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

"Do you think it's an accident that most inmates are black?" Miss Bain asked.

"Shit. Tell us something we don't know," O. J. said.

"All right. How about the movies you're all watching in the auditorium. What was last Saturday's movie?"

"Trick Baby," Lee answered.

"Trick Baby?" she said. She dropped her head is disbelief. "Trick Baby?"

The guys laughed because her eyes said it all.

"Hey! Now that's my boy," Lee said. "That's Iceberg Slim."

"I don't care if it's Romaine Lettuce," she laughed. "That crap is doing nothing but poisoning your young minds."

O. J. looked over at Lee with an exasperated expression.

"You can roll your eyes all you'd like, Mr. O. J., but let me just say that as long as we keep pandering to this never-ending stream of negative imagesones that show young black men as nothing more than pimps and pushers, con men and racketeers-instead of stepping up and showing off young, bright talented men such as each one of you is capable of being, then the general public is not going to care two nickels about you, me, or any other minority."

0. J. looked at her, his mouth slightly ajar.

"There will just be a neverending stream of young 0. J.s and June Bugs and Juju Beans that keep showing up in prison each year."

"I'm not telling you what you should watch, but I do think we can challenge what others think about us by questioning who it is they say we are."

We sat in a kind of stunned silence. No one had ever had that kind of analytical conversation with me, and I'm sure none of the others guys had ever had one either.

"I'll tell you what," Lee said. "That shit is DEEP."

The loudspeaker blared, "Attention All Inmates: Return from your assignments."

"Question your assumptions," Miss Bain said in closing, "and look for the contradictions. I'll see you all this afternoon."

As she got up to leave, she glanced over and smiled at me.

Miss Bain was a bad motherfucker!

When we arrived for chow, I let Paul go ahead of me in the line. It was pizza day, the highlight of the week's menu. As I inched toward the serving trays, I felt someone squeeze my ass. I spun around and saw a large black guy, Reese, pull his hand away. He stared at me like it wasn't him, and as soon as we sat down, I told Paul about it.

"Who?" He shouted.

"Shhh," I said. "He'll hear you."

"Fuck that! You can't let these ho's play you like that."

My heart sank, because I didn't want to get into a fight. And I wasn't sure it was him anyway. "It was Reese," I said, after Paul insisted I tell him.

Paul got up immediately and went over to him. A few minutes later, he returned. "It's take care of," he said. "I told him I didn't want a fight, but that you were with me."

"What'd he say?"

"He said that was cool."

Paul took a bite of his pizza.

"Do you want mine?" I said. "I'm not really hungry."

"You need to gain some weight, Squeeze. Those pants are falling off you."

It was scrawny piece of pizza, and it was nearly cold. I didn't want it.

"Listen, you can't let shit like that go," Paul said, "because it's never about what it looks like on the surface. He wasn't just copping a feel. He was testing-to see how you would react."

"I think he was also testing me," Paul said.

I hit into my thin slice of pizza.

Outside the chow hall, two inmates walked past.

"That bitch is so ugly," one of them said, "that when she was born-the doctor slapped her momma."

Inmates loved to snap on one another, but I didn't know who they were joking about until I turned the corner and saw Black Diamond standing with another queen.

"Well stir my pudding," she said. "If it ain't Mr. Blue Eyes. How the hell are you, girl?"

In the daylight, the poor thing was even more ugly than I had remembered. Her hairline was at the top of her head and her eyebrows were arched so high that she looked like Oopsy the Clown.

"I'm fine," I said, smiling, "but I'm still not a girl, Miss Thing."

"Well all right," she said. "You can be anything you want to be, honey, with your fine self."

It had been a few months since I left the county jail, and though I heard she had arrived in Quarantine, I didn't get a chance to see her before I left.

"When did you get here?" I asked.

"Today. I guess they don't want me startin' no scandals over in the barracks-so they're moving me into A-unit before we hit the Eyewitness News hour, if you know what I'm sayin'. Girrrl! There are some fine lookin' men up in this place, honey."

"How's Ginger doing?" I asked, remembering her cellmate from the jail.

"Girl got herself a dime," Black Diamond said, meaning she had received a ten-year sentence. "She's over in Gladiator School. But she'll be all right, already got herself a man picked out, so won't nobody fuck with her."

"And You?" I asked.

"Well, I'm just gonna have to wait and see what time it is before I pick me out a timepiece. But I'm sure enough gonna get one a Roladex or at least a Long Jean's Wittnauer, if you know what I'm sayin'."

She mispronounced both names, but I didn't have the heart to mention it. We both laughed. I remembered how judgmental I was when I first came to prison, and how horrified I was when I saw those queens on the tier- gigglin' and wigglin' their butts.

Paul tugged my jacket. "This is Paul," I said.

Paul nodded, but he seemed distant. "C'mon, Tim, we've got business."

"Well all right," Black Diamond said. "Y'all go on and make that thing happen."

As soon as we got out of earshot, Paul said I needed to be careful about who I associated with, because that had much to do with everything.

"But she's been nice to me!" I said.

"I hear what you're saying, but these