Reading behind Bars

by Jill Grunenwald

  The inmate’s eyes shifted quickly around the room, bouncing off the walls and shelves of books. It was like watching a person attempting to find that one solid spot to stare at, while at the same time attempting to catch their balance. If a person could flail while standing absolutely still, this inmate was doing exactly that.

  “I was . . . well, I just . . . it’s not what it looked like!” he stuttered. His eyes turned glassy, a veil of tears threatening at the corners.

  “Uh-huh.” Fordham turned to me for clarification.

  Great, so I was going to have to be the one to say it. Out loud. I took a deep breath. “He was . . . masturbating,” I finally announced. I could feel the heat in my cheeks rise.

  Caught, the inmate’s whole body crumbled, like the bones of his body just sunk into themselves.

  Fordham raised an eyebrow. Whatever he was expecting me to say, it was not that.

  “Write the conduct report,” Fordham instructed. “I’ll take it up front.”

  I raised my eyebrows. This was unusual: with the exception of Jackson’s last evening, every other conduct report I’d written was just dropped at the captain’s office as I was leaving at the end of the day. Hell, some of them I forgot about and didn’t take until the next day. Then, again, every other conduct report I had written were minor infractions, nothing compared to this.

  “Okay. I’ll let you know when it’s ready.”

  Fordham gave me a nod and exited, leading the guilty inmate by his elbow. As he did, Inmate Franklin got up from his seat at one of the tables and followed him out.

  Franklin returned within seconds. “I told Fordham I seen it, too,” he explained. He scrunched his face as if smelling something particularly foul. “Nasty.”

  I nodded in agreement, thanking him for speaking up.

  After that, the rest of my morning was spent drafting my conduct report. Facts, I kept reminding myself. Just the facts. Don’t embellish or add feelings or conjecture. Just state the facts.

  Shortly before the library was to close for lunch, I rang Fordham up next door. He picked up my conduct report and delivered it straightaway up front in Administration.

  The phone at Stephanie’s elbow rang and we both paused in our eating. She answered, gave me a glance, then handed me the phone. “Coleman,” she mouthed.

  Huh. That was unexpected. My interaction with Lt. Coleman had always been limited to exchanging polite conversation as we passed each other on the walkway.

  I took the phone from Stephanie. “Hello?”

  “Ms. G. Coleman here. Tell me exactly what happened.”

  My eyes met Stephanie’s and I held her gaze as I went over the story. It was easier to pretend I was telling it to her rather than Coleman. It was mortifying enough to have to tell it all, so I might as well make believe it was just two women gossiping.

  “So you actually saw his—” Coleman stopped.

  I nodded, even though he couldn’t see me. “Yes.”

  There was a pause and Coleman’s voice dropped low as he conferred with Captain Freeman. “This isn’t the first time he’s done this,” Coleman said. “There are similar incidents at other facilities. He has a history of gross indecency.”

  My eyes widened. On the other side of the table, Stephanie was antsy with anticipation. “Really?” I asked.

  I could practically hear Coleman nodding on the other end of the line. “Yeah, he shouldn’t have been sent here because of that; he somehow slipped through the cracks.

  “Okay, thanks. That’s enough for us.”

  Hanging up the phone, I gave Stephanie a shrug and relayed the conversation.

  This wasn’t my first guy masturbating in the library, but this was the first time I was so aware of it when it was happening. Not just aware, but knowing the guy was looking at me while he did it. I felt violated and exposed. Graduate school had left me totally unprepared for this part of librarianship. I wondered if this is how Alice felt when she stepped through the looking glass, and discovered everything had turned topsy-turvy. Oh, and there was also that dark shadow of threat lurking around every corner, jaws snapping, claws scratching. Beware the Jabberwock, indeed.

  Secrets in prison don’t say secret for long, and by the next day word had already gotten around.

  “There was a masturbator in here, Ms. G.? And you caught him?” someone asked me the next day.

  “Caught him? He was staring at me.”

