A Place to Stand

Baca continues to retreat into memories of his childhood home in Estancia, but thoughts of more recent events intrude. He tries, often unsuccessfully, to block the bloody image of stabbing his fellow prisoner with the butcher knife.

When Baca is released from isolation, a guard takes him to the warden’s office. Arizona officials have hired Warden Howard after he had successfully stopped a riot at an Ohio prison. They hoped he could tamp down gang activity in the Arizona facility.

The warden accuses Baca of being in a gang. When Baca denies gang membership, the warden refuses to listen: “You want to collect the contract on Rick because Rick snitched, and a dealer laid two grand to take him out!” the warden claims (158). Again, Baca attempts to refute the claim, but to no avail. The warden declares that Baca is losing any time he has earned, and will now effectively be starting his prison sentence over.

Baca returns to the routine of working in the kitchen and life among the general population, but he knows that eventually the prison mafia will attempt to kill him. After one such attempt, Baca begins to take his shank with him to the showers.

After several months, Baca is eligible for reclassification. He hopes to convince the committee to allow him to go to school. Baca is surprised when the counselors says, “You’ve had problems adjusting” (161). The man has been stopping by Baca’s cell regularly to commend him on his behavior. After further questioning, the committee tables Baca’s request to go to school until he serves another six months without incident. Baca lashes out in disappointment and anger, but his hearing is dismissed.

Suddenly, Baca finds himself unable to move. Lying in his cell the next day, Baca considers what could have happened when he became immobilized at the hearing. At the time, he was unable to explain the incident, but later he realizes that he would have been in prison forever if he had allowed officials to deny him the education he sought.

Baca decides to stop working. His cellmates know he wants to better himself by going to school, but they are concerned about the disciplinary write-ups he receives as a result of his protest. Baca doesn’t want the other inmates to think that he is hiding in his cell out of fear. Soon, Baca stops cleaning his cell, and the writes-ups pile up on his cell door.

Eventually, the counselor comes to the cell to find out what is going on. Baca reacts angrily, remembering that the counselor had withheld his support for Baca’s schooling at the reclassification hearing.

That evening, guards in riot gear search Baca’s cell. Finding a pack of sugar from the kitchen, the guards charge him with possession of contraband. As the guards drag him from his cell, the other inmates yell at Baca. They believe he has turned against them. The inmates’ anger escalates as he walks by, and Baca is astonished when they throw urine and feces at him. Despite the other inmates’ hatred of him, Baca begins to feel pride in his defiance of the system.

Baca is again placed in an isolation cell, where he tries to escape to pleasant memories of Estancia. Instead, he recalls his grandfather’s death. Baca realizes the unacknowledged pain of this loss has burdened him all his life. Unable to suppress the dark memories, Baca begins to recall his deep longing for his mother after he was placed in the orphanage.

Baca weeps, releasing emotions that he has repressed for years. Then he experiences an epiphany: “I knew why I couldn’t get out of the chair, why I refused to work, why I stayed in my cell…I could never again tolerate the betrayals that had marked my life, stretching back to my earliest years” (174).

After thirty days, Baca is released from isolation and taken to the warden. The warden says that he has given up on reforming Baca, and a guard escorts Baca to a dilapidated section of the prison referred to as “the dungeon.” The other inmates are incredulous when Baca says he is being confined to the dungeon for refusing to work.

Typically, Baca does not receive letters from the outside, so he is surprised to hear his name called one day, when letters are being distributed. Baca struggles to read the letter. He finally determines that a man named Harry has chosen his name from a list of prisoners who do not receive many letters.

Baca writes back to the man in Phoenix; Harry responds to Baca’s letter by sending him a dictionary so that Baca can try to improve his writing. Baca begins a daily study of the dictionary and continues to write to Harry. Soon, Baca’s pen-pal sends him notebooks and a bilingual devotional booklet to help him learn more about reading and writing.

Harry is sympathetic to Baca’s situation, but he does not seem to believe an injustice has occurred. Eventually, Baca is able to express himself well enough to counter many of Harry’s beliefs. Soon, feeling that Baca is questioning God, the religious Harry informs Baca that he will write no more letters to him. Baca is disappointed, but grateful that Harry has helped him enter the world of language. Baca begins to write poems, and soon he is writing letters to women for other inmates in the dungeon.

One day, while Baca is in his cell, reading, he hears a commotion in another cell. Bonafide, one of the dungeon’s other prisoners, screams when another prisoner is brought to his cell. Bonafide rapes the man and beats him so badly that the guards take the injured man away. Baca is surprised at Bonafide’s rage. Again, he wonders where he fits in the world. “Harry’s world had nothing to do with me,” Baca writes. “But neither did Bonafide’s” (191).

Letters for Baca are scarce and visitors even rarer, so Baca is surprised to find he has visitors one Saturday morning. In the visiting room is his brother, Mieyo. Mieyo introduces Baca to his girlfriend, Lori. Mieyo promises to get a lawyer to try to free his brother, but Baca knows this promise is likely to go unfulfilled. He asks Mieyo to send him a typewriter, a promise Mieyo keeps. Jimmy asks Mieyo to convince Theresa to visit him in prison, and he is shocked when later Mieyo accomplishes this task, too.

When Theresa visits, Baca tells her that he is still in love with her. Just as she has done in the past, Theresa rejects him. She tells Baca that she does not love him and does not want a relationship with him.