Prison Noir by Joyce Carol Oates
“Okay,” the man said.
The worker bent down below the desk and pulled out a roll of bedding. The blanket looked clean, new. There was even a pair of sheets. Nobody else had sheets.
When my name was finally called, I stepped forward to the desk.
“Anderson, Fredrick? That right?” the worker asked, reading from a sheet.
“Yes,” I said meekly.
“Here’s your band. Number 178822.”
“So I can use the phones now?”
“Yeah. You set up an account with someone outside, your woman or your family, whatever, and enter that number into the phone to make calls.”
“Okay,” I gulped.
The worker laid my package down on the desk. “Bedding. Reds. Soap and deodorant. Here ya go. Next: Willia—”
“Hey, man,” I interrupted.
“Yeah?”
My blanket was pink, dirty, and it had more holes than material. The clothes I could deal with, but I wanted a decent blanket to sleep with.
“Could I get a nicer blanket?”
“What do you got?”
“What?”
“You got any items?”
“Like what?”
“What do you mean like what? Do you got any soups or anything?”
“Soups? I just got here, what are you talking about?”
“This is your first time, huh? If you don’t have any soups, y’know, ramen noodle soups you bought off of commissary, I ain’t givin’ you shit. You’ll get a nice blanket when you have some items to sell. Sorry, man.”
“Are you serious? Look at this damn blanket!”
“You’re stuck like Chuck, my man.”
Before I could say anything more, a guard came out of one of the showers and pulled me in by the arm. I nearly dropped my shitty blanket on the ground, which obviously would have ruined it. In the shower room, the guard washed his hands after touching me and put on a pair of rubber gloves. The guy was a bodybuilder, well over six feet tall, with a beard and bald head.
“Put your shit on the counter behind you.”
I tried placing my stuff down, but there was a tray on the counter with cups full of piss. For many reasons, I didn’t want to touch the tray and move it; I tried putting my things down gently on the little space I had on the counter.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
“I was just trying not to—”
“Who said you could talk, dickhead?! I said put your shit down, not pretend your fucking bedding is a ticking bomb.”
“Sorry.”
“Strip, get in the shower, don’t screw around and play with your pecker; just get in and out.”
I did exactly as he said. I jumped into the shower, washed as quickly as possible with as much soap as possible, not knowing the next time I’d get to clean myself, and jumped out. Naked, dripping wet, I stood in front of the guard.
“All right, squat down like you’re takin’ a shit.”
I bent down, almost slipping on the floor. I caught myself and squatted down.
“Cough.”
I coughed. The guard looked at me. I hadn’t coughed well enough.
“Come on and COUGH.”
I did. It was better, louder.
“Now stand up, turn around, spread your ass.”
I did.
“Okay, turn back around, look at me. Open up your mouth with your hands, show me under your tongue, behind your teeth.”
I did.
“Great. Thanks. Welcome to the Allegheny County Jail, how did your ass taste?” The guard laughed and left.
Still wet, I put the red clothes on, as well as my shoes. I folded my old clothes and walked out of the shower room. A different worker called me up to the desk.
“Your clothes.”
“Here.” I handed him my suit jacket, shirt, and pants.
“What kind of shoes are you wearing?”
“Florsheims.”
“I have no idea what that means. Lemme see ’em.” He peered over the desk and down at my shoes. “Yeah, those are no good. Does that have a fucking heel? Ha ha! Why would you even try to wear those? Lemme have ’em.”
I took off my shoes and placed them on the desk. The worker pulled a pair of blue canvas-top slip-on shoes, size ten.
“I wear a size twelve.”
“We’re out. The only bo-bos we have right now are eights and tens, a few fifteens. I actually gave someone a pair of fifteens earlier.” He laughed to himself. “Well, all right, go out this door, stand over there with everyone else.”
The lot of us waited as the others received their bedding and showered. After the last one finished, we were taken into a small holding cell.
