Writing My Wrongs

by Shaka Senghor

  The energy at Cooper Street was different from that of any prison I had been to, because inmates were constantly being released to the outside. It felt good to watch guys I had known from other joints walk out after serving nearly their entire adult life behind bars. When I ran into E Love, a guy I had known from the East Side, he told me that he was going home soon, and my confidence soared. E Love was far from a model prisoner, so if they were letting him go, I figured I stood at least a chance of getting out soon.

  Once I had settled into a routine at Cooper Street, Ebony and I had a talk about our visits and phone calls. At the time, phone calls cost nearly eight dollars for fifteen minutes on the line, so we tried to limit how often we talked. But it wasn’t easy. When we talked, we had such a good connection that we never wanted to stop. On more than one occasion, we would run up a bill so large that the prison would restrict our calls until Ebony paid it down.

  Visits came less frequently, but they were a great supplement because seeing each other in person made us feel connected in a way that couldn’t be replaced. Some days, we would spend eight hours sitting and talking to each other. Other times, we would play Scrabble or cards while we laughed and joked together, but there were also days when we would hold hands silently, lost in our own world. One of my favorite things to do on our visits was take pictures together. It provided me with an opportunity to sneak in feels on her booty and get extra kisses, especially when we had a cool cameraman.

  Each officer had a different approach to couples kissing. Some would give us a minute or longer if we were really lucky, and others would tell us to stop before we’d even gotten started. Whenever there was an officer who really didn’t care, we took full advantage of it. The first time that happened, I experienced the deepest sense of fulfillment I had ever had. It was a sensual experience that superseded any sexual experience I had had in my life. As I held Ebony in my arms and kissed her deeply and passionately, it felt as though our souls were making love. I caressed her tenderly and held her tightly for what felt like forever.

  When I look back, my antics remind me of a junior-high student getting his first kiss. Whenever I left from our visits, I would kick back on my bunk and play back every detail of our physical contact. I thought about how Ebony felt in my arms and how sweet her lips had tasted. I was on cloud nine. But no matter how much affection we were able to sneak in, I was always left wanting more.

  22

  COOPER STREET CORRECTIONAL FACILITY

  Jackson, Michigan

  June 20, 2006

  After a few weeks of visits from Ebony, I had stopped worrying about getting transferred to the camp system. Inmates who had been transferred into Cooper Street after me had already been shipped up north, so I thought I had missed the window when I could be sent on that dreaded trip over the Mackinaw Bridge, which connects the lower part of Michigan to the Upper Peninsula.

  You can imagine my shock and disappointment, then, when I was told on the day before my birthday to pack up for a transfer. I was terrified. My relationship with Ebony was young and vulnerable, and I knew we were about to be put to the ultimate test—a test of distance and limited contact that left few romances intact.

  It didn’t matter which camp I ended up at; they all ranged from six to twelve hours from Detroit, and none of the options would provide us with the ability to see each other every week, like we’d gotten used to doing at Cooper Street. I knew inmates who had been over the bridge for more than two years, so by that point, it was more than possible that I could spend the rest of my incarceration up there.

  My fingers felt like lead as I dialed Ebony’s number to tell her I was being transferred. Would this be the end of our relationship? I didn’t want to dwell on the thought, but it was possible it could be true.

  When Ebony answered the phone, the sound of her bubbly, melodic voice made my heart ball up in a knot.

  “Baby, they’re transferring me to a camp up north,” I said with a heavy heart. I struggled my way through the explanation. Part of me was afraid that our relationship was too young to endure the trials we were about to face—after all, my relationship with Brenda had failed to survive the same stress. Another part felt selfish for dragging Ebony into the crazy world of prison life. I wanted to tell her to run. I wanted to protect her from the madness of a system designed to break wills, crush dreams, and uproot the few human connections that managed to spring up in its soil.

  When Ebony finally spoke, it was through tears. She told me she had been planning to visit the following day to celebrate my birthday and sing me a birthday song. Her voice cracked a couple of times as she shared her plans, and all I wanted to do was take her in my arms and hug away the hurt. I felt helpless. Silently, I cursed the system and the universe for being so cruel. How could this happen? How could something so beautiful and innocent get destroyed? Didn’t the officials at Cooper Street see the way Ebony lifted my spirits each time she walked into the visiting room?

  Before we hung up, Ebony had collected herself enough to sing me the most beautiful birthday song I had ever heard, the one she had planned to sing on our visit. Parts of the song were in Kiswahili, and her voice was beautiful, yet powerful and firm, as she moved through the notes. While she sang, I dreamed that the two of us were together on the beaches of Kenya, wading in the water, locked in a firm embrace.

  —

  BACK IN MY CELL, an ominous feeling washed over me. Would Ebony really stay by my side? I didn’t think so. Except for my dad, the people in my life hadn’t stuck around when things got hard. I began thinking as if we had already broken up. I couldn’t afford to make myself vulnerable to the pain that was about to enter our relationship, so I tried shutting down my emotions.

