A Stone of Hope

by Jim St. Germain

  At the stoplight, the supervisor turned to me, seeing the anxiety on my face. “Don’t worry,” he said. “You’re going to like this place.”

  I didn’t even know what neighborhood I was in or where I was going. I took a deep breath and looked out the car window, watching the lights flash by. It was like we were driving into a black hole.

  8

  Points

  On our life map, he drew a bright circle around twelve through eighteen. This was the abyss here, unguided, black boys were swallowed whole, only to reemerge on corners and prison tiers. Dad was at war with this destiny. He was raising soldiers for all terrain.

  —TA-NEHISI COATES, THE BEAUTIFUL STRUGGLE4

  We pulled up in front of a three-story brownstone in a nice neighborhood not far from downtown Brooklyn. I thought it was a mistake: the building didn’t look like a facility at all. I was expecting another high-walled place where I waited out my case. I noticed the quiet, the clean streets, the absence of all the typical late-night elements.

  The Boys Town NSD was a sunburnt brick townhouse on Dean Street with gated windows of black metal. It was three train stops from my grandmother’s apartment on Crown Street—a five-minute ride—but it felt worlds apart. As the Juvenile Justice supervisor brought me inside, the door opened to hallways, rooms converted into offices. On the first floor was a secretary, security monitors, a computer, and file cabinets. I sat down for intake, a routine I knew well by that point. An older white woman fired questions that I answered automatically:

  Jim St. Germain.

  Tenth grade.

  Crown Heights.

  Oh, Beach Avenue NSD.

  Ricot St. Germain, my mom’s not around.

  I’ll eat anything.

  A couple of shirts, these sneakers.

  No.

  No, my friends are Crip. Were Crip. They’re still Crip but I’m not really friends with them anymore.

  No, not me.

  I don’t know. Next month?

  My lawyer would know.

  Possession with intent to distribute.

  I don’t know.

  No.

  I went through all this at Beach. And Spofford.

  These question-and-answer rounds were never about imparting information. Boys Town already had my file. It was about me. They wanted to see whom they were dealing with. What hand they were dealt. What a kid like me was like right there in the flesh—not on paper.

  A young staff member in a collared shirt knocked as he opened the door to the office. He put a plate in front of me—fried chicken, mashed potatoes. “Here you go, son,” he said. I was starving and cleared the plate, ate like I hadn’t in a while. I had been eating at long tables with other kids under tight watch and time frames for a few months. It was now hours past dinnertime but the food was hot; they had saved it for me and kept it warm. It was the first indication that this place saw me as more than a case file or money from the state.

  After intake, he came back in and sat across from me on my side of the secretary’s desk. He was light-skinned and leanly built, two-day beard and a shaved head. He looked right at me and said, “Hello, my name is Charles,” corny and formal. Then he shook my hand and said, “It is nice to meet you.”

  I mumbled my name.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’m going to walk you through the Boys Town system. First off, you have to introduce yourself the way that I just introduced myself to you.”

  “Wait. Really?”

  “Really. Look at me. Then shake my hand and say, ‘Hello my name is Jim.’ Maintain eye contact with me as you say, ‘It is nice to meet you.’ ”

  We went through this sequence a few times. He modeled it and I copied. He corrected me and I did it again. Charles and I introduced ourselves to each other five or six times. It was forced and awkward and I resisted it. It just seemed phony.

  “The purpose here is to retrain your behavior,” Charles said, more direct than before. “That’s the model.” He handed me a thick booklet, bound and laminated.

  “We start with the first four basic skills: following instruction, accepting consequences, greeting skills, and reporting whereabouts.”

  I knew immediately that this place was nothing like Beach or Spofford. This felt like school. School for the outside world. School for after school.

  “First, following instructions,” he said. “There’s steps in there to follow.” He took my manual and opened it to a page, then handed it back to me.

  I followed along as he recited: 1. Look at the person. 2. Say okay. 3. Repeat the instruction. 4. Complete the task. 5. Check back.

  “We go over these every day, all day,” Charles said, “until it’s automatic, unconscious. We’re going to instill that in your brain,” he said, pointing at my head.

  He then handed me a wide index card, with boxes and a divider down the middle. One column read “Positive Points,” the other “Negative Points.” “Jim St. Germain” was already written at the top.

  “What’s this?”

  “That’s your point card,” he said.

  “My what card?”

  “Point card. To keep track of your points. You earn positive points for positive behavior, negative points for negative behavior. We’re trying to teach you consequences. By the time you leave here, hopefully it’ll stick.”

  “I gotta give this to you anytime I do something bad?”

  “No, you keep track. Your life, your card, your points. And it’s for positive and negative.”

  I looked at the card in disbelief. When in the world was I ever going to use a point card?

  “That card needs to be on you at all times. Think of it as an extension of yourself. Even not having it will get you negative points.”

  I smiled. “But where you gonna write it down then?”

  “That’s funny,” he said. “You’re smart.” He flashed a brief smile that quickly got swallowed up by his face. “You always get meals, you always go to school, but a lot else is in your hands. If you accumulate a certain amount of points, you get to play basketball in the back, time to play video games, a later bedtime. Maybe we give you cookies and milk.”