  I had to deal with this same exchange multiple times that day.

  On Friday, I went down to Segregation for my usual visit. As soon as I got in, I ran my eyes down the whiteboard above the officer’s desk, looking for Jenkins’s cell number.

  I began on the other side of the room, wanting to avoid the inevitable for as long as possible. Cell to cell I went, asking if the inmate or inmates inside wanted anything from the library. Every few feet I’d throw a glance in the direction of Jenkins’s cell. That was his name: Jenkins, habitual masturbator. Unless an inmate was a library regular, the only other reason I’d usually learn an inmate’s name was if I had to write up a conduct report, such as the case with Jenkins.

  When I first started going around the Segregation unit, Jenkins was asleep on the top bunk but as I rounded the corner and began working on his side of the room, it seemed that he had woken up.

  “Mr. Jenkins,” I called into the cell. Regardless of what had happened, politeness needed to be maintained. “Is there anything you’d like from the library?” I kept my eyes trained on the notepad in front of me. When he didn’t answer, I looked up.

  His entire face took up the porthole window, his mouth turned up into the widest grin I’d ever seen. All of his teeth were bared, a brick wall of white. It was by far the creepiest grin I had ever seen, like jack-o’-lantern level. Suddenly I knew how Little Red Riding Hood felt when she first came upon the wolf deep in the woods.

  Despite there being a solid steel door between us, I took a step back.

  “Know who I am?” he asked.

  “Yes, Jenkins. I know who you are.” I looked down at the notebook in my hand, pen poised. I avoided his gaze but I could still feel it boring into me. “Are there any books you want from the library that I can bring you?”

  He didn’t answer. My eyes darted up then back down, just long enough to see him still staring at me with that grin on his face. “Yeah,” he said. “Bring me some James Patterson.”

  I scribbled Patterson next to his cell number on my notepad, then quickly stepped to the side to get to the cell next to his and finish my rounds, wanting to put as much distance between me and him as possible.

  The next day, I was due to return to Segregation with the books. During the morning break, I loaded up my basket with the appropriate titles, or as close as I could get, and headed down the walkway hoping I’d run into someone with a Segregation key along the way, saving me from having to awkwardly loiter around the exterior door.

  “Captain!” I called out, quickening my pace as I hurried up the sidewalk of the Education building to catch the person exiting. Above, the darkening sky was full of clouds heavy with impending rain.

  Up ahead, a man in a crisp black uniform turned his bald white head in my direction. Despite his short stature, Captain Freeman was an intimidating force across the prison yard, garnering the respect of inmates and staff alike through his fixed, yet fair, rule of law and order.

  Falling directly below the major in the chain of command, the captain had authority over the lieutenants and correctional officers, while also acting as a sort of liaison between the civilian employees working out in the yard and the brass up in the Administrative offices.

  It also meant he was one of the few individuals in the camp who had a key to let me into the Segregation unit.

  The yard was empty except for the two of us, and I fell in step beside him as he led me down the walkway towards the heavy steel door that led to Seg. “One thing,” he said, putting the key into the lock. “You should stay away from Jenkins�
�s cell.”

  “Oh?”

  Freeman held the door open and waved me in. “He was caught doing it again in his bed here in Seg.”

  “Oh.”

  He offered me a sympathetic smile as he shut the door, leaving me alone in the long, empty corridor.

  Bolton stood up from his seat when I entered the cell block, keys at the ready. He followed me from cell to cell, unlocking the trap door in front of each one as I dropped off the books the inmates had asked for.

  Right before we got to Jenkins, I stopped short. “Here.” I thrusted the requested James Patterson book into Bolton’s hands. “I’m not going anywhere near that cell.”

  Without a word, Bolton took the book and slid it into the trap door. “Jenkins! Your library book.”

  I heard movement inside the cell, a rustle of metal upon brick as he jumped down from his bunk and it hit the cinder block wall behind him. “She out there?”

  Bolton shifted a slight look in my direction before turning back to him. “Just take the book, Jenkins.”

