After being in this prison system more years than I have lived on the streets, I’m feeling things I’ve never felt before – like my life was a waste. The world is almost thirty years ahead of me. When I think of people, I think of what life was like outside this prison in 1994. I still see the people who were once my school mates as kids. I still feel like a kid. I was one when I came here. I don’t still think like a kid, but I still shoot basketball and exercise just like when I left the world. I am 44.
I’ve spent over half my life thinking about the events that led up to the night of January 11, 1994 – the day before my eighteenth birthday. Mobile is different now. If I lived there now, it never would have happened. There is a Coalition Against Bullying now. They have Anti-Bullying Awareness Weeks. There is something called a ‘Bullyblocker’. You text a number if you are being bullied – your text goes straight to the District Attorney’s office. I guess it’s too late for me to text that. I did contact the right people at that time though. I went to my parents, the school, and the police. It’s all on record. I just didn’t have that Bullyblocker number. I would have used it if I had – and I wouldn’t be here.
What makes me different than a kid that lives in Mobile today? I was bullied by men that didn’t even go to my high school. There is no doubt the things that were done to me would have gotten a response if I had texted a hotline. It exceeded bullying. I was pushed around, chased, stalked – I was in high school and shot at on more than one occasion. If none of that had happened, what happened on January 11, 1994, wouldn’t have happened. People make excuses for themselves all the time. That’s not what this is. That’s just reality. If the people who were supposed to had resolved the issue like they were supposed to, I, Louis Singleton, Jr., would never have done what I did. I wasn’t raised to hurt anyone. That’s not who I was or am.
I’m smarter though. I refuse to give into the criminal life. I get on to young brothers who can’t seem to give up the drug life – until I break it down for them. They have big dreams of being Big Time Drug Dealers. They call me Unk. I try to encourage them to get out and do better for themselves. The at-home training my late mother gave me is embedded heavily in me. Knowing the difference between right and wrong will always be in me, no matter where they send me.
I’m living in the Alabama prison system, one of, if not the, worst prison system in America. Respect is at an all time low, but I never disrespect anyone, never have, never will. My mom taught me better. I hope those that were affected by my actions forgive me. I don’t expect them to understand because, truly, you’d have to walk in my shoes. You’d have to be the seventeen year old kid who was getting shot at. I don’t want that for anybody.
They see me as a ‘violent offender’. I’m not violent. That label doesn’t make me violent. I was seventeen, and it was a violent crime that never would have happened if I had been able to text that magic number and get help. I’m not even allowed to talk at my own parole hearing. They don’t see me. They see ‘violent offender’.
My first coach told me to never give up, no matter how badly you are losing the game. I haven’t forgotten that to this day. It’s the fourth quarter, the score is 44-10, the other team has the ball with 3:54 left on the clock. Play hard until the clock says 0:00. One time I was in a game playing defensive back, and a guy beat me on a broken coverage. He was running to the end zone, and I was chasing him. He got so far in front of me, I stopped pursuing him. He scored. I got chewed out heavily for that. Anything could have happened. He could have dropped the ball. From that day on, I’ve never given up.
ABOUT THE WRITER: Mr. Singleton’s story can be found here. WITS is grateful for his honest and heartfelt writing, and I hope he continues to write about his life in the Alabama Department of Corrections. Louis Singleton can be contacted at: Louis Singleton #179665 Fountain Correctional Center 9677 Highway 21 North Atmore, AL 36503
Growing up, it seemed every Christmas my imagination would expand more than the year before. I would hope for everything I ever wanted, but in reality my hopes were diminished. At times I only got the Goodfellow’s box and a few other items underneath the Christmas tree. It was tight for us back then, the only means of income in our household, like many others, was the public assistance check known as ADC or Welfare every two weeks. Man, those were some embarrassing times as a youngster. I would go to some of my friends’ houses and see all kinds of toys in their front rooms under huge trees. I don’t think my young heart could form any envy toward them because most all my friends would share their many toys with me. They’d let me ride their new bikes, and play with their electric trains, race car sets, and even their Rockem Sockem Robots.
