Six by Ten

by Mateo Hoke

  I was born January 23, 1957, in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. When I was fifteen months old, my mother moved us to Fort Worth, Texas. That’s where I grew up. My father passed when I was three. He was in prison for robbery and something happened with his kidneys. He got very sick. He got let out on medical release and went home to his mother’s house in Pine Bluff and that’s where he died. He was a serious gangster. I was told he never went anywhere without his .45. People always told me I look just like him. I don’t remember him, but I remember the funeral like it was yesterday. My father was lying in a gray casket with burgundy crushed-velvet lining inside. I wanted him to get up and he wouldn’t get up. We went to the cemetery and they lowered him into the ground. They threw dirt on him. I didn’t want them to throw dirt on my father.

  Up until the age of about sixteen I had extremely hard crying spells over my father. Being his only child, I longed for him. And my brothers and sisters weren’t very nice to me at times. My mother worked all the time. So I didn’t have anybody, I felt like I was just so alone.

  When I was younger I didn’t socialize with people. I didn’t like to be touched. I didn’t even want my mother to touch me. She used to ask me at times if she could hug me, and sometimes I’d just cry. I couldn’t play with other children. Intellectually I was very advanced. But I didn’t know how to socialize. I had no friends. When I would go outside to play I would take a book and sit under a tree. I could read very well. I had a favorite tree, a peach tree, in front of our house. I used to climb that tree and pluck the peaches and eat them. That was pretty fun.

  There were eight of us kids. Six boys and two girls. We all had different fathers. Let’s see, my fourth brother and my sixth brother, they had the same father. My mother was somewhat promiscuous—my oldest sister and my second brother had the same father, but after that everybody has different fathers. My mother has a third-grade education. She cooked and cleaned people’s homes to take care of us. And she had many “friends.”

  My sister Rosemary was very mean. She had short, thin hair. I have very long, thick, coarse hair. I was tender headed, and Rosemary would take Mama’s big brush and beat me in the head with it, so I didn’t like for her to comb my hair, and I didn’t get my hair combed a lot. Other kids would make fun of me and call me “Little Nappy Head.” I was always called names. The kids, they laughed at me because they said I was ugly, that I had rat teeth because I had a gap between my teeth.

  Me and Rosemary shared the same bed. She was like seven years older than me. She used to go out and get men and bring them back in at night and she would have sex with them, in the same bed that I slept in. She would make me get down at the foot of the bed. One time Rosemary had this white man in the bed. He wanted to play with me, but my sister said, “No, don’t touch her.” I was so scared, I wet the bed. I started crying, but I couldn’t cry aloud because I was scared. When I got up the next day my sister told Mama I wet the bed. But I couldn’t tell Mama why I wet the bed ’cause if I did, I was gonna get a worse beating from my sister. So I just took the beating from my mother instead of having to take it from Rosemary.

  HIS CONFIDENCE WAS JUST SO INTERESTING

  When I was eleven, my mother married my oldest brother’s father, and moved all of us to Dayton, Ohio. I liked my stepfather and he liked me. But he was mean to my mother, and they fought a lot. One time, when I was twelve, he was lying in bed and my mother tried to shoot him with her .38. She missed him, but it definitely wasn’t ’cause she wasn’t trying to hit him.

  When I was about fourteen, my mom left my stepdad and we moved into the projects in Dayton. I didn’t do a lot of socializing. So, being in the projects consisted of me mainly staying in the house. Because we had a big family, we got a duplex with four bedrooms. I looked after my brothers. The projects were violence, abuse, more violence, more abuse. You had to mind your own business.

  Then when I was sixteen I went to my first party. I went with my friend from high school. She was very promiscuous, but I didn’t know because I was very naïve. It was a basement party, and we were having fun, dancing. Well, there were a lot of Nigerians at the party. They were older—grown men.

