A Stone of Hope

by Jim St. Germain

  My room was a small locked box with a metal sink, so I couldn’t hurt anyone or myself. A rickety bed was covered with a slice-thin mattress. There was a window up high but the glass was frosted, maybe because they didn’t want us to get any thoughts about the outside world. The hours eked out like a slowly dripping faucet. There was nothing to do but go over how I got here and where I’d be going.

  I’d had run-ins with the police before and they were routine: a ride to the precinct, maybe fingerprinting, and a call home. But a Class D felony meant I was headed deeper into the system. Maybe too far for any light to shine through. I would have to adapt quickly, hurt anyone who tried to make me a target. I would just go off on the first person to look at me funny. The heavy metal door and thick walls told me I had no choice but to adapt and survive. Adapt and survive. It was like a mantra that I repeated to myself. I just had to keep my head above water as the levels rose and the waves came crashing down.

  The law treats crack more severely than cocaine. At the time, crack sentencing was literally a hundred times more severe than powder cocaine. The irony is that crack is actually more diluted than powder cocaine; it can be stretched out with baking soda and cooked up, which is what makes it cheap. The harsher penalties reveal racial bias and embedded systemic issues: it’s much easier to arrest crack dealers on street corners than suburban kids or Wall Street brokers. It was only a matter of time before I got caught. As far as Brooklyn police were concerned, I was fish in a barrel.

  Before Christine showed up, I had been running through everything in my head, alternating between the small and the large: How did the cops find the product so fast? How long were they going to put me away for? Was being sent away actually better for me? Was someone going to take my spot on the corner? What was my father going to say? Does my family even care enough to visit me?

  I thought about the day we left for America, four years earlier. Everyone from the neighborhood knew where we were going so they congregated out in front of the house. I met up with my family on the main road and got on the back of the tap tap to the airport. Neighbors were waving good-bye, yelling things like “Don’t forget us!” as the tap tap kicked up rocks on the dusty road. I remember carrying only a small bag, which didn’t hold much of anything. I had my plane ticket, I had my visa, and I had the clothes on my back. I was so young, I assumed America was going to take care of the rest.

  Spofford was the gateway, the first step into the system. There’s a reason it’s called the system; it’s a well-oiled machine that takes in troubled kids and churns out hardened men. I was on my way.

  “You’re moving up in the world,” Christine said jokingly. “Two D felonies.” We sat in a sparse room, two wooden chairs and a phone. “What, one wasn’t enough?”

  “But I didn’t do it.”

  “Really?”

  “Really,” I said. “I swear.”

  “Okay, then this will be easy,” she said, half-joking.

  “It wasn’t even my bike—”

  “And the drugs?”

  “It was like a dime bag of weed—just to smoke. For me.”

  “And the crack?”

  “Not mine,” I muttered.

  “All right,” she said, exhaling as she opened my file.

  I couldn’t make eye contact with her; I felt like I’d let her down. But even as I avoided the truth and her look, having her there calmed me. The system is cold and faceless, an entity that towers over you and seems to exist to make you feel small. Christine made me feel like me again, even if just during the length of our conversation. She laid out my sentencing options. If I lost the case, she could try to convince the judge that I would benefit from a structured environment.

  I was conflicted. Ignoring rules and running wild was the only childhood I’d ever known. From six years old I had been fending for myself for basic needs. In Brooklyn, that expanded. I had a powerful thirst for the streets: the block, my homies, the money, marijuana, and alcohol. Lockup would bring withdrawals—both physical and psychological. It was all toxic but my body needed it to function. I’d also heard horror stories about drug hustlers who got traumatized while incarcerated, beaten up or thrown in solitary or kept way past their release date.

  I also knew I’d be guaranteed a meal, a bed, medical care, and, hopefully, adults who had a stake in my welfare. I felt guilty and wanted to give my family some peace of mind. Now at least they’d know where I was.

