ other option for staying up-to-date. If the bustling mail room on my first day wasn’t enough proof of the amount of letters that came in every day for the inmates, I also had
inmates show me their mail. Letters from home sharing news clippings from their city, updates on family, new photos of the children they hadn’t seen in months. Even books came in the mail, supplementing the limited offerings in the library. For example, I didn’t have the budget to stock The Help, the latest New York Times bestseller that everyone wanted to read. I didn’t have the budget to stock anything, really. The prison ran a tight, lean ship, and new books, especially new hardcover books that everyone wanted to read, were not an acceptable line item. And I do I mean everyone wanted to read it. Staff, guards, inmates—everyone. Several times a week I had inmates coming in asking if we had copies available. The library, however, didn’t have it, but copies could be found floating around thanks to prisoners who had copies sent in.

  Some inmates were also lucky enough to get their news in person with visits from family. Visitation happened twice a week, although the inmates were limited to a certain number of visits per month. All of these restrictions put a strain on relationships.

  So even though it was less than a week in and I was already struggling with my commute, that was always put into perspective when I considered the struggle that family and friends of prisoners underwent. If nothing else, I could see my family whenever I wanted and sleep in my own bed every single night.

  It was the end of winter and thus far Cleveland’s weather had been rather mild, but I knew I might not always be so fortunate. The prison was quite literally in the middle of nowhere. There was nothing surrounding it for miles. I couldn’t imagine what getting to work would be like when snow really started to take hold.