Fish: A Memoir of a Boy in Man's Prison (4 page)

3

The Absence of Drama

As I was leaving for court in the morning, Rick came out of the house and called to me.

Sharon started to say something, but stopped herself. Instead, she got into the car and started it. Rick handed me a carton of cigarettes, and Sharon looked away.

My brother and I stared at each other for a long moment, neither of us knowing what to say. It had all been said before. He looked down at his feet and back up again. As usual, he was trying to hold it together. None of us were anygood at emotional stuff.

"Remember what I told you," he said. It was his last piece of advice. "No matter what happens in there, Little Brother. It'll be your memories that hold you together."

I looked at him and nodded.

"Up here," he said, thumping the side of my head. "And in here, " be gently pressed my chest.

"Not more than four years," the judge ordered, "and no less than two and a half." He scribbled in the folder and passed the file to the clerk seated on his left.

"You are hereby remanded to the Michigan Department of Corrections."

I was disappointed that I didn't get a May God have mercy on your soul, or even a May you rot in hell final admonishment. It all seemed so horribly lacking in drama. I was just another number. The bailiff was calling the next case before the Sheriff deputy could get his handcuffs on my wrist. The judge didn't look up at me. There was a huge stack of manila folders and dark brown files in front of him. It was sentencing day, and the court had a full docket. They were using an abandoned wing of the Wayne County Hospital as overflow to the congested courts in downtown Detroit.

I looked over at Sharon, she was blowing her nose into a hankie as she turned and walked out. Our eyes didn't meet, so I wasn't sure if there were tears. Dad couldn't get off work that day, or perhaps he couldn't bear towe knew I was going to prison.

The deputy took me into the back, through a large set of double doors, to a holding cell. A long metal bench was attached to the wall. He unlocked my handcuffs and ordered me to take everything from my pockets and place it onto a table. I removed my wallet and a pack of gum from my right front pocket. I had three quarters and two dimes in the other. I took a pack of cigarettes and a green lighter from my shirt and placed it onto the table next to the carton my brother had given me that morning. He said they would hold me at the county jail a few days until I was transferred to the state prison.

The deputy told me to remove my belt and shoe laces, so I couldn't hang myself, and to place my hands on the wall while he patted me down. He unlocked the cell, ordered me in, and closed the barred door with a clunk. The vibrations echoed off the walls. I tried to ignore the metallic sound of the turning tumblers and the thud of the locking bolt.

I fumbled for a cigarette and asked the deputy for a light, not knowing how long it would be before he'd be back again. He kept my lighter, which was considered contraband, and gave me a book of matches from his shirt pocket and told me to keep them.

"Thanks," I said. My hand slightly shook as I took the matches.

Behind him, a deputy entered with another prisoner. As each new inmate was placed inside the cell, I tried harder not to think about the sound of the turning bolt that slammed into the steel jam I'd gotten myself into. It had been almost a year since I was arrested for sneaking into a hotel room at my after school job at The Airport Inn.

Using a stolen passkey, a buddy and I had gone to the hotel to find an empty room to sleep in. We had been out late drinking and didn't want to go home and risk waking our parents. Sharon was such a light sleeper that when I was younger, she could hear cereal being poured into a bowl and she'd wake up screaming. She made me stand in the corner or kneel at the foot of her bed until she was ready to get up. So if I just didn't go home at night, no one would have cared that I wasn't there.

I was supposed to get probation, but since I was out on bail at the time I was caught for another crime, the judge wouldn't honor my plea bargain. Part of the deal with probation is that you can't get into any more trouble. So I blew it, before I was even sentenced.

My lawyer said, "Don't worry about it. When you come back for the Photo Mat, the judge will probably give you the same amount of time as he did on this sentence."

I guess the biggest problem I had with what he had to say, was the word probably. I was worried about it, because everything was happening so quickly. He was a court-appointed attorney, and so far, things hadn't worked out exactly as he said they would. But that wasn't his fault, he was quick to point out, since I was the one who had gotten arrested again.

"Trust me," he said. "You'll go to a minimum-security camp, and with good time, you'll be back on the streets in no time."

My brother was helpful, in terms of coaching me on how to carry myself once I got to prison, but he wouldn't come to court for any of my hearings because he had warrants out for his arrest involving unpaid child support and traffic tickets. So I had been mostly alone. At least Sharon came for my sentencing. She had to drive past the courthouse on her way to work.

