Six by Ten

by Mateo Hoke

  That first time, I was here for a year, I graduated. I got high the next day. My fifth daughter was almost due. I got out on May 7 and she was coming June 7. I didn’t want to be high when we had her, so I stopped. I was there at the delivery. Then after she had been home for three or four days, I started getting high again.

  I hid it from my girlfriend, Brooke. She found out, but at first she didn’t know. My woman ain’t never smoked dope in her life. She ain’t never been around a tweaker. She don’t know what to look for. She knew I got high in the past. She knew what I did, but as far as being around it and really knowing what to look for and knowing what’s up, she had no clue. She had never experienced it.

  I was getting high every day. All the time. I knew it was wrong, but once that beast is unleashed, there ain’t no stopping it. I justified it in my head with, I ain’t getting high with the fellas. I’m not committing any crimes. I’m working every day and not only am I working, but I’m supporting my girlfriend and I’m taking care of my child and on top of that my four other daughters. I’m supporting them and I’m giving money to their mama to help out. I justified it as, Hey, as long as I’m doing that, handling my responsibilities, why can’t I get high?

  The difference between this time in the program and that last time is that I’m committed. I want to be clean because I’ve got five daughters, and I haven’t had a relationship with them. My oldest daughter is ten. I didn’t come into her life until she was four years old. All the other ones, they know me, but they don’t know me. They know me as Daddy. I’ve been there, but I’ve always been in and out of their lives. This one, my youngest daughter, the relationship that I have with her is amazing. I’m experiencing what it’s like to be a father. I don’t want to give that shit up.

  I’m excited. Brooke and I are going to get our own apartment. The program here advocates for you with housing if you finish the program. And then we’re getting married.

  When we meet with Levi again in the spring of 2017, he’s selling meth from his garage. He and Brooke are married, living in an apartment with their young daughter in a rundown section of Vallejo. During our conversation Levi shows us a loaded AR-15 rifle he bought illegally to protect himself.

  I left the program and as soon as I turned the corner I was blazing a blunt. I got home and the little monkey in my head that wanted to get high was scratching at me. And you know I know where to get it. So boom. I got it. Now I’m getting high. I smoke a lot. I smoke all day. I want to get high. I don’t want to quit right now.

  It was great working. I had the pipe going and the money fueling my habit. I was making good money, man. I was working over a hundred hours each two-week pay period. And I was getting high the whole time. I wasn’t out robbing nobody, I was doing no crime.

  I lost my job though. One of my coworkers decided to get something out of my truck, and he found my pipe. I was working, painting at this job site and wanted to go take a puff. I went to go get my pipe, and it wasn’t there. Later the boss calls me in and says, “We hear you’re getting high.” And I’m like, “Yup, I ain’t going to lie to you.” He said, “We can’t have that,” and let me go. I was hella bummed out and feeling down, and it just fueled the old me to come out.

  I didn’t have no income and that made me scheme and plot. My buddy was selling crystal so he helped me get it going. And I started doing whatever I could to get money. Stealing from houses, stores, getting stuff out the back of trucks. Getting money or getting things I could sell for money. Anything. When I had my job I was at home. I was getting high, but I wasn’t getting into no trouble. I ain’t got no job now so I’m out here wheeling and dealing.

  After I lost my job Brooke was pissed off. She was bugging me about why I can’t stop, why I won’t stop. Why this is so worth losing everything to me. She said she was going to try it with or without me. I was like, “You’re joking, right?” And she’s like, “No. I want to know what all the hype is about. I want to try it.” I told her to swear on our daughter that if I didn’t give it to her she was going to go get it herself. And she did. I couldn’t have her going and getting it from some predator motherfuckers, because she don’t know nothing about the dope world. She’s naïve to the game.

