Lockdown on Rikers (7 page)

As the truth crashed through, her thin shoulders heaved and her face turned the color of scarlet. “I'm going to prison,” she sobbed. “Prison! This can't be happening.”

“As awful as it feels,” I said gently, “it could have been a lot worse than this.”

“What could be worse!” she snapped.

“You could have died, Tiffany. You could have been raped—overdosed—murdered—you were vulnerable to a lot of terrible things, things that happen to people every single day.”

She sniffled and stared at the floor. “I'll tell you one thing—I'm never going to touch drugs again. Ever! I'm done!”

“That's a good beginning. What do you say you and I keep working on this?”

“I guess that would be okay,” she said, looking up at me as though seeing me for the first time. “Guess it couldn't hurt.”

“Good,” I smiled. “It's about time we got started.”

7

Just as my work was getting under way in earnest, my Rikers mission was threatened by an unlikely health crisis. Several cases of tuberculosis, a disease thought to be long eradicated in the United States, had cropped up in the city. When the source of the outbreak was traced to released inmates, Rikers Island was in a frenzy. An airborne virus, tuberculosis isn't a threat where fresh air circulates, but in the stagnant, germ-ridden confines of jail, TB had found a foothold. Overnight, Rikers Island, normally a vague footnote to the larger city scene, had jumped to center stage.

The resurgence of tuberculosis made front-page news, and on our morning drive to work, the three of us read aloud the
New York Times
's daily coverage of the outbreak. Our families were understandably alarmed, and Columbia was considering halting the Rikers program and pulling all the students off the island. Montefiore Hospital, the jail system's health-care vendor, responded swiftly and aggressively, adding TB testing to the battery of inmate medical exams.

But it wasn't only the inmates who were to be tested. Tables sprung up in the jails' lobbies, where officers and civilians stood by with rolled-up sleeves. Long lines of navy blue uniforms and white lab coats became a familiar sight, and like everyone else, Allison, Wendy, and I stood in line and waited. The test, called a PPD implant, is injected under the skin of the forearm. If the skin remains flat, there's been no exposure to TB. As the needle was slid under
the skin of my arm, the area reddened and a Band-Aid was placed over the puncture wound. For the next few days I couldn't stop checking it, fearful of a rising mass of angry tissue. But the redness disappeared and the skin remained flat. I had not been exposed! Nor had Wendy or Allison. In fact, all the Mental Health staff tested negative.

That news was reassuring, as was the medical department's insistence that the TB cases were isolated and few, and that contracting the disease was highly unlikely. Jailhouse seminars on disease transmission were scheduled daily, where questions were answered and fears quieted. Columbia stepped back cautiously, as did our families. Still, just the idea of tuberculosis was frightening, and the three of us decided on stringent precautions. To keep our workspace air as fresh as possible, the small windows in our conference room would remain open. We were into November now, and with winter approaching, the next few months would be spent in coats. It would be semimiserable, but well worth it. Not everyone, however, was appreciative of our novel strategy. “What are you trying to do,” demanded Officer Overton, “freeze out the entire clinic?”

“We're trying to avoid TB.”

“Avoid TB, huh? What about pneumonia? Ever hear of that? That's what you're going to get, and that's what you're going to give everybody else! I'm closing this door—if you want to freeze to death, that's your choice!”

But before shutting the door, he took the opportunity to sound off on a few other matters. “Every year, you students come in here thinking you're going to help these inmates. Let me tell you something—they see you coming, they just play you!” And then, looking directly at me: “Did Millie Gittens get her sleeping pills? That's all she wants,” he taunted, slamming the door before I could respond.

Overton's impression of the inmates was typical of his fellow officers, and frankly not far from most people's opinions of the incarcerated. One evening after work while the three of us waited for the route bus, a couple of police officers exiting the jail offered us a ride. When we described our work, they said, “You mean you
actually
talk to these skels?
”
Skels
is the term the police routinely use to characterize drug addicts, the homeless, the mentally ill, the down and out. Behind bars, these people are bodies; on the streets, they're skels. Try as we did to defend our jailhouse mission, their only response was a rolling of the eyes and knowing smirks. But their opinions aside, my interest in this work was only deepening. The skels they referred to were Lucy Lopez, lying on the edge of a subway platform; Annie Tilden, lost to a terrifying mental illness; and Tiffany Glover, a scrawny, delinquent mother. Not pretty pictures. But while their behavior may have hit the societal bottom, they were still human beings with the inherent dignity of all life, and with the ever-present possibility for change. And changes they were making. Lucy was battling back against drug addiction, Annie was adjusting to a radical brain change, and Tiffany was tuning in to a dawning awareness. Still, Overton's dig about Millie Gittens did sting—probably because in my heart I knew he was right.