  So I’m dancing, and this man came walking down these steps. He was so interesting to me because he had on these big high-heeled shoes—when men used to wear big high-heeled shoes—and he had on bell-bottoms and stripes and flowers and plaid and polka dots. And he wasn’t matching nowhere. He had zits all over his face and he was so ugly! Well, my mother told me not to say the word “ugly,” so—he was different looking. But he acted like he was the handsomest thing in the room. I thought that was just the most comical thing—his confidence was just so interesting. He asked me to dance with him, and I said no. Well, I didn’t know that his father was like a king, and people actually bow down to him. You know the movie Coming to America? Well, where he was from in Nigeria, he was used to people actually bowing down to him wherever he went. But we don’t have kings and queens in the projects.

  His name was Augustine. Eventually I danced with him and we danced very well together. He wanted my phone number, but I wouldn’t give it to him, so he bribed my girlfriend, and she gave him my phone number.

  I realized he wasn’t all bad, you know, he was a lot of fun. And then we started hanging out together and he started buying my mother all kinds of gifts and presents.

  We had sex for the first time when I was sixteen. He’d invited me over and was cooking food, and he started messing around with me. I told him I wanted to go home, but he started guilting me, telling me I owed him this once, that he knew it was my first time, but I shouldn’t be scared, and that my mother wanted us to be together, that I didn’t want to disappoint her. I was so humiliated and ashamed.

  The thing was, I didn’t even know I was pregnant before he did. He figured out I was pregnant and he told my mother and together they made all the arrangements for me to get married. He picked me up from high school one day and took me to the justice of the peace and that’s where we got married. I cried like a baby. The judge said, “She don’t look like she’s real excited about being married.” Augustine put his arms around me and said, “She’s so excited, that’s why she can’t talk. She’s just overjoyed.” I never said, “I do.” I never said “yes.” I never opened my mouth because if I’d started crying I would have gotten hysterical and I wouldn’t have been able to stop. And my mother told me, “Well, you’re going to learn to love him.”

  When I got married in 1973, at first I tried doing what I had been used to seeing my mom do in her relationships. But my husband, he was older, and he quickly told me, “You will not yell at me. You will not curse at me. Those are not things you will do because that is not how a wife treats her husband.”

  My son Augustine Jr. was born nine months later when I was seventeen. He was born May 5, 1974. After that I had three more boys—Greg in ’75, David in ’76, and Lucky in ’78. Basically one every year.

  My marriage initially felt forced but not abusive. I did not love him, but I did respect him. He was very patient with me, and he was very good with the children. He worked two jobs and went to college to make sure me and the kids were provided for. He was my husband, but really he was my guardian. So year after year of him being patient with me, I developed a sense of love for him as a father and husband and as a man. Enough so that I moved to Nigeria with him.

  Maryam and the boys spent the next nine years living in Nigeria with Augustine. She describes the years as mostly happy and filled with wealth and status beyond her imagination, complete with chauffeurs and multiple houses. In 1984, Maryam moved back to Dayton alone after what she describes as severe abuse and threats from Augustine. Her children then joined her in Dayton, where they lived in a car for a brief period before Maryam was able to fully get on her feet.

  I ENDED UP IN THE HOSPITAL

  I started going to Sinclair Community College, and after two years I got a degree in p
roperty management and real estate. Then I started working for the housing project, developing programs.

  The first property that I bought of my own was a duplex in Dayton—three bedrooms on each side. My kids and I lived on one side and I rented the other side out. We stayed there for a few years and then I started buying other houses. In less than eight years, I’d bought dozens of properties. I had a major real estate investing business, Uloho Investment, with millions in assets. And during that time I raised my four boys and had three more kids, two boys and a girl—Adrian, Robert, and TaQuilla.

  Unfortunately, I became public enemy number one with some detectives in Dayton. You see, detectives working in my neighborhood, they wanted to use some of my properties for sting operations. Some of the clients in my real estate business were “pharmaceutical dealers.” Some of them were less than honorable citizens with criminal backgrounds, drug convictions, the whole nine yards. But some wanted to turn over a new leaf and help women with children get into their own homes or help senior citizens. I felt like that was a good thing and I was in support of it. The police wanted me to help raid these guys, and I wouldn’t go along with it. So I became a problem.