  “Oh. Okay.” I was having trouble processing most of it.

  Charles stood up. “Okay, follow me,” he said. I grabbed my bag and my new point card, and followed him up the stairs.

  On the second floor Charles pointed out the living room, a TV and video game console, a large dining room table, pantries, an almost industrial-size kitchen. The tight hallways had motivational posters framed along the walls. We then went up another flight to where the kids slept—it was after nine so everyone was in bed. The shared bedrooms were college dorm–size with wooden bunk beds and blue-sheeted mattresses. We stopped at one of the rooms with three crumpled figures under blankets, and an empty and made top bunk. Laid out were a clean white T-shirt, boxers, soap, toothbrush, and toothpaste. “This is you,” he said. “Now, take a shower. When you’re done, store your property for me to lock up.” He gestured to a labeled basket. “Wake-up is 6:30.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Good, that’s 750 points.”

  “Huh,” I said, confused.

  “Write it down,” he said. I patted my pockets and Charles took a pencil from behind his ear and handed it to me. I filled in my card, wondering how long I’d be able to do this.

  It was a tight space for four people, with small wooden dressers, one thin closet. On a bulletin board I saw family pictures, a magazine photo of Tupac, a test with “Great job!” in red marker. Most kids lived out of bags, as they were only there a couple of weeks, sometimes less. I didn’t know how long I’d be there. All I knew was that this was my new home, my fourth in as many months.

  Boys Town was built on structure and routine. That’s the heart of the system. We woke up at the same time every day, showered, and brushed our teeth. Everyone made their bed, tidied up their area, did their scheduled house chores, and got checked. Chore checker was a responsibility they
’d give to a resident, as were manager and bookkeeper. It was about creating a “buy in” culture. New residents see the kids taking responsibility so they fall in line.

  After our morning routine, we lined up to go down to the dining room table. Two or three staff members would join the twelve kids for toast and cereal, maybe waffles. The teaching continued through the meal. You couldn’t escape it. I was in a constant state of being watched and being taught, down to the most basic things. If I grabbed the milk without asking permission, I’d earn negative points. Someone would correct me and have me redo it. I had to give eye contact and ask respectfully, “May I please have some milk?”

  At first it felt oppressive, and repressive. The goal was to teach me behavior, unlearn old habits, and train proper ones: everything from greeting someone to following instructions to accepting criticism. There were steps on how to disagree respectfully, select appropriate clothing, even how to contribute to a conversation.

  No matter our crimes or situations we all had the same issue. We hadn’t been following the rules: at home, at school, in the world, so there was a precision to everything at Boys Town. The lining up, the constant asking of permission, the overly proper way we had to speak, especially toward authority figures. It was like boot camp for my behavior.

  One of my first mornings at Dean Street I had to use the bathroom during breakfast, so I got up from the table and did so. I was almost sixteen years old. It didn’t occur to me to ask permission to go to take a piss.

  “Hey, Jim,” one of the staff, a burly dude we called D Dub, said when I returned. He was round, genial, with a beard and glasses. “Just now you got up and you went to the bathroom.” The staff always immediately stated what you just did. Rather than “Hey, what are you doing?” or hitting you upside the head, they immediately identified your behavior. It’s like the burn from the hot stove, creating a direct connection between behavior and consequence.

  “Yeah. So?” I said.

  “And you didn’t ask permission and you didn’t report your whereabouts. For that you’re going to earn a negative two thousand points.” D Dub spoke calmly, which was the method there. Staff wanted us to focus on our role. This was new: Teachers threw me out of class, cops cuffed me, and my father smacked me. Boys Town staff clearly stated what I did wrong, what the consequence was, and made sure I accepted it.

  That last part was the crossroads moment. If you could control your anger, accept the consequences, and write your points down, you would automatically get half of them back. That day, that’s not what I did.

  “What?! That’s fucking stupid,” I said. “I’m not asking permission to piss. You want to hold it too?”

  Everyone at the table froze.

  “I understand you’re upset,” D Dub said. “You feel like you didn’t do anything wrong, but this is part of the system and you have to accept the consequences.”

  “That’s fucking st—”

  “Okay, now that you’re not accepting the initial consequence I’m going to assign you another five thousand negative points. Plus, because you’re cursing—”

  “I don’t give a fuck about stupid points!” I snapped back.

  A calm exhale. “Okay, I’m going to have to give you another . . .”

  I kicked over my chair in protest and started yelling. I was caught in a loop, accumulating more and more negative points, getting further away from my privileges. D Dub stayed locked in on the steps. For all my exploding emotions, he remained even. In order to see if I’d calm down and be willing to accept the consequences, he gave me another instruction—“Please sit down and finish breakfast with us.”

  That was another chance to end it right there and I took it. Those little opportunities—to earn back points—were hugely valuable. Everyone at that table was paying for a series of bad decisions and consequences going back years. I huffed and sat back down, ten thousand points in the hole for the day. It wasn’t even 8:00 a.m.

