I
turned the corner into the lobby and found him staring out the window at traffic
on Florida Avenue. He was hard to miss. Canary yellow sweatpants and a matching
hoodie, a bright yellow headband around his bald head and yellow marigold Adidas
sneakers.
“Antuan?”
I asked.
When
he turned around, I was surprised to see he looked much older than his file
reported. At thirty, he looked middle aged. That’s what being in prison will do
to you.
Three
days earlier, I’d bounced into the building to start a new job as a Life Coach
in an ex-offender re-entry program. I smiled and said a cheery “Good morning!”
to everyone I passed on the way to my office. I was the first employee to start
in the Tampa office for a program called Passport to Success.
Designed
to help people coming out of prison to find housing and employment, it was
funded through a legislative appropriation, not the grant I was originally told.
This makes a difference politically when trying to get help from agencies funded
by the state because our budget may have meant theirs shrunk.
Two
old desks were crammed in the tiny space but only one had a computer on it.
Assuming it was mine, I tossed my briefcase next to the chair and picked up the
pile of brochures sitting near the keyboard. Along with a punchy headline in
shiny magenta and a stock photo of happy faces, this was printed at the bottom:
Axis I Diagnosis Required.
I
had no idea what that meant, so I booted up the computer and jumped on Google.
This is what I found:
Mental
health disorders in the Axis I category include schizophrenia, bi-polar
disorder, PTSD, and major depressive disorder. Medication is usually
required.
Umm,
excuse me?
No
one said anything to me about this being a part of the job. Nary a word in three
separate interviews.
I
thought I’d been hired because of my extensive career training background. I had
zero experience in social work or psychology and felt way in over my head. The
program director hadn’t started yet, nor had the therapist with whom I would
share the office. I was completely on my own until the following week.
My
appointment with Antuan wasn’t until Wednesday, so I took the next two days to
do a ton of research, none of which made me feel more competent or comfortable.
I also defaulted to my sales skills and headed off to the various probation
offices to hand out brochures and introduce myself.
In
retrospect, the naivete was comical.
Dressed
like I was still in sales, I showed up expecting them to be happy that there was
a program that would support the people they supervised. I could not have been
more wrong. Many of them looked at me like I had six heads as I shared my
enthusiasm and hope about how we could help their clients get stable housing and
employment. More than one asked me to “leave the brochures with the
secretary.”
It's
also important to mention that many of these probation offices were in areas I
didn’t frequent. Some of them in parts of Tampa I’d never even been in. And all
of them had array of characters in various stages of their probation periods
waiting for appointments or drug tests in the lobby.
Before
Antuan’s intake appointment, I went over the paperwork multiple times to make
sure that I did everything correctly. There was no one to train me, just a voice
on the phone at the Clearwater location twelve miles away that I could call with
a question. I was nervous about making a mistake and screwing something up so
badly it couldn't be fixed.
Fortunately,
since I had taught writing in a prison I wasn't too apprehensive about meeting
someone who had been incarcerated. But I was still woefully undereducated as to
the impact on people's physical and mental health, along with how it affects
one’s ability to function in society after being institutionalized.
The
intercom buzzed on my phone to let me know Antuan had arrived, and I checked
over all my notes and paperwork one more time before heading to the lobby to
meet him.
“Antuan
Ware?” I added his last name. He nodded.
We
headed back to my office and I offered him a seat. His slouch screamed, “what is
this white lady gonna do for me?” and I sensed he was guarded, trying to show me
he was hard, impenetrable.
In
the beginning, I was all business. Name. Address. Social Security Number. I’d
decided I wasn’t going to ask for details of what got clients locked up, but I
had the charges in the case file. Assault with a deadly weapon. Oh, and a
diagnosis of schizophrenia.
When
we completed the paperwork, I explained to him the details of the program. I
learned from the brochure that he’d be required to see the program psychiatrist
once a month and that a counselor was available if he wanted to talk to someone.
His work experience prior to being incarcerated consisted mostly of warehouse
work, so we discussed his skills and the work he’d done in prison so I could
begin to look for places open to hiring him.
I
did my best to hide my inexperience, lest it come across as incompetence. I
wanted him to trust me even though I wasn’t sure he should.
Gradually
he began to sit up straighter. We talked about the halfway house he lived in and
the amount of drugs circulating. “It’s not great. As long as I’m on probation I
have to pee in a cup once a week.”
My
ignorance about the reality of halfway houses caught me off guard. Didn’t
someone check to make sure there were no drugs? How were weed, crack and heroin
being rampant helpful to someone who was trying to change? I won’t even get
started on the neighborhood he was living in. Riddled with crime and drugs, it
didn’t provide a supportive environment for him to turn his life around.
“Ain’t
you gonna ask why I was locked up?”
“I hadn’t planned to,
but if you want to tell me, I’ll listen.”
“I
was at a friend’s. With my boyfriend.”
OK.
That’s new information, I thought.
“There
was this guy that kept hitting on him. I asked him to quit. Four times. But he
wouldn’t stop. I stood up to let him know I was serious, and he came at me. I
pulled my knife and stabbed him.”
“I’m
sorry,” said.
“The
cops showed up. Lights and sirens everywhere. They cuffed me and dragged me off
to the station on 30th Street. Then it was two months at Falkenberg (the county
jail) before I got sentenced.”
Even
though he was my first client, he educated me more than anyone on the job had.
After Falkenberg, he was transported to the Reception Center, an oxymoronic
label for the first stop in the Florida prison system. After two months there,
moving through the classification process, it was determined he needed to be in
a medium secure lockup and was shuttled upstate near Pensacola.
Originally
from Las Vegas, his only friends were in Tampa, although that no longer included
the boyfriend over whom the fight was. Being so far away, he was on his own for
the length of his sentence, some of which had been served in solitary he had
requested to keep himself from assaulting some of his fellow inmates.
His
mom sent him money when she could, so he had some access to the “commissary” –
vending machines filled with everything from deodorant and underwear to ramen
noodles and candy, all at inflated prices. The phone calls were so expensive,
she could only afford to talk to him once every couple of months.
Altogether,
he served nearly five years and had requested probation in Tampa since it was
the only part of Florida he really knew. But when he arrived at the Greyhound
station the day before with only the clothes on his back, $50, a bus pass, and a
month’s worth of meds for his schizophrenia, he couldn’t locate any of his
former friends.
He
looked beat down and skinny sitting in the old metal chair, the colors of his
clothes hiding a much darker reality. I leaned on the desk and looked him in the
eye. “Where are you in forgiving yourself for stabbing that man?”
Before
I knew what was happening, he was sobbing like a toddler. He managed to choke a
few sentences out in between heaves to catch his breath. “I never hurt nobody
before in my life. I didn’t want to stab him. He just wouldn’t stop and all my
friends be lookin at me like Ima a pussy.” He took a moment and began to calm
down.
“Bein
high didn’t help.”
We
both laughed out loud, and the tension cracked like an old window. “Who are
you?” he asked wiping the tears with the sleeve of his bright yellow hoodie.
“Some kinda witch? Ain’t nobody asked me anything like that the whole time I was
locked up.”
When
we were done, I made promises I had no idea whether or not I could keep, and
Antuan headed back to his halfway house. Over the next six months, we created
stories together. Stay tuned for Part II.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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