Although we didn’t have much in the form of material riches, we had a kind of wealth in our hearts which was demonstrated by the love and appreciation we had for each other. I recall my mother and I decorating our tree with Christmas lights, an assortment of bulbs, candy canes, artificial icicles, and ornaments to make our tree look its very best. I was happy to crawl under everyday and pour water into the stand to keep it fresh. We usually waited until Christmas Eve to go down to the Eastern Market and buy us a tree because the price would drop to only a dollar or two. It was an exciting time during the holiday season, and I enjoyed helping to select our tree every year.
On Christmas we would enjoy my mother’s deliciously cooked meal before heading over to visit with relatives, and I could always expect several Christmas presents waiting for me at my Aunt Mae ‘s house. She was what you call hood rich and lived ghetto fabulous. Her house was laid out with the best furniture from Margolis, an expensive furniture outlet where she bought mostly all Italian-style layouts. She was never stingy with her money or riches, and gladly gave us whatever we needed. So, we might have been borderline living way below the poverty level at our household, but it was a completely different story when I went over to my auntie’s house. My Christmas changed dramatically, and so did my attitude of not having much because at my aunt’s house on Seyburn in West Village, I had everything I wanted. That is how I could imagine something different every Christmas morning back when I was growing up, and even though I might be confined behind bars, I can still experience those same fond memories at Christmas time.
While the meals in here can’t compare to the ones my mother and Aunt Mae cooked, where the collard greens, sweet potatoes, baked turkey, deep fried chicken, chitlins, baked ham, potato salad, string beans, cranberry sauce, and butter milk cornbread would literally melt in your mouth, not to mention the best banana pudding you could ever taste, I’m still appreciative because there’s millions upon millions of people who go hungry every single day, many starving to death. I have no room to complain about a poorly prepared and cooked prison holiday meal. What I normally do is close my eyes and imagine those delicious meals I used to eat at a real dinner table. Believe it or not, a smile always comes across my face because I can still imagine tasting what I miss so much.
Today is Thanksgiving, and we’re on ‘quarantine status’ for at least fourteen days as a result of nearly 200 of us in this housing unit testing positive for COVID, which means we’ve been eating cold, poorly prepared meals three times a day out of styrofoam trays since this past Monday. The holiday meal of processed turkey, dressing, mash potatoes and gravy will be served the same way later, and the same meal will be served on Christmas Day, but I’ll do as I’ve done for nearly forty years in here, close my eyes and imagine something different.
ABOUT THE WRITER. Ricardo Ferrell is the winner of our final writing contest of 2020. I’m not one of the judges, but as I was posting this piece – I see why he won. It’s not just the writing – it’s the heart behind the writing. That heart, which he so easily expresses, is exactly why WITS exists. Ricado Ferrell has the ability to express the light that exists within himself and within prisons all over the country. Ricardo Ferrell can be contacted at:
Ricardo Ferrell #140701 Gus Harrison Correctional Facility 2727 E. Beecher Street Adrian, MI 49221
Winter holidays are associated with remembrance, love and ‘be with your family’ time. For many inmates, it’s more traditional to cry into their arms when the lights go out during this time of year. Holidays are one more day without mail. Mail is big in an atmosphere of systematic dehumanization. Mail is validation of a prisoner’s humanity rarely received, even in the mirror. Holidays are reminders of the inability to feel your wife smile against your chest, or bathe in the sparkle of your kids’ eyes as they unwrap presents, or even witness a normally grumpy family member catch a bit of Christmas spirit.
Agony.
This Christmas will likely be the worst in Texas penitentiary history because it’s already been seven months since we were allowed family visits, courtesy of COVID-19, and the restriction remains indefinite. Not that Texas allows family visits on Christmas anyway, but the preceding weekends usually fill the visitation room with women, children, laughter and tears, all of which are excruciatingly cherished by men starved for such light.
Thanks to a new prison policy this year, not only will we be deprived of visits, but now all holiday cards from our children and loved ones are forbidden as well. See what I mean about systematic dehumanization?
Holidays are generally unacknowledged by our captors or even ourselves. Decorations, parties, gift exchanging and now – greeting cards – are prohibited by the state, but amongst ourselves there are some exceptions. Beautiful exceptions.