  There was a drop of foresight in me too, a voice saying there had to be another way. I knew that my life back on Crown Street had a short clock and I wouldn’t make it out. Even then, I recognized the opportunity brought by my arrest.

  But all this didn’t even really matter because where I went wasn’t up to me. It was a Hobson’s choice—the illusion of free will. The truth is I had no choice at all.

  Christine always complimented me on being a good listener, but often I couldn’t comprehend what she was saying regarding my case. I didn’t understand the ins and outs of the juvenile justice system or the various services and options being presented to me. The legal terms were beyond my comprehension. I was polite and nodded a lot; most teenage boys aren’t too expressive anyway, so I could hide what I didn’t understand. But her level of attention and interest mattered more. She would regularly check back, ask if I understood; even when I pretended I did, she would still go over it again more simply. She was caring like that, not forcing me to reveal how little I understood.

  The level of compassion I felt from Christine was more important to me at that moment than any details about the legal process. All that felt abstract. The law has to be more than an intellectual exercise. Being seen as a person in that fragile moment can change a child’s life, help him feel a basic sense of security in a terrifying world. I don’t know how much attorneys understand this: a child about to lose his freedom is looking at this adult as maybe his only hope.

  For our rides out to court, or medical appointments, juvenile offenders were transported like dangerous criminals, searched yet again and marched outside. Staff clinked tight metal cuffs around our wrists and ankles and escorted us single file into a white government van, with “Department of Juvenile Justice” in bold on the side. I accepted that I was state property. But I wasn’t afraid to ask questions; that’s always been my way. We were always in the custody of black or Latino males in their late twenties and thirties, many of whom had been in the streets or had kids in the streets. One time while they were preparing to transport me to Family Court I asked one, “You really need to do this? Cuff my arms and legs like I’m a murderer or something?”

  As he clicked the ankle cuffs closed he eyed up at me, a visible sneer, like, Who does this kid think he is?

  “This is my job, man. I didn’t make the rules,” he said. “You don’t like it, don’t get locked up. You thought this was Boy Scouts or some shit? You want to get milk and cookies? Get tucked in to bed?”

  He laughed as he got into the passenger seat, but I could see his partner, the driver, looking at me through the rearview mirror during the drive. Old-school hip-hop played through the speakers and all the kids in the back were bopping their heads and mouthing the words. Their eyes were unfocused, the music taking them somewhere else. Music was a luxury and the van was the only time we got to hear any. It was like a satellite back to Earth, as far as we were concerned. Inside those vans, rusted white metal gates ran horizontally in rows, separating the driver from the kids and the kids from each other.

  “Hey, son, what’s your name?” the driver asked over the music. “Hey you, Mister Question Man. What’s your name?”

  “Me?” I asked. “Jim.”

  “I been where you at, Jim.”

  “Yeah?” Just hearing my first name out of his mouth sounded strange because we were rarely called by name like that. It was usually our full name bellowed in some official way—or a docket number.

  “Yeah, a few times,” he said. “And my boy’s going through it now. And you looking
at this wrong. What are you, sixteen?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “Well, shit. This’ll be over soon. This is like a crystal ball.”

  “Huh?”

  “The future. If you don’t leave the street alone, this will be the rest of your life. What you have left of it.”

  He wasn’t trying to scare me. It was more like he was leveling with me. “Yeah,” I said, “maybe, but why do you gotta—”

  “Yo,” a kid yelled from the back. “Shut the fuck up! We’re not trying to hear you. Tryn’a hear the radio, man, not your dumb-ass questions.”

  “Word up,” another voice said.

  I turned my face into the gate behind me. “Mind your own fucking business, pussy,” I yelled at him.

  “Fuck out of here!” he said, kicking the seat.

  “Hey, hey. Enough! Quiet!” the driver yelled. He killed the radio and we rode in silence the rest of the way to the courthouse. I could feel the kid in the back stewing.

