Fish: A Memoir of a Boy in Man's Prison (29 page)

He walked off, but I could see Slide Step talking to someone at the end of the corridor. The guard, behind him, stepped out and locked the office door. "I already took a shower," I yelled after the con.

"He said come anyway."

Slide Step waved at me then disappeared before I could protest further.

I grabbed my towel and toiletry kit and headed down the hall. It didn't make sense. He knew I'd already showered, after we'd had sex earlier. When I got to the end of the hall, he was gone and the guard's station was empty. They must have off making their rounds. To my left, I noticed Pepper and another inmate sitting together just inside the dayroom. They both stopped talking and looked up at me.

I went down the other hall and slowly opened the shower room door.

Slide Step was sitting on the bench, on the far side of the room. Was this my punishment for what I'd done? I stepped into the room and someone closed the door behind me. Slide Step told him to keep an eye out. It was Scatter! I froze in place and looked at Slide Step.

"I have a surprise for you," he said.

I turned around, and Scatter smiled.

I was terrified and confused.

"Go on," Scatter said. He nodded toward Slide Step.

"C'mere," Slide Step said.

I hesitated.

"C'mere!"

I saw a shadow from around the corner of the wall, and I heard voices, but the echoes inside the shower room prevented me from knowing whether the voices came from inside or out.

My mind raced as I walked toward Slide Step-thoughts of Black, Scatter, and Pepper. How Slide Step hadn't touch me earlier. He had a smirk on his face as I got closer and cleared the opening to where the showers were. Out of the corner of my eye, I felt a figure standing in front of me, but I was afraid to look.

"Go take a shower," Slide Step ordered.

I turned, quickly, to see who was there. The shower blasted hot water and filled the area with steam. Out from the shadows walked Brett smiling.

I looked back at Slide Step.

"Go for it, Squeeze!" lie said.

20

Compromising Choices

It was a normal weekend in early November, and Dad showed up just like he'd said.

"I don't care," Mom said. "You can't have them."

"You've done this before, God damn it, and you're not doing this to me again." He raised his hand, as if to slap her, backing her into the kitchen table. "Get in the car, kids!"

Rick was already there. Connie stood at the back door.

"Daaaaaad!" I screamed in protest.

"I said, `Get in the car!"'

"Don't you dare," Mom shouted.

"God damn it! `Get-In-The-Car!"

Connie obeyed. I dropped my GI Joe doll and ran toward my room, so I didn't see him slap her. Please Daddy, I thought, Don't make me choose.

I walked into the County Jail with a "cat in my stride" -the slow rhythmic swagger that I learned from Scatter-it was supposed to communicate that I was street-wise or institutionalized to lessen the odds that I would become a target. Slide Step warned me that because the county jail was so transient, it could be more dangerous than prison.

I had been in the bullpens all that day, shuffled from one to the next, as they sorted and shifted through hundreds of prisoners.

A deputy walked past the bullpens calling my name, "Parsell!"

"Yeah?" I stepped over several bodies to get to the front of the cell.

He held my wrist to the bars to confirm my name on the plastic hospitalstyle bracelet they put on me when I arrived. "Open Four," he yelled. "You have a visitor."

I stood there stunned for a moment, but then smiled as the gate lurched open under the noisy hum of the electric motors. It must be my brother, I thought.

We walked past the showers and through the Intake area where my fingerprints had been taken, just a few months earlier. So much had happened to nee since then, that it seemed like a different life to me now. A flash went off in the adjoining room, and I remembered dropping the letter board when they first took my mug shot.

Three inmates were standing at the rear of the elevator. The familiar WAYNE COUNTY JAIL was stenciled on the back of their dark gray clothes.

"Step in and face the wall," the deputy said, as he slid the accordion gate closed on the elevator.

We were taken up several floors and into a hall where small windows lined a wall. "Fifteen minutes," the deputy said.

I saw my brother Rick waiting on the other side of the window.

"Hey!" Because of the echoes off concrete and steel, I had to shout into the small intercom at the base of the window and then hold my ear to the speaker to listen.

Rick's wife Belinda, who was straining to see behind him, cried as soon as she saw me. She was probably the only person in my family who cried about my situation. I imagined how much she'd sob if she knew the full details of my time at Riverside.

"Hey little brother! How you doing?"

It was good to see him, but I was angry he hadn't come earlier. "How are you?"

"Better than you!" He grinned.

"Fuck you," I shot back, and we both smiled.

Belinda tried to squeeze in, but Rick wouldn't let her. "In a minute," he said impatiently. He gave me a tired look that told me they still weren't getting along.

"How's the food?"

"Couldn't be better. I'll send you a doggy bag."

There was so much I wanted to tell him-about Slide Step and Brett, Riverside, and Chet and how I got revenge by flushing his teeth down the toilet, but then I realized I couldn't tell him any of it.

