Gloria Heffernan
Grounded
They told me clearing security could take a while. Bring a book, they said. I didn’t. I get fidgety in waiting rooms. Can’t concentrate enough to read a book. But I’m beginning to think I could have read Gone with the Wind in the time it’s taking for me to get from the main entrance of the prison to the school. I just want to get this over with and I’m getting a headache from the roaring engines of the airplanes taking off from LaGuardia Airport. One of the runways is so close I could probably swim the narrow channel that separates it from the main entrance to the Riker’s Island Correctional Facility.
On the couch across from me, a minister is talking to an elderly Black woman. She is petite but nothing about her suggests fragility. Her hair is combed in a tidy page-boy with silver strands running through it like delicate threads of lace. She wears a brown wool coat with a fur collar. Her black patent leather shoes look new. Today is visitors’ day. As far as I can tell, she is here to see her grandson and is hoping the minister’s presence will be of some comfort – I’m not sure for whom.
The minister is speaking softly to her and holding her hand. I count the tiles on the floor, trying to estimate the dimensions of the waiting room and trying even harder not to appear like I’m eavesdropping. “But he’s a good boy,” she says, her voice breaking despite her visible effort to remain composed. I lose count at tile number forty-one and have to start over from the beginning. I want to get my mind off these people and their problems…and the planes.
“Armstrong!”
I jump at the sound of my name being barked by the guard at the glass-enclosed security desk. I scramble to the desk, relieved that I am, at last, on my way. The sooner I get in, the sooner I get out, the sooner I have another line on my resume.
“Walk through the metal detector and place your bags on the conveyor belt.” The barking is getting old fast. I’d like to bark back, but he’s better at it than I am so I just drop my purse and book bag and walk on. Before I get through the metal detector, lights start flashing and an alarm honks like a choir of angry geese. “Armstrong! Get back here!”
He points at a monitor behind the metal detector and I see the contents of both my bags outlined in shades of grey on the screen. “What the hell is that!” he demands, pointing at a three-inch oval shape on the screen. Without waiting for me to answer, he grabs the bag and roots around in it until he withdraws my key ring with the gift my father gave me the day I moved to New York. “Well?” he demands.
“It’s a Swiss Army Knife,” I answer. I am still shaking from the jolting noise of the alarm and I have decided that compliance is better than impotent pissed-offedness.
“You cannot bring a weapon into the ARDC!”
“Weapon?” My memory flashes on my father standing in the driveway of our house in Michigan. He gave me the knife and a heavy duty flashlight – going away gifts for the long drive. His kind of gifts. Practical.
“It’s not a weapon! It’s a …it’s a tool.”
“A tool!” He grabs a paper clip from his desk. “This is a tool,” he grumbles, and with lightning quickness, unfolds the paper clip into a straight wire. “Now you wrap three of four of these tools together into a good tight coil, and you got yourself one hell of a weapon. You wanna guess what these punks‘ll doo with a ‘tool’ like this?” He thrusts the folded knife in front of my face about an inch from my nose. “No weapons or tools! You can pick this up on your way out. Now go to the next window and get your visitor’s badge. And wait there for your escort to come down from the school.” He issues these instructions in a disgusted, superior tone and as I walk through the metal detector I hear him mutter, just loud enough for me to hear, “Dumb bitch, I’ll show you a tool.” I want to scream or kick him or report him to someone but I can tell he specializes in having the last word and I don’t want to hear anymore. So I walk through the metal detector, take a deep breath, and remind myself that it’s just a job. One day on Riker’s Island never killed anyone – or so they tell me. When it’s over, I never have to set foot in here again. And if that’s not enough, I can take solace in the fact that this little adventure will make for a useful piece of conversation whenever a date needs to be reminded that I know how to take care of myself. “…And then there was the time I taught that creative writing workshop at Riker’s,” I’ll say, with just the right blend of Midwestern innocence and New York street smarts.
