Rikers High (6 page)

The dude sitting to my right had a tattoo of a cross on his neck. In my mind, I imagined it was that spiderweb on the kid who'd cut me. And for a few seconds, I gripped that pencil tight inside my fist, till that wave of anger passed.

House COs only give out pencils about the size of your thumb for writing letters. Even the pens you buy in commissary come without a hard, plastic cover. They just sell you the metal point and the tube filled with ink. So if you tried to stick someone with that, it would bend before it ever broke skin.

Ms. Armstrong was a combination CO and housemother. Inmates want this kind of women officer because when something breaks down, like the hot water, you can put it in their ear that it's not right. They're usually real sensitive about kids being locked up and not getting services. They'll keep dialing the phone till somebody comes out and fixes what's wrong.

She was black, with a round face and big hips. Most kids had a mother or aunt who looked and acted just like her.

“I got a son in junior high right now,” said Ms. Armstrong, reading the test over our shoulders. “I help him with his homework all the time.”

“He ever been locked up?” a kid asked.

“I didn't say I busted his ass, did I?” she came back.

Then Ms. Armstrong caught somebody just filling in the blanks without even looking at the questions.

“You want people to think you're stupid, boy?” she said, slapping him on the back of the head.

Halfway through, Demarco walked in and told us to put our pencils down. The assistant giving the test got all nervous about it and went to the door to watch for who might be coming. I guess he didn't want to get in trouble for letting Demarco interrupt us.

“Look, even the teachers got to watch the door in jail,” cracked Ms. Armstrong. “Only it's not the COs they're fearful of; it's the principal.”

“I'm Demarco Costa,” he said. “But what's really important is who all of you are. So let me hear your names.”

Then Demarco pointed to us one by one, and kids said their names.

When Ritz said his new tag, everyone from that Sprung #3 storeroom broke up laughing.

Demarco looked at him funny and said, “Is Ritz your
last
name?”

“No, somebody called me a cracker. Then dudes decided I would be a Ritz because of my obvious style,” he explained, with Demarco grinning from ear to ear. “But my real name is Walter.”

When it was my turn, I said, “Forty.”

“I might as well call you
table
or
chair
,” Demarco said. “I'm not interested in knowing you like that.”

I didn't know what to say back.

Then the next kid took his turn and it continued down the line.

I felt like I'd missed out on something good.

Demarco said that the test wasn't all a waste of time, and that if we wanted to get put in the right class level or try for a GED, we should take it for real.

“I know it's not easy to think about school when you're locked up,” he said. “But you want to show people, like a judge, that you're serious about what you do. And you don't want to fall behind everybody your age to get things, like a good job to support yourself and your family.”

After hearing that, lots of kids were looking at Demarco like he was too good to be true for this place.

Demarco wasn't white, but he wasn't dark enough to be black either. Kids asked him what he was and he answered, “I'm a teacher.”

The assistant started flapping his arms, like a bird that's about to take off, and came running back from the door. We picked our pencils up and everyone got quiet.

Demarco was looking up at the ceiling when a thin, middle-aged black woman in high heels and a dress that hung down to just above her bony knees walked into the mess hall and said, “Good morning, Mr. Costa.”

She looked us up and down and said, “I'm Ms. Jackson, the principal here. Let's go over a few basic rules. When you're in class, you are to be respectful of”—
blah . . . blah . . . blah
.

I wanted to tell Demarco my name was Martin. But he moved behind the principal while she was talking, giving us all a thumbs-up before he slipped out the door.

W
hen school finished that day the COs took us shopping. A house never gets more excited than when it's going to commissary. Everybody has a list of what they want to buy, and it almost feels like Christmas.

We deuced it up and marched across the yard into the main building. The COs who work the corridor stopped us at the first gate.

The main corridor is maybe two city blocks long, with iron gates every hundred feet or so. This way if something big ever jumps off, the COs in the control booth can close the different gates with an electric switch and keep the fighting pinned down to just one area.

We were waiting because there was traffic up ahead. The corridor is like a highway. There's a line running down the center and you always walk on the right side, no matter which way you're headed.

Even though it happens, COs never want two houses to pass each other in the hall. Even when you're marching right up against the wall, there's only four or five feet between you and the dudes on the other side. If the two houses had bad blood and wanted to fight, there'd be no stopping it. The COs playing the centerline would get caught in the middle, and most inmates would enjoy that.

Sprung #2 was on its way back from shopping. They were all smiles, holding big paper bags filled with commissary.

“We bought all the food there was,” said one of their kids. “Nothing left for you Sprung-bunnies. Sold out.”

But everybody knew better than to take him serious.

One of the kids coming back must have just transferred over from Sprung #3. He held his bag up high and dropped his head behind it. Only some of our dudes recognized him and began blasting his name.

Brick tried to put the bite on him for whatever he owed right there.

“Pay up now, sucka,” he snapped.

The kid got all shook. But Officer Carter wouldn't have any of that crap in the corridor.

House COs can get real tight in the halls and don't want to be shown up by their inmates in front of other officers standing post.

“Let me hear one more word and I'll turn this house back around!” barked Carter. “Do not disrespect me!”

For now, Brick backed off.

But I didn't take him for the kind that turned the other cheek.

We got to commissary, and I filled out an order sheet. I had only three bucks in my account. Mom filled it for me when she had a few extra dollars. I got a handful of beef sticks with it. They fit into my pocket, and nobody except the kid behind me knew what I'd bought.

I never liked beef sticks much until I got locked up. You can heat them over a match and it's like having a hot meal anytime you want.