Many of the men pressed their faces against the dirty plexiglass, watching for movement of any kind. Some of them looked at the people in the cells next to us, which were outtake processing, the guys who were leaving the jail. Others watched for women. Most watched for guards.
“Fuck, man,” one said, “did anyone else have Housser in the showers?”
A bunch of people nodded. I nodded.
“He made me squat down and cough. I can’t stand that! He only does that to people he hates. I’ve been to the ACJ seven times, saw Housser five of ’em, and he still makes me do that shit! I’ve never just had to spread my cheeks and do the How’s your ass taste? thing; I’d rather do that than squat like a bitch.”
“He made me do both,” I chimed in, not thinking before I said it.
“Um. Wow. He must have really not liked you.”
Everyone laughed.
* * *
After intake processing, I went to the fourth level of the jail, the “Shoo,” where everyone went before being classified for different levels. I waited out my time, never leaving the cell I was in. I slept most of the day.
“Boy, you’d better start eatin’,” Chauncey, my cellmate, said while scribbling on the walls, “or ’least come out and take your tray so yous can give it to me.”
“I’ll see how I feel at dinner,” I replied.
Chauncey looked at me through soda-bottle glasses, huffed, and continued drawing on the walls. Then he dropped his pencil, began screaming and rubbing at his chest. Chauncey was a lunatic. He had been arrested for accidentally stealing someone’s wallet; the only reason he didn’t return it right away was because he was afraid the lawyer he had stolen it from might sue him. It was clearly a misunderstanding. Because Chauncey was insane, he always appeared in mental health court, in front of the same judge. This thing with the wallet was the fifth time the judge had seen him that year. Chauncey was gonna get knocked.
“Ahbubba cah! Cah!” Chauncey shouted while still tearing at his chest. I quickly got used to it. Laying in my bunk, I turned around toward the wall. The guards didn’t run over anymore because Chauncey screamed so much. Not even the suicide watchers bothered checking in.
After about ten minutes he was done. “I need a cigarette,” he said. He quietly left the cell and came back a few moments later with two other men. Our cell was the smoking cell; Chauncey allowed people to smoke there in exchange for a few hits of the cigarettes. If a guard saw smoke, it would ultimately come down on whoever’s cell it was. Chauncey was willing to take that risk, with me along for the ride even though I didn’t smoke their toilet-paper cigarettes.
“Yo, man, what’s up?” one of the men asked me. He was a tall, thin, black gang-star boy with tattoos on his face and neck. Chauncey had told me he wouldn’t be staying in the jail; he was going to be sent upstate in a few weeks. Triple homicide.
“Nothing much,” I responded, laying in my bunk as usual. Above my head, on the wall, someone had written, KILL ALL WHITES, with what looked like blood. The tattooed gang-star looked at me, then at the message on the wall.
“Shit, man,” he said. “That’s really rude.”
* * *
Low-risk inmates went to level one, which had three cellblocks, and higher-risk inmates went anywhere from level seven, which we
A few days on the block, I got the best job in the jail, “street gang.” For some reason this upset a lot of people. Street gang was a highly sought-after job. Instead of red uniforms, we wore dark green, working from a warehouse on the bottom level of the jail, next to the outtake area. We got to go outside, eat what the guards ate, and, at night, leave the cellblock to empty garbage. I spent all of my time sitting by the trash compactor, the “beast.” Everyone else sat in the warehouse, eating chips and watching TV. I liked being by myself, in the trash compactor room. It stank in there but nobody bothered me, which was nice; I even got used to the stink after a while. All of the other street gang workers thought I was insane.
“Hey, Fredrick,” one worker, Luther, said, holding a glue trap in his hand.
“Yeah?”
Luther grimaced. “Man, how the hell do you sit back here by the beast all day? Anyway, will you throw this in for me?”
I noticed the glue trap had a mouse stuck to it, still alive, struggling. “Sure, I’ll take care of it.”
“Thanks.”