  The van pulled up to a separate entrance area behind the Brooklyn courthouse. We were taken out one by one, lined up, and escorted to a back elevator, then into a dark and depressing room. And there we sat, all day among the faded cinder block and hard lighting, on heavy lockdown. There were cheap plastic chairs bound together and then to the wall so nothing could be moved. A thick metal door with a small square window buzzed every thirty seconds as lawyers, social workers, and probation and court officers came in and out. A phone connected to the courtroom let the guard know whose case was up.

  There was an old TV in the corner and since we’d be waiting eight hours, the staff would throw in VHS tapes, usually old boring movies that served as a distraction. Sometimes they’d play “smack” DVDs, homemade videos of underground rappers waving guns, boasting about selling drugs and pimping women, showing off their cars and jewelry. Smack DVDs were the purest form of a familiar impulse: showing off what pieces of the pie we were able to get for ourselves. When a lawyer would come in and catch sight of the movie, a staff member would run up and shut it off.

  Some of the juvenile justice staff members weren’t that far removed from the kids they were watching. Most were from the same neighborhoods and had similar perspectives. It’s true they put in those videos because it kept us content and quiet, but looking back, it’s disturbing. Why were they showing us these movies? Didn’t they just reinforce some of the reasons why we were there?

  The kids were only allowed brief communication with each other; if you encountered someone you had an issue with, this wasn’t the place to settle it. But we were kids, and fights were inevitable. If a kid already had been sentenced and there were no longer any incentives to behave, something often went down.

  They’d bring in boxes of squashed bologna sandwiches at lunch and if anyone complained, they’d get another version of the “this is why your ass shouldn’t get locked up” speech. We’d elbow one another and scramble for ketchup, mustard, and mayo packets, squeeze them onto the sandwiches, and devour them, hoping there’d be extras. Sometimes when I sat there scarfing my food, I thought of the lunch line at school. How we didn’t want to show our hunger if it meant showing our poverty. In juvie, that equation went right out the window. Everyone was equal, eating as if our life depended on it.

  When the phone from the courtroom rang everyone got extremely quiet to hear who was up to see the judge. When a kid’s case was called, he’d stand up and take a deep breath; his face would instantly transform from youthful disregard to fear, the tough-guy façade left on that chair. He’d go down the line and everyone would give him a dap, wish him luck: maybe he’d get to go back to the world that led us here in the first place. Since we were all from the same community, we’d also send messages through that kid, things like “Yo, tell my dude Rae I say what’s up!” or “Tell B-One I’m holding it down in here.” We wanted to send word of ourselves back out there, hoping it would only be a matter of time before we returned too.

  Kids who lost their case would be escorted back into that room crying or keeping quietly to themselves, holding in their anger. Others returned beaming, a little bounce in their step, knowing they were getting out soon. And then sometimes a kid didn’t come back at all, which meant he got to walk out the door and go home. “Lucky dude,” we’d say sometimes. More often we’d say, “He’ll be back.”

  Though it was comforting to see Christine, who always brought a smile and support, my three-minute appearance in front of the judge was just a formality. Most decisions were made before we got there. We were pawns in the larger moves made by invisible hands. It’s a strange feeling, having your life decided as if you weren’t even there. Most judges wouldn’t address us, and prosecutors and defense attorneys talked about us in the third person, and in legal jargon that we didn’t have a prayer of understanding. It seemed like we didn’t even need to be there. Most kids leave their day in court feeling as unreal and small as they do in the cell.

  I got moved from Spofford to a nonsecure detention facility (NSD) on Beach Avenue in the Bronx, right alongside a public housing complex. It was freer, though still far from free. At no time can a kid be alone at an NSD; you are under constant watch, even while you sleep. My room had a lower window, one I could see out of, and even curtains. A thin wooden desk was pushed against the wall with a stool. Security was looser and we could leave our rooms with permission.

