Stand Tall

by Dewey Bozella

  “Goddamn,” I swore to a God I now worshipped but could not fathom. “Another fucking brother, man?” I turned to Leon, wishing there was some way to fight this fight for him, to be the big brother who could step in and save him. I said the only thing left for me to say.

  “Yo, man, you know I love you, man.”

  I got to see him one more time after that, before being called to the chaplain’s office.

  I rode to Leon’s funeral shackled in a prison van with two officers to guard me. Traffic was terrible, and the CO driving—Murphy was his name, and we knew each other because he managed boxers on the outside—got lost on the way to Brooklyn. It took us five hours to make what should have been a ninety-minute trip at the most. When we finally got there, we walked in, and the pastor was the only one there.

  “You missed it,” he said.

  The COs went into damage control. “Yo, man, don’t get us in trouble,” they implored me. “Don’t say anything.”

  I was quiet. Maybe it just wasn’t meant for me to see my little brother in a coffin. Maybe this wasn’t God punishing me, but God sparing me just that one piece of pain.

  Back in the van, my silence made the COs anxious.

  “Yo, man, why ain’t you crying?” one of them asked.

  “For what?” I answered dully. “This is the way my life has been. Just like this.”

  Murphy said he wished he had a fighter like me, then asked if there was something they could do to make this any better.

  “Get me some street food,” I suggested.

  They pulled up to some joint and bought a bag of burgers, then loosened my handcuffs so I could eat. Back at Sing Sing, I never said a word about missing my brother’s funeral. It was just the way my life was, that’s all.

  7

  AS THE YEARS SLOWLY PASSED, and I became more educated and more spiritual, a new restlessness set in. I became less resigned to the solitary confinement my heart was serving. My boxing, plus the classes and workshops I continually signed up for, had given me regular contact with good, compassionate people from the outside, and I was beginning to realize that, contrary to what I’d heard all my life, maybe I wasn’t worthless. Knowing that I had the ability to contribute positively to society made me eager to give something of myself. I know that sounds high-minded and maybe even insincere. But my whole life had been about survival, about resorting, even as a kid, to taking what I needed because I knew I couldn’t count on anyone else to provide for me. I pretty much raised myself, and I can tell you right now that a child who’s forced to do that is bound to grow up selfish and distrustful. Shariff and the Muslim lifers who mentored me saw right through that childish posturing, though, and the true gift they gave me, through prayer and meditation, was self-awareness. I’ll always be grateful to them for that. The world does work in mysterious ways, and ultimately, it was these supposedly stone-cold criminals who set me right. My faith before had been shallow and easily abandoned in the face of injustice. Believing in God again—truly believing and trusting in his plan—allowed me to believe in myself. It doesn’t get any simpler.

  Religion is a subject that came to fascinate me. Whether I was reading the Qu’ran or the Bible, or studying Asian philosophy and the ancient martial arts, I was drawn to the idea of being an honorable man—one who provided for and protected his wife and children and humbly served his community. I liked to picture myself in a business suit someday, coming home from work to a house full of kids and the smell of dinner on the stove. I would be married to a good woman, and we would live in our own house, drive a nice car, save enough to send our children to college. I would fill my shelves with as many books and CDs as I wanted without anyone telling me what I was or wasn’t allowed to enjoy. I would wear whatever color clothes I pleased, and good shoes. In my free time, I would introduce at-risk kids to boxing, returning the favor the great Floyd Patterson and Bob Jackson once did for me. Maybe I could shape the promising ones into real contenders. It would feel good to at least give some other young man the chance that had been taken away from me. I would be surrounded by people I cared about, and who cared about me in return.

  That was my fantasy. My reality was that none of the families waiting in line on visiting day belonged to me, and my name was not going to be called to walk through that orange door unless my lawyers had business to discuss. The rare visits I got weren’t nearly enough to sustain me, so I had to get creative. Eventually I found my own way to be around the visiting-day families: I became their photographer.

  After I completed the photographer’s training and got the job through the Jaycee program, I became a fixture in Sing Sing’s visiting room, taking family portraits for my fellow inmates. The big room was bursting with the conflicting emotions of so many people torn apart by crime. Working that room, I would see the tears rolling down the cheeks of bone-tired mothers who left packages of cookies and cigarettes for the sons who had been swept up by the streets and landed in prison. I’d watch the little kids light up under the attention of daddies they barely knew, while the older kids tried to hide the pain they felt inside with long silences and blank stares. I saw the prison groupie girlfriends servicing their con-artist cons, going as far as they possibly could before a CO spotted them and broke it up. In that room, all kinds of promises would be made and broken. Sometimes family ties would tighten, and sometimes they would snap. Sometimes marriages held strong as cement, and sometimes you could watch them crumble before your eyes. In the visiting room, people had no choice but to say whatever they had to say for anyone to hear, whether they were voicing their loyalty or their doubts, their love or their contempt. Sometimes the smiles my camera captured were real, but a lot of times, it seemed, they were just a masquerade. It’s funny how you get a feel for what’s genuine or not by looking through that little lens.

