Page 41 of The River Is Waiting

There are some tough-looking dudes in this Communion line, but they seem as pious as monks. Thinking again about the line I stood in the day before, I shift uncomfortably. Do these guys crave some kind of absolution the way I craved that tequila? I hope the AA meeting after this isn’t going to push the God stuff too hard. I don’t feel contemptuous of religion like my father does, but I’m skeptical that some savior “if He were sought” is anything more than wishful thinking. I remember what my sponsor’s sponsor said to him: “Dale, you don’t have to believe as long as you believethatIbelieve.” Or what Dale told me about his own belief: that the closest he comes to feeling the presence of a higher power is when he looks out at the vastness of the ocean when he’s surf casting.

My attention shifts to the three-man choir up front, one of them strumming a guitar. The song is familiar, but I can’t remember where I know it from. The middle singer looks familiar, too, and when he steps forward and begins his solo, I do a double take. It’s that Jamaican guy, Jheri Curl, who tried to embarrass me the first day I went out in the yard.To see Thee more clearly, love Thee more dearly, follow Thee more nearly, day by day.He’s toned down his look for church—no eye makeup, no lipstick courtesy of strawberry Twizzlers. And he has a damn good singing voice. The other two join in as the song wraps up.Day by day by day by day by day.

After the ones in line have been served, Dog and the three choir members receive their communion, then take their seats. Jheri Curl’s is directly in front of mine. I’m looking at the long vertical scar running down the back of his shaved head when I feel something hit my sneaker. Glancing down, I see the kite. At the far end of my row, a bearish-looking bald guy is pointing at… Jheri?

“Him?” I mouth, and his head bobs up and down. I tap Jheri on the shoulder and slip him the kite. He unfolds and reads it, then places two fingers to his lips and sends off a kiss to the sender. A hookup, I figure.Spirituality now and sinning later on, my father’s voice says.What hypocritical bullshit.

When church is over, about half the guys stay behind, stacking some of the chairs against the wall and arranging others in a circle. I’m surprised to see that when the priest takes off his robe, he’s dressed like the rest of us: tan scrubs, state-issued sneakers, prison ID pinned to his shirt.

A younger guy named Javier calls the meeting to order. He leads the eleven of us in the serenity prayer and reads a couple of announcements. When he asks whether anyone is new, I raise my hand, volunteer my firstname, and tell the others I’m cross-addicted. “Welcome,” some of them say. “Glad you’re here.”

Javier passes me a Big Book and asks me to read “How It Works.” “Chapter five, pages fifty-eight through sixty,” he says. I read the description of the twelve steps and end with that part about how, although no human power can save us from our addiction, “God can and will if He is sought.” Everyone else chimes in on that last part. They sound more convinced than I am.

Javier says his topic for today’s meeting is how we can resist temptation. Most of the guys who share say a lot of the same stuff I heard at the meetings I attended before my sentencing: talk to your sponsor; pray for strength from your higher power; “move a muscle, change a thought.” One guy says he wants to remind us that while we’re sitting in here, our addiction is doing push-ups out in the yard, getting ready for the day when we’re discharged. The priest, whom everyone calls Father Andy, shares that he got his fourth DUI on his drive back from a ninety-day rehab. I half-want to tell them about my close call the day before, but I don’t know whether I can trust these guys and I don’t want anyone on my tier to get in trouble if someone ignores the “what’s said in here stays in here” rule. Besides, I can’t quite say how or why I was able to resist at the last minute. When my thumb poked through the bottom of that cup, had it been a voluntary act or an involuntary one?

I’m the only one who doesn’t share. Still, walking back to B Block, I feel pretty good about having gone to that meeting. Calmer than I’ve felt in a long time. Maybe I’ll put in a request to go back next Sunday. It would beat sitting in our cell, worrying about how Emily and Maisie are doing or trying not to listen to Manny’s music or one of his monologues. Last week I added earplugs to my commissary order.

“Where you been?” he asks when I get back from the meeting. What business is it of his? I tell him, straight-faced, that the warden invited me over to her place for tea and cookies. He looks so hurt by my sarcasm thatI fess up. He says he’s proud of me for going, which creeps me out a little. I sure as hell don’t needhisapproval.

Before lights-out, I read Dr. Patel’s letter for the umpteenth time. Reading can bea temporary escape from your restrictive environment.… There are many jobs available to inmates at Yates.… the prison librarian, Fagie Millman…

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

September 2017

Day 53 of 1,095

I let a week go by before I get a pass from my counselor and find my way to the library on the top floor of the main building. Coincidentally, that guy Javier who chaired last Sunday’s meeting is working the circulation desk.

“Hey, there,” he says. “Corby, right?” I nod, pleased that he remembers my name. I ask whether he knows of any job openings. “Here, you mean? You’d have to check with the boss about that,” he says. He points to the small office behind him. “Door’s open, so you can knock and go right in.”