The more crowded it got inside the holding pen, the more I realized how must worse my situation was than I'd ever imagined. There was no way out of it now.

Trust me, the lawyer said. He was probably right.

4

Who's Angrier than Who?

When we heard Dad's horn outside, I said to my sister Connie, "I looked the last time. It's your turn to look."

We were living at Grandpa's house, on Cook Street, and I was still in the first grade.

Connie walked over to the window and slowly lifted the blinds.

"Is she there?" I asked.

Connie dropped her head and sighed.

We were hoping that Dad's new girlfriend, Sharon, wasn't there or that her two boys, at least, would be off with their own Dad.

"Time to go,"Mom yelled from the bathroom, where she was putting on makeup. "Tell your Dad if he doesn't pay me the child-support he owes-he's notgetting you kids next weekend."

"Don't tell him," Connie whispered.

After my parents were divorced, we went out to Camp Dearborn with my Dad, Sharon, and her two boys, Bobby and Billy. Bobby was my age, now almost eight, and Billy was a year younger. We no longer had money for things like crepe paper costumes, ice cream, and french fries at the canteen. I stopped competing in the Talent Show. It wasn't the same going there by myself. We ate our meals at the trailer that Dad had rented (the Bank repossessed the big Marshmallow), and Sharon even washed out our straws to save extra money. Bobby said I couldn't sing anyway, and when I tried to argue with him, he asked if I wanted to fight about it. Ricky was away at Boys Camp for what would be his last time.

Connie said Bobby was mean because his dad used to beat him. I didn't care. I wished I could've beaten him too, but he was tough and mean like his mother.

Sharon and I didn't get along well at all. Particularly since I told her what my mom had told me to say. "My momma says she don't want some old broad hitting me! She said she's my momma and if there's any spanking to be done-she'll do it -NOT YOU!"

I stood there with my fists balled at the sides, matching her stare glare for glare.

I didn't know it was possible to see anyone get as angry as Sharon got. Part of what made her mad was that my mom was actually older than her.

Sharon's eyes turned as red as her face as she let out a low rumble that seemed to shake the entire trailer. "Dale," she yelled, back to where my Dad was sleeping. "You better come get him, before I kill him."

Bobby came running in, and Sharon yelled at him to go back outside.

I was terrified to say anything else, so I just stood there trembling, waiting for Dad.

Ricky had been living with them for a couple of months, but Connie and I hadn't been told we were moving in with them for good until just then. Mom said later, she didn't have the heart to tell me, and Dad just thought we had known about it.

Mom couldn't handle us alone anymore. She was studying for her GED so she could get a job with the phone company. In the meanwhile, she worked as a cocktail waitress at the Dearborn Lounge and always came home late. When Dad offered to take us-Mom said OK.

Sharon was the exact opposite of my mom. She screamed and yelled and always seemed mad about something, especially when Dad disappeared for days at a time. Connie said Dad was still heartbroken over Mom's affair. And that Sharon's ex-husband used to beat Sharon up as well. "That's why she's mad all the time," Connie said.

I guess in fairness to Sharon, I was like any other young kid in my situationshe was replacing my mother, so I hated her and I never cut her a break. It probably skewed my perceptions of her.

Dad still only came to camp on weekends, and most of that time was spent sleeping. At night, he sat around the campfires with my aunts and uncles laughing and drinking. "You kids go off and play," they'd say. They didn't like us hanging around when there was so much for us to do there. The camp was ideal for them, because they didn't need a babysitter. There were now twenty-eight of us kids, counting Bobby and Billy and my variOUS Cousins.

At the paddleboat lake, there were all types of boats you could rent for a quarter, and each family got two free for every week they stayed in the park. I loved the ones that were shaped like a bicycle. It straddled two pontoons and was faster than all of the others. I used to get on it and pedal as hard as I could, pretending that my hat would catch wind, like in the Flying Nun, and carry me away from there.

I just wanted to be back home with my mom.

5

Chain Reactions

On Saturday nights, the camp held teenage dances on the tennis courts next to the canteen. Only a few of my cousins were old enough to go, but that didn't stop the rest of us. We hid on the hill and watched from the shadows.