Shakespeare Saved My Life

by Laura Bates

  “And now we want Shakespeare to work for other people as it’s worked for us, as a tool for use, not just a compilation of great stories. We want to bring it to these juveniles, who are right now still shaping the rest of their lives, and hopefully we can counter the same hollow principles that we built our lives on. That’s our goal, and that’s what we’re doing. Thank you.”

  Before he could leave the stage, the audience jumped to their feet in a standing ovation. Larry stood there awkwardly, but he was beaming. I looked over at Mom. I thought I saw her wipe away a tear. I was beaming like a proud mother myself. And that is what the photographer captured.

  The prisoners’ adaptation did not cover the entire play; it didn’t even include Juliet. It focused on Romeo and his peers, and it ended with act 3 when Romeo kills his rival Tybalt. Sirens blared and an officer came onstage to arrest Romeo for manslaughter. One by one, each of the actors stepped forward and spoke, starting with Romeo: “Shakespeare wrote this play four hundred years ago, but it still applies to teenagers today. I came to prison at age eighteen for murder, and I’m serving a life sentence.”

  The actor playing the officer spoke next: “I came to prison at age sixteen for murder, and I’m serving a life sentence.”

  The murdered Tybalt got up from the floor, dusted himself off, and said, “I came to prison at eighteen for a double murder, and I’m serving two fifty-five-year sentences.”

  Father Montague (Romeo’s dad) stepped forward: “I came to prison as a sixteen-year-old, with two murder convictions, and I’m serving two eighty-year sentences.”

  Romeo’s pal Mercutio came back onstage: “I came to prison at the age of fourteen, for murder, and I’m serving a sentence of 199 years.”

  The last one to speak up was Benvolio, the voice of reason, played by Larry: “I came to prison at the age of seventeen for murder with a sentence of life without the possibility of parole. I will never go home.”

  In unison, the group spoke the closing lines: “We hope you learn from Romeo’s mistake—and from our own.”

  Lights out. Another standing ovation.

  CHAPTER 56

  Killer in the Classroom

  The Romeo and Juliet project impacted my on-campus teaching in an unexpected way. At the time, I was leading a schizophrenic academic life: teaching Shakespeare in prison while teaching children’s literature courses for future elementary school teachers on campus. Kids and killers. I never thought the twain would meet, but once again, I learned an important lesson from my prisoners.

  Naïvely, I had assumed that “at-risk” youth needed an intervention during their teenage years, and that’s why I brought our Romeo and Juliet video into the alternative high schools. But as I listened to the prisoners sharing their life stories, it became apparent that each of these men who had committed murder as a teen had started down that road at a much younger age. I asked each of them the question I had earlier asked Larry: “At what age did your criminal career begin?” Their responses took me by surprise.

  Dustin: “Twelve. Started off with runaways, criminal mischief.”

  Steve: “Ten. Playing hooky from school, selling dope.”

  Larry: “Ten. Stealing from Kmart.”

  Jon: “Eight. Keying cars, vandalism.”

  James “Eight. Stealing pop from the store whenever I was thirsty from playing ball.”

  Patrick: “Seven—”

  Me: “Seven?”

  Patrick: “Seven. Calling in false fires, out past curfew, drinking under age.”

  Me: “Seven?!”

  Kevin, the only prisoner in the group who was not serving a murder sentence, summed it up by saying, “What a child experiences between the ages of seven and ten will determine his actions as a teenager and an adult.”

  I thought this was crucial information for future elementary school teachers, and I found that it was not addressed in their education courses. “Killer in the Classroom” was the title of a presentation that I prepared for the future elementary school teachers. The title got their attention, and the prisoners’ stories kept them riveted for the full hour.

  While none of these prisoners placed blame on their teachers for turning them into criminals, all of them had advice for how a teacher could spot a troubled child in her classroom and how to reach out to him. They also pointed out some of the ways in which even well-intentioned actions could backfire. Jon related his experiences as a boy who, because his father’s job required frequent transfers, was often the new kid in school. He admitted to engaging in some juvenile mischief, but nothing requiring the harsh treatment he received. One teacher, having heard of his reputation as a troublemaker, singled him out at the start of the school year—literally, singled him out. She made him spend the semester behind a partition in the back of the room, separated from the rest of the students. Over time, that led to his rejection of the teacher, of his schoolwork, of school. That led to the streets, to drugs, to violence. Jon connected the dots by concluding, “Stick me behind a partition, and I grow up and kill someone.”

  My end-of-semester surveys always showed this presentation to be the most impactful moment of the semester. It was a lesson that I knew my students would remember when they started working with little Larrys, Dustins, and Patricks. And I believed that it, too, could save lives.

  CHAPTER 57

  Hands that Kill Can Also…Sew?

  In addition to the Shakespeare program, Wabash Valley Correctional Facility had another unusual program that provided a creative outlet for its prisoners in general population: quilting. It was remarkably popular among many prisoners and, like Shakespeare, demonstrated that activities that might seem effeminate can be embraced by the most macho of men. Furthermore, the quilts made by the prisoners were donated to charitable causes, such as battered women and families of deceased veterans. The quilts were accomplished works of art in their own right and were displayed at the Indiana state fair, on the news, and in the offices of the top administrators of the facility.

