by Diane Mierzwik.
Now Circe had warned Ulysses about the Sirens; and so he prepared for this danger…”
- – The Wandering of Ulysses, Gladys Davidson
I was substitute teaching for Peckham in a classroom at the corner of a maze of a building with long, nondescript hallways and doors like every parole building I’d ever been to. The maze is on purpose, a safety and security precaution with clients brought in and circled around until they are disoriented, so that if they decide to run, they won’t know how to exit the building, how to flee toward freedom.
The classroom door beside the supply closet, then the network closet, then the janitor’s closet opened onto a long hallway, isolated. Unless an agent wanted to lock me in with the students while they made an arrest in the hall, they never peered into the classroom.
A new student, Mark Doty, appeared at 10:15 for his intake paperwork. I asked how long he planned to stay.
“My agent told me I had to be here all day,” he said while rubbing the corner of his left eye with a finger with yellowed, dirty fingernails.
I directed him to sit at a nearby table, facing the teacher’s desk. I gathered the intake paperwork, taking one paper from each of the horizontal files and grabbing the Operations Manual, turning to Chapter 6, “Enrolling a Student.” I worried that as Peckham’s boss, I would mess up the paperwork and reveal myself to be a fraud, a boss who wasn’t competent enough to do his job.
Mark and I went through the paperwork laboriously, with him filling out a blank while I checked for directions on how to complete the next blank. Once I was satisfied, I told Mark to sit tight, created a file with his name and California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation number on it, placed the file in the “new student” stack and gathered the intake assessment paperwork.
Without me sitting next to him, Mark gazed around the room, sizing up the other students, asking if he could get some coffee, resisting the urge to scrape the pencil along the side of the table to peel off the yellow plastic coating, asking when was the next break. I pointed to the classroom schedule on the wall below the light switch and handed him the assessment.
I explained that first he had to complete 25 questions in reading, then 25 questions in math. The questions grew more difficult and it was okay to guess, but not to give up. I didn’t mention that once he was done with the assessment, he would then be placed in another two tests each with at least 50 questions each. Then he would be placed in the appropriate curriculum. It was going to be a long day.
Usually students complete the paperwork and initial assessment then come back for the second round of assessments, but Mark’s agent had told him to be there all day.
I watched as Mark worked through the first few questions. He kept watching me by turning his head and pretending to be looking at the clock. I had figured out by now that Mark was on psyche meds, meds that might have been working, but were not hiding the fact that he needed them. I circled the classroom, checking on the other students.
There were eight other students in the class: Pops, an elderly man, working his Hooked on Phonics workbook; Melody, sitting next to the coffee machine with her plastic bags full of her dirty clothes shoved under her desk and policing the coffee station; Silvano sitting with his back to all of us, staring at the same computer screen, rocking back and forth in his seat. The other students were not regular attendees. Because I was the substitute, I didn’t know them.
I returned to my seat and worked on a report due in two days.
As lunch break approached, many students packed up for the day. Mark asked if he had to come back.
“Your agent told you what?” I asked.
“To be here all day,” he answered.
I shrugged my shoulders and pointed to the schedule. Lunch ended at 12:30.
After lunch, there was only Mark, Silvano and one other student in class. Mark mostly stared at me. Mostly I reminded him to complete his test. I didn’t push too hard, understanding that focusing for that long was hard. Then he began humming, acting intoxicated. I shook my head and scowled at him like the schoolmarm I was pretending to be, but I understood that if he was on psyche medication, it might be wearing off. Mark would sit still, staring at his test for a few minutes then start again. Finally he put his hands under his grey Poisonwood Concert t-shirt, rubbing himself, and stared at me as if under a spell. I ignored him, convinced he was not really looking at me. Occasionally I reminded him that he needed to be finishing his test. Mostly I counted the minutes until class let out at two pm.
After being engrossed in writing my report for several long minutes while Mark was being quiet, I glanced up at him because he had begun humming again. He had slid his chair so that he was at the end of the table, his feet extending in my direction, his body lounging in his chair and his pants hanging below his hips, masturbating.
Looking away, I stared at the floor as I made my way to the doorway of the classroom. I waited for a parole agent to come by so I could get some help. I stared down the long hall with my back to the class and waited. I couldn’t leave the class unattended. I moved my body sideways so I could see that all the students were still in their seats in my peripheral vision then stared at the hallway ceiling, painted the same sea foam green as the walls. Finally, Agent Tokusma wandered toward me, sliding his feet along the tile floor as if dragging his feet through sand, his tropical print shirt waving behind him. I interrupted his reverie and asked him to walk through the class because a student was masturbating. I continued to stare into the hall.
I knew enough time had elapsed that Mark was no longer masturbating, but I wanted him to know I had reinforcements. Agent Tokusma came out.
“Nothing’s going on,” he told me with a pitiless tone I understood to mean “why are you teaching in this class, a woman.” He strode away, shirt floating around his waist, pant legs floating across his feet.
