Chapter 61
Let's Talk
Let’s Talk A friend once texted me, “We need to talk,” and my whole body clenched. There are few phrases that strike more fear. We laughed about it later, the way women do to keep from crying. Between lover and fighter, I’m a lover. I’m Sicilian; we’re stubborn about love and humor. History kept conquering us, so we learned to keep laughing. Turns out that’s the real victory. Humor and love are subversive technologies. In here, they’re survival skills. After Luci left, Tamara became my head bunkie, which means she was in the row behind mine and the tops of our heads faced each other. It’s an oddly intimate position. You hear everything. I know when she gets up to pee in the night.
She knows when I’m conked out and snoring. When she does “readings” for people with the cards or goes through her rosary, I try to put up a protective wall for privacy. When Rach and I chant or do other practices in our bunks, I feel her trying to do the same. It’s a clear and deliberate non-intrusion. A few years back, I was staying in an Airbnb in the Hamilton Heights area of Harlem. It was hot. Dirty, humid, city hot. My mom and I, in a rare turn of events, had gotten into it. I’d gone on a few dates with a guy and her hackles were up. Something about him rubbed her the wrong way.
He was too fast. Too smooth. I didn’t like her snap judgment. I did the eternal daughter’s protest: “But Mom, you have to get to know him.” She did the mother classic: “You only need to know one of those guys.” Long story short, she was right. I went for a walk, the great panacea. Unless it’s 100 degrees. I instantly regretted my decision, but I was committed at that point. I wasn’t altogether familiar with the area. There was a much higher concentration of Dominicans than other parts of Harlem. Spanish writing on the awnings. Guys in long jean shorts and white socks. Photos of Dominican seafood in the windows. Heat fumes were coming off the sidewalk. My mind felt like a dry mouth, thoughts stuck, yet I had a grim determination to make it to 125th Street.
Suddenly I heard, “You need to come inside.” It came from a woman dressed all in white. I looked around. She was looking at me. “You. You need to come inside,” she repeated. I glanced at the window filled with candles and crosses, images of Mary. The awning torn, dirty. A Santería store. Santería, if you haven’t met it, is a Caribbean religion that blends Catholic saints with West African deities. It lives in back rooms with candles, rum, cigar smoke, and prayer, and it can be as healing as it is risky, depending on who’s handling the power. I was not up for the task. My Latina friend who inhabits the depths of that secret world once warned me, “Keep your eyes on.
We are the cleanest and the dirtiest of ’em all. Not knowing the difference can get you in a heap of trouble.” I was not in the mood to decipher. “Your mother does not want to argue with you. She wants you to come in and listen to me.” Okay, now it was getting personal. I looked around again as if LET’S TALK someone who knew what had just happened with my mother was signaling this woman. Except no one knew what was going on with my mother other than me. The air in the store was cool. The lights were out. It was a space out of time built only for these conversations. It was very clear there was very little commerce.
My mind, like melted wax that was now cooling, reformed. There was a sharp clarity, like pristine reality breaking through hot smog. She handed me a white rose from a vase of roses. I remained cautious. She laugh-smiled as if she’d seen this response a thousand times. “That’s it. Keep this. That’s all I had to say,” she said. I reached toward my bag. Clearly this was her gig: Call people in, give them something for free, and they feel inclined to give you cash. Give her the money and go. She held her hand up in a “keep your money” gesture. “She loves you. Your mother loves you. That is all. I serve the Mother.” She pointed to an image of Mary on the wall. “All mothers.” And then she let me go.
I say “let” because I was suspended there for those few minutes. I was retroactively humbled, a bit embarrassed at my suspicion. She read this too. Smiled. Nodded. I turned and left, walking down 145th with a white rose. Tamara makes me think of this woman. The keen eye. She can tell that I am somewhat wary. The profound softness. There is a mischievous quality to Santería women. You can sense the legacy of women, back rooms, rituals, candles, and secrets. Tuning in, tapping into things not all of which should be tuned into, and if they are, the person turning the dial had better be skilled at both knowing what she is calling in and how to handle it when it arrives.