"Have you turned queer yet?" He asked, jokingly

"Fuck You." I said and stuck out my chest.

"Good Boy!"

I was better than ever at masking my true feelings. "And I've got your boy," I said, grabbing my crotch and shaking it, "hanging right here."

"Now don't start turning nigger on me."

I winced and looked around quickly.

The jail was in the middle of Detroit, and I was relieved that nobody heard him. He shrugged it off. It was easy for him, on that side of the wall, where there were mostly mothers and girlfriends. There was nothing but men on my side.

One thing was clear, I could never tell Rick about Slide Step.

He looked different to me, but I wasn't sure why. It was the first time I noticed we were splitting apart. But there was also something else there, but I wasn't sure what. His hazel eyes reminded ine of Grasshopper's, and his hair red was like Chet's-though he didn't look like either of them. In a couple of months I would turn eighteen; and in October he would be twenty-three, yet he didn't seem that much older than me now, or as smart and tough or as good looking as he'd always appeared to me. He probably acted like Chet, when he was in here.

When he stepped back from the window, his wife Belinda came into view. She had stopped crying, and her mascara lined her cheeks. She started to say something, but then stopped abruptly. "Your face has cleared up!"

She stared at me with a baffled look, as if struggling to make sense of how my complexion would be clearer now that I was in prison. My heart sank when I remembered guys in high school say that all you needed for your pimples to go away-was to get laid.

Rick moved back into view. "Dad says he'll try to be at court tomorrow. He's not sure he can get off work."

I said it didn't matter. "How's Dad doing?" I asked.

"OK. He quit drinking."

"Uh-huh. How long this time?"

"You're probably too young to remember, but he wasn't always like that."

"I know," I cut him off, "before Mom ran off and left us."

Rick was one to talk. Belinda was nothing but white trash, though she did seem genuinely upset about my being in here. Everyone in the family hated her. Dad said she was OK-to use as a landing pad for when Rick first got out of prison, but that he was stupid for marrying her. She already had two kids at the time, and Rick thought the new one on they way might have been his. Nobody else did.

It was typical of him to take Dad's side. Up until then, Mom was the only issue that separated us. I loved Dad, too, but I also remained loyal to Mom. Even when they all ganged up on her, and said she was no good for leaving us, I would drown out their words in my head. They didn't understand. She had to leave to save herself, she once told me. I just wished she had kept her promise and had cone back for me.

Kick and I stared at each other, neither of us knowing what to say.

"Are you sure you're all right?"

I nodded. "Why haven't you visited?"

"I couldn't get off work." He looked at me sheepishly. "I've been flat broke."

I wanted to ask why he hadn't written or sent me his new phone number, but I couldn't bring myself to say it. So I put that out of my mind too. He was here, now, and that's all that mattered.

"Hey! I almost forgot. I bought a new truck."

"That's great," I said, sounding a hit distracted. It wasn't lost on me that he had just told me that he was flat broke. I let it pass. I had to shut down to survive in there. So I tucked all my feelings away. I couldn't think about it, because that might lead to true feelings something, and you couldn't afford feelings inside. If you do that long enough you start to get good at it after a while. Then you get so used to disappointment that you become grateful for even the tiniest crumb. Still I was glad he came. I missed him.

"Time's up!" the deputy said.

He'd only just got there. It hardly seemed like fifteen minutes.

I sat in the bullpen waiting for Classification. I thought about Brett and how Slide Step had set me up with him before I left. It was pretty brave of Slide Step to do that-given all the checks and challenges that go on with "manhood" in prison. Inmates viewed kindness as a weakness-so for Slide Step to be that generous with me could have brought unnecessary heat on him. Yet even still, he wielded a lot of power and since most inmates viewed two "boys" getting together as lesbian sex-it wasn't a threat to Slide Step's manhood.

I'm not sure if Slide Step knew about Scatter and me, because he didn't mention it. And neither did I. Never trust a guy who'll tell on himself. I couldn't wait to get back there, now, especially after what Slide Step had done for me. I wanted to write him and thank him again. But that was Slide Step. He always seemed to look out for me, and he took as much joy in seeing me happy, as I took in having sex with Brett. And I couldn't wait to do something with Brett again, but I'd have to wait for a pre-sentence investigation report, before the judge could sentence me for the Photo Mat.

The pre-sentence investigations were completed by the Probation Department, and I would be stuck in the county jail until it was completed.

Inmates loved to talk about how they knew the system inside and out. Even when they didn't know, they talked like they did-so you had to be careful about what and who you listened to. "Fuck all that nu mbo jumbo you hear when you first get there," I said to a con in the bullpen. "However much time you've got-that's where they're sending you."