Fish: A Memoir of a Boy in Man's Prison by T. Parsell (ready to read books TXT) 📕

Ginger didn't say anything.

"OK then. Now stay out my affairs." She turned her attention back to me. "I'm just sayin', as long as you keep hanging to the outside world, and walking around here like your some kind of lost sheep, then these motherfuckers are just gonna keep doggin' you. So you need to put that shit right out your head and start playing this game for real."

"Oh, shut up, you ghastly ho'," Ginger said. "I ain'tgonna read to you no more!"

"Look, bitch! I'm not kidding," Black Diamond said. "You better shut up."

"She's right," Ginger said. "You gotta stay strong, girl. Throw some shade and make these motherfucker pay! You've gotta go from What can I do? to What can I do You out of, baby? You know what I'm saying to you, girl?"

I wasn't sure I knew exactly, but Black Diamond was right about one thing-it was time I let go of the outside world. I was spending too much time thinking about it. Retreating from whatever was happening inside prison-to my memories of childhood and home-like my brother Rick had told me to do. "It would be my memories that helped keep me together," he said. But Rick had been wrong about a lot of things, and so maybe he was wrong about that too. So I was now ready to let go of the past, and to concentrate on being present, so I could learn what I needed to learn to survive in here. I don't know that I was ready to learn how "to work it," like Ginger was saying, but I was definitely tired of being a sheep that kept getting "dawgcd" by other inmates.

The next morning, I was transferred to Jackson Prison.

When I arrived at Quarantine, the deputies who had transported me to the state prison must have told them what happened to me earlier at the county jail, because I was processed immediately and placed back on TwoSpecial-the set of cells next to the guards station on the second tier. Ironically, I was put in Grasshopper's old cell, which had been next to mine the first time through.

I wondered how Grasshopper was doing, and if he had learned how to adapt by now. Perhaps he got a man to protect him. And if so, maybe he got as lucky as I had, by having someone who cared about him like Slide Step seemed to care for me. So much seemed to fall to chance, if you weren't proactive in some kind of way. "You can hurry up and get you a man," Black Diamond had said to me. "You choose one of them, before they choose you."

Since I had already gone through medical and educational testing last March, I didn't have to wait the full six weeks to meet with the Classification Committee. It only took three. Yet it seemed much longer. By now, I was eager to get back to Riverside. It wasn't the prison I missed so much, as it was Slide Step. With him there, I didn't have to worry about what was going to happen to me. And even the sex wasn't so bad. At least he didn't try to hurt me. And anything else an inmate could have in thereSlide Step made sure I had it. Including Brett! Yet oddly enough, I'd hardly thought about Brett at all since I'd been gone. It was Slide Step who I kept thinking about.

"Why do you want to go back to Riverside?" the head of the Classification Committee asked. He was a man in his fifties with short dark hair and glasses. He didn't look the type who would understand.

"I like it there," I said. "Can I please go back?"

"But it's a higher security and you now qualify for medium security placement."

He looked at the other two members, who were looking back and shaking their heads. "We don't understand why you'd want to go there, when you can go to a lower security facility with inmates who are closer to your own age."

"I feel safe there," I said.

I couldn't think of what else to say, and for the first time, I realized how deeply I had cared for Slide Step-because the pain I was feeling, deep down in my gut, had nothing to do with concerns for my safety.

"Please," I begged. "Can I please, just go back there?" But this sudden realization of how I felt for Slide Step, was too late.

"No. I'm afraid not."

My heart sank.

"We're sending you to the Michigan Training Unit, where you can finish high school and acquire a trade, so you can be productive when you get back out."

I didn't want to get back out. I wanted to go to Riverside. I didn't care anymore, about guys my own age. I just wanted to go home, to Riverside.

27

Greener Grass

We had gone out to eat at a family restaurant. Everyone was there except for Ricky. He was down in Florida serving time for forgery. Dad ivas hungover and was making up to Sharon fora disappearance.

I looked over at the family sitting at the table next to ours. The son, who was about my age of fourteen, was talking and everyone at his table was listening to him. His dad smiled as he placed his hand on the back of'his son's neck. Everyone laughed.

The boy's clothes looked different than mine-they were cleaner and new-and he sat up taller in his chair, even though he seemed shorter than me.

I wondered how different my life would have been, if' I had lived with them.

According to the orange-covered rulebook, The Michigan Training Unit was a nmediunm-security prison for the more educable inmates under twenty-one years old. The focus was on rehabilitation, and everyone there was required to work and go to school.

For all the structure that had been missing at Riverside, the Michigan Training Unit had made up for in programming. They offered