  In 2000, my business was raided. The police didn’t find anything because I wasn’t involved with drugs. But when they raided the office they left the building open. The property was robbed and vandalized. Everything was gone. I had a $15,000 printer. I had computers. It caused sort of a nervous breakdown for me. I didn’t understand how the police could raid my place and then just leave the business unsecured. I started spiraling down and I ended up in the hospital. They put me on medication that had me not thinking straight. On TV I saw that Mardi Gras was coming up and I just booked a bus ticket. That was not like me. I had every intention of coming right back, but it didn’t work out that way. In February 2001, I left my youngest kids with their brothers, who were in their thirties, and I went on a vacation to Louisiana.

  I FELT LIKE I WAS AMONG SAVAGES

  Maryam says that while on vacation in Louisiana, she met a man with whom she stayed during her trip. Because he is still fighting his case from prison, Maryam asked not to use his name. On March 3, 2001, the two were driving in Lafitte when they were pulled over by the police. The man was suspected of perpetrating an armed robbery of an armored car and was arrested. Maryam was also arrested and charged with armed robbery and aggravated battery. She pleaded innocent, and no witnesses put her at the scene of the crime. Though the armed robbery and battery charges were dismissed, Maryam was convicted of obstruction of justice for refusing to turn state’s evidence. She was considered a two-time offender because of an aggravated assault charge she had previously pleaded guilty to in Ohio and sentenced to twenty-five years. She maintained her innocence throughout the trial.

  When I was first arrested in 2001 and taken to Jefferson Parish Jail, it was a really scary experience for me. Now, here I am, this professional woman, never in my life have I been in a holding cell, or a holding tank, so I had no clue what to expect. One woman had lice. And these women would just steal each other’s food. I felt like I was among savages. And if you go to sleep, I mean, only God knows what’ll happen, so I couldn’t sleep.

  I was held in jail for eighteen months while I was waiting for a trial. It wasn’t unusual. Some women were there five years before their trials. I was concerned about my younger kids back home, but I wasn’t too worried about them because I knew their older brothers would take care of them. And my mom was in Dayton too. One problem was, the detectives from Ohio who had raided my business asked Jefferson Parish to deny bail and hold me. I couldn’t get out on bail, so I just had to wait.

  Inmates and guards would find ways to mess with me. One time the guards sent three women to fight me, and they stood on the other side of a window and watched. Another time six or seven guards kicked a mentally ill woman until I saw blood coming out of every hole in her head. They beat her unconscious, then took her to a room and strapped her down and kept her there. And these were supposedly Christian people. I was a die-hard Christian, but I actually turned to Islam partly because the guards and inmates who were Christians could be so cruel. I didn’t want to be affiliated with it. So I converted there in jail. I needed peace, and I found it in Islam.

  “TAKE THAT RAG OFF YOUR HEAD!”

  I was convicted and sentenced in February 2003. Then a few months later, that’s when I was moved from jail to prison, to St. Gabriel.4 The guards came and got me early in the morning and told me to pack up my stuff. They chained me into the back of a van with no windows with some other prisoners. I felt like a slave on a slave ship.

  And then when we got to the prison, I think there were about eight of us prisoners, and everybody rolled out and went to the building for the new commits. A new commit is a person who’s just coming into the prison. So we get there, and I have on my hijab and the officers tell me to take the rag off my head. I said, “No, I can’t do that. I’m Muslim. I don’t know where I am. I don’t know if there’s men around here, and I’m not taking my scarf off.” As Muslim women, we keep our heads covered, especially in the presence of men, because we’re taught that you don’t expose your beauty to strange men, you just don’t do that. The guards weren’t hearing any of that. They thought I was being rebellious.

  So, they took all the other women to process them. I had to stay in a tiny corridor locked between two doors. I stood there for about two hours while they decided what they were gonna do with me. No one knew, so they eventually put me in handcuffs and shackles, very tight, and a woman guard ordered me to go with her. She was angry, but I didn’t let it click with me, I just kept smiling. Actually, my first impression was that prison was the most beautiful place I’d ever seen in my life. They had the most beautiful plants, and trees, and flowers, and greenery, and the lawn was manicured perfectly. So I kept commenting on the flowers, and the guard was confused that someone could express joy around so much anger. She told me to just keep walking, and she put me in a cell by myself. I was in the hole.

