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Mr. Hooft had got his cane and was leaning on it as he sat. He was breathing kind of heavy. Then he turned his head toward me.
    “So what did you do?”
    “I needed money real bad,” I said. “I knew this one guy, Freddy Booker, who hung out on my block, was dealing prescription medicines. He was getting homeless dudes to go to certain doctors and get prescriptions for painkillers and Viagra and things likethat. They would give him the prescriptions and he would give them, like, two dollars apiece or something like that. Then he would get the prescriptions filled and sell the pills on the street. He would buy any kind of prescription that was either sex medicine or painkillers.
    “I knew where this doctor had a storefront office. It was in a rough neighborhood and usually closed at night. I know it was wrong, sir, but I broke in and stole a whole bunch of blank prescription forms. The ones with the numbers on them. I sold them to the guy who was dealing prescription drugs.
    “What happened then was this same guy was busted for dealing with a doctor downtown on 127th Street.”
    “In Brooklyn?”
    “No, in Harlem.”
    “Then what happened?”
    “When he got picked up, he snitched out everybody he knew, including me. They charged me with about eighteen counts of dealing drugs and unlawful distribution and stuff like that, everything the guy was charged with. I copped a plea to doing just what I did, and that’s how I got to Progress, sir.
    “But yo, like, I’m trying to turn my life around and I’m not going to do anything like that again. That’s for sure.”
    “I don’t like colored people,” Mr. Hooft said. “Nothing personal, I just don’t like them. And you’re a colored criminal and I don’t like criminals, either.”
    “Right.” I had been standing up but I sat back down again. I knew if Mr. Hooft said anything negative about me, said I sassed him or anything, it was going to go against me, so I just shut up. Even if it wasn’t true, it didn’t matter. I was a criminal, like he said, and what really went down didn’t matter all that much.
    “Did you know the doctor?”
    “No, sir,” I said.
    “But you stole from him anyway, and this other person, the one you were working for—what was his name?”
    “Mr. Hoof, I wasn’t working for him—”
    “Hoof t ! With a t . Colored people can’t say that? P-i-e-t-e-r Hooft!” Mr. Hooft said. “Simi can’t say it and you can’t say it. There are certain things in your makeup which make you who you are. You coloredssteal and use drugs and you kill people and you can’t even pronounce a name. Your brains are bad. That’s why you were slaves.”
    What I would have liked to do was to hop to this sucker and beat his head in, but it would’ve been the same as beating my own head in, because I would be the one doing the most suffering. I didn’t feel I was letting what he said slide, but I held back from saying what I really felt.
    When Mr. Pugh came to pick me up, I was ready to go back. He asked me if I had had a nice vacation.
    “I was working,” I said.
    “What were you doing?”
    “Picking up garbage,” I said.
    “Good job for you,” Mr. Pugh said.

CHAPTER 8
    At Progress you could get visitors any day between 10 in the morning until 4 in the afternoon, and on Saturdays and Sundays between 10 and 6 in the afternoon. I hadn’t had any visitors, so when Mr. Wilson called me out of the dayroom Sunday afternoon I thought it was a mistake.
    “Who is it?” I asked.
    “Your mother and sister,” he said with a grin. “I might have to steal your little sister, she’s so cute.”
    I stopped dead in the hallway and looked at Wilson to see if he was kidding. My moms hadn’t visited me in months. “You sure?” I asked.
    “Yeah, it’s for you. Remember, they can’t give you anything to bring into the facility,” Wilson said.“They’re supposed to leave all gifts at the office.”
    “Yeah, okay.”
    The visitors’ room was decent.