Turning the Tables: From Housewife to Inmate and Back Again (22 page)

They recommended that I enroll in personal growth and development training, which I thought couldn’t be too bad. They determined that my personal character showed evidence of spirituality, that I examined my actions to see if they reflected my values and that I found meaning in times of hardship. They said that I had excellent personal hygiene and sanitation, and wanted me to enroll in a finance course designed to teach me how to balance a checkbook. When I got the program review I mailed it to Jim to show him that I was doing well. They scheduled the next review for June 30, and by then not only had I completed the personal finance course, I had done the personal growth and development course and a résumé-writing course. My prison report card also noted that I maintained physical fitness through regular exercise and that I had made all scheduled payments toward my restitution. I was thankful that my hard work and desire to better myself were being noticed by my fellow inmates and by those who worked at Danbury.

Toward the end of my first month there, my family got approved to come visit me! I was over the moon because I hadn’t seen them since the early hours of January 5, when I left them in the middle of the night. Friends had emailed me with magazine articles that claimed Joe didn’t come see me for a few weeks because he didn’t care. Again, such nonsense. By this time, though, I was over all of that—I just wanted to see my family.

I had a lot to do to get ready! I wanted to look beautiful for them! The day they visited was Martin Luther King, Jr., Day, and so the lunchroom served a special breakfast: scrambled eggs and potatoes. Even so, I only had bran cereal, a banana nut muffin, and an apple. I was too nervous and excited to eat anything more.

The night before, I’d had Diamond, another inmate, who ran the prison salon, wrap my hair, so it would be straight. First, she set my hair in rollers and had me sit under a dryer that looked like it belonged in a 1950s beauty salon. After that, she took huge strands of hair and pulled them over to the other side of my head, carefully anchoring them to my scalp with bobby pins. She did the same thing with the other side of my hair, basically giving me a long comb-over and pinning that down. She wrapped one last strand at the crown of my head in a doobie (a big, fat roller). Then she gave me a scarf to put on my head to keep it from frizzing overnight. I felt official now! The next morning, she wrapped it for me the other way. It looked gorgeous!

After my hair was done, Tonya did my makeup. I felt like I was getting ready to film a scene for the show. She did a great job. I told her she should become a makeup artist. After I was ready, I went upstairs and waited by a big window where you could see everyone walking up the hill from the parking lot to the camp. When I saw them, I started crying. I had to go back to my room to pull myself together. When I calmed down, I fixed my makeup and went and stood at the double doors to the visitors’ room. They had just signed in. When you enter the visitors’ room, the first things you see are a plastic table and a wooden podium for signing various forms: visitors must state their identity, who they are visiting, and sign off on whether or not they are bringing in explosives, weapons, and things like that—kind of like at the security line in the airport, except there was no metal detector. There were a lot of visitors that day, so Joe and the girls had to wait in a long line to get in. When the guards finally called them, they checked Joe and the girls in at a computer. He didn’t drive there, but the guards would also take your car keys and hang them on hooks on the wall behind them. You weren’t allowed to bring anything with you to the visits.

I could see them through the cracks in the double doors and was waving frantically to my four precious girls and my husband. I had never, ever been so elated in my life. Finally, the guard allowed me to go inside to see them. I made a beeline straight for my family and hugged them all and kissed my honey. Nothing had ever felt so right.

We found six red plastic chairs and sat down. Gabriella told me all about how well soccer was going for her. She just loved it. Gia told me about the cheerleading championship her team had won (and how they dedicated their performance to me, which made me cry . . .). Milania and Audriana kept kissing me and hugging me and telling me how much they loved me. I took turns holding both of them on my lap.

Then came the part where I had to try really hard not to cry in front of them.

“Mommy, when are you coming home?” said Audriana, looking up at me with those big beautiful eyes.

“I will be home as soon as I can . . .” I said.

“Can I stay here with you?”

This was torture.

“Mommy, will you be home for my birthday?” asked Milania.

