The Quiet Room

I sat on a short stool facing the window of The Quiet Room, laying cards in rows of seven along the sill. A deck of cards was one of the few things I was allowed to have with me in the room. I was also allowed a pencil and a pad of paper, a bible, and one non-religious book. I chose The Sound of Waves from the bookshelf in the common area because I liked the artwork on the cover, a Japanese painting of a cresting wave crashing down on a little boat full of men. It was a love story.

My eyes flicked among the stacks as I transferred cards from one pile to the other. When I was out of options, I wrinkled my brow, which I had done so often when I was drunk or angry that, although I was only fifteen, I already had a deep crease in the skin between my thick, black eyebrows. My head was shaved because I’d recently been transferred from Juvenile Hall, where they offered two haircuts: all off or half off. Thinking about my next move, I clicked my tongue on the roof of my mouth a few times, lifting my lip and exposing a top row of clean white teeth. I’d chipped one of the fronts in a fight just before I got locked up and at both ends of the row, I had long, sharp wolf teeth, just like my dad.

The Quiet Room wasn’t like any other cell I’d been in before. In Juvenile Hall, the cells were dark with walls covered in graffiti and little fogged windows facing other cinderblock wings of the complex across a narrow cement walkway. This room was more like a small, enclosed porch, with tall windows on each of the three sides, looking out on a lawn with trees and white benches. The door wasn’t locked and I could go to the bathroom whenever I wanted without someone letting me out. Other than that, I was supposed to stay in the room twenty-four hours a day until the staff determined I was ready to come out.

The facility was one of the places the luckier kids were sent to from Juvenile Hall to serve their sentences. Months before, I was sent to a ranch much further north in California to work on an apple orchard, but I got caught trying to escape and was sent back to lockup after a few weeks. Everybody told me this was my last chance.

I cycled through the cards three at a time looking for something I could play. At the end of the stack, I started again, thinking I might have missed a card on the first few cycles. Nothing. Then I went through the deck one at a time, looking for a black eight I could use to join two piles and open up another stack. It wasn’t there, so I looked under the stack that was trapped and cycled through that pile until I found the eight of clubs, which I used to join the two rows and open up the column. I flipped the top card and it was an ace. I smiled as I transferred it to the top of the sill, where I’d already set the other three aces.

The game ended, as all solitaire games did for me then, in a victory. I stood up and stretched my legs, then dropped to the floor to do a set of push-ups. I had the habit from the Hall of 200 push-ups a day, which was important then because we were rarely let outside for exercise, but we had to be ready to fight. We all had daily workout routines so we could come out of our cells with chests out and forearms bulging. 

I stood up and moved to the bed, where I started reading my book. It reminded me of other stories I’d read: two young people are in love, but people and circumstances are conspiring to keep them apart. I turned my body over in bed every few minutes so I could switch reading hands and stay comfortable. This is another thing I got used to in Juvenile Hall, reading in my cell for several hours every day.

It was late spring, so dinner came before the sun started to set. One of the staff members knocked on the door before he came in carrying a tray. It was Greg. “How ya doin, buddy?” Greg set the tray on the little table next to the bed and sat down on the stool. Greg was a little man, short and skinny with an orange goatee and colorful tattoo sleeves. He was like a lot of the other staff members there, a young guy with a past of his own, trying to do the right thing and help kids out. This was very different from the kind of people they had working at Juvenile Hall.

I sat up on the bed and swung my legs around to put my feet on the floor, moving slowly and rubbing my eyes before answering. “I’m  ok.” 

“Anything you wanna talk about?”

“Ummmmmm, not really. Tell you the truth, I just wanna get out of here.”

Greg nodded, signaling for me to continue.

“I mean, not out of here, like this place, but just out of the quiet room.”

Greg was very conscious of his own body language, opening his hands up and making eye contact before speaking. “Well, it’s important you know that you’re not in here as a punishment, but to give you some time to think about where you’re at and think about what you wanna do moving forward.”

I looked at the floor and grumbled. “Thinking about where you’re at is a punishment.”

Greg laughed. “Sure. Yeah. It can be. But we want you back in the community. Nobody’s mad at you, we just want to make sure you’re ready before we do that.”

I nodded, still looking at the floor.

Greg stood up. “All right, well, I’ll let you eat your dinner. Spaghetti tonight.” Greg smiled

and walked out the door, closing it behind him.

