Chapter Thirty-Seven
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
It’s Friday, January thirty-first, four days until my release.
To make sure everything goes smoothly, I’m spending most of the day with a new CO, Officer Whiteley, who looks like she’s just out of middle school, never mind the police academy.
She’s assigned to escort me to the offices where various personnel will help me do everything I need to do and sign everything I need to sign to ensure smooth sailing when I’m processed out of here on Tuesday.
Our first stop is the Inmate Trust Fund office.
My account was frozen a week ago and I’m told I have eighty-seven dollars and forty-two cents left on the books.
From that, fifty bucks will be subtracted and handed to me in cash as “gate money” just before I leave.
The remaining thirty-eight dollars and change will be issued in a check forwarded to me at my mom’s address.
Next, I have my picture taken for the ID card I’ll exchange for my prison ID.
This new identification will substitute for the driver’s license I surrendered when I was indicted three years ago.
I’ve been warned by my case manager that getting my license reinstated won’t be easy, given the nature of my conviction.
The DMV fees will be steep and I’ll probably have a better shot at it if I hire a lawyer.
I make a mental note to call Rachel Dixon’s office later, but there’s a part of me that dreads the thought of getting behind the wheel of a car again.
On our way to the property office, I ask CO Whiteley what drew her to this kind of work. “My last job was checking members in at a fitness center and saying ‘Have a good workout!’ a hundred times a shift. Plus, it’s kind of in the family. My dad’s a state cop and one of my brothers is a CO.”
“Which prison is your brother at?”
That’s when her training kicks in, I guess. Her face turns expressionless and she says, “Never mind. No more questions.”
At the property window, I refuse the personal effects I came in here with.
The last thing I want to be reminded of is the courtroom clothes I was wearing the day I was processed in here.
“Donate them or throw them out,” I tell the property manager.
And so he issues me a thermal undershirt, a pair of khakis with an elastic waistband, and a hooded sweatshirt.
“I ain’t got any winter jackets at the moment.
You can’t walk out of here with the winter coat they issued you because it’s state property.
They’ll make you surrender it before you leave.
When you leaving?” This coming Tuesday, I tell him.
“Supposed to snow,” he says. “You need socks or skivvies? They’ll let you leave here with those.
” I tell him I just got laundry back so I’m good.
Last time I talked to my mother, I asked her to buy me some underwear and socks so I could throw out the used shit they issue us here.
“Any excuse to go to TJ Maxx,” she said.
More offices, more signatures. At Medical, a nurse tells me I still have some left on my Klonopin. Do I want them to send the rest of my prescription over to Discharge? I tell her no—that I’ve gotten myself off them. Haven’t taken any for about a week and a half. “Any negative effects?” she asks.
Palpitations, some on-and-off twitching, a little more irritability. Nothing I can’t manage. “None that I’ve noticed,” I tell her.
“Okay then,” she says. “If you’re sure.”
Our last stop is Counselor Jackson’s office. “Okay, this is it for me,” CO Whiteley says. “Good luck.”
“Same to you,” I tell her. “Hey, do me a favor, will you?” She says officers don’t do favors for offenders.
“Okay. I was just going to ask that you don’t let this place make you cynical.
” I put my hand out to shake hers, but she refuses the gesture and walks away.
I figure she could go either way after she’s here awhile: become one of the decent ones who remember we’re human beings or one of the ballbusters who has to keep reinforcing the message that we’re scum and they’re in charge.
Something I’ve observed in the time I’ve been here is that a lot of the female officers are chameleons.
They’ll treat you reasonably one shift and go hard-ass on you the next, depending on who their shift partner is.
For whatever reason they chose this work, women have to manage two groups of men: the prisoners and their fellow guards, including the ones who try to test them by making sexual remarks and the ones who assume this is no job a woman should be doing.
Counselor Jackson wants to know how I’m feeling.
I shrug. Tell her my head’s all over the place but I’m mostly happy to get out of here.
“Understandable,” she says. “Is someone picking you up on Tuesday?” I tell her yes, my mother.
“Good old Mom, huh? Let her know she should be here no later than eight thirty, but that she’ll probably have to wait awhile.
Depends on how many others are getting processed out.
And as you’ve probably noticed, nothing at this place moves too fast.”
“Believe me, I’ve noticed. See if you can speed things up when they make you warden here.”
She laughs and says, “Oh God, don’t wish that on me.
Here. Don’t lose this.” She hands me a card with the name and contact info of my probation officer and tells me I need to check in at his office within forty-eight hours of my release.
I’m given a CT DOC discharge packet that contains information about transitional services and how to access medical insurance.
I ask her to describe what happens on D-Day.
“Sure,” she says. “They’ll get you up early, probably have you take a shower and get dressed.
They will already have issued you a couple of garbage bags for the stuff you’re taking home, so you should pack the night before.
Make a list of everything. Then an officer will escort you over to A you’re supposed to haul it all out of here whether someone else could use it or not.
But for me, part of the joy of getting out of here is giving it to him and, really, who’s going to check and say, “Hey, isn’t that Ledbetter’s antifungus cream?
” It’s one of the stupid rules here that begs to be broken, and I’m just seventy-two hours away from saying so long to all the stupid regulations at Yates fucking CI.
“Zatarain’s?”
“Which kind? Blackened or Creole?”
“Creole.”
“All right then. Yeah.” Like he’s doing me the favor.
He also says yes to two rolls of toilet paper, half a bottle of shampoo, a three-pack of Slim Jims, a barely used deodorant stick, my rubber shower shoes, an unopened package of smoked almonds, and a fingernail clipper.
The only things he declines to take possession of are the come-to-Jesus books my aunt Nancy has sent me.
It’s not that I don’t appreciate her thoughtfulness; it’s just not the kind of reading I’m drawn to.
Guess that’s my father’s influence, but at least I’m not as judgmental as he is about religion.
It still strikes me as weird that one sibling becomes a Holy Roller, the other an avowed atheist who thinks believers have been duped.