The brighter news, though, was that Millie's mind-set was soundly outnumbered by those who wished to remain drug-free and were prepared to do whatever it took to put drugs behind them and get their lives on track. And as these more motivated women came to their sessions and shared the intimate details of their lives—of the degradation of prostitution, of helplessness in the jaws of addiction, of surviving a fringe-type existence, and of humiliation in the face of scorn and judgment—I felt privileged to be their confidante.

Most of my nine cases were from general population, with a few from the Mental Observation Unit. It was through my work on the MO that I was getting a solid grounding in the nightmare of mental illness. Ever since our first session, when I happily realized that Annie Tilden wasn't readying to throttle me, a bond had developed between us. When I arrived for our sessions, she was no longer in her cell, but waiting for me by the staircase. Together we bounded up to “our office.” Despite her insistence that she always took her meds, the daily compliance report showed otherwise. “Well, it
seems
like I take them all the time,” she said. I challenged her to do better and we made a contest out of it. And as I became her trusted counselor,
Annie offered me a glimpse into the tormented world of schizophrenia. “Sometimes,” she told me, “I'd be lying in bed and a person's head would pop up out of the mattress! And other times this same head would pop up out of my stomach. Now I
know
that heads don't pop out of mattresses and stomachs, but I'm telling you, Miss B, the heads were right there, plain as my hand,” she said, holding out her palm. “And it was so scary—terrifying. And the TV? When the news was on, I just
knew
Dan Rather was talking to me—so I would talk back to him. People would run away, but I'm telling you,
it was so real.
Sometimes now, when I'm watching the news and I see Dan Rather, I just shake my head.”

I thought about how frightening Annie's pretreatment life must have been. Contrary to popular belief, schizophrenia is not a “split personality,” but rather a disturbance in perception, often resulting in auditory, and sometimes visual, hallucinations. I find the very word itself,
schizophrenia,
scary. A cruel condition, it renders the afflicted unable to discern the real from the hallucinated. With such impairment in basic functioning, the schizophrenic can't move past futile attempts at organizing the brain. Without treatment, anything resembling a normal life is impossible. I thought schizophrenia must be a living hell and had all the more compassion for Annie Tilden and the legions like her who struggle with this horrific affliction.

* * *

So far, all of the women I'd met had stories and plights that I could, in some way, empathize with. Honestly, they didn't seem like “real criminals” to me.

But with the assignment of a new case—Rhonda Reynolds, one of the few Rose Singer inmates charged with murder—that was about to change. “A little more of a challenge for you,” Janet said.

Janet had already done the initial evaluation and suggested we meet with Rhonda in her house. As we stood in her cellblock waiting for her to emerge, I was chewing on my pen. Janet had been
so casual about the murder charge; I supposed that as a jailhouse veteran, very little fazed her. But I didn't have long to fret. An upper cell door popped open and a wiry woman glowered down at us, her hardness softened by an oversized fuzzy blue headband. As she descended, her irritated demeanor transformed to that of a debutante making a grand entrance. Taking her time, she slowly made her way over to us. She gave me a coy little smile and looked squarely up at Janet.

“Hello, Rhonda,” said Janet. “I want you to meet Miss Buser. She's a student intern and I'd like the two of you to start working together.”

“Uh-huh,” said Rhonda in a low, raspy voice.

Inching closer to Janet, I smiled at Rhonda. In turn, she sized me up. “Yeah, you can call me.”

Gee, thanks!

With that, Rhonda Reynolds turned away and faded back up the stairs.

“She seems like a tough customer,” I commented, resuming my pen chewing.

“Not as tough as she seems,” said Janet. “She's facing a lot of time upstate, but she's in complete denial about the trouble she's in. She may be someone you'll work with for just a few sessions, or she could be long-term. Either way, she'll be here long enough for you to find out—it'll take forever for her case to resolve. The wheels of justice move very slowly, Mary, especially for serious charges.”