Fagie Millman has no eyebrows; that and the headscarf that’s riding back from her forehead reveal her baldness that says cancer treatments. She’s warm and welcoming and remembers my name from Dr. Patel’s email, but says she doesn’t have any open slots. “I’m happy to add your name to my waiting list,” she says. “There are three ahead of you, but one of my current workers has applied for a job in food prep and is waiting to hear back. And there’s always a chance that someone will become eligible for early parole.” In the meantime, she says, I should feel free to browse. “And here, have one,” she says, holding out a plate of chocolate chip cookies. “After he retired, my husband, Howie, was bored out of his mind until he discovered he likes to bake. I’d weigh a thousand pounds if I ate everything that comes out of our oven. Warden Rickerby frowns on my bringing ingoodies for you fellas, but nuts to her. What’s she going to do? Fire me after twenty-eight years?”

I thank her, take a cookie, and tell her I have a two-hour pass. Does she mind if I hang around and do some reading? She says she’d be delighted. Handing me a pencil and a slip of paper, she has me write down my name and inmate number. When I hand it back to her, she compliments me on my legible handwriting. Makes me smile when she says that. At Yates, you take whatever praise you can get.

The collection’s pretty thin. I browse through sci-fi, biography, nature. When I read the titles on the shelf labeled “Local Interest,” I pull out something calledConnecticut’s Carceral History 1773–2012.On the cover are two photos: one of New-Gate, the state’s first prison, the other of this place. I’m curious about New-Gate. When the state turned it into a museum, Emily took her sixth-grade class on a field trip there and came home with a brochure. From what I remember, the prison had been a copper mine before it housed crooks, killers, and British prisoners of war. Yates is bleak enough, but from the pictures in the book I’m holding, the conditions at New-Gate were practically inhuman.

I sit down at a table on the opposite end of an older Black inmate seated in a wheelchair. Short gray dreads, horn-rimmed glasses drooping halfway down his nose, faded US Navy tattoo. He’s mouthing the words as he reads, tracing each line with his finger. When he looks up at me, I nod a hello. He nods back, not smiling, and holds up the paperback he’s reading,Charcoal Joe. He asks whether I’ve ever read any Easy Rawlins books. “Can’t say that I have,” I tell him. “I’ve heard of that author, though.”

I can tell from his “pfft” that I haven’t won any points with that answer. “The author’s Walter Mosley. Easy Rawlins is thecharacter. Who you think writes all themTarzanbooks? Tarzan?”

Yeah, whatever, Gramps. I give him a half-smile and crack openConnecticut’s Carceral History. The introduction describes how the public’s attitudes about prison is a pendulum that swings back and forth between punishment and rehabilitation, depending on which way the politicalwinds are blowing. The book was published in 2012, when Obama was president. I remember reading about him visiting some prison and telling the inmates that some of them were there because they’d made the same kind of mistakes that he made when he was young. His message was all about hope and change and getting past those mistakes. Now that Trump’s in the White House, the political winds have shifted so abruptly, you could get whiplash.

I flip to the back of the book. Turns out the author, Nathan Kipp, was a prisoner at Yates who came here at nineteen for a gang-related assault. Started taking correspondence courses while he was here and ended up as a college professor. It saysConnecticut’s Carceral Historywas his doctoral thesis. In his author photo, he looks early forties maybe. Bald-headed, full beard, arms folded across his chest. Despite his achievements, there’s a sadness in his eyes. Did he always have that look or did he earn it in here?

I open the front and read the dedication: “To those who live in prisons of their own or others’ making.” He’s inscribed this copy to Fagie Millman, thanking her for believing in him before he believed in himself. Nice.

I skip the rest of the introduction and dip into the history. The first chapter says that in the 1600s, the Puritans believed crime and sinning were the same thing, and that punishment was more about public humiliation than keeping people locked up. Thieves, blasphemers, drunks, liars, adulterers, idolaters, practitioners of witchcraft or Quakerism could be lashed, put in stocks, branded on the forehead with a red-hot iron, or banished to the wilderness. The most egregious transgressors could have an ear severed or be escorted to the gallows, where they would meet the noose.

Kipp writes that New-Gate was the first of its kind in Colonial America: a state prison. At New-Gate, the book says, incarcerated men were forced to live seventy-five feet underground in the caves and shafts of the converted mine, and that the facility was later replaced by Westfield Penitentiary, a four-story brick fortress built by New-Gate prisoners who were then locked up there.

In a way, it’s not that different from what happens at this place. A lotof the guys here work for Prison Industries, making office furniture and body armor, assembling electronics, doing DMV data entry—all for a whopping fifty cents an hour. I overheard some guy in the shower room griping to his buddy that from the twentysomething dollars a month he earns “working for the man,” they take out for taxes, victim restitution, and program costs.

The book says that by 1850, the prison population had far outgrown the Westfield facility, leading to overcrowding, escapes, brawls, and the stabbing death of a controversial warden. Deemed ineffective with the now more violent population, the penitentiary system was abandoned and the pendulum swung back to a more punitive—

“If I was you, I’d begin at the beginning.”

I jump a little; I forgot about the old guy on the other side of the table. I look over at him, confused. “Devil in a Blue Dress.Start there.”

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