The Redemption of Bobby Love

by Bobby Love

  One day, one of those tabloid TV news shows just showed up outside our apartment building with their cameras rolling. I refused to go downstairs to talk to them and simply waited for them to go away, which they eventually did, but I was so embarrassed because everybody in the neighborhood knew why they were there. I never wanted attention like this, so in response I slowly drew my circle of friends and family tighter and smaller. Pretty soon I felt like it was just me and the kids against the world.

  Thankfully the kids all decided to handle themselves like angels and were there to support me and take care of me every step of the way. Jasmine and Jessica called me during the day just to make sure I was okay, or sometimes to ask if I wanted to do something fun like go to a movie after work. I would often go up to Harlem and spend the night with Jasmine’s family, just for a change of scenery. The twins kept up with school, both continued to make good grades, and Jordan continued playing football with the same intensity he always did. He was hoping to secure a football scholarship for college, and those dreams were not deferred because of Bobby’s situation. Initially I was worried that the boys might be suffering and not telling me, but even their school counselor, who knew what was going on, contacted me and told me that both Justin and Jordan were showing no signs of distress. For that I was so grateful, and I just felt like my children had built a cocoon around me to make sure I didn’t fall apart.

  In addition to dealing with the new public scrutiny of my life, without Bobby at home, managing our finances fell squarely on me. Even when he wasn’t working, Bobby still managed the money, stretching our dollars and making decisions about what bills to pay and which ones to hold off on until he could figure something out. We had fallen behind on the rent and loan payments, and now I had to be the one to negotiate with the landlord for more time to pay and call on friends and family to borrow the money we needed. Sometimes I felt like I wasn’t going to be able to deal with everything, but I didn’t really have a choice. If I didn’t do it, who would? I had to remind myself constantly that God only gives us what we can handle. If God was laying these burdens on my back, I had to assume He thought I could handle them. So I did.

  Even though our lives were challenging with Bobby gone, when I went to visit him at Rikers, I didn’t want to trouble him with what was going on in the outside world. When we visited, I spent all of my time trying to keep his spirits up, reminding him that we all loved him and that we were all praying for his release. Figuring out how to pay an overdue utility bill paled in comparison to the life Bobby was living in a six-by-eight-foot cell. Every time we stepped foot in that jail, I could feel the degradation of the place. Bobby always tried to put on a brave face, but I knew he needed to see our smiles and feel our positive energy to keep him motivated.

  Luckily, Bobby had been placed in the infirmary because of his diabetes, so at least he wasn’t housed with the general population. Even so, he told me if any nonsense between inmates started to pop up, he would tell the guard to lock him in his cell so he’d be protected. I still worried about him all the time. I worried about his diabetes getting out of control. I worried about him getting into some kind of fight with another inmate. I worried that the vertigo he suffered from might act up and he’d fall and hurt himself. I worried he’d get sick from the food or because some other inmate might have something contagious.

  For his part, Bobby never complained when we came to visit. He mentioned that the regulation prison sneakers hurt his feet, but other than that, whenever we were at the jail with him, Bobby kept his mood upbeat. Sometimes he would have us laughing about the things he saw going on around him. Bobby even managed to get himself a job at Rikers. The way he explained it, he had become something of a hall monitor, tasked with walking the hall of the infirmary where he was housed and making sure all the other inmates were okay and that nobody was breaking any rules or hurting themselves. “They’re paying me twenty-eight dollars a week to do this,” he told us with a grin, “and I get to stay out of my cell all day instead of being locked up, because I’m on duty.” This was so typical for Bobby, figuring out how to make something good out of the worst situation.

  Bobby never let us end a visit without giving the kids his attention. He’d talk to the boys about their schoolwork and grill Jordan about football. He would ask Jasmine about Levi, and he always told Jessica to keep an eye on me—​since she still lived at home and we joked that she always would. The last thing he always said was that he knew that God would help him get out. He seemed steadfast in his belief that he would be released sooner rather than later, and we were all hoping, against all odds, that he wouldn’t have to go back to North Carolina. I’d never heard Bobby speak so fervently about God and I just hoped his predictions would come true.