It’s rarely of this world. It’s not always light. It’s clear Tamara has wrestled with more than a few night creatures, and that when she calls the light, it picks up the phone. It was another “game recognizes game” instance when we met: the cat-circling of encountering someone in a different game, gauging the ethical distance between the two, the priorities. She was quick to say she had no fear of the darkness but that the light was her home. I said, “Same, same. If you fear the dark then the light is just a hiding place. But if you’re not afraid to enter, you find the hidden light inside the dark.” She liked that. Gave me an “I’ll think about that” look. “You know I get exhausted back here sometimes,” she said. “I take in a lot of dark in this place.
Do my best to cycle it through for the ladies, but sometimes it just knocks me out.” “I know a few practices, if you’re ever interested, to transform that energy.” Again, the “I like that” look and a nod. Needless to say, she had been the first person to sign up when our meditation class sheet went up. She has a charming habit of moving her mouth with yours when you speak and murmuring back what you say. It establishes a rapport, a sense of one current. Then she’ll throw her head back and laugh as if to break the spell, because all spells must be broken, and go on her way to her job mopping the dorm. I keep my eye out for her.
She does go down often. I tell her, “We need you,” meaning the love, the light, the care she brings. A mother at fourteen, two boys and a girl with severe autism. You see both the care woven into the fabric of her nervous system and a lifetime of never enough sleep. I try to wrap her in mantras, try to send a field of safety around her. I invite her on the walks which, more often than not, she says yes to, but when it’s time she’s wrapped in three blankets in deep sleep. This place is, for some, the first time they ever rest. She’s my age. We talk about “codes.” I try not to sound like I’m scolding a younger generation, but she’s right: A lot of folks in here never learned any code beyond impulse.
I caught her talking to a few girls after a blowup at the gate and gave the talk: You don’t put a man LET’S TALK before your girls. Loyalty first. Things calmed for about five minutes. We were stuck on recall—count was off again. Someone was miscounted so the whole dorm freezes while they redo it. Xi-yen is often the culprit as she speaks no English and will be in the kitchen happily cooking her fourteen-minute congee. We will hear all the Asian women at once: “Xi-yen!” Tamara was close to Carla, the woman who had called “bullshit” on the more generous perspective of prison I had tried to share in meditation class some weeks back. Carla was not, shall we say, an easy woman.
She was walking, talking prison slang. “Hard time make a bitch hard” was one of her favorites when someone would ask her to lighten up. Never before have I witnessed the “opposites attract” reality as I did with Carla and Tamara. Most women here are close to one person at a time, vacuum-sealed, then wake up and start hanging out with someone new. But those two somehow got along through thick and thin. Where everyone else bristled, Tamara just giggled over Carla’s insults. As much of a shit-kicker Carla can be, that’s exactly what you need when shit goes down. She had defended us more than once, first when Isabella refused to let us into the room where we were supposed to hold meditation class, and again when Lisa accused us of stealing her bottle of pink oil the Black women use for their hair. “The fuck you think these rich women need your hair oil for?
They not bald, ugly bitches like you.” Okay, so I did not say it was a sweet defense, but it worked. Having spent the better part of her life in prison, and solitary, you see it in her eyes. One half can’t be messed with and one half has been touched by something deeper, moved by an otherworldly force. “Didn’t read, didn’t get high like everyone else,” she said when I asked how she got that strong aura. “Just sat and listened in the silence. First in juvie SHU, then every hole they threw me in after. You sit long enough, you hear more than your own bullshit. Even longer and you hear more than angels even.
At some point it’s not even you hearing no more.” I tell her that in meditation that’s called meeting yourself. That’s when we did as close a version to connecting as could be done with her. She winked at me. “I feel ya.” What I want to give the women is ten minutes a day to meet themselves. Distraction is the devil, and the prison installed two additional televisions, an amenity designed to keep you from hearing your own life. Or that silence. A woman who meets herself is ungovernable. She doesn’t need saving. She starts changing things. Without that inner compass, people get blown around like leaves in the fall. Week to week, enemies become ride-or-die and back again.
