Джойс Оутс - Prison Noir

“Yes, Deputy Warden, most of the other helpers know him, but we’d rather not help him. He’s very abrasive.”

Smiling, Engle said, “I’ve heard that, Ali, and that’s why I’m hoping you’ll take the assignment. I think both of you being so religious would help you get along.” If I played this opportunity right, Twin could be my access to a steady stream of messengers. I had to make sure the deputy remembered that I didn’t want the assignment.

“Deputy Warden, you know I’m a Muslim, and I’m sure you’ve seen the news. We Muslims can hardly get along with each other, let alone with a fanatic Christian.”

Deputy Engle sat back. “If you’re refusing to be Mr. Jackson’s helper, I’ll understand, but that will leave an open slot for me to fill. I’m sure I can find someone who would like to earn a hundred dollars a month.”

I knew his implication. At present I had no assignment, so I was the open slot. “All right, Deputy Warden, I’ll be Mr. Jackson’s helper. But I want it understood that he’s very temperamental.”

He got up to shake my hand. “I’ll note in your file that Mr. Jackson is a difficult assignment and will even request that payroll gives you a one-time bonus of fifty dollars.”

I never got the bonus, but I did get something far more valuable: that day it became much safer for me to send my messengers to Allah.

There is a commonality between Allah’s messengers and mine. Both of us choose men who are reluctant to be messengers and are despised by the people. Our messengers also share the trait of believing they are not special until they’ve been separated from the people. They don’t feel different, but they are different.

“What incompetent person made you my helper? Plus, aren’t you a Muus-limb?”

I smiled. “Twin, we’ve known each other since 8 block in Jackson Prison. I came to prison as a Muslim, so let’s just have you believe what you believe and I believe what I believe.”

He gave me a long look. “I don’t need a Muus-limb’s help, so you can leave my cell. Don’t worry, they’ll still pay you for the day.” I agreed to leave and told him that if he needed help he should alert the officer, who would get me from my unit.

The following day, Twin had a callout to see the doctor. He had been waiting six months for approval to have an operation to remove cancerous cells from his lungs. I got a wheelchair and took him to the doctor’s office. I waited in the hallway for only about five minutes before I was told to bring him back to his cell. I said nothing as we made our way back.

Twin was peering vacantly down the walkway when he said, “The doctor told me I was denied the operation because the cancer has spread to other parts of my body. It’s in Jesus’s hands now.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I offered to help him write a grievance against the medical provider, the warden, and the Department of Corrections.

“Ali, how many grievances have you won in your time in prison? I’ve been in prison for fifty-two years and remember when we had no grievance procedure at all, and now that we do, I’ve never won one.”

I knew he was right, but I wanted my next messenger to have hope. Hope is Allah’s sign that your message is close to being accepted. I didn’t need another pained expression on the face of my messenger when he stood before Allah.

For the next two weeks, Twin didn’t want any help. I would come to his cell and find him reading the Bible or saying his prayers. “Twin, do you need anything today? I could take you to the yard.” It’s strange making such small talk with a dying man, but I wanted him to be peaceful, and hopeful.

“I’ve been in prison yards since 1960,” he replied. “If you’ve seen one prison yard, you’ve seen them all.”

An inmate’s greatest fear is dying in prison. In prison you have no control. You wake up, eat, go to the yard, come back in, and sleep when told, only to do the same thing all over again the next day. I knew with only twenty-four years in prison myself how Twin felt about being told to go to the yard. He thought that, in not being able to control his life for the last fifty-two years, he could at least have some control over where he died. With great sadness in my heart, I went to the yard by myself.

It was Easter and a mildly warm sunny day when I showed up with a wheelchair at Twin’s cell door. “I thought we’d go to the yard, and you can tell me about Jesus.”

Twin was in bed reading the Bible. “You don’t even believe in Jesus.”

I looked hurt. “I believe in Jesus as a messenger of Allah, God.”

Twin looked doubly hurt. “If you don’t believe Jesus is the son of God, you don’t believe in Jesus.”

I sat down in the wheelchair and asked, “Don’t you believe Jesus was a messenger who brought God’s message to the Israelites? If you do believe this, then maybe you can convince me that Jesus was also the son of God.”

He took my challenge and asked to be helped into the chair. I wheeled Twin to the back of the yard, where I could sit in the shadow of the trees, and he in the sun; I had to be careful to not upset my messenger. There were plenty of others in the yard, but they didn’t approach us. When inmates find out someone is dying, they tend to avoid him as an evil omen of their demise in prison.

I made sure Twin faced the garden outside the greenhouse. The prisoners working the grounds provided a sense of how Allah gives life to a land after its death. I knew this scene would give Twin hope, because life being prepared to come forth always gives hope. Who has not seen a woman with child and not had hope for his own life, her life, and the life of the child?

After twenty minutes of silence, Twin asked, “Ali, do you really want to hear about Jesus as the son of God, or were you just trying to get me out of the cell?”

I pretended to be giving his question some thought. “I do want to talk about Jesus, but in stages.”

He looked at me. “In stages? Like what, His parables?”

“No, not His parables, but the stages of being a messenger to John the Baptist, then a rabbi to the disciples, and finally rising from death as the son of God. I’m really interested in His message.”

Twin smiled and let his body relax under the sun and the blanket on his lap. “You want to know about His ministry, and how He was a messenger of God.”

I knew that those who have ministries are not messengers of Allah but messengers of prophets, and actually receive God’s calling and not His message. Only messengers come with Allah’s message. “Twin, have you ever tried to send a message to God? And has He answered you? And if not, why not?”

Twin, pleased with my skeptical expression, said, “Ali, are you in doubt that God hears you? That’s why Christians speak to God through Jesus. God will always hear Jesus, so Christians have no doubt.” If Jesus was a messenger, this was yet another sign that Allah would hear a message sent through him without a doubt. “You see, Ali, God hears me because I’m a messenger myself. I send the message of God to your ears.”

The sign was complete! Twin was a messenger, and tonight he would leave with my message to Allah. “Twin, you give me hope.”

I spent the next two hours listening to my messenger speak about how he fully understood Jesus’s words. A messenger understands the message. Unlike Red, Twin believed in God, if wrongly, and Allah would correct his belief at their meeting. The yard would close at three forty-five in the afternoon for four o’clock count. After count, I would bring Twin his dinner and, if he allowed, get him ready for bed. I hoped, after our talk in the yard, he would let me help him get ready for bed.