by Barbara Deming

excerpt from Prison Notes. Available from the University of GA press. Prison Notes is Barbara's account of the month she spent in the Albany, Georgia, city jail early in 1964. Barbara was arrested in Albany while participating in the Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo walk for peace.

Chapter One

January 27, 1964

Albany city jail, Georgia. The cop locks the door on us and walks off. now we're out of mischief. the barred steel door has banged shut; the big key has made a lot of noise; they have "put us away." people still believe there is some magic in the turning of a key.

he walks past some other cages, running his night stick, clattering, along the bars; and then we hear him make a curious little clucking noise to the prisoners - as though human speech were not quite appropriate to cross the distance between us. magically, now, we are no longer quite of the same species.

as he goes, he glances down at his boots, and he puts his hand - as if to be sure of something - upon his wide belt with its creaking tooled-leather holder.

"sonofabitch cop!" a prisoner rages, and grasps the bars and rattles them. "oh goddam motherfucking sonofabitch! wait til I get out of here tomorrow!"

I am reminded of a fairy tale I once heard about a miser and his old slippers. one day they cause him embarrassment and he tries to throw them away. he isn't able to. he throws them out the window, he buries them in the garden, he tries to burn them, he travels to a distant country and drops them in a pond; but each time fate returns them to him, and each time in a way that causes him mischief. they are too much a part of him. if the miser could not get rid of his old slippers . . . . but people persist in believing that they can put other people from them.

yes, they manage to sound very reasonable to themselves as they talk of deterring others from crime; but the act of putting a man in jail remains essentially the act of trying to wish that man out of existence. from the moment of arrest one begins to feel against one's flesh the operation of this crude attempt at sorcery.

I remember suddenly the first time I was ever arrested, in new york city , 1962. as I begin to write about time I have served in albany's jail, my earliest impression of the world of jail crowd upon me.

a bitter march morning. the united states has just announced resumption of nuclear testing, and in protest I have sat down with a group of pacifists in front of the a.e.c. building on hudson street. a small group of us sit, expecting arrests; a larger group circles there, immune from arrest, in a simple picket line. the arrests are swift. before we have time to shiver on the cold sidewalk, we are picked up and dumped into a paddy wagon waiting at the curb. we are dumped into the back, but we crowd that section, and one of the cops tell three or four of us to crawl over into the space up front in the wide cab. up there we can stare out the open door at our friends walking past , almost within our reach. and they could look in at us easily, exchange a few friendly glances. but not one of them does, though we sit there for quite a long while before we are driven away, and they circle past us, circle past us again. with our arrest, we have become invisible, even to them. my friends are being dignified, of course; but there is more to it than that. when people are arrested, a kind of primitive awe can take hold of everybody involved. they are caught up in spite of themselves in the ritual act of denying our existence.

I remember the woman guard sitting outside the detention cell in which some of us were held before being taken to the women's house of detention - remember her uneasiness every time she noted in us signs of life.

she spies dangling from my lapel the lettered white ribbon we have all worn that morning: no tests east or west. she snatches for it. "no banners in here!" a little later she says that she can make one telephone call for each of us. one young woman in the group writes out a message to her sweetheart. she makes it, carefully, very brief, but her feeling for him is clear in it - is flies this banner. the guard gives a little start as she read it, takes a pencil, swiftly edits. nothing of the young woman's self no remains in the message.

nobody has to print in a manual for guards that the prisoner must be wished out of existence for society's sake; this magic principle is grasped as if by instinct. prison routine varies from place to place, but the one blind effort shapes it everywhere. here is part of the routine of our "admission" that day:

a policewoman takes us into a small room in the building where we are arraigned. she searches our handbags for sharp objects; we take off most of our clothing for her, unfasten the rest as she peers at us. the guard outside the temporary detention cell examines our bags for a second time, removes a few more possessions. at the house of detention, a third guard empties the bags, keeps every remaining article. we have packed a few things with which to keep ourselves decent; comb, toothbrush, deodorant, a change of underclothes. she takes them all - even, in my case, some pieces of kleenex. and if I have to blow my nose? "find something else to blow it on," she tells me cheerfully. she explains then: I might be smuggling in dope this way. I am led into a large shower room and told to strip. another guard shakes out each piece of clothing. hand on her hips, she watches me closely as I take my shower, and I struggle hard not for self-possession. he stand reminds me a little of that of an animal trainer. now she asks me to hold my arms wide for a moment, turn my back and squat. I ask the reason. she, too, is searching for dope - or for concealed weapons. one of my companions has been led in by another woman and has stripped and is sitting on the toilet there. here face="" is anguished. she explains her predicament to the guard: she is menstruating, but her extra sanitary napkins have been taken from her. "just don't think about it," the woman tell her. I don't know how to help her; catch her eye and look away. I am given a very short hospital gown and led now into a small medical-examination room. another of my companions is just leaving the room and smiles at me wanly. I climb up on the table. I assume that the examination performed is to check for venereal disease. the woman in the white smock grins at me and then at he assistant, who grins back. no, this too is a search for concealed dope or dangerous weapons.

