Moments of Reprieve

By Tsan Abrahamson

I am asleep on my sister’s couch. I have been out of prison less than 24 hours, determined not to go back, but knowing I will somehow slip back into the life that put me there in the first place. It is not my desire to go back; my will is as strong as my biceps, chiseled and strengthened in prison. It’s simply this: I will make more bad choices in the weeks to come. But for now, I am out. I am free. I am still full of hope. And I am asleep.

Only an ex-con can truly understand the sleep that comes outside prison walls. It is a deep sleep, a painfully thick sleep, and it is more beautiful that the most perfect woman, and more fleeting – at least before you drift off -- than that moment a clean shot of junk reaches your brain. In the joint, you are never asleep, not really. You cannot give yourself over to the temptation to fall completely, totally asleep, and yet it is that very sleep that you so badly need to keep from going crazy in the six by nine cell you have come to call home. The concrete crib with nasty blankets and scratchy linens, the gray food, gray walls, gray books. Sleep: a luxury most cons cannot afford. Fall too deeply asleep and you may never wake up. I did not sleep in prison.

I'm out now, a five year bit tucked under my belt. Hours earlier, I had played with my sister’s kids. The boys ran to me when I walked through the door. So big and so small all at once, they had jumped into my arms with the enthusiasm that only small children can muster. Uncle, tell us about prison. Uncle, are you going to take us to the show? Uncle, we love you. Uncle, show us your new tattoo. We wrestled, the way little boys do with their uncles, and we ate. My sister made dinner, and with it I sucked down beers at her small kitchen table, while the boys picked at their food and continued to ask me questions. And for a brief moment of reprieve, I was not the ethnic throw-away that society had treated me as for so long. I was not the garbage I had come to believe defined me.

My sister and I are cut from the same cloth, suspicious by nature, suspicious by experience, and so we had watched each other move around the house, her striking green eyes mimicking my own. She is my sister, mi familia. She would not let me sleep on the street. Still, she had grown up in the same home with me for 16 years, and I knew she was wondering if she had done the right thing by letting me stay with her. Could she trust me? After all, she had kids now. Banging was understandable, but not desirable, especially around her boys. She wanted the boys to know their Uncle, but not ride the wake of destruction I had created.

It was time for bed, and she had scurried the boys off to sleep. They had wanted to stay with me, but she promised them I would be there when they woke up. Reluctantly, they hugged me and went to their room. Mercifully, they left me alone in the living room.

Now I am alone. My plan is to watch television, smoke some bud maybe (having scored on my way over), and kick it for a little while before driving over to a friend’s house. But sleep – real sleep -- is calling me. And East Oakland can wait.

Oakland, or at least this part of it, hasn’t changed much since I went in. The same shitty, broken down apartments, houses and projects with their dead lawns and old cars out front; the same slum landlords trying to squeeze off a few more bucks for a one bedroom with roaches and a toilet that leaks. The same single moms who clean houses by day and try to get their kids off the street at night. The same liquor stores hawking malt liquor and smokes to 13 year olds. The same cops cruising the streets in their prowlers, harassing otherwise good kids because they look like Latino or black gang-bangers. The same cheap-ass prostitutes parading down West MacArthur in outfits that look like disco throw-aways. The same fucking cars riding on the same fucking streets over the same fucking potholes. There might have been a proposition or a bill passed to fix the streets, but the money never seemed to trickled down to East 14th Street. It can all fuckin’ wait until I get some rest.

It’s not long before I am face down on the couch, my face buried in the faded cushions, my arms dangling at my side. I am drifting, slowly, steadily toward a perfect sleep. The street noises that were so annoying only an hour ago now become a low murmur in my brain. I am vaguely aware that my sister is coming in and out of the living room, tidying up, phone cradled between her neck and shoulder as she talks to her girlfriends about one thing or another. And suddenly I am completely, totally, unabashedly asleep. There are no guards here. There are no crazy cons trying to steal my shit. There are no vendettas on my sister’s couch.

I am back in prison in my dreams. I am protecting my space. I am holding court in the yard. I am slammin’ bones. And I am watching my back. Edgy. I am edgy. I am patient, but fast-moving. I am calm, but acutely aware. No one better fuckin’ touch me. No one better fuckin’ touch my homies. I am sweating. I am asleep. If I were white, I would be suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. But I am Latino, so I am just fucked up. I’m asleep and fucked up.

I sense someone coming into my cell. Fuck, it’s dark. My body stiffens. I cannot see him but I know he’s there. Who is sneaking up on me? If he thinks he’s gonna get the jump on my ass, he’s got another thing coming. Wait, maybe I’m dreaming. It’s nothing.

No, it’s not a dream. My instincts don’t lie; they are what kept me alive in this place. I feel someone’s hand. Someone is definitely trying to kill me. I whirl around on my back and I grab that asshole. I grab him and I throw him across the cell. I throw him into the concrete cinder block walls that I have lived with for the past 5 years. I am standing when I throw him, because I am quick as shit, and I put my entire body into the throw in hopes that he doesn’t come back at me. He doesn’t. He is slumped on the floor and screaming in pain. Only it is not into the cinder block that I have thrown him; it is into my sister’s crappy drywall in her living room. And it is not a con trying to kill me, it is my 7 year old nephew who was too excited to sleep and has jumped on my back to play. And it is not a dream. He is screaming. He cannot move his arms. They are positioned in a most unnatural state and are doubtless broken. I am fully awake now.