  Beach Avenue was a blur of faces and forms and questions. Of judges and lawyers, social workers, counselors, probation officers, and psychologists. They packaged me up and reported to the court, trying to find me suitable placement. I told and retold my life story, spilling all my transgressions, hopes, and fears to people who looked nothing like me, and who couldn’t possibly understand me.

  The strange thing was that I was comfortable being honest with them, since they judged me on a different scale than the one in the streets. They didn’t care if I was tough or weak; I could just be me. It was like taking a long breath. The adults I met in lockup were expecting me to project weakness, vulnerability, all the hallmarks of adolescence. Christine went out of her way to let me know that it was okay to show myself, that I wouldn’t be attacked if I did.

  “How do you feel about selling drugs?”

  A psychologist was sitting across from me in a closed room at Beach Avenue, yellow walls and open windows. I could hear free kids running around outside, horns honking. On nice days I felt more stuck than others.

  “I feel terrible about it,” I said. “Like I’m destroying families and that’s wrong.”

  “Well, that’s good,” he said, writing it down in his leather notebook.

  “But—” I hesitated.

  “Go ahead.”

  “To be honest, at the same time I feel like if I don’t do it, someone else will do it, you know?” I said. “I got friends that sell drugs to their mothers and if I don’t do it, someone else is gonna do it anyway.”

  “So you recognize that it’s wrong,” he said, more a statement than a question.

  “Of course. I’m taking food away from children.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Because their mother’s coming to me to buy drugs.”

  I was trying to charge through the opening I saw, use my charm to make sure I got access to the resources that were offered. The process was backward—throughout my childhood I needed help, support, and services. But it wasn’t until I got arrested that people and services came out of the shadows.

  “You’ve had a hard life,” he said, peeking at my files.

  “Yes, sir,” I said. I recognized that how I spoke was as important as what I said. “I know a lot of people that do. But yes, I did. I do.” I didn’t say it, but I believed that growing up the way I did, especially in Haiti, forced me to mature quicker. That experience helped me know what I needed from my new environment.

  But I was fifteen, so I had a loose understanding of my motivations. Christine said since I was still a teenager I had an “under-informed brain.” I al
lowed negative influences to exert too much control, and I let impulsive behavior govern my actions. The malleable adolescent brain provided fertile ground for the criminal life. The doctors and social workers thought it was a good sign that I attempted to rationalize why I sold poison to society’s most vulnerable.

  “How do you feel about being placed somewhere?” a social worker asked. She was a mousy woman with small glasses.

  “I don’t know. I guess I was sad at first but I know that if I stayed in the community I’d be killed,” I said. I was getting good at playing my role, though it was also starting to feel more and more like the truth. “Going to a place that gives me medical care, and where I have to be in school every day. I’m excited to learn, to read, better myself. Get opportunities.”

  “Do you think you can avoid conflict with your peers?” she asked. “Wherever you go, there will be other kids your age. Some like you.” It was like she was lobbing underhanded pitches. I knew what she wanted me to say.

  “Oh definitely. I don’t really have the heart to hurt someone like for real. No doubt. I haven’t fought with anyone here.”

  The respondent presented a history of markedly poor judgment . . . His capacity for sympathy impressed as intact, but sympathy does not appear to play a significant role in the respondent’s decision making . . . it does appear that if he remains in the community, he will continue to encounter considerable danger.

  The respondent’s strong desires to better himself impressed as genuine, not manipulative. He impressed the examiner as a youth who, in spite of his turbulent history and markedly poor judgment, might seize upon opportunities for self-improvement that are presented to him. These strengths will serve him well in the future.

  One night at Beach a staff member came to my room and told me to get my things. I did as I was told but he wouldn’t answer any of my questions as I packed my few things. I had no idea where I was going and wasn’t even allowed to say good-bye to anyone. I was escorted outside into a black car where a Department of Juvenile Justice supervisor sat at the wheel. I felt like a hostage as we drove into the night.