  The following morning, I was transferred to Camp Manistique. It was my thirty-fourth birthday, and here I was, stuffed on a prison bus for a six-hour drive. I hated every moment of the trip because I knew it meant the end of the best relationship and friendship I had ever experienced.

  As soon as I arrived at the camp, I called Ebony to tell her where I had landed. Without hesitation, she told me that she’d be up there that weekend. I was at a loss for words. I expected her to say she’d come up at a later date, once she had the time and the finances to plan a trip, yet she was making the sacrifice to see me as soon as possible. It gave me hope that we might be able to survive the curveball that the system had thrown us.

  But a few days later, just as we were preparing to see each other, we were dealt yet another blow. I was being transferred again, this time to a secure Level One at the northern end of the Upper Peninsula. An inmate had recently been killed at another camp by an inmate who was doing a long bid, and with my violent background, the administration was worried that I would do the same. The following week, I was transferred to a prison in Baraga, a nine-hour drive from Detroit.

  Months into our relationship, Ebony and I were being tested on every level. But despite my initial fears, Ebony proved to be a woman with great tenacity who refused to be defeated by the system. Within months, she had planned a trip to Baraga and drove up to visit me. She stayed for four days, and we spent every second basking in the glow of each other’s presence. I had grown accustomed to fighting the system by myself, but Ebony quickly proved that she had the fierce determination needed to overcome whatever obstacles the system might place in our path.

  Nine months later, I got into a conflict with an officer at Baraga over a job. The prison had tried to cut down on its budget by firing a number of inmates from their jobs and making those who were left pick up the slack. But when I was told I would be doing twice the work for the same pay, I asked the officer to show me where in the prison policy it said that he could force me to work two jobs. He couldn’t find anything in the policy, so he threatened to write me a misconduct if I refused to do the other job.

  I followed the order. It wasn’t worth losing ninety days of good time, and besides—I had learned to fight using my mind instead of my hands. As soo
n as I was done with work that day, I requested to be removed from my assignment and filed a grievance for abuse of authority.

  I thought I had won the battle, but the next thing I knew, I was again transferred, this time to Marquette Branch Prison, in the middle of the Upper Peninsula. As soon as I arrived, the officers there placed me in solitary confinement, keeping me there for seven days. They claimed that they didn’t feel comfortable with me because of the assault-on-staff case I had caught at Muskegon in 1999.

  I couldn’t believe this was happening. I had already done more than four years in solitary confinement for that case, and I hadn’t caught a misconduct in nearly eight years. I had worked hard to rid myself of the man I had been on that fateful day, yet all these years later, I was still being punished for it.

  Ebony and my family had no idea where I had been moved, and I had no way of communicating with them. The prison staff refused to give me any of my property, and I was limited to three showers a week with no outside recreation. I knew right then that this was the old boy network at work. The officers didn’t take kindly to me writing a grievance on their partner, and they were making me pay for it. In legal terms, what they did is called double jeopardy, but the prison system has a way of forgetting principles like those.

  A week later, I was transferred again. This time, they increased my security level to medium, and I was right back in the midst of the madness I thought I had left. After adjusting to an environment where inmates were on the homestretch of their sentences and wanted to do their remaining time in peace, being in medium security again felt like a nightmare. I was back in a place where stabbings and life sentences were the norm.

  When Ebony found out that they had transferred me to a Level Two, she went to work writing and calling the administration in Lansing. In the meantime, I was trying my best to dodge the drama on the yard. The week I arrived, there was a war raging, and several guys had been stabbed over the course of the previous few days. A brother I knew came to me and told me that he had a shank I could use, but that was the last thing I needed at that point in my bit. I told him that I was okay and went to my unit.

  —

  SHORTLY AFTER I arrived, Ebony came up for a visit, and we strategized on how to get my security level back down and earn a transfer closer to home. But around that time, my old bunky BX wrote to ask me for a favor. He said that a guy who had molested his son and niece was at the prison I was in, and he wanted me to take care of it.

  I was conflicted. I had stopped using violence as a way to solve problems. I had gotten to a point where I was tired of the madness of prison and all of the street codes, and all I wanted to do was move on with my life. But BX was like a brother to me. As I thought about how I would feel if my child was molested, my sense of loyalty kicked in, and I decided to make sure the matter was handled. Within a couple of days, I paid to have another inmate stab the guy in the yard.

  I was conflicted about this decision, because even though he had done one of the most reprehensible things in my eyes, a part of me felt like he was worthy of mercy. It was the last act of violence I took part of in prison, and a few weeks later, I was transferred to another secure Level One, in Ojibway, which is so far northwest in the Upper Peninsula that it’s in the Central Time Zone.

  Ojibway was better known to inmates as “O-stab-a-way” because of all the shankings that took place there. Despite its designation as a Level One, it was run like a Level Two, with a long list of restrictive rules. Many of the inmates there had done long stretches in prison, with more years to go, so they were easily provoked. They had grown up in prison, during the era when stabbings and violence were a regular occurrence. When I arrived, the racial tension between inmates and officers was intense because a white officer had recently allowed a white inmate to stab a Black inmate, causing the prisoners to riot in response.

