SEATTLE-KING COUNTY JAIL: LESSONS LEARNED
THE BACK STORY: THE GARTERS OR
THE BOMB?
1964 Bangor Missile Base
In the
introduction to Seeing for Myself, I wrote
about my role as “on-the-ground director of what in 1968 was the biggest peace walk the
local American Friends Service Committee had ever mounted.”
Alongside the band, Country Joe and the Fish, I
stood on the back of a pick-up truck, directing
the crowd to take their places. I was armed in the super-respectable
uniform I always donned for political demonstrations: a
black double-knit skirt with matching top, two-inch heels and hose, a faux fur
black hat, and a long string of fake pearls. If I was going to be called
a “Commie,” I would be a properly attired, ladylike Commie.
The rest of that story didn’t make
it into Seeing for Myself, but if it
had, it might have been titled, “What to Wear to a Revolution”–or, at least, “What
to Wear When Committing Civil Disobedience.” In the early 1970s I still dressed
“like a lady” for demonstrations, including one at the Bangor Missile Base to protest
the mounting of nuclear warheads on submarines scheduled to be housed there. A
couple of dozen of us activists had gathered at the entrance to the base to support
three members of our group who would try to enter the base illegally.
The three men approached the gate, attempting
to enter the grounds. But guards immediately moved in, tackled the protestors,
carried them a few feet away from the entrance, and unceremoniously dropped them
onto the dusty ground. Clunk! We supporters collectively winced. Our colleagues, of course,
were trying to commit an illegal act of trespassing but, did the guards have to
be so rough? Were our friends hurt? Evidently they were not. They picked themselves
up, slapped the dirt off their clothes, and with quiet deliberation, headed
once more for the gate.
I was impressed with the men’s
fortitude. But the warheads were obviously as much a threat to women as to men.
The campaign against their installation was my cause as much as the men’s. So, why,
I wondered, had none of us women been willing to take the risk of disobedient
action? I ruminated about that, as the men continued determinedly walking toward
the entrance, where guards intervened and dumped them on the ground again. I shuddered with each thump, and my discomfort
grew. My body twitched with the urge to join the three, and for a moment I
thought I would do exactly that.
Then an image kicked in. A couple
of newspaper photographers were present, and they would probably be delighted
to take a photo of a woman being dumped on the ground. In my mind’s eye I could
see it clearly. A guard would grab me, my skirt would hike up, and–oh, no! My
garters would show. A camera would click. There I would be, garters and all, on
the front page of the Post Intelligencer, “in front of God and everybody.”
It was much later that I asked
myself, “So, you would rather risk nuclear bombs than the embarrassment of a pair
of garters exposed?” Apparently the answer was “yes!”
I EXONERATE MYSELF
By 1976 nuclear
warheads had been installed in Trident submarines at Bangor Missile Base, and
activists at the pacifist center called Ground
Zero mounted another nonviolent resistance action. Though I had never
forgiven myself for my previous cowardice, I was still not willing to go beyond
the role of witness to others’ civil disobedience. A couple of dozen activists
were committed to the symbolic act of cutting the barbed wire fence that
surrounded the base. I knew it was the right thing to do, but I wasn’t ready to
commit civil disobedience. My previous self-imposed demonstrators’ dress code
was no longer warranted; the days of garters holding up hosiery were long
gone―for many of us feminists, anyway. So if that had ever been a worthy
excuse, it surely wasn’t this time. I wore a comfortable Mexican dress and
sandals. No hosiery. No hat. No string of pearls. But my attire wouldn’t matter
anyway, since I had no intention of committing disobedience.
This time several
women were among those determined to symbolically destroy part of the Bangor base fence. I
watched them and a few men approach the fence, and cut just enough of the barbed
wire to enter the premises. If my body could have talked, it would have said, “This time I can’t just stand here, perfectly
safe, while others risk arrest.” My body reacted before my mind. I walked away
from my group of supporters and headed toward the fence. Someone handed me a
pair of clippers, and I joined the others in cutting just enough of the wire to
create a hole I could step through.
In planning the action the group
had followed the usual principle of openness by informing the base commander of
our intention to enter the base. Now, as we crossed onto the sacrosanct
military grounds, we were intercepted by a patiently waiting guard who pulled
our hands around to our backs and placed plastic handcuffs on our wrists. Next we
were steered to a paddy wagon, and taken to jail, where we spent the night.