  When I learned that some members of the Shakespeare program in general population were also quilters, I was amazed that they found the time to engage in two such demanding hobbies in addition to a schedule that often included a fulltime job and college classes every night. They told me that they recited Shakespearean texts while sewing, entertaining their quilting comrades while memorizing their lines.

  One Shakespearean quilter, Dustin, had been a member of the drama group in open population since our first production in 2004. When he joined, he was the youngest, and shyest, member of the group, and he limited his role to simply reading a few sentences of introduction to the scenes and speeches that the others performed. But the following year, he agreed to take on the lead role of Macbeth, and his acting ability really became apparent. That, coupled with his handsome Brad Pitt looks, caused one of our audience members to ask if he was an actor by profession. Alas, he never was, and never will be.

  Entering an adult prison while still a juvenile, he, like Larry, was a small, scared kid in a tough adult world. He responded with violence. His was one of the most extensive conduct histories among those I examined: nearly one hundred offenses in his pre-Shakespearean years.

  “He just wanted to hurt you,” an officer once told me. “And if he couldn’t do it physically, then he would do it emotionally.”

  “I’ll do whatever you want me to” is the refrain I always heard from Dustin, and it was uttered in a sincere, not sarcastic, tone of voice. Over the years, he proved to be one of the most productive and essential members of our group. True to his word, he always did whatever I asked of him, stepping into whatever role was vacant or writing whatever additional text was needed.

  Even the officer quoted above eventually had to admit—as Sgt. Harper said of Larry: “If Shakespeare made him change, I’m impressed.”

  Dustin’s contributions to our Romeo and Juliet project were especially valuable, with him not only playing the important role of Romeo’s best friend Mercutio
, but also sharing his insights as a troubled kid and the parallels between the Shakespearean character he portrayed on stage and his own character:

  Mercutio is very hot-headed. He is big on how people’s perceptions of him are. I was the same way. But my crimes are nothing like what Mercutio did out of loyalty to Romeo. There was no honor or justness in what I did. I was a self-absorbed, self-centered fourteen-year-old who cared little for anything or anyone else but myself.

  His open and honest self-revelation spoke to the at-risk teens to whom I presented the video. They saw themselves in what he was saying, and they saw that they could easily end up like him. He never intended to kill anyone; it was the unexpected result of common teenage mischief. Even his effective stage presence was valuable, making our video powerful and riveting. Teenage girls stayed after class just to get another glimpse of him.

  At the end of the public performance of our Romeo and Juliet adaptation at the prison, after the standing ovation and after the extended applause finally died down, Dustin came back on stage carrying a large parcel. Surprises are not usually a good thing in prison, but this one was.

  “We want to thank Dr. Bates for all she’s done for us,” he began. And then he opened up the bag. “With a quilt.”

  Denim and black (my “prison colors”), it measured six feet by six feet and was made single-handedly by Dustin.

  Wow! I was speechless as he handed it to me, and despite my conviction to never become emotional in prison, I was moved almost to tears. The guys could tell. I overheard one of them say, “Yeah, I thought we might get some squirts.”

  I hate to sew, can’t even thread a needle. I couldn’t imagine the time involved in cutting out 288 little squares of black cloth, white cloth, and different shades of denim and then painstakingly sewing them together. And then, on the reverse side, he had made an intricate design out of paisley-patterned cloths on a background of pale denim. The time, the talent, the thoughtfulness! It was hard to hold back the “squirts.”

  The quilt.

  CHAPTER 58

  Fears and Phobias

  One day, I brought a video to watch with Larry: a Discovery Channel show that includes a reenactment of his hostage attempt in the SHU in 2000. I wondered if he had ever seen it.

  “Oh here, let me help you,” he said, jumping up from his chair to help the middle-aged officer who was struggling to wheel an unwieldy TV/VCR cabinet into our little classroom. Again, I couldn’t help being impressed with his respectful demeanor with the officers. With the cabinet in place and plugged in, the officer inserted my tape into the little slot in the standard-issue TV/VCR combo while I sat down next to Larry. (I wished we could share a bag of popcorn.)

  “As you watch your reenactment,” I said to him, “let me know if there’s anything that’s not accurate.”

  The video opened with the announcer’s dramatic voiceover:

  “Three letters strike fear into the hearts of prisoners: S-H-U.…”

  The visuals showed the familiar ranges on the SHU where Larry lived for so many years.

  “That’s my cell,” he said, pointing at the screen.

  Momentarily, a prison official dressed in a business suit came on camera and stated gravely, “All of the prisoners in the Secured Housing Unit are dangerous.…”

  “That’s not true,” Larry said quietly, more to himself than to me.

  “What?”

  “They’re not all dangerous.”