That’s why codes matter when the wind picks up. Eventually, she would be transferred, and she’d leave me her plastic soap holder. “Your soap is important in here. You gonna get sick if you don’t take care of it.” And I’d know it was her version of a warm hug. Now, back on recall, Tamara, Carla, and I compare street codes to the bodhisattva codes in Buddhism. Can you be someone who dedicates their life to helping others wake up and suffer less? Carla says, “Look, I am sweet as candy. Don’t fuck with me, I don’t fuck with you. I’d do anything for you until you cross me.” I laugh and say, “See, that’s a bit like karma, or like the buddhas and bodhisattvas.
You do no harm, you relieve suffering, you’re honest about the price, and the wish-fulfilling jewel is yours. You cause harm, that boomerang hits hard. What matters is that you live by a code and know the ride you’re getting on.” We’ve had some wins. In between practices and walking, Rach and I have started minding a little corner. People show up at our table for sun burgers and quiet. We run unofficial office hours: say mantras LET’S TALK for Nevaeh’s daughter who applied to a master’s program, or Kiki’s nephew whose girlfriend was in a car accident. It’s for the mothers in us. Jingyi studies notes from meditation class and comes by with questions. Rach whispers, “I could die happy right now,” which in here means this moment counts.
There are other wins too. A group of women who used to blast the TVs at jet-engine volume all night have agreed to use headphones after 9:30. The TVs are a whole saga, but nothing compares to the phones where the women leave notes and times they’ve arranged calls. It will read “Diamond 1 p.m., 6 p.m.” Or “KoKo 12:30.” Sane. Civil. Except for Isabella. She keeps one note above the phones that reads “Bella.” As in period. As in she can come in any time and say she needs to use your phone. She has seniority and relationships with various guards, so while the rest of us are on recall, behind the blue line, she will saunter over to the phone, call her wife, and put her in her place.
Mind you, it is in rapid-fire Spanish, but the tone is universal. You can sense that Bella’s wife has been conditioned to her voice. Rumors travel, of course. That the way her eye slightly wanders is the result of her wife finally fighting back. That the three scars on her face are where her wife’s nails dug in. We do know that no one knows her wife’s name as anything other than “bitch.” That “bitch” has a way of making Bella whisper into the phone, cry sometimes, plead sometimes, and slam the receiver down often. “Bella’s wife is fucking around with a man. Pregnant. Bella found out from her ex-wife of all people. They say she went crazy on the guy,” Janiya whispers as Bella, with her square muscular body, nearly shaved head, pants worn like Ben Davis, strut-slinks back to her bed after one of the desperation calls.
Dakina howls in a different tenor when Bella gets in these moods. I swear she voices what people can’t express. They have one of the odder bonds in the dorm. Both have a quality of unreachability, untouchability. And big, tough Bella is surprisingly tender with Dakina. She seems to have very little for commissary but always buys Dakina something. They’ve been to places others wouldn’t dare go. They are not like the cute little Nicki Minaj-style fraud girls who are going to get out, catch the first flight to Vegas. They don’t use words like “baddies.” Lately, though, there’s a low rumble, some tension between Isabella and us. She rolls her eyes at me like I’m a substitute teacher but aims something sharper at Rach.
There was the library incident. The library is prime real estate in here. One of the only relatively quiet places. It’s small—as in three bookshelves and one table small. Isabella sits in there like, well, like a crime boss. Whatever deals or conversations she needs to make, she makes them in there. We’d worked out a meditation class, reserved the room. Isabella does not take reservations. Rach was charged with setting up the chairs. It was one of the rare occasions when Rach was unable to break through with someone. She came over to the bunk and said only, “I think we should do it on the rec deck.” Something smelled funny. “Um, there is an endless catcall conversation on the rec deck.
I’m not imagining we’ll do a lot of dropping into silence,” I countered, questioning her logic. She just stood there, speechless, wide-eyed. “What?” I prompted. “Isabella said she’s not moving.” “She’s not moving?” I looked across the dorm and saw her through the library window, sitting, legs spread open, leaned back like she should have a cigar in her mouth. Ah. Got it. I walked over in my super-bouncy tennies and little grey sweatsuit, trying to look as intimidating as I possibly could. LET’S TALK “Yes,” I said, way too chirpy, walking into the room. “We signed up for this room. We need to have a class. You’re welcome to come. You might like it. But we need to set up.” I think my total obliviousness caught her off guard.