Finally, I had exonerated myself
from my previous failure to stand up for my beliefs in a meaningful way, and I
laughed as I said, “This time, I would even have risked having my garters
photographed, if I thought it would contribute to a tiny possibility of
stopping the threat of Trident submarine bombs.” A few weeks later I was
sentenced to sixty days in jail for destroying government property.
SEATTLE-KING COUNTY JAIL: LESSONS LEARNED:LEARNING THE ROPES
As a jail inmate I hadn’t expected
to encounter an unwritten rule about proper female attire. When I checked in at
Seattle-King County Jail I had to submit to an exam to prove I wasn’t carrying
any contraband. In a crisp tone, a middle-aged admitting matron alerted me that
she would have to lift my shirt. I nodded in compliance. But the moment she hiked
it up, she snatched her hand away, as if from boiling water. All but shrieking,
she gasped, “You have no bra.”
“Well, no,” I said, “I stopped
wearing a bra years ago.”
So far, I
had learned what to wear to a demonstration, and now I would learn what to wear
to jail. My stay there would teach me additional lessons.
The phone
is brought to each cell in the women’s jail for an hour twice a day. Each
prisoner has ten minutes each time to contact the outside world. That may not
sound too bad. But if you divide the time between lover and child, for
instance, the time will whizz by so fast it feels like just seconds. Or you
might use several precious minutes dialing your parole officer or lawyer, only
to endure six minutes of busy signals and operators who put you on hold as if
you had all the time in the world. Such disappointments can build up so much
frustration that it sometimes spills over in a two- or three-minute call to the
people you most care about. When you reach them, you might unintentionally rant
about the problem of reaching a lawyer, and then listen to their interruptions
with suggestions, such as, “Why don’t you call early in the morning before
court starts?”
You try not to be surly. You try
not to say, “Because I don’t get the phone unless they feel like bringing it.
Don’t you think I have sense enough to figure out that’s the best time get
him?”
The father of your child comes on
the line. He complains about how hard it is to work and take care of the
children all by himself. He says he’s afraid of losing his job, and you say to
yourself, “I‘m using my precious phone time for this?”
“Let me speak to Sally,” you say
abruptly, knowing you’re hurting him but hoping your ten-year-old will cheer
you. You want to salvage something from these minutes you waited for all morning.
The clock ticks away your time and your cellmates are telling you your time is
almost up as Sally is being called and you hear her casual, “Just a minute. I
have to see what Mr. Spock says.”
Doesn’t she know the seconds are
ticking away? Can’t she understand that
you are more important than Star Trek?
No. No, of course not. Even most adults can’t seem to grasp how it feels
to cram everything you’re feeling and planning and experiencing into this scrap
of time. They all seem to talk in slow motion. They use too many words to say
too many trivial things. By the time they get ready to say the important
things, like whether they talked to your parole officer, arranged for your
mother to take care of the childrenor “I love you.” Long before you’re ready,
it's time to hang up.
And talking to the children is
especially frustrating.
“What are you doin’, Honey?” you
ask in your most cajoling voice.
“Nothin’. “
“Playing?”
“Yup.”
“What are you playing?”
“Oh, nothin’,”
“Well, are you…”
Can’t she understand that this is
no time to play Twenty Questions? You try to suppress your anger and explain
that you have to hang up. And then, with a cell-mate reaching for the phone or
the matron warning you that the whole cell will be deprived of the phone next
time unless you hang up immediately….Then
your child starts a barrage of questions: “When are you comin’ home?” Where’s my pink shirt? Why are you in jail anyway:”
You get out a few quick sentences
rat-tat-tat: “I can’t talk to you. I have to hang up.” You hang up feeling
angry, frustrated, hurt, guilty and wondering why you called at all.
THE INMATES
You don’t have to go to jail to
know that it infantilizes and dehumanizes people. But it helps. Sixty days in King County
jail helped me understand things I felt I knew about people in jail and what it
does to them. Eighteen or fifty, everyone here is called “girl.” Matrons defend
the usage by saying, “Most of them are
girls. They are just so immature.” And it’s true. Most of the inmates are
scarcely out of their teens. The primary crime the inmates are charged with is
prostitution, though a few inmates have committed credit card forgery.