For a moment, I am paralyzed from fear. And as the realization slowly works its way through me that I have slammed a child into a wall, I begin to panic. The thump of his body hitting the wall and the subsequent screaming have brought my sister and other nephew into the living room. My sister is screaming at me that she is going to kill me. She is going to call the police. I am an asshole, a fucker, a derelict to do this to a child. I am a piece of dog crap. I cannot be trusted in her home. I want nothing more than to explain myself; to tell her than I was dreaming and I thought he was hurting me. I want to make it better, to take it back. He is screaming. She is screaming. She is making threats and I cannot bear the thought of going back to the joint. I want to take him to the hospital, but I am at once afraid that I will end up in a bloody pool on her living room floor if I stay around. So I leave.

As I run down the street, my sister’s screams permeating the noisy cross-traffic, I am not sure what to do. I have fucked up. Big time. I have attacked my sister’s kid. And now I am running. Fuck that crazy bitch. I had to run, didn’t I, or my ass would have been back in jail. She didn’t let me explain. If she had only let me explain, then I wouldn’t be running. I hear an ambulance screaming down 98th Avenue. I wonder if it’s for my nephew. I cannot believe I am going to go back for hurting my own blood. Shit. I loved that boy. He and his brother were the only ones who made me feel truly important in this world, and I have destroyed that, like I destroy all the good things in my life.

I am fulfilling my destiny. Perhaps it’s a good thing. Without real ties except for my gang-bangin’ homeboys out here, I don’t need to worry about my family any more. I am free to fulfill the destiny that got its start in a violent and abusive home, was further honed at the California Youth Authority, and finally got polished to perfection in Chino Prison. It’s what I was told I’d be; why fight it? Shit, grab myself a 40, roll up on my friends down the street to wait for my sister to calm down (so I can get my stuff), and cut her and her little boys out of my miserable, predictable fucked up life.

I duck into a liquor store and pony up the $6.98 for a case of Old Milwaukee, which I carry over to my friend’s house around the corner. He won’t be expecting me. It will be a surprise. I am sure that by the time I get though half this beer, I won’t even remember my nephew’s name and my sisters screams will be drowned in the fermented malt beverage I’m hauling under my arm.

I push open the door at my boy's crib. My homeboys are pretty much where I left them when I was arrested: hanging out, banging, clockin’, and talkin’ shit. I am greeted as if I never left the fold of the group. There are hugs and comments about how prison has made me strong, and there is coke and dope, and crank. I am struck by how very identical things are since I went in, as if time stood still. In later years, when I am clean, I will realize that this sort of stillness equals death, and I will fight hard to shake things up. But now, it is comfortable and I am floating happily in that semi-state of consciousness that takes away the pain I feel most of the time.

My mind races back to the house. I wonder if my nephew will be OK. I down another beer, to drown out the visual and the sound, but the pain in his eyes lingers with me and I am now no longer frightened for myself, but for my nephew. What if my sister cannot afford to pay the doctor? Will they push him off and let the white kids go first? I have to know. They probably took him to Highland Hospital, not far. I could call. No, I’m cool here. Nothing I can do anyway, and my sister is crazy right now. Seeing me would send her over the edge.

My head is spinning, but not from the splif that just passed by me. Give me some money. I need some money. I ask my friends to fork over what they have and they do. Amid comments about getting laid and scoring crank, I stash the cash in my front pocket and grab my coat. Why do I care about this little boy? He wasn’t even born when I went away.

I grab my boy’s chevy for the ride to Highland and I am there in four minutes. I am going back to prison. I walk toward the emergency room entrance knowing that I’m going back to fucking prison because I have tossed an innocent child into drywall. I should just get the hell out of there. My sister will calm down. Maybe I can get out of this if I lay low. I guess I always knew that I would be back; it’s what the counselors – or what they called counselors – at Youth Authority told me when I was 13. I’m a habitual. This is the life I was born to.

My sister is not in the waiting room. Maybe they didn’t need to go to the hospital. I tell the nurse I’m looking for my nephew, hoping she will tell me there is no one by that name here. She looks down her list and her finger stops on my last name. She points down the hall and smiles at me. I watch myself walk toward the curtain. If my sister goes crazy again, that crazy bitch, I’m ready to take off.

I walk into the room. My sister stands there with my nephew. His arms have been cast and he is sitting on the examining table. He sees me and his face widens into a smile. Uncle! My sister whirls around and at once I see her face and I know her blood is boiling. There he is! There he is! He did this to my son. She is screaming and pointing. Fuck. I am going back to prison.

When Malcolm X wrote his autobiography, he wrote of an epiphany he had while he was in the hole; a single event that changed the direction of his life. When Sanyika Shakur wrote Monster, he talked about a visitation from God. I did not have such a focused road to clarity or salvation or self-direction, or whatever you call it. When I went back to prison, I took my time learning the concepts of goodness and grace. There was no divine spirit, no light that would not go away beaming into my cell, no God that spoke to me. Over time, I came to understand that people were both good and bad. Most importantly, I came to know that I was worth something in this life, worth saving. That day in the emergency room, the grace of a little boy started me on that journey.

“STOP! It’s not his fault.” The tiny voice of my nephew pierces the chaos. I freeze. My sister freezes. The doctor who has been running toward me with an orderly freezes. We look at my nephew. Big fat tears rolling down his eyes, his arms reaching out toward me. “I surprised him. He thought I was attacking him. He thought he was back in prison. I’m sorry, Tio.”

How does he know this? He is crying and I do not know where his tears end and mine begin. The anger has left my sister and she is sobbing, too. The doctor and orderly are still frozen, not sure what to make of this scene. My sister opens her arms and includes me in her embrace with my nephew.

I will go back to prison for stealing a car in the months to come. I will get hooked on heroin again. I will lose the few legit jobs I get when I get out. I have more to learn about life and redemption and grace. But I did something right and something honorable, and I was rewarded with compassion from a little boy. And I believe that I am destined for something more than another prison tatt.