Silently, she got up and skulked out. Use everything you’ve got. That I am capitalizing on looking totally oblivious, after the initial shock, strikes me as funny. Then came the cold war. Literally. Didi was moving to her designated prison. She had the coveted “fan control” role. MDC is most certainly a hell realm. We alternate from a Death Valley desert dust storm to a frozen tundra igloo. There is no middle ground. She who controls the fan controls, relatively, the temperature. She who controls the temperature controls the torture. She who controls the torture controls the dorm. Didi was extremely fair, dealt with more than her fair share of complaints. The fan is big and loud and could knock a car off its course.
Women like it on at night for the white noise. Well, they like it from 3 a.m. when they go to bed until 4 p.m. when they wake up. But they also like it to modulate the dorm weather. I cannot emphasize enough how the dorm revolves around this fan. Didi thought it would be a good idea to pass the baton to us. We were not in a turf war and would not use the fan as a weapon. What she did not take into account was the fact that we are not in here for gang violence, as she was. This means people do not fear us. People would kill for that fan unless you look like you’re carrying a shank.
Rach and I do not match that description. Isabella is always hot, a side effect of her medication. Not only does she need the fan on twenty-four-seven, but unlike most of the other women, she wants it facing the beds. It was Isabella and the women she hung with, maybe six, against the rest of the freezing-cold dorm. I take my ethical position very seriously. I wanted to be a good representative of everyone. “Bella not about you,” Janiya whispered to me. “She or he or what the fuck ever don’t want you fucking with her fan no mo’.” I must have looked like a receptionist. “It’s not her fan, it’s everyone’s fan.” “You smart but you dumb.
You gonna end up brawlin’ if you not careful,” Janiya said with a protective love. “We will not be brawling,” I said, the definition of stiff. One morning I wake up and Rach is trembling. I can’t tell if it’s fear or anger or both. “Keenan told me to turn the fan off at three in the morning. I did. Next thing I know, Bella’s passing by me saying I better watch myself. Goes over and turns it right back on.” Keenan is an officer. A right-on one at that. “Did you tell Keenan?” I ask. “No, I just went to bed. I didn’t want trouble.” “Fair and smart,” I say, trying to calculate our next move. I find my answer in about twenty minutes.
We are next to each other near the sink. For a minute I’m, as they say in Buddhism, between this and that. Isabella has a certain charm. There’s a way she’s so real, so direct, that you want to be on her good side. When she smile-winks at you (which she has not done in a very long time with me, and only once), it has the same quality as a rock star singing to you onstage. I think that is why women collect around her. And why they are so loyal to her. You really want to be on her good side because the good is so good and the bad is so bad. I feel a lot like a perky cheerleader next to an asshole football player.
That attracted/repulsed feeling I thought was reserved for high school. I have to be very conscious of that deep groove of conditioning that wants very much to flatter or seduce my way out of this. I have no plan whatsoever when my mouth decides it’s a good time to open. LET’S TALK Looks like we are going to ride this one bareback, I think to myself, and go straight improv. “Let’s talk,” I say in a voice that sounds like it should end with “young lady!” For a moment I swear I see her wince, almost like a dog that pulls away fast when you accidentally step on its foot. She recovers. “Yeah?” she says, continuing what must be the longest tooth-brushing in the history of teeth. “Yes,” I say, thanking the gods that I did not go into a long explanation. “I can’t talk till later.
I got an appointment.” I don’t dare say, ‘An appointment? This isn’t the outside. What are you going to do, get a manicure?’ “Good. Two?” I say, smartly. “Two it is,” she confirms. I hear her name over the loudspeaker. A guard comes for her. Attorney, court, or medical. But at 1:45, I look up and she’s standing at my bunk. When she catches my eye, she sits down on Rachel’s bed across from me. It’s disarming. I’ve heard an expression, “circle of fear,” that criminals and true spiritual people have one common quality: they get into your circle of fear. I’ve had challenges here because I am so accustomed to keeping that gate open; in the ordinary world, only spiritual people enter that gate, and there aren’t many.