Prostitutes, it should surprise no one, tend to be especially personable.
T affects an ultra-nonchalant
shuffling walk that emphasizes her full hips. She carelessly tosses her curly
hair, with its orange-peroxide tips, over her shoulder. She has a style and a
humorous way of coping that draws people to her. She entertains us with tales
of escapades in Job Corps, of police entrapment, and of her wonderful, kind,
loving man whom she will keep happy forever. She is making him a satin
heart-shaped pillow embroidered with one of Erica Jong’s poems. We can almost
imagine this couple as every girl’s first long-term romance until she reminds
us she has only known the guy for one week prior to coming to jailand that he
has three other prostitutes in his stable.
After entertaining us at length T
talks about her childhood. “My dad used to always say, ‘I could retire on the
money you girls could make.’ He and my brothers used to agree to take me to the
store if I’d do stuff.” It is clear to all o f us what the “stuff” was. But no
one asks how this connects with her life-style, or whether hurt, shame or grief
lie hidden under her amusing story-telling voice. It is the mode in jail to
accept your fellow prisoners’ statements at face value.
E is a truly classic beauty, a
natural blond who has the wit not to dilute her innocent blue eyes or creamy
young skin with make-up. She is one of the few prisoners who speak middle-class
“standard” English. She seems unaware of her ambivalence toward the parents she
describes as “good people, who take in foster children.” I wonder what it is
like for them for E to be incarcerated for prostitution when they perhaps dreamed
of their Golden Girl walking down the aisle in white.
When the cell is unlocked, E alternates
games of solitaire with pacing up and down the hall. But then she pauses to
talk about her “hopelessly square” mother and her parents’ righteous anger
after each of the runaways that began at thirteen. “How dare they send the
police after their own daughter!” At eighteen, she feels she has cut her ties
with her parents forever.
E has just come into jail, and her
restlessness begins to dissipate. Awkwardly, she kneels on a bench, then curls
into a near fetal position, and I have the urge to rock her. She is so sure she
will be bailed out by her man within a couple of hours that she doesn’t even
get her bed ready for sleeping. When the telephone is brought to our cell we
let her have it first so she can call him. It is a drama I hear re-enacted many
times listening to other women. Her voice is a soft blanket flowing thorough
the wires to envelop her man in comfort. From the one sided conversation, we
learn that he is having trouble raiding bail money for her. He could use the
Eldorado she bought him, but the bondsman would take the key, and his life
would be very inconvenient without transportation. E coos her understanding of
the problem. She tells him she has faith that he will think of something. Along
with my cellmates, I resist voicing my opinion that she had better not count on
him, but E gets the message anyway.
Two days later, her man comes with
the bail. She says to us silent skeptics, “See?
I knew he’d take care of me.”
M, in contrast to other inmates,
disapproves of prostitution. She turns up her nose in disgust at any sexual
behavior other than intercourse for the purpose of “having babies.” After
almost two months in jail waiting for trial, she is one of the more obviously
troubled inmates, anxious about what will become of her, confused by guilt and
resentment. As nearly as anyone can tell, her crime grew out of a momentary
whim to coerce an acquaintance into giving her money. As her story unfolds, she
reluctantly says she did threaten the woman if she refused to give her money.
But M never expected to be caught,
and even if that happened she couldn’t imagine being charged with anything more
serious than extortion. She never imagined being charged with armed robbery or
kidnapping, which is what’s happened. She is a tiny woman, whose short hair,
angular body and open expression give her an impish, boyish look. Each time M
tells a new arrival about the charge, the newcomer hoots in disbelief at the
idea that this girl Peter Pan could be physically or psychologically capable of
such a crime. The new people assume some bizarre miscarriage of justice has
taken place. One or two other black women say it’s a prosecutor’s racist plot.
They persuade M that she must have a bad lawyer and she ought to fire him. M
says little but seems to go along with that assessment.
Over the next few days something
like the truth gradually surfaces. M admits some of the accusations and seems
mainly upset, and alternately embarrassed or outraged, about what the charges
are called. They do not fit her image of herself. She passes around a sheaf of
legal papers, asks if we think the prosecutor has any kind of case. I say, “It
looks pretty bad to me.”