  I was the only woman in the prison who was Muslim, the only one who wore a headscarf. When I got out of solitary after those first two days, I took my scarf off to let them see I wasn’t hiding anything. I didn’t want confrontation. I told myself, Mary, we’re gonna try to get along here, we don’t want anyone thinking we’re terrorists, we’re gonna try to keep the peace. When I was in jail, I had a lot of trouble because of my headscarf with guards and also other inmates. I’d had to fight because of it. I didn’t want to do that in prison. So for the moment I kept my scarf off.

  But then a week later there was an incident when the prison deacon was handing out prayer books, and women were lining up for them. I got in line for a book, and when it was my turn, the deacon asked me if I was Christian or Muslim. I said I was Muslim, and he refused to give me a book. He said, “They’re only for Christians, and you can’t be both. You’ll have to choose.” So I walked down the hall, put my scarf back on, and from that day forward it was war.

  There was a chaplain there that I’d met when I first went in. He looked like Santa Claus, he really did. But he hated me because of my religion. He told me, “Before I allow you to infest this compound with Islam, you will do your entire time in the hole on lockdown.” He meant that. He went out of his way to try to get me locked up on many occasions.

  When my family sent me my prayer rug, it went to the chaplain’s office first. It was in his possession because he was the chaplain, rightfully so. He called me and gave it to me, and then he flipped the script and told the administration that I stole it, that he didn’t give it to me, that I’d gone in his office and taken it. That was a serious infraction. But, the deacon happened to be there, and he saw everything that was going on. He stepped up to the plate and he says, “She didn’t steal that. He gave it to her. I saw him give it to her.” I was able to escape that one. This deacon protected me from the chaplain, but after the deacon got fired,
I was at the mercy of the chaplain.

  All the time, guards would see me with my scarf and just say, “Take that rag off your head, fool! Are you crazy? Are you stupid? You know you can’t wear that rag here.” I’d say, “No ma’am, I won’t. Can’t do that.” And then they’d lock me up, put me in the hole. I’d be in for ninety days at a time. Then eventually they’d let me out, but it would happen again. The longest I’d stay out was two weeks or so.

  In 2004, I was in general population and I got called to see the chaplain. He was with a guard. He told me that there’d been an accident, that my son had died. I didn’t know who he was talking about, so I asked the guard. It was my first son, Augustine. He’d died in a motorcycle accident. I called my second son, Greg, and asked him to bury Augustine, since I couldn’t be there. I was devastated. Losing a child is something you can’t imagine, but not being able to be there with my family was a whole other level. I was so distraught for the first time, I asked to go to the hole, since I didn’t think I’d be able to control myself around other people. I stayed there a few days.

  AFTER A WHILE, YOU START TO LOSE HOPE

  I got used to the hole. I developed a mentality of survival. Once I realized these people were trying to tear me down mentally, I strengthened my mind. Only my body was imprisoned.

  All of the buildings at St. Gabriel are named after zodiac signs. Like the Gemini building is for mentally challenged prisoners. The solitary cells, they’re in Leo. The cells are a little bigger than a bathroom. Maybe nine feet long and six feet wide. The walls are made of cinderblock. The door is made of metal bars. On the left side is a bed made out of steel. On that steel bed is a mattress wrapped in thick, heavy plastic. The pillow is wrapped in the same thick plastic. There’s a small window at the back, about six inches square with metal mesh on it, and a little round knob you’d turn to open it. In that same corner there’s a steel sink and a steel toilet. Beside the toilet, a step or two away, is a steel desk fixed to the wall. On the floor is a steel stool. You can reach your hand out from your stool on one side of the room and touch the gate at the front. The fluorescent lights are always on. It was something I got used to. But not everyone could do solitude.