The Towel

Day 1 

I pride myself on living in a clean space, and that’s easier to accomplish when I’m living by myself. It gives me peace of mind. In such a small space, like a cell, managing yourself is no problem. My routine is: I wake up, pray, eat light, work out, wash up, hand wash my laundry, hang my clothes up to dry, eat lunch, read and take notes until evening, eat dinner, and then watch a little TV at night. Five to six days a week this is my regimen. I should have known something was wrong when I moved into Jaleel’s cell. The cell was filthy and it had an eeriness to it, like a bad spirit was lurking in it. It looked like he hadn’t swept the floor for a couple weeks. The floor has to be cleaned every day, after all, we eat and pray here. Cleanliness is close to Godliness. Jaleel liked to have the cell dark, which was annoying because I study during the day. We almost had an altercation when he went to yard and I forgot to put up the cardboard he used to block the narrow window in the middle of the cell’s concrete wall. It was the only view outside. Other than that, the only thing we could see was the dayroom of the cell block. 

The cell is literally a concrete box. This was a newer 180 layout, which is bigger than most old school prison cells. Level-Four 180 is the highest security level there is in the State of California. The cell door was metal with a little glass window, eye level, the size of a person’s face. When the door opened it would slide into the wall of the cell, until the correctional officer hit a button for it to slide back out to close. There were two long, narrow windows, one on each side of the door. Immediately when you walked in, either on the right or left side depending on what cell you were in, there was a stainless steel toilet connected to a stainless steel sink. Opposite the door, there was a metal desk with a stool connected to it and a narrow window to look out of above it. The window was a 3’x 6″ slit of thick, almost unbreakable glass. If someone miraculously succeeded in breaking the glass, they definitely were not going to get through the slit. They would be fortunate to get their arm through it. There were two bunks on one side of the wall, an upper and a lower. On the other side of the bunks were metal cubbies to put our property in, which consists of clothes, toiletries, food, and appliances.  We put books on the top. What couldn’t fit in the cubbies went under the bottom of the lower bunk. We placed our TVs on top of the metal cubbies or, if you were on the top bunk like me, you could have one tied to the light that was on the ceiling. The light on the ceiling was a big metal rectangle with long fluorescent lights enclosed in thick glass. If you can tie a torn sheet line around it, you could tie your TV to it. Other than the unwelcoming colorless and cold scenery of the cell’s interior, there were only two places to look out of the cell. We could see the cellblock through the windows in the door and on either side of it, or we could see outside through the little slit in the wall, and Jaleel liked to keep that one boarded up. 

I couldn’t stand being locked in this concrete box without seeing nature. I’ve never been a nature person but trapped in these cells for two weeks at a time during lockdowns, and every other day for normal program, I was starting to appreciate more and more the green of grass and trees, the flowers and birds, the smells, the blue sky, the snow, the rain, anything that had to do with outside. With no way to look out there, you’re boxed in an echoing concrete cell with your harassing (but sometimes pleasant) thoughts that seem to bounce off the walls nonstop. If you do not want to be trapped in there with your own thoughts until the door opens up for yard or day room, or the toilet flushes to break the train of thought, learn to meditate. Of course, meditation is easier when you are alone or in a positive living space. If not, it’s relentless, chaotic thoughts, and trapped in a cell with another person you don’t get along with, everything begins to build up. 

Our first disagreement came when I removed Jaleel’s window blocks. He came in from yard huffing and puffing. “The way I was raised, when I move something, I put it back where it needs to be,” he said. 

“What’s up,” I said, “You trippin off a little bit of sunlight?” I had been waiting to confront him for some time about this. That’s when he told me he had suffered from blunt force trauma so the light gave him headaches. So I gave him that courtesy, with the understanding that I need some light from time to time, because I need to read and I don’t like feeling trapped in the cell. If not bipolar, he was at least very high strung, and it was hard to reach an understanding with him most times. 

This wasn’t the first time that I had a bipolar celly. It was the third time in a row. The first one told me, right after moving in, that he fights all of his cellies. We know what happened with that one. The next one could never keep a celly for more than a month because of his erratic behavior and potential for violence. Now, it was me and Jaleel. After our first close call with the cardboard window shade, I didn’t know how to address the used floor towel laying on the ground under the toilet. I was getting more and more annoyed by the minute. I hoped that he would pick it up, but I figured that I should pick my battles because I knew he lacked communication skills. Evening turned to night and, as I laid down to go to sleep, I could not take my mind off of that towel. 