“I know,” she says, and I’m surprised
she agrees so readily. We talk over the fact that it will be M’s word against
several witnesses. She spends most of that afternoon in uncharacteristic
silence on her bed. Within the next twenty-four hours she decides it is, after
all, not the lawyer’s fault that the prosecutor won’t lower the charge, and
that she won’t fire him. She comes close to deciding to plead guilty if the
prosecutor will ask for a shorter sentence.
Then D comes into the cell. She
reads the charges and is outraged.
“That woman says you told her you
had a gun? Now why would you do a foolish thing like that? She says she was
scared of you? All ninety pounds of you? Who would believe her?”
C joins in and soon the case is
being constructed all over again that M has been framed, victimized, mistreated
by an incompetent lawyer, and in fact she has committed no crime at all. C
elaborates on the situation. “It is all the fault of that white girl (the
victim) who came around just to find a black man for herself. Then her parents
found out what she was up to and she had to make up this story so they wouldn’t
know she was messin’ with Niggers.” (Though it is now standard usage to avoid
that word, substituting “the N word,” I have chosen to keep the language used
here by the inmate, as well as below by me in the original version of this
article.)
I am privately angry at these women
who, posing as M’s friends, contribute to the clouding of her sense of reality.
I know they see themselves as supportive, but surely they cannot help her this
way. Still, I have to weigh the fact that I’ve never experienced similar
circumstances. I’m not constantly flirting with incarceration. My persistent
search for the voice of realism rests on the idea that if I know what’s
happening I can do something about it. In jail, that doesn’t hold true. I soon
begin to learn the limits of my personal power. What I don’t pick up quickly,
the matrons soon teach me.
THE MATRONS
My sister-prisoners agree that some
matrons are “nice” and others “mean.” Most of us agree that S is one of the
worst. It has surprised no one to learn she has had a career in the armed
services. She barks orders, and we don’t know from day to day what those orders
will be. For weeks we inmates have broken a rule by spiriting extra blankets
into our cells for protection against the cold steel benches and the light
weight cotton uniforms. S has pretended not to notice. Then one day she
suddenly “reminds” us of the rule that each person may have only two blankets.
She strips the beds of extras and we’re left to shiver. Or she suddenly decides
that the cards and pictures we have taped to the bars must come down. They are
our only break from the monotonous green, and the one way we can express our
individuality.
G has an opposite style. She
fancies herself every inmate’s chumwhen things are going her way. She seems to
see herself as a self-sacrificing rescuer who loves young people. She has a
house full of children and has taken in the neighbor’s too. She talks about
sponsoring prisoners at the state prison so they can get out sooner. G puts so
much energy into being Best Liked that she becomes outraged when someone
questions that image. Like a melodramatic parent, she seems to be saying, “Look
at all I have done for you…worn my fingers to the bone, and this is the thanks I get.”
When we are waiting for the phone
to be brought to our cell, tension is high. A timer in sometimes available to
help us divide the time fairly, but it is kept in the booking room. So one day
we ask G to bring it with the phone to our cell, which she has often done for
us. But this day she refuses, saying, “My advice is just to be considerate.”
“But,” I quietly point out, “we
have no way of knowing whether we’re being considerate or not.”
The Best Liked persona disappears
as G turns righteous, and screams: “I don’t have
to bring the phone. You should be grateful I give it to you at all. And if
you can’t behave better than that, I might just decide to only let you call
your lawyer.”
W is one of the rare matrons who
allows nothing to ruffle her. She argues that the poor and non-white can
improve their lives with a bit of self-discipline, and refuses to acknowledge
that racism does significant damage to people. Yet she relates to each person
in a warm, fair way. She admits that some of the rules are senseless, and she
bends them when she can. She also knows when she is being conned and chooses to
set clear limits, rather than to punish afterward.
Several matrons are blind to
certain of the prisoners’ activities, perhaps because they don’t want the
trouble that might follow a confrontation. Matron F enters our cell and L and I
become nervous because our cellmates R and N are in the shower-toilet area,
behind a sheet draped across the opening. They are obviously up to something
secret. It would not be at all unreasonable to guess they are shooting a little
heroin, and later I learn that they were doing exactly that.