  But it didn’t work out that way. When the phone call came early on a Thursday morning in June, it was Erica Valdez who gave me the news.

  “They’re sending Bobby to North Carolina,” she said. “I just got word and I wanted you to know.”

  I sighed. “When will he be sent down there?” I asked.

  “Today,” she said. “They’re having the extradition hearing this morning.”

  I almost dropped the phone. “Today? Why so soon? Can we see him one more time?”

  “Mrs. Love, this is how it works,” Erica explained. “You can go to the court hearing, but you can’t really talk to him, and you won’t be able to hug him or anything. Some people actually prefer not to go for that reason.”

  “What time do we have to be there?” I asked, my mind already made up. If they were going to send Bobby to North Carolina, I didn’t know when I’d be able to see him again. And I didn’t know what kind of conditions he was going to be living in once he got down there. He needed to see us as much as we needed to see him.

  Erica told me where I needed to be, and when I hung up the phone, I texted the twins, who had already left for school, to tell them to meet me at the courthouse in Manhattan. I texted Jasmine and Jessica as well. There was no way we weren’t going to say goodbye to Bobby.

  I saw the boys as soon as I came out of the subway in lower Manhattan. The three of us rushed into the building and found out what courtroom Bobby would be in. There weren’t that many people in the room, just us, the judge, Erica, and some guards and other random officers. Out of the corner of my eye, I also saw the newspaper reporter who had interviewed me from the New York Daily News. When they brought Bobby into the room, my heart just leapt into my throat, but I couldn’t say anything, of course. Even though I’d seen Bobby every week, I still scanned his whole body for any changes in his appearance. The beard he’d been growing since he was arrested was now thick and bushy and covered the lower half of his face in a white cloud. He was wearing regulation gray sweatpants and a sweatshirt, and I could see the edge of a white undershirt around his neck. I could tell by the way he was walking that his feet hurt, and I was glad I’d brought his sneakers that he’d asked for. I was hoping to give them to someone who was going to be with him going down to North Carolina.

  The whole procedure lasted less than thirty minutes. The judge made a show of looking over Bobby’s paperwork, and then he explained that he was sending Bobby back to North Carolina to finish serving his sentence. The judge said Bobby would have to serve ten years. I nearly fainted when I heard that. Ten years! Bobby had been away from us for six months and it already felt like a lifetime. How in the world would we be able to handle ten more years like this? How would Bobby handle it?

  Jordan nudged me out of my stupor. “Ma, come on, they’re taking Dad out.”

  I got up out of my seat and followed the boys and the few other people out of the room.

  “Mrs. Love.” Erica tapped me on the shoulder. “Come out this way and you can see them take Bobby away.”

  The boys and I followed Erica out the door to the front of the building, where there was a white van waiting that was going to take Bobby down to North Carolina.

  “Remember, he can’t talk to
you or hug you or anything,” Erica said. “They’ve told him to look straight ahead and not make any eye contact with anyone. So he’s not ignoring you, he’s just following directions.”

  Sure enough, they led Bobby out of the courthouse in handcuffs, and even though he walked right next to the boys and me, he couldn’t turn his head and say goodbye. Seeing Bobby like that, like an emotionless robot, nearly broke my heart in two. I knew he was hurting. But just because he couldn’t say anything didn’t mean we couldn’t.

  “We love you, Bobby!” I shouted, not caring that I was standing outside and causing a spectacle. “Don’t forget that! We love you and we’re here for you!”

  The boys joined me. “Bye, Dad! We love you!”

  I know Bobby heard us, but he just kept his head up and kept walking toward the car.

  And then suddenly I heard a familiar cry, “Dadddddyyyyy!” It was Jessica. She had been furiously texting me saying she was trying to make it to the courthouse from work. She wanted to see her father before he was taken away. I told her where we were and encouraged her to hurry because they were not wasting any time getting Bobby out of New York. I watched my daughter sprint across the front of the building, hollering at the top of her lungs. “Daddy, wait! Don’t go!”

