Kindness for Weakness (7 page)

Time passes slowly, the jackhammering of my heart lessening. The screaming in my head stops, and my muscles go slack; I feel drained, exhausted. The guards take some of the weight off me, and for a long time no one says anything. Then, as if a timer has sounded, they start to talk with each other.

“You get mandated yet?” one guard says.

“Yep. Henderson banged out sick this morning.”

“He ain’t sick.”

“Don’t care. I need the overtime. You going out tonight, Roy, or you got your kid?”

“No. The ex’s lawyer says no more visitations until I go to anger management. You believe that?” It’s Horvath’s voice, but I can’t see; he’s standing outside my field of vision.

“Hah! You can go to Eboue and Samson’s group. Won’t cost you nothing, but you’ll have to read their damn books.”

“You know Roy can’t read.”

They all laugh. Abruptly the one on my back says, “Hey, this kid smells like puke!”

“Maybe you squeezed him too hard, Croop.”

“Ah, shit,” says Croop. “That’s why you let me have him. You suck, Horvath!”

Horvath laughs. The weight on my back and legs is lifted, and Croop pulls me over onto my side. He says, “You stink, kid. Get up!” I rise stiffly and touch my cheek. It throbs and burns, but there’s no blood.

“You’re fine,” he says, cuffing me on the back of my head. “But it’s time to man up.”

What’s he mean, “man up”? I want to sit in the chair
and cover my face with the palms of my hands. I want to lie down and curl into a tight, impenetrable ball. I want my life to be over. I’ve had enough.

Horvath points at Freddie, who is stone-faced, sitting with his back against the wall.

“Come on,” Horvath says. “We’re waiting for
you
, Peach!”

Freddie stands, and the three of us walk down a long hallway lined with white cinder block walls and more tempered glass windows. Outside, on some kind of athletic field, a group of boys are gathered in a circle doing jumping jacks underneath a lead sky. Freddie tries to find me with his eyes to see if I’m okay, but I don’t want to look at him. I don’t want to look at
anyone
, because I’m not okay and I don’t think I can pretend for much longer.

We pass heavy steel doors stenciled with the words
ALPHA
,
DELTA
, and
CHARLIE
. A line of boys walk in the opposite direction; they look straight ahead, like soldiers in cheap red and khaki uniforms. Horvath stops in front of the
BRAVO
door and taps Freddie’s shoulder with the antenna of his radio.

“Just in case you forgot,” he says, “
I
run Bravo Unit.”

“You’re senior YDC?” says Freddie.

“Shut up. I didn’t ask you to talk. And it don’t matter who the senior is. This is
my
unit, and everybody knows it.” He leans toward Freddie, his bloated face inches away. “And I don’t want any bitching from you about the food, or the clothes, or the television shows. There ain’t going to be
Dancing with the Stars
or any other queer shit on the TV. We watch football or the History Channel.”

Freddie scowls and moves toward the door, but the big man stays planted in his giant-sized work boots. “I’m not finished,” he says. “You can be a flaming pervert on the outside, but in here you better nut up and act like you’ve got a fucking pair.”

Freddie breathes deep and says, “No more queer shit. Got it.”

“Don’t curse at me, fruit. I’ll write your ass up, and you can start your time with negative points. Is that what you want?”

“No,” Freddie says, dropping his eyes.

“Look at me when I’m talking to you.”

Slowly, painfully, Freddie looks up. His face is clenched in anger, and he holds the big guard’s gaze for a long, uncomfortable moment, like it’s a contest to see which of them will strike or look away first.

No one strikes. No one looks away. Horvath grunts, says, “I’ll be watching you. Count on it.” He shakes his ring of keys and unlocks the heavy steel door to Bravo Unit, my new home.

Bravo is a big open room with plastic chairs, several shelves crammed with battered paperbacks and board games, and a Ping-Pong table. Red-shirted boys play cards and watch the History Channel on a small old-fashioned television set mounted on the wall. They turn to look at me, and I don’t see a single friendly face.

A black guard with a silver hoop earring and a close-trimmed beard says, “Are you James?” He is tall and thin, and his uniform looks crisp, unlike Horvath’s, which is wrinkled and darkened with patches of sweat.

“Yes.”

“Mr. Eboue,” he says with the slightest hint of an accent I’ve never heard before. African, maybe, or Caribbean. He sticks out his hand for a shake. “I’ll show you to your room and get you set up.” He points to my cheek. “Did that happen here?”

