when she had a heart attack.
She told Kakamia when they did speak that she wasn’t able to write or visit him and let him know she was alive, because she had severely advanced arthritis. While this is true, I think a lifetime of tension, two decades of bars, and years of silence between them were also the cause.
Kakamia called me, in a hushed voice said, “My mom’s alive, Wa, she’s alive. These bastards have been lying to me all this time.”
I could imagine him touching the tattoo he had added of his mother’s name, written in the same urgent, heartrending strokes as Thearon, right above it.
It is an incredible story—an unbelievable story—only if you have not been in close contact with the prison system, and do not know the capriciousness, the callousness, and the incompetence with which things are run. I have seen a guard cut a visit short because he did not like the “aggressive” look the prisoner gave him when the guard walked by. Guards search cells for contraband, crumpling children’s pictures, ripping pages out of books, demolishing letters from loved ones, only to find nothing. I have seen a woman wait for two and a half hours to visit her husband, only to finally be told that he had been transferred to another facility inextricably, for no reason, the night before. She had driven six hours.
Prison is a site of pain, and unnecessary psychological games justified by the need to “keep the inmates on their toes, so they don’t know what’s going on.” It is like a vase, jarred by running careless hands, toppling to the floor and spraying a pattern of heartbreak underfoot.
* * *
I know Kakamia was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder. I read his paperwork, read about the mother murdered, the father who miraculously survived, and the two older white co-defendants. I know when he was convicted, sentenced to fifteen to life. I know he has done ten more years than the minimum, which he was promised by his trial lawyer. I know the uncertainty of when, of if, is potentially fatal. There has been a countless string of parole hearings, all stamped denied. Not this time; try again in two years. Better luck next time, in three years. Fifteen to life is counted in decades, not years, months, or days.
When a friend of mine came home from prison, he told me that when he had a year left, he placed a deck of cards on his bunk. Every week, he would move one card over to a new pile. One week down, 51 more to go. For his last month and a half, he moved a card a day. For his last two days, it was a card an hour: anything to see time move, the end approaching, hope growing as the stack of cards shrinks.
Fifteen to life. No deck of cards. No countdown in my brother’s future.
Preparation for the parole hearings is always the same: gather letters and secure job offers, housing offers, and drug and alcohol support programs. Who do I know that would impress a parole board with their support? What can I say to make them see the man I know my brother to be? Every time, I go in search of the secret magic words. I spend hours drafting my letter to the parole board, a letter they probably never even read. The immense responsibility I put on myself is comforting; if I have the power to say the right thing to set him free, then I at least have some kind of power.
But the decision is the same. It is always the same. And it always feels worse than imagined.
The state of California passed new laws around parole. The longest denial they could give before was two years. Now the shortest denial they are allowed to give is three years. Prisoners are being denied parole and given 15 year hits, the slang for the time a prisoner has to wait until their next parole hearing. Hit: slang that is so true, it hurts. It is being told you will not even have a chance to walk outside of prison walls for a decade and a half, and that your dreams must be put on hold while graduations and births and deaths pass you by. It is a blow to the face and a punch to the gut.
It is a hit not just to the prisoner. We all take that hit: loved ones, family members, and communities that will eventually welcome back the vast majority of people in prison right now—ninety-five percent, says the Bureau of Justice. Many of these people will be permanently scarred black and blue from so many hits.
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