Day 2 

I woke up in a bad mood because the towel was still sitting right there, looking at me. It would have been easier if we could have communicated like human beings, but Jaleel was not the conversing type. When you can’t communicate with someone in a confined space, your own thoughts fill in the gaps. It’s like your thoughts are swarms of buzzing flies, taunting you, buzzing at you, doing everything but comforting you. A simple misunderstanding left unclarified becomes blatant disrespect. When this happens, you begin to think the person is doing what they are doing on purpose. It’s like they are intentionally trying to annoy you because they don’t like you. If they did, why couldn’t you and this person communicate like adults? Outside of the cell Jaleel and I got along fine, but when I moved in the cell with him it was apparent that he wasn’t all the way there. When I moved in with him and saw the state of his dirty cell, this was a clear red flag. Another was that it was blacked out all the time. In my experience, people that are depressed stay in darkness, don’t clean, and have no will to get up do anything. Depression is associated with darkness while productivity and happiness are associated with light. You can tell a lot about a person’s mental state by the state of their cell. A cluttered living space, a cluttered mind; a neat living space, a sound mind; a dark and dirty cell, depression. 

What made things worse was he made wine every other day and sold dope. This is definitely something that he was not supposed to do, considering what we were up under. There were a couple of times when he didn’t go to sleep at all, as if he was getting high on his own supply. On one of those nights, I let him do some tattoos on me. He must have spent an hour tattooing this boom box with music notes on my elbow. My elbow was visibly swollen for days, and it scarred. One day I brought up the topic of mental illness, he got upset (which by now was typical behavior). He told me I would never know what was on his mind. 

I started to care less about keeping the peace. We had silence, always silence, but it wasn’t peace. The towel had been sitting under the toilet for 24 hours now and it was bothering me. I did my normal routine: I woke up, prayed, worked out, washed up, and studied. As the day went on, it got harder and harder to focus. I could not stop thinking about him and this towel. I was beginning to see red. I started thinking that I was going to have to fight him over a stupid towel, because I was not going to pick up a used towel off of the floor, a towel that another man had used to bird-bath, and wash it for him. Next thing you knew I would be washing his boxers and sleeping under the bunk. By night time I was fuming. This could be the straw that broke the camel’s back. I started sizing him up. I was going to have to take a stand and address this towel issue very soon. I didn’t know how I could tolerate it any longer.  I could give it until the morning, I thought. This night was rougher than the last. 

Day 3 

Sure enough, the towel was still there when I woke up. I don’t think that Jaleel and I had spoken for a week. This wasn’t normal for most cellies, but it was for us. It’s strange living with another man, but I had been doing it for so long I adapted. Don’t get me wrong: it can be dangerous, going into a cell with a person you hardly know. You can try to vet them, but that’s still not a guarantee that you won’t get into a cell with a crazy person. CDCR (California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation) puts people in dangerous situations. They are all about the money. When they hear about the possibility of more human beings with lengthy prison sentences, they see dollar signs. They know that two men should not be living together in these circumstances. The CDCR would argue that they want to see if we still have antisocial behavior and can get along with another person, but most anyone would lose it having to live with someone they barely know and having to put up with their crap. Someone who smacks while eating, doesn’t flush the toilet, snores loudly. Some married couples even stop sleeping in the same room because one of them snores too loudly, and they love each other. However, the prison packs grown men in cells together, not to help us with our antisocial behavior, but so that they can get as many people in the prison as possible. The United States’s number one commodity is prisoners. Welcome to mass incarceration. 

I was taught that, if the correctional officers tell you to go into a cell and the person who occupies the cell isn’t there, you go and find him, and you don’t go into that cell until you speak to the guy. The staff doesn’t care what happens, and the last thing you need is for the person whose cell you are in to show up and accuse you of touching his property. This can go badly. He might falsely accuse you because he doesn’t want a celly and sees you as an easy target.  If he punches you, the staff gives him single cell status. Now, he doesn’t have to worry about getting a celly anymore. This is assuming he is willing to fight and doesn’t play with knives. That’s only one of many scenarios, but the point is one has to be extremely cautious in these environments. If you get a cool celly, it’s not so bad. You get someone to talk to and build something with. You can push each other to study more, workout harder, you can joke, and you can bounce ideas off of each other. Good cellies are hard to find in prison. For one reason or another, this is the biggest insane asylum in the United States. 

I tried to find another cell before things came to a head, but I couldn’t. People said the same thing they’d said about my previous living situations: “I’m surprised you lasted this long.” 

I had had enough. I put my state-issued boots on and tied them real tight. This is protocol when an issue needs to be addressed, when things could go wrong. Sometimes nothing happens, but you have to be ready; we’re talking about dangerous volatile people here. Jaleel was in for manslaughter, but never mind that. That towel laying on that dirty floor for days was oppressive. I couldn’t think about anything else, and it was affecting my peace. It was midday. I sat on the toilet with my boots laced. It’s better to sit, not stand. Standing could lead to an escalation. 

“Akhi, we got to talk,” I said. “That towel has been sitting under the toilet for three days now, and I’m not cleaning up after no grown man, folks.” 

Jaleel looked at me, confused. There was a pause.  “Man, that is your towel, you crazy man. After you worked out the other day, you bird-bathed and never picked it up. I was wondering when you were going to say something.” 

I felt relieved. I told Jaleel “Oh, good looking out, my bad akhi, we don’t talk much in here so I didn’t know how to address the issue. I was hoping you were going to just pick it up and wash it, but now I know why you didn’t.” We both laughed, a good laugh, and then went back to our silence.