R peeps over the sheet and explains
to F that she is washing N’s hair. F doesn’t question the fact that R isn’t in
the shower. She chats a few minutes and goes on her merry way. Soon she returns
and finds the same scene. R talks even faster this time, rattling on about her
crocheting, while F sits patiently on the bed waiting, perhaps unwittingly, for
her to finish shooting up. She is the same matron who tells us, “Everything is
all right,” one night when the cellblock is thick with tension.
Physical attacks are uncommon but a
woman has been beaten up. The scuttlebutt is that more of the same is being
planned, and after lights out, we are all locked into our cells. Everyone seems
to feel anxious and helpless. Matron F believes cell #604 is secure. But
prisoners have put paper in the door jamb so they can open it at will to admit
the inmates in #605, who are planning another attack on a woman in #604. F
tells us, “We know the door to #604 was open, but it’s locked now.” As she says
that, one of my cellmates looks through our tiny window and sees an inmate in
#604 open the door.
The matrons set a tone which has a
great influence on how prisoners feel about themselves and each other. The
system, however, requires that even the best matrons contribute to the
demoralization of everyone locked behind bars. The background of clanging,
yelling, rattling, banging, radio music and TV chatter that goes on from six in
the morning to ten-thirty at night is the only thing I find truly difficult to
endure.
But I see no signs of it bothering
the matrons. Their job is challenging at times, though it’s not steady hard
work. Often there is plenty of time chat with each other in the booking area,
though inmates are discharged and others check in, at unpredictable times.
Sometimes the jail is too short-staffed to efficiently handle booking new
people, coping with hostile or violent prisoners, and battling a computer that scrambles
information. At such times matrons will often stay away from prisoners and
their barrage of requests and questions: “Please open the window.” “Will you
call the nurse back here?” “What time do we get out of the cell?” “Please get the
radio now.” “Is there ‘rec’ today?”
The matron may cope with this
verbal gauntlet with a casual, “sure, just a minute,” which may immediately be
forgotten. Or with “I don’t know,” delivered as if the question had only the
remotest connection with the matron’s job. The prisoners may be reduced to
passive waiting, or to shouting like clamoring children and banging on doors to
obtain “minor” legitimate conveniences that through frustration have taken on
immense importance.
THE SYSTEM
No matron can compensate for our
lives confined in cages; for the arbitrariness and punitive aspects of the
rules; for the lack of adequate health care, or for the deadly sameness of each
day. Matrons and nurses often respond with equal indifference to minor
complaints and requests for essential health care. Women are sometimes deprived
of medicine for ulcers or asthma. They can’t get medically sound diets for gout
or ulcers. One woman brought directly from a car accident is not examined
until, hours later, she collapses onto the concrete floor.
My first impression is that jail
time is easy. Women immersed in street life meet old friends, cousins, aunts,
friends of friends, and at times a cell will sound almost like a class reunion.
I am surprised to find myself a participant in that, when a couple of new women
arrive and are assigned to my cell. Suddenly, their laughter and loud whoops
reverberate throughout the jail, and they shout in amazement, “Miz Crow! What are you doing here?” (My name was Crow then.)
Other cell mates gather around, puzzled. A few
years earlier, as a social work intern, I had persuaded a judge that these two
women, F and N were ready to reform their lives of prostitution and should be
let out of jail. I join in the hilarity and say, “What are you doing here? I got you out
of jail!” Everyone finds this situation
spectacularly funny, and it certainly breaks up the boredom of the day.
The old hands often go to bed
immediately upon arrival, staying there most of the time for three or four days
as if it is the only rest they are likely to get for a very long time. But
eventually, all fall into the jail routine: a little TV and reading, a lot of
gossiping, casual complaining and waiting. Waiting for the next meal, waiting
for the cell to be unlocked, for the phone, for recreation, church services,
health clinic. We wait for commissary night, for Sunday visitors. For the mail,
the lawyer, the bail money, the trial, the sentencing. Waiting for the nurse to
make rounds in the faint hope of relief from pain or from the sleepless nights
or from the anxiety of not knowing where the “old man” is, whether the children
will be placed in a foster home, or an eviction notice served. We wait for
anything at all to break the monotony of life in what feels like a cage.