I nod.

“You’ll have to see the nurse, then. After dinner.”

But I am only half listening, because I don’t trust him
even though he seems nice. Because I can’t trust anyone. Not the guards, not the nurse, not the other kids. Freddie could be okay, but he did nothing while the guards beat me up. He watched.

I check out my new room, number fifteen, which is walled with more white-painted cinder blocks. It’s got one narrow window looking out on the barbed-wire fence and parking lot. An empty fiberboard dresser. A cot with one pillow and a thin blue blanket.

“You can clean up and relax,” he says, “but don’t close your door until bedtime. Any questions?”

I turn away and lie facedown on my bed, trying not to cry.
Don’t fucking cry
, I tell myself, but it’s hard, because whatever it is I’m supposed to do at this place, I am pretty sure I can’t do it. I can’t “man up” or fit in with kids who are real criminals and gangbangers. What was I thinking, delivering drugs for Louis? What was he thinking when he asked me?

I am a loser. I am scared and weak. I want to call Mr. Pfeffer and ask him what I’m supposed to do. I want to talk to him over cold root beers, and have him tell me that everything will be okay. I want him to give me new books, enough to last twelve months, so I can disappear into the pages and not have to deal with this place. I could read one book after the other, stopping only to eat, sleep, and do school or chores or whatever it is they do here. And I won’t have to talk to anyone, except for Freddie or Mr. Eboue. That would be a good plan.

At some point I fall into a dreamless sleep, and it’s Mr.
Eboue’s voice that wakes me. “Listen up!” he says. “Chow time. Regular order. Freddie and James, I want you two at the end with me. Tight formation, everyone.”

I get in line behind Freddie, squaring my shoulders like the others. We walk in single file to the cafeteria and sit at other round plastic tables bolted to the floor. My table gets called first to wait in line with Styrofoam plates at a stainless steel counter; kitchen boys in latex gloves and hairnets load us up with meatloaf, mashed potatoes and gravy, peas, and buttered bread. I am allowed two milks, two cups of water, and a bowl of chocolate pudding for dessert. It looks like school lunch food only worse, but the other boys don’t seem to notice or care. They dig in and work their mouths silently. Mr. E sits down next to me at my table.

“Family visits are allowed every Wednesday between four-thirty and six,” he says. “But we need a three-day notice. You have family to come visit you, James?”

“I’m not sure,” I say.

The other boys at the table are looking down at their plates, eating slowly. But they’re also listening. I hear whispered comments: “That boy mad skinny.” “He looks like he about to cry.” “Smells like puke.” Mr. E shoots the boys a glance and then pats me on the shoulder.

“Then you have to be extra strong,” he says. “I don’t have much family, either, and it’s tough sometimes.” He gets up and goes over to a table that’s getting loud. Almost instantly the boys seated across from me look up from their food and glare.

A Hispanic kid with an Afro says, “Where you from,
white boy?” He smiles, almost friendly, like he knows he can kick my ass if he wants to but understands it’s not necessary because I’m no threat.

“Dunkirk,” I say. “You?”

“Brooklyn, man. We all from Brooklyn or the Bronx.”

The others nod and smile with what looks like pride.

“Where the fuck is Dunkirk?” says a small white kid with big ears and spiky blond hair. His eyes are swirling with the same manic energy that Ron has when he’s tweaking on meth.

“About forty miles southwest of Buffalo,” I say. “It’s on Lake Erie.”

“I like Buffalo wings,” says a tall kid with the beginnings of a mustache. He looks a little dopey.

“Buffalo’s a shit hole, ain’t it?” says the kid with spiky hair. He shifts and bounces in his seat like he’s wired up to springs.

The Hispanic kid looks at him and says, “Yo, Weasel, how come you’re always saying other people live in a shit hole? Because your narrow white ass got ‘retarded inbred trailer park’ written all over it!”

Other boys laugh and say stuff like “Yo, that’s fucked up,” and “Weasel’s mad inbred.”