  Prison rules banned female visitors from wearing provocative clothing, like see-through blouses or tight pants, but that didn’t stop some women from pushing the boundaries. You could still get an eyeful when you scanned the room; plenty of the women were all but screaming for attention. They didn’t get mine: it was the composed, understated women who piqued my interest. One day—this was in the springtime of 1995—an inmate’s sister came to visit, and I went up to take a picture. “Hey, this is Sing Sing’s light-heavyweight champion,” the inmate, Joseph, said by way of introduction.

  Trena possessed that kind of quiet demeanor that speaks volumes. She carried herself like a woman, not a little girl. You could see the intelligence sparkling in her brown eyes and feel the warmth in her pretty smile. I was happily surprised when Trena told me how much she loved boxing; she had grown up watching it with her dad. We stood there talking for a good twenty minutes. Trena was twenty-eight, about seven years younger than I was. She had been going to college to become a teacher, majoring in psychology so she could work with special needs kids, but her financial aid had run out one semester short of graduation, and she was working then for a discount stock brokerage firm. She was a single mom with a daughter named Diamond, who was just three. She and the baby’s father had just split up, and he put them out of the house. She was on the verge of becoming homeless and landing in a family shelter with Diamond when her sickly father came to the rescue and suggested they rent a two-bedroom place together.

  I wanted to meet her ex in the boxing ring, right then and there, for a little tune-up. I’ve never been able to abide men who treat women badly. The sick feeling it gives me probably goes back to the way Dirty Harry used my mother as his speed bag when I was a helpless little kid. Even when I took to the streets as a teen and ran with a rough crowd, I couldn’t act the role of macho gangster that other dudes did, slapping their girlfriends around, expecting them to obey commands like some dog, and calling them all bitches, or worse. At Sing Sing, there were guys who would curse their own mothers out in the visiting room: Didn’t I fucking tell you to bring me Snickers? Some guys would manipulate a whole string of groupie pen pals or whoever else they co
uld bait and hook, staggering the visiting days so each one thought she was the only “fiancée” bringing packages, putting money in a con’s commissary account, and giving a quick hand job under the table when the CO wasn’t looking. These were the same dudes who expected their women to smuggle in cash or contraband. Some of them, foolish enough to bring in drugs, were caught and ended up behind bars themselves. You think the inmate who put them up to it felt even a little bit sorry? Hell, no. He just moved on to Bachelorette number 2 . . . or number 22. It was as predictable as the plot of Dick and Jane, except, when it got to the critical part, Jane didn’t have the sense to run. You’d walk into the room, see a guy all buffed up—good physique, handsome—sitting there with a girl five foot four, hundred and eighty pounds, wearing her desperation like cheap perfume, and you’d think, Here it goes again. She would be the only one in the room who didn’t know he was flat-out using her.

  Being the detached observer in that room a couple of days a week was like an advanced course in psychology. You would see the way a rapist behaved around a woman, how his cowardly need to dominate and hurt seemed to be always simmering just below the surface. You’d see how some men laid their wives or girlfriends out when the CO wasn’t looking, because they didn’t bring what they wanted. Yo, bitch, where my money at? You see him take a swing at her, you don’t tell the COs, because they could shut down visiting day right then and there for everybody. There were better ways to deal with that kind of disrespect. My status as a prison boxer had given me some credibility as a private peacekeeper, so if I saw some dude pulling that kind of shit, I would wait until I could get him on the other side of the orange door to get in his face: “What the fuck is wrong with you, man?” is usually all it took.

  The funny thing is, Trena told me much later that she had had a strong jolt of intuition about me before we even met that first time. She vividly remembers some inner voice speaking to her as she and her brother came up to get their picture taken. This man is going to be prosperous one day is what she heard. Once I’d taken their shot, I asked Trena if she minded if I took a picture of just her.

  “No, I don’t mind,” she said. I snapped the Polaroid, then took the picture, and put it in my pocket. It was my way of saying I was interested.

  I’d never met someone like Trena before, who could just dive right into the deep end of a conversation. We talked about the passion we both had for education, and the role of faith in our lives. It felt so good to have a stimulating conversation that had nothing to do with Sing Sing and the hell kept hidden behind that orange door. It felt indescribably good just to click with someone, and not have to plow through all that superficial bullshit you usually do when you’re sizing somebody up to see where the person fits in your life. I told her in our very first conversation that I was innocent, in jail for a crime I didn’t commit. I didn’t share the details, but I talked my head off. When it was time for her to leave, I cut straight to the chase. I was nowhere near as smooth as I thought I was.

  “You need to know that I’m not looking for a friend. I’m looking for a wife,” I informed Trena. New York had changed its mind about letting lifers marry and had lifted its ban in 1990. Working the visiting room gave me the possibility of actually meeting somebody and marrying someday, of having somebody who would help me do my time. My ideal woman would be someone who was smart and had a strong backbone; I didn’t want some meek little mouse who just said yes, yes, yes all the time with no convictions of her own. Independence was high on my list of desirable traits, and I also knew I wanted someone as interested in pursuing her education as I was in continuing mine. I’d chatted up women before during my roving photographer gig—always making sure it wasn’t someone’s wife or girlfriend—but Trena was the first one I considered a serious prospect.

