No one knew anything of my plans. But many of my fellow prisoners had the same kinds of plans for the people who had crossed them. Plotting revenge is a common way for inmates to try to stay warm locked in a cold cell, living in a cold world.
Once someone has seen hatred or has been treated with cruelty, it is easy to respond the same way. That’s what my murderous plans were really about—I wanted those people to learn firsthand how they had made me feel. I wanted them to hurt the way I had. The heat of that hate was what kept me going—at least for a while.
Inmates had to find ways to get through because they were not going to get out, at least not for a long time. So each of us in our own way learned to find peace in an ugly place, to find love in a dark world where no one really cared about us. We did what most lonely, loveless Americans do—we got pets.
Now, the prison rule book will tell you having a pet behind bars is a ridiculous fantasy—nothing like that would ever be allowed. The truth is that prisons are teeming with animals that give inmates comfort and love and something to nurture.
We had cats who lived inside and outside the penitentiary, who wouldn’t emerge until all the lights in the cells were turned off and only the unearthly yellow glow of the security lights on the sidewalks was left.
Rangy, feral “convict” cats that would have been turned down by even the kindest shelters stalked the prison grounds, unneutered and unafraid. They would chase cockroaches and moths, dancing in the near darkness outside our cellblocks for hours. One inmate, a guy everyone called Catman, would give them food he had taken from the chow hall or purchased at the commissary. They knew him on sight and responded instantly to the sound of his voice, knowing that his presence meant sustenance. In return, they gave him something to care for, something to look out for, something to love.
One spring Catman branched out and began feeding the skunk families who roamed freely around the edges of the prison. Unfortunately for the rest of us, the skunks quickly learned that a white uniform worn by a man walking alone outside meant dinnertime. Countless inmates were accosted by baby skunks on the rec yard or when walking between buildings. The worst part was that we couldn’t yell or scare them off—because they had the power to drench us in a toxic stench that would take weeks to wash off. We had to remain calm and softly explain to the beady-eyed skunklets toddling toward us with their tails held high in the air that they had mistaken us for someone else—and then we ran like hell.
One guy had a collection of live spiders in various containers in his cell. He was referred to—of course—with the eternal clarity of prison wit, as Spiderman. This inmate would appear every evening on the rec yard—not to work out but to lunge and leap, catching flies and mosquitoes to take back to his hungry eight-legged friends. Kind of a weirdo, but well intentioned, I guess.
We also had a mouse trainer in the house. True to the prison name game, he was known as Ratman. He taught the mice to respond to his calls or chirps by feeding them treats—and then selling them to other inmates who, for some reason, seemed to want semitrained rodents as cell mates. These mice would even trail their masters around the prison, or ride along in a pocket to the rec yard, where inmates would show off their little partners’ abilities by getting the mice to waddle-run toward them at the first sound of their human counterparts’ voices. It was as heartwarming as you might imagine.
The rest of us had to make do with the animal pals we could see through our thick glass, screened, and dirty windows.
Every spring, we would watch the birds outside make nests, with varying degrees of success. Pigeon families broke our hearts by building homes that we knew would be directly in the sun come summer. The little squabs born there didn’t have a chance in the pounding Texas heat. They hatched and thrived, withered and died right in front of us. Every year, we’d see another couple of inexperienced birds try to use the same spot, and no amount of shouting or angry pounding on the windows seemed to deter them.
One time we became fans of a bird clan that had built in what we all deemed a smart, safe spot. Their babies were growing and almost at the point where they would be able to fly away on their own when a monstrous Texas thunderstorm kicked up. We sat helplessly inside, watching through heavy rain as the creatures we had seen evolve from eggs to babies to fuzzy teenage birds were beaten to death by sharp clumps of hail as big as golf balls.
The comparisons to the lives of the men inside were so obvious even the unschooled could see them. Most of the inmates had grown up with parents who built their nests in precarious places—who didn’t realize, until too late, that their children simply didn’t have a chance. Most of the men inside had been scorched early on by experiences from which they could never recover. They suffered from inattention and abuse, drug use and hopelessness and, sadly, simple ignorance that seemed to go all the way to their DNA. Now, they were all grown up and had no place to go except the penitentiary.
And I was in there with them—every minute of every day. I was with them in December 1988, when the district appellate court rejected all my pleas for relief.
I was still with them in September 1989, when the Court of Criminal Appeals gave me its final rebuff. I was beginning to worry that getting out might take longer than I had thought—much longer. The days and months continued to pile up. My prospects were bleak.
I worried about my son. By this point, I had been in prison almost five years. Eric was about nine years old. I was watching him grow up on the installment plan, with visits every six months. Each time he came, it was like meeting a different kid. He would be taller, or rounder, or more talkative, or less. He would be happy or as peeved as his aunt Mary Lee. He would share peeks at his life with me—or not. And nothing I could do brought him closer.