I hear myself laugh weakly. can they frisk us any further now? as a matter of fact, if their search is really for dope, they have neglected to look in my ears, or up my nose, or between my toes. they wouldn't be able to admit it to themselves, but their search, of course, is for something else and is efficient: their search is for our pride. and I think with a sinking heart: again and again, it must be, the find it and take it.

sometimes, all of a sudden, one of them will give it back. people are everywhere, happily, unpredictable, I am told to dress again before going to my cell, but I'm not allowed to wear my tights (because I might hang myself with them?) or my fleece-lined english snowboots (these are labeled "masculine attire," forbidden). a young negro guard tells me to find some shoes for myself in an open locker she points out. I stare at the heap of old shoes and tell her wearily, "it's hopeless. most of these have heels and I can't wear heels. also, my feet are very big."

she looks at me and smiles. she says, "if you thought anything was hopeless, you wouldn't have been sitting on that sidewalk this morning!"

I smile at here, astonished, and feel my spirits return. I tell her, "thank you. you're right. I'll find a pair."

before I can, she kneels, herself, and fishes out some floppy slippers that will do.

but more often the guards are caught up altogether in the crude rite of exorcism. I remember the ride to jail in macon, georgia, this past november. we are peace and freedom walkers this time. a number of us who will go to jail again in albany have been arrested for the crime of handing out leaflets.

the guard who drives the paddy wagon begins to chatter like an excited boy to the second guard as soon as we are locked in, seated in back on the lengthwise metal benches against the sides of the cab. he suddenly lurches the car forward, then, with a gnashing of gears, backward, then forward again, swerving the wheel. knocked against the metal walls, we link arms quickly; brace our feet, not t be tumbled to the floor. later we'll me prisoners who are black and blue from such falls. "something seems to be the matte with the gear shift!" he shouts, delighting in the pretense. there are railroad tracks to be crossed; he manages some good jolts here by zigzagging, then takes the car on two wheels round a curve. "yes, something seems to be the matter with this car!" as the drive ends, and he jerks us again in the prison yard, forward, backward, forward, backward, forward, we put out our hands instinctively to touch one another: you are still there. but the exulting excitement in the driver's voice betrays his opposite conviction: we cannot be people any more. he has shaken that out of us.

now it is albany, georgia. this is the city where the police chief, laurie pritchett, likes to boast that he has defeated martin luther king nonviolently. when we are arrested for walking peacefully down the sidewalk with our signs, and in protest we sit down, conspicuous respect is shown for our persons: we are carried to the paddy wagon on stretchers. but the familiar instinct persists, for all this show. ralph has been dumped into the wagon gently enough, and I have, and kit and tony and michele. they are bringing john-I-thin. one cop looks at another. suddenly they tip the stretcher up, the wrong way round, standing john-I-thin on his head.

magic: shake it out of them - the fact that they are people. or tip it out of them. or frisk them of it. and put them away. has the relation with them been a difficult one? now they don't exist.

our cage in albany is seven by seven by seven. three bolted steel walls, a steel ceiling, a cement floor. for bunks, four metal shelves slung by chains - two on one wall, double-decker, two on the wall opposite. the filthy mattresses. no sheets, no blankets, but, very recently, muslin mattress covers have been added. the chief expects publicity, perhaps. against the third wall, a tiny washbasin. cold water. next to it, a toilet without a lid.

the mattress of the lower bunk rests against the toilet. the upper bunk is so close above the lower that one can only sit up on the lower bunk with a curved spine. the floor space allows one to pace one short step - if there aren't too many inhabitants. we are six at the moment, but we'll be more. other cells are more crowded. it is not by stretching out that the prisoner here will recover himself.

the fourth wall is made of bars and a thick barred door, centered in it. in the corridor outside, guards and plainclothesmen come and go, day or night. if one is sleeping, a sudden knock at the bars: "hey!" or a little tug at the hair of the sleeper's head: "what's this one?" no corner of privacy in which to gather oneself together again.

the dirty windows in the corridor look out upon an alley and a brick wall. (they are very dirty. a prisoner long ago has flung a plate of spaghetti against one of them. shriveled tatters of it still hang there. on the window next to it a shrunken condom hangs.) a little weak sunlight filters through to us at certain hours, but there is no real day.

and no real night. our only other lighting is a naked bulb hanging in the corridor out of reach, and this burns round the clock.

not enough space. no real time.

from the cage behind us, around the corridor, a man calls to his wife in the cage next to us: "are you still there?" she grunts for an answer. he calls to her: "I'm still here!"