  So I gave her some shit. I mixed it in some juice and made sure to give her enough to make her sick. I gave her hella that shit. She was throwing up all night. She got sick as hell, but the next morning she wanted to try smoking it to see if she’d feel better, and she instantly liked it. I mean instantly. For the last five months she’s just been smoked out nonstop. I don’t know if I blame myself. I mean I gave it to her, but I gave it to her to avoid her putting herself in a real dangerous and dumb situation. She’s good though, she’s still going to work and taking care of our daughter and things.

  Being in prison, being in the SHU was hard, but hell, I hear voices to begin with. The voices, sometimes it’s whispering, sometimes it’s yelling. Sometimes it’s like an echo. It all depends on what I’m going through. It stems from depression, but also, the meth don’t help, that’s for damn sure because my mind’s already going.

  I’ve calmed down hella much. But if I get caught, especially with what I’m working with now, I’m either going back for life or the cops are going to kill me because I’m shooting it out with them. I got a trigger lock, which means it’s basically twenty-five to life if you’re caught with a firearm. I’m not going back. If it comes to that, I’m shooting it out.

  * * *

  43. Narrator’s name and certain details have been changed at his request.

  44. Vallejo is a city of 121,000 in Solano County, thirty miles northeast of San Francisco.

  45. A “bird bath” refers to a quick body wash using the sink in a standard prison cell.

  46. California State Prison, Solano is located in Vacaville, California, approximately thirty miles northeast of Vallejo. Though it was built for a capacity of 2,600 inmates, its actual inmate population has been more than a thousand greater than that through much of the past two decades.

  47. In the California state prison system, SNY stands for “Sensitive Needs Yards.” SNY units were established starting in the early 2000s to protect certain people, including ex-gang members, informants, sex offenders, and others, from others in “mainline” units. Protective custody can be requested by incarcerated individuals who fear for their own safety and can often, but not always, be a form of solitary confinement. For more on protective custody and other forms of solitary confinement, see glossary, page 262.

  48. “Prison politics” generally refers to racial segregation in California men’s prisons. Those housed in the California prison system are classified as a certain “race” and are generally housed and treated as a bloc in their movement and behavior with members of the same “race.” For more, see glossary, page 261.

  49. Salinas Valley State Prison is a maximum-security facility located near Soledad, California, in Monterey County. Built for a capacity of 2,400, the prison houses more than 3,300 people.

  HEATHER CHAPMAN

  age: 47

  born in: Nyack, New York

  interviewed in: Fort Lauderdale, Florida

  Heather Chapman lives in a small two-bedroom house in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, with her husband of fourteen years, their two young daughters, her nephew, and a rotating cast of animals—some the family owns, and some she rescues and fosters until they’re rehabilitated enough to go to a forever home. Their house can be loud and chaotic. When we visit, a ferret and three dogs run around our feet while Heather recounts the struggles her family is facing.

  Her first child, Nikko Albanese, was arrested in 2011 for armed robbery and sentenced in 2012 to ten years in prison. Nikko began medication at age ten for a range of mental and emotional challenges, and Heather says that life in prison—especially in isolation—is deteriorating his mental and physical h
ealth. She says he’s twice been found unresponsive in his cell, and she fears he could die before his release. Heather is animated and emotive when we talk, and though she’s lived in Florida for twenty years, she speaks with a heavy New York accent. Over the course of dozens of conversations, Heather describes the brutality of solitary confinement on her son as well as the impact on her and her family.

  I HOLD NIKKO’S SHOES

  My son Nikko Albanese has been incarcerated for the past six years. And he’s been in solitary confinement for that entire time. They’re torturing him. They’re torturing me. They’re torturing my daughters. They’re torturing my husband. They’re destroying our family.

  When I hold Nikko’s shoes, I mean, it’s all I have. It’s all I have of my son. Nikko would have the worst-smelling feet. He’d take off his shoes and the whole room would smell terrible. I used to yell at him all the time. I would make him spray his shoes with Lysol and put them outside. And now I smell his shoes because I’m so desperate for him. Every time I get a letter I put it in a ziplock bag just in case I can smell him because I know he touched it.