A few days later, Rhonda Reynolds arrived at the clinic for our first session. Along with the fuzzy blue headband, she wore her hair in little girl pigtails. Giggling loudly in the waiting area, she was the center of attention.

“Your client is here,” Overton announced, rolling his eyes.

As we settled in, I wasn't exactly sure how to begin, but I needn't have worried. Rhonda Reynolds got right to the point. “I'm here for murder—you believe that? I didn't murder anybody. Let me tell you what happened. A bunch of us were hanging out on the corner, just messing around, and this girl jumps on my back. Everybody's
laughing, but it wasn't funny. I
can–not
have anyone crowding me like that. So, I yell at her to get off. When she didn't, I pull out my handy knife and cut her—not hard, just to let her know I wasn't kidding around. When I saw the blood, I told her to wait while I got some peroxide and a Band-Aid. But did she wait? Nooooh! She decided to go home and bleed to death along the way. I told her to wait, but she did what she wanted. Not
my
fault she died.”

With that, Rhonda Reynolds sat back and probed my face for a reaction.

She had to be kidding. Her story was ridiculous. Obviously, she'd killed this poor woman. But her denial was rock-solid. If I challenged her, any hope of a relationship would have ended then and there. About all I could think to say was, “Do you always carry a knife?”

“Yes, I carry a knife!” she growled. “Where I live, you need a knife! Being a White girl and all, you wouldn't understand that!”

Ignoring the racial jab, I said, “It must be hard to not feel safe.”

“It is! Everybody carries something—you have to! And now I'm in this place and all I feel is stress. Stress, stress, stress! What you need to do is get me sleeping pills.”

To this, I explained the department policy, but didn't quite have the nerve to pull out our handout, “Natural Techniques to Fall Asleep.” Not this time.

She leaned forward and banged her fists on the desk. “You get me sleeping pills!” And then, pointing both index fingers at me, “That's
your job!
”

She was intimidating, but I held my ground. “I'm sorry, but I can't help you there.”

“Well, then, why'm I here?” she said, slumping back.

“What happens when you try to fall asleep?” I asked.

“I have nightmares, that's what. Okay? Nightmares that wake me up.”

“What are the nightmares about?”

She hesitated for a moment, then said: “Pools of blood. Okay? Happy now?”

When I asked if the pools of blood meant anything in her waking life, she became withdrawn and refused to answer any further questions. Not nearly as upbeat as she'd been when she'd arrived, the session ended and she flounced out of the clinic, but not before I asked if we could make a follow-up appointment. “I'll think about it!” she snapped.

I had my doubts as to whether Rhonda Reynolds would return, but when I called her the following week, she arrived promptly. In a rerun of the first session, she demanded sleeping pills, referring to the nightmares. When I again tried to probe, she abruptly switched gears, launching into tales of an idyllic childhood filled with birthday parties, Easter baskets, and warm family gatherings. Of course, none of this added up to the woman sitting on Rikers Island charged with murder. But she had her own reasons for portraying this happy image, her own reasons for denying she'd killed someone. I didn't know where any of this was going, but it seemed to me that despite her outward gaiety, Rhonda Reynolds was deeply troubled, and for that very reason I was actually hopeful that we might make some progress. Emotional turmoil, uncomfortable as it may be in the moment, is an impetus for change. Even twelve-step programs talk about “hitting bottom” before any real change can occur. I had the feeling that, for Rhonda Reynolds, the bottom was getting closer.

* * *

If emotional angst prompts change, then its absence may have at least partially explained my stalled relationship with Millie Gittens. Despite having lost custody of five children and now being behind bars, which for most people would have been hitting bottom—many times over—when Millie Gittens put her head on the pillow at night, she slept soundly.

As much as I hated to admit it, Millie and I weren't making any progress. She remained fixated on sleeping pills, and that was when she bothered to show up. She rarely made her appointments,
showing up just often enough to keep the busy Camille Baxter placated. Determined to make this relationship work, I would storm down to the nursery, only to find her sprawled out on the couch, protesting that she couldn't find anyone to watch Calvin, or that she'd gotten mixed up on dates and times. Always an excuse.