A common penitentiary celebration is the birthday spread. When it’s someone’s birthday, his friends often pitch in with commissary purchased food and make a big meal, or even a cake made in a cage with cookies, oatmeal and maybe some candy – surprisingly delicious, and we’ll have a small get-together. The spread is a subtle expression of what we don’t communicate most of the year, ‘Hey, it doesn’t matter where we are or how tough we act, it’s your birthday, and I love you.’
I tend to dread the mail-less holidays but even after twenty-five years of prison, the dreamer in me still romanticizes Christmas. It’s crazy because as a child I never experienced sitting under a Christmas tree unwrapping presents, or sitting with a family through dinner. Maybe Hollywood movies made me idealize the image of family Christmases, or the rare glimpses I eventually saw myself. As a young adult, I accompanied various girlfriends to their family gatherings. Not enthusiastically or even willingly, but I’m easy to manipulate because I’m terrified of female tears. The problem was that I looked and dressed repellently. I wasn’t a boy that any family, particularly a father, wanted their daughter to drag home. But that’s the magic of Christmas. Those families were unfailingly polite, even warm to me. I witnessed the holiday spirit they showed each other, and it filled me with an almost unbearable longing, knowing I was doomed to always be a guest and never a true family member. All these years later and Christmas still stirs that lonesome longing I felt as a sixteen-year-old.
Believe it or not, even Texas prisons acknowledge the existence of Christmas. You won’t see any blinking lights or Santas, but they do give us an extra tray of food. More importantly, at least to me, they also give us an apple and an orange, which are basically the only fresh produce we’ll see all year. You don’t value the small things until they’re gone, and I torture myself over every piece of junk food I ever chose over an orange when I was privileged enough to choose my diet. Healthy food is merely a pimple on an elephant of regrets, but I’m hungry right now, so bear with me.
Christmas day in prison is not that horrible. The miasma lifts some, it’s quieter and there’s a more positive vibe. Some guards relax a little. Some men wish others a Merry Christmas, and others gather in pockets of fellowship. It could be worse, the whole purpose of prison is vindictive punishment, to inflict misery and demoralization, and it’s wildly effective. But there are moments, you know? And Christmas is as good a day as any to find them.
Merry Christmas.
ABOUT THE WRITER. I’m always excited to hear from a new writer. Mr. Adams entered our recent writing contest, and I’m glad he did. He is our second place winner. His writing is honest, open and a true pleasure to work with and share. It’s my hope he will submit more. John Adams has served twenty-five years of a life sentence and maintains his innocence. He can be contacted at:
John Adams #768543 810 FM 2821 Huntsville, TX 77349
Scene: Death Row – a Christmas tree, ornamented, tinseled, well-lit, complete with phony gifts beneath. It crowds one half of the hall as we shoulder on around en route from and to chow. Most guys walk on by – eyes ahead; but some press close to thump a tiny colored light bulb hard enough to darken it, pinch needles into zees, or brazenly slap the crap out of plastic dec- orations, as if to say, “I’m hurting you because you’re hurting me.” Still other men oohhh and aahhh, like little kids, eyeing mint-condition memories that are kept shelved except for special occasions. Never- theless, the Lord is my shepherd- I shall not want.
II.
The other day an officer stood there peering deep into its depth of plastic branches, then grabbed it roughly, angrily even, and shook-shook-shook the fuck out of it, rattling off a noisy mess of decorations. “Nope, Sarge, nothing!” he hollered up the hall, his voice rolling over scattered ornaments and turning a sharp corner to enter the office, from where a faint, unconcerned reply returned: “Okay.” The officer scanned the wreckage. Then looked at us and shrugged. He goosestepped back back to the office. We rebuilt our tree.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR. George Wilkerson lives on Death Row. He is a talented writer, always keeping us on our toes. He is an occasional contributor to WITS, a co-author of Crimson Letters, an eye-opening book released in 2020, sharing the voices of those living on North Carolina’s Death Row, and his writing can be found on several other platforms. I’m happy to say, he is also the third place winner in WITS’ final writing contest of 2020.
Mr. Wilkerson can be contacted at: George T. Wilkerson #0900281 4285 Mail Service Center Raleigh, NC 27699-4285
It’s been a crazy year, and with only 21 days left, I’m done chronicling it. I’m fortunate to see the end.
