A Knock at Midnight(101)
Some hopeful progress was made on December 21, 2018, when President Trump signed the First Step Act into law. The bill was called the most significant federal criminal justice reform legislation in decades and garnered overwhelming support from people across the political spectrum. Aimed at reducing recidivism and easing harsh penalties related to federal drug offenses, the bill included four modest sentencing reform provisions. It made retroactive the reforms enacted by the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, which reduced the disparity between crack cocaine and powder cocaine sentences at the federal level. It also eased the three-strikes law so people like Chris Young automatically received a mandatory twenty-five years instead of life. But in an outrageous irony, the law’s scope did not reach Chris and others like him. In one of many compromises made by progressive reform advocates to secure conservative support, the three-strikes revision and several other provisions of the bill were not made retroactive.
The First Step Act was just what its name indicated—a much-needed first step that provided long-awaited freedom and reunited families, but there was much more work to do. And nothing was more urgent. So many more Chrises, Coreys, and Sharandas were waiting.
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I WAS LATE. I’d driven to Rockwall earlier that afternoon to pick up the brisket my dad had spent all night smoking on the grill. Briskets in Texas are a big deal, and my dad makes the best, with just the right combination of smoke, heat, and time. Foil-wrapped to seal in the juice and big enough to feed sixteen, its aroma taunted me from the backseat. I hadn’t eaten all day. When Sharanda put on a dinner, I knew to save room. Tonight was a truly special occasion.
Two days before, Alice had arrived in Dallas for a visit, and Sharanda was throwing her a feast. Donel, Terry, Wayland, and Mike would all be there. Jazz was coming over, too. “Is Sharanda making those greens?” she’d said. “Let me get my Tupperware together now!” Even De-Ann had driven in from East Texas. I couldn’t wait to see everyone.
Every time I pulled into the parking lot of Sharanda’s apartment building, I was struck by a vivid reminder of our journey. There, just kitty-corner from her new complex, in a perfect location for the diner it now was, was Sharanda’s former soul food restaurant, Cooking on Lamar. Painted black now and nondescript, its presence might have haunted someone less optimistic. But not Sharanda.
“I’ve been over there,” she’d told me. “The lady’s real nice, but she’s having trouble with the menu. I told her soul food! You got to drive all the way over to South Dallas to get some good candied yams in this town. If I wasn’t so focused on my food truck, I’d help her out!”
Halfway down the hallway to Sharanda’s door, the heavy brisket in my arms, I could smell exactly what she was talking about. She and Alice had been cooking for two days. “We haven’t slept!” said Sharanda. “Laughing all night like kids. I know you’re going to like the food, though. We did it real big.”
Before I could knock, Alice swung open the door. “Hurry in here before the neighbors start asking for food!” she said. “Someone already stopped Sharanda today and asked her to cater a lunch! Everybody wants a plate!” She helped me set the brisket down and gave me a huge hug. “I’m so glad to see you, Britt. So glad.”
Twelve months out of prison now, Alice looked radiant. I was always surprised that I was taller than her—something about her regal presence made her seem much taller than she was. She’d been traveling all over on her book tour, she said, tired but happy. “I cannot rest,” she said. “All those women I left behind? I have a responsibility to them.” Sharanda was the same way. Survivor’s remorse haunts every formerly incarcerated person I ever met, that heavy sense that every moment of their newfound freedom is a moment someone else spends in prison.
The next few hours were a flurry of joy and warmth. The guys and De-Ann arrived soon after and filled their plates to overflowing with melt-in-your-mouth ribs, cornbread, mac and cheese, candied yams, greens, black-eyed peas, Alice’s peach cobbler—you name it, those two had prepared it. With the addition of the brisket, there was enough food to feed a village. Sitting around the table with Alice leading us in a moving blessing, I felt soul-rich with family. Mama Lena’s Sunday dinners and Sharanda’s abundant table were both squares on the same quilt. Wrapped in love and belonging, I listened to my clients laugh and joke with one another, their humor a balm for shared memories that no one should have to endure. As always, I was moved by their tremendous grace.
Across the room, Wayland proudly showed De-Ann and Jazz pictures of the house he and Mike had flipped—their first. They’d done all the construction work themselves and had turned their first flip over for profit in less than two months. Wayland’s trucking business was doing well, too, though whenever she saw his trucks, Sharanda would joke, “You sure you actually do any work? Those trucks are too clean!” Now that they’d been reunited, the brothers did everything together, even lived together in a house across the street from their mom’s. Wayland was revising two novels he wrote while in prison and considering penning a third. He was such a good jailhouse lawyer that I thought he might pursue the law as a free man, but he joked that if he never in his life saw another court document again it would be too soon. I could understand that. Watching Wayland laugh about something with Jazz until tears came out of his eyes, I tried to imagine being separated from my sister for even half the time he and Mike had spent apart. I couldn’t. Donel had his own trucking business, too, and true to form, he had spent the first part of the evening asking me to check over some paperwork for a new contract, worrying over getting every detail exactly right.