Luther set the trap down on the ground and tried to hold his breath. I picked it up and pet the mouse; it calmed down slightly. The trash compactor room was also where county cars were parked to be washed. Every day I cleaned one or two of them, using the various soaps and sprays lined up in fifty-five-gallon drums. Some of the soaps were very harsh, could be used as floor stripper, and some weren’t as bad.
I went to the drum of yellow soap, which was very mild, and pumped it onto the mouse. Rubbing the little animal, massaging the soap all over it, the glue began to loosen. The mouse started to tear away from the trap; I helped, peeling it off gently, letting it bite into my glove to pull itself further.
“Hey, did you kill that mou— Whoa, whoa!” Luther yelled. “What are you doing?”
“I’m loosening the trap.”
“What? Why?”
“So he can get free,” I said, looking down at the mouse.
“The fuck is wrong with you? Those things have the fucking plague!”
“We’re the plague, Luther.”
“What?”
“We are the mice.”
“You’re as fucking crazy as everyone says!” Luther shouted.
“That’s fine.”
“Even if you let it go, that thing’ll die after a day.”
“What do you mean?”
“They get caught in traps and become frightened to death.” He laughed. “Their poor widdle hearts can’t take it,” he mocked.
“That’s fine too.”
Luther headed out, shaking his head.
The mouse pulled off of the trap completely. As it hung from my glove, I took it to the hose for washing the cars and dripped some water on it, rinsing it off. There was a small bend in the garage door and, on my hands and knees, I guided the mouse through. I watched it scurry away.
* * *
Despite what Luther or the workers may have thought, the guards who ran street gang liked me. I never kissed anyone’s ass, and for whatever reason, I didn’t have to. I kept to myself and worked as hard as I could. Nothing more. I had cut myself on used razors while emptying trash, helped clean out a flood in the jail for twenty-three straight hours, and went on road trips, hauling any usable scrap metal from the old county buildings that were being remodeled or destroyed. The county’s budget must have been tight or something.
It would usually be me and one other worker, plus a guard to escort us. Once we went to an unused forensics lab; there were bullets everywhere, and a big steel water tank. Another time we went to the old morgue. We had to scrap the remaining desks, lockers, operating tables, and scalpels, and try not to get hurt. The morgue was almost empty when we got there; the halls echoed with my steps. It felt as if eyes were always on me, hiding behind the walls. I would pick up a cleaver and throw it into a box, then toss a full box into a dumpster outside. It was tedious. There were four professional scrappers, hired by the county, who were helping us; they listened to the radio a lot and ate pizza. Only one of them, Vic, actually worked. He and I were together, ripping copper wire from the walls. I tried to talk to the guy, but he didn’t seem interested. Under his breath, between grunts, pulling at the wires, I heard him complain that he didn’t like working with gutter trash.
“Hey, Vic,” one of the other scrappers called out, laughing.
“Yeah, what’s up?” Vic answered, hitting sections of wall with a hammer to get at the wire, then widening the holes with the claw end.
“Why don’t you let the kid handle that?”
“Why? So he can take it back to the jail and strangle someone? I don’t get why the county makes them work with us. It’s fucking embarrassing,” he groaned.
“Aw, calm down, he’s right next to ya. After this you wanna go to the Goldmine? Two-for-one lap dances until six!”
“Damn straight.”
“Anderson, come on. Lunchtime,” Arnold said.
Vic and the other guy walked away.
Arnold, the guard, was a bulky, baby-faced New Jersey type. He was always joking. The other worker and I tried laughing at his jokes, but it was hard. In one of the examining rooms, he picked up two large knives from a table—the knives they cut people with. They looked like small machetes. He put them behind his back, in an X formation. He started to pull them out from behind him. “Hey, look! I’m like a ninja with these—aw, fuck!” It sliced right into one of his knuckles. There was still old blood on the blade when he did it. He ran off to clean the cut. He was so funny. We laughed. Ha ha ha.
