Michael Fischer - Home Cooking 

 

JR looks at me and he says, "Do you realize that I could kill you right now, stash your body under your bunk, and just take the pretzels [audience laughter] and nobody would even know?" [audience laughter] JR and I are at the end of a hallway and around a corner. We're in a blind spot, and we both know it. As far from the guards as we can get. Both doors off of this floor are locked. It's 2013, and we're in a medium-security prison in upstate New York. I hate being watched by the guards, but it's other inmates like JR that I really worry about. 

 

Every time I get a letter from home, the first thing I do is tear the return address into little pieces. Because if I don't, somebody might fish the envelope out of the trash and write to my family and my friends. They could demand money from them and make it really clear what will happen if they don't listen. It's happened to other guys in here. It could happen to me. 

 

Earlier today, when I returned from the package room with some other inmates from my floor-- I made the long walk down the hall to where I bunk. There were guys peeking their heads out of every room along the way, just watching those of us who had just come back, because they were clocking what was in the net bags slung over our shoulders. JR was one of those men. He saw something he wants. And that something is my pretzels. JR's question is not rhetorical. He could kill me right now. He's bigger than me, stronger than me. I'm no match for him, especially these days.

 

I've been losing weight ever since I arrived in prison a few months ago. The food is partly to blame, but I think it's mostly depression that has me down to less than 160 pounds. I remember this guy, during one of my first days locked up, showing me his prison ID and saying, "I came in here with no one but the ugly old man on this ID, and I'm going to go home the same way." Message was pretty clear. You come in alone, you bid alone, you leave alone. Whatever happens in this moment is between me and JR. Because just like everyone else in here, I'm on my own. 

 

Right now, you might be thinking, this is really weird. A couple of inmates fighting over pretzels. So, before I keep going, I just want to be clear. These are not just any pretzels. These are Snyder's honey mustard and onion [audience laughter] pretzel pieces. If anyone's ever had them, you'll appreciate the difference. It's the big bag. It's not the single serving. It's not like the little ones that you can get in a vending machine. So, my life for these pretzels is a pretty even trade. [audience laughter] 

 

In fact, the pretzels are worth more than me. I'm a file clerk over on A Tower. It would take me days at that job to afford this bag. Bag probably costs $3. I make 24 cents an hour. I'm worth nothing. I'm a net negative, actually, because depending on which expert you ask, each inmate costs the state upwards of $50,000 a year in food, housing, medical care. So, the math, it doesn't make sense for me to die defending these pretzels. But if I do die for them, the math isn't going to be my reason.

 

Standing with JR, I can picture my mom making a lunch for me to take to school when I was a kid. Packing up food she thinks I like, things she bought especially for me, because she wants me to be healthy and hopes I'll have a good day. When I was in grade school, my mom used to pack me a lunch pretty much every morning. Every once in a while, she would slip a note into the paper bag. Something small, just to let me know that she loved me. Finding a note from her was the best part of my day, because my mom was my favorite person in the world back then. She probably did that with the notes when I was in middle school too, but I wouldn't know. By then, I was throwing the bags away unopened, as soon as I got to school.

 

There was this food truck that would pull onto the blacktop every day at recess, and I would buy something there instead. That's what the cool kids did. I can still picture those lunches my mom made rotting in a trash can. Apples going brown, meat going rancid, bread getting moldy as I run around the schoolyard thinking I don't need her. To be honest, the things that haunt me about my past aren't the choices that brought me to prison. It's the small, quiet things, like what I did with those lunches, that cut the deepest. I know that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I've caused much more harm doing plenty of other things, legal and illegal. But there's no perfect correlation between the gravity of my actions and how bad I feel about them. If I've learned anything in prison, it's that guilt is an imperfect science. 

 

I've never told my mom what I used to do with those lunches. I'm too ashamed that I abused her love and her care like that. She's never stopped supporting me, even now. And that only makes it harder to think about what I did. But now, I'm with JR, thousands of miles away from her and I finally have my chance to make the smallest of amends. Why am I standing in a prison hallway a few weeks past my 24th birthday, guarding a bag of pretzels with my life? Because my mom sent them to me. She sent them, because she remembers how much I liked them as a kid and she's trying to brighten my day. It's having the opposite effect, obviously, but [audience laughter] she's trying.

 

My mom sends me cards even though I call her on the phone every few days, because she thinks it's good for the officers to see me getting mail. She thinks they'll be nicer to me if they're reminded that in addition to being an inmate, I'm also a human being who has a family. She wants them to know, just as she wants me to know, how much I'm loved. So, the only person who's going to eat these pretzels while I'm still alive is me. 

 

I can tell JR wants to fight about this. He's got his head tilted to one side. His arms are crossed in front of him. He's just waiting for me to say the wrong thing. But my hands are in my pockets. I'm in disbelief, to be honest, that this is the type of stupid situation I find myself in these days. I'm scared, but I try to keep my voice steady. "If that's really where you're at, that you're going to kill somebody over pretzels, then I don't know what to tell you, man. They're not for sale." 

 

JR stares me down, weighing his options. I'm not arguing how easily he could kill me, and something about that seems to rob JR of the rage he needs to actually do it. Instead, he stomps off down the hallway empty-handed. He's smart and it's midday, so he's leaving it alone for now. He'll probably stab me in my sleep tonight for disrespecting him like that, for being so casual about his threat. Part of me hopes that does happen, because call me crazy, but I don't think there's anything better waiting for me up ahead.

 

Prison teaches each person inside that the only way to right a wrong, the only way to repay a debt, is to suffer. In the Department of Corrections, only pain can answer for pain. I can never do enough, be sorry enough, rehabilitate enough. But if I suffer enough, if I pay for my mistakes big and small, my tears, my time, my life, then maybe someday I'll be forgiven, if only by myself. So, maybe that suffering takes the form of JR poking a few holes in me tonight. 

 

It would take my family forever to get my body back. I've heard the paperwork to pry a corpse from the state is a nightmare. They just won't let you go, even after you're dead. But that can't be the way this ends, because if there's one thing I owe my mom at this point, it's sparing her from having to bury me. I have to outlive her. It's quite literally the least I can do. So, I stay up all night reading beneath my little commissary lamp, listening for JR's footsteps. It doesn't feel safe to sleep, and the odds of violence seem lower in the daylight. The sun feels like a witness who can protect me, even though I know this isn't true. 

 

But JR doesn't pay me another visit. He keeps a cold distance instead. And a couple weeks later, he assaults somebody in the stairwell and gets sent to solitary confinement at some other prison. I wish that meant I could breathe easy, but pretty soon, some random new guy will be sleeping on JR's old bunk. And here, the devil I know, better than the devil I don't. 

 

I can't change much about the life I live now. God knows I can't change anything about my past, including how I treated my mom. I've been stuck, too ashamed to apologize to her, but too tormented to move on. As strange as it sounds, something about hanging onto that bag of pretzels, come what may, makes me feel just a little bit better. Not because I like the pretzels all that much anymore. They're actually too salty for me these days. Not because there won't be some other guy threatening me over food someday soon, because I'm sure it's only a matter of time. 

 

My mom will never even know the standoff with JR happened. It's like she doesn't know I threw away her lunch bag in the first place. But at least it's a moment, you know, one small moment where I've done the right thing. It's something I can build on. It's a time that I protected the love that she's always shown me instead of just throwing it away. Thank you.