Doing Time (34 page)

I closed my mind and drifted. After you do time for a while, you learn how to build your own wall. You learn to show nothing and hear nothing. After eight years I can shut out almost anything.

When Wilson came back at 6 A.M. to unlock the doors, it was business as usual. As everyone went to work, Jane passed me on the tier and nodded her normal hello. We weren't friends, but once in a while we'd run the track together. She looked cool, more dressed than usual, with more makeup, and she'd rolled her hair. I had a bad feeling about this.

Night came again and we locked down. Not one hour later I heard it happening again: Wilson opening Jane's door. I heard them laughing, then moaning. If I could hear, so could Maria on the other side. I thought about banging on the wall. I wanted to yell at them; “Don't put me in your shit!” But I didn't.

Wilson and Jane went at it for a few more nights and then stopped. I don't know why. Maybe they got spooked, tired, or their thing just fizzled. There weren't any rumors on the unit. I hoped it was all over. But a week later on my way to work in Mechanical Services, I saw Jane at the officers' station leaning across the desk laughing with Wilson. He put his hand on top of hers in one sexy move. Keisha, my best friend here, walked by and saw it too. As soon as Wilson saw Keisha, he pulled his hand away, and Jane straightened up and walked out the door.

On the line at lunch, Keisha and Maria were talking. I picked up a tray and inched up behind them. “For sure, I hate that shit,” Keisha was saying. “Wilson is fine, and he don't need to be with no white broad.”

“Fuck her, she's crazy. That's why she screams every night,” Maria said. We got our beige-colored slop and moved to the tables. Maria looked at me. “Lee, I know you can hear them every night, too. I get hot just listening.”

“What are you talking about?” I hoped I sounded casual.

“Yeah right,” Keisha shot me a look. “I remember how you can't hear. When Sally Barnes lived next to you and had that seizure, you heard enough to bang and yell, even though Maria slept through it. Remember what's-her-name, Miss, uh, Havers? She came a half hour later and Sally was blue ‘cause she'd swallowed her tongue, and you were screaming at her: ‘Where's the med team?' “

Yeah, I remembered. Havers had freaked out and let me out of my cell — very irregular — because she knew 1 could get Salty breathing. Then she'd turned around and locked me in the hole for being out of my cell after lockdown just to cover her simple-assed self.

Fortunately we couldn't find an empty table, so we couldn't continue the conversation. We had the “hate prison food talk” instead.

Every time I put on my khakis I think about my old life, my free life when I'd put on my whites, my nurse's uniform. It's always a passing thought, a second of longing. Then I do my crunches to get my blood flowing before I leave the cell.

I walked out and ran into the unit manager, Mr. Jason. He's one sick guy. No decision is made without his personal approval. He's king here and we're his “girls.” Behind our backs, he calls us his “bitches.” That gives the guards a green light to treat us like dogs. Whenever a guard cops a feel on me doing a pat search I think, “Mr. Jason, one day there will be divine justice.” Jeffrey Jason, Bureau of Prisons, hack supreme: Mr. white suit, brown shirt, Brut-smelling, “family values man.” I hate him and usually I stay out of his way.

But this morning he stopped right in front of my cell. “Lee McMann, this your room?”

“I live in this cell, yes.”

“Get to work.”

I did, but I looked back and saw that Jason was in my cell. At lunch I went back to see what was missing or if he'd found my petty contraband (cinnamon and oregano from the kitchen, a little Comet for my sink) but everything was exactly as I'd left it. The man had looked but not touched. Something had been violated, but I didn't know what.

I started back to work but bumped into Maria on the tier.
“Los puercos
were in my cell this morning,” she said. “The vent between mine and Jane's was opened. That's the only thing they touched. Big Daddy Jason was in yours, too.”

“Yeah, I hate that man.” I wasn't going to discuss this with Maria. She talked a good line against the cops, but she was a government witness in her own case. As far as I was concerned, that meant she was a snitch.

Maria pushed it. “Do you think it's about Wilson? How could they know so fast?”

I shrugged. Maybe ‘cause you told them, I thought. It was closing in on me, and I started to get mad. Fuck all this. Fuck Jane and her lying ass. Fuck the lieutenants. Fuck Wilson.