I was thirty-two years old when I came to prison. I wasn’t a fighter, wasn’t ready for the predatory violence associated with being locked up. I had to learn how to unlearn all the societal norms I grew up on.
In prison – up is down, right is wrong, and vice-versa. If you’re a male, you can’t show weakness of any type. If you do, you are lunch. You might as well don a neon green jumpsuit and carry a placard saying, ‘Take advantage of me. I’m new. I’m vulnerable.’
I navigated that. Not easily, mind you, but I survived.
It makes me wonder about how females manage. They aren’t just preyed upon by inmates, they also have to run the gamut of officers, more often male, who can be known to take advantage of their positions of power. It brings to mind a few women I’ve known. Three gems. I’ve changed their names to protect the innocent.
Tara. I was assigned to a hospital facility during my COVID experience. I was sent there because I couldn’t walk. I was brought low by an amputated toe and the long-haul effects of COVID-19. The facility was basically a female unit, but the hospital part was both male and female.
Females were assigned there, so they worked in the kitchen, the laundry, for maintenance, and also as utility workers. You never saw them or were permitted contact or to converse with them, and they were escorted through male areas to ensure this didn’t happen.
I first saw Tara while I was being escorted from my hospital room to a video appointment with a doctor about thirty miles away. Tara was locked in a holding tank, and she couldn’t communicate with anyone because she was deaf. I knew this because of the big yellow tag on her shirt, ‘HEARING IMPAIRED’.
A lifetime ago, I had a friend who lost her hearing and had to learn sign language to communicate. I’d had to learn how also. I wasn’t very good, but I understood the basics, and she was always patient with my underachiever status.
I took a chance with Tara. After all, the rules said I couldn’t talk to her, they didn’t say I couldn’t sign to her.
“How are you? Are you okay?”
She explained she was being punished for disobeying a direct order, not packing her property and refusing housing. There were tears in her eyes. She was young, had cropped hair and looked, in a word, vulnerable.
“Don’t give up. Look up, you’re not alone.”
She rolled her eyes. “I have two years left to do. I don’t think I’m going to make it.”
Diane. She was sentenced to forty-five years for being at the wrong place at the wrong time. I befriended her while she was incarcerated at a woman’s prison in the mid 90’s. Back then, inmates could write to each other in other units.
I encouraged her to take programs to show she wanted to change her life. She did, and she ended up getting her GED.
Then the ‘system’ shut down letter communication between inmates, supposedly to eliminate communication between gangs.
A dollar for the swear jar, please – bullshit.
I don’t know if Diane ever went home. All of my efforts to find out have been hindered by the system. You see, in Texas, the reality is, they don’t want inmates to be rehabilitated, and they don’t want inmates helping each other.
Melanie. The third side of the coin? Melanie was incarcerated in Kentucky and committed suicide after doing almost ten years. I had her home address, and after not hearing from her for a month, I wrote her mom. Melanie had given up. Many have before her, and many more will after if things don’t change.
Coins are meant to be protected, put in a bank, shown their worth. Priceless…
ABOUT THE AUTHOR. John is currently doing another one-year set off, after almost thirty years of incarceration. He is an insulin dependant diabetic, he’s lost a toe to his disease, he’s survived COVID-19, and he is still viewed as a threat to society apparently, since he just got turned down for parole once again. I visited him once in prison. When I left an officer stopped me. He wanted to tell me what a good and amazing guy John Green was. John Green has been a frequent contributor to WITS, and he is also author of Life Between The Bars, a unique and heartwarming memoir described by Terry LeClerc, “This book is so good because each chapter is short, has a point, doesn’t whine. It’s an excellent book.” John can be contacted at: John Green #671771 Jester III Unit 3 Jester Road Richmond, Texas 77466
I lost my way sometime after 2006. I’m a Marine Corp veteran and father of four amazing children, as well as two beautiful grandchildren, but I still lost my way. I felt like I was on a train, headed down a mountain, without breaks, not realizing pride and selfishness were pushing the train faster, not to mention greed, alcohol and drugs. I thought I was in total control though. My train took me to prison for the first time in 2014.