When he was very young, I could entertain him with lemon drops and questions about his cars. As he got older, he began to look around and didn’t like what he saw. I could no longer convince him that the inmate with the eye patch was a pirate. He was harder to distract in the visiting room, when some families’ moments together dissolved into tears or anger. He knew that nobody else’s dad lived this way. He knew I was powerless to meet him anyplace else.
God knows what my in-laws had told him about me—it couldn’t have been good.
I began to feel more and more diminished, more and more distant from him. I sensed that seeing me had just become a distasteful duty he was being forced to carry out. I didn’t know who to feel sorriest for—him or me.
I knew that, if I didn’t get out of prison, I would lose him entirely. And he was really the only thing I was living for.
My newest efforts in the federal courts were floundering. So I tried another approach. I contacted one of the handful of actual attorneys who served as staff counsel for inmates. Most people didn’t know that the state paid a small cadre of lawyers to work with inmates on legal issues that came up during imprisonment. Wives abandon husbands and file for divorce, child custody fights become vicious, relatives die and their wills need to be carried out—those were the kinds of cases these attorneys addressed.
I asked the attorneys to help me file for DNA testing. I’d been reading about advances in technology that were increasingly allowing forensic identification based on blood, semen, even hair. I hoped against hope that science held some answers for me. I knew it was a long shot, but it was all I had.
It was August 1991 by the time the court finally granted my motion. The attorney who filed it for me made all the difference. He told me prison writs were rarely given serious consideration. The lawyer’s bar number on my paperwork elevated it above the typical penitentiary fare. It was actually looked at, read, and ultimately, approved.
Williamson County issued a bench warrant for me, and I was soon on my way back to Georgetown, Texas, in the company of a sheriff’s deputy.
My exit from the penitentiary summed up everything anyone ever needs to know about the Texas D
epartment of Corrections. They bid me adieu by giving me a set of lovely free-world clothes—electric blue parachute pants and a too-small T-shirt with hearts and flowers on the front, surrounding fancy script spelling out FRIENDS ARE FOREVER.
I must have cut a dashing figure as I was marched out the front gate, which was an odd experience in itself. Walking out was something I had dreamed of for years. Of course, in my imaginings I was never dressed as I was that day—like an oversize eight-year-old girl who needed a shave.
We sped off to the Harris County Jail in Houston to pick up another prisoner. To my surprise, the inmate turned out to be a woman, wanted for writing hot checks. As an added bonus, she appeared to be terribly sick—she was staggering and weaving on the way to the car like a Saturday night drunk. Of course, for security reasons, I was handcuffed to her. I feared she was going to pass out, fall to the ground, and drag me down with her. Fortunately, the cop decided to let her lie down in the backseat, while I sat in front.
We stopped in the middle of nowhere to grab lunch, and I experienced something I’d heard other inmates talk about but had never actually felt—sensory overload, overstimulation, too much, too soon. Call it what you will. There, in the middle of the restaurant, looking at the massive menu board, I simply couldn’t make sense of it. The writing was too colorful, there was too much conversation and clanging going on at the tables, there were too many choices available. There was music playing. Everyone was happy. I felt overwhelmed, weak in the knees, lost.
The cop helped me order—chicken tacos and an iced tea. I didn’t cry when I bit into the first taco, but I must have moaned with pleasure, because the woman I was handcuffed to passed me a few of her steak fingers out of pity.
It was the first real food—the first meal cooked well enough that people would actually pay for it—that I had tasted in years. I was in home-cooking heaven at being reintroduced to some of the powerful flavors and freshness I’d been missing out on.
Back in Williamson County, I was pleased to see there was a new jail. I was alone in a cell, and it was spacious compared to what I lived in back “home” at the Wynne Unit. It was also air-conditioned, almost too cool. I feared I would catch pneumonia. The food there wasn’t bad either.
The company, however, was. I was locked up with inmates who watched nothing but wrestling or cartoons. There was a coup under way in the Soviet Union, but no one except me cared. I almost got into a fight when I tried to explain to the hostile and uninterested throng the relevance of what was happening on the other side of the world.
My blood was drawn early in my stay. Then all I could do was wait—and wait—and wait—for the results. Still, it took weeks for me to get back to Wynne, even longer before I was back on my job with the Typing Pool. I learned later that the woman who supervised me at work had actually called the Williamson County Jail and told the sheriff’s department that she needed me on the job and wanted me back immediately. It was nice to be wanted—even by a prison supervisor.
I felt optimistic that finally I might be on the way to getting this terrible mess worked out. Maybe I would be home with Eric sooner than I thought. Maybe I could pick up life where I’d left off.
I had no idea how long it would take or how much more I would lose before I would finally walk out of prison—before I would finally be free.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The guard shouted out my name from the dayroom.
I had mail!
I leapt out of my bunk like I’d been shot from a cannon. I had only a few minutes to catch my TDC “mailman” before he moved on to another inmate eager to be remembered by the U.S. Postal Service.