I guess it was these qualities—coupled with the fact that I was the only one who applied—that convinced Professor Owens that I was the best choice for the job. And I took it because I know that an MFA candidate in Creative Writing had better have some teaching experience to fall back on or else get used to the idea of waiting tables and writing brilliant bits of poetry on napkins and place mats. Not my style. Besides, I had done some teaching back in Michigan and I knew that one set of bored teenage faces was pretty much the same as any other. The only difference is that some of these kids had actually done the things my Michigan students only wanted to do. The operative word being some.
“They’re not all criminals,” Professor Owens had said. “You’ll be working at the Adolescent Remand and Detention Center. They haven’t been sentenced yet. This where they’re sent to await trial.” All I know is these kids have been arrested and chances are I wouldn’t want to sit across from any of them on the subway at eleven o’clock at night. In the final analysis, this project is good PR for the university and a day’s employment for me. Go in, get them writing, get out. I’ll leave the platitudes for my distinguished colleagues. “It takes a lot of courage to do what you are about to do,” Owens had told me, extending his hand in a most collegial fashion. Nice words, but this is about paying the rent.
The steel door before me begins to open. It rumbles slowly and loudly. Mechanically operated, it roars like an earthquake opening up to reveal a sudden and irreparable crack in the world. On the other side of the threshold stands Virgil Patterson who runs the GED program here. I met him in Owens’s office when they interviewed me. Handsome Black man, around fifty, tall, well-built with ramrod straight posture. The kind of guy kids wouldn’t try to test. His voice is slow and rich like a late night DJ on a jazz station. You’d never peg him for an English teacher in a correctional institution…until he starts talking about his students. “Yeah, I’ve seen some who oughtta be locked up for good, and I’d be happy to throw away the key myself. But you can’t just look at a thirteen year old kid and think, “that little scumbag is selling drugs.” You have to ask yourself, ‘What can I sell him that’s better?’ What options can I offer him besides parking my car or working in McDonalds?” And he still believes it, even after twelve years in the system.
I smile when I see him, grateful for the sight of anyone or anything even remotely familiar. “Sorry about the delay,” he says. “I had to persuade a few of our boys that listening to me was better than the alternative.” I nod and clip my visitor badge into place, making it clear that I don’t want to hear about the alternatives. There’s an uncomfortable silence while we wait for the door to rumble back into place. When it’s completely closed, another begins to open.
We walk down a long corridor past noisy offices where uniformed men and women laugh and slap each other on the back exchanging greetings. They appear comfortable with each other, gossiping and dialing phones and typing requisitions. It could be any office anywhere until you get to the storage room where the floor-to-ceiling shelves are meticulously stacked with riot gear. Helmets with visors, Plexiglass shields, bullet-proof vests, night-sticks, all bathed in fluorescent light.
After we pass the riot room, we come to yet another steel door. We have to wait until a long line of boys dressed in street clothes carrying green plastic mugs passes by. “Lunch line,” says Virgil. “It will just be a minute.”
I watch through the small glass window as teenaged inmates shuffle along in an orderly procession. They are silent and, at first glance, appear well-behaved; but on closer examination, the behavior seems less orderly than mechanical. There is a sullen passivity in the slumped shoulders and downcast eyes. A tall skinny Black kid in low slung oversized jeans and a Phoenix Suns sweatshirt drops his mug and when he stoops to retrieve it, four boys walking behind him crash into him like bowling pins. He turns around and looks impassively at the disheveled crowd. Suddenly mouths are moving rapidly and hands are waving about in argument. I can’t hear anything through the locked door, but I know from the elaborate gesticulations and shaking heads that it must be loud. A guard pulls a night stick from his belt to break up what could become an ugly fight. The kid bends down to pick up his mug. As he stands up he peers briefly through the glass and catches my eye. His expression changes for a moment from indifference to curiosity. He catches a glimpse of Virgil and nods respectfully. I’m impressed. The line starts to move again. It seems endless and, in fact, through the narrow window, there really is no end in sight. There must be at least a hundred young men on this line. The majority of them are Black with a handful of Latinos. I ask Virgil where the white kids are. “Out on bail,” he says.