  I ache for my son. I ache for him and I won’t clean his shoes. I keep them in plastic bags and when things get bad I take them to bed with me and I hold them. I won’t let anyone else touch them.

  NIKKO WAS THE ONE WHO GAVE ME THE STRENGTH

  I always wanted children, but Nikko wasn’t planned. I would have preferred to start having children when I was financially in a better position. I was waitressing at a Denny’s, and that’s how I met Nikko’s father, Glen. He was one of the waitresses’ sons. She kept trying to set me up with him. Something about him scared me, and I didn’t want to meet him. I’ll never forget she literally dragged me to him one time, and everything about him just frightened me. But I ended up going out with him and it went from there.

  I worked up until I was eight months pregnant. Glen and I were engaged when I got pregnant, and I kept making excuses to push the wedding date back. He just was not a nice person.

  Nikko was born in September 1992. He was my first baby. He was born in the same hospital as I was, in Nyack, New York. Before Nikko was born it had been gray and raining for six weeks straight. It was September in upstate New York so there were no leaves on the trees. I woke up and I knew it was time to go to the hospital. I was in hard labor for thirteen hours. I was twenty-two, and I wanted to deliver Nikko naturally, and I did. The nurses handed him right to me and it was the greatest moment of my life. I still remember the way he looked at me and the way he smelled. He smelled like Nikko.

  Glen was there at the hospital. At that time we were living in a duplex in Valley Cottage, New York. When I brought Nikko home it felt like a dream. It felt like a miracle. I was in disbelief that this beautiful little creature was mine. And like every parent, I thought he was so perfect and so beautiful and I was—and still am—so in love with him. He was my world; he was my everything. And I brought him into a miserable environment.

  Glen had the neighbors watching the house. If I even stepped outside, he would get a phone call at work. Glen had them all convinced that I was crazy and trying to steal his child. I wasn’t allowed to speak to anyone. Nikko’s father seemed like such a great guy and everyone liked him, but they just didn’t know who he was.

  I left Glen when Nikko was eleven months old. Actually Nikko was the one who gave me the strength to leave. I would never have been able to do it without Nikko. I’d been with Glen for three years, and it was something out of a horror movie.

  He would take me to the supermarket and give me only enough money for the groceries. I would save like a nickel here, you know, twenty cents there, and I eventually saved up seven dollars. And when I saved up the seven dollars, I made arrangements for a women’s shelter to meet me at the local supermarket. The only things I took with us were Nikko’s pictures. I put them in a blue garbage bag. And I knew that when I left the house in a cab that Nikko’s father was going to get phone calls and that’s exactly what happened. One of the neighbors was a state trooper and was able to get information from the cab company so they found out where the driver had dropped me off. I’m holding Nikko’s pictures and I’m holding Nikko and the woman from the shelter is late picking me up. Every minute felt like an hour. I’m standing out in front of that supermarket holding Nikko so tight. I was literally fearing for my life.

  I went to a shelter because of Glen. I was very scared of him. So Nikko spent his first birthday in a battered women’s shelter in Walden, New York.

  NIKKO COULD DO ANYTHING

  I moved to Boca Raton, Florida, where I got my license to do nails. I worked around Nikko’s schedule. I got Nikko into Catholic school, and how I paid for it was I would do the nuns’ nails two or three times a week.

  When he was in kindergarten, I remember walking into the school to pick him up and one of the teacher’s assistants came running up to me and she said, “Nikko was on the roof!” And I said, “What? What was Nikko doing on the roof?” And she goes, “I don’t know . . .” so I hurried to his classroom and there he is drawing a picture like nothing was happening. And I said, “Hi, Nikko,” and he gives me a hug. I said, “Nikko, were you on the roof?” And he said, “Yeah.” I said, “Well, why? Why were you on the roof?” And he just kinda looked at me said, “’Cause my ball went up there.” To him it was a crazy question to ask. His ball went up there so he needed to solve the problem. He had found a way to get up on the roof of the school to retrieve his ball and didn’t see anything wrong with it. That was Nikko. If there was a problem, he’d just solve it. Nikko could do anything. He was very determined. One time he saw some man on TV do a backflip. Well, Nikko decided that he wanted to do that. And he taught himself to do it. I don’t know how long it took, weeks maybe, but it didn’t matter. If he jumped up and landed on his head a hundred times, he would just continue to do it until he mastered it.