Certain social class privileges
operate to reduce some of the tedium of the daily routine, and I am one of the
beneficiaries. One of my lawyer friends visits me, not just on the designated
Sunday hours, with it’s strict timing and awkward exchanges through a thick
window. She shows up whenever it is convenient for her, presents her lawyer
credentials and we are admitted to a comfortable spacious room to chat for as
long as we please. She hasn’t had to lie because the matrons assume she is my
attorney for my case, not just a friend who happens to be a lawyer.
What passes for a schedule can
change without notice or reason and being told we can expect the phone, the
cell being unlocked or an exercise opportunity is of little or no value. There
is no way to know for sure whether it will happen at the announced time. The
opportunity to plan one’s own time would be a tiny bit of autonomy in a sea of
powerlessness.
I decide to stop playing the
waiting game, their game, and to get
onto my own schedule. I find in the library a novel so good I can concentrate
fully despite the radio, TV, yelling clanging. I settle down on the bunk bed
and start reading. For ten minutes I’m delightedly engrossed in someone else’s
life, and I’m feeling good about doing what I
choose to do.
But, Clang! The cell door is
flung open, forcing me to shift my attention. The pleasure of choosing for
myself how I will spend my time is suddenly muddied by opportunities offered by
the system. With the cell unlocked, I can walk in the hall for exercise, take a
bath, use the pay phone to call a friend long distance. I can visit other
inmates in their cells. None of those items are on my list of desires right
now, but if I am to do anything at all outside the cell, this is my last chance
for an unpredictable number of hours. If I resolutely stick to my own schedule
and not theirs, I will be deprived of all those out-of-cell “freedoms.” The
system of arbitrarily locking and unlocking cell doors seems designed to foster
helplessness and dependency.
Grudgingly, I put my book aside and
go out to the booking area to call my friend in Tucson. This may be the only opportunity for
a couple of days or longer, so I’m surrendering to the power of the system
again. Matron Y doesn’t look up from her paper work. I adjust my attitude to
avoid sounding as if I’m begging or demanding. I ask, “Is it all right if I use
the long distance phone?”
“Why do you need it?” she asks. I
hesitate, trying to think of what answer she wants. I feel a sudden empathy for
my former students who were wedded to the Right Answer technique of dealing
with teachers. I had scrupulously encouraged them to use their reason to arrive
at answers that made sense to them, but they persisted in coming up with
whatever they imagined I wanted them to say.
In my usual
life I would have explained to Y that she had no right to invade my privacy and
that phone regulations should be posted. In short, I would try to make her
understand that even prisoners have rights. But in the jail world my rights are
both dubious and limited. More to the point, I’m willing to give Y the answer
she wants if I can figure out what that is. I hear myself mumbling about
“calling someone who’s writing something…uh, well… never mind, it’s too
complicated.” All that’s missing is a shuffle.
My
“explanation” is quite incomprehensible. But Y is satisfied that it is not a
frivolous call, not for pleasure. Matron S is the only one who says it out
loud, but the unwritten rule does seem to be, “You are here to suffer, and if
you are indulging yourself in pleasure, then we cannot allow it.”
I surreptitiously glance about and
dial “collect” to reach my Tucson
friend. I am circumspect because this call is probably not “legitimate.” I instinctively
hunch down, so that matrons at their desks won’t notice me. I’m soon talking to
my friend, and we’re laughing together. But then I see a matron coming in my
direction, and I surprise myself by immediately cutting short my laughter and
looking down at the floor, as if I might become invisible..
I have always looked people directly
in the eye. Is this how people become “shifty-eyed, untrustworthy, criminal
types”? I think of the stereotypical southern black person studying his shoes
when a powerful white person speaks to him. I recall white girls in the ghetto
school where I taught telling me why they avoided eye contact with certain
black students. It was a useful survival technique, and I thought I had some
understanding of how they felt. Yet, I had thought it would be worth the price
for them to work out a straightforward way of dealing with a difficult problem.
Now in the jail I discover that trying to seem invisible is a small price to
pay to avoid having a phone call cut short.