I pulled the table toward me and started on the spaghetti, using a fork and spoon together to twirl the noodles. It was nice to use silverware again after months of plastic sporks. I picked up my book and read while I ate, holding the book in one hand and twirling noodles or stabbing at broccoli trees with the other. When I was done, I picked up the tray and set it in the hallway, as I’d been instructed, and returned to bed with my book.

The sun went down and soon I was done with the book, which I closed and set on the floor. I picked up the pencil and pad from the floor and started to write a letter, lying on my stomach on the bed and resting on my elbows.

Davina,

What’s up baby. I just got to this new placement, R House, where your homegirl Ashley is. She’s at the girls program though so I don’t see her every day, but I did see her the other day at this graduation ceremony they had here. I’m not allowed to send letters or anything yet but I thought I’d write you one because I was thinking of you (like always). No surprise, I already got in trouble here because some kid was trying to act sick and I thought it was my job to check him. Stupid. So now I’m in the quiet room and I gotta wear all yellow so I can’t run away or if I do run, the cops can find me pretty easy.

The reason I thought of you tonight is because I read this book called The Sound of Waves by this Japanese guy Yukio Mishima. It’s about these two kids who fall in love but there are haters everywhere so everything gets messed up for them. It made me think of us. I’m sorry sometimes in my letters I get so mad at you, but I just can’t believe it sometimes that you would do that to us. Sometimes I think you don’t know how much that hurt and how sad I still am all the time about it. Like, sick to my stomach. Anyway, I know you don’t wanna hear all that. In the book, it works out for them. The boy gets a job on a boat working for the girl’s dad and they get caught in a storm and he saves the boat from sinking, so the dad stops being a hater and lets them be together. I know it’s not the same as us, but it makes me think about things being meant to be and just believing everything is gonna work out in the end. It also makes me think about being on a boat or working on a boat. I think that’s something I would be good at, just traveling the world and being out in the middle of nowhere surrounded by water. Actually, naw. That sounds like jail. I can’t even tell you how fucked up it is to be locked up and you can’t do anything about it and it’s gonna be years before I can decide what I wanna eat or go for a walk or something. I can’t even picture it. Anyway, I just wanted to write you a letter, I don’t even know if I’ll be able to send it.

I love you,

Russell

I tore the pages from the pad and folded them in thirds and tucked them under the blank pages. Then I turned off the light and got under the covers and lay on my back and started to talk to God.

 * * *

I woke up to somebody whispering my name. It was Gustavo, one of the other residents, and when I opened my eyes, I saw that there were three guys standing in my room.

“Hey man.” He bent down and whispered right in my face. “We’re goin’ outside to smoke.

You wanna come?”

I smiled and stood up. “Fuck it, yeah. Let’s go.”

I’d heard about what they called “the underground” there, but hadn’t been around long enough to be a part of it. It was standard mischief: people smoking cigarettes, making unapproved phone calls, stealing and trading food or making coffee. Coffee was contraband, but kids would brew their own using socks or t-shirts as a filter and hot water from the showers. The underground seemed like stuff the staff knew about but didn’t mind.

The boys invited me along because the only way to sneak out was through the quiet room, which had its own door to the outside. The custom was if anybody was in the quiet room, they got invited along. The other guys were people I had already made friends with. Except Rob.

Rob was the kid I pushed during an argument in the classroom. It was my fault, really. I’d decided I didn’t like Rob early in my time there and made a habit of provoking and ridiculing him. I was used to being the only white kid in these places and I almost always was. Even though I was part Mexican, I didn’t speak Spanish and I looked white, so that just meant I was white and that was a weird thing to be in the system. A lot of the time it made me a target. Rob was a whole other animal: a poor, rural white kid with spiky blonde hair and blue eyes. It bothered me that Rob tried to act hard, so I made a habit of provoking him. I guess you could call it bullying.

The day of our altercation, I’d spent most of the afternoon in school balling up foil gum wrappers and flicking them at the back of Rob’s head. Finally, Rob shot up out of his chair and ran toward me, though I’d already stood up and was significantly taller than him. He looked up at me with his head cocked. “Yo! Cut that shit out!”

I’d seen this from other kids before. They would cause a big scene and talk loud because they knew somebody would be along soon to break it up. We called it chicken-hawkin’. I pushed Rob, who fell back onto a desk, nearly tripping to the ground. Greg came into the classroom and took me outside to calm me down.

“Why are you messing with Rob, man? He’s a sad kid, just pretending to be tough. You’re smart. You can see that.”

I was still breathing heavily and trying to calm down. “I know, it’s just so . . . annoying.”

