Walter Myers - Lockdown

I looked up, saw Wilson near the door, and went over to him.

"Can I hang in the dayroom awhile?"

"Sure, man."

We went out of the visitors' room. I took my clothes off and he searched me for contraband. Then I dressed and went back to the dayroom. They were watching Cops on television.

Her name tag read Karen Williams, but all the guys were checking out the short skirt the woman was wearing. On the blackboard behind her she had written "Exit Strategy" in big letters.

"So, who knows what an exit strategy is?" she asked.

"That's how to get out of here," Play said.

"It's how to get out of here in a way that means you won't be coming back," Miss Williams said. "Or does anybody here want to come back?"

Nobody answered the lame question.

"One of the things you want to have in hand is either a GED or a head start in taking the GED exam," she went on. "Employers want to see what you have accomplished in life, and one way of showing them is to have your GED."

"What they know most from that is that you didn't finish regular high school," Diego said. "That puts you on a whole different level than kids who finish high school with a regular diploma."

"I think it shows initiative and a willingness to work," Miss Williams said.

"But they know you ain't in the top set," Play said. "If I was going for a job, I wouldn't be waving my GED in front of anybody unless they asked me for it. And what they mostly ask you is if you've been arrested or anything."

"Which is illegal," Miss Williams said. "They can't ask you if you've been arrested, and if they did ask, you don't have to answer. Did you know that?"

"Did you know that if you don't answer, they won't hire you?" Play said. "And if you go and make a complaint, all they got to say is that they were thinking about hiring you in a job that handles money and you had to be bonded. Then they can ask you anything they want."

"A lot of what you're saying is true, but that's why we have courts, to fight abuses," Miss Williams said. She had her legs crossed and we all took a look. Not bad.

"So you got your GED," Diego said. "Then they're going to want to know what you've been doing for the last year. You tell them that you've been in church, see-"

"Redecorating the confession box," Leon said. "Putting in a tile floor like they do on television."

"Yeah, yeah," Diego went on. "Then your probation officer gives them a call to see how you doing. Or he comes around with a little cup for you to pee in. Then the job is gone because everybody knows where you've been."

"Okay, a lot of what you're saying is true," Miss Williams said. "On the other hand, if you show up with no high school diploma, and no GED, how does that help?"

"At least you won't be disappointed when they turn you down," Leon said.

Some of the guys laughed. I looked over at Toon. He wasn't laughing.

Miss Williams kept on talking but it wasn't coming through. What all the guys knew was that there was a world on the outside and we didn't belong in it. Maybe we could get over once in a while, but we really didn't fit in.

When the session was over, Miss Williams handed out a form that listed all of the papers we were supposed to have once we got out. That was cool, because whenever you go someplace, you have to start all over again or they turn you down for something because you don't have the right papers.

The right papers didn't mean anything. You were still yourself in your own black skin and you couldn't sound like some white dude or some la-dee-da black dude who was heavy into what was going down with education or being middle class.

My moms had left the papers for me to sign, but when I took them to Mr. Cintron and he was telling me how cool the family program was, I saw that she could get some money from it and figured that's all she really wanted. That's what I thought. And Icy had given me the 411 on Willis going into the army. The enlistment bonus. If he got that, Mom would try to con him out of it. That's what she was about.

I wondered if she had been different at one time. Maybe she even thought about being the first woman president. And then, maybe, things just started happening that turned her around. I felt for her, but I wished she was stronger, someone that me and Willis and especially Icy could depend on.

After group skills we went to the B wing to get our teeth checked. While we were waiting, we sat with some new guys and one girl. The orientation flick was on television. The new kids were looking at the TV screen, but out of the corners of their eyes they were checking us out. I saw Diego trying to look hard.

Diego, in my mind, was a punk. But his head was so messed up that he was a dangerous punk. Every morning between breakfast and school he was on the med line. I had seen a lot of the guys do that, but I couldn't figure out how they knew who needed the pills. The nurse gave them one or two pills in a small cup, and another cup filled with water. They took the pills and then drank the water. Then she made them stick their tongues out and move them around so she could make sure they swallowed the pills.

The dentist was white with dark hair and big eyes and this sincere look on his face. He asked me how often I brushed my teeth and I told him once a day.

"Why not twice a day?" he asked.

"I don't know, man," I said.

"It only takes an extra two minutes a day," he said.

"Okay, I'll try it," I said.

He thanked me and told me it would be worth it. I had never seen anybody get into teeth before. But two minutes a day made sense.

At dinner one of the newbies sat across from me and Play. He was my height but wide and ugly. Sucker looked like King Kong with a nappy 'fro and a jumpsuit.

"Where y'all from?" he asked.

I didn't say nothing and Play didn't say nothing. The newbie started puffing up like he was mad and asked us again where we were from. We still didn't say nothing, mostly just because he was a newbie, and he picked up his knife from the table and held it in his fist. That cracked me up a little because it was just a plastic-ass knife.

"I just came in from your mama's house," Play said. "She told me to tell you hello."

The guy looked at us like he was ready to go off. Then he said that he was from the Duncan Avenue projects in Jersey City.

"We kill a guy just for smiling at us," he said.

I got up and went to another table because I really didn't want to fight the sucker. Play got up with me, and we sat with some white dudes from the Special Attention wing. Those were dudes who were all messed up and were in the special watch-these-guys-because-they-might-hurt-themselves area in the back of the classrooms. One guy we sat with didn't look up from his tray. The other guy put his hands, palm down, over his plate like we were going to take his food.

Toon needed to be with these guys.

When we finished eating and Pugh lined us up to go back to our wing, King Kong came over and got behind me.

"Me and you got some business to take care of," he growled at me.

I thought back on what Mr. Cintron had said. All these dudes in here had run stupid until they found the front door of some courthouse, and half of them were still running on empty.

"You think you can kick his ass?" Play asked me later.

"I don't know if I can kick his ass," I said. "But if the deal got to go down, I can sure make it a war he didn't want to be in."

Lights-out and I was lying in the dark thinking that King Kong was going to get both of us screwed up. I wondered if he knew it too.

So what happened is that Mr. Pugh brought me a candy bar and talked to me decent on the way to Evergreen. I don't like people giving me nothing, but I took it and said I would eat it later.