  The worn James Patterson title disappeared into the cell and Bolton clapped the trap door back up, locking it tight. The sound of metal meeting metal echoed through the cavernous room. I breathed a sigh of relief, boundaries solidified.

  By the following week, when I returned to Segregation, Jenkins was gone. Shipped off to some higher security prison due to his history of “gross indecency.”

  Chapter 24

  Ink Art Serrated

  Rule Violation: (57) Self-mutilation, including tattooing.

  Rule Violation: (58) Possession of devices or material used for tattooing.

  —Ohio Admin. Code 5120-9-06

  Officer Klein walked into the library, thumbs tucked into the belt loops of his pants. He was tall and lanky, a local boy from right here in Grafton. “Alright!” he shouted into the quiet library, startling us all. “Everybody up and out. Back to the dorms. Emergency count.”

  The inmates grumbled as they stood up from the tables and shuffled to the circulation desk, newspapers in hand. “This is some bullshit,” I overheard one of them say as he traded the paper for his badge.

  “Emergency count?” I asked Klein as he waited, watching the room clear. The inmates were already counted several times a day, like clockwork. Emergency counts, spontaneous situations where everyone had to rush back to the dorms and stand by their bunks to be counted, were rare.

  He nodded, gaze trained on the inmates as they filed past him and outside. “Inmate from next door possibly escaped.”

  “Escaped,” I repeated skeptically, knitting my brows together.

  The yard closing down was far more common than emergency count. Yard closing could be handled one of two ways: first, everyone was to stay exactly where they were, no inmate movement at all. So if the inmate was in the library when the yard closed, the inmate had to stay in the library. The second option was that the inmates were herded back to their dorms like sheep, and had to stay there, and weren’t allowed to leave the dorms until the yard reopened. This was often what happened with imminent weather. More than once the library had been shut down early because severe lightning was headed our way and the Captain ordered all inmates back to the dorms before it struck.

  The worst instance of yard closure was when Mr. Hooper, GED teacher, lost his keys.

  Yes, you read that right: Lost. His. Keys. Inside. The. Prison.

  Keeping your keys secure is, like, Prison Employment 101. But somehow Hooper managed to lose them. Not only lose them, but he had no idea where he had lost them. In this instance, the inmates were forbidden from leaving whatever area of the prison they were in at the time of yard closing. Security didn’t want to give them any opportunities to dump the keys, if they had them. So until the keys were found, nobody could leave, including staff. School was done for the day, as were the AA and NA meetings, so the Education staff and the Recovery Resources staff aided in the hunt. At one point during the search, I looked out the window of the library and saw Stephanie precariously squatting over a drain, attempting to peer inside to see if the keys had fallen down there.

  Correctional officers scoured the yard while others tore the dorms apart. Eventually, 4:00 count rolled around and an officer came to the library to escort the inmates back to the dorms.

  By dinner, Hooper’s keys still hadn’t been found, much to the frustration of those of us who were supposed to have left hours before. I was posted in the chow hall that evening, along with Dr. Harald, directing inmates on where to sit for dinner.

  Finally, around 6:30 p.m., Hooper’s keys were finally found out in the yard and the staff were free to go home. Because of Hooper’s incompetence, I had to stay late for three nights that week, which annoyed me to no end.

  That wasn’t the first time Hooper had shown himself to be a security risk. One day, after the library had closed for the morning, I was in the Education department and saw Hooper in a classroom with some of his students. Class was over, so these inmates were dawdling until they had to head back to their dorms for count. Whatever Hooper was teaching them was so captivating, they decided to stay behind.

  From my vantage point by the copier, I was able to stare through the classroom windows and saw that Hooper was teaching them how to write in code. To Hooper, this was just a novelty. A fun and interesting thing to teach his students. But to his students, this was a way to skirt the security of the prison.

  How he still had a job after that, I have no idea.

  But as far as security threats went, the key thing was just a closing of the yard. Emergency counts were different. With emergency counts, the yard gets shut down and inmates are sent back to the dorms, where they stand and are, well, counted.

