By Brandon Astor Jones
It is cold in the little cubicle that bears the number 38. It is January 11, and I am in the far end of H-Cell House. Ordering me into the filthy cell, the corrections officer (CO) said, "I'll give you some things to clean up in here with in a minute, but I can't right now."
To myself I quietly laughed at his feigned concern as I entered the cell. It was bare. The barred gate slid shut loudly behind me, and about five feet beyond, the gate of the steel door closed and locked, and he was gone.
I must now reside here for the next 14 days. I am being punished for having what the prison authorities term "altered food or drink", back in G-Cell House. At the pretentious tribunal known as a "disciplinary hearing", I was officially charged with "unauthorised possession of contraband". So for the next two weeks this is where I will be. Mentally disturbed prisoners, for the most part, are held here.
The stench is incredible. It rises as if from a crypt. Try to imagine a cesspool-like rainbow with your colour senses: it is dull and yet dehumanisingly brilliant. It is varied in its demoralisation, at once overt and subtle. Even if you have succeeded in drawing a picture in your mind, at best it only scratches the putrid surface of what it is like to be in cell 38. Such a picture cannot give you the sights, sounds and assaults upon my senses. It is like a chamber filled with silent preludes to death. I stretch out atop the steel bunk staring off into 38's tiny space.
On my right, the toilet is less than 18 inches away. The sink that is connected to it, perhaps 15 inches above, is stopped up. The standing water in it has a sickly reddish hue, between two layers of scaling light gray and dark gray paint. There is excrement scattered here and there on the upper and outer rim of the commode, a repulsive, crusted dark brown.
On the dirty beige wall, perhaps a foot beyond, there is strong evidence of hundreds of faded yellowish streams, which by scent and location suggest urine. The yellow streaks seem to disappear into an eight-inch black border neatly painted on the wall. There is a perverse, silent humour in the sight, as if someone thought the yellow leavings would cease to be, simply because of the shining black camouflage.
To the left, a few feet above the soft brown of the concrete floor there is a new-looking pencil scrawl gouged into the cruddy wall. It reads: "I will act the way I am treated so help me god!" I feel as if the writer is giving the whole world a very important message.
It has gotten colder. I am shivering; there are fans somewhere creating a huge draught of bone-chilling air. I am still waiting for clothes, dressed only in a pair of socks and boxer shorts.
At various times over several hours I have asked Sergeant Goddard, COs Allen, Hunter and others to provide me with clothing and soap so I can dress and then clean and sanitise this cell. So far, the requests have fallen on deaf ears.
Later there was a sweat shirt/top and jumpsuit brought to me, after what I guess to have been six hours. It could have been longer. I am not sure. I foolishly asked CO Hunter, "What time is it, officer?" He looked at his watch and said, "I can't tell you that" in a matter-of-fact tone. He returned in what seemed like an hour, and it occurred to me that part of this punishment must be for me to lose all sense of what day or time it is.
CO Hunter began rolling up and sticking envelopes, containing messages from the outside world, into five of the 56 little two-inch square openings situated near the dreary white ceiling of the cell. Looking up at him, through those openings, I can see that his face is expressionless. There is a middle-aged woman with him. She is wearing a thick black jacket. Obviously, she is cold too. I wish I had her jacket.
The man in the cell next to me calls her "Doctor Johnson". I assume that Dr Johnson is a mental health care giver. I stand up on the bed in order to reach up and get the five pieces of precious mail.
It was then that I caught a fleeting glimpse of myself in the mirror of my mind in which I share a brief kinship with a newly born blackbird in a concrete and steel nest being fed rectangular white worms. I desperately need them and a lot more to help me maintain my sanity and humanity. Enclosed in any one of them may be a moment describing someone's more humane existence that I can experience second hand. Such moments serve to buttress my spirit as I try to keep it safe from the ravages of a permeating madness that is contagious here, perhaps more so than in G Cell House.
When CO Hunter and Dr Johnson leave, I scream up into those 56 little white openings and ask the man in the next cell (who of course, I cannot see), "How much time did the man have who was in this cell before me?"