laboriously scratched in the metallic gray with which our walls and ceiling have been painted are name after name. rufus was here - was "still here." the melton broters (sic) was here. bob wimberly. jackie turley. "super" normon. was here, was still here. hawk, to remind himself, has uttered his name seven times, has flown from wall to wall to ceiling to wall.

the cops read the names with irritation. it is cheating for the prisoners to assert in this way that they do exist. "we hardly get it painted fresh when it's covered over again." freedom! lulamae. the names appear where they oughtn't as cries might issue from under the earth.

we have scratched our names, too: quebec-washington-guantanamo walk for peace and freedom. edie, yvonne, kit, michele, erica, barbara. later, candy and mary will appear.

the man calls to his wife again. she doesn't answer. he calls again. she doesn't answer. he calls again.

"yeah."

"do you love me?"

very low, very tired, "no. you're no good."

I remember suddenly the first prison cell I ever entered - twenty-six years ago. I entered that day out of curiosity an abandoned new england small-town jail, attached to the old courthouse friends and I were turning into a summer theater. the few cells were like low caves, windowless; the walls were whitewashed rock. in one, I noticed on the uneven plaster of the ceiling, scrawled in candle smoke - or cigarette smoke - the declaration I am a jolly good fellow. I tried, that day, imagining myself the prisoner - tried and failed. but the words have recurred to me over the years. today I think of them again.

hard work, in here, to feel like a jolly good fellow; and so pride almost requires a man to feel he is the very opposite.

from one cell to another an old man calls to a pair of teen-age boys, just arrived. we have heard a detective talking with them; they're in for breaking into a store. "who are you?" the old man calls. his voice is slurred with drink.

"I know who I am!" one of the youths shouts.

"I'll show you who you ain't" the old man teases.

"you want me to come over there and whip your ass?" one of them asks.

"I bet you're tough," say the old man.

"you're goddam right."

"you think you're bad, don't you?"

"bad, bad!" asserts the boy.

a little later, "what are you in for?" the old man calls.

there is a pause.

"murder!" one of them suddenly shouts.

"what are your names?"

one of them starts to answer and the other cuts in: "the sizemores," he decides. (later we'll find that name scratched on the wall of their cell - dated months earlier.) "we're the sizemores. ed and my brother dan and my brother richard. he's not here. ed is. I mean I am. and dan. don't you know the sizemores? the sizemores, man - the meanest motherfuckers in town!" he elaborates upon the theme.

the old man is full of words, half incoherent. somebody yells at him, "shut up, pop, shut up!"

the two boys take it up: "shut up, pop!" he begins to beat against the bars.

"only baboons beat on the bars," one of them yells. "and queers. he's a queer, ain't he?"

and now they launch into an endless obscene tirade against him. pop returns the compliments. the voices rise in hysterical crescendo. "talk to my ass awhile; my head hurts."

both sides tire; there is a lull. I hear the two boys tossing on their mattresses. one of them groans to himself, "oh god, oh god."

then it begins again. "I'm the motherfucking superior of you!" the old man suddenly insists. "I'm here because I want to be!" he begins to beat again upon the bars.

they taunt him: "keep a-beatin;, keep a-beatin, beat on, beat on!" the voices swell again, in flood.

silence. they have tired again. I doze a little; wake. they are calling again. my companions are awake, too, and we stare at one another. the voices are quieter now and contain a different note.

the old man is asking, "did you mean those names you called me?"

"I did at the time," one of the boys replies.

a pause. "give me some reason not to and I'll withdraw them."

pop relapses. "you're a no-good sonofabitch."

silence

and then we hear the young man call out again in a voice suddenly as frail as a child's: "you want to be friends? heh - you want to be friends?"

"I'd rather be friends than enemies," the old man mumbles - then abruptly declares, "I'm friends with everybody."

another night: we hear the familiar scuffling, cursing, the slam of the metal door. a drunken officer from the nearby air base has been brought in. "don't put me in her with that goddam drunk!" he commands. "get me out of here! cop, come here! open this door! open this door!" a fellow prisoner makes a comment. the officer yells, "shut that goddam sonofabitch up or he's dead!" his voice shifts to a growl: "I'm going to kick the everloving shit out of you." he screams, "open the door!" then suddenly, "leave it locked, you sonofabitches! shut up, you're dead!" his voice mounts in hysteria.

somebody calls, "I know you're tough-assed, but take it easy."

the officer breaks into quavering song, to the tune of "bye bye blackbird":

"you can kiss my ass, ya ya!
"You can kiss my ass, la la!"

Somebody calls to him, "how long have you been in service?"

"Thirteen everloving goddam years."

"What are you in - I mean, besides jail? The goddam air force?"

"The Peace Corps," he growls. "Shut up, you're dead!" He resumes, "Open the door, open the door!" then very very quietly, "Open the door!" Then in a yell.

