Prison Was the Best Year of My Life: Part 2

      I had a routine.  Every morning I woke at 5:30 AM.  Because inmates have so few belongings in prison, morning ablutions take very little time.  Most of the hundred inmates in my unit were sleeping, so I might have the entire row of sinks and showers and toilets to myself.  The bathroom smelled bad and the fixtures in the barracks-style bathroom were all malfunctioning:  clogged toilets, dripping faucets, cold showers, no showers.  Black mold everywhere, except when an outside inspection was due.  Then, inmates were recruited to paint over the mold.  After the inspection, the mold returned quickly.  It was not a wholesome place to breathe.

     I went to breakfast at "Main Line," a giant warehouse-type building on the grounds, open at 6 AM for an hour.   I brought teabags purchased through the commissary.  Breakfast was the only meal where milk was available--nonfat, almost transparent, in baggies, two per inmate. No scissors permitted--you opened them with your teeth.  I drank tea with skim milk, went to my job (it was a work camp), then began my 10-miles-a-day walking routine.  Three times around the track was a mile.  I brought a book and studied Spanish while walking.  I made a "hat" out of a baseball cap and pieces of cardboard retrieved from the trash, covered with reflective candy wrappers, to protect against the blistering sun.  I wore heavy green men's pants and a long-sleeved button-down men's shirt--prison-issued garb.  It might be 100 degrees out, but I kept to the routine.  It kept me sane and I was grateful to be in a prison where we were allowed outside for limited periods each day.  Since COVID, inmates are not permitted outside.  This must be causing a great deal of additional suffering.

     Inmates often joined me for a few laps, sometimes to be friendly, sometimes to ask questions about their health or their legal problems, and sometimes to trade Spanish-practice for English-practice.  A third of the inmates were native Spanish speakers, luckily for me.

     If any aspect of my routine was broken, lots of inmates came looking for me.  "Are you all right?  I didn't see you on the track!"  "Where were you at breakfast?"  "Is something wrong?"  Inmates care about one another.  There is solidarity of a sort I had never known before.  It made me feel loved and cared for.  We were equals, we had to look out for each other, and we did.  Of course, there were risks and hostility and people you might not trust--but not many.  I steered clear of them, as best I could. 

     When had so many people ever seen me, as me, rather than as a commodity or a person playing a fixed role?  When had so many people cared about me?  When had I ever had so many friends?

     How could this not have been the best year of my life?