The procession passes and the door begins inching its way open to reveal yet another corridor. This one is permeated by the odor of some unidentifiable food. It smells bland and stale, like overcooked cabbage and boiled hot dogs. The odor hangs almost palpably on the air and I am near the point of gagging. The smell…the stooped shoulders and hooded eyes…the crash of the mechanical door as it closes behind me. The visitor’s pass pinned to my dress does not change the fact that I am locked in.
The heavy door behind me has opened again. More young men stand in casual groups scattered along the corridor. All are dressed in street clothes. I suddenly realize that I had expected uniforms. Nothing as clichéd as stripes, but something that would set them apart from the clusters of teenagers I pass when I walk down the street every day. I look at them and remember to smile when we make eye contact. One smiles back. A joyless smile. Confined to the lips alone, the eyes cold. A smile that says, “I know you’re scared of me.” And it registers for the first time that I really am scared. It’s a scary place. There are murderers here. And rapists. And drug dealers. And I wonder what the hell I am doing here until I force myself to remember that first and foremost, there are kids here. I look straight ahead and recite a kind of incantation in my head. Accused is not guilty. Remanded is not convicted. Purgatory is not hell. But looking around, I see that it’s damn close.
I wonder how long it would take me to run back down the hall. The electronic door is slow. It will be another thirty seconds before it crashes to a close. Thirty seconds in a place like this is the difference between fluorescent bulbs and sunlight. I find myself craving a wide expanse of sky. The way it looks in Arizona where you feel like you are walking around under an infinite bowl of blue light.
We pass a bank of windows with steel bars running across them. Eight horizontal bars to each window. Sunlight falls across the floor like a striped blanket. But not real sunlight. Just scattered pieces of it to remind you what’s on the other side of the glass. Like the planes. Every three minutes, the sound of freedom rumbling overhead. I wonder if any of these kids knows what it feels like to fly. I think about flying now. I think about the thrill of looking out the window and seeing the world passing below me. I think about what it means to travel. To move. To go. I remember reading somewhere that the Navajo language has over three hundred words to express movement. These boys have only two: no way. I wonder if the proximity to the airport is a coincidence or a joke.
I’m thinking too much. I should be listening to Virgil who is pointing out some of the more agreeable features of the facility. They like to call it a facility; it eases the tension. I have slipped a good ten feet behind him. I need to catch up but I’m caught in an undertow. I try to swim forward but the current is holding me back. I keep thinking about the sky.
Virgil has noticed that I am not keeping up. He stops and waits for me. I feel like I’ve been walking down this corridor for hours but I see now that it has only been three minutes. Another airplane has just flown overhead. I know it’s been three minutes because I started counting the take-offs when I was sitting in the waiting room. Half an hour -- ten planes. Pass through the metal detector and hand over my passport in exchange for the visitor’s badge. Three more planes. Nine minutes. Then the electronic door opened and I entered the corridor. A plane took off in unison with the rumbling of the steel door and its roar receded as the door rolled back into place. I walked the length of the hall. Silence except for my heels clicking against the white tiled floor. And then another plane. Three minutes. Clockwork. Maddening.
I am convinced now that the proximity to the airport is not coincidence. There is a sadistic ritual in this punctuation of time. I am lousy at math but I start to calculate. It keeps my mind off the steel-on-steel slamming of the doors. One take-off every three minutes. Twenty flights an hour. I think about the class I am about to visit. It’s an English class, but I want to start them off with a math question. They used to call them problems when I was in school. “Okay, boys, here’s a problem for you to figure out. If a plane takes off from LaGuardia every three minutes, how many times a day do you have to listen to their engines screeching overhead reminding you that you’re going nowhere?” Now that’s a problem.