I returned to the class and Mark had gathered all his papers. He was handing them to me and signing out for the day. There was 20 minutes left of class. I was torn between keeping him there so his agent wouldn’t be mad if Mark “ran” and never showed up again and letting him go.
I took the outstretched papers and watched him exit the class.
At the end of the day I found Agent Tokusma and asked if I needed to file a report with Mark’s agent, who was not in the office for the day.
He shrugged his shoulders. “These guys are criminals. What did you expect?”
I stared at him, trying to decipher if his response meant I was to report the incident to his agent or not. Another agent, a female agent, spoke up.
“Yes, report it. That’s bullshit.”
Agent Tokusma was the OD – Officer of the Day –and should have helped me with the incident report. I knew I was in murky waters. If I gave the impression that I was being picky about what type of students were being referred to the classroom, our referrals could dry up and that would hurt our program statistics. If I didn’t report it and the agent was uncompromising, I would look like an “inmate-lover” and lose credibility.
I wrote up an incident report and left it in a locked desk drawer with a note for Peckham about what had happened.
On my drive home I berated myself. When Mark had been rubbing himself under his t-shirt and staring at me, I should have asked him to turn at his table and face the other way. When I asked for Agent Tokusma to check the class, I shouldn’t have told him why. I should haves ran through my mind for hours.
The next day Peckham called.
“Hey, was everything in order?” I asked as a way to finding out if I had messed up on the paperwork without telling him I was worried about it.
“Diane, I found your report,” Peckham’s voice trailed off.
“Oh, I wasn’t sure what to do with it. Agent Tokumsa didn’t seem too interested in it. I don’t want to cause trouble for you,” I said as nonchalantly as possible, not wanting to break the spell of our boss-employee relationship.
Later that day, Agent Camejo called and asked if I would be willing to testify against Mark at his parole board hearing. “I’m trying to bring new charges against him so he’ll surrender his parole status.” He offered to drive me to Chino Prison and I accepted, figuring he would fill me in on what to say.
Instead on the day of the hearing several weeks later, we got in his car and he told me all about his divorce, how his wife had abused his good will, had mocked his love for her, and had locked him out of his house, the house he had paid for. He took a phone call. After saying hello and laughing nervously, he said, “She’s here. We’re on our way.” While I was sure he was not going to look at me, I examined his belt, cinched tightly around his waist, holding his tight shirt in place. After a few more cryptic answers, Agent Camejo got off the phone and drove the rest of the way. We made small talk, both staring in front of us. Once we got to Chino Prison and through security, I was asked to have a seat and was ignored until it was my time to go into the hearing.
I watched the officers and prison psychologist and lawyers banter and discuss, in vague terms, their personal lives. I watched as everyone grew eerily quiet, pretending they hadn’t just halted all conversations, every time an inmate was escorted through the hall and into the room where the parole board hearings were taking place. Then I saw Mark escorted in. I pretended not to be watching him, staring at the ground so I could see his feet in the waves of blurry peripheral vision. Agent Camejo and a sheriff escorted him into the room. I sat and waited.
Agent Camejo summoned me into the room and waved me to a seat. Once I was settled, a man in a suit with his tie loosened and his top shirt button undone asked me to explain my position and how I had interacted with Mark. While I talked, he shifted in his seat, lounging back in his chair and rubbing his shoulder blade. He asked me to explain what happened.
“While Mark was in my classroom, after several hours, I looked up and he was masturbating.”
“Did you see his penis?” he asked looking me directly in the eyes.
I kept my eyes on the man asking the questions, but I knew both Mark and Agent Camejo were staring at the table in front of them. “Yes,” I answered. “His pants were pulled down and his penis was sticking out of the top of his pants.”
He nodded, broke eye contact, made a few notes then excused me.
I returned to the chair outside the room and waited.
When we got back in the car, Agent Camejo said, “Thanks. He’ll be getting two years for that.”
I stared straight ahead and nodded.
Agent Camejo continued. “He pulled the same stuff on a female deputy just a few weeks ago.”
It felt like he offered this as some sort of proof that I had not made up the entire thing, created an illusion.
“Well, it least it was me and not some unsuspecting lady or kid,” I said.
“Yeah.” Agent Camejo drove. “Sorry, I should have prepped you.”
I looked over at him but he focused on driving.
“I didn’t know,” he said, then glanced my way. “I was told…”
“It’s my job,” I said.
Thoughts about his not “prepping” me as a way to protect me from reliving the scene or to protect me because I might not be able to handle it or thinking that I actually liked that a kind of attention swirled in my head. What had been said about me? What had he thought about me?
Mostly I worried that he was going to suggest we stop for something to eat and I was going to make a lame excuse about too much work and needing to get back to my office.
And their sweet skill in wonted melody;
Which every after they abused to ill,
T allure weake traveillers, whom gotten they did kill.
- – The Faerie Queen , Edmund Spenser