During my first couple of years in the prison, I would take Native American books from my office library to Native inmates in the Administrative Housing Unit.  Those men spend about 23 hours a day locked in their cells.  When I walked by the cell door of one of them who was a lifer, he would look at me with the coldest eyes I’ve ever seen.  I was glad he was in that unit because I was afraid of him.  A few months later he was in general population.  In the meantime, there was a new inmate in general population who had a degree in accounting.  I thought with our shared educational background, we would have something in common to discuss.  That didn’t happen, however.  He was extremely rude to me and in my face about everything.

One day he walked up to me in the hallway and apologized for the way he had been acting and said it wouldn’t happen again.  I was very surprised.  After he left, another inmate came up to me and asked if I knew what had happened to change his mind.  I said I had no idea.  He told me the inmate who made my blood run cold came up to the newer inmate, like a few inches from his face, and asked him if he thought a real man would treat an older woman with such disrespect.  That conversation made the newer inmate think about why he had been so mean to me and he realized he had fallen under the influence of the inmate I call the “bane of my existence” and had believed everything that man told him.  He realized I had never done anything to him so he apologized and was very respectful to me from then on.

A week later I saw the man who scared me half to death and told him I understood he had come to my assistance and I wanted to thank him.  He smiled just a little, shrugged, said he didn’t know what I was talking about, and walked away.

Mary Montoya