For a man in prison, getting mail is like having daylight shipped in. An envelope with an inmate’s name on it illuminates, at least briefly, a dark and limited world. Even junk mail takes on magnified importance. It’s more than just a break from the everyday. To those on the inside, mail is a reminder that they are still alive—tangible proof that someone out there in the free world knows we exist. I loved getting news from home or reviews from a magazine or book editor who’d been reading my work. Sometimes, a sainted friend would send me a new book that would keep me busy for a few nights.
When the guard bellowed my name for mail call, there was even the outside possibility I would finally get some word on the DNA testing I’d been waiting months and years for. I jogged to the guard in time and got handed a small envelope. I recognized the handwriting on the outside instantly. It couldn’t have been more familiar.
The letter was from Eric.
I held it tightly as I made my way back to my bunk. I sat down and turned it over and over in my hands. I looked around to make sure I was semialone. Inmates never opened important mail in front of anyone else.
I wanted to absorb the news without anybody around—because I knew it might be bad. Prisoners are accustomed to getting dumped, denied legal appeals, and disappointed through the mail. We’d learned to take the bad news by ourselves, so we’d have time to paste on our faces the necessary expression of indifference. None of us wanted other inmates to see us cry or give up or waver—even momentarily.
I liked believing that Eric had written me during my incarceration, even though I knew he hadn’t done it on his own initiative. Over the years he’d signed a birthday card, or scrawled his name at the bottom of a letter my mother sent. Most of the mail I got from him had my parents’ home as a return address. I knew they encouraged him to write when he stayed with them. This note, however, had been sent from the home he shared with his aunt Mary Lee.
I took this development as a good sign. He was fifteen, after all—maybe it was a sign of growing up. Maybe he had finally chosen to reach out to me on his own.
I opened it carefully and began reading. The youthful imperfections of his penmanship could not soften the hostility of his message. Eric wrote that he didn’t want to see me anymore—he didn’t want to make the twice-yearly visit to the prison to talk with someone he barely knew. He didn’t want to wait through the complicated prison check-in or check-out process, and he didn’t want to sit for hours in the visiting room—surrounded by ne’er-do-wells and the needy, loud, messy families who clamored to see them.
I knew our visits had begun to feel like an annoyance, a duty he couldn’t get out of. And I certainly knew my former in-laws didn’t appreciate Eric’s continuing connection with me. My parents and siblings were undoubtedly the only people in his life who wanted him to keep making the trek to Huntsville.
Still, Eric’s letter stung—it was like a knife slashing at the meager measure of pride I had left—it cracked my brittle belief in my own future. His rejection of me mocked the glimmer of optimism I had so carefully nurtured—that someday, somehow, something decent would come out of this nightmare.
Frankly, Eric was all I had left. He was really all I was living for—the only remnant of my life with Chris. In the past decade, I’d lost too many pieces of myself—my freedom, time with my family, the company of my friends. But I had always been able to tell myself I still had my son, even if everything else was gone. And now, so was he.
I crumpled onto the bunk and just lay there, clenching and unclenching my fists, feeling hot tears forming and then falling, clutching the letter to my chest as if I were trying to squeeze all the hurt out of it—as if I could change its message by crushing the paper it was written on.
Then I did what I always did when things got too tough. I thought back to Chris and the way she calmed me, the way she could make everything better. I thought back on the difficult things we had gone through together. I thought back to the years before Eric was born, to the time when Chris and I had lost a child.
We’d just begun trying to get pregnant, and for us, conception happened quickly and easily. We took it as a sign that it was meant to be. Chris felt good and looked beautiful. We’d already chosen names—Nicole for a girl and Eric for a boy. She liked
me to come along for her regular checkups, sonograms, and talks with the doctor. And I loved being able to see our baby growing and know that, with every visit, we were getting closer to the moment when we could all say hello in person.
We went in for a standard checkup one day. Chris stretched out on the examining table and bared her tummy. It was big and round and taut—she was close to twenty-two weeks along.
The technician smeared the now-familiar goop on Chris’s belly and began running the sonogram wand back and forth. She was trying to find our baby’s heartbeat. She moved the device lower and then higher, and then off to either side. She didn’t say anything was wrong; she simply said there might be a problem with the equipment—she would get the doctor to help her. Still, there was something unnerving about her demeanor—about the way she left the room so quietly, without smiling, without any laughter or words of reassurance.
Chris and I waited in stony silence—frozen silence. We didn’t breathe a word to each other about our growing sense of panic. It was as though we could keep bad things from happening by refusing to speak of them.
Finally, the doctor came in, exchanged pleasantries, sat down, and took over the procedure himself. He pushed the device back and forth and around and then back again—searching for something that wasn’t there. After a long, terrible silence, he lifted the apparatus off her stomach, laid it on the table, and said flatly what we had dreaded most.
“I am so sorry. There is no heartbeat. I’m afraid your baby has died.”
It was as if the floor had fallen out of the room. Chris was shattered. I was lost. It seemed impossible. We’d been walking on air when we came into the office. We left in mourning.
Getting Life Page 14