“He’s been fucked with his whole life, man. He’s from a tiny, shitty trailer park just a few blocks away from here and when he says he’s “finna to holler at choo,” can’t you just hear him faking it?”

“I know! That’s the problem!”

Greg looked at me. “Yeah, well, it’s not your problem.”

As we filed out of the quiet room door onto the lawn, I followed behind Rob, who didn’t seem to be holding a grudge. He turned back to me and smiled, whispering, “Wassup, homie. Welcome to the underground.”

The four of us walked silently, hunched over like special-ops soldiers, and crept into a narrow spot between the end of the house and a tall wooden fence. Besides Gustavo and Rob, there was Brendan, a goofy black kid with a small afro and teeth that were too big for his mouth. He spoke first. “Yeah muthafukkas, light it up!” Everybody laughed.

Gustavo gave me a cigarette, a Newport, and Rob lit his and passed the lighter around. We smiled and nodded and looked at each other.

Gustavo whispered to the group. “You know what would be fuckin sick right now? If we had some fuckin forties. Just chilling out here, smoking cigarettes, listening to the crickets, passing around a Mickey’s bottle.”

“Mickey’s?” I jumped in. “Nah, man, it’s Old English for me!” 

“Well fuck you then, get your own!” and we all laughed together.

Then Rob spoke. “Bro, there’s a fuckin 7-11 like four blocks up on the main road. We could just hop the fences and run up there. I bet we got enough money to get a bum to buy us a couple forties right now. I got like five bones in my room.”

Gustavo looked at me smiling and said, “Fuck it.” I laughed. 

“Yeah, fuck it.”

Brendan finally spoke. “Y’all are fuckin trippin’. I’m ‘bout to be outta here in August. You wanna go, that’s on you, but I’m out.” He dropped his cigarette on the ground and turned to Rob.

“Hey, man, you got those Tic Tacs? I gotta get my breath right before I go back in.”

Rob nodded and pulled the rattling plastic box from the side pocket of his cargo shorts. He

opened the box and shook it over Brendan’s hand, then put it back in his pocket.

Brendan looked at his hand. “One Tic Tac? How you gonna give a mothafukka one Tic Tac?” Rob shrugged while Gustavo and I laughed. “Shit, Bill Clinton’ll give you one Tic Tac. Jay Leno’ll give you one Tic Tac!”

We walked single file to the door of the quiet room and stepped in. Gustavo turned to me. “You still down?” I nodded. “Cool, I’ll bring you some clothes. Can’t be wearin’ all yellow to the 7-11.”

I sat down on the bed while the other three crept to their rooms. My heart raced. It felt like the first time I cut school or shoplifted. I was smiling and jumpy and couldn’t wait for the guys to come back.

Gustavo brought me some basketball shorts and a hoodie, which I changed into quickly, and Rob came into the room a few seconds later. The plan was to walk the perimeter of the lawn to avoid the night watch guys and get to the fences by the driveway, where we could hop over and be on the street. We’d have to be quiet and move quickly.

With my heart still racing, I followed Gustavo and Rob out of the quiet room door, closing it behind me and shuffling along the edge of the grass. At the back fence, we had to cut across the lawn in plain view of anyone watching from the house, so we had to be fast. We went one at a time, Gus first, and then it was my turn. As I was running, though, I saw flashlights coming from the house. It was the night watch guys, who must have seen Gustavo running and come out to see who it was. They were far enough away, though, that I had time to hide. There was a lot of abandoned garbage on the lawn, so I sprinted to an old refrigerator and got inside, closing the door on myself.

All I could hear inside the refrigerator was my own heavy breathing and thumping heartbeat. It was pitch black and it smelled like bleach. I wondered how much air I had and how long I could wait until it was safe to come out again. I laughed to myself and shook my head, enjoying the excitement.

Within seconds, the door popped open. It was Darryl, one of the night watch guys, shining a flashlight in my face. “Come on out, man.” As I stepped out of the fridge, I saw Gustavo and the other night watchman. Rob must have still been hiding somewhere. Nobody said anything as the four of us walked back to the house. In the staff office, Darryl told us to sit and said he had to call the director of the program to see what would happen next. We watched as he made the call.

“Hey, Alex, it’s Darryl. We got a couple guys trying to get out tonight.”

Darryl nodded and listened to Alex on the other end of the phone. “Ok. Sounds good. I’ll write it down in the log and we can talk in the morning.”