  Unlike most Level One facilities, Ojibway had eight-man cubes and two-man cells, but I was lucky to get a cell with only one bunky, where I would have the space to write and study. Mentally, I was preparing for my parole process and my future on the outside, so the fewer distractions I had, the better. I called Ebony whenever I could, but it was difficult to talk as much as we wanted, because the unit had limited phone access and the calls were expensive as hell.

  I was ten hours away from home, but we did what we could to maintain our visits. Ebony would make the long trek with complete strangers in an effort to cut down on travel expenses. I would find a solid brother whose girl was interested in a visit, and she and Ebony would split the cost of gas and a few nights in a hotel.

  Ebony’s visits, letters, and phone calls became my lifeline. We grew tremendously as a couple during that time, and on my roughest days, I would keep myself grounded by thinking about the dreams we shared and the future we hoped for.

  23

  OJIBWAY CORRECTIONAL FACILITY

  Ojibway, Michigan

  2008

  As the months wore on, my anxiety grew. Yes, I was getting closer to seeing the parole board, but my freedom hinged on me completing the Assaultive Offender Program (AOP)—a ten-month-long group therapy class required for all inmates with an assaultive case—and I hadn’t been placed in it yet.

  The problem was, the waiting list for AOP was longer than my arm. Although I had seen many brothers go to the parole board without completing AOP, I didn’t want to put myself in their situation. The board refused to release anyone who hadn’t completed the program, yet the state didn’t have enough slots to accommodate the number of inmates who were required to complete it.

  Ebony and I went to work, making calls and writing letters to get me into AOP, only to be turned down time and time again. At this rate, we knew that my parole board hearing would probably come before I started the class, let alone completed it, so we decided to begin asking our family, friends, and people from our community to write letters to the parole board on my behalf. I was concerned, but I tried to remain optimistic that the board would see how much I had changed.

  A few months into 2008, I was added to the waiting list for AOP and told that I would finally be taking the classes at Ojibway. I was excited to get the news, because I knew that it would bring me one step closer to my release. Then I was dealt a devastating blow: the group had been canceled. Like many of the brothers before me, I would be having my first review in front of the parole board without completing AOP.

  —

  AS THE DAY of my parole hearing approached, Ebony and I discussed my strategy for the interview. I knew the changes I had made in my heart and in my life, but I also knew the reputation I had gained during my seventeen years in prison. I had accumulated thirty-six misconducts, caught a case for assaulting an officer, and spent a total of seven years in solitary. I knew that my file did not reflect the man I’d become, but I also knew how unforgiving the system could be.

  Upon release, my plan was to go to work immediately mentoring young men and women who were staring down the path I had taken in my youth. In the two years we had been together, Ebony and I had started a publishing company, Drop a Gem Publishing, to print and release our first novel. We had also partnered with HOPE to publish a book for children with incarcerated parents, and my writing was starting to appear in anthology books and national magazines. I had no doubt that I would successfully complete parole if given the chance, and I wanted nothing more than to be let out so I could start making a difference in the lives of others.

  As I prepared for the biggest moment of my incarceration, Ebony garnered support on my behalf. People from all walks of life—professors, school directors, bookstore owners, and community activists—wrote letters to the parole board that spoke to the importance of the work I was going to do and offering their assistance for when I got out. My father, my sister Nakia, and my stepbrother, Will, wrote about the growth they had seen in me over the years and the ways in which they would support my transition home.

  The day before my first hearing, in August 2008, Ebony drove up
for a visit with my father, my stepmother, and my son, Jay. I hadn’t seen my son in a few years, so I was excited to see this young man who had grown tall and handsome and seemed to have a firm grasp on what he wanted to do with his life. It was also the first time I had seen my father and stepmother in a while, because the distance had kept them from visiting. When they entered the visiting room, they wrapped me in the tightest hugs. They were the Black family version of a Snuggie, providing me the love and warmth that I needed to survive the long, arduous process that I knew lay ahead.

  As we settled in, my father began talking about my freedom and what it meant to him and the family.

  “Blood, we need you home,” he said. “It’s been too long. Your sisters need their brother back and your children need their father.”

  My eyes welled up with tears. I had not cried deeply in the seventeen years of my incarceration, but I couldn’t hold it back any longer. It had taken years for me to realize that no one goes to prison alone; my imprisonment had impacted my family as though they were sitting in the cell with me. I felt the overwhelming pressure to free Ebony and my family from the shackles of my incarceration, and I broke down.

  “I know this is what we all have been waiting for,” I said through tears, “but I want us to be mindful of all the possibilities. The worst-case scenario is they give me a two-year continuation on my sentence. Which means it would be another two years before I see the board again.”

  I had served seventeen years by that point, but two more years felt like an eternity.

  “No matter what they do, we will never leave your side,” my father reassured me. “We will be here to support you until they release you.”

  His words strengthened and emboldened me with the courage to face the board the following morning. I knew I would have a sleepless night, but it ended up being a night of peaceful contemplation, meditation, and prayer. The time had come for me to face my destiny and finally, after all these years, put prison behind me.