Watched by belladet
Fuck Orange is the New Black they could never make me like you.
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Prison is not like TV. The guard patting me down is new. Short and portly, her glasses cover nearly the entirety of her face, magnifying her eyes like a bug. She runs the backs of her hands inside the waistband of my jeans, and I snort. The air is sucked out of the room. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I giggle, trying to hide my face in my hair, “I’m really ticklish.” The guard pauses, and for a split second, I think that she’s going to get angry. Feel insulted or something off the cuff. It’s common for prison security guards to find the slightest thing to ruin your day, and my laughter might be too bright for the depressing tiled halls of Saginaw Correctional Facility. I glance at Ashley sitting across from me while putting her shoes back on. Her eyes are wide, worry permeating off her in waves of Jazz Club Replica perfume.
“It’s okay, I’m really ticklish too. Can’t ever get a pedicure because they brush your feet. Why they gotta do that? Just paint my toes!” The guard says lightheartedly. She continues the routine, finishing by running he hands down my legs and around my ankles.
We take a breath, and everything is fine. Ashley is up next, followed by Sarah and Ariana. Running up and down our limbs, under our bra lines and waistbands. Asking us to lift our hair and open our mouths to make sure we haven’t snuck anything under our tongues. They can't find our kind words though, those we keep tucked in our hearts.
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When the guard is satisfied enough that we aren't sneaking in razor blades or a letter from their families, we leave the bubble and walk into a middle area. Ashley grabs a PPD from a desk and straps it to her belt. A PPD is a little device with a big red button, and when pressed will alert SWAT to come find us in case of an emergency.
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I've never thought about pressing it.
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We get walked to The School by an older guard who refuses to make small talk with us. The seagulls soar from roof to roof, occasionally landing and cawing at each other over a stray bit of food or stick. The Yard is mostly empty. A few stragglers walk back to their units from the Med Line. We smile and wave as they pass, leaving a wide berth between us and them.
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Our favorite guards, a young hispanic man and older white woman are stationed at The School's desk. ​
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"Awww look who the cat dragged in." Vasquez snickers, grabs the clipboard from a drawer, and offers it up. I take it with a golf pencil and sign us all in. Vasquez is a sign that prison doesn't only change the inmates. Give him a few more years, and he'll be just like the gaurds who tell us all these men are pedophiles. The staff are changed simultaneously; only they can go home at the end of the day and pretend they don't spend 8 hours in a prison.
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"More like a seagull," Ariana responds as she turns to watch one fly outside the door's windows.
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Vasquez smiles, "The room's ready, girls."
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Which was half true; they'd only unlocked it. We separate the chairs from their desks to make a large circle, leaving plenty of room between each seat. The men like their personal space, since so often they are left without it. As they fill, we smile and shake their hands. The only physical touch allowed. Blue and orange uniforms speckle the chairs until each plastic throne is used.
We start with laughter. Jokes are flown across the room like verbal ping pongs bouncing off one man to the next. Sonny makes an especially good quip, and the room erupts in cackles.
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As much as the media wants us to believe the opposite, there is joy in prison. There is love and there is hope. But if it's spotted, the federal justice system will stop at nothing to snuff it out. The guards are bloodhounds searching for a tiny mouse of happiness. It is not easy going into prisons. To do so, you have to completely rewire one of the fundamental beliefs built inside of us. That criminals are bad people who are meant to be feared, and even worse, killed. ​
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A few weeks ago, one of our newer group members asked us in the car on the drive home from our new facility (Cotton, where we used to be at Saginaw) how we handle it. She told us she accidentally found out one of the mens crimes while researching the prisons history.
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There was no simple answer. You just do.
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As the class comes to an end, we sit in the same circle as the start. Going around, we each share our rose, thorn, and bud. Rose: something good, thorn: something bad and bud: something hopeful. The men talk about their dark days as if they're aren't allowed to have anything else. It makes my bad days seem infinitely more diminutive, but I know the men would disapprove of that line of thinking. The selfish part of me is quieted after realizing this isn't about her. One man shares that we are the only visits he ever gets. His family hasn't come to see him in 5 years. I think about not seeing my mom for that amount of time and shudder at the hole it leaves on my heart. When the circle is finished, the room is put back together. Chairs on top of desks. Markers returned to the gaurds.
We drive home. We go on with our lives. We drive back. Rinse and repeat.
On the last day, performance day, we all gather in the gym with the creative writing workshop (a new addition to Saginaw). In front of an audience of just each other, the men perform the first scene from the play Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo. It's beautiful. They do skits and fake-ads, read poetry. And at the end, we gather in a circle to share what would be our final rose, thorn, bud. We didn't know it yet, but Saginaw would later refuse to continue PCAP workshops for the foreseeable future.
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Harold, an older black man who is a staple in the theatre class, wants to go first. He takes a folded piece of paper out of his pocket, and Mike turns to me, "Get ready to cry." I was, in fact, not ready.
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Harold gives a speech. I won't tell you the whole thing, because I'm not sure you deserve to hear it. But at the end he says with that soft smile on his face, "when you girls meet your soulmates your gonna think you all are the lucky ones. But you're wrong, because they're gonna be the lucky ones."
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And I cry.
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