Milania’s ninth birthday was in a couple weeks, on February 2. I had barely made it through Gia’s birthday. I knew how much Milania wanted me home for hers. I tried to put on as strong a front as I could.

“I won’t be there for your birthday, honey. But you know how much Mommy loves you.”

I could see the tears welling up in her eyes. She hugged me a little tighter. This broke my heart.

We went into the chapel/kids’ room, which is off of the main visitation room, and sat at a table. Audriana, Milania, and I were coloring pictures for each other. Gabriella and I played a game we made up—“What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?” She said she wanted to become a professional soccer player or a model. I loved hearing that. Milania said she wanted to become a nurse—or a movie star. (Of course she did!) I want my girls to shoot for the stars and beyond.

Since Milania and Audriana are the two youngest, they wanted all of Mommy’s attention. They were both hanging on me, hugging me, and kissing me on the cheeks and on my nose. It felt so good to put my arms around them.

I was so proud of Gabriella and Gia, who were so poised and so mature. They sat there trying to hold it together for the younger ones, because they knew if they lost it, the little ones would just dissolve into tears. It was so nice sitting there and talking as a family again. They were also strong for Joe, who was having a hard time seeing me in prison.

Before we knew it, it was time for them to leave. Those four hours or so just flew by. When it came time to say goodbye, I didn’t think it was going to be as hard as it was. It was just like the night I said goodbye to them when I left to turn myself in, when the six of us were all crying. This time, Audriana started crying, then Milania, which made me lose it. When Gabriella and Gia saw me crying, they started up, too. Joe put his arms around me and sobbed into my shoulder. The last times I’d seen him do that were the night I left—and the day his father died.

“I’m sorry, honey,” he said. “It’s just so hard to leave you again. I’m going out to the car.”

He kissed and hugged me. I could see his shoulders heaving as he walked out the door, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. By now, Audriana was hysterical, hanging on my neck, saying she didn’t want to leave.

“I . . . just want . . . my mommy!” She could hardly get the words out in between sobs. She was hyperventilating, so I kept talking to her in a low, soothing voice. I didn’t want her to leave me so upset, but this was killing me.

I knelt down and talked to the girls quietly, telling them how much I loved them. Milania stopped crying, but was still holding on to my arm, as though she would die if she let go. That’s kind of how I felt, too, but I didn’t want to let them know that. They had no idea that they were the ones who kept me going, day after day. Gia took Audriana in her arms, while we both tried to calm her down.

Gia said Joe had texted her and that they had to leave. It was almost 3 p.m. now, when the visits officially ended.

“Mommy will call you when you get in the car,” I told Audriana and Milania, which seemed to make them feel better.

Audriana whispered, “OK, Mommy.”

I hugged and kissed them all once more and thanked Gia and Gabriella for being so strong. Gia picked Audriana up and they walked out the door. That was that. It was over.

I started sobbing again. One of the women who was still in the visitors’ room and had also said goodbye to her children was crying, too. We looked at each other and gave each other a sad smile, like, “I get it. This is hard.”

I went back through the double doors, got patted down for contraband, and headed straight to the phone area. Other women seemed to have the same idea I did, so I had to wait to call Joe and the girls. While I was waiting to talk to them again, I thought about how happy I was that they had come to see me—and that my daughters had seen that Mommy was safe and as joyful as she could be, given the situation, so they wouldn’t worry about me. They saw that Mommy had her hair, makeup, and nails done—all markers of my old life that let them know I was doing OK.

When I finally reached them, I asked Joe if Audriana was all right and he said yes. I hate to see my daughters cry, but I always tell them it’s good to let their feelings out. (I tell them that because growing up, my dad never wanted to see my brother and me cry, so that’s why I don’t cry a lot. It takes a lot for me to cry. Not showing too much emotion when I was little has made me a strong person. But I do tell my kids it is OK to cry sometimes because those emotions need to come out.) When I spoke to Audriana, I told her that Daddy would buy her a new Barbie. That made her happy. Gabriella was on her way to soccer practice, and Gia was going to be filming her music video for her girl group 3KT’s song “Just 13” at the house. In the video, the camera zooms in on photos of Gia at various stages of her life and of me and Joe with the girls. It ends with a video snippet of me saying, “It’s not saying goodbye. It’s saying, ‘See you soon,’ ” before saying “MUAH!” and blowing her a kiss. I wanted to blow my daughters kisses and give them hugs forever and ever and ever. Seeing them go was so hard for me—but I knew I had to let them go, because they had to get back to their lives. I didn’t want one second of what should be their carefree childhoods ripped away by what Joe and I were going through.

