Prison, Poetry, Grace
by Sharon
Charde
I had been looking
forward to this experience for such a long time. Years, really.
When I’d gone with the Touchstone girls (The
Writers at Touchstone) for our field trips I had been horrified,
fascinated, compelled — by the women in their maroon tee shirts
and blue jeans, the sterility and coldness of the buildings, the
sternness of the corrections officers. Walking through wide cinderblock
halls, noting the thick black wire benches screwed to the floor,
the lack of any human touches, I had felt my skin prickle with
anxiety despite the winter day and my warm turtleneck.
Outside, in the compound,
I had seen women shackled, heads down, being led here and there.
Inside, we viewed the 'seg’ units where inmates were sent for
infractions of the prison rules, to contemplate their sins in
solitude. The cells in the segregation units as well as those
in the detox units were pure stainless steel, toilet paper the
only soft thing inside them. In the detox unit, a few women, scrawny
junkies just off the street, caterwauled and rocked back and forth,
their tinny cries bouncing off the steel and cement. The girls
and I peered into those cells, fascinated and horrified voyeurs.
For the girls, the experience was supposed to be scary, frightening
them enough to stay out of prison and get on a healthier path.
For me, it was a view into a world that was totally foreign. It
might as well have been a trip to Tibet, so different was it from
anything else I had known or seen.
The girls I worked
with were incarcerated, yes, but in a homelike setting with real
bedrooms, teddy bears and family photos, teenage messes on the
floor. Touchstone, a residential treatment facility for adjudicated
girls, was grim in its way, but nothing like the women’s prison.
And the girls could wear their own clothes, do their hair, eat
the cookies , birthday cakes and soda I frequently brought in.
But yesterday, I rethought
that experience, prompted by my third trip to Niantic. Perhaps
it hadn’t been so foreign after all — perhaps it was more familiar
in some way than I had realized. Dale Griffiths, a teacher at
the prison and a co-facilitator of a writing group led there by
Wally Lamb, had invited me to come to do a poetry workshop for
two groups of women after I had sent her a copy of the anthology
of the Touchstone girls’ poetry I had edited and we had corresponded
by email for several months. I drove down to her house in Old
Saybrook the day before, and we went out to dinner with her friend
and colleague Joe Lea, talking all the time — about poetry, about
the prison, about our work, Connecticut politics, books and relationships.
When we got into relationships, Joe began looking at his watch
— after all he did have to drive back to Manchester that night
and back to the prison the next morning — but I’m sure he could
tell Dale and I were into it for the next few hours. And
we were, brought together by our love for the work we do and the
commonalties of our lives in other areas.
Dale
was the first person I had met who worked with incarcerated women,
and it was thrilling to have a colleague at last. We agreed that
our own stories pulled us to these women. “There, but for the
grace of God, go I,” she wisely and astutely observed. I had a
restless night in her newly redecorated guest room — dreaming
that her house was full of people, crowding around me, talking,
laughing, arguing; however with relief I found a secret top floor,
a serene and open room with a blazing fire and a big flokati rug
— and finally I was able to sink into a deep sleep.
It was against this
intense backdrop that I arrived at Niantic the next morning, having
carefully followed Dale’s tan Corolla onto and off route 95. As
we drove up to the prison I could feel my indrawn breath again.
It looked just like what it was — a sprawling series of low gray
stone buildings — they had a menacing look. I wondered how they
appeared to the women who were arriving for the first time. The
guards cleared us for entry to park, and then searched my bag
and gave me a bright green visitor’s tag after I signed in. Being
with Dale made it easier, I guess. The tall blonde CO who checked
me in laughed and joked with us—it was 7:30 and the stream of
people entering were mostly teachers, obviously known to her.
To enter Niantic one
must go through a series of heavy locked doors which slide open
when an invisible presence behind a one-way window sees you and
pushes a button. The visiting room, a huge cavern full of dark
tables and orange chairs, is on the left, empty at that hour of
the morning. Then there are more locked doors and hall, a room
with those black metal benches screwed to the floor. It all has
a sinister feel —perhaps the energies of all those inmates who
have passed through these doors and inhabit the compound are somehow
caught in the stale air, and were crowding around me. I was reminded
of my visit to Auschwitz years ago, the saturation of suffering
in its bricks—someone has written that birds don’t sing at Auschwitz,
and I’m not sure they would sing at Niantic either.
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