  The Boys Town model makes sure you end on an upswing to show we can always make amends and get redemption, every time. After I accepted and wrote down my points, D Dub role-played it all over again with me. To demonstrate the proper behavior, we tracked back through the incident, which was psychologically powerful. We rewrote the negative incident as a positive one. An erasure. Something about that concept appealed to me.

  For the first time in my life I was forced to follow rules, mostly because I had to face accountability on a daily basis. I was also regularly exposed to authority figures invested in my success. Rather than the occasional conversation with Christine or meeting with Dean Walton, this was day in and day out, every little thing I did, from every adult I encountered. But I couldn’t always see it for what it was, so I rebelled frequently. It was like I’d been sick for so long that my body rejected the medicine.

  After breakfast we lined up for the staff to escort us to the first floor where one by one we’d retrieve our shoes. Every time we entered the brownstone, we’d get searched, and have to take off our shoes and jackets so we’d be less likely to go AWOL, hurt others, or ourselves. We then lined up again in the front hallway waiting for the blue passenger van to pull up.

  Staff transported us one at a time using a grip called manual guidance where they held our arm with one hand, the other on our bicep, and guided us to another staff member at the van door. We were all pre-adjudication, and unlikely to run, but that’s how we were transported everywhere. A solid reminder that we were not free. The system’s claws were in us.

  Behind the wheel of the van was Patrick, Big Pat we called him, one of the morning staff, who treated the van like it was his own. He had a slowly graying beard, glasses, and a gleaming smile. We gave him a hard time because he played only old-school jazz and R&B.

  “C’mon, let’s hear some hip-hop,” I said one time. “You got any Nas in there?”

  “That’s the problem with you kids—your music is soulless.” Big Pat turned back to look at me, then turned the volume up. He pointed at the radio.

  “What are you talking about? You been alive like a minute. That’s the Commodores. This is the song right here.”

  She’s a brick howwwse. She’s mighty mighty, just letting it all hang out.

  “Mato mato! What is that?” I said.

  “Mighty mighty,” he said; then he started singing, dancing in his seat. “She’s mighty mighty, just letting it all hang out.” The whole van busted up laughing.

  “The lady is stacked is what he’s saying,” Pat explained, drowned out by our laughter. After that anytime that song would come on he’d turn it all the way up and we’d “mato mato” while he waved us off, saying we didn’t know anything.

  Boys Town had its own school, a small brick building on Willoughby Street downtown, which was part of the larger Passages Academy, the school system’s program for kids in detention. It was the twelve of us at Dean Street, another twelve from the other Boys Town NSD on Bergen Street, along with kids serving longer sentences at the two residential homes—about forty kids total. As NSD kids we wanted to help our cause with the judge by getting a good “adjustment report,” so we tended to stay in line. It was like an old schoolhouse where we started at homeroom in the lunchroom, and rotated through English, math, history, and science. An assistant teacher would work with individuals on the side, so as not to expose or embarrass them in front of the class.

  The points system carried over to the school. Boys Town staff members would stand by the door, handing out discipline and teaching the model. I had barely gone to school and when I did, I had avoided work as much as possible. But I couldn’t disappear in this classroom—the size, structure, and staff made that impossible. The spotlight was on me, and it felt like I couldn’t get away with anything.

  Ms. Oglio, the history teacher, was a small Italian woman with a fiery personality and a strong New York accent. I couldn’t shake a feeling that she singled me out, not telling me the answers that she told others.

  I remember a time a
month into my time there, when we were reading about world religions. The class was filling out a worksheet on rituals and traditions. I kept raising my hand but Ms. Oglio was ignoring me and instead was helping Alan, an Albanian kid who seemed to already know everything.

  “Jim, I can’t show you exactly where the answer is,” she eventually said. “You have to figure it out for yourself. If I give you the answer, you won’t remember it or know how to find it again,” she said.

  “So I’m stupid?”

  She opened her mouth like she was going to say something, but didn’t. She just leaned over and went back to Alan.

  “That’s some racist shit, Ms. O. Fuck you!” I shouted, tossing my book and notebook on the floor.

  “Jim. Jim! Step out the room, now,” Mario called out from the door. A short and stocky staff member with coolie hair, Mario was earnest but had a black belt and an aura that commanded respect. Sometimes he rode a Harley motorcycle to work and we’d gather around to ask him questions about the bike.

  “She’s fucking racist!” I shouted as Mario walked me out of the room.

  “Stop cursing and calm down,” Mario said. He walked me out into the small foyer outside the classroom and I sat on the windowsill. Mario didn’t speak a word, waiting for me to breathe it down. I stared into the classroom through the glass of the closed door at Ms. Oglio.

  “What happened?” Mario asked.

  “That bitch, Ms. Ugly-o, called me stupid,” I said. “She’s racist, man.”

  “First of all, don’t call her a bitch. And her name is Oglio.”

  “I don’t care, man. She’s racist,” I said.

  “What are you talking about? You’re more racist than she is. She cares about you. And she does not think you’re stupid.”