Ted Conover - Sing Sing Tattoo

 

 

This time of year in Sing Sing Prison, it gets very hot in the cell blocks. The cell blocks are huge buildings where inmates live. They're like warehouses for human beings. It gets so hot that when inmates come out of their cells to exercise in the yard or the gym, they often aren't wearing shirts. You get to see some surprising things. You see a lot of scars, because a lot of inmates have been stabbed and shot, and you see a lot of tattoos. They're not tattoos as you'd see in the Village, so much as jailhouse tattoos, which are cruder. They're homemade, they're often self-inflicted, and they're often kind of-- They're not artful, you can say. 

 

On this one day in July of 1997, an inmate I knew a little bit named De la Cruz came out of his cell. I learned for the first time that he had emblazoned right about here, the word “assassin” in three-inch letters, which didn't surprise me. That's not an unusual thing to see in Sing Sing. But as he walked away, I followed him, I saw that his entire back was covered in tattooed script. He has a big back. He's in excellent bodybuilding shape, like a lot of inmates at Sing Sing. Every single inch of his back was covered in script. And from what I could see-- I just caught a brief glimpse, it was in Spanish. And so, when he came back in, I said, "Hey, De la Cruz, what is that on your back?" He said, "Oh, that, Conover. That's a poem, man. That's a poem." I said, "A poem? What poem? What poem is it?" He goes, "Oh, nothing. You wouldn't know about it, Conover." I go, "Try me." He goes, "I don't know nothing." And De la Cruz goes into his cell.

 

De la Cruz is a guy who interested me a lot, because within a week of arriving on this floor where I worked, he was on disciplinary restriction. He had tried to extort money from another inmate in the commissary, which surprised me, because he seemed like an intelligent and calm and reasonable guy. This is before we knew each other. I said, "Hey, man, what's this about? Nobody gets a ticket soon." He said, "Conover-- Or, no, he said, CO." He didn't know my name then. "CO, you do what you got to do." And CO means correction officer, or prison guard, in the most direct language. Every day I traveled as a prison guard-- 

 

It's about 26 miles north of here, up to Ossining. Sing Sing Prison has been there 170 years. The passage of inmates from Manhattan to Sing Sing gave rise to the phrase "up the river," which describes the way they got there, they went in boats up the river to Sing Sing. Sing Sing also is where the phrase "the Big House" originated, because the first cell block in Sing Sing was massive. It held 800 inmates. And in the 1940s, two more cell blocks were built, A Block and B Block, which hold 650 and about 500 inmates each. These are two of the biggest cell blocks in the world. They're out of date. Prisons don't work when they're this big. They're chaotic, they're impersonal, they're harmful in all kinds of ways. But Sing Sing still has them. I worked in B Block, and that's where De la Cruz was.

 

I wanted to get to know this guy. And often those guys on restriction are the ones you do get to know, because they're stuck in their cells 23 hours a day. They're not let out. And one day when I saw him sort of sitting there pensively, I said, "Hey, De la Cruz, what's on your mind? What are you thinking?" He said, "Conover--" and he looked like he wasn't sure whether he should tell me. And then he said, "I'm not going to lie to you, Conover. I'm thinking about my next job." And I thought, wow, this is good. He's thinking about the work he's going to get when he gets out. [audience laughter] He goes, "No, no, no, Conover. The job I'm going to pull, man. The job I'm going to pull." And I said, "What? What do you mean?"

 

He said, "That's the reason I'm here. It's because I didn't think out the last job." He said, "Next time, it's going to go right, man. It's all planned. I know it's not a positive thing, I know it's not a positive thing, but I'm not going to lie to you. That's what I'm doing. I've got plenty of time to do it. And if I do it well enough, I won't be back in here again." He's a man in his late 20s. This was his third felony sentence. His first one had been in Virginia, where he entered a prison known as the Wall at age 16, because he'd come from Puerto Rico on a birth certificate that belonged to his dead brother, who was two years older. His mom brought him over on that birth certificate. So, the state thought he was 18 and he was 16. He told me how scared he was that day. 

 

It's hard to get inmates to tell you things like this. But he was unusual, and I think he knew I would respect what he was telling me. I asked him about a week after, I said, "Hey, De la Cruz, what's that poem?" No, excuse me, I'm getting ahead of myself. He said, "De la Cruz, what's on your back?" He said, "Oh, that poem, CO? You never heard of it, man. It's by a Jewish girl during World War II, man. She was trapped by the Nazis in her house. She wrote this book." [audience laughter] I say, "Got to be kidding me. Anne Frank?” And he looked at me like, “You know Anne Frank?” [audience laughter] 

 

This would be a very strange thing for an inmate, I hadn't appreciated an officer who not only reads, but knows things you read in high school. Poetry, important social documents, Diary of a Young Girl. And I said, "Yeah, I know that. I know that diary." I said, "So, what does it say?" He goes, "Oh, no, never mind. Never mind, CO." A couple days later, I got a day off, and I went home and read it cover to cover, looking for a poem. There's no poem in Diary of a Young Girl. I came back and I said, "Hey, De la Cruz, there's no poem in there, man. You're confused." He goes, "I'm not confused. You think I'd put a poem on my back I don't know what book it comes out of? [audience laughter] Think I'd translate it from English to Spanish, have someone [beep sound] tattoo it on my back? It took me a month, and not know what it came from? Yeah, that's from Anne Frank." 

 

I went back and checked again. It's not there. I said, "De la Cruz, you want to read that book again?" He goes, "You got it?" And I said, “Yeah.” It's against the rules for an officer to bring a book to an inmate. It's contraband. It has to go through channels. I said I'd bring it to him. He spent the next two days in his cell glued to that book. And on the third day, I came and said, "So, how was it?" And he said, "Man, it's the best book I have ever read. I cry all the way through. It is the best book I've ever read." And I thought, wow. And I said, "So what does it say on your back?" And he goes, "Get out of here, Conover. Get lost, man." [audience chuckles] 

 

That was that. De la Cruz got transferred upstate, and I left the state service. But a couple months later, I wrote him a letter and I asked if he remembered me. He said he did. I wrote him again and I said, "What did that poem say on your back?" [audience laughter] And so, he wrote it down in Spanish for me. He transcribed his tattoo. And with renewed vigor, I went to the New York Public Library. I figured there's an edition of this book that has the poem. There are like 50 editions of that book. I checked out 25 of them. No poem. 

 

I called up a woman in Woodstock who'd written a play, a one-woman play about Anne Frank. I said, "Do you know any poem? Did Anne Frank write a poem?" She said, "Oh, she wrote a couple. They're not in the diary. Most people have never seen them." I read her what the poem said. Basically, she said nothing like that. I thought [beep sound]. I was really-- I thought I'd done everything I could. I read the book one more time, I got to the last page, I got to the last sentence, and there it was. It's the last sentence of Diary of a Young Girl. This is what it says. "When everybody starts hovering over me, I get cross, then sad, and finally end up turning my heart inside out, the bad part on the outside and the good part on the inside. And keep trying to find a way to become what I'd like to be and what I could be, if only there were no other people in the world."

 

And so, at that moment, I understood a little bit more about De la Cruz, and I understood a lot more about officers, and officers who don't want to talk to inmates, officers who don't want to find out about inmates, officers who, I think, at the end of the day, couldn't bear the sadness of what they'd find learning about inmates. Thank you very much.