Before that happened, I had tried to convince myself the people who meant the most to me didn’t notice the condition of my train as it passed them every day. I told myself, ‘I got this.’ I’d pay half the rent one week intending to pay the rest the next week and justifying it all with, ‘Well, at least I paid something.’ Next week would come, the utilities would be due and the other half of the rent, plus the three kids that looked up to me needed lunch money, and the refrigerator was empty. I was so ‘in control’, I didn’t realize the fifty dollars I just spent on drugs was taking food out of their mouths.
Life kept picking up speed. My GPS stopped working, and I was headed in a direction I never saw coming. I’ve tried, over the years, to figure out what made me lose focus on what was really going on. What I finally figured out was – it was me. I was the conductor. I derailed myself at the age of 48-years-old. I have no one to blame but me. And I needed help. I found help in God.
And I had to start believing I was worth happiness, love and forgiveness. I also figured out I had nothing to lose and everything to gain. Looking back, I think prison may have saved my life. I could have died on my path. I think it was a sign from above, telling me to steer in the direction of freedom, family and forgiveness. The most important change I’ve ever made is letting God take over as my conductor.
ABOUT THE WRITER. Charles Butcher is new to our writing family, but has said what many writers have shared – ‘prison may have saved my life’. That sometimes get lost in the debate of how to improve conditions and the system. I hope he shares more of his wisdom and perspective with us in the future, acknowledging we can take what’s good and make it better, while fixing or removing all that is broken. Mr. Butcher can be contacted at: Charles D. Butcher #166023 21000 Hwy. 350 East Model, CO 81059
For over three years I’ve been writing for Walk In Those Shoes, a sounding board for prisoners whose voices would otherwise be muffled behind prison walls, as well as a call to action for readers. In a world of social statuses, cultural practices and racial characteristics that serve to divide us, we remain connected through our human experiences. We’ve all lost a loved one. We’ve all dreamed. We’ve all had childhood crushes for that special someone that turned our words to mush. We’ve all done something we wish we could take back, and we all have something yet to attain. Our experiences link us in a way that voids our differences, the fabric of our worldly relationships woven in our stories.
It was after reading personal and thought-provoking essays by writers like John Green and Charles Mamou, that I recognized the importance of Walk In Those Shoes. Each piece was thoughtfully edited and kept true to its writer while providing a visual nexus that was soulful, stories not told with rhetoric but the realism of childhood abandonment, abuse and regrets. There were also tales of familial joys, kindness and compassion. I could hardly wait to join such an astonishing cast of writers whom I’d come to admire through their shared vulnerability.
On October 5, 2017, Walk In Those Shoes featured a piece titled I’m Still Breathing, an homage to Dr. Maya Angelou. In addition to the message, there was an image of a rusted manacle laid bare on granite siding. This visual selection was a symbol of empathy meant to resonate with my words. It was my first writing to be published on Walk In Those Shoes, my induction into a brotherhood of writers and one of my proudest moments.
Simply put, Walk In Those Shoes is a proverbial reminder that we are not without empathy. It is a platform for writers with broken pasts to make whole their productive future. I’m grateful for my fellow contributors for their courage to share their experiences. Our stories are not meant to suffer in silence, our stories are meant to heal.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Terry Robinson often writes under the pen name ‘Chanton’, and his creative resume is rapidly growing. His is a co-author of Crimson Letters, Voices From Death Row, a book banned from prisons in North Carolina; he is an active board member of Walk In Those Shoes as well as one of several frequent contest judges; and he continues to work on his memoir, as well as a book of fiction. His writing abilities are amazingly far reaching, and we are fortunate to have his voice and input in the direction of WITS. Terry Robinson has always maintained his innocence, and after studying his case file and transcripts WITS also believes in that innocence. Mr. Robinson can be contacted at: Terry Robinson #0349019 Central Prison 4285 Mail Service Center Raleigh, NC 27699-4285
I. My block housed only 18 to 24-year-olds. For my one hour of recreation on my first day there, weighted with full-restraints (hand- cuffs, ankle-shackles, waist-chains connect- ing them) I clank-paced the tier. Each cell door had an eight-inch square of window, some framing faces that peered at me. Marko, a feral-looking latino who had come from home to hole as a pretrial detainee, flagged me as I passed. He was breathless with excitement and blinking rapidly as he testified: “God speaks to me.” He’d tried but failed to pluck out his eyes, so, to receive divine enlightenment, he instead had committed to hand- copying the Bible’s one thousand three hundred and eighty-nine chapters, every jot and tittle using crayon-sized floppy- rubber pens that were approved (suicide-proof) for segregated inmates. He’d been at it two years, during which his hair and beard grew like Jesus’. His eyes widened, crackling with supernatural energy as he showed me a waist-high tower of babbling pages.
