Fish: A Memoir of a Boy in Man's Prison (42 page)

Sharon was pissed, and for once I had finally beaten her!

We decided to name the prison newspaper The Oracle. Spaulding, our editor, had found the word in Webster's Dictionary. He read us the definition and everyone agreed it was perfect because it reminded us of Miss Bain. An oracle is a person (as a priestess of ancient Greece) through whom a deity is believed to speak-a person giving wise or authoritative opinions.

Spaulding had worked closely with Miss Bain to pick the team of five reporters, an assistant editor, and me. I was hired as the administrative assistant. I'd never held a real job, much less one with a title, so I was especially excited to take part in the project. Four of us were white, and four were black.

When Miss Bain first assembled us, she handed everyone brand new journals and said that we each brought something unique to the paper. She wanted us to share our unique experiences, something no one before had ever asked me to do. She told us Warden Handlon wanted the paper to win an award for prison newspapers and that he instructed her to hire the best and brightest at MTU.

Josh, the white guy I knew from Riverside, was our legal writer. He was studying to become a paralegal and worked in the law library. I hated him for setting me up with Rock when I first arrived at MTU, but I wasn't going to let that stop me from advancing myself.

Spaulding was also white, and the oldest among us, had worked on a newspaper at Jackson prison. At twenty-four, he was older than most inmates at MTU. No one knew why he was there, since MTU was for inmates who were under twenty-one. The rumor was that he had snitched while on the North Side of Jackson. Warden Handlon believed that anyone who had served time in Jackson didn't belong at MTU, since its focus was on younger inmates who still had a chance of reforming. But Spaulding was a college graduate, and his experience on the newspaper must have had something to do with him joining us. Miss Bain said that Warden Handlon was the type of man who once he set his mind to something, like winning the National Penal Press Award, he'd stop at nothing to accomplish it.

I was the youngest on the team and the only homosexual, which is why (I believe) the others hassled me about working on the newspaper.

"She's going to fuck it up for the rest of us," O. J. said.

O. J. was one of the reporters. He looked like the then-famous football player who appeared in rental car ads on TV, but that isn't how this O. J. got his name; he'd tell us many times. He was Otis Junior, the fifth or sixth junior in a row.

"My daddy was Junior, and my granddaddy they called June Bug, so they named me O. J. -long before that other nigger won the Heisman trophy."

I stared at him in confusion.

"See!" he said. "She probably doesn't even know what I'm talking about."

"I'm not a she," I said. "I've got a dick."

He and the others shot me a dirty look.

"Watch your language, bitch. Can't you see there's a lady here?"

I looked up and saw Miss Bain standing in the doorway.

"Sorry, Miss Bain. I don't like being called a girl."

She nodded at me and glanced disapprovingly at the others.

"Whatever you are," Rodney said, "None of us want you messing it up for us."

"What are you talking about?" I asked.

By being on the newspaper, we were granted free access throughout the prison, to follow up on news stories, but the other guys were worried that I would ruin that by getting caught having sex in one of the units.

"If you get caught," O. J. said, "they'll take that privilege from all of us."

"I'm not looking to do anything!" I wanted to ask, "What about you guys?" Who's to say they wouldn't be out raping a fish or forcing some gay guy to blow them?

"All right," Miss Bain said. "You can knock all that off right now."

"I'll knock it off," Lee said, his eyes trying to check out my ass.

The others laughed, and Lee winked at me.

I was angered by how they'd pick on me one minute and then the next, turn nice and ask if I'd go off and have sex. But of course that only meant my servicing them.

"Now we can let go of stereotypes while your working with me," Miss Bain said. She walked in and sat on the edge of a desk. "I've hired Tim because he can type, better than anyone in here, and because he has shown some other talent ..."

"Yeah, we know about that," O. J. said.

"I said that's enough!" Miss Bain sounded annoyed, but she didn't raise her voice. She didn't have to. These guys wanted to stay in her good graces.

"I can't believe how you all are treating him!"

O. J. and the others shifted in their seats.

"I would expect some of you, at least, to have some sensitivity to prejudice and discrimination."

"It's not the same thing," 0. J. started to say, but Miss Bain cut him oft.

"Yes it is. It's not black and white, or even a gay/straight thing, it's...'

"It's in the Bible," 0. J. said.

"And we all know how closely you live your lives by that."

0. J. smiled.

"The Bible also condones slavery. Did you know that?"

"Hey Miss Bain?" Lee said. "Why are you sticking up for fags?"

She stood up and closed the door. "Open your journals, gentlemen, and write down these words: Hate and Ignorance. As reporters, you're going to need to know the precise meaning of words."

She sat on the edge of her desk. "This is not about homosexuality, Lee, its about hate and ignorance, and though you may think you know what those things mean, I want you to look them up anyway. As long as we keep focusing on where something is landing, instead of what it is that's being tossed about, we're going to keep missing the point."

A couple guys nodded.

"Whatever Tim's lifestyle is, is of no concern to me." She looked around the room. "Now this isn't just another job assignment, and if you came here because you wanted a free pass throughout the prison, tell me right now. I'm sure we can find something else for you to do-in the kitchen."

Spaulding started to say something, but Sherry Bain held up her hand.