  The tape showed the official re-creating the movements of the officers during the hostage attempt, backing out of the range, crossing his hands to protect his face, as he described how these prisoners “with blood lust on their mind” came at them, “cutting and slashing.” Then a photo showed the stab wound in Harper’s shoulder. It was all very dramatic, very scary. Again, I found these behaviors difficult to reconcile with the man sitting next to me. I wanted to believe that he was a different person. That he was changed, permanently changed.

  After the clip ended, I asked him, “Did that put you back into that mind-set, the ‘blood lust’?”

  “No,” he replied. “I can’t feel it. I mean, I remember it, but I just can’t feel it anymore.”

  I asked Larry what his goal was in the hostage attempt.

  “We had a list of demands,” he told me. “We were gonna leave the cell 6 food slot open so we could have direct contact for medical, ’cause when guys needed medical they would be banging and screaming for hours, and them COs would just do nothing, man, nothing!”

  “That was one of your demands?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You risked your life to improve the conditions of your fellow prisoners? That’s sweet.”

  “No no no, that’s not sweet! It’s ridiculous. For one, it’s not gonna happen.”

  “But it wasn’t, ‘Let me out’?”

  “No, there was no demand like that: ‘Ship us out!’ No.”

  “What was the reaction of the other prisoners on the range?”

  “Silence.”

  “Really? I assumed cheering.”

  “Yeah, ’cause they’re ‘evil prisoners,’” he said with a chuckle.

  “That’s not true?”

  “It’s not true. We just happen to be in prison. We’re still human, we have the same reactions: it’s shocking. Places are silent when things go down. It’s a shocking experience for everybody. You’re just sitting there watching TV, all of a sudden this goes down, you’re not getting rowdy, you’re shocked by it. My instinct is always to get away from a fight.”

  “You know that it was Sgt. Harper who got you out for our session that first day?”

  “Really? Well, I can say this about Mr. Harper: I didn’t go out there to butcher this guy, and he knows that. I think that’s why we don’t have a problem to this day. I’m not saying we’re buddies or anything, but I think he knows that if I was out there to kill him or hurt him real bad, I could’ve. I had him held by himself, pinned up against the wall, a knife in my hand. I could’ve been stabbing him the whole time, but I wasn’t.”

  A thought occurred to me, and Larry picked up on my silence.

  “What?” he asked.

  “We’re sitting here alone every week, unsupervised. Ever consider taking me hostage?”

  “No. Never. Uninhibited truth here.”

  “Good.”

  “What could I get anyways?” he asked, pointing to my water bottle. “A vitaminwater?” He laughed and called out: “I need a vitaminwater and some French fries. Now!”

  “That’s rather insulting, isn’t it?”

  “Take you hostage. Man, what the—?!”

  He laughed again, and I got up from our table. As I took the tape out of the VCR, I asked a question that I assumed one should never ask of a prisoner.

  “Were you scared? When the extraction team came in?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, I mean, you know there’s a banging coming, so you just sort of get ready for that, psych yourself up for that. Maybe there isn’t time to be afraid.”

  He seemed fearless, and he was teaching me to be more fearless myself, not only in my prison work, but also in helping me to recognize that unfounded phobias, like fear of flying or fear of sailing, were good examples of the types of “prisons” that we all put ourselves into.

  “Is there anything that you’re afraid of?” I asked.

  “Yes!” he shouted, smacking the table with his hand for emphasis—a common gesture. “Spiders!” he said with a shudder. “Always have been.”

  “Come on, man,” I wanted to say, “that’s retarded.” It was one thing for me, as a timid little girl, to have been afraid of insects growing up—but for a big tough convict?

  “Are you kidding?” I said. “You have lived in dangerous environments all your life, in ghettos and in prisons, and your greatest fear is a tiny little harmless insect?”

  “Ask my mom. She’d tell you: I would jump out of a moving car to get away from a spide
r.” He slapped the table again. “No joke!”

  Another lesson learned: even the toughest of criminals has his weakness. “We just happen to be in prison. We’re still human.”

  CHAPTER 59

  Sociopath or…

  “Who Am I?”

  To date, I have uncovered that I am:

  Insecure, confident.

  Stupid, intelligent.

  Lame, funny.

  Pessimistic, optimistic.

  Deceitful, truthful.

  A loyal friend, a loyal enemy.

  A loving son, a hateful subject.

  A killer, a lifesaver.

  A captive, and a free man.

  Larry read to me the self-reflective poem that he had written in his English 101 class (one of five college classes he was taking each semester). Then he asked me, “Do you think I’m a good man or a bad man?”

  “How do you see yourself?”

  “I think I’m a good guy, really. For two reasons. For one, I have a genuine compassion.”

  “Where do you see that?”

  “I don’t know. We’ll get to that. And two, because I genuinely want to be better.”

  “What does ‘better’ look like to you?”

  “What ‘better’ looks like to me is internal. I still have a great deal of cowardice in me in the sense that I still conduct myself in certain ways in certain settings; I’m still somewhat dictated by the environment as opposed to my genuine will in life. So being more courageous, detaching some of these strings in my life, having even greater insight into myself and even into human behavior—all this is my idea of ‘better.’”

  “Nothing to do with your sentence?”