And then suddenly, almost eerily - we stare at one another again - there issues out of the midst of all this clamor that other voice we have heard, frail, childlike: "Heh friend, he friend," the officer calls. "You think they'll let us out of here tomorrow?"

It is another night - scuffling of feet again, the clanging to of the steel door. Curses. Groans. More curses. A fellow prisoner calls out, "You're a bad-ass, aren't you?" "yes, I'm a bad-ass," the new man confirms loudly. The familiar exchange of obscenities begins. The voices mount in the familiar rhythm. but in the very midst of it - we have learned now to expect it - the voice alters; he calls: "Say - we're friend now, okay?"

We hear the heavy steel doors of the cages clang open, we hear them clang to, as the cops lock the prisoners in or let me out. These arrivals and departures mark the time for us now - a time which stretches, contracts, no longer tidily divided as it was outside jail. I am always surprised, when I glance at my watch, to learn the hour it is. The rhythm of night, day has been broken, as the light burns round the clock, and round the clock, too, the cops come and go, the prisoners yell at them and at one another; so that we sleep, when we do, simply in those stretches, whatever the clock says, when the yelling subsides enough to allow it. Mealtimes no longer subdivide a day; we have broken this rhythm ourselves, for my companions are fasting and I take only a part of one of the two meals the jail provides - a meal that is brought not at the beginning or the middle or the end of the day but at four in the afternoon. WE count the separate days as they pass, but as we haven't yet been tried and sentenced, we cannot yet count: one day less to serve. Time has its own peculiar quality in here, and, marked as it is by these clamorous arrivals and departures, it takes on a quality more peculiar still as we begin to hear prisoners who had been released being brought back into the cells again. Time, it seems, runs nowhere. We are in Hell.

I remember my first experience of this, in Birmingham's city jail, May 1963. This was my first imprisonment of any duration - six days; I had been in jail in New York less than twenty-four hours. My crime in Birmingham was walking half a block, a sign around my neck: "All Men Are Brothers." I had taken part in one of the Negro demonstrations. (The sentence was six months, but the case was appealed, and after six days we were all bailed out.) I was separated, of course, from my companions and put on the top floor of the jail; Negro prisoners were held on a floor below.

A large airy room, in this case. Still a cage in fact, but room to pace. (My friends below have less room - very much less of everything.) And we are even let out of the room at certain times - herded downstairs at mealtimes (three times a day here), very occasionally called down to the visiting room. The matron comes to the door and yells for one of us or all. And sometimes she yells a very particular phrase, calls the name of the prisoner and then add, "All the way!" This means that the prisoner is being released. Festive phrase! The prisoner hurries to gather up her few belongings; she straightens out her skirt, pats quickly at her hair, grinning, shouts a quick goodbye. I remember Ruth saying goodbye, I remember Flo. I remember . . . It is the middle of the next night. There is a sudden racket on the stairs, the heavy door is swung open, and I sit up on my top bunk to see who will come in. I have been asleep, and for the first moment I felt that I was having a senseless dream. She is wearing a different dress now, but that is Ruth who stands there. Her dress is soiled, she is barefoot, one of her eyes is swollen and she is cursing, her face contorted. "You know what that bitch of a matron did? She slapped me. She slapped me!"

It is two nights later. Racket on the stairs again. The door swings open, and Flo staggers in again. She gives me a funny little sideways smile as she passes - sly and despairing. She wanders distracted for a few minutes in the long aisle between the double-decker bunks, then sinks down on the bunk below me. I fall asleep again, then wake to the sound of splashing water. Flo is squatting in the aisle, her skirts lifted. She suddenly passes out and falls forward, sprawled in the puddle she has made. A section of thin glass is set onto the floor at that spot, and the feeble greenish light that glows through it from below outlines her there, helpless, her red curls unraveled, her dress twisted, her filled petticoat showing.

Now in the Albany city jail we hear derisive shouts, welcoming back a man who has been released three days before. He begins at once to curse at someone: "If your brains were made of cotton, there wouldn't be enough to make Kotex for a red-eyed beetle!"

The cop who has brought him in, on his way out, strolls back past our cell, hitching his pants. The look on his face asserts: A job well cone; our city is safer now. he slaps his hand against his pistol holster, as if to reassure himself: Yes, there is power in me; I am a member of the force.

No wonder you touch yourself for reassurance.

I think of the heavy doors shutting, the heavy doors opening. First the rite of casting them out of existence. It is time they serve, no eternity, so then the rite of returning them to society. "All the way! All the way!" A cry in a dream. Punishment can almost convince a man that he doesn't exist; then the rite of returning them to society. "All the way! All the way!" A cry in a dream. Punishment can almost convince a man the he doesn't exist; it cannot make him feel, Now I am one of you. If society was embarrassed by them before, will it be less embarrassed by them now?