A Knock at Midnight(73)
I made it through the panel that evening, more emotional than usual. I kept my eyes on Mike’s encouraging, proud face in the audience to remind myself of hope. He was a walking miracle, anything was possible. But I couldn’t shake the image of Sharanda in the very first video I’d seen of her, when I was a student at SMU. “I just can’t see my daughter graduating without me there. I just can’t see it,” Sharanda had said. Almost a decade had passed since that video was made. Sharanda had missed every graduation, every milestone. Somehow, mother and daughter had made it through. But something about Clenesha expecting her first child surfaced the pain and heartbreak, the severe trauma, of their separation.
An unexpected pregnancy always ushers in mixed emotions—joy and panic in equal measure. Clenesha didn’t want to stress Sharanda, and Sharanda didn’t want to stress Clenesha. By this time we had formed a little family of three, and in this family crisis I was in the middle, fielding calls from Clenesha in the morning, sometimes within minutes of receiving an email from Sharanda, both women in a desperate panic about the likelihood that Sharanda would still be incarcerated for the birth of her first grandchild. It was as though all the pressure of the past years had come to a breaking point, and that point was the tiny being growing to term in Clenesha’s golden-brown belly.
Meanwhile, days passed. Weeks. Months. And still, silence from the White House.
* * *
—
I TRIED HARD to hold fast to my conviction that Sharanda’s freedom was imminent. Sometimes, in moments of weakness, I felt afraid. Sharanda had never stopped believing, but lately she seemed to be grappling with the nightmare realization that President Obama might not grant her clemency. She’d always talked about her sentence as something unreal to her. “It just don’t fit,” she’d say defiantly. “It’s not for me. Can’t even get the words through my lips! I’m getting out of here!” But lately those bold proclamations had been subsumed by worries for Clenesha and the baby. Genice had died in prison. At the edge of all of our minds, held at bay by constant faith, belief, and prayer, was the unimaginable possibility that Sharanda could, too.
In my own moments of feeling overwhelmed, I sought the comfort of my own mom for solace. I’d meet her after work at Mi Cocina, our favorite Tex-Mex restaurant, and order chips and queso, beef enchiladas for my mom, chicken fajitas for me. I’d be exhausted from corporate finagling, she from guiding people in recovery through their first days of detox. I was always in awe of her willingness to put herself in such close proximity to the perils of addiction. By the time we’d worked our way through the first basket of chips, we’d have laughed away some of the emotion of the day.
One evening, after I’d finished catching her up about Clenesha being pregnant and my new strategy to generate direct appeals to Obama from as many people as I could, she set down her glass of water and looked at me, serious for a minute.
“Britt, I can see you’re tired,” Mama began, her voice softening. I opened my mouth to protest, but she gave me that look I knew well—the one that meant I’m your mama and I can see straight through you, so hush. “I know your work is wearing on you,” she said. “And I don’t mean at ORIX. I mean your real work. Your heart work.”
I felt her words penetrate all my defenses as only a mother can. I can’t afford to be tired, Mama, I wanted to say. There’s too much work to do. But I knew if I spoke, the tears I felt pressing at the back of my eyes would get out. And with them the questions I could not bear to ask myself. What if she doesn’t get out? What if I’ve failed?
“What Sharanda and Clenesha are going through with the baby—that’s a lot of pain,” Mama said. “When I missed your master’s graduation, I didn’t know what to do. I was just in my cell, on the bed, curled up in a fetal position. Couldn’t get up for almost two days, and then only because I had to work. I let my baby down. I let myself down. Your proudest moment to that point, and I couldn’t be there. It broke my heart. If you had been pregnant?” Mama looked down for a minute, shaking her head. When she looked up, her eyes were filled with tears. “I don’t know if I could have stood the anguish. Sharanda is a brave woman.”
“You were there in spirit, Mama,” I said. “You’ve always been there.”
“But not in the flesh, Britt. And as a mother, it’s an unbearable feeling. But I am here now.” She reached for my hand. “You are going to get through this. You and Sharanda and Clenesha. I know that for sure. But what I want you to know is this—I am proud of you, Brittany K. I am so very proud. And it has nothing to do with your rising career in corporate law. All of that is just icing on the cake. I’m proud of you. Of who you are. Of the work you are doing. Of how you just won’t quit. Sharanda’s getting out, Britt. Just like Mike, just like Donel. Because you won’t quit until she’s free. And not giving up? That’s what it’s all about.”
Evelyn Fulbright was a straight shooter. If she said it, she meant it. We had been through so much together. But we’d made it. My mom was a fighter, and one of the most courageous women I’d ever known. At her words, I felt flooded with a deep joy, the kind of love that readies you to move mountains.
I grabbed a chip and smiled at her playfully. “I guess I got it from my mama.”