Darryl hung up the phone and turned us. We’d been looking at each other and trying to communicate with hand gestures. “Ok, just sit tight. I have to make a log entry and then we’ll go from there. Looks like we’re gonna take your shoes for the night so you can’t make another run for it and the day staff will deal with you in the morning.”

Gus and I looked at the ground, nodding sullenly. I tried to plead with Darryl. “We were just out there smoking. We weren’t trying to go AWOL or anything.”

Daryl smiled. “Come on, man. The smoking spot is at the end of the house by the fence. We saw you guys sprinting across the other side of the lawn! There’s no reason for you to be over there unless you’re trying to get out.” He laughed again and shook his head at us. “Don’t make it worse for yourself by lying.” Daryl turned away from us and sat at the desk to make his log entry.

I knew this meant I’d be discharged and sent back to juvenile hall. I was already on quiet room status and now the director of the program had gotten a call in the middle of the night that I was trying to AWOL. My stomach rolled. I’d be back in the Hall by the next night and I knew where they’d send me after that: CYA. Gladiator School. Everybody said it was as bad as adult prison and they could keep you until you were twenty-five. I rocked in my seat.

I looked back at Gustavo with my eyebrows raised. I wanted to tell him that we should just run out of the office that second and hop the fence while we still had our shoes. I jerked my thumb to the door and Gustavo nodded. We eyed Darryl at the desk, who was still writing.

Gustavo started to give us a silent countdown to run out of the room, holding up three fingers, then two. My eyes got big and I nodded, checking to see that my shoes were laced tight. Then Gustavo shook his head and moved his hand across his lap to cancel the countdown. I was at once disappointed and relieved.

Seconds later, Gustavo started the countdown again, holding up three fingers. Then a long break, peering over his shoulder at Darryl at the desk. Then two fingers. I rocked in the office chair a little, getting ready to spring. Again, Gustavo shook his head and looked away, moving his hand back and forth to erase the plan. We sat in silence, looking around the room and listening to Darryl scratch his notes into the log with a blue pen taped to a piece of yarn. Finally he was done.

“Ok guys, lemme get your shoes and you can go off to bed. They’ll deal with you in the morning.”

We bent down and untied our shoes, leaving them on the floor as we walked out of the office toward the rooms. The night watch guys didn’t walk with us, and halfway down the hall Gustavo turned to me and whispered “I’m still down. We can just take somebody else’s shoes.” We both went into Gus’s room, where I tried on his roommate’s shoes, who was sleeping. They were a little big on me, but I laced them extra tight. Gus opened a drawer and said, “Check it out.” There was a plastic bag with some cash and change in it and a pack of Newports. Gus took it and put it in the pocket of his hoodie.

Gus hesitated at the window, looking at his sleeping roommate. “I feel like we should say

good-bye.”

I shook my head. “Fuck these kids.”

Gus slid the window open, pulled out the bug screen and climbed outside. I followed. We were behind the house, so it was easier to get to the fences near the driveway. We sprinted, kicking up gravel and making a lot of noise, but there was no quiet way to do it. I was laughing as I ran.

We were racing each other, pulling on each other’s sleeves and laughing, each of us playfully trying to get ahead of the other. We bumped into each other on purpose, sprinting and spraying pebbles into the house and fence we ran between. Gus stopped at an old tree and pointed up to signal that we should climb it to get over the fence, which was over ten feet. I nodded and went first.

I was proud of my climbing abilities, honed in my years as a tagger and a burglar. My friends called me Spider-Man because I could climb things that seemingly had no footholds. So I grabbed one knot with my hand, planted my foot on another one and scurried up the tree like a cat, sitting on the first branch, which was several feet over the wall.

Gus looked up at me. “Damn!”

I reached down and lowered my hand to Gus, who was having a hard time getting a foothold, and helped him up onto the branch with me. We both stood up and walked along the branch until we were on the other side of the wall. Then we both dropped down to hang from the branch before we let go and fell to the ground, another gravelly road. We looked both ways and saw that the main road was to our right and then we started running again.

Seconds later, we saw a figure crouching beside a low wall. It was Rob. He looked up at us, scared, and whispered, “Get away!” Then we saw the police cruiser. Gus broke left and I followed, sprinting and kicking up rocks, jumping over a wall and entering an open field, which was very dark. We both kept running, assuming the police had seen us and were giving chase. The grass in the field was up to my chest and mosquitos swarmed around me as he ran.

After a minute of sprinting, I looked behind me and saw that no one was following. “Gus!

Gus! Stop!”