  That stopped Bobby. He couldn’t ignore his baby girl, not even at the risk of being punished by the law. He turned his head and looked at Jessica and gave her a hint of a smile. I grabbed Jess before she tried to throw herself in Bobby’s arms and really got him in trouble.

  “Bye, Jessica,” Bobby said. “Ya’ll be good.” And then they put him in the car.

  We all just stood there waving, yelling our “I love yous” through our tears. And then Bobby was gone. I looked down and I noticed I still had his sneakers in my hand.

  * * *

  I had to wait an entire month before I heard from Bobby again. I assumed he was alive because nobody had called to tell me he was dead, but other than that I knew nothing about my husband. I tried to get information from Erica, but now that Bobby was in North Carolina, he was no longer her client. She assured me he would be getting a lawyer down there, but before Bobby was extradited, she sent his case down to an organization in North Carolina that helped advocate for people with excessive or unfair prison sentences. She told me that someone would be getting in touch with me from the organization as soon as they reviewed Bobby’s case. I was happy to hear that, but it didn’t stop the pain of not knowing or hearing anything for those four long weeks.

  And that’s when I had to have a “come-to-Jesus” meeting with myself. I had been going through the motions of living, going to work, being with the kids, even going to church. But sometimes I’d wake up in the middle of the night still in my clothes, having fallen asleep watching TV, and just wonder how I’d gotten there. My friends and family were all trying to help me cope, offering encouraging words, but I needed to do something or else I was going to go crazy. So I did the only thing I knew to do: I turned to the Bible. I got into the Word. I started to build a wall of faith around myself. Every morning I’d start my day listening to my favorite hymns, dancing around the kitchen, just letting the spirit wash over me. At night and on the weekends, I would watch my favorite ministers preach on TV. I had to deepen my faith and truly believe that God had a plan for Bobby and He would keep him protected. I had to believe in the power of prayer, and so I prayed faithfully every day and with all of my heart that Bobby would be released from prison. I just filled my spirit with the word of God and tuned out almost everything else. I had to be my own cheerleader, protector, and friend. I had to be strong for Bobby, for the kids, and for me, and the only way I could do that would be to truly lay it all in God’s hands and believe in His power. Even though I’d been going to church for my entire life, and I never wavered in my belief in God, I had come to a point where my faith was truly called to the test.

  When Bobby was finally able to call home, sometime in late July, I was so happy to hear from him, tears sprang to my eyes.

  “Bobby!” I practically shouted into the phone. “Where are you?”

  “Hey, Cheryl,” Bobby said. “I’m sorry I haven’t been able to call until now. They wouldn’t let me.”

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. They just put me through all this testing and moving me around and all this.”

  “Well, where are you now?” I asked again.

  “I’m out here in this place called Spruce Pine,” Bobby said.

  “Spruce Pine?” I said. “That sounds like a summer camp.”

  “Well, trust me, it’s not,” Bobby said. “I’m out in the middle of the woods, but it’s no summer camp.”

  “Can we come visit?” I asked.

  “Cheryl, I don’t want you all to come down here,” Bobby said. “This place is so far up in the mountains, I don’t even know where we are and I don’t know how you’d even get here. The roads up here are so narrow and treacherous, I’d be worried the whole time thinking about you trying to get someone to drive you here. It’s not worth it for you to try to come. Besides, I know I’m not going to be here that long.”

  “How do you know that?” I asked.

  “I just know,” Bobby said. “I’ve rehabilitated myself. I’ve been a good citizen. I’ve paid my taxes. I’ve done everything I was supposed to do. Even my lawyer told me she didn’t think I should be here.”

  “But has anyone told you since you’ve been down there that you weren’t going to have to serve the ten years?” I asked.

  “No,” Bobby said. “But God has saved me so many times, Cheryl, I don’t think He’s going to stop now.”

