Panther Baby by Jamal Joseph Page B

She told me that Reverend Lloyd and the whole church were praying for me. I wanted to say, “Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition,” but I knew Noonie would have found a way to slap me through the Plexiglas window. I just nodded my head and mouthed the words, “ Th ank you.”
    Th e guard came for Noonie and told her the visit was over. “Over? Visits are supposed to be thirty minutes. My mother’s only been here for ten,” I yelled at the guard through the vent. “ Th e phone doesn’t work and you’re cutting my visit short?” Th e guard ignored me. Noonie told me she loved me, blew me a kiss, and left. Th e guards left me in the visiting coffin for another hour. When they finally let me out I was drenched, weak, dehydrated, and pissed.
    Merciful was sitting in one of the regular visiting cubicles waiting for his visitor to arrive. “Peace, black man,” he said, and smiled. “You have a good visit with your people?”
    “Naw, man,” I snapped, “these pigs messed with my whole visit.”
    One of the guards escorting me was a short, stocky black dude. He spun around, jabbed his finger in my chest, and got nose to nose with me like a boxer before the first bell. “I ain’t gonna be all them damn pigs,” he spit.
    “You don’t have to be one if you don’t act like one,” I replied almost politely.
    Th e guard jabbed me with his finger again. “I said I ain’t gonna be all them damn pigs.”
    I knew the next words were going to get me in trouble, but I was too mad to hold back. “I’m sorry. I meant to say these motherfucking pigs are messing with my visit.”
    Th e guard was holding his prison key ring, which he used to deliver a hard smack against the side of my head. I staggered back. He came at me with a punch. I managed to partially block it and landed a kick in his fat belly. I was aiming for his balls, but it was enough to wobble him back. Th en two white guards jumped on me and started pounding away with punches. Prison guards don’t actually carry clubs for fear that inmates will snatch them and use them as weapons against them. It’s the riot squad, or “goon squad,” that wears helmets and uses clubs, shields, and tear gas to overpower prisoners.
    Since the visiting corridor is narrow, the guards had a hard time subduing me. We banged up against the wall, trading blows until they were able to drag me to the main corridor. Once there I dropped to the ground and curled into a protective ball the way I had been trained in Panther self-defense classes. Th e guards handcuffed me. Th ere were a number of inmates and guards and a black captain named Woods in the main corridor. With all the witnesses, the beating stopped. Th e captain told them to take me back to “seg” and write up an incident report. Captain Woods had a reputation for being hard but fair. He did not allow guards to use “excessive force” on his watch.
    Captain Woods shadowed the guards as they took me back to my cell and locked me in. He asked me what happened. I told him about being locked in the broken cubicle and making a general statement about the pigs. He asked me who threw the first blow. I showed him the swelling that the key ring left near my eye. Captain Woods just nodded and walked away. I slept with one eye open, expecting the guards to return in larger numbers with a beat-down.
    My first week in prison felt like a year, but I knew Noonie’s trek from Rikers Island back to her apartment in the North Bronx must have felt like an eternity. Th ere were locked gates to go through, a long wait for the bus to take her off Rikers Island, then another bus to the subway station, followed by a series of trains on the two-hour ride home. Eventually, I convinced her to visit only once each month.
    I would write Noonie letters assuring here that I was doing fine and that the lawyers were making progress with the case. She would send me shorter notes with encouraging Bible quotes and well wishes from church members. It