Lockdown on Rikers (6 page)

5

My workday pace was picking up, as Wendy, Allison, and I were now pitching in with the daily referrals. Inmates in emotional distress came to the Mental Health Department's attention primarily through medical screenings and alert officers who generated referral slips that were dropped off to us and placed in a wire basket. Whether the emotional crisis was the shock of arrest, an AIDS diagnosis, a family death, or the trauma of a heavy sentence, the basket was always overflowing, our waiting room a daily mob scene.

Our highest priority was to identify the suicidal and mentally ill, who were to be transferred out of general population and onto the Mental Observation Unit; less critical situations called for supportive therapy, an appointment with a psychiatrist for medication, or some combination of the two. But the appropriate action wasn't necessarily obvious. Mental dysfunction is not an exact science; there's nothing like a blood test to pinpoint bipolar disorder, types of schizophrenia, or degrees of depression. A psychological assessment is largely a judgment call, and in the beginning our supervisors followed our assessments closely, especially after the three of us started putting almost every person we met onto the MO as a precaution, creating a mini-crisis. The permanent staff swiftly descended on our conference room. “Ladies! You can't put the whole
jail on the MO. Not everyone who's depressed is suicidal, and not everyone with messy hair is psychotic!” We were learning.

When I sat down to interview these women, I almost forgot they'd been accused of crimes. In a place where they were treated as nothing more than a number and a body, they seemed grateful for a little personal attention and were generally polite and well mannered. Although I needed to complete a lengthy intake questionnaire, I made a point of shaking hands and chatting a little, which helped to establish a rapport that eased the sting of the prying questionnaire a bit. One of the first questions dealt with the reason for arrest. The general responses painted a picture of drug possession, petty theft, prostitution, and shoplifting, or “boosting,” as they called it. While I surmised that many were guilty as charged, I had resolved that if I was going to work with the incarcerated, then I needed to leave judgments to the courts and keep my focus on mental status.

As we moved into the “Family Background” section, the stories were painfully similar: growing up in the care of a drug-addicted mother, extension-cord lashings, empty refrigerators, abuse, fear, and neglect. As I took in the sad details, I wondered how I—or anyone, for that matter—would have turned out under similar circumstances. And what of their own children? When we reached this sensitive question, their eyes welled with tears as they confided that their kids were in foster care or, in luckier cases, with family members, often their own mothers—the very same mothers who'd once been addicts themselves. Instances of a formerly drug-addicted mother now raising grandkids would become a familiar theme. Many an inmate would recover from addiction too late to raise her own children, but would eventually straighten out and take over for her children's children, with her adult kids lost to the streets. Among the jail population, this is a tragic but common family scenario as the misery of drug addiction passes from one generation to the next.

I was often surprised by the twists and turns an assessment interview could take, and I was learning the utter importance of
refraining from judgment. In one situation, the Social Services Department informed us that the husband of an inmate had been killed in a car accident, and it was up to us to break the news to her. “It's a tough one,” Janet said, handing me the referral. “But it's important experience.” Armed with a box of tissues, I went out to the waiting area where Daphne Cruz was perched on the edge of her seat, anxious to find out why she'd been summoned to the clinic.

I led her to a session booth and gently told her. But as I passed her the tissues, I was shocked to see that she was suppressing a smile. Her husband had just died in a terrible accident! But I caught myself and pulled back from judgment, resolving to let her tell her story, and I was glad I did.

Putting the tissues aside, I said, “I get the feeling that this isn't really such bad news.”

“Oh, yes, yes, it is! It's just . . . terrible,” she replied, trying to conceal her obvious joy.

“Look,” I said, “it's okay to say how you really feel. It really is.”

She probed my face for a moment to see if I meant it. Then she took a deep breath and the smile vanished. “Well, maybe I don't feel bad about it,” she whispered. “Maybe I don't feel bad about it at all. Look, miss, I know that sounds terrible, but see, he was terrible—he used to beat me up, bad. He even burned me once with boiling water. Look!” she said, rolling up her sleeves to reveal ugly scars along her upper arms. “I wanted to take out a restraining order, but he said if I did it, he'd kill me—and he would have. I was like a walking dead person. And then a funny thing happened. I got arrested for selling drugs, little nickel and dime bags of reefer. At first, I thought going to jail was the end of the world. But when I got in here,
I was safe!
This is the one place in the world where he couldn't get me. After I was released I made sure I got arrested again, and as long as my son was with my sister, I was fine with it. You know, miss,” she whispered, “There's worse things in life than coming to jail. Much worse.”