That night, like almost every night, I dreamt of my girls—that they were beautiful, strong, independent, and caring. The best part of waking up from those dreams was realizing that those dreams were my reality. And so, even though saying goodbye at those visits was hard, I knew I was very lucky—I had five people so wonderful that it made those goodbyes extra hard.

One thing the women said over and over was that they had learned their lesson pretty early on, because life at Danbury was not fun, cushy, or like a country club, no matter what people said. They say that people don’t need to be locked up for five, ten, fifteen, or twenty years for a nonviolent crime. It’s especially hard for women because often they have to leave their children behind. It always really upset me to see children clinging to their mothers and sobbing in the visitors’ room, but especially when I knew that those mothers had long sentences. In so many cases, it just wasn’t fair.

T
he day after that first visit, I woke up at 6 a.m. to get in line at the commissary when it opened. When I got there, I realized I wasn’t the only one who’d gotten up early. The place was packed and the line was so long. But the smell in there was the worst part! I was practically gagging. I’m not sure if people hadn’t brushed their teeth or taken a shower or used deodorant, but the smell was really bad. I started to feel sick to my stomach, so I waited outside. They finally opened the doors at seven-thirty, but I didn’t get called until eight-thirty. I tried to breathe through my mouth when I was in there, so I didn’t have to inhale the stench. I finally got my sneakers and bought some hair products and French Vanilla Coffee-mate and got out of there as soon as possible.

I headed straight to an appointment with one of my counselors at eight-thirty. He was sitting behind his desk and told me to come in. I put my bag of commissary items on the floor and sat down. I told him I wanted to see if I could go to a halfway house. He asked if that was really what I wanted to do.

“Not really, but if it allows me to see my girls more often, then I’m willing to go.”

I had heard scary stories about life at a halfway house, where prisoners can be sent to learn how to reenter society—that they could be dangerous. But my desire to see Joe and the girls outweighed anything else. The counselor said he would look into it for me. I thanked him and left. I had a funny feeling in my gut about going to a halfway house, but I had to do what I had to do.

I
had been calling home every day, which is what was keeping me going in there. I also spoke to my parents a lot. One cold, sunny morning, about two weeks into my stay there, I got up, had breakfast, and then headed to the phone area. Another line . . . I waited about a half hour or so, then dialed my home number—and a recording came on saying my minutes had expired. I felt like I had been hit in the stomach. I tried to call home again and got the same recording.

I turned to the lady next to me. “My minutes ran out! Already! I’ve only been here two weeks and I need to call home!”

She could see how frantic I was getting. I mean, Joe and the girls were my lifeline. My everything.

“I need to get more! How do I get more?”

“Hon, you only get three hundred minutes a month,” she said to me, rubbing my arm. “Once you run out, you’re done.”

Now I was getting hysterical. I almost started crying.

“What do you mean? I have to wait?”

I had weathered a few small storms here and there during my first couple weeks at Danbury, but this was like getting hit by a tsunami. At least that’s how I felt about it. Of course I found out later that there was a way to keep track of your minutes, but no one had told me that. There was so much to learn in here . . . but this? I was sick to my stomach.

Milania’s birthday was on February 2, and I wouldn’t get my new minutes until February 6. I had to call her. I have always been there for her—and all my daughters—since they were born. To not be able to speak to her was devastating to me. I went and found Liz. Maybe she would know what to do.

“Why don’t you write to the warden and explain the situation,” she said. “Ask for extra minutes so you can call your daughter. Sometimes they make exceptions to things.”