The Middle of Your Texas Prison Sentence |
Issue 10
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Bang. Bang. Scrape. Scrape. In the false fluorescent dark of the night, you attempt to ignore the pounding and scraping sounds of soap-making in a nearby cell. Everyone received matchbook-sized chunks of chalky greenish-blue soap that barely cleansed. Someone discovered that if you smash the soap in a sock, then scrape together the powder to mix it with water and lotion, it hardens into a better bathing product. It is far from Dove, but most find the effort worth it. The scratch of plastic ID badges against metal desks creates the melancholic soundtrack to your life behind bars.
You have already spent 738 days inside this brick-and-steel oven with 1,589 other men. All those deemed unworthy to move about the world. The summer temperatures continue to break 100 degrees, and that’s just what they measure on the outside. The heat draws a roadmap of sweat lines across your back. It sketches a potential route home, but you can’t read it. You can only feel the sticky weight of it. You have become a number, or really, two sets of numbers. Correctional Officers (COs) and other staff refer to you by your housing: “Bravo 214 top,” while the letters you send and receive need to include your TDCJ ID number: 06674186. What a coincidence that the number they assigned you includes two prominent numbers in physics. First, there’s 667, the gravitational constant. The realization dropped you back onto your bunk when you first noticed it on day 38. Your situation's weight or gravity is more than you should be expected to handle. The last three digits of your number are also meaningful since 186 miles per second is the speed of light traveling from a stationary source. You consider the light in prison. Always too much or never enough. Then, the distance between your current location on a tiny metal seat at the metal desk in your cell and where you should be—at home with your family or in college, studying for a quantum mechanics test. The sweat-speckled notepad in front of you has a graph you don’t remember drawing through the haze of heat exhaustion. You consider how much longer your sentence could have been compared to others in the unit. Based on what you have heard from them, the more years anyone spends inside, the more challenges they will face when they get out—finding a job, a place to live, friends, and family who still care about them. In your sketch, time inside is the x-axis, and connection to the outside world is the y-axis. The line has a steep downward slope, and you avoid the thought of the point where y could equal zero. You rub your eyes. A CO must have maced someone in the unit today because you still feel the burn. That pungent odor—a skunk spraying Sriracha sauce—lingers in your nose and throat hours later. Your skin prickles at the sound of COs opening the door to the cell. “Contraband search!” The voice booms from the one with the key. They order you and your celly out and shove you both against the wall. Your sweat-slicked cheeks press firmly into the brick. Your necks twist beyond natural flexibility. You are both sent to the day room, where you witness the arguments over what plays on the TV and complaints about the noise of the industrial fan that provides minimal relief. When you return to the cell, you find your photos, books, newspapers, and letters scattered on the floor, mixed together. The COs had flipped your flimsy bedrolls—clear plastic stuffed with thick shreds of cotton that lump together over time until you are sleeping on rocks. The bedrolls are paired with coarse muslin fabric sheets that are sandpaper against your skin. The jackets you use as pillows are sprawled out on the floor, stamped with boot prints. While a few COs are decent sometimes, they are still part of the system that chips away at humanity. Maybe the nicer ones don’t wield the chisels, but their hands are still covered in the dust that falls from prisoners’ souls, including yours. After a few hours of half-sleep, the stench of burnt pancakes emanating from chow hall tells you it’s morning. Knowing the food made in mass will be a disappointment, your celly starts making one of the best creations the two of you have come up with so far: the Fruity Breakfast Burrito, or the “FBB.” It’s surprisingly palatable, using the snack ingredients you can usually find at commissary—Fruit Loops, tortillas, peanut butter, and strawberry jelly. Your celly gathers the ingredients and then rolls it all into a strange mix of food. “Good morning,” he says, holding the stuffed tortilla with a bite taken out. “The FBB. It’s both sweet and savory.” He grins while chewing his next bite. “It’s smooth but with a satisfying crunch,” you add after taking a bite of yours. A drop of jelly drips down your chin. Your celly stands with an unexpected burst of energy. “Short on supplies but big on hunger? Roll yourself an FBB. A combination of flavors that can’t be beat!” “The FBB: it’s good for you, and it’s good for me.” Your smile grows after taking another bite. Your exchange is interrupted by a garbled intrusion over the loudspeaker. With cheap equipment, and COs who don’t bother to enunciate, announcements are nearly impossible to understand. “Bwah-bwah-BWAH-wahh,” your celly mimics. You’re lucky to be paired with a good dude who doesn’t give you trouble, someone you can commiserate and almost let your guard down with. “What was that, Charlie Brown?” You laugh, cupping a hand behind your ear and pretending you’re both characters in the Peanuts cartoon. “Good grief!” he says. “I just can't stand it!” You wipe away an escaped tear from the unexpected moment of joy. You’re grateful for any laughs you can find in here, but they still aren’t quite the same as genuine, full-body laughs people on the outside have access to. That level of relaxed contentment isn’t possible in prison, at least in your experience. It is always something just out of reach. |
Lauren Oertel is a community organizer based in Austin, TX. Her work has been published in The Ravens Perch, Evening Street Review, Gemini Magazine, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, Noyo Review, The Bloom, Steam Ticket, The Bluebird Word, MONO., Mystic Owl Magazine, Bridge Eight, and The Sun Magazine.
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