This was not at all what I'd expected, but I understood. “It's over,” I said softly. “It's over now.”

“I'm free! I'm free!” she said, holding prayerful hands up to the heavens. “Thank you, God—thank you!”

I never saw Daphne Cruz again, and as she walked out of the clinic, I had the feeling that her jail days would soon be over for good.

* * *

Whenever I made a good connection with someone I'd met through the referral process, Janet would assign the case to me, and my caseload was building. Of my original three cases, I was meeting with Annie Tilden regularly, but I was discouraged that Tiffany Glover continued to hold me at arm's length. And I was thoroughly challenged by Millie Gittens, who never showed up. But as soon as Camille Baxter got wind of this, Millie was promptly delivered to the clinic.

“What happened?” I asked her. “Did you get my messages?”

“Yeah, sure I did—and I wanted to come, but Calvin was crying and I couldn't leave him. We can't just walk away, you know!”

There!
Her explanation made perfect sense. There was a good reason she hadn't been coming.

As I spread out my intake forms, though, it bothered me that Millie was twisted around in her seat, straining to see who was in the waiting area. But she settled in, readily answering the intake questionnaire. Millie was twenty-seven years old and confided that she'd been arrested for possession of a small amount of “cocaine.” As I probed about her drug addiction, her cocaine use seemed more akin to smoking crack, a cheap derivative of cocaine, but even more addictive. Like many of the inmates I'd work with who'd been hooked on crack, I noticed that she was careful to avoid the undignified word itself.

Millie's background was a sad one. Her sisters and brothers, as well as half-sisters and half-brothers, were raised by an overwhelmed grandmother. She had no memories of her father and said her mother wasn't around much while she was growing up.
“She used drugs back then,” Millie said softly. “But she doesn't anymore. Now she's taking care of two of my kids and some of my nieces and nephews.” When Millie's grandmother became ill, she and her siblings were farmed out to foster care. “That happened when I was nine, and I didn't see two of my sisters again till I was twenty.” As she described her foster family experiences, it was apparent that these makeshift arrangements were anything but nurturing, loving, or secure. At fifteen, it was off to group homes until she was on her own at eighteen. Somewhere along the way, she'd dropped out of high school. As she recounted a painful childhood, I felt a deep sadness for Millie, once again wondering how I would have turned out under similar circumstances. I thought of my own mother, the family rock, and then I tried to picture her holding a crack pipe or a heroin needle. It was a preposterous thought, an image impossible to even conjure. Yet this had been Millie's reality.

With the paperwork completed, we sat back to talk. “Have you thought about what happened during that group session?” I asked.

“I sure have!” she retorted. “I shouldn't have gotten blamed for everything when it was those two who started it!” With that, she thrust out her long legs, crossed her arms, and pouted.

Her childish answer was disappointing, indicating a starting point well below what I'd hoped for. “Well, what they did was mean,” I agreed.

“That's right.”

“But . . . maybe we need to work on your reaction to it. People aren't always going to be nice to us, Millie. Sometimes they're going to get nasty, but we just can't let it get to us that badly. Do you know what I mean?”

“Hey,” she said, pulling up straight. “Here's what you could do for me—how about getting me some sleeping pills. Now
that
would really help!”

Suddenly I had an image of Overton's smirk.

“I don't think so, Millie. Not every problem in life can be solved with a pill.”

She slumped back again, but I wasn't ready to give up. “Let's back up. Before everything went haywire, you said Calvin was your sixth child, that you wanted to be a good mother to him. That's a good goal—an important one—something we can work on together. Now, being a good mom means keeping your baby safe, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And the thing is, when you got so upset, you could have dropped—”

“Yeah, well,” she interrupted, “maybe I wouldn't get upset if I wasn't so tired all the time. Other girls in here get sleeping pills—I know they do—so how come I can't?”

“I don't know about them, Millie, but I don't think sleeping pills are the answer here.”

She stared at the floor. I tried a different angle, looking for something positive where we might make a connection. I praised her for meeting with me, for trying to improve her troubled life. But once pills were ruled out, I was grabbing at air. Still, it was only our first meeting, too soon to become discouraged. As the session ended, I finished up with a cheery, “See you next week!”

But as Millie skulked out of the clinic, I wasn't hopeful.

