Rikers High (2 page)

At the courthouse, we were put into the pens. You pick up a lot of skills in jail, and in the pens you need them all. The pens are big cells, with maybe fifty inmates inside of each one. That's where everybody waits until their case gets called. There's an open toilet, a sink, and benches bolted to the floor so nobody throws them. The COs in charge aren't interested in what you do because they don't have to live with you for long. They don't really want to come inside and stop anything, either. It's up to you to take care of yourself. As long as you come out in one piece to see the judge, they did their job.

Adolescents are mixed with adults in the pens, and guys that fly the same colors stay together and act tight. By eleven o'clock, the COs serve you a slice of bologna between two pieces of bread for lunch. Inmates call them “cop-out sandwiches” because you'd be willing to confess to anything just to not eat that crap. After a while, the floor of the pen gets covered with bologna and stale bread.

I tried to look hard, with my chest puffed out and eyes squinting. I was as worried about the next few hours as I was about my case.

Some guys had bullied a weak kid over in the corner into doing the pogo—jumping up and down in the toilet on one foot in his shoes and socks. It's mostly the adolescents who do stuff like that because they want to show other kids how tough they are. The only time an adult will step to an adolescent is if the kid is acting real stupid. And when adults fight, there's no playing around. They'll pull burners quick and try to stab each other to death.

The dude standing next to me was practicing hand signs, and I thought he was down with one of the gangs. He saw me watching him and said, “This is what's gonna help me beat my case.”

Then he ran down the whole show for me.

“All the judges are Masons,” he said. “If they see you throwing up the right signs, they won't find you guilty. That's why you don't see white people going through the system. Most of them are Masons, and they know the signs. But there are black Masons, too. Even a white judge knows that.”

I just nodded. You never want to argue with a dude when he has his hopes riding on something crazy like that. Not while he's waiting to see the judge and is all uptight.

There were two kids starting to jaw in the corner of the pen. They were fighting over which outfit ran their neighborhood, and it was starting to get heavy. They both had on their best ice grills, and one of them had backup.

“You're talkin' to me like I'm some sort of punk,” said the one standing alone.

He put his fists up and stood with his back to the bars, so no one could yoke him from behind. But that crew had him surrounded and other inmates in that part of the pen started to move away.

It was about to be high drama when an officer came up to the bars and shouted, “All right boys and
girls
, listen up! Fuller, Douglas, Stokes, and Wallace, let's go!”

“That's me, Martin Stokes,” I told the officer, as his key rattled the lock on the door.

I
hadn't seen my legal aid lawyer since the last time I went to court, fifty-one days ago. I'd called her plenty since then, and so did Mom. But she was never there and wouldn't get back to us. That happened so many times we got to know the message on her answering machine by heart and would tear it to pieces on visits.

One time, I just screamed “Forty!” into the phone and hung up.

I'd only met her five minutes before I saw the judge on my first trip to court. Until she said my name, I had no idea she was my lawyer. She was young and black, and I thought she was the girl or sister of somebody on trial. Then I noticed the briefcase in her hand.

“My name is Gale Thompson,” she said, inside of a small conference room. “I've been assigned to represent you in this matter.”

Before she even asked me what happened, she started to explain how I was guilty and what kind of deal she could get me.

They had me for “steering”—telling an undercover cop where to buy weed in my neighborhood. I told her I did it, but that it was really a setup. How the dude who walked up to me was diesel, and I was afraid not to tell him anything or he might start to beef with me. I told her that she had to tell my side of it, too, before I got anywhere near calling myself guilty.

We argued back and forth for a while. Then she just threw her hands up and sent a note to the judge saying we weren't ready. He didn't like that, and I had to wait almost ten weeks to come back. That's when I thought Mom would do anything to make my bail. But she didn't have the money and had to worry about supporting my sisters and Grandma.

I didn't see Miss Thompson again until the next time my case came up.

“I hope you're through with all that nonsense and we can get down to the business of getting you home,” she said. “I've got a lot of cases to handle, and this one is cut and dry.”

By then I'd seen lots of kids go home on more serious charges. I just wanted to be done with jail and to get my ass out of this stinking parade. So I kept my mouth shut. But the judge got caught up in some case that went to trial, and I never even made it into the courtroom that day.

Now I was glad to see Miss Thompson. I was happy to get out of the pen before it exploded and finally go home. The CO took me to a side room where she was sitting at a table, studying her papers.

“I've arranged for you to go home and get off this public support.” she said. “The assistant DA has agreed to probation, but the judge is out sick and we have to come back in a couple of weeks, on the nineteenth.”

My brain just shut down for a second, and it was like I was frozen stiff.

I couldn't believe it. I was going back to Rikers Island.

Couldn't they get another judge? Couldn't the DA just send me home?

I was tired of getting shuffled around, and she was the only one in the room to hear it. So I started to bark at her.

“This is 'cause of you, right? 'Cause you're a miserable shit lawyer!”

Miss Thompson took a deep breath.

“I saw your mother in the courtroom,” she said, in an even tone. “I gave her the news, and she was very upset. I tried my best to calm her down and let her know I have a handle on it—that you'll be home soon.”

But I wouldn't cut her an inch of slack, and stared her down.

Miss Thompson stood up and started stuffing papers into her briefcase.

“Oh, yeah, and thanks for all those times you never picked up the phone or called my mother back!”

“I don't like the system much either, Martin. The truth is, you get what you pay for,” she popped off. “The city picks up this bill. I represent over fifty clients like you at the same time,
all
brothers or Hispanics. It's delicatessen-style justice in here. Take a number and wait. That's how it works.”