II. Skyler, freckled and well-muscled from toting hay bales, had never traveled past city limits until he got arrested. An accent is not an accent in one’s hometown – it’s invisible – but Skyler’s tobacco bent even further into ‘baccer. At first. Six months in, we were friends. I called his name from behind my door, since it’d been several days since we’d spoken. I pressed my ear to my door’s steel crack to catch his answer. That’s not my name. My name is Fahbo (Fabulous, in short) from New York. I’m an ahtist. I could feel his tongue wrang- ling his identity, twisting it’s straight but tilted spine into a kind of personal scoliosis, figuring nobody would care to remove his corselet. He was right.
III. This one guy loved the hole. He’s been in and out of many holes since age fifteen. This manimal fancied himself a hunter. He’d cover his cell’s light fixture, and his rear-wall’s strip of window; so, to see in, an officer was forced to shade her eyes from the tier’s glare while leaning face against the eight-inch door window. They’d hear a faint but steady friction: ch-ch-ch-ch-ch- and suddenly a milky roar would splat into the Plexiglas at mouth- level, followed by a weaponized penis thudding and rubbing it in. The guard would scream a variation of, “Oh, you nasty muthafucka! Get your sick ass down from there!” He’d built a ‘deer stand’ he bragged, by stacking books on either side of his door so he could get a clear head shot. He seemed shocked when I admitted I didn’t do it too, as if I were some strange beast.
IV. Evidently, prison administrators have figured out how to remove evolution’s rev-limiter and take off its restrictor plate. Its transformative mutations now take place in as little as six months using Therapeutic Seclusion – also known as THE HOLE, in prison lingo. No one who passes through ever leaves the same person if he entered a year ago. The hole is a tool designed to break man down to his quintessence. It hyper- bolizes by creating a parody of one’s character. I’ve seen it strip away the masks and games of faith – no time for masquerades when insanity is gaining – forcing a sort of apotheosis. I have watched it petrify pretense into cement, making men fake forever. I’ve even witnessed it dissolve humanity in atavistic acid: acting like an animal now comes naturally to him.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR. George Wilkerson lives on Death Row. He is a talented writer, always keeping us on our toes, and an occasional contributor to WITS. Mr. Wilkerson is a co-author of Crimson Letters, an eye-opening book released in 2020, sharing the voices of those living on North Carolina’s Death Row.
Mr. Wilkerson can be contacted at: George T. Wilkerson #0900281 4285 Mail Service Center Raleigh, NC 27699-4285
“My mind was racing with thoughts I couldn’t even grasp mentally. I went home and sat in the house with all the lights out, scared to move, didn’t know what to do nor to say. My mom was gone to a choir convention in Mississippi during the time of the incident. While I sat in our house quietly and somberly in the front room, my mother pulled up with no clue of what just happened. When she came in the door, turned to lock the door, I was sitting there in the dark room. I scared her out of her wits. As a mother who knew her child, she instantly asked me, ‘Boy, what’s wrong with you sitting in here with all the lights out?’ I was so discombobulated I honestly couldn’t speak, it seemed like somebody had my soul…”
It’s been twenty-six years for me now. I’m in solitary confinement and have been for almost six months. It’s the first long stretch I’ve done in lock-up, and I’ve learned if you aren’t mentally strong, it can break you. I’ve thought about everything from being three years old, to that day, to this place I am in now. I’ve probably aged ten years in the last six months, but I think I’ve made it. My blood pressure is crazy, but I think I’ve put it under control by relaxing and focusing on better things.