In contrast to Millie, one of my first promising cases was a woman named Jeanine Bowers. Jeanine had been referred by an officer who noted that she spent her days lying on her cot, weeping and staring at the ceiling. During our initial interview, the neatly kempt twenty-six-year-old tearfully told me she'd been arrested numerous times in the past, and it seemed that this pattern of coming in and out of jail was the source of her despair. “I've been getting locked up since I was fifteen,” she whispered. “Going to jail didn't used to bother me. I was always fooling around in the halls—it was all a big joke. But now, when I see older women in here—women in their thirties and forties—looking all beaten up, I say to myself,
That could be me!
The thing is, I'm scared, miss—I'm really scared. I thought I could turn this around any time I wanted, but I haven't been able to do it.”

Jeanine Bowers and I made an instant connection. In our first few sessions, time flew by as she told me how she'd attended Narcotics Anonymous meetings and enrolled in GED classes each time she'd been released, hoping to break the jail pattern. “But it always winds up the same—I fall back into drugs and wind up right back in here.”

As she and I looked more closely at her backslides, and at how she might line up outside support prior to release, I was delighted with this budding relationship. My work with the motivated Jeanine was exactly what I'd hoped for in coming to Rikers. But I was about to learn one of the cold realities of providing therapy in a jail setting. When I asked Overton to summon her one afternoon, he said, “She's gone.”

“Gone?”

“Yeah—she went upstate yesterday morning—prison. She got sentenced. Once they get sentenced, they're not city property anymore, they're state property, and the city's not paying for state property—and you better believe it!”

“Thank you for that!”

I immediately sought out Janet, who explained that once the detainees were sentenced, DOC wasn't going to tell them—or us—their departure date. The date was kept vague as a precaution, to thwart any plan of springing someone from a bus while en route to prison.

From a security standpoint, this policy made perfect sense, but from a therapeutic perspective, it was a disaster. Although deeply disappointed that she was gone, I only hoped that Jeanine would continue therapy in prison. After that, I learned to become attuned to my clients' legal proceedings, now understanding that they could simply disappear.

6

One bright fall weekend, I went out to Long Island for a family visit, where there was often a crowd gathered around the Sunday dinner table. My mother was enjoying the first wave of grandchildren, and as the tots arrived in state-of-the-art strollers with the latest in child-safety gadgets, I had a flashback to the woman with the flimsy stroller whom I'd encountered on my first day at Rikers, and I felt a pang of sadness. Nonetheless, I was excited to tell everyone all about my unique internship, and it was a rapt audience that listened as I explained what I had learned: that Rikers Island is not a prison and that it is not one building, but rather a complex of ten jails, and just how jails differ from prisons. “Prisons are for those who've been convicted and sentenced, whereas jails are for pretrial detainees,” I explained.

“I had no idea,” my mother said. “Jails, prisons—I thought it was all the same thing.”

For my family, like most, Rikers Island was an occasional blurb on the evening news, its true function just as fuzzy as its exact location.

But my mother mulled it over a little more, and then looked puzzled. “But if the detainees haven't been convicted, then why are they in jail?”

“Because they can't afford bail while they wait for their cases to resolve.”

“Well, that doesn't seem right,” she said.

“It doesn't seem right to me either,” I agreed. But I didn't really understand the legal system, and so I told them more about what I did know, about the women I'd met, of their sad backgrounds, and of how we were helping them to find their way.

Everyone was interested and supportive, and outside the family, my friends were also enthused. The only sour note came from my father. My parents were separated, and although my father lived in another state, we maintained a close relationship. His blunt take on all this was that it was okay to work in jail for the school year, but after that, “Get the hell out of there.” I didn't understand his negativity, but I didn't let it bother me.

* * *

The following Monday morning, Janet announced that she was stepping aside as nursery group leader and assigned Allison and me to take over as co-leaders. “I think I'll take a break,” Janet said, with a little smile that made me suspicious.

Although initially excited, I found the nursery group to be an uphill battle. Marisol and Addie were eager and interested, but the others less so. Tasha and Swanday never budged from the end of the couch, Millie was off in her own world, Lucy stayed to herself in the rocking chair, and the rest were otherwise distracted. This wasn't at all what I imagined of a therapeutic group, and it certainly didn't measure up to the ideals touted in the classroom: “The group is a vehicle for change!” At the rate things were going here, I didn't see how this could be a vehicle for much of anything. It was quickly obvious that the biggest obstacle to a good discussion was the babies. Sweet as they were, babies cry. Not only did they cry as their mothers fussed with bottles, but they also cried from their cribs, meaning that the mothers were continuously jumping up and running out to the cribs, creating a constant, nerve-wracking distraction.

One afternoon, after yet another challenging session, I had an idea. I stopped off at Camille Baxter's office and ran it by her.
“What if we used women from general population as babysitters? They could tend to the babies so the mothers could attend the group in peace.”