Weasel’s eyes get big and even more crazy-looking. “I dare you to say that again, Tony. You half-breed motherfucker! I mean, where’d you get that gay-ass seventies ’fro? Because I heard your mother was bald-headed. I heard she was a one-legged whore who was bald-headed. I heard …”

He’s rolling, like he’s preaching a foul sermon in some kind of an ADHD-induced frenzy. I have seen kids like
him at school, kids who are mental and hyper, but he’s in a league of his own. It’s funny but a little scary, too, because I don’t know how far he’ll go and what the other boy (or the guards) will do. If they mess you up for walking in the front door, then what will they do for this?

Tony is gripping the edge of the table, veins and cords of muscle standing out on his forearms. He looks like he’s going to jump across the table and choke the shit out of Weasel.

But Mr. E stops it from going any further by grabbing Weasel and pulling him off his stool. At the same time he locks eyes with Tony and says, “You’re too smart to let him run you with his mouth. Right?”

Tony nods and, almost at once, lets his shoulders drop. But Weasel keeps struggling in Mr. E’s grip, shouting and talking more trash. “He started it! Get your hands off me. I can walk.”

Horvath is nearby, watching, waiting, shifting nervously in his big work boots, ready for action. His face is red and puffy, and he looks like he wants to crush Weasel and then throw him around like a spiky-haired rag doll. I can picture it, but it’s not at all funny, because I know exactly how it would feel.

But Mr. E says, “I got this, Mr. Horvath.” He puts his hand on the small boy’s neck and says, “Okay, Bobby. Show me how you can do the right thing.”

Bobby, or Weasel (or whoever he is), nods, finally settling down, and they walk past a hulking Horvath, who looks angry and cheated.

After dinner the other boys go back to the unit; Mr. Horvath takes me to see the nurse. He points to a yellow-taped line on the hallway floor.

“Always walk on the right,” he says. “Or you’ll get written up. Understand?”

“Yes,” I say.

The clinic is a bunch of offices and small rooms separated from the rest of the facility by another set of heavy locked doors. A guard sits outside one of the rooms in a plastic chair reading a magazine, while a boy presses his face to the small inset window to watch me as I walk by.

“Sit down!” The guard bangs the door; the boy grins and disappears from view.

I follow Horvath to an office with a stainless steel examination table. It looks like the kind of place where they put dogs and cats to sleep. He drops heavily into a chair and grabs a bowl of chocolates off a white Formica desk.

“Tired, Mr. Horvath?” says a small woman in white scrubs with purple reading glasses hanging from her neck
by a cord. She pours coffee into a Styrofoam cup and hands it to the guard.

“Thanks, Terry. Three mandates this week.”

“And it’s only Tuesday! You poor thing.” She picks up a clipboard and gestures for me to get up on the exam table. “What are we doing here, Roy?”

“Post-restraint. New kid. Puked in the van.”

“Oh, my,” she says, turning my head to look at my cheek. “Things aren’t going well for you, young man, are they?”

I shake my head, ready to be comforted by this nice gray-haired nurse.

“Don’t let Mr. Innocent fool you,” says Horvath. “He’s already thick as thieves with Freddie Peach.”

She scowls at me like I’ve done something wrong, says, “I
heard
Freddie’s back. Can’t say I’m surprised, though. A born con artist, that one.”

They go on talking like this for several minutes, like I am no longer there. Terry says that Freddie filed thirty-something grievances last year, all of them rejected.

Horvath grunts and shakes his head. “That’s because he’s a pathological liar.”

The nurse takes a picture of my cheek, which is red and puffy like a scraped knee or a rug burn, which I suppose is all it is. The camera is an old-fashioned Polaroid; the flash pops, and the camera spits out a square of film that Terry shakes and puts into my file.

“Do you know why you were restrained?” she says, a ballpoint pen poised over her clipboard.

“No,” I say.

Her glasses drop to the tip of her nose. She looks really pissed now, no longer a nice gray-haired nurse. Horvath stops devouring the bowl of Hershey’s Kisses and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. He’s rolled the foil wrappers of the dead chocolates into tiny balls and lined them up in a neat row. “He knows why,” he says. “He’s just being a smart-ass.”

The nurse frowns. “Okay, then. I’ll ask once more. Why were you restrained?”

“I don’t know.”

Horvath erupts, scattering the foil balls across the clean white desktop. “That’s a bunch of crap!” he says. “He wasn’t following directives. That’s why.”

The nurse marks something on her form and says, “Not following directives. Okay, next question: Were you injured during this restraint?”

I point to my cheek.

She puckers her mouth. “Last question: Do you feel that the restraint was conducted properly?”