  Nikko didn’t have much of a relationship with Glen, though he’d wanted one. Nikko loved his father. Glen would come maybe twice a year to visit Nikko, and Nikko lived with Glen for a little while in White Plains, New York, while I took care of my mother, whose cancer had come back.

  But when Nikko was ten, we were in church and Nikko grabbed my cell phone, and he said, “I’m going to call my father and wish him a Merry Christmas.” That was fine with me. So he walked out of church and when he walked back in, he was completely white and he kind of sat back in the pew and was just staring down. And I whispered, “Nikko! What happened? What’s wrong?” And he looked at me and said, “My dad said he wants nothing to do with me. That I’m more trouble than I’m worth.”

  It was traumatizing. And the whole thing happened because Glen was with a very nice woman for six or seven years, but the whole time he had a girlfriend on the side. Nikko didn’t think it was right so he told Glen’s main girlfriend. And then Glen severed the relationship with Nikko. After that Nikko would call his father probably once a week asking, “Will you see me now?” And the answer was always no.

  I DIDN’T REALLY UNDERSTAND THE DIAGNOSIS

  I didn’t have the energy for Nikko. By the time I would finally get him in bed I felt like my brain was oatmeal. Like I was just sitting there with drool coming out of my mouth. I mean, I could barely get myself into bed. Nikko was my first, so at first I thought it was me. I didn’t understand it. But then I started to realize there were some other issues going on.

  Nikko would always handle a situation the way he saw fit and would never think anything through, he would just react. He got into fights, but he wasn’t some violent kid. At the time I didn’t fully understand what was happening. And then he got labeled. And that was that.

  I was having a lot of behavioral problems with Nikko, and I knew it wasn’t a disciplinary thing. So I took him to a hospital and the psychiatrist there gave us the initial diagnosis. I don’t like to use this term because it’s horrible, but it was “severely emotiona
lly disturbed.” It doesn’t really mean anything, and I didn’t know enough to dive into that and ask what that meant. I had no idea. But really it was multiple disorders. Bipolar and attention deficit and compulsive disorder and separation anxiety and, you know, he just wouldn’t think before he would react.

  Nikko at the age of ten was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. That’s when we began medication. Nikko would never go out and be a bully or be mean to a kid. He has compulsive behavior where he would ask the same question repeatedly and he may annoy another child, and so that kid would say, “Get the hell away from me,” and would hurt Nikko’s feelings and then Nikko would react. Not even in a physical way, but maybe say something. He wouldn’t say it quietly like the kid said it to him, but so the teacher would hear it. It was considered bad behavior.

  I didn’t really understand the diagnosis, and it’s not like anyone explained it to me, or how the process works. That was something that I had to learn. And when you’re in the middle of something like that, there’s so much going on. Okay, so he’s got a diagnosis, but there was always that underlying thing of, well, if you were a better mother, this wouldn’t be happening. There was always that judgment there, even from within the medical profession. And I would say to myself, these are medical people, and I must be a bad mother and I need to do better.

  It’s a very difficult system to navigate. So if you don’t know the right questions, you’re not going to get the right answers. I was confused. I didn’t really understand what was happening, and things weren’t really getting better. Especially for an adolescent that young, you know you have a medication cocktail and you’re constantly adjusting levels until you find one that works and then that’s only going to work for a short time because the chemicals within the brain are continually changing. And I didn’t know any of this. So I thought it was my fault, I thought it was Nikko’s fault. I didn’t know the right questions to ask and I just didn’t have enough information.