I was given respect from most of the inmates, but I didn’t give it to anyone else. I lipped off the guards, I still refused to attend any programs. I got in fights often with other inmates who looked at me too long or whispered when I walked past. I spent a lot of time in solitary. After three new inmates, trying to prove they were tough, attacked me in the shower, I waited until each of them were alone and returned the favor. But I also cut them and left jagged lines down the center of their chests. One day, a woman put a pillowcase over my head while I was napping in my cell and tried to beat the crap out of me. I managed to dislocate her shoulder. I became someone inmates either feared or wanted to challenge so they could prove themselves in there.
For the next three years, nothing changed. If I wasn’t in the hole for fighting, I’d work in the kitchen, then run the track every night or work out in my cell. And if I wasn’t working or exercising, I slept. Once I stopped writing back, my dad’s letters drifted off. He came over my first Christmas in the pen, but I’d gotten thrown in the hole the day before. Now he just sent money into my account every few months and new CDs, sometimes a card with a brief note. I wondered if those would also stop one day. My grandmother was the only family member who kept writing each month, the only one I answered sometimes.
Pinky was still my roommate and we existed fine with each other, never friends but never enemies. Other inmates who were also serving long sentences tried to talk to me sometimes, telling me I needed to chill out, I was making things harder on myself, but I ignored everyone. I had lots of sessions with my institutional parole officer and the prison psychiatrist. I did my best to piss them all off, and I succeeded every time. No one liked me.
Ryan still wrote, at first every week, then every month, and then months would go by and I’d think he’d finally given up, but he’d send another letter. I didn’t read them, didn’t even open them, though sometimes the urge was so strong I’d be physically sick, retching over our small metal toilet, Pinky watching and shaking her head. Sometimes I’d wake up from a dead sleep, Ryan’s name on my lips, and know that he was thinking of me, calling for me. After every letter I’d retreat back into my cell to stare at the wall. I’d stop eating. They’d put me in a paper suit and back into solitary. I got thinner—and angrier. Some days I didn’t even know myself anymore.
After I’d been at Rockland for five years, I was sitting in the hole one day, after spitting on a guard, when they sent the prison shrink to talk to me. He was a younger guy with an earnest face and big glasses. I got the feeling that he really cared about his job and wanted to help, but I’d spent most of our previous meetings trying to convince him that I was a waste of time—and doing a good job of it, I thought.
This time he said, “Toni, you’ve served a third of your sentence. You can get out of here and have a life, but you just keep making it harder on yourself. It’s like you don’t want to get out. Like you’re scared of everything out there.”
After he left I thought a lot about what he’d said. When I’d first come in, my sentence had seemed so long, but there was a light at the end of the tunnel now. The idea was terrifying and exhilarating. Did I even have a life to go back to? If I kept going the way I was, fighting the system every step of the way, I’d be nothing but a deadbeat or a druggie when I got out. I’d probably be back in a week—I’d seen it happen time and time again. I thought about what Janet had told me, about doing easy time and hard time. I’d assumed cutting my family and Ryan off would make things easier, but I’d never really accepted being in prison, never tried to fit in or make any kind of life on the inside. I’d seen other inmates laugh, love, learn, achieve things, but I’d closed myself off from any chance of any happiness.