by Mateo Hoke
I thought, They ain’t ever sending me back. I was free. Boom.
IT SEEPS DOWN INTO YOUR DREAMS
Aaron was sent back to Northern Correctional Institution later in 2003 for the same reason he had been sent there in 2000—a combination of low-level Class A and B disciplinary reports. During this ten-year stint at Northern, Aaron was charged and designated as a member of a “security risk group,” that is, a gang member. He vehemently contests this designation. He was transferred out of Northern in 2013.
Now I’m at Walker, in Security Risk Group. I’m here because they say I’m a gang member. The physical structure is different—Northern is designed to maximize the isolated effect. Walker, where I am now, wasn’t built with that effect or objective in mind. Here, you’re not really that isolated by the physical structure of the building in the SRG unit. But here it’s still twenty-three hours in the cell and one-hour rec. It’s still no TV, lack of programming, lack of social contact, et cetera.
But before I got moved to SRG at Walker, I was in an SRG block at another prison, Corrigan, where they had TV. It was the first time I’d seen a TV since I’d been sent to Northern. I remember once watching something on my cellie’s TV. It was Rosemary’s Baby. I think it was a scene where she was in a lot of pain, and I started crying. I’m like, Why am I crying? Why am I getting so emotional? I can’t control it though. I’m tearing up. Somehow the TV reconnected me to my emotions. I pushed all those emotions back. I suppressed them. Now I’m confronted with them again. What a time.
But that doesn’t happen very often! Northern makes you bitter and emotionless. It makes you hard. That’s what isolation does. It seeps down into your dreams. That’s how deep it go. That’s how real it is.
I had one dream recently. In it, I’m watching a conversation. There was an inmate, and he’s at the table with his mother. He has a low haircut, chubby face, nappy hair. And he’s walking back and forth, and he shakes his head in a circular motion, like he’s saying “yes.” And only thing I can understand is he was explaining to her how much pain he was in. I’m listening and watching the conversation, but I’m not there. I can hear them talking. I’m listening to him say he’s in pain. She’s weeping, she’s crying, saying she wants to help him, but she really can’t. He is shaking. She says something and whatever she told him, it caused him to fall over weeping.
The dream shifts. I’m at dinner, at a restaurant. I’m with the inmate and his two sisters. We talking about the situation, and I’m asking them, “How did he end up in solitary confinement?” The sisters are saying, “It was nothing. Tax evasion.” I’m like, “No, not why he went to jail, what he did in jail to be put in solitary confinement. Ask him, what rule did he break?” He’s not answering. He’s just rocking back and forth. I’m like breaking it down. “I can file a motion to get him out of segregation. I can file an injunction. But I have to know what he did that made them put him in segregation.” They’re not understanding. They’re saying, “Nothing, nothing. He didn’t do anything.”
Then the dream shifts again. I’m walking on a college campus with one of the females who was at the restaurant. We’re on campus, but we’re on a bridge. And beyond the bridge is a beach. I can see the sand. From the bridge, I can see the water. Clear blue water and white sand. It’s crazy. We’re walking and looking over the railings. I ask her, “What are you studying?” And she laughs, looks back at me and says, “Why, what are you here for?” And I wake up.
There was a time when I could see no end to the abuse being perpetuated upon me by staff at Northern. I could see no way to make it out of Northern. All that changed when I was blessed with the ability to humble myself and quiet my environment, listen to Andre Twitty, and learn the law. The law has been my shield and my way to articulate the need for prison reform and for my release.
If it wasn’t for my family, friends, associates, Andre, and even certain CT-DOC officials, I’d probably be stuck in my old ways, more bitter and angry. My family and friends have been my cornerstone, though. They’ve come see me when they could, even at Northern. They write. They encourage me. They buy me books when they can. Inetta, my sister, thinks I could be the president of an African country.
What happens to people in Northern who finish their bid is this: it can radicalize a person. They create this hardened person and then they release him to the community, and that person is doomed for destruction.
But what keeps me alive is my family. When I’m released, I can’t go back and live the street life. That’d be selfish. They did this bid with me. They’ve always been there, but I haven’t been there with them at times. I haven’t been able to be there with them, but they never gave up.
In the spring of 2017, Aaron was sent back to Northern because of alleged gang activity. He remains there today.
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10. Narrator’s name and other identifying details have been changed at his request.
