Howdy Do?-Personal Narrative

I sat in a small, dirty and crowded holding cell in Fort Bend County jail. Sitting here waiting to get processed and see the nurse, Mane! These men in this holding cell were all fucking trifling. There were cells for suicidal inmates, crazy inmates, murderers and those going through drug withdrawal. The smell of musty underarms, alcohol and feet made it unbearable to breath. It was time for me to live with the consequences of the choices I had made. The newest consequence was the foreboding environment of a small, overcrowded county jail.

"Count!" The prison guard yelled on a brisk Saturday in Maidens, Virginia. I watched as the prisoners lined the walls of the James River Correctional Facility. While the majority of my friends spent their Saturdays enjoying pizza and ice cream with their family, my Saturdays consisted of being in a prison visitation room. My father was serving a thirty year sentence for distributing crack cocaine. As the years went on, I began to look forward to seeing the barbed wire and prison guards. I knew that in the midst of the penitentiary environment, I would at least be able to see a father figure for a few hours.

Conover also covers all of this, describing the overwhelming confusion of a new officer’s first days in a crowded housing unit, illustrating the newjack’s reliance on the helpfulness of prisoners, portraying the obvious unfriendliness and unconcern of higher-ranking coworkers, and exhibiting the unavoidability of making critical and even life-threatening blunders in the tumultuous world of the prison. In doing that, Conover assists readers in getting beyond the stereotype of the ruthless guard to see correctional

Lockdown starts out as the quintessential prison story: the prison is in lockdown, the prisoners are punished. There is even a hostage situation, prisoner suicides, and angry, mean guards who put the prisoners down. As a reader, my first thought was of the TV show Prison Break. My next was of the movie The Shawshank Redemption. From the first line about guards “wearing armored vests and riot helmets taking a head count” I categorized, assumed, and wholeheartedly stereotyped the essay. But then, suddenly, I stopped. As if someone had flicked a switch in my brain, a quick movement similar to that of someone snapping their fingers, my perception changed.

Dad: In the prison, we didn’t do anything in the prison. In prison we stayed in a ten-by-ten room that held about ten to fifteen people. Inside the room, there wasn’t any AC or light. Everybody was in the dark room basically naked due to the heat. The heat was so extreme that everybody was down to their underwear. Some people would faint due to the heat.

You are no longer in your neighborhood, inside your own house. Hundreds, if not thousands of total strangers now surround you. Upon entering prison the realization hits you; things are done differently. There are various types of people, and they do things differently on “the inside.” You start

Inside the county jail, the officers looked at me with disgust and distrust. Then proceeded to tell me that “the colored entrance is in the back”. So I exited the jail, my face burning in embarrassment. I don’t know what I had expected. Walking around the jail, I came to the colored entrance where I was greeted kindly by the elderly African-American man who let me inside, and lead me to where Rosa was being held. He let me inside her cell, and I took my place in the chair across from her at the small and dingy table.

It was nearly a 4:30 in the morning and Asher Aamil lay in his bunk, staring at the pockmarked prison ceiling, enjoying the soft patter of the early morning drizzle against the window. He very much loved these dark days, the created a gloomy, dark atmosphere, yet it was relaxing and they still got to go out into the yard. He lay there for nearly an hour, relaxing, thinking about the circumstances that landed him where he was today, the same routine he had for the most part of the last two years. At about a half hour until five he slips out of bed and gets ready for the day, and soon the guards come around as they all do at six sharp. He shuffled through the day and found himself in the cafeteria at noon. And that was where his schedule

He had just managed to stumble to his feet resting his back against the wall. The only light was in the room was from a small opening where the ceiling and wall met, covered with bars. Bahauddin had reached for his neck and a sense of anxiousness rushed through his body. There was no metal there, no keys, no nothing. He had peeked his head through the cell bars to examine the lock and everything around him. “Hello?” Bahauddin yelled, waiting for a response. Coughing had came from the cell next to him. “Hello,” he repeated, “who’s there?”

The inmate hears the deputy call out his name. A cell door opens and he is asked to step forward where he is shackled at the wrist chains in preparation of being taken to court. The holding cell that the inmates wait in before going to court offer no comfort, are hard and cold. One toilet for all and sometimes an entire agonizing day will go by before your name gets called.

Tucked at the end of a long dirt road, framed with cacti, sat the low profile block building. Surrounded by a wire fence, I later learned it to be the men’s facility. My new home, the women’s quarters, sat in the open paved lot. “Phoenix Prison Camp,” read the sign. Joe opened the chicken wire embedded glass door and led us into the administration building. Dragging their feet, my kids accompanied us inside. We had few words to say. No one acknowledged us. We waited, huddled together on a wooden bench, our legs and hands crossed. Levi rubbed his face. I chewed my nails. Framed photos of Barack Obama and Eric Holder hung on the wall. Guards strolled past, ignoring us.

I discovered that within the prison’s white walls and alarmed doors were children-a stark contrast to the stern prison guards and orange jumpsuit-clad prisoners of my imagination. These bright-eyed youth reunited every Sunday with their incarcerated parents; only one measly hour was allotted for the sharing of a week's worth of experiences. While sketching, I observed heartfelt embraces full of compassion alongside forced and terse greetings. I could not even imagine how emotionally taxing and complicated this whole ordeal could be on anyone, especially an impressionable

Walking into the correctional facility felt as if I was walking through a college campus tour. They had dorms, they had a gym, they had a library, they had a dining hall, they had special rooms for special people. I can assure you this is not the college I would want to go to. The students here, also known as inmates, looked demoralized. While we were there, the prison was in a state of overflow. They had to many inmates that they needed to pack them like sardines in the meeting area of the dorms with bunk beds. The living conditions seemed inhumane. The campus was chained in by barbed wire and any escape would put up major signs of danger. Walking through the courtyard I felt a feeling of being trapped, and I was not even the one in chains. I never realized how terrifying prison was until this experience. The effects of isolation were clearly visible through the inmates.

I look up towards the sky and see dark clouds rolling across the sky towards the west where the sounds of gunfire could be heard off in the distance. I look around the cramped bunkhouse and see the other prisoners. The bunkhouse is cold and smells of rotting flesh and human waste. The beds are made of cheap wood and thin cloth with some hay for a mattress. The guards walk in and start telling people to wake up. I slowly get out of my wooden bed out onto the muddy floor. My feet feel cold as they touch onto the earth below. My hands start to hurt from the cuts covering them when I try and get up. I see a man refusing to get out of his bunk near the entrance of the bunkhouse. The guards saw him refusing to follow their orders and dragged

I sighed deeply as I sat back on the bed. After the police arrested me and put me in here, I haven’t seen any form of humanity for the week that I’ve been in this jail cell. The meals are passed through a flap on the door and no one came to visit. It all started that morning….