  And now she was looking at me like I was crazy.

  Trena’s response to my forthright declaration about finding a wife sent me backpedaling for some dignity fast. I decided education was a safer topic, and I heard myself urging her to go back and finish her degree so she could build a better life for herself and her daughter. Still trying to cover my embarrassment, I told her she should also be in touch with God on a daily basis. Trena listened politely and, to her everlasting credit, did not cut me down then and there, though she later admitted to bursting out in laughter once she got to the parking lot, thinking it took one helluva nerve for a guy serving twenty years to life in prison to play like he was some damn life coach. Handsome but cocky is how she summed me up back then. And she had no intention of becoming some jailbird’s bride, thank you just the same. It’s safe to say that Sing Sing was not her matchmaker of choice.

  By the time she got home, I had already called and chatted up her father for half an hour.

  “Dewey wants to know if you’d be interested in coming to some festival at Sing Sing,” Trena’s dad helpfully relayed. Trena was surprised and not very pleased that her brother had given up her phone number to some felon she had just met, but my intentions were purely honorable. The Muslims were hosting a big festival in the prison gym, very family oriented, and we needed to sign up our guests well in advance so they could be cleared for the special visiting privilege. As best as you could when locked up in prison, I was asking Trena out on a date.

  It was another week before I got another turn at the phone and was able to call her again. The long wait worked in my favor, though, and whatever initial hesitation Trena felt had given way to an oh-why-not curiosity. She accepted my invitation.

  On the day of the festival, I dressed up as much as the prison rulebook would allow me, pulling on my best green sweater over a crisp white shirt I had arranged to have cleaned and pressed by an associate who worked in the laundry. Trena arrived in a nice dress, looking every inch the lady. I felt nervous, but she quickly put me at ease. We enjoyed the food, music, and all the kids happily racing around getting their faces painted and playing the little games that had been set up for them. She stayed for hours, until the festival ended around two thirty in the afternoon. We talked all day, but the conversation that stuck with me most was the one we had about family. She casually asked me if I had any siblings.

  “Yeah, I got sisters and brothers all over the place,” I said, shrugging. “But nobody sees after me.” In time, she would learn what had happened to them, and to me.

  Trena took my hand.

  “Well, guess what,” she said. “I’ll be your family.”

  Who asked who for that first kiss is a matter of ongoing dispute, but I do remember chiding her for being too prim.

  “Why you giving me a white-girl kiss?” I objected. “I want a real kiss!”

  “Wow, you’re pretty straightforward,” she checked me, even as she obliged.

  We began writing letters back and forth, several times a week, and Trena would let me know when she was coming to visit her brother. She often brought his young daughter to see him, and while the two of them were visiting, Trena would slip away and come hang out with me. My method of courting outside of prison had always amounted to this: sit down at a bar, go home with a woman. Either she would lie down and have sex with you, or not. You didn’t have to prove yourself.

  Now I understood that I had to be appealing and respectful. Most important of all, I wanted Trena to see that my word was good. I resolved to be attentive to everything she said and did, to show her how much I cared however I could. I wasn’t in a place where you could buy a nice bouquet and show up with flowers for your sweetheart. But creative people get put in prison, too, and with the right connections, I could buy a beautiful handcrafted greeting card from more than one talented artist doing time, with a message inscribed by my choice of prison poets. If I saved enough forbidden cash or had something worth trading, I could even get Trena a pocketbook from a guy who did designer-quality custom leatherwork from his cell.

  After a while, Trena got on my visiting list and began coming specifically to see me, which caused some tension between me and her brother, who
felt cheated out of his own visits and worried that Trena would spend what little money she had on packages for me instead of him. Sing Sing allowed visitors every day during the week, and alternating weekends. Trena lived in Beacon, which was just fifteen or twenty minutes up the Hudson River. She began coming to see me sometimes twice, three times a week. That told me a lot. I never asked her for anything, but I was grateful for the snacks she would buy us from the vending machines only the visitors were allowed to use. We would picnic on Big Az cheeseburgers and hot wings that Trena would nuke in the visiting room microwave. There was watery orange Tang to drink and candy bars for dessert—I had given up smoking without much trouble, but I craved sweets like crazy. We’d spend our time talking and laughing together, or sometimes we’d just sit holding hands, enjoying what little physical contact was allowed. I loved the way she would sometimes lay her head on my shoulder.

  The first time Trena brought Diamond to meet me, we were just sitting down at our assigned table when I saw two guys out of the corner of my eye getting ready to fight. There was no shouting, no commotion, or anything yet, but in that split second, I knew it was going to go down. I jumped up without a word and pushed Trena—with Diamond still in her arms—behind me. Then I pulled the chairs beside me and the table in front of us.

  “If you come over here, I’m gonna bust both your nigger asses,” I bellowed at the two men now locked in a brawl. Trena and Diamond both stared at me wide-eyed. Diamond was just a tiny thing, pretty and precious as the gemstone she was named for.

  “Why were they fighting?” Trena wondered after COs broke it up.