"Now listen to me, because I only want to have this talk once. While you're working with me, I expect you to behave like gentlemen, which means I expect you to treat each other respect and with some degree of dignity." She glanced over at me.

"Words can be a powerful weapon, but as gentlemen, I'll expect you to leave some of that out there on the yard. Because I don't really need to be hearing about your bitches and ho's and fags and ... some of those other things." She looked at 0. J.

Everyone laughed, at the way she pivoted her head back and forth as she said it. She was acting very "street" all of a sudden, and it seemed out of place coming from her.

Spaulding said, "You being a woman, in the field of male corrections, you must be especially aware of these kinds of issues."

Miss Bain stifled a grin. "It probably has more to do with my upbringing, but, yes, wading through some of these back waters has been an interesting challenge. Though not as difficult and you might think."

"Since Spaulding is your editor, he is going to question your words and check your facts. We need to be as accurate as we can be, so we'll teach you how to do this," she said, "with everything."

"To validate our stories we'll look for contradictions and challenge our assumptions. When following up on something, always keep an open mind, because you never know where it where it might land you."

"What do mean by that?" Rodney asked.

"Well, let's start with a simple question," she said. "How many of you thought you were given a square deal by the system?"

No one raised their hand.

"None of you?" She looked around the room. "0. J. What was your school like?"

"It was pretty messed up," he said.

"Any sports programs?"

"We used to, until they cut them out."

Lee said, "That shit is for white folks-out in the burbs."

"Do you think it's an accident that most inmates are black?" Miss Bain asked.

"Shit. Tell us something we don't know," O. J. said.

"All right. How about the movies you're all watching in the auditorium. What was last Saturday's movie?"

"Trick Baby," Lee answered.

"Trick Baby?" she said. She dropped her head is disbelief. "Trick Baby?"

The guys laughed because her eyes said it all.

"Hey! Now that's my boy," Lee said. "That's Iceberg Slim."

"I don't care if it's Romaine Lettuce," she laughed. "That crap is doing nothing but poisoning your young minds."

O. J. looked over at Lee with an exasperated expression.

"You can roll your eyes all you'd like, Mr. O. J., but let me just say that as long as we keep pandering to this never-ending stream of negative imagesones that show young black men as nothing more than pimps and pushers, con men and racketeers-instead of stepping up and showing off young, bright talented men such as each one of you is capable of being, then the general public is not going to care two nickels about you, me, or any other minority."

0. J. looked at her, his mouth slightly ajar.

"There will just be a neverending stream of young 0. J.s and June Bugs and Juju Beans that keep showing up in prison each year."

"I'm not telling you what you should watch, but I do think we can challenge what others think about us by questioning who it is they say we are."

We sat in a kind of stunned silence. No one had ever had that kind of analytical conversation with me, and I'm sure none of the others guys had ever had one either.

"I'll tell you what," Lee said. "That shit is DEEP."

The loudspeaker blared, "Attention All Inmates: Return from your assignments."

"Question your assumptions," Miss Bain said in closing, "and look for the contradictions. I'll see you all this afternoon."

As she got up to leave, she glanced over and smiled at me.

Miss Bain was a bad motherfucker!

When we arrived for chow, I let Paul go ahead of me in the line. It was pizza day, the highlight of the week's menu. As I inched toward the serving trays, I felt someone squeeze my ass. I spun around and saw a large black guy, Reese, pull his hand away. He stared at me like it wasn't him, and as soon as we sat down, I told Paul about it.

"Who?" He shouted.

"Shhh," I said. "He'll hear you."

"Fuck that! You can't let these ho's play you like that."

My heart sank, because I didn't want to get into a fight. And I wasn't sure it was him anyway. "It was Reese," I said, after Paul insisted I tell him.

Paul got up immediately and went over to him. A few minutes later, he returned. "It's take care of," he said. "I told him I didn't want a fight, but that you were with me."

"What'd he say?"

"He said that was cool."

Paul took a bite of his pizza.

"Do you want mine?" I said. "I'm not really hungry."

"You need to gain some weight, Squeeze. Those pants are falling off you."

It was scrawny piece of pizza, and it was nearly cold. I didn't want it.

"Listen, you can't let shit like that go," Paul said, "because it's never about what it looks like on the surface. He wasn't just copping a feel. He was testing-to see how you would react."

"I think he was also testing me," Paul said.

I hit into my thin slice of pizza.

Outside the chow hall, two inmates walked past.

"That bitch is so ugly," one of them said, "that when she was born-the doctor slapped her momma."

Inmates loved to snap on one another, but I didn't know who they were joking about until I turned the corner and saw Black Diamond standing with another queen.

"Well stir my pudding," she said. "If it ain't Mr. Blue Eyes. How the hell are you, girl?"

In the daylight, the poor thing was even more ugly than I had remembered. Her hairline was at the top of her head and her eyebrows were arched so high that she looked like Oopsy the Clown.

"I'm fine," I said, smiling, "but I'm still not a girl, Miss Thing."

"Well all right," she said. "You can be anything you want to be, honey, with your fine self."

It had been a few months since I left the county jail, and though I heard she had arrived in Quarantine, I didn't get a chance to see her before I left.

"When did you get here?" I asked.