11. Long Lane School was a juvenile correctional facility for boys and girls age eleven through sixteen located in Middletown, Connecticut. It originally opened as the “Connecticut Industrial School for Girls” in 1870 and functioned as a home for girls in state custody for a century, housing both children incarcerated for crimes and children taken by the state due to perceived home neglect. Long Lane became coed and something closer to a detention and custody facility in the 1970s. After decades of building decay—and the investigation of a suicide of a fifteen-year-old girl in 1998—the facility was closed in 2003.
12. Manson Youth Institution is a detention facility for males ages fourteen to twenty-one located in Cheshire, Connecticut.
13. The MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution, in Suffield, Connecticut, is a maximum-security prison for adult men. It is the largest correctional facility in New England.
14. Cellie is slang for cellmate.
VERNESIA GORDON
age: 25
born in: Pontiac, Michigan
interviewed in: Anchorage, Alaska
Vernesia Gordon has her hands full. She’s a young mom of three and also works full time at an elder care facility. She makes time to talk with us in the evenings while taking care of her small kids and often some of her two brothers’ kids as well. She fixes dinner and snacks while disciplining and joking with the kids, and she recounts the love she shared with her fiancé, Davon Mosley. Davon dealt with mental illness for much of his life and was in and out of jails in California before he and Vernesia decided to start their lives anew in Alaska.
When we meet Vernesia in Anchorage, she’s coming from work, on her way home to take care of the kids. She wears white scrubs with a frog pattern, burgundy glasses, and gold hoop earrings, and her hair is in a single long braid. She says she loves her job but that she’s planning to go back to school in order to become a nurse. Before her current job she worked part time at Toys“R”Us while taking phlebotomy classes. Her mom, Khenisia, joins us, telling us she’s concerned about her daughter’s recent weight loss and that the stress Vernesia carries means she doesn’t know how to slow down.
HIS EYES TOLD ME SOMETHING DIFFERENT ABOUT HIM
One day in October 2009, I was walking to the apartment complex where my family lived in Bakersfield, and there was a boy leaning over the second-floor balcony of the complex.15 I think he was leaning over trying to see who I was. He leaned so far over he fell off. He literally flipped over the balcony! Yeah, he got my attention.
The next time I saw him I was sitting on the stairs of the complex talking to my brother, and the guy who had fallen off the balcony earlier came down to talk. His name was Davon, and he was friends with my brother. I was seventeen at the time, and he was sixteen. When I first met him I was looking at him thinking, He’s so weird.
We just started a conversation and ended up hanging out all weekend. We went to the movies. We walked to the park, and just talked about us and
our lives. We ate at the park and stayed until the sun went down, looking at the stars and the moon.
The first thing I liked about Davon was his eyes. His eyes told me something different about him than everybody else’s did. When we talked I learned that Davon had bipolar schizophrenia. I believe he was fourteen at the time when he was diagnosed with it. His sickness didn’t change anything. I didn’t judge him. I just kind of liked him.
HE DIDN’T SHOW HE WAS SCARED
I was born on August 11, 1992, in Pontiac, Michigan. But my family only lived in Michigan until I was five, and then we moved to Arnold, Pennsylvania, and then New Kingstown, Pennsylvania, for about five years. I don’t remember too much about my early childhood, but I remember my mom’s family being in Pennsylvania, so we were around her family a lot.
Then when I was close to turning ten, we moved to Lancaster, California. My mom’s sister lived out there, so we moved out to be around her. That was 2001. We didn’t have much more extended family in California, so it was just me, my mom, and my three brothers, two older, one younger. Even in California we moved around a lot, on almost a yearly basis around Lancaster. I don’t know why we were moving around so much—sometimes it was because my brothers would get into fights in school, and my mom would want to get them out of there.
So we were moving around Lancaster, and then my family moved to Bakersfield. This was around the time I was in high school. At that point I was doing well, so I didn’t want to move to a new school again. So we worked it out that I would stay with a friend in Lancaster to go to school, then visit my family on weekends and days when I didn’t have school.
Eventually I ended up coming back to Bakersfield and staying with my mom. Davon was a big part of the reason why I came back and stayed in Bakersfield. He would always leave school and come home with food. I love to eat, and he knew that, so he would always surprise me with burritos from the Mexican stand down the street. I literally was always at Davon’s house. I would go downstairs to my mom’s house to change clothes, take showers, stuff like that. We were inseparable until he went to jail. Then when he got out of jail we were inseparable again.
