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Kalamu ya Salaam's information blog

 

APRIL 28, 2017

APRIL 28, 2017

 

 

 

My Father Spent

30 Years In Prison.

Now He’s Out.

 

father prison 01
Last November, my mother called me around 10 p.m. My boyfriend
and I were in the middle of dinner — we eat late because of his work
schedule — and I squinted at my phone before answering. I’d been
trying to spend less time messing around with my phone, especially
during meals, but my mother had worked the same job in Indiana
for two decades and was almost always asleep by 9. Seeing her name
flash on the screen, I was worried.
 
She said she had something to tell me. Then, she hesitated. I left
the table and walked into the bedroom to pace on my own. My
worst fear was that something had happened to one of my three
siblings, a worry that literally fuels my nightmares. She let out a
long sigh before responding.
 
“Your dad is getting out of prison.” I stopped pacing.
 
“When?”
 
She sighed again. “In two weeks. I just found out. Are you okay?”
I wasn’t, but I said I was, so I didn’t have to talk about it more. I
went back to the table and told my boyfriend, Kelly. I laid my
phone on the table, face down. Then, I went right back to eating
while he stared at me, eyes wide and mouth open. “Well, how do
you feel?” he asked me warily. “I don’t know,” I said. I looked at
my phone, wondering if I should call my mother back, and say
more. But what would I say?
 
I stopped eating and began to cry. “I really don’t know.”
 
 
 
My father went to prison when I was only a few months old.
He and my mother were married. She was 22 years old, and he
was two weeks from 21. His crime and subsequent incarceration
devastated her. She discovered she was pregnant with my brother
after my father was already gone. She didn’t talk about him much.
No one did, except to say how much I looked like him. My Uncle
Clarence, my father’s closest brother, would just stare at me.
Sometimes I caught him. “You gotta excuse me,” he’d smile. “You
look just like my brother, but smaller and with pigtails.” Then
he’d hug me, and we’d laugh. I always wished he’d say more
about his beloved brother, my absent father, but he rarely did.
 
I’d seen my dad approximately four times over 30 years, but I only
remembered two of them: a visit when I was 12 years old, and one
when I was 25. When I thought of visiting my father, I pictured
the beige rooms, the beige uniforms, and how everything seemed
to be nailed down. I always brought bags of change to use at the
vending machines. I knew he had a sweet tooth, and I wanted to
buy him something sweet. He always got reprimanded by guards
for holding my hands too long.
 
The only real information I had about my dad came in his letters;
he sent me dozens. Photographs included in those letters were
precious. In the 30 years he was locked away, I only received four.
That was the best he could do.
 
HE KEPT WRITING: THAT I WAS HIS FAVORITE GIRL,
I WAS BRILLIANT, AND I WAS THE BEST DAUGHTER
ANYONE COULD EVER HOPE FOR. FOR A LONG TIME,
THAT WAS ALL I NEEDED. UNTIL, OF COURSE, I
NEEDED MORE.
 
Phone calls were too expensive, plus, my mom, siblings and I kept
moving. He was wasting money he didn’t have calling numbers we
had left behind. He had no access to the kind of technology people
were using more and more on the outside. I’d gone to the library
and signed up for a Hotmail email address. I thought I might be
able to give it to him the next time we spoke, but they didn’t have
email in prison. Meanwhile I became obsessed with communicating
with strangers online, a compulsion that was only tempered by the
fact that we couldn’t afford the internet at home.
 
I wrote him back by hand approximately three times. I had been
receiving his letters since before I could read, and wanted to
respond much more often than I did. How do you catch someone
up on your entire life? I didn’t know how, and so I rarely tried.
Our relationship existed in sparse correspondence and our own
imaginations.
 
Back then, our relationship wasn’t real. I felt like I knew him, and
he felt like he knew me, but really we were both building versions
of the other we couldn’t confirm or deny. We dreamed of one another
— what we might be like — long before we met. Each meeting,
though pleasant, bowed under the weight of all our expectations. We
were happy to see one another, but we could not always say the thing
we most wanted to say and risk spoiling the other’s dream. We
never talked about it, yet somehow agreed on these terms. An
unspoken pact between an emotionally desperate father and daughter.
 
“That’s okay, Baby,” he’d say, when I tried to apologize on the phone
for not writing. “You write me when you want to. I’ll be waiting
patiently, and happily.”
 