I’m learning something about an
economy of scarcity, too. Whether the scarce commodity is phone time or
blankets or healthy, tasty food, the problem is not so much that there is not
enough, as that I have no control over getting more of whatever it is. So I
take what I can get, whether or not it is something I want at the moment. Only
once do I turn down an offer with a polite, “No, thank you.” That’s on my
second day in jail when a trustee offers me an extra milk, and I realize just
too late, that I should have taken it for later or for someone else.
I begin to understand why my
cellmate tried to help me out on my first commissary night by trying to
convince the matron she shorted me on stamps. I begin to see why prisoners
“borrow” stamps or cigarettes no matter how many they have stashed away. It
amazes me that there is apparently very little intra-prisoner stealing.
I have learned to value the
virtuosity of invented reasons for using the pay phone for “emergency”
situations. And I understand why there is an endless parade of sickness
scenarios whenever the nurse arrives with her wares. I know, now, why that
results in the nurses doing so well at protecting themselves from the “con”
that they have stopped believing pain is real. All that is part of the
motivation for the jail’s constant gaming–to get as much as possible, as soon
as possible of whatever is available. There isn’t much of whatever it is, but
there may be even less tomorrow.
But there is more to it than that.
On the most superficial level, the gaming is fun, even for me. I would normally
do almost anything to avid being manipulative. But with no other entertainment
or challenge available, gaming becomes attractive. For instance, “double-scrub”
day is a weekly event. Every Wednesday we are directed to scrub walls, bars,
toilet and sink, as well as to put out of sight nearly everything not in use at
the moment. Then our cells are inspected and “forbidden” materials such as
extra blanket or books are likely to be removed.
An argument
sometimes takes place over dealing with this and other demands of the matrons.
There are the “good Niggers,” the obedient people who try to ask for virtually
nothing, which would risk the indignity of being turned down or ignored. They
try to anticipate and comply with every demand. This method is almost
hassle-free. It results in few confrontations and it is possible to enjoy the
illusion that one is acting autonomously.
At first,
anyway, I belong to the principle-upholders’ school of “bad Niggers” who say
“there’s no good reason the matron should object, so I’ll ignore the rule until
someone insists I do it differently.” Some in this category gripe to the
matrons about what is unfair, and the matrons generally act as if they are
registering those complaints, even when they are shouted in anger. It is as if
they consider it normal for us “girls” to be a little bratty. I am more likely
to explain why I think a rule is unjust and unnecessary, or a violation of my
rights. My manner, which I strive to make respectful, seems to irk them more
that the teenage style of antics of other inmates.
A third way to cope is to con. To
my surprise, there comes a time when, to ensure that I’ll be warm enough, I
fold two blankets together to look like one. Next, I feel as if I have made a
significant change in philosophy when I start gaming the system on “double
scrubbing day.” I fill the scrub bucket with water and Lysol and bring it to
the cell, not to use, but so the matron will believe we’re obediently
“double-scrubbing.”
After about
six weeks I’m surprised to realize I have evolved from a “principle-upholder”
to a “Bad Nigger,” and then to a “con artist.” I wonder how long it would take
for this form of adaptation to become permanently embedded in a person’s
character. As a civil libertarian, I am irrationally surprised that no one here
shares my concern for the importance of a jail “constitution”–a clear set of
rules and routines posted along with penalties for infractions. I persist in
asking questions such as, “Where is it written that I can’t use the extra
mattress as a pillow?” “How can I be expected to know how much time I’m allowed
to spend with each visitor?”
The other prisoners more often
insist that writing the rules might make things worse. The matrons might feel
obliged to enforce them. And after a couple of weeks, I have learned the games
to play with each matron, and have accumulated a stack of books. Though that is
against the rules, there has been no repercussion but a half-hearted, “You’re
not supposed to have more than two books in your cell,” I realize that I will
be grateful if no opportunity arises to stand up and fight for my principles,
and perhaps lose little advantages I have gained.
And so,
despite unhealthy, bad tasting food, body tension that comes from having
nowhere to sit but the bunk or the backless, cold steel bench, jail time comes
to seem not so bad. I am eager to be home in my own bed, yet feel sad at
leaving my cellmates.
Many of my jail mates are nineteen
or twenty, and the young seem endlessly adaptable. But at what cost! Cultivating
passivity, dishonesty and dependency are unlikely foundations for “reform” or
for effectively taking charge of their own lives.
