CHAPTER

9

The sun came up and the whole north side went from dark to light. There are no window shades or curtains in jail, so anyone wanting to sleep past daybreak had to bury his head beneath a blanket or pillow.

I sat up in the light and looked around to see if anyone was still interested in me. There were only a handful of kids awake, and none of them wanted to even trade looks. Jersey had given his crew the lowdown by now. And anyone that hadn’t heard yet could tell by my face that I had a history.

Inmates get cuts on their faces for different reasons. You might get in deep juggling and decide not to pay. Sometimes a crew gets a real stranglehold on a house and you’re down with another outfit. Maybe you’re a herb that somebody used to prop himself up, or you’re a snitch and somebody was getting even. I didn’t fit into any of that. But people were going to try and place me somewhere. That’s just how it is in jail. Everybody has a place, and nobody wants you to fuck up the order, especially if it puts you on top of them.

“Breakfast,” a CO called as low as he could.

Only two kids got up to eat.

The COs call breakfast real early, when almost everybody is still asleep. This way they don’t have to hassle with getting half a house back and forth to the mess hall. They never have it easier than when everyone is sleeping, so they try to keep it like that as long as possible. That means most inmates are thinking about lunch from the moment they wake up. I usually bought stuff for the morning during weekly commissary, like cookies and soda, using the money Mom put into my account. But there were no snacks in my bucket now.

Most dudes spend their account money on cigarettes and live off jail food. But I’d rather have a settled stomach than a smoke any day. Besides, there’s always a cloud of smoke hanging over the dayroom that you can suck in for free. Dudes who don’t even smoke buy cigarettes because they’re easy to juggle and you can get almost anything for them. And the jail will sell you cigarettes in commissary even if you’re under eighteen. If kids didn’t smoke, they’d be wired all day and there would be nothing but fights.

I saw in the newspaper that some kid in Texas sued the jail out there after he got cancer. He was only seventeen, but they sold him stoves anyway. They had to pay him millions because he saved all his commissary receipts and could prove it.

Dudes are always talking about suing the jail. But for all the times the COs beat our asses without a reason, they get bagged for selling cigarettes to a minor. I guess that’s the way this fucked-up justice system works.

Nearly two hours later, a CO hollered at the top of his lungs, “Let’s go, ladies! Rise and shine!”

I was shocked. It was just before eight o’clock and the COs were serious about getting the whole house up.

“I warned you yesterday about moving your lazy ass!” yelled a CO, before flipping the bed over on a kid who didn’t get up fast enough.

Now I knew there was some kind of schedule to keep.

Most kids were still walking around in a daze. They were either heading for the bathroom or taking down their washed clothes, which were drying on the air vents.

I made my bed, waiting for the count.

The entire north side of Sprung #3 could see my face now, and kids were starting to say shit as they passed.

Dude must be havin’ his period on his cheek.

That’s why all the Tampax.

He got done up like cold cuts at the deli.

Other kids just shook their heads because they knew it could happen to them, too.

The CO blew a whistle and everybody stood by their beds, counting off. Most of the voices were tired and weak, fading into the high, round ceiling of that tennis bubble. But I could tell right away which dudes were part of the main crew. They knew I was listening and wanted to count off like they were somebody.

“Twenty-seven!” boomed the voice of the dude who’d said I was going to Maytag for them. He was short and squat, but his muscles were really chiseled. And he sounded like he stood, cocked and ready to go.

I waited my turn and loudly said, “Forty!”

After the COs told us to deuce it up, we marched out of Sprung #3 and into the yard, with the south side following behind.

I saw the back end of Sprung #2 disappearing into one of the trailers. Sprung #1 was at the gate of their house, waiting for us to pass, and a captain in a sharp white shirt was eyeballing it all.

The COs took us across the basketball courts, and then we stopped in front of another trailer. One of the kids at the head of the line had the box with all of our ID cards, and one of the COs was carrying the logbook. So I knew we’d be out of the house for a while.

A civilian walked past with a yellow ID card clipped to his shirt.

One of our dudes called to him, “Yo, mister, pick me for the GED.”

That’s when it hit me. We were going to school.

Out in the world, I’d finished my junior year at Jamaica High School in December, right before I got locked up, even though it took me an extra semester to get there. I’d held a 70 average, and had even passed the English statewide exam a year early. But now here I was, walking into some beat-up school trailer on Rikers Island with almost a hundred other inmates.

My old house had a GED teacher that came by a couple of times a week. But I wanted to graduate from high school for real, and I always thought I was just about to go home. So I never bothered with it. But Sprung #3 was a legit schoolhouse five days a week.

There was an olive-skinned teacher with tight, curly hair just inside the door of the trailer, sitting on top of a table like he was in his living room. He was calling inmates by their first names as we walked in, making a real show of how many he knew.

“Michael, Dontel, Julio, Rodney,” he said, without missing a beat. “I got Sprung #3 names on lockdown.”

Some dudes slapped his hand as they passed and said, “Demarco, the best.”

I heard him call out “New jack, don’t know you yet” to kids before and after me. But he looked me square in the face without the comedy and said, “My name’s Demarco. Good to meet you.”

The whole house was deuced up in the middle of the hall when a CO screamed, “Cockroaches disappear!”

Kids scrambled for their classes, but us new jacks were still standing there. One of the COs was holding open a door and pointing inside.

“In here for today,” he snapped. “The next placement test is tomorrow. Just stay quiet, and whatever you do, don’t fuck up.”

It was a storeroom where they kept extra tables and lockers. There were seven of us standing against the wall. We spread out as best we could, and for a while nobody talked or even moved much. Then one of the kids put two tables together for a bed and stretched himself out on top. Somebody else started trying all the lockers. One of them even popped open, but it was only filled with schoolbooks.

There was a tall, wiry white dude with us, and from what I saw he was the only one in the house. Just a few of them had passed through Mod-3 in all the time I was there. White dudes are usually real quiet in jail and keep to themselves, because they’ve got no power and nobody to watch their backs.

He was sitting on the floor when one of the kids asked, “How the fuck did you ever get locked up? Didn’t you tell that blind judge you were a cracker?”

It got tense for a second, but the white dude looked that kid right in the eye and answered, “I didn’t know I was a cracker. Am I a Ritz or a saltine?”

The kid who was trying to sleep on the tables laughed so hard he almost rolled off. And after that slick comeback, everybody there gave that white dude a free pass.

I liked the way he handled himself and decided to call him Ritz, because it rolled easier off the tongue.