A Knock at Midnight(30)

Just entering the stark grounds of a prison heightens your stress levels. A prevailing feeling of constant surveillance, of powerlessness, is impossible to evade. I warded off memories of visits with my mom as I waited in line. One flustered woman ahead of me kept setting off the metal detector with her underwire bra. She was an older Black woman with short gray hair and light blue slacks like the kind Mama Lena used to wear, and the third time the guards barked at her to go back through I could see her hands shaking. She apologized for making me wait, and I smiled at her as kindly as I could. “Don’t worry,” I told her. “It’s happened to me before.”

    “Thank you, baby,” she said, and the third time she made it through.

The visiting room looked out over a yard, where in the warmer months kids could play while adults visited. But it was cold now, and everyone was inside. At a child-sized table in the middle of a side room, a woman in a tan jumpsuit sat with two toddlers, drawing them a picture with a crayon as the children looked on. The other visiting stations were metal, with attached mauve-colored chairs, an effort to soften the place, the chairs attached in a line as in an airport, with small side tables between every four or five. Around the room hung canvases with homemade photo backdrops—a tropical beach scene, a mountain with a lake, pink with flowers in the corners, a Christmas tree, Santa. Later I’d learn the incarcerated women had painted them.

I’d found some free chairs in the corner. I kept glancing at the door that led to the cells, hoping to see Sharanda. I hadn’t been to a prison since my mom was released, had forgotten the claustrophobic feeling—all that metal, the clanging echo of slamming doors, guards’ keys, steel on steel cutting through the visiting room buzz. I had a plastic bag of quarters on the table in front of me for the vending machines, twenty dollars’ worth—prison vending machines cost a fortune. I was nervous. I had never met anyone set to die in prison, and I had no idea what to expect.

Finally, the beige door buzzed and swung open, and there stood Sharanda, searching the room for me. We spotted each other at the same time, locking eyes and smiling wide. Sharanda was absolutely beautiful, just radiant, and as she wound her way across the room to me I was struck by her short, jazzy haircut, those deep dimples, her laughing eyes. Who could lock away this woman?

Sharanda opened her arms wide and gave me a big hug before we both sat down. I was relieved. I hadn’t been sure she would be happy to see me, didn’t know if the woman I’d meet would be bitter or sad. Under the circumstances I half expected it. But here was Sharanda Purlette Jones, warm and gracious as could be.

We’d written a few emails through Corrlinks, the prison email system, before this first visit. I’d learned Sharanda was the exact same age as my dad, and she’d grown up within an hour of both Greenville, my mom’s hometown, and Campbell, my dad’s.

    “There’s a white lady in here that knows your family,” Sharanda said. “I was telling her about your visit and she was like, wait, Barnett? Like from Campbell? She told me to ask you if you’re related to Leland.”

“That’s my dad!” I said. “What’s her name?”

“Kim Wagoner. She said she grew up with him. She got fifteen years for meth.” Sharanda shook her head. “So crazy. She just got in here a few years ago, so she’s got at least a decade to go.”

“It’s mind-blowing how much time they give people,” I said. “Like it’s nothing.”

“Tell me about it,” Sharanda said, smiling, and I thought about how many decades stretched ahead of her. Her ability to find any humor in the face of her own sentence seemed to me a profound grace.

“Who cut your layers, Brittany?” Sharanda said, keeping the mood light. “They’re gorgeous.”

“I love yours, too. I wish I could pull off a pixie cut! Did you do it yourself?”

“No, but I am real picky about who I let touch my head,” Sharanda said. “I can always tell who has blessed hands or not. Girl, I never would have guessed you were twenty-five.”

“And you sure don’t look forty-two,” I said. “No way. I guess it’s true what they say”—I smiled—“Black don’t crack.”

“You better know it,” Sharanda said, raising her head and flashing her gorgeous smile.

Sharanda’s quick laugh and familiar country accent put me so at ease. We talked as if we’d known each other our whole lives. About family, friends, what we’d done that day—everything.

The closest we came to discussing her case that day was in line for the vending machines. In all prison visiting rooms there are vending machines, often poorly stocked, sometimes broken. The women aren’t allowed to approach the machines. There are yellow lines painted on the floor that they stand behind to point out what they want. Carswell was pretty well stocked; one machine even had cheeseburgers in plastic wrap you could heat up in a microwave.

    “I’m sorry if I was a little cold at first,” Sharanda said, as we waited for those ahead of us to make their selections. “I didn’t know who you were working for.”

“You were nice,” I said. “Nice-nasty.” We laughed. “What do you mean who I worked for? I told you I’m just a student.”

“All these lawyers,” Sharanda said. “They come in all excited, say they’re gonna help me. As soon as I get the money together, they’re back. It’s like they work for the feds now. If you say this about this person, maybe…if you say that about so-and-so, it’s possible that…” For the first time since our visit began, Sharanda looked upset. “That’s just not in my heart, Brittany. I have a daughter. I believe in karma. How am I gonna have somebody in here suffering for something they didn’t do? It’s just not in my heart to lie like that.”