Baxter smiled, but with a knowing look. “Babysitter,” she said, was already an official job, just one that was hard to fill due to two criteria. “First,” she explained, “the babysitter can't be facing a murder charge, which isn't much of an issue—most of these women aren't killers. But it's the second one that gets you: a babysitter can't be here on a drug charge. We've got over a thousand women in this jail, Mary. Months can go by before someone qualifies for the job.”

I was stunned. I knew from my assessments that drugs were a huge problem, but I never imagined it to be on this scale.

“Sad, isn't it?” Baxter said.

With the babysitter idea dashed, Allison and I had little choice but to slog through the crying and distractions and try to generate a meaningful discussion. But the dialogue seemed to go around in circles, rarely moving to deeper levels. As much as I hated to admit it, the high point was usually the end, when everybody got a donut. Allison felt we should be serving fruit instead of donuts, but when we put it to a group vote, not one hand shot up in favor of an apple or a banana.

But all was not lost. While everyone was relaxing afterward, someone would often sidle up to me or Allison, eager to talk—just not publicly. Addie sought out Allison, while the pleasant Marisol waited for a moment when I was alone. “Miss Buser,” she whispered. “I want to tell you something that I don't want everybody knowing about.” Bobbling Teresita on her hip, she said, “I did something that was really hard for me to do—I got tested for HIV. When I was out on the streets, I'll be honest with you, Miss B—I used needles. So I've been really worried that I might have gotten the virus. But I got the results this morning at the clinic. I don't have it—I'm negative! I can't stop smiling. I waited six months before I got tested so I wouldn't get a false negative, but the HIV counselor said it's definite!”

Marisol's relief was understandable. It had only been a decade earlier that the deadly virus that causes AIDS had been identified, and the country was still struggling to understand this baffling new disease. Fear of AIDS loomed large, especially for inmates, a population highly vulnerable to HIV primarily because of drug addiction, which often involves dirty needles and can lead to casual and unprotected sex; both are major modes of transmission. As the newly arrested recovered from drug use, the possibility that they'd contracted AIDS was a constant worry.

“I feel like this is a second chance from God,” Marisol asserted. “Now I know that I can get through this jail stuff and stay off drugs when I get out and, well—just be a good mother to Teresita.” Smiling down at her baby, she said, “That's all I want in life, Miss B, that's all I want.”

And then in a big surprise, the aloof rocking chair mother approached me. With a little gap-toothed smile, Lucy Lopez had a certain attractiveness. “Could we meet privately?” she asked. “I don't want everyone in here knowing my business.”

I pulled out my appointment book, and a few days later, I greeted Lucy in the clinic, curious why this distant woman wanted to talk to me.

“Oh, I know you think I'm not paying attention during group,” she started off, “but I'm listening, all right.”

“Then, why don't you ever say anything?” I asked.

“It's like this, Miss B. I take care of my baby and mind my own business—I stay to myself. I don't want to fool around in here and get all silly, 'cause if I do, I just might forget.”

“Forget what?” I asked softly.

Lucy Lopez looked me in the eye. “Miss B,” she said, “I'm going to keep it real with you. I'm a crack addict. Hard-core. I'm not going to dress it up like the others do and call it cocaine—no, crack! Now that I'm in here and I can see just how far gone I was out on the streets, it scares the hell out of me! This one time, I was so high that I was laying on a subway platform in the Bronx and my arm was dangling right over the edge. I was looking down at
the tracks, they were shiny and so close. And somewhere deep inside of me, a little voice was whispering,
Lucy—what are you doing? You're gonna get killed, you're gonna die.
But there wasn't a thing I could do—I could no more pull myself off of that platform than I could get off drugs and get a job and take care of my son. And then, like in a really bad dream, I could hear the train coming. 'Cept it wasn't any dream,” she whispered. “It was getting louder, so what I did was—I shut my eyes, tight as I could. And just when I thought it was gonna all be over, I could feel somebody picking up my legs and dragging me back. That happened to me, Miss B—it happened,” Lucy said, her face crumpling into tears. “I need help.”

I scrambled for a box of tissues, barely able to believe that this young mother had been sprawled out on a subway platform, inches from a horrific death.

