Walter Myers - Lockdown

Mom was a trip and a half. She was small. I was as big as she was when I was nine. She was pretty when she fixed herself up. And she spoke well. Like Icy. Icy probably talked like Mom, really, but when Mom spoke, you could hear every syllable. Unless she was high. And as much as I loved Mom when she was straight, that's how much I hated her when she was high. And she always tried to pretend she wasn't using when I knew she was.

But the main thing was that I knew how some of the chicks around the way copped their money to get high. You can finesse people in stores or you can finesse people in the post office, but you can't finesse no dealer. He knows what you need and what you'll do to get it.

Sometimes I dreamed about Mom and me and Willis and Icy living somewhere together, maybe in Queens, next to the park. It was a good dream when it started, but it never ended up good. Never.

The whole joint was quiet and I figured the staff had everybody on lockdown. Sometimes, especially if there was a fight or something, there would be a silent lockdown. You couldn't have a radio on or a television and you couldn't talk. That didn't bother me but it bothered some guys big-time. They had to have some noise going on all the time. I think maybe they were hearing stuff in their heads and wanted to shut it out. Those were usually the guys on the meds line in the morning.

When dinner came, I was glad to march with everybody to the mess hall. Dinner was the same as lunch, a hamburger patty, a slice of bread, some creamed corn, potatoes, string beans, and rice pudding. It didn't have any taste, or maybe I was just not up to tasting it, I don't know.

My light went out at eight thirty. I'm a level one and it wasn't supposed to go out until nine thirty. I wondered if Mr. Cintron had dropped me to level three, or even four. If I was on level four, I didn't get to go to school or have rec time. I wouldn't be going to Evergreen anymore, either.

Being at Progress, hearing the bars slam or standing in the halls waiting for somebody to unlock one of the steel doors, made me feel like maybe I was an animal or something. Going to Evergreen and seeing people walking around and smiling made me feel good even if they weren't smiling at me. They were feeling good about themselves, and that's what I needed.

The thing was that whatever happened to me, there was always something worse than there was before. The first time I was arrested, when they sent me up to Bridges on Spofford Avenue for two weeks, it was bad, but the worst thing that could have happened then was that I got a record. That was like a weight around my neck that was going to drag me down even further the next time I got into trouble. Then the last time I got arrested, I came here to Progress, which is a lot worse than Bridges. When Wilson said they could send me upstate with Cobo, I knew that would be even worse. If Cobo did have a gang up there, they would just probably kill me like they were thinking about killing Toon.

I guess dying is the worst shit you can get into.

Morning came and I got roused up with everybody else. We lined up and I didn't see Cobo. I was looking for him because he might be trying to sneak up on me and shank me or something. Play gave me a wink but Diego just looked away.

It was summer, and I knew school was out back in the world. My main dog, Kenneth, would be playing b-ball in the Fourth Street tournament. K-Man couldn't play a lot of ball two years ago, but now he was getting real good. Two teams wanted him to play in the Fourth Street tournament. I wished he could come up and visit me. K-Man is real people.

"Reese, out of line," Mr. Pugh said.

I stepped out of line, and he left-faced the crew and marched them off toward school. I was just standing there by myself but I knew better than to move. When Mr. Pugh gets mad at you, he can make your life two kinds of miserable.

He came back and told me to follow him. "Put your left hand on my belt and don't take it off!"

I put my left hand on his belt. And he started walking toward the staircase. We went to the stairwell and down the stairs real slow. Sometimes Mr. Pugh would stop and flinch like he was going to do something. I just held on to the belt. He was letting me know that any moment he could stop and punch me in the face. I was knowing it.

We went to Mr. Cintron's office. Miss Rice, his secretary, looked old. Mr. Wilson said she had been working at Progress for over fourteen years.

Mr. Cintron came out of the office and he told Mr. Pugh to bring me in.

"You want him handcuffed to the chair?" Mr. Pugh asked.

"Yes," Mr. Cintron said.

He went around to the other side of the desk while Mr. Pugh cuffed me to the chair and left. Mr. Cintron shuffled through some papers and shook his head like he was disgusted.

What I was thinking was that if I went upstate and they were going to kill me, then it would be better if they did it right away. I didn't want to have to walk around looking over my shoulder all the time.

"We picked you!" Mr. Cintron said, looking up at me. "We selected you for the work program because you had a high IQ, you hadn't done anything violent, you had a decent reading score, and you sounded like you really wanted a break. So everybody on the board is going to be looking at the 'model' for this work project and making a judgment. And you're here getting into fights. You really know how to screw things up, don't you?"

"Sir, I'll break my back to make it up," I said. "I'll do anything you say. I'll work hard, I won't get into any more fights. If somebody wants to beat me up, I'll just let them. I swear it, sir."

"Hey, you've already proven that your word doesn't mean shit," Mr. Cintron said. "So why are you giving me that bull now?"

"I'm giving you the only thing I know, sir," I said. "I'm not a snitch, sir, but they were talking about offing Toon. I just didn't want that to happen, sir."

"Reese, well, maybe we were wrong about your IQ," Mr. Cintron said. "You're in here with boys who can steal, who can shoot each other, who can kill. That's the kind of life you chose, and that's the life you got. And you're one of them. So when you start running down some bull about you couldn't let this happen or you couldn't let that happen, it doesn't mean a thing to me. You stole because you didn't want something to happen. Deepak-the boy you call Toon-is in here because he wouldn't behave himself. Tell me where I'm wrong, Reese. Tell me where I'm wrong."

"You're not wrong, sir," I said. "I was wrong, but…"

"But what?"

"I was just wrong."

"So, I have a number of options," Mr. Cintron said. "The first is to write up a report on the fight and give you a nice label. How about 'Aggressive and violent. Cannot control temper'? Then I can send in the report and have you transferred to an upstate facility. You ever been to one of the longterm facilities? In New York they usually put them in nice areas upstate. It's pretty up there this time of year. You can fight up there to your heart's content. They have a half dozen gangs and you'll be in one of them, and then you can get ready for your visit to Manhattan. You ready for that?"

"What's that?"

"That's when they send you back to the streets for a visit," Mr. Cintron said. "It's only for a visit because you'll blow it again and be back in some facility. You're lucky you didn't get a longer sentence."

"I can't get another chance?"

"I don't want to give you another chance, Mr. Anderson," Mr. Cintron said. "But if I take away your chance, if I report this incident, that our 'high-IQ, nonviolent, carefully selected choice' has messed up, it's going to stop the work program in its tracks. Why should we fund this program, pay the extra insurance, and pay for the extra staff hours if these African Americans are just going to throw it away? They're going to look into my face and talk about recidivism rates and emotional instability and social understanding-but in their hearts they're going to keep it a lot simpler. They're going to be thinking that people like you don't deserve a chance.