We stopped running and put his hands on his knees and hung his head, gasping. I stayed upright and put my hands on my head to keep my lungs open. Neither of us could talk. I got on my knees to be lower than the grass and Gus did the same. I could barely breathe. After a full minute of gasping, I looked up at Gus. “Do you believe in God?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“We should pray.”

Gus nodded and we both looked down at the ground as I led us in prayer.

“God, please help us get out of here tonight. Help us find a car or something so we can get

away from here and just be free and good. We promise to go to church and thank you the first chance we get.” I turned to Gus. “You wanna say something?”

 “Nah, that was good.”

“Thank you, God, amen.”

We stood up and started walking quickly toward the nearest structure, which was a run-down apartment building. I turned to Gus and pointed to the building with my lips. “We can check cars up there. If we can get to San Francisco tonight, I can get us a place to stay and some money.”

Scanning the carport, we found an old Honda with the door unlocked. Gus opened the driver’s door and got in. “I can do this one.” I got in on the passenger side while Gus yanked the plastic panel off the steering column and pulled out the mess of wires. I watched with my knee bouncing as Gus took different pairings of wires and flicked them on each other, like a match on a striker. I had never gotten this trick to work before. Most of the cars I’d stolen, I just jammed a screwdriver or a butter knife into the ignition. Pretty soon, one of the pairings worked and the engine started up. We looked at each other, eyebrows up and smiling with our mouths open. Gus went to put it in reverse and stopped.

“Shit. It won’t work. The wheel’s locked. It won’t turn.”

“Fuck it. We gotta keep checking then.” I looked in the glove box before we got out. “Cigarettes!” I swept the change from the cup holder and got out, closing the door softly.

We kept checking for unlocked doors until we got to an old, blue Dodge Aries with a Navy Seal sticker on the back window. Gus pointed to the sticker and laughed. “Hope this fucker doesn’t catch us fuckin’ with his car!”

I laughed too. “It’s good! The cops won’t pull us over!”

Gus got in the driver’s side again and as I slid into the passenger seat, he scanned the car for change and cigarettes. Gus was about to pull the panel when I grabbed his hand. “Look at this shit!” There was a key ring in the center console with about twenty keys on it. I scanned the keys until I found a silver one with a Chrysler logo. “No way!”

I handed it to Gus, who slid it into the ignition and started the engine. We started laughing, trying to be quiet. Gus put the car in reverse and started to pull out. There was a kukui nut necklace hanging from the rear-view mirror, which I took off and put over my head as Gus sped out of the lot and turned onto the main road. Gus banged the wheel at the first stoplight. “Are you fuckin’ kidding me!? Keys in the car!? Navy Seal my ass!” We couldn’t stop laughing.

“I told you we should pray!”

Within blocks, we saw a sign for 101 South and Gus merged the car onto the freeway, speeding up. “Gimme a cigarette!”

I lit one for Gus and passed it to him, rolling down my window and then lighting another one for myself. Gus got the car up to 80 and moved into the left lane. “Be cool, man, we don’t wanna get pulled over!”

Gus laughed. “Fuck it man! We’re Navy Seals! And we prayed!”

I laughed too and reached my arm out the window, banging the side of the car several times, then sticking my head out the window and howling up at the sky.

Minutes later, we passed the exit for San Quentin Prison. Gus tapped my arm and pointed to it. “Hey, man!” We had to yell to hear each other over the noise of the old car and the wind. “That’s my next stop!” We screamed our laughter in each other’s faces.

I lit another cigarette off the last one and looked out the window. As we approached San Francisco, we rolled through the hills of Marin County and it felt to me like we were driving along the edge of an expanding bubble. I could feel us lifting up and out toward the black sky barely tracing a thin, shiny membrane underneath us.

We passed Mt. Tamalpais and I remembered that my brother told me the name means “Sleeping Maiden” in Miwok, because it looks like a reclining woman, the rolling foothills forming the curves of her hips and breasts. The fog poured over the edge of the hills and I thought it looked like a soft, thin sheet over the maiden’s sleeping body. It poured right into the open windows of the car and I watched her curves rise and fall as we raced toward the blue light of San Francisco.

---

RUSSELL MORSE is a criminal justice advocate and writer living in Providence, Rhode Island. As a journalist, he has covered youth riots in France, juvenile justice reform in California, issues along the US/Mexico border, and three presidential elections. His work has appeared in Rolling Stone Magazine, The Yale Review, and The San Francisco Chronicle.

Return to Vol. 43.2