Джойс Оутс - Prison Noir

A couple of days after my arrival on I-unit I was pulled out for orientation. It was held in the gym, and I received a rule book for the facility and another pamphlet, which really struck me at the time and has stayed with me since. I was told that drugs were discouraged at this facility, but that if I was using, I needed to read the pamphlet. It had the expected stuff about HIV/AIDS, and it also had a diagram with directions on how to bleach out a syringe. Holy shit. How fucked is this facility if they’re like, “To hell with it! At least clean your shit right!” Just one of those things I’ve never forgotten.

Hace hici-mokkeye . Creek Indian term for marijuana joint. Literally, it translates to “drunken cigarette.” After a few weeks on I-unit, another Native who went by the name Vic Smooth asked me if I fucked with it. I said I did. Vic gave me a joint, which we then smoked together. He said, “I notice you’ve been getting visits,” and asked me who I had coming up to see me. I told him it was my mom and my wife. Vic nodded a knowing nod and asked, “They don’t be gettin’ down?” I told him that they hadn’t, and asked him how difficult it was to get drugs in through visits. Vic said, “Ain’t shit,” and ran it all down for me.

So, at my next visit I ran it all down for my mother. “Mom, check it out. You know, I’m trying to smoke some weed to chill my ass out. I need you bring me some.”

“Jesus. How?”

I told her to get the weed and take out the seeds and stems, and then to buy some little water balloons and fill two or three of them with weed. “Cut a hole in the bottom of your pocket, that way you can put the balloons in your panties, and when you go to get a snack for me, you stick your hand in your pocket and reach across your panties and grab the balloons. That way, it looks like you’re digging for change.”

“And then?”

“Keep the balloons in your hand. Microwave my sandwich, and grab some napkins. Come back to the table. Let me finish my sandwich, and while I’m doing that, put the balloons in a napkin and wad them up.”

“I don’t know about this.”

“While you’re doing that, I’ll be wiping my mouth with other napkins and wadding them up, placing them on the table. You’ll set your napkin next to mine, and when I finish the sandwich, I’ll grab all the trash to throw away in the can. I’ll palm your napkin in the process, see? Then I’ll fish the balloons out of the napkin and keep them in my hand.”

“Yeah, but what then? Geez, Ed. You can’t just carry that stuff back in. How are you going to hide the balloons once you get them in your hand?” My mom had that look of half concerned disappointment, half brokenheartedness, which I had seen before whenever I’d been in trouble growing up. I also could see that she was going to do whatever I asked. My mom raised me with no help at all from anyone, and she really tried to do her best by me. But I was her baby, and she just didn’t have it in her to say no in what she perceived was my hour of need.

“Just listen, okay? You get me some peanut M&Ms. I’ll eat a handful, and when I get to the last few in the bag, I’ll pour them in my hand with the balloons and slap them all in my mouth at once. I’ll work the balloons under my tongue. Then I’ll chew up the M&Ms, swallow them, and swallow the balloons right behind them. That’s the plan.”

The first time we tried it, which was a couple of weeks later, it worked perfectly. I got back to my bunk, then hit the bathroom and started trying to throw up the balloons. The initial part of the process had been worrisome, but this was definitely the most difficult part of the operation. I remember I couldn’t get them to come up. I tried everything. I even drank a shampoo mixture in an attempt to make myself sick. Didn’t work. I used a toothbrush to gag myself and only managed to bust vessels in my eyes from straining so hard.

On to plan B — catch them coming out the other end, if they didn’t get eaten up by my stomach acids. I think it took me about two days of digging through my own shit to finally get the balloons back, but I did it. It was a lot of work for just short of seven grams of Oklahoma homegrown. So Vic and I smoked a fat joint, and I gave him another for schooling me on what I’d needed to know. Hace hici-mokkeye. It sure made I-unit seem like a better place. Compared to the rock, I-unit didn’t seem so bad, but I wasn’t destined to stay there much longer.

I had met this dude we called Black Bean. He was a black guy, and his mama had named him Bert. Bert Smalley. How he got the name Black Bean, I don’t know. That’s what he was called though, and I had been kind of kickin’ it with him and some of his dudes, shooting hoops and playing spades. So one day, Vic and I had smoked a big joint. We got stupid high, and I was cheesing my ass off. I got real hungry too. Later that night, Bean had looked out for me by giving me a bag of coffee and a rack of cookies. A dude’s got to be real careful what he accepts in prison from another inmate. No matter how innocent it may seem, you just can never fucking tell. So I told Bean that I was straight, that I had money on the way, and that I didn’t want to owe anyone shit.

He was like, “Come on, homey! It ain’t even like that. You don’t owe me shit. I’m giving you this shit, not storing it to you!” (Storing is a practice in prison in which a guy loans someone something for that same item plus fifty percent back.)

So I was like, “Cool. Good looking out.”

A few nights later, I was playing cards with Bean and he asked me if I wanted some coke. I asked him how much it was, and he told that would depend on how much I wanted. I said my money would be showing up in a day or two and that I might want to get a little bit. I’d had a meth habit, and I had shot coke before, so I figured I would do a little, since talking about it had me jonesing anyway.

We were on Fifth Street, and he had blankets hanging off the top bunk to give a little bit of privacy. I was wondering as I sat there where I would get an outfit (syringe), when Bean reached down in his sock and pulled out a bundle of what looked like yellowish-tan rocks.

“What the fuck is that?”

“Coke!”

“Man, I’m not an idiot. I know what coke looks like.” (Obviously, I was an idiot, because I hadn’t known what crack cocaine looked like.)

“Trust me. It’s coke.” He told me to stick my tongue to a small piece, and to my surprise, my tongue became numb where it had touched the stuff. Now, I’m from the woods, and I had never smoked crack or even seen it before, so yeah, I was suspicious. I asked Bean how in the hell I was supposed to shoot a fucking rock.

“Just smoke the shit. Peep game. You’s my dude, so this is what’s up. We’ll smoke a couple of dubs together. I’ll show you how to smoke them, and if you like it, I’ll sell you some. If not, then you don’t owe me shit. Cool?”

Shit, you already know I was all-in on that deal. Bean pulled out a piece of antenna he had stashed from a GE Superadio III and started to put a bit of Brillo pad down inside it. I was fascinated, wide-eyed. He had something taped or wrapped around the end that he told me was the part I’d put my mouth on. He put a piece of crack inside the antenna and lit it just enough that it would, as Bean said, “stay put.” Then he began heating it as he spun the antenna and inhaled the smoke. He held his breath and his nose and sat there for a second before exhaling.

He repeated that same process until the whole rock was cashed, and then handed the antenna to me. I grabbed the silver part. It was hotter than shit, so I dropped it like a dumbass, looking real stupid. Bean gave a little snort, and just nodded toward the floor. I picked it up, and then mimicked what I’d seen him do. Almost instantly, shit changed. I felt like I could see farther, hear better, and that all of my senses were really clicking. I finished the two dubs with Bean and felt like I needed to move around. He told me to enjoy it and to let him know what I thought about it later, so I split.