Commissary Day, Part 3

(Originally Posted on June 12, 2015) 

Commissary Day (continued)

A Bossman appears in front of the bars and magically has everyone’s attention. He smirks a hello and points a remote-control at the televisions mounted high on the brick wall, turning them to maximum volume. He asks what stations we want to watch, but jeers and shouted profanity are his only answer. Historically, thousands of prisoners have spilled blood over what snowy reception TV station to watch, yet nobody cares right now. Today is Commissary day.

 

At 7:23, the same smirking Bossman appears and demands ten people for Commissary in his exaggerated Southern drawl. The mood of the packed room brightens, and a gang leader leads nine swaggering homeboys out of the door. It’s an early start today, and that gives even the guys at the back of the “line” reason to be cautiously optimistic.

 

Ten minutes after the first guy leaves the dayroom, he returns with two transparent laundry bags of goodies. Every eye in the dayroom studies those bags through the bars, including mine. I think it’s involuntary. Whenever inmates see Commissary, their eyes cannot resist the colors. It goes back to the sensory deprivation thing: There are no bright colors native to prison. Inmates wear white uniforms, the guards wear Confederate Grey, and the building is red brick with shiny razor-wire. Stare at these dull colors for a few thousand hours and watch what your eyes do when suddenly presented with bright colors. It captivates them. It’s the reason magazines and photographs are treasured behind the walls.

 

It’s not just the colors that attract eyes to those bags laden with treats. There’s the sense of taste. Prison serves strictly bland food. Eat penitentiary cardboard long enough, and you start yearning for rich flavors. And our tongues know the flavors those bright colors represent.

 

As every eye in the room watches the homeboy General’s bags, he steps up to the bars and takes out some ice cream treats for some of his minions. Later today when the temperature exceeds a hundred degrees, ice cream will seem like life-giving medicine. It’s standard etiquette when returning from the Commissary to drop off a few ice cream novelties to your friends suffering in the Hyena Den and hope they return the favor sometime.

 

The general climbs the stairs to his cell. Returning from Commissary is, by rule, the only time an inmate can come back to the cellblock and go directly to his cage. A rule likely more motivated by medical bills than humaneness. Sending a person into the dayroom with a bag of Commissary would be like dropping a bloody carcass into an alligator pit. Before the administration caved, prisoners would come in the dayroom with goodies, and someone would sneak from behind with a razor blade and slash open the bag. The contents would fall everywhere, and dozens of scavengers would dive to grab something — anything! Naturally, people were injured. Sometimes killed.

 

Just a few minutes pass before the second homeboy returns with his bounty. If the lady (the prison Commissary industry in this state seems to have a majority of women employees) wants to, she can move the line fast. It's not like you can browse or make selections, and you’d better keep your damn questions to a bare minimum. (An inmate must turn in a written order each time he goes to the Commissary, and he has a spending limit of $95.00 twice a month, though not many men have the resources to spend the limit every time.) If the items you order are out of stock (more than common and insanely frustrating for the inmates), tough luck. The Commissary window line really moves if the lady doesn’t take a lot of cigarette breaks, and there’s not a host of prison guards cutting the line for their own snacks. But even when a lady comes to work ready to rock, she may often face an empty line, as it often falls to an apathetic and overworked cellblock sergeant to fill her line.

 

I’m hoping they’ll run another shot of ten before count-time. They don’t. Not that count-time shuts down the Commissary by rule, yet it often happens that way, depending on the nature of the shift sergeant. That’s important to us non-homeboys trying to make Commissary, because count-time can last anywhere from forty-five minutes (at best) to four or more hours (at worst). If the worst happens, combined with an apathetic sergeant, we won’t make Commissary today.

 

Count-time comes, and we exit the dayroom to pair up in line on the run. I feel the start of a headache, and I’m sweating profusely. This old brick building with walls of windows heats up fast. We’re counted and stuffed back in the dayroom. I sit again, feeling the body heat of my Siamese twins and consider the sweat mixing where our bodies touch. Kind of gross, but you get used to it. The Siamese twin on my right is talking to me, but I cannot hear a word. I nod and smile in time with his facial expressions, yet I really wonder how anyone can deliver such a long, uninterrupted stream of dialogue to a stranger who hasn’t uttered a word.

 

The line stagnates. No more shots to Commissary until count clears. The temperature is steadily rising in the dayroom sauna, aided by a mass of bodies. They finally clear count, two hours after it began, and another shot of customers is called out the door. Ten minutes later they call chow, and now it’s decision time. I’m hungry, but to leave the dayroom is to risk getting shuffled back in line. And then there’s a possibility of getting caught in the hallway without an ID card… I watch the guy holding my ID card in what is now the fifth stack. He passes the stack to someone so he can go eat. That makes up my mind to stay and watch the new card holder. My stomach growls and my headache beats the drums in protest.

 

At 12:15, it’s count-time again, and we’re still waiting to see the fourth shot called out. The temperature is over a hundred degrees outside, and there’s no telling what it is inside this brick oven gorged with epidermis. The noise, the heat, the stress — they have become physical pain. I’m desperate to make Commissary without knowing if it’s even possible. It’s the anticipation that kills, I’m telling you. My only relief is the coolness of my sweat-drenched clothes and the beautiful air provided by fanning my not-so-worthless book in front of my face.

 

At 12:40, the first fight of the day breaks out. It’s white versus black. The black man, “Cadillac”, evidently tried to shuffle the white guy’s ID card out of place, and John (the white guy) refused to accept it. For a few seconds, everyone lets them go at it until John lands a punch that staggers Cadillac. At this point, John is enveloped, eight to twelve black men attack him, kicking and stomping him as he balls up against the wall. John is a homeboy, and I know that two of his fellow gang members are present, but they stay well away from the beating. I guess suicide isn’t part of their homeboy constitution. Who can blame them? They are two white faces in a sea of black faces.

 

John is rescued only by economics, as once again the chiefs step in to restore order. Killing this white boy would cost them big. The Commissary would become more than elusive if a dead body shows up in the dayroom. John fares remarkably well. No doubt he’s bruised up, but he never lost consciousness. And though his nose looks broken and the rest of his face is a mess of lumps and cuts, he manages to stand up and walk over to the sink to wash his face and minimize evidence.

End part 3