Well, maybe not Wilson. He'd always been all right with me, and everyone else too. When my coworker Cakes's mom had a heart attack, he'd called the hospital and let her talk with her brother. Another time he'd found two women in bed so he just counted them right there and never said a word. He was a human being first — and that can be dangerous for a cop.

When I got to Mechanical Services, my boss was at lunch, as usual. All the work orders were filled, the tools locked up, and there was nothing to do. Keisha, Louise, and Cakes were sitting around having a loud argument.

“I don't care,” Louise was yelling — very unusual for her. “All these men walking around, patting us down, walking in the cells when we're on the toilet, pawing through our clothes. I hate it. I hate all of them. Talking to us any way they want, calling us bitches and whores. I believe her.”

“You're one stupid, blind white girl. You just saying that ‘cause he's black and she's white.” Cakes heaved herself up from the chair and glowered. The sweat on her forehead glistened and her temper was about to blow.

“Lee can tell us. Right, Lee?” Keisha looked me straight in the eyes and smiled. “We all know you're a space case — but only when you wanna be, right? Cakes heard that Jane said Wilson raped her. How about it? Yes? No? Is the white girls' club gonna put on their robes, or what?”

I shot back: “I don't know what the KKK's gonna do. The white girls' club can tar and feather themselves to death.”

Cakes was frowning, concentrating hard on a spot over Louise's head, trying not to let her fury run wild. Keisha had stopped smiling, but the smirk was still in her eyes. Louise was almost crying. She had pulled her knees up to her chin and slid down in her chair, looking even thinner than usual. I looked at her and said, “Stop crying. He didn't rape you, did he? He didn't fuck you, right?”

“No. But these men around here make me think of Jerry, He beat me up every time it rained. He said I was his and there was nothing I could do about it. When I got arrested, the first thing I thought was ‘Jerry can't do me no more,' and I was happy.”

“Ain't that some shit,” Cakes said. “You gotta go to prison to get away from your old man. I wouldn't take that from any man. All you white girls are the same. Either you take it from your men, or you take ours.”

My boss walked in and everyone shut up.

“What's going on, girls?”

“Nothing,” everyone said almost at once.

“There's a special count. Everyone go back to your quarters. Come back at two P.M.”

I was relieved. I wanted to talk to Keisha. If there's anyone I can talk to, it's Keisha. She reminds me of Tina, a woman I went to nursing school with who was always telling me to touch my patients. Tina said I'd never be a real nurse if I was afraid to touch, roll up my sleeves, and dive into their illnesses. One day in the emergency room a black woman who had overdosed was brought in. She had open wounds all over her arms and was lying in her own vomit. We had to clear the vomit from her throat, then pack her in ice and clean her sores. I hesitated, and Tina caught it. The shame burned as I turned red. It wasn't the vomit or the sores that made me hesitate. It was because she was black. I'd never touched anyone black. Tina never said anything about it, but she knew. After that I thought a lot about how fucked up I was, how I was a racist and didn't even know it.

When I met Keisha, she asked me why I wasn't in the white girls' club. At first I would only say I didn't want to be in any club, that I was a loner. But later I told her this story. She said at least I'd realized it. Most people would have let someone else treat the woman. I liked Keisha for saying that. But after that she told me about her life, and how white people didn't know how racist they were, or they knew and enjoyed it. She told me about her father trying to organize the United Auto Workers union in Detroit, and how the whites fire-bombed her house. Keisha is really proud she's black. She is BLACK, almost blue-black.

She called us “the odd team,” and we hung out because we worked together. We didn't need to talk all the time. We were comfortable with each other on some level I can't explain. It's just one of those friendships that happen in prison and wouldn't happen anywhere else.

We walked across the compound, past the rec field. Even though it was windy and the leaves were blowing, we walked slowly, because once we got inside it would be harder to talk.

“You know you're going to be called by the lieutenant,” Keisha said. “Security is going to deal with this one. Jane said he raped her, and she's gonna go for it. The white girls' club has already started talking. They're talking to all the white girls who will listen. They're saying it's cop violence.”