  Of course, most of the time, the officers are looking to make sure we don’t have too few inmates. In this instance, the prison was making sure we didn’t have too many inmates.

  Although, why you would escape one prison just to enter another made zero sense to me. But protocol is protocol.

  I closed up the library and headed next door to await instructions.

  False alarm, it turned out. The inmate from next door was found and we had the correct number in ours.

  A few days later, I was back in Segregation for my weekly visit. My eyes ran down the Segregation whiteboard, the furrow in my brow deepening the further down my gaze went. I referenced the notebook in my hand then looked back up at the board. “What happened to Doyle?”

  I had been surprised to see his name on the board to begin with. Doyle, while perhaps not the brightest crayon in the box, was not known for getting into trouble. Certainly not Segregation levels of trouble that is, often relying on his boyish charm to talk himself out of any situation. Nevertheless, he had been in Seg for the past few days, although currently, according to the whiteboard, he was in the medical unit.

  Bolton and Lopez exchanged a quick glance, smiles dancing on both of their mouths. Neither answered, but Bolton’s belly jiggled as he attempted to contain his laughter.

  “What?” I asked, looking back and forth between the two of them. “What’s so funny?”

  Lopez looked to Bolton before continuing, but Bolton shook his head and waved him off. His laughter was so tightly contained that if he opened his mouth even for a breath, he’d completely burst into hysterics.

  “Uh, well.” Lopez gestured for me to come closer to his desk. “There was a bit of a situation.” He looked to his partner for help, but Bolton, while no longer on the verge of bursting out into laughter was still not ready to contribute to the conversation. Lopez rolled his eyes. “It seems that Doyle got a hold of an ink pen. Gave himself a tattoo.”

  “Come on.”

  Bolton, wiping tears from his eyes, nodded. “We still don’t know how, but he had the pen hiding in his bunk.”

  “How bad was it?”

  “Got infected,” Lopez answered. “We had to send him next door to Medical.”

  Their laughter no longer seemed appropriate, an
d the look on my face must have given my concern away because both of them snapped to attention. “No, no,” Bolton finally said. “He’s fine. He just needs to stay there for a day or two so they can keep an eye on it.”

  Admittedly, my curiosity outweighed my concern. “What happened?”

  They both shrugged. “We don’t know how he got the pen,” Lopez said. “But somehow he got it in and broke it open, used the shards to poke holes and then put in the ink.”

  Prison tattoos are not uncommon, and for those inmates with an entrepreneurial spirit, it can even offer a side hustle while inside. Payment for ink in the clink works on a barter system, as inmates are forbidden to possess money. This is why envelopes coming in and going out of the facility had to be pre-stamped, a special class of envelopes purchased directly from the post office, since stamps could be traded in lieu of cash. Prior to the smoking ban, cigarettes would have been the payment of choice, although there were still other options, usually food and sundry items purchased through commissary.

  That said, most inmates who possessed that same entrepreneurial spirit of turning prison tattooing into an inside job are also intelligent enough to know it was best to fashion some kind of motorized tattoo gun from contraband items and not just use some random ink pen.

  “And it got infected?”

  “He tried to hide it,” Bolton answered, picking up where Lopez left off. “But it got so bad that his bunkmate finally alerted us.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Wanna see a picture?” Bolton’s eyes lit up. Both he and Lopez looked at me like overeager puppies.

  “Um . . . ” Did I want to see a picture? I already had one tattoo myself, but I was itching for more. In an ideal world (and with an unlimited bank account) I’d have two full sleeves, both of my arms technicolor tapestries. Seeing a tattoo job gone horribly wrong might ruin all interest in further ink adventures (though my finances would certainly appreciate that outcome).

  Not waiting for an answer, Bolton pulled open his desk drawer and produced a digital camera. Technology of any kind was so limited inside that the digital camera looked like some object from an alien planet when compared against the stark white walls of Segregation.