Most people don’t like that much intimacy. It’s a kind of close where I feel like I can feel her body heat or hear her heartbeat. She’s suddenly profoundly human. It’s unnerving. “Yeah, okay, so my bad. I fucked up,” she begins. Well, that was not how I expected this to go. “Fucked up?” I ask. “With Raquel. I didn’t mean to scare her. It’s just…I’m drenched at night. I can’t fucking take it sometimes.” This is going much better than planned. “Raquel?” “Yeah. Yo girl,” she says in a tone that intimates she means “my girl” in the same way the song does. “Oh, Rachel? You think she’s my girlfriend? She’s my co-de,” I say, using our prison slang for co-defendant. “We’ve been friends for twenty years.” I smile.
Everything is a negotiation. I don’t want her to think I think having a girlfriend is bad, but I don’t want her to think Rachel is my girlfriend. It’s a common experience in here to navigate tightropes like this. “Okay, well yeah, her face look like I killed her mother when I pulled that chain. I can say when I done wrong.” I’m down for the count. I’m a sucker for what Janiya calls a gangster apology. She says, “When a thug apologize, it hit deep.” And it really does. It’s far from the girl in L’AGENCE Jeans and freshly done nails cutting in front of you at the smoothie bar with her clickety heels, “Sorry, sorry.” “You know,” I say, in typical Nicole form, “in Buddhism they have what are called dharmapalas.
The toughest ones turn into the greatest protectors. You have a lot of sway in this dorm.” Dharmapalas are those fierce-looking guardians you see in temple pictures, the ones who look like they’d beat the shit out of you and then tuck you into bed. I’m telling her she’s that. Dharmapala. She looks like she likes it. “Domo-pomo. I like that. I got anxiety real bad. Like bad bad. Sometimes all I can do is sit in that library and try to not lose my shit. I haven’t always been like this, you know. My fuckin’ wife. She’s killin’ me. Fifteen years and now she got a kid. All while I’m sick.” She hangs her head in a way that looks soft, feminine.
All the bravado melting away. “You’re not well?” I ask as gently as I can. “Nah. That’s why I’m here. I get transferred to Carswell in a month.” LET’S TALK She means the medical facility. “I’m advanced. They don’t know.” I don’t ask “advanced what.” I can guess. And it doesn’t matter. “My hormones all fucked up from the meds. I’m all fucked up.” “I’m so sorry. I imagine that has to be terrible in so many ways.” She looks up and into my eyes. We lock for a minute, as if we’ve known each other forever. We are meeting in a place that only deep love or deep pain can bring you to. She’s letting tears fill hers, which means everything in this place. “Can we do this?” I say. “If you want anything, just ask.
We can talk directly.” “Yeah. Yeah, I can do that. You know you and Raquel, you’re alright, you know. I mean what you’re doing is alright.” “Thank you. You’re alright too,” I say, smiling. In the chilled environment of a federal prison, that’s the equivalent of a bear hug. “I’m happy to hear it. I’m always looking for more peace in here. It’s better for the whole dorm. And I am serious. If you need anything, you tell me. I have friends who work with people in your situation. I am happy to help.” She looks at me with the warmest smile. “Girl, you crazy. I fucked with you. You don’t owe me shit. We good. I need to show you around.
You gonna get yourself in big trouble, you be nice to the wrong people.” “I know I don’t owe you anything. I want to. Okay?” Now it’s gone too far and tears are really coming. She wipes her nose like a twelve-year-old boy. Looks at me like, I gotta get out of here, you understand, and turns and goes back down the aisle. In case I needed final proof, that was the last pin to fall: a shift from loving the unlovable to coaxing love out of the unloving. It’s simpler than it sounds. Give a little room. Everything is trying to move toward love if you let it, not just to be loved but to love. Because in truth there’s no such thing as unlovable.