Wiping away the tears, she composed herself. “I gotta believe that getting locked up happened for a reason, that there's a reason God didn't let me get killed that day—and that somehow, my life's gonna get better. I don't know exactly how, Miss B, but I've gotta find a way, 'cause if I don't—when I get out this time, I'm gonna die for real. I will, I know it. That's why I thought I should talk to you. I started going to NA meetings in here, and they have this one saying that keeps going through my head: ‘If you do what you've always done, then you'll get what you always got.' And the thing is, I never asked anyone for help before. But maybe this is something I should do different. I hear you when you talk—I just don't like the group. I'd like to meet with you privately, if that's okay.”

“Of course it's okay. I'm so glad you're reaching out like this, Lucy.”

“Me too,” she said, struggling to hold back a new round of tears.

As Overton announced the start of the afternoon count, we set up our next appointment, and Lucy Lopez dashed back to the nursery.

* * *

As I continued meeting more of Rose Singer's inmates, tales like Lucy's were common—young women who'd lived on the edge in a drugged-out haze, now “coming to,” growing disconsolate about their lives and frantic about their children. Much of the chatter in the waiting area centered on children, prospects for regaining custody, and dealings with BCW—the hated Bureau of Child Welfare. It was a long road back for most, and while not everyone had Lucy's level of motivation, many did. And for those in denial, the absence of drugs and their continuing incarceration usually brought them around to their sad reality, which is exactly what finally happened to Tiffany Glover, who continued to insist that her arrest and incarceration was one big misunderstanding.

So it was somewhat of a shock when Tiffany was waiting for me one afternoon when I arrived at the MO. “Oh, Miss Buser,” she beamed. “Things are going great!”

“They are?”

“Yes, see, I go to court tomorrow and I've been on the phone with different drug programs, and I found one that'll accept me. Not that I need it, but if it gets me out of here, then why not? Gotta do what you gotta do,” she laughed. Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out a folded paper. “I got this today—a letter saying I could come. It's a day program. I'm bringing it to court and when I show it to the judge, he'll release me.”

“Hold on a second, Tiffany—what does your lawyer say about all this?”

“Oh, him! He's a joke. Every time I try to call him from that card he gave me, I just get a machine and my call's wasted. It makes me realize I gotta take matters into my own hands. This is my life, and I've gotta be in charge of my own life—right?”

“Well, it's a good effort you made here, but it doesn't mean the judge will go for it.”

“He's gotta let me go. I gotta think positive. Everyone deserves a second chance.”

“Yes, but there's no guarantee—”

“You're just bringing me down,” she interrupted. “I'm going home tomorrow! Home!”

Tiffany's spirits were soaring. This was the first time I'd even seen her smile, but I had a bad feeling. Try as I might, I couldn't get her to at least consider the possibility that her plan might not work. As soon as I got back to the clinic, I talked it over with Janet, who feared that if she wasn't released, the soaring spirits would plunge. Janet showed me how to place Tiffany Glover on an enhanced suicide watch.

The next day was Tiffany's big day in court, and I wondered how it was going. The following morning, I scanned the daily census, a thick computer printout of every inmate at Rose Singer. Had she been released, her name would have been gone, but it was still right there.

When I got to the MO, Tiffany's faithful broom was propped up against the wall, but she was nowhere in sight. I tapped on her cell door. Through the window I could see her limp figure lying diagonally across the cot, laceless sneakered feet dangling off the side.

She lifted her head. “Miss Buser?” She slowly righted herself and stumbled to the door.

“I guess things didn't go well in court,” I said softly.

She shook her head.

“What happened with the program?”

“What program?” she whispered hoarsely. “I wasn't allowed to say anything and my lawyer wouldn't even tell the judge about it. They want me to take a one-to-three. Oh, Miss Buser, I'm not a bad person. Why am I in jail? I can't take this—I just can't!”

When I suggested we sit down together, she finally agreed. We found an empty cell where she fell into a chair, dropped her face into her lap, and sobbed. “This can't be happening—it just can't. I can't be going to prison. I can't do it—I just can't!”

“Tiffany, I know this feels like the end of the world—”

“It
is
the end of the world. Okay, so maybe I do have a drug problem, but I'm not bad! Why am I being punished like this? I have a baby boy. Who's going to take care of him while I'm in prison? Huh?”

“Who takes care of him now?”

“My mother.”

“And who took care of him before you were arrested?”

“I did!”

“Tiffany,” I said carefully, “you came in here bone thin. You couldn't have been eating very much, or taking care of yourself. Are you sure you were taking care of a baby?”

“Yes!”

“So it was you who put your son to bed, got him up, fed him, bathed him—every single day—or your mother?”

“No!
Stop!
I love my baby! I love him! I would come home to see him—at least once a week. That was my rule! Once a week!” she cried, pounding her fist on the desk.