Virgil is walking faster and I’m surprised to see that I am keeping up. I am just hitting my stride when we come to a halt in front of a uniformed man at a desk. Words are spilling out of his mouth as he points to an open loose leaf on the blotter in front of him. I pick up a pen and watch my name spreading out across the page. The guard looks at my badge and copies the number down next to my signature. “If you lose that badge you’ll be in big trouble,” the guard says. “Do you understand?” I nod. “…total lockdown.” I missed the words that came before it. “I’m sorry,” I say, “Can you repeat that? I didn’t hear you. The planes.”
“Lock down,” he says, matter-of-factly. I’m holding onto his words like a slippery rope in a tug of war that I’m losing. “If you lose your pass, one of the inmates might find it and as long as he’s holding that, he can get through any door in the place.”
“We had a lockdown just last week,” Virgil interjects. “The guy made it all the way to the last checkpoint. Almost made it to the parking lot. Lock down lasted three hours. That means every door slams shut and were you are is where you stay… elevators…hallways…it doesn’t matter. Nothing moves until the guy gets caught.”
I think about the time I got stuck in the elevator at my sister’s apartment for ten minutes and how I wanted to scratch my way out. I think about being a prisoner here even for ten minutes. Another plane rips through the sky. It’s a big one. Businessmen and vacationers have already placed their seats in the upright position. Three minutes.
It’s a hike to the classroom. We walk out of the main building and head over to the Sprungs, the compound of modular units where the school building and the dormitories are situated in the shadow of a grassy incline. I wonder who thought up this name. The Sprungs. Virgil tells me it’s just the name of the company that manufactures the units, but I’m remembering old George Raft movies about convicts who talk tough about getting sprung, and I think the complex might have been named by the same smartass who put the airport at spitting distance from the main entrance. We pass through an alleyway constructed of chain link fences enclosed overhead by a canopy of razor wire. We pass through a courtyard, the recreation area, my first taste of open space all morning. We’re walking faster now. It must be the outdoor air. I think about the escapee who made it almost to the parking lot. Could he see the planes taking off less than a hundred yards away? I think about the grandmother and the minister and wonder if her boy will be one of my students today. And as I walk into the schoolroom, I wonder just what it is I intend to say.
“Okay fellas, listen up. This is Miss Armstrong,” Virgil says. “She’s our guest for the day and I expect you to treat her with respect. She’s going to talk to you about writing poetry. Now I know some of you fine young men have got poetry way down deep in your souls. And God knows you’ve got plenty of time around here to try and find it.” A few of the students laugh self-consciously at the remark.
I look at the bodies that are too large for the Crayola colored plastic chairs that fill the room. Virgil is standing at the back of the room and I am talking for several minutes before I realize that I am speaking directly to him. This is wrong. I begin to look at the students and what I see are no longer lines on a resume, but lines nonetheless. The lunch line passing before me silently in single file. The line of bull Professor Owens is so fond of spewing about courage and meaning when what he really means is tenure and good press.
I hand out the paper and pencils and start talking about poetry. I talk about words and the power of being heard. I force myself to remember that these things do matter…even in here. Because they have to matter. Because options must be offered and poetry is something I can sell. Another plane soars overhead. I look out the window and study the shadow of one enormous wing as it passes over the courtyard. I ask the students to think about why people write poetry. I think about teaching them to fly.
Gloria Heffernan's first full-length poetry collection, What the Gratitude List Said to the Bucket List, was published in 2019 by New York Quarterly Books. She has also written two chapbooks, Some of Our Parts (Finishing Line Press), and Hail to the Symptom (Moonstone Press). Her work has appeared in over sixty journals, including Chautauqua Literary Journal, Stone Canoe, Columbia Review, and The Healing Muse. Gloria holds an M.A. from New York University and teaches at Le Moyne College and the Downtown Writers Center in Syracuse, New York.