A Knock at Midnight(17)

My mom had failed her drug tests over and over again after being put on probation when I was in high school. Time after time, her dad would bail her out, or sometimes Billy. Each time she failed a drug test, the length of her felony probation was extended, and over the years she had accumulated ten years’ probation time. Finally, her luck had run out. When she violated probation this time, the judge had had enough. The court sentenced my mother to eight years in prison.

The news stunned our family. Any semblance of normalcy was stripped from us in that one judgment. It was so obvious that Mama’s problem was drugs. The only crime she committed was against her own body. It had been six years since her drug-induced encounter with a police officer that had led to her initial arrest and charge. There was no new subsequent criminal offense, only the snowballing consequences of her addiction in every failed drug test. But Red River County had no alternate drug courts, and so instead of the drug treatment she so desperately needed, the State of Texas was going to lock her away for a sentence that seemed like forever to us.

At night, I lay awake, trying to keep the shattering emotions that I felt in the pit of my stomach from taking over. The nightmares of my childhood returned, and sometimes I woke up in a sweat, my head pounding from a tension migraine. My logical defenses were vulnerable at that midnight hour, and I would give over to the pain. In the morning my eyes were swollen and my face red from where I’d pressed my hands into it. I held a cold compress to my cheeks and eyes before heading to work.

Mama was right about pulling chain: They moved her out of Clarksville that very week. From work and in between classes, I checked the Texas Department of Criminal Justice website several times a day, trying to find where they would place her. Finally she came up in the system at the Woodman Unit in Gatesville. I didn’t tell Jazz, I didn’t tell anybody. I just went. I had to go see my mama. I wanted to hug her, to hold her, to have her whole self in front of me, not some number on the endless list of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice website, not a tiny voice on the other end of an impossibly expensive collect call, not the image of her in that archaic black-and-white Jim Crow prison uniform from Clarksville, locked in some cage.

    I set out for the two-and-a-half-hour drive to Gatesville determined to make the best of the day, to be positive for my mom. The heat rose in waves off the blacktop as I cruised down I-35. I turned up the stereo and let the heavy bass of T.I.’s new album King run through me, trying to keep my despair at bay.

Gatesville is a small rural town near Waco with a population of fifteen thousand. Over half of that population are incarcerated in the town’s six prisons, all but one of which were built between 1980 and 2005, during which time the prison population in the United States grew an astounding six hundred percent, and in my home state of Texas, twelve hundred percent. Five of the Gatesville prisons are facilities for women.

Finally I turned onto the road that led to the Linda Woodman Unit. Fields stretched on either side of the road, some with corn knee-high, others dry and fallow, the soil baked hard in the heat. I drove slowly, afraid I would miss the turn, passing one prison on my right, then another. Despite my tinted windows and the air-conditioning on full blast, the steering wheel was hot to the touch from the sun’s relentless rays. In the field ahead of me, a large man in a cowboy hat and spurs sat astride a tall horse, both horse and rider silhouetted against the yellow fields in a quintessential central Texas scene. Busy admiring the sun rippling off the animal’s muscled flank, I didn’t see the rifle cradled in the man’s hands until I was almost upon them. For a moment I was confused. Then I saw what he was guarding.

Just beyond horse and rider, three rows of women in white prison uniforms broke the soil with hoes swung in perfect unison. Sweat poured from their faces and soaked through their cotton uniforms as they struck the earth again and again in a perfect, terrible choreography. The man guarding them didn’t turn his head as I drove by. His mirrored sunglasses flashed in the unflinching sun. I felt physically sick.

    Later I would learn that I’d witnessed a Hoe Squad, a common labor practice for prisoners under the age of forty in Gatesville prisons since the 1950s. Women and men cropped all day in the fields, despite temperatures averaging ninety-six degrees. If a prisoner fell out of plantation rhythm, she risked being written up for an infraction. At the time, though, I just drove on and tried to shut the image out of my mind.

I had reviewed visitor rules on the Texas Department of Criminal Justice website again and again to make sure I was as prepared as I could be, that I met the dress code, that I’d be able to follow the rules, and now I tried to ease the hard pit of anxiety in my stomach by going over them in my head. I knew I would be able to hug and kiss Mama when I arrived and again when I left. I knew we’d have only two hours to visit and that we’d have to stay mindful of the time if we were going to be able to catch up on everything.

The Linda Woodman Unit was a low-security prison, but razor wire and dozens of tall security floodlights still marked the perimeter. The low-roofed building resembled a cattle barn. I pulled into the huge parking lot and into one of the many available spaces. Even though it was peak visiting hours, the lot was almost empty. I sat still in my car, motor off, no music, no A/C, just me looking at that blue tin building. Somewhere inside, I’d find my mama.

I couldn’t wait to see her, had driven these two hours full of anticipation. But now that I was here it was like I was stuck in the car. This wasn’t the little Clarksville jailhouse; that had been scarring enough. I didn’t know what to expect, but if the scene in the field was any indication, I wasn’t ready. The temperature in the car rose steadily, but still I couldn’t move. The tears started, and then the sobs, wild, uncontrolled. I didn’t want Mama to see me like that, wanted to be smiling for her, to be strong. But at that moment, I felt anything but.