I was seventeen and still in high school when my mom came home that night. I’d just shot at some men. For months I’d been shot at, intimidated, ‘bullied’, by an adult. I’d sat in a car as it was beaten with a crow bar. I’d had a gun pointed at my head. My parents knew, the school knew, the police knew. They all knew. I can never take back what happened that night.
I now understand what they mean when people talk about the school to prison pipeline. Things are a little different now in Mobile, Alabama, where I came from. I hear there are anti-bullying laws in place to protect kids like I was. There are laws to keep kids from being followed around and shot at, as well there should be. No kid should ever have to grow old in a place like this. No kid should ever be expected to know how to make people stop shooting at them.
I went from going to high school, playing football and dreaming, to living in a nightmare. No, I can’t take it back. I should never have had to. It should have never gotten to that night in my living room.
ABOUT THE WRITER: Mr. Singleton’s story has been shared here, but this is the first time he has written for WITS. I hope he continues to write about his life in the Alabama Department of Corrections. Louis Singleton can be contacted at: Louis Singleton #179665 0-24 Fountain Correctional Facility 9677 Highway 21 North Atmore, AL 36503
I don’t remember my mother’s face. Not the warmth of her smile or her loving embrace. In fact, I don’t have one memory of her at all. Sherly Ann Lacey. In a drugged-out rage, my sister’s father took her life one night while she slept. Using a shotgun, he blew her brains onto a wall. She was due to have his second child any day.
Naturally the event devastated my, her, family. She was the first of my grandmother’s eleven children to be lost so early in life.
Many will believe it was my mom’s murder that first shaped my life, but that’s not true. It was people’s reaction to it that molded who I became, shaped the conclusions I would draw in life and how I’d react to pain, loss and various levels of devastation that serve as markers in every life.
Nature verses nurture? Nurture wins hands down every time. It’s people who shape people. Hard scrabble environments do not create hard hearts or ill-formed souls. People do.
Louise Lacey, my grandmother, herself a quiet, ‘nurtured’ woman, raised my sister and I. A beauty in her day, giving birth to eleven children by three different men, and being subject to my great-grandmother, who might well have been the basis for a character from Walter Mosely’s Los Angeles, my grandmother eased into a grand-motherly figure. Love.
By the time of my mother’s murder, my granny was an old hand with children. Panic after a miss-deed or the bright blood from an accident didn’t send her reeling. When her brother beat his wife, she’d complain about the noise – after a while…
Hers was the knowledge of survival. Coming of age in the 40’s and 50’s as a black woman was as hard as it was complex. You cried when you couldn’t hold it in any longer. Then you simply dusted yourself off and did the next thing needed to survive. Tough.
I’m surely being too simple, short, and impatient with the telling of her depth of spirit, her staunch faith in God and her unshakable commitment to her family. Like the moon, she’s a silent force that has affected every part of me.
If my granny’s footprint in life was quiet, it was only because my great grand-mother’s, Josie Frederick-Hintz, was so loud. At six foot in her socks, ‘Big Joe’ was a demanding, sharp-tongued, physical woman. She chewed tobacco, ran a whore house and carried a .38 revolver until the day she died – not for show or as a bluff.
Born in 1911 in Louisiana, Big Joe had owned a grocery store, bowling alley, brothel, after-hours gambling den and a total of five different rental properties throughout Los Angeles. She pinned her money in a silk pouch to her bra.
Josie gave birth to two children and raised her brother’s son after his murder. Systemic racism, sexism, abject poverty, rape, molestation, robbery, abuse, beatings, murder, jealous, insecure and ambitious men, their equally motivated, if shrewder, counter-parts in women – Josie not only survived it all in the big city as a veraciously stunning beauty, she was also able to, at times, win herself a few slices of pie.
But those pieces of ‘white only pie’ come at a cost. Josie’s size in life demanded control and that others, people she loved, be smaller in life to make room for the demands of who she needed to be – the boss!
Her biological son, my great-uncle Bill, Jr., was a con who became a homosexual after being violently raped in prison. He was serving time for counterfeiting U.S. Treasury notes, five dollar bills. Her brother’s son, Lemule, would become a vicious, small time pimp.
