By Joshua Ryan
Chapter 6: What You Need Is a Regular Schedule
The bright light came on. We scurried to put on our uniforms. Sergeant Wong appeared in the cell, lined us up, and welcomed us to what he called “your first morning behind the High Walls.”
The Sergeant supervised us as we made our beds and turned our blankets into tofu cubes. Then he conducted us and our blue plastic pails to the Wash Room at the end of the corridor, and guarded us as we waited in line to squat over the 20 toilet holes, piss in a steel trough accommodating 20, and use our pails to wash and shave our faces in the water flowing into the sinks, which were also troughs accommodating 20. He then returned us to the cell, where he “organized our labor” by giving out jobs. There were two prisoners for every job—“this is the PRINCIPLE of COLLECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY.” Two prisoners got the job of cleaning the sink, two got the job of swabbing the floor, and so on. I got the worst job—scrubbing the shit holes. Me and Farmboy. We had 15 minutes to get our brushes out of the locker, bend and scrub, and wash the brushes thoroughly in the trough—sorry, I mean the “sink.” The Sergeant walked past and told us to go deeper into the holes. We did.