Left alone, with nobody to help me (the other worker spent a lot of time in the bathroom, probably hiding things to steal), I grew bored. I threw gurneys down the marble steps because they were too long to fit in the elevator. It was a spectacular old building.
“This is a nice place . . .” the other worker said at some point.
I tried to smile. “Yeah. People are dying to get in.” He didn’t get it.
All around there were slides and Polaroids and a refrigerator that still had parts in it. I could hear Arnold screaming somewhere else in the building as the alcohol burned over. I had a few moments to look around. A lot of office furniture. The coolers were still cold. I noticed a few lucky pennies on the floor.
Eventually, I stumbled upon a chapel. I’d heard about it before, maybe on TV: the morgue had a chapel for the grief-stricken to pray after seeing the corpse of a loved one. I opened the door and looked inside. The air swirled. High, rounded ceilings led down to walls with stained-glass windows on the right and left, dusty light sleepily floating in.
Suddenly I felt my cheeks becoming wet. I needed to get the fuck out of this place; I decided that I wanted to pray. Even though I had no idea what I was praying to, this was most definitely a place for it. When I started to step inside, not paying attention, I nearly fell. I looked down and saw that the floorboards of the chapel were missing. My hand gripped the doorknob as I regained my footing. It would have been a nasty drop. I stared at my shirt, the word INMATE printed on the breast-pocket, thumping with the rapid beat of my heart.
If the fall wouldn’t have killed me, I thought, the scare still could.
A MESSAGE IN THE BREATH OF ALLAH
BY ALI F. SAREINI
Coldwater Correctional Facility (Coldwater, Michigan)
Only the fading light of day was visible through the barred window as I entered the cells at Coldwater. The shadows were silent.
“Turn the lights back on, Ali. I don’t like when my cell is dark. I’m not afraid, I just don’t like shadows.”
“I’ll turn them back on in a minute, Red. I need to ask you to do something for me. How are you feeling? Is the morphine patch working?”
“The pain isn’t too bad. I’m used to it. But
I’ve always found it ironic that prisoners feel comfort with darkness at the corners of their mind, but have a fear of the darkness that covers their eyes.
“Red, I need to ask you to deliver a message to Allah for me. Can you do that? I will include mercy upon you from the hellfire in my daily prayers if you take my message to Allah.”
“I’ve already told you I don’t believe in God. I’ve never seen, heard, or known Him. In my forty-four years in prison He has never sent me a message. If I believed in God I would send Him my own message. What I’ve seen, and know, is that only a hypocrite believes in God, and I’m not a hypocrite.”
“That’s the beauty of Allah, Red. You don’t have to believe in Him for His laws and rules to apply to you. When you die, you will go before Him and He will ask you about this life. I want you to give Him a message from me. Please, Red.” I’d been taking care of Red for more than a year. I believed he owed me, and what harm was there in delivering my message?
“Okay, fine. What would you like me to tell your Al Aah?”
“Thank you, Red. Maybe if I send Him my request through you, He will hear and help me. I want you to tell Allah that I’ve been praying for twenty-four years to leave prison, and He has not answered me!”
“Sure, no problem . . . Hey, what’re you doing? Put the pillow back under my feet and turn the lights on.”
“Don’t forget, Red. Give Allah my message. I really need you to do this. You’re my friend, so please don’t forget. I need Him to get me out of here.”
“Hey, what, au augh meem meem haal . . .” I covered Red’s face with the pillow and held him down as he feebly struggled. It wasn’t hard. Most older prisoners, after decades of imprisonment, have lost the will to live. The only reason they don’t take their own lives is to spite, by the high cost of imprisonment, the citizens of their state. However, Red’s true spite was for the families of victims, who had extracted this life and the next from him. He once said: “The victims took two lives from me when I only took one.” He truly believed he had been wronged.
Maybe the reason he didn’t struggle—much—was that he wanted me to give his life meaning. Of course, I didn’t ask him for his life’s meaning, but really, what meaning can forty-four years in prison generate in a universe that is indifferent to meaning?