Large personalities, small egos, violent drama, they were characters you couldn’t make up. My grandfather was from a cattle ranch in Texas, a pimp and hustler who discharged from the army in California.
They were all largely uneducated people save by life itself. Like the rest of us, they had flaws. The one that has been a prominent force in my life was their silence. They seemed to need to marshal their energies to hold it all in and to move forward.
Through my self-education while in prison, I’ve become fairly articulate, but I remember the silence of a time before I became a reader, before I saw the value of language and communication, before I learned to read, comprehend and apply ideas to further my own understanding of me, my world, my actions. Silence.
I know how the lack of the ability to express one’s self in words pushes the thunder of action deep into one’s ears. You’re not deaf… there is no sound!
I came up in the 80’s, MTV, BET, videos, PC, crack victims, empires and hip-hop culture. My family’s silence was a foreign language subtitled on silent film.
Now listen! We all believe our own struggles to be the worst. It’s that forest through the trees thing. But by growing up never having a single meaningful conversation with the adults in my life, I kind of raised myself. I sat waiting for something or someone to influence me, but no one ever took notice.
We are all born into motion. That’s what life is – motion. A body in motion will stay in motion until it’s acted upon by an equal and opposite force. I crashed into Mr. Michael B. Huston.
Teenagers, kids, are like vacuum chambers that suck up everything indiscriminately. Facts, emotions, ideas, words, anything floating through their lives. Sadly, sometimes, the adults who rear them contribute the most trash to the bombardment when they are the primary force policing the intake. They may sit back, looking confused and even offended as the young life bursts for lack of any meaningful release. At around thirteen to fifteen or so, they act out, rebel at the mistreatment.
Now, I grew up on violence without ever being told it was wrong to do this or that to people. Not simply the violence put forth by the men of my family and neighborhood against the women of my home and in my world, but poverty creates its own hellish acceptance of might as a viable means, be it for respect or fear.
When my father, the Baptist preacher, found out I’d been doing robberies when I’d shot and paralyzed Mr. Huston – then an Assistant Attorney General to the State of Oregon – he expressed shock and hurt. “How could you do something so obviously wrong?!” I remember him blurting over the phone as I sat in a juvenile detention center.
The answer, though I didn’t know how to articulate it as a seventeen year old, was that I really didn’t know that it was all that big a deal, that people would place such a huge value on life.
That will sound twisted to some, but as a child it was extremely remedial to me. This may go a long way in explain the Black Lives Matter movement to some. I’d just tried to kill ‘myself’ a few months earlier. There was no panic, anger, or fear from the community. There was no rush to review the issue before various boards. As a child, I never received care or treatment for my mental health.
I’d ingested a small mountain of heart, blood pressure and pain pills. Then I got into bed. I remember passing out. Kids test the boundaries of their world. I didn’t believe I wanted to deal with any more pain in my life, so as no one was ever looking, I sought to move on.
If my life, my ‘black life’ didn’t matter to the world, why would I come to the conclusion as a child that his white one did? Not that race was a factor for me or Mr. Huston at the time. The justice system made that point emphatically.
I was thoroughly and completely confused. As I sat in Court, it was like returning to Central Park, only to find it’s been moved! You know the address, turn the corner, and it’s not there! But how could you, I, be that wrong?
“How could I do something so obviously wrong – ‘toanother’?” is the unspoken end to the question.
It’s a question of value(s). Poor, uneducated black boys and girls are taught in a plethora of ways that they have little to no value. So why does it come as such a shock when their value of others falls short in word or deed?
The best lies ever told take place in the vacuum of the mind, there’s no one other to refute, challenge, or evaluate them. So, speak the thought, the feeling, and force the conversation out into the ‘now’. It’s the thing that gives value to human beings… love spoken into a life that is loved – valued, even.
ABOUT THE WRITER. Mr. Jones has an honest and thought provoking style of writing that is exciting to work with. I look forward to hearing more of his insight as well as more of his life’s experiences. Mr. Jones has served 32 years for a crime he committed when he was seventeen years old. He can be contacted at:
DeLaine Jones #7623482 777 Stanton Blvd. Ontario, OR 97914