Then Miss Thompson walked out the door and the CO came back inside to get me.

B
y the time I got back to the pen, it had cooled way down. Still, the dudes who were being sent back to the Island weren't happy. And anyone who'd got off light wasn't going to smile too much over it. Not in there.

Sitting on one of the benches meant you'd have to move if somebody who was cranked up wanted your seat, or that you'd have to fight to keep it. I wasn't interested in any of that shit. So I stood up, hoping to get put on one of the next buses out.

A guy in a Nike sweatshirt was shadowboxing in the corner, trying to keep himself together. He was breathing hard and starting to really sweat. He'd rest with his hands wrapped tight around the bars, like they were around somebody's throat. Then he'd start up again to fight another round.

Those two kids who were ready to mix it up before stood at opposite ends of the pen now. But I sensed that any little spark in between could set things off again.

Within a few minutes the COs called out close to twenty of us, and I got shackled to the one who wanted to take on that whole crew by himself.

We were among the last pairs onto the bus and were sitting close to the front. He spent half the trip glaring back at two kids from that crew who were shackled together.

Some big dude right behind us was pissed off. He kept cursing about how his own boys did him dirty in court, testifying against him.

“I'll kill all those bastards, and the DA. I'll blaze somebody right here, too. Don't think I won't,” he warned, with his voice starting to crack.

You've got to watch your back when somebody gets desperate and blind mad like that. The CO was all over that dude, and I thought he might even lock him up in the cage.

“I'll put my foot up your ass if you don't stop!” screamed the CO. “Now shut up!”

“Fuck everybody!” the dude said.

While the CO was busy with him, my partner mouthed something to his fan club in the back. And I saw them steaming over what he said.

The bus passed through the first checkpoint and started over the bridge to Rikers. The sun pushed through the windows and struck me dead square in the face. It was shining off the bay, too. And I tried to pretend that I was heading to Rock-away Beach instead of jail. I even remembered a day as a little kid when Pops took me fishing there and caught a horseshoe crab by the tail with his bare hands. Only that memory got bounced from my brain by the first good bump we hit.

That damn bridge always seems longer when you're going back. But you'd rather have it go on forever than drop you off on Rikers Island.

Getting off the bus, that big dude broke down bawling. I guess from the stress. The CO must have taken him for a real herb, because he slapped him in the head as we were walking across the yard and said, “Shut up, crybaby!”

But that dude turned man again in a hurry. He tackled the CO on the spot, dragging the inmate he was chained to with him.

The other officers in the receiving yard ran over to help. That's when those kids from the back saw their chance.

They came at my partner, and I got caught in the middle. I'd been through enough that day and was ready to fight. But it was nearly impossible being chained to somebody. It was like two sets of Siamese twins trying to beat on each other, only that other pair was working with the same brain.

Before I got hit, I saw the spiderweb tattoo on one of their necks and the light reflecting off the burner in his hand. I threw my arms up, swinging back as hard as I could. Then I felt the side of my face get warm, and I tried to touch it with my cuffed hands.

The two of them jumped back into the crowd of inmates. I tried to go after them, but I got pushed down by COs.

I could feel the blood between my cheek and the ground.

That tattooed kid had cut me across the face with a razor.

The sharp sting started to pulse high on my cheek. Then it went racing down my entire body, like I'd been sliced from head to toe. Suddenly, I was paralyzed with fear, and I was too shook to even cry.

I
nside the clinic, COs were taking Polaroids of my face and asking me for a statement. Only I was in too much pain to even think about talking.

Then a doctor came at me wearing a mask and gloves, saying, “You'll barely feel this.” When I woke up from that needle he gave me, the right side of my face was totally numb. And in the metal frame of the bed next to mine, I could see the bandages taped from the top of my skull to the bottom of my jaw.

I couldn't keep track of all the fears running through my brain—about what I was going to look like, how nasty a scar I would have, if the cut would ever heal. I kept closing my eyes, hoping everything would go away. But it was just blood-soaked bandages, white curtains, and inmates handcuffed to beds every time I opened them again.

I'd seen bad stitching on inmates before. That's because doctors on Rikers are usually just starting out, or couldn't keep a good job in a hospital. So they come to work in jail where nobody can fire them.

I'd heard lots of kids talk about getting their stitches fixed up right out in the world. They say how they're going to sue the doctor, or the jail for letting them get cut. Now there I was, seventeen years old, and I wasn't sure if my face was going to look like a jigsaw puzzle. I just knew I didn't want to see any more than I could in the frame of that bed.

An officer wearing a blue Windbreaker and holding a clipboard stepped to me. He closed the curtains behind him, like the dudes in the other beds wouldn't be able to hear us after that. He was wearing street clothes, and if it wasn't for the badge hooked to his belt, I could have sworn he was a social worker.

“How you feelin', Martin?” he asked, reading my name off a medical chart.

I didn't have an answer for him.

“It's criminal what somebody did to you,” he said. “What are you gonna do to set this right?”

It didn't take him long to get into his rap. He was with the squad that tracks gangs through the jails, and his favorite saying was, “Just tell.” No matter what was wrong, it could get fixed easy. “Just tell.”

“Never mind
you
,” he went on. “Some gangbanger put your mother through even worse pain. You're a minor, so we had to call and tell her what happened. You
know
she was upset. She probably won't get any sleep tonight because of what some punk did. Don't let him do your mother like that,” he said. “Just tell.”