He kept writing: that I was his favorite girl, I was brilliant, and I was
the best daughter anyone could ever hope for. For a long time, that
was all I needed. Until, of course, I needed more.
 
 
 
 
I made a special playlist on iTunes before going to see my dad
for the first time as a free man. I sat up in my hotel room in
Indianapolis, having arrived from Brooklyn at nearly 1 a.m. The
room was dirty and badly designed, but I’d booked it last minute
using an app. Now, I was back in my favorite Midwestern city,
preoccupied with the phone in my hands, trying to answer the
question, “What songs will I want to listen to on the way to see
my father for the first time outside of prison?” I didn’t want to
hear anything too loud or too fast. I wanted familiar and soothing;
60 tracks later, the list was lousy with Anita Baker, Lauryn Hill,
and ‘90s-era Kenny Loggins.
 
Sleep did not show up that night. As scared as I was of the
bedbugs I assumed surrounded me in that atrocious hotel, I
was more afraid what would happen when I saw my father.
Would the man who showed up be anything like the one I’d
been imagining, and would I be anything like the daughter he
thought he had? Would he be proud of me? How were we going
to make this relationship — the real one — work? I lived in
Brooklyn, and he would be staying with his sister in Indiana.
More importantly, he had been in prison for 30 years and had
no contact with modern technology.
 
WE WERE ON OPPOSITE ENDS OF THIS
TECHNOLOGICAL SPECTRUM, BUT IF WE
WANTED TO KNOW EACH OTHER, WE
WOULD HAVE TO MEET SOMEWHERE IN
THE MIDDLE.

He didn’t have an email address, while I was tackling multiple
inboxes every day. He’d only seen photos of cell phones, but I
was blocking apps in an effort to get my time and attention
back. The social aspect of the internet I’d always enjoyed had
recently begun to feel like something I was trapped inside of,
something at odds with my desire to be close to people. And
yet, I was constantly logged in, logged on, or scrolling. We were
on opposite ends of this technological spectrum, but if we
wanted to know each other, we would have to meet
somewhere in the middle.

 

I went to my aunt’s house, and my father wasn’t there just yet.
My mother, my aunt, and I sat around chatting for over an
hour before we heard the garage door open. I stood up — he
didn’t know I was there. He didn’t even know I was coming to
see him, and I wanted to be the first person he saw. And I was.
He walked over to me silently, put his arms around me, and
kissed my temple. My aunt began to cry and yelled, “Thank
you, Father God! Thank you, Jesus!” My Uncle took dozens of
photos of me and my father that I knew I’d want immediately.
I only ever had one picture of us together, taken in the prison
visiting room: my brother and I seated on either side of a father
we did not know; our faces a mixture of happiness and confusion.
On this day, my father and I silently looked up at each other,
wondering who the other might be, and excited to find out. My
aunt cried behind us, “God is so good!”

I stayed in Indiana for a week. My dad and I went shopping
for
 new clothes for him. Stores were a lot for him. He didn’t
understand why everyone walked around looking down at their
phones. He
 couldn’t fathom what could be happening on the
phone that kept
 them so entranced. I tried to explain that
there were often 
other people to talk to or look at on phones.
Sometimes those people were
 far away, or people they didn’t
even know. There were mostly no
 long-distance fees; there
were photos and videos — basically the
 whole world could be
on these screens. He thought about that for
 a minute and said,
“But there are people all around right here. A lot
 of people we
don’t know. Why not just look at them?” I didn’t have
 an
answer to that. I thought about taking my phone out of my
bag
 and showing him, but I also didn’t want to bring my
Phone World
 into Our World. We were shopping together
for the first time,
 shooting the shit for the first time, and
despite all my usual
 inclinations, I had no desire to rush to
document it. I didn’t want
 to share it with anyone else.

 
When my dad asked for my number, I wrote it down on the back
of a receipt and handed it to him. “Is this your New York number,
or your Indiana number?” he asked. I looked up at him and
grinned. “There’s no difference between the two, Dad. That
number follows me wherever I go.” I wondered if he’d ask me
how that worked, but he didn’t. He didn’t really seem to care. All
his questions were about me. Where did I work? Did I love it?
Who was I dating? Did I love them? Would he get to meet them?
What was my home like? What was my favorite food? Did I
remember telling him I was proud of his art? Did I know that
that’s why he got one of his degrees in art? Would it be alright if
he called me on Wednesdays and Saturdays? Would I spend the
night tonight so we could sleep under the same roof for the first
time? Was I sleepy? Was I happy? By the time I fell asleep, I
didn’t even know where my phone was.
 