I didn’t know if things were serious, but not long after I started staying in Bakersfield, I got pregnant. It caught us by surprise because it was very soon after we met. I missed my menstrual cycle, and Davon and I walked to Walgreens and bought a pregnancy test. Two came in a pack. I took the first one and I set it down, and when the timer went off, I had him read it. And he just stood there like, “You’re pregnant.” I’m like, “You’re lying. Don’t lie.” I took the second test just to make sure, and it turned out I really was pregnant. That’s when my life changed.
It was all a bunch of feelings at once just rushing in. But for the most part, I was really scared. Davon, he was happy about the pregnancy. His mom was happy. His dad, though, would say things like I was just using Davon to get pregnant, to get welfare, that Davon should get a paternity test, those kinds of things. Davon always protected me from his dad though. Davon used to tell me he didn’t think his dad loved him.
When Davon was seven his older brother, Carlton Jr., was killed. Carlton Jr. was in a car and he was shot in the head in Bakersfield. I think it was a setup. Davon felt more of a dad connection to Carlton Jr. than he did to his own dad. He took it hard. They were all mixed up in gangs.
I think my presence changed Davon in many ways. He used to be out in the street. But Davon slowed down completely to the point to where his parents were like, “You saved our son’s life.” They used to think Davon could get killed any day. But when me and Davon got together, he never went out. It was always me and Davon together. And when I got pregnant, he became a family man.
My pregnancy was miserable. It was so hot! I was hospitalized because my placenta ruptured. All the complications with the pregnancy were very scary, but Davon was at the hospital the whole time. He spent nights at the hospital, went to school, came right back to the hospital or he would go home, get fresh clothes, and then come right back to the hospital. He was there every day. He probably tried to keep his emotions to himself, like that he was scared or worried for me. He was always there, reassuring me, “It’s going to be all right and you’re going to be all right. It’s nothing to worry about.” I believe he was scared because the doctors were saying our son might not make it. I know Davon was scared, but he didn’t show it. He kept it to himself.
Davon Jr. was born on August 10, 2010. I was happy, nervous, emotional. But for the most part, I was really scared. When I had my son, he wasn’t getting any oxygen. His umbilical cord was tied in a knot. So they had to do an emergency C-section and take him out. The doctors said if he stayed inside any longer, he would have died.
A lot of people put me down, saying, You’re not gonna finish school. You’re stupid, you shouldn’t have the baby right now, you’re not even eighteen. I didn’t listen to them, and I still have my baby now! I never dropped out of school, I always had straight A’s, I always did everything I was supposed to do. Even after I had my son, I still graduated from high school, and I’m going to graduate from college.
WALKING DOWN THE STREET WITH AN AX
Davon and I went through a lot together very quickly in our relationship—getting pregnant, having a complicated pregnancy, Davon being a bipolar schizophrenic. So dealing with Davon and his illness, it was stressful, but he was always there for me during my pregnancy. I was always there for him, too, every step of the way.
In the beginning of our relationship, he’d pick and choose when he wanted to take his medication and I had to tell him, “You can’t just do that. You have to actually take it every time,” but I also understand why he wasn’t taking his medicine. It’s lithium, and out in Bakersfield it was so hot. Lithium is salt, and it would always make him pass out. He was dehydrated.16 He’d be walking outside and just pass out. He kept constantly passing out.
We would call his probation officer and tell him Davon isn’t taking his meds. His probation officer was aware of his illness, but the officer would say, “Oh well, you have to wait until he does something. We can’t do anything because he’s not doing anything wrong right now.”
One time Davon was walking down the street with an ax. He was literally just walking down the street with an ax and that’s when his dad first called the probation officer, and they were like, “He’s not doing anything.” He’s walking down the street with an ax! What do you mean he’s not doing anything? They said we had to wait.
Because of the side effects of lithium, Davon was telling his doctor that he wanted a different kind of medicine. But instead of giving him a different medication, she just took him completely off everything.
Not long after, Davon had an episode. It was September 2011, a little after my son’s first birthday. He was arguing with my brother D’Aire and got a machete from under his dad’s bed. He was actually just going crazy. He was hitting the walls with his machete. D’Aire’s arm got cut really bad. The machete almost hit D’Aire’s artery