The First Count
Standing in your slot. Counting heads. Trying not to count days.
They told us what to do during count, but they didn’t tell us what to feel during count. The instructions were procedural. Stand at the door of your cell. Face forward. Don’t talk. Don’t move. Wait until the deputy walks past, looks at you, looks at his clipboard, makes a mark, and moves on. The mark means you exist. The mark means you haven’t escaped. Most of all, the mark means there will be another count in five hours.
The math of it
I learned the rhythm before I learned the rules. Count happened five times a day in jail. Stand-up count, where you had to be on your feet. Bunk count, where you could be lying down but had to be visible. Emergency count, which was rare but loud. The deputies counted because someone, somewhere, was missing the second they stopped counting. The deputies counted because counting was the answer to the problem of bodies that might not stay where they were put.
The mark means you exist. The mark means you haven’t escaped. Most of all, the mark means there will be another count in five hours.
For my first count I stood too straight. I stood like someone trying to look innocent, which is to say, guilty. The deputy walked past me, looked at his clipboard, made his mark, and said nothing. I exhaled when he was past. My cellie 1 Cellie — short for cellmate. The man you share an eight-by-ten cell with for an indefinite period. The vocabulary moves in fast. Within a week you stop noticing you’ve absorbed it. had been in before. Let’s call him Jay. He laughed at me afterward. “You stood like a statue, man. You’re allowed to breathe.”
I learned to stand at count the way you learn to stand at a bus stop. Loosely. With your weight on one foot. With the patience of someone who knows the bus is coming whether you stand right or not. By week two I could read during count. By week three I could carry on conversations through the bars during count, in the seconds between deputies passing each cell. By week four I had stopped noticing it.
Counting backwards
What I noticed instead was time. The counts marked time. Five counts a day, seven days a week, thirty-five counts a week, one hundred forty counts a month. I started doing the math even though I shouldn’t have. The math was bad for you. The men who had been in for years had stopped doing the math. The men who had been in for years could tell you what week of their sentence they were in, but not what month, and definitely not what year. The math was the wrong calculator. The right calculator was: today. The right calculator was: today’s two phone calls. Today’s mail. Today’s count.
I got a letter in the second week. From my mother. The letter said the things mothers say. That she loved me. That she was praying. That she had put money on my books — my commissary account 2 ”On my books” — money deposited in your inmate account, used for commissary purchases, phone time, and stamps. The account is bookkeeping, not a bank account; you cannot withdraw, only spend. — so I could buy stamps and ramen. The letter ended with what she always wrote at the end of letters, even before any of this: “I am proud of you for who you are becoming.” She had written it for years. I had read it for years. In jail, sitting on my bunk between bunk count and stand-up count, I read it for the first time.
The deputy came past for the next count. I stood at the door of my cell. I faced forward. I did not move. The mark on his clipboard meant I existed.
I let it.