I left the next morning emotionally exhausted, my phone
screen crowded with notifications I didn’t want to answer or
know about. I did not want to leave my father, and yet, I
couldn’t relax until I was finally on my way back to Brooklyn.
I ignored my phone the entire drive back to Indianapolis, the
flight back to New York, and most of the day after. When my
Uncle Clarence started texting me the photos he took while
my dad was holding me, I couldn’t help but open and look. I
cried while I scrolled through them, then immediately
distracted myself by digging into my inbox, my iMessages,
and various social media alerts. A hundred people were
trying to reach me, and I felt too many miles away from the
one person I wanted to see. I closed the phone again,
downloaded an app that periodically blocks me from social
media, and called my aunt’s number to see if I could speak
to my dad.
 
Over the past five months, my father and I have taken on
the monumental task of getting to know each other. I’ve
visited him once more, pulled into the driveway listening
to “Almost There” by Michael Jackson, just to walk into
the house and hear him listening to the very same song.
In many moments, in person and over the phone, we’ve
marveled at how alike we are. We share similar tastes in
music, art, and humor. We’re stubborn, but not hot-headed,
and given to daydreaming as long as we can. We had our
first argument, a miscommunication really, and once it was
resolved I giggled and thought, Wow. I just had my first
fight with my dad. A real fight with my real dad. He keeps
calling, and I keep answering. He has a job and a smart-
phone now, but he doesn’t really know how to text. I just
send him pictures of me, my home, my city, and I know
he can see them, even if figuring out how to respond still
eludes him on most occasions.
 
THIS WAS WHAT HE NEVER GOT TO DO, BE
THERE FOR ME IN HARD TIMES. I COULD
GIVE HIM THIS.
 

When he calls, we talk about our days, our weeks, and our
hopes. Occasionally, we rant, but not often. Because of
how much time we’ve lost, we’re constantly catching each
other up. He tells me about his childhood, and I tell him
about mine. He’s called at least once when I was deeply
depressed. He asked if everything was okay, and I didn’t
have the energy to lie. I told him I knew I wasn’t much fun
when I was like this or interesting to talk to. He said,
“You’re my daughter. Everything you do is interesting to
me. I know you’re upset, but if you’ll let me, I’d like to try
and help. Can we just keep talking?” I smiled at the
longing in his voice. This was what he never got to do,
be there for me in hard times. I could give him this.
 
“Sure, Dad,” I said. “I’d love to keep talking.” And so
we did.
 
 
At least once a day I open my phone to scroll through
our one-sided text conversation. There are a few sentences
from his end, words separated by periods. He has trouble
with the space bar. I see the uninterrupted column of my
selfies and views of my surroundings. I know he appreciates
the technology that allows him to see my current world so
clearly, as he missed so much of my past. Because he has
trouble responding with text, he calls to say how wonderful
I am, how proud of me he is, and how much he wishes he
could see the things I see every day. If I can’t answer he
leaves minute-long voicemails. He is a talker, and I am his
rapt audience.
 
I know someday he’ll figure out how to text exactly what
he wants to say. When that happens, I’ll miss how much
we’ve had to fit into phone calls, and how I’ve had to
describe all the things he can’t see about who I am and
where I am. I’ll miss his voice, too. His strange and
familiar voice that sounds so much like my brother’s,
and his brother’s, though the thoughts often sound
just like mine.
 
Yes, one day, he’ll think to text before he thinks to call
because that’s what everybody does. It’s quicker and more
convenient. Less intimate. Traditionally, with most people,
I’ve preferred it that way. With him, it’s different. I’m
different, and I want to talk to my dad on the phone more
than I want him to text me. But I don’t have to worry
about that just yet. For now, I wait to hear his voice on
Wednesday and Saturday nights. I wait patiently, and
happily.

>via: https://www.refinery29.com/2017/04/152179/my-father-spent-30-years-in-prison-i-dont-want-him-to-text-me