  I smiled at that. It sounded like Bobby had had the same “come-to-Jesus meeting” that I did.

  “Okay, Bobby. I’m praying every day that you’re going to get out,” I said.

  “I’m going to get out, Cheryl,” Bobby said. “And it will be sooner than you know.”

  From there Bobby asked me about the kids, and I quickly caught him up on everything that had happened in the last month. We couldn’t talk that long, because Bobby said the inmates only got five minutes per call, so Bobby promised he’d call me again the next night at the same time. And he did.

  Six thirty phone calls every night became our new normal. Everybody knew that I had to be home at 6:30 for Bobby’s calls. I spoke to him every single day. Sometimes the ladies at work would ask if I wanted to join them for a happy hour drink or something, and I’d look at them like they were crazy.

  “You guys know where I have to be at six thirty p.m. I have a date with my husband.”

  And they would laugh but never try to dissuade me from rushing home to talk to Bobby.

  One day when I got home, there was an envelope in the mailbox addressed to me. It was from Bobby. I was like a giddy schoolgirl getting a note from her boyfriend. I tore it open before even getting up to our apartment and found a three-page handwritten letter. I kicked off my shoes and sat on the sofa and read the whole thing. In it Bobby poured his heart out, begging me to forgive him for all the mistakes he’d made over the years, for leaving me in the situation I was in now, and for lying to me about his past. Then he shared some of the passages in the Bible that he was reading over and over again that were really helping him endure prison.

  I read the letter through twice, and when I was done, I pressed it to my chest and just wept. Bobby had really found God. I could tell. I knew he had been on a path even before this all started, but I could tell Bobby was truly getting into the Word and believing in God’s grace. And he was telling me that he loved me in a way that showed his true heart. I ran back into Justin’s room and found some paper and immediately wrote Bobby back. While I wrote, I listened to Bobby’s and my favorite Earth, Wind & Fire album and was flooded with fond memories. In my letter I thanked Bobby for writing to me. I thanked him for sharing his heart. And I told him that I forgave him for everything. I also told him that I loved him.

  It sounds crazy, but
with Bobby in prison, we were communicating more than ever. I felt like I was falling in love all over again. We spoke every day on the phone and wrote letters to each other every week. My constant prayers for God to bring me and my husband closer together were finally being answered, just not in the way I’d hoped or expected.

  * * *

  In late August I heard from Bobby’s lawyer from the organization in North Carolina. He introduced himself as Mr. Walker. He sounded young on the phone, but knowledgeable.

  “I don’t want to get your hopes up,” he said, “but I think we have a good chance of getting Mr. Love out of prison. I need you to do a few things for me to help.”

  “Of course,” I said. “What do you need me to do?”

  “Well, my goal is to get Bobby out on parole. He’s already proven for over thirty years that he can be a contributing member of society, so I want to argue that he should be able to continue to serve out his sentence on the outside. In order for him to go up for parole, I need a bunch of letters from people testifying to Bobby’s good character. Could you collect a bunch of letters like that?”

  “Yes, I think so,” I said, already thinking of whom I could ask to write a letter on Bobby’s behalf.

  “Great,” he said, and then he told me how many letters I should get and where and when I should send them once I had them all collected. He stressed that time was of the essence. He also reiterated that I shouldn’t get my hopes up. “We almost never get a case where someone gets paroled on the first attempt, but we’re going to try our hardest,” he said.

  As soon as I hung up the phone with the lawyer, I was ready to get to work. Now I had a purpose. Now I had something concrete to focus on to get Bobby out of jail, in addition to my constant prayers.

  The first people I asked to write letters were Bishop and the first lady from our church. Not only had Bobby been attending church more frequently after he got fired from his job—​he’d even started teaching adult Sunday school—​but he had worked for the bishop and his wife in their house, too, cleaning and doing odd jobs. They knew him well and could say good things about him based on firsthand experience. Thankfully they agreed right away to write a letter.