Brick carried two big bags in each arm back to the Sprungs. I watched him unload his commissary while his goons made collections. He had so much shit to put away that he had to rent a bucket from another kid.

Barnett and Luis were walking around with a list of what kids owed. They even checked the receipts of what kids bought, just to make sure that no one was holding out on them.

Kids go to somebody like Brick to juggle because they don't have any money in their account.

It's usually two for one on the straight juggle, paying back twice what you borrowed. But if a shark like Brick has something dudes are really desperate for, or the house gets burned from commissary and nobody can shop, he can get even more.

That night, Barnett and Luis lumped up some kid in the bathroom. They beat him with wooden scrub brushes, swinging them over their heads inside of sweat socks so that the force coming down would be even harder. The kid was the cousin of Harris, the dude from Sprung #2 who'd beat Brick out of commissary. It was a lesson for anybody that wanted to get too slick.

Sometimes a herb gets lumped and doesn't tell the COs. But those goons hurt him so bad that he was bleeding and it wouldn't stop. The COs had to fill out reports and send him to the clinic.

Before the kid left, Johnson, that grizzly bear of a CO, made the whole house stand by their beds, like in a lineup.

“Everybody, on the double,” roared Johnson. “Let's see who looks guilty.”

The kid was scared shitless and wouldn't pick them out.

Johnson was pissed and cursed his ass for twenty minutes until the escort came to get him.

“We can't help you. Not if you stand there silent like a fucking mute,” Johnson yelled. “It won't be on my conscience. No. When you don't speak up for yourself, it's all on you!”

When that kid got back from the clinic, the COs packed him up to another house for his own good.

T
here was no school on the weekend, so the COs just let us sleep late. A guy named Sanchez had the bed next to mine. At eight o'clock we were the only ones awake on the north side and started to talk.

“My smart-mouthed lawyer told me to look at my watch,” Sanchez said. “It was 4:57. He says, ‘Three to five. That's how much time you're gonna cop out to on this drug charge.'”

Sanchez told me he had turned eighteen the week before. He'd been sitting in the Sprungs for nearly seven months, and even got his GED there.

He flashed a big grin as he reached into his school folder to show me the official diploma. And Sanchez was only still in class because he wanted to be, and because the teachers thought he was a good influence.

Then he talked about going upstate to do his three-year bid, and the time he'd served so far on Rikers. That's when his face got real serious and the mustache over his lip started to twitch.

Maybe it was the bandages on my face that made him feel like I'd be as scared as he was.

“Upstate's going to be a nightmare. I've never even had to live in the main building on Rikers,” he admitted, folding his arms across his chest. “It's been all Sprungs for me. I'm grateful my case got dragged out as long as it did. I know it's easier down here. It's got to be. This is all kids. That's seven months I don't have to do in a real joint with adults.”

Rikers is a jail, not a prison. Most everybody here is waiting for an outcome to their case. Anybody getting sentenced to more than a year goes upstate to do his time. And there are no adolescents up there, no kiddy playtime. It's all man-on-man.

I wasn't going to tell Sanchez about all the trouble Pops got into upstate, and have him lose any more sleep worrying.

Sanchez ran down what all the COs and teachers were like for me. Then he asked me about my face. I told him I got cut in a fight and stopped it there.

He saw there was nothing in my bucket and asked if I wanted to juggle with Brick.

“I could represent you,” he said. “That would help me cut down on what I owe him, before I ship out. I don't need a debt like that following me up north.”

I turned him down flat. I wasn't trying to get involved with anything in this house. I was tangled up in enough bullshit already. For the next two weeks, I was willing to be poor. And I wasn't going to let anyone suck me in.

Later, we got a bunch of new jacks in the house. I was happy about that because it gave dudes something to look at besides me.

One of the kids came in with a brand-new hoodie. And after the idiot let on that he'd got locked up for jumping a turnstile, it was gone. Inmates don't have any respect for a crime like that. He should have just hung a sign around his neck that read, I'M A HERB. TAKE MY SWEATSHIRT.

The dude who took his hoodie didn't even pretend he wanted to borrow it. He just took it right off the kid's back. But that herb didn't have anything else to put on. So he was walking around half the day without a shirt.

“Get your new-jack ass dressed,” Ms. Armstrong told him. “You're not at home.”

When he couldn't, she knew he'd been jacked.

Ms. Armstrong grabbed an old rag of a shirt from one of the house buckets in the officers' station. Everyone was laughing because they thought she was going to give it to the herb. Instead, she found the robber and made
him
wear that smelly rag for the rest of the day.

That herb got his sweatshirt back and stayed close to Ms. Armstrong until lights-out. He was tied to her so tight, dudes started calling him “Apron Strings.”

On Rikers, most dudes wear their own clothes because they're not convicted yet and aren't considered property of the state. But lots of inmates wish they could wear state-issued uniforms.

Wearing your own clothes means you have to fight to keep them. There's always somebody who thinks your threads are better than his. Lots of kids tell their families not to send them good clothes from home. It's not worth the trouble.

Dudes brag about their threads at home and how fly they look when they're on the streets. They say they're going “undercover” on Rikers Island. Corrections won't let you wear a pair of two-hundred-dollar sneakers anyway. That's because they know there's going to be a war over them, and they don't want to have to settle one.

I waited all day to get called out for a visit, but the call never came. This was the first Saturday I hadn't seen my mother since I was locked up. I guess she'd juggled her workdays at Key Food to see me that past Thursday. It had been only two days since she was here, but I missed her bad already.