"He'll be out on the street in three years." He said nothing else for a minute or two and then added, "Yeah man, they beat the [expletive] out of him just last Monday!"
"Is he a black man?", I ask.
"You know it!", says he.
Now in silence, except for the perpetual drone of the fan(s), I explore my thoughts — which are questions without answers more than anything else. Visions of a faceless man who occupied cell 38 before me, along with great wonder, invade my senses.
Did he write the words on the wall? If so, is he stricken with rage, anger and madness, filled with the violent memories of last Monday's brutal beating? Have they now set the ticking clock that has rendered him little more than a time bomb just waiting to explode three years hence? Which community will it be? No matter which one it turns out to be, it will be one that stood by silently while those COs brutalised him in cell 38.
If he does explode, there will be more than a few Americans calling for getting "tougher on crime". Do they not realise that there is a line, on one side of it is toughness, but across which is sheer madness? Building more prisons and giving the kind of treatment prisoners get in cell 38 goes way over that line, into and beyond madness.
It is dark now. It has been too quiet for too long. The man in the next cell is incoherently and repeatedly screaming for the "sergeant". The COs are trying not to hear him, although you would have to be on the moon not to.
It must be about nine o'clock when CO Perry opens the steel plate door. Two prisoners are with him. They walk up to the gate and bars of the cell and push through them a small plunger, a toilet bowl cleaning brush, a can of scouring cleaner and a mop. I, in turn, pick them up. Then I free the drain. That task completed, I quickly scrub the walls and toilet and mop the floor. I stick the mop and other things back through the bars. One of the prisoners removes them while the other one mops the rest of the floor outside of the cell. The air changes in cell 38. It is not fresh air, but gratefully I realise that it is no longer as putrid as it was a while ago. I lie down. For a while I am warm from the activity of cleaning. The steel door closes. Sleep quickly overtakes me.
No dream visited me. The morning rays seep through the steel door's eight by eight inch plexiglas window. Later the door opens and Sergeant McClendon hands me two bars of soap. I am grateful and excited because now I can wash my body. Not unlike cell 38 on the night before, now I too am not entirely fresh, but I am not putrid. In my mind I silently thank Sergeant McClendon, because I still have one bar of soap left.
What seems like a couple of hours pass. I can hear a lot of hurried footsteps and noises. Moments later I see the heads of a group of COs rumbling by the little window in the door, and simultaneously I also hear what sounds like the nearly unconscious and no doubt chained body of another prisoner being physically dragged by. I hear the steel door two cells down the line being unlocked and flung open. I hear the handcuffs and/or leg irons being removed from his body. Then there is quiet for a moment, and from somewhere deep within the confines of his pain, a strange yet vaguely familiar guttural moan escapes. It was barely audible. Then the cell door shuts and is locked with a key.
Now the COs come back by 38's little window. There is the sound of hands slapping, perhaps in the "high five" manner; I cannot be sure. Because he is in profile, I can see only one half of the smile on Sergeant McCord's face. As quickly as the group came, they are gone.
Shortly thereafter, I can hear and see Warden Thomas, and a number of his high-ranking officials go by, obviously en route to the cell that Sergeant McCord and his crew had just left. Some of them are chattering softly like a class of fifth graders on a field trip to their local zoo. One is laughing, but I cannot see her face. She is not laughing loudly. They linger at the cell — I assume they are looking through the glass in the door of the man who was just dragged in.
Then they start filing by the little window of the cell again. There is more than one person laughing this time; and the laughing is a little louder, but I cannot see who it is because the window is filled with the face of the warden. He peers in at me. We make eye contact. He seems to be pondering. Then he smiles that practised politician-like grin and nods in recognition of my presence in his "hole". I nod back. I do not smile.
The warden and his assistants vanish. Then I ponder. The greater sadness is: that the vast majority of misguided folk out there are begging for much more of all that cell 38 stands for.
Thirteen days to go.
[The writer is a prisoner on death row in the United States. He is happy to receive letters commenting on his columns. He can be written to at: Brandon Astor Jones, EF-122216, G2-51, GD&CC, PO Box 3877, Jackson, GA 30233, USA.]