“Why me, damn it? I never talk to the police.”

“Lee, don't be a jerk. You live next door to her. You and Maria are part of their investigation for sure.”

“I hate this shit. All I want to do is my time and get on.”

“What will you tell them?”

“It's none of your business what I tell them.”

“Yes it is. If you tell them you don't know anything, they'll put you in the hole until it's over, and I'll have to send you stuff. If you tell them he raped her, then you'll be the white girl of the month. If you say it wasn't rape, then you'll be called a cop lover and a snitch. Any way you do it I'll have to decide where I stand with you. It is my business.”

“But it's not my business. I don't care about Jane or Wilson. They don't care about me. They didn't give a shit about me when they did it in her cell.”

“It may not be your fault, but now you're in it. So you have a problem.”

The door to the unit was open and people were filing in. Half the unit was standing on the tiers or in the lobby. The count hadn't been called yet. On the top tier there were two lieutenants and two other men in sports clothes standing at the rail, taking pictures of cells -— Jane's, Maria's, mine. Everyone was watching. I cursed Jane over and over.

At five the next morning I heard officers opening Jane's cell, telling her to get dressed. They took her out of the unit. The investigation had begun.

I wanted time to think, bur I had to go to work. On my way, I saw Louise talking to Bonnie, this stone-cold racist. She and her bus-band had been part of some racist gang in Idaho that went on a terror rampage against Vietnamese immigrants. Now she's “born again” and leads an all-white self-esteem group. Seeing her with Louise gave me the chills; I realized that Bonnie was trying to find out what I was going to do about Jane and Wilson. I was going to have to start watching my back if this was gonna be a gang thing. It could get physical and someone could get cut up.

I got to Mechanical Services — out of the air, into the dungeon. Work was an overheated, dark basement office where I spent my days jockeying for a seat on the best of the torn-up trashed chairs we collected from the garbage to furnish our office. One of our jobs is to pick up broken furniture and equipment, but since there's no place to store it, and it takes months to get anything fixed, most of it sits in the basement hall rotting.

Keisha was going through work orders and pulling out the parts we'd need for each one. Louise came in right after me and walked to the desk in the middle of the room, looking more strung out than usual. I always thought all that whacking around and beating had made her dull. She was so skinny and she looked like she was scared to put food in her mouth.

Louise's jaw popped. “Everyone's saying that Wilson did it. Jane is really afraid the guards are gonna set her up. Unless we support her, she may have to go into protective custody. This woman in a state prison had the same thing happen to her. She got pushed off a tier and broke her back. Now she's paralyzed, I mean, a guard raped her and tried to kill her.”

“Since when do you talk to Bonnie so much, Louise?” Keisha asked.

Louise stuttered, surprised by Keisha's challenge. “I, uh, that's not it. It's just that I believe Jane, and besides, he's a cop and it's her word against his. And we never win unless we stick together.”

“Well, I don't think he raped her,” Keisha said. “I think they were lovers. She was into him. I want to know why she's doing this. First she fucks him, then yells rape. Just ‘cause she says it, don't make it so.”

I wanted to know why she was doing it too. I also wanted to jump out of my skin and run.

Cakes walked in. “They just took Maria in handcuffs to the captain's office,” she announced. “Four of them. ‘Come with us,' they said. They didn't even wait ‘til she was outside to put the cuffs on her.”

When I got back to the unit, Jane was still gone and Maria was sitting on her bunk, staring at the wall. I knocked and went in. She didn't look good. She'd been crying and her wrists were swollen from the cuffs. I asked her if she was okay.

A long line of Spanish curses came out:
pendejo
this,
pendejo
that. “That was worse than all my talks with the U.S. Attorney, that
cabrón.
They were screaming at me and threatening me. They said I could get a new case for perjury, and no matter what, I'd go to a grand jury. I don't even know where the grand jury is.
Chingada.
They made me take a lie detector test. I kept asking to call my lawyer and they said, ‘Fuck your lawyer!' They said I'd go to segregation and do the rest of my time there. Six of ‘em kept saying, ‘He raped her.' They said it over and over.”