Below is an excerpt from Betts' forthcoming memoir, 'A Question of Freedom', posted at The Atlantic:
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One morning my cell-mate Roger was walking to the cafeteria wearing his do-rag, the leg of a pair of long johns tied with a knot at the top. When he walked into the cafeteria a Corrections Officer called out, “Let me have that contraband.” Everyone around knew it was some bullshit, but Roger tossed his rag to the CO. The white man caught the hat, then called in other COs and said Roger threw the hat at him. Suddenly, tossing a hat had become an assault charge, a 105 in their rulebook, and they gave Roger ninety days in segregation.
The segregation cell was in the building parallel to my cell. And lucky for Roger, he’d been put in a cell roughly across from mine. Anybody locked up for more than a few months on the Farm knew how to fish. This is when you made a line from the sheets you slept on and added some sort of hook. The hook could be a shampoo bottle full of water, a boot or a fingernail clipper. It depended on where you were sending your line. If it was going inside the building it would be a fingernail clipper or a bar of soap, but if it was going to another building it would be something heavier. Fishing was how we got stuff to each other when we were locked in the cell. At night, you could see lines drifting from the top tiers to cells on the bottom and then you’d see a laundry bag containing Black and Milds, soups or whatever the fisherman was angling for. Sometimes the bag just held a note.
With Roger across from me, we could fish. I’d attach a boot to my line and toss it halfway into the space that separated our two buildings and he’d snag it with his line. Once the lines were connected you could see a tightrope linking our two cells and you could see the pillowcase going back and forth as I sent him food and whatever else he needed. Prisoners weren’t allowed to have much in the hole, so fishing was the way we supplemented and the way the segregated units and the population communicated. We could yell to each other, but that got old when you competed with seven other conversations. But our fishing didn’t last long. One afternoon Born and I were coming from church with Jackson when the Italian guard told me to go to my cell. Now. In the time it took me to turn around, she was writing a charge.
It shouldn’t have mattered, one charge that I would have likely beaten, but I was young and stuck on principles. I was set on going to the prison’s field event. If you stayed away from trouble for a year, your family could come and walk around the prison rec yard with you for a few hours. I was especially looking forward to it because I’d heard you could have sex with someone if you were sneaky, so I was laying my plans out. While I had no one who would come up to a prison to have sex with me, I was mad that the CO was writing a charge for something so petty and ruining my chances. I tried to talk her out of the charge but couldn’t. Next thing I know she was trying to slam my door in my face, but I wouldn’t let her close me in the cell. The disobeying a direct order charge became an assault charge when she said I hit her with the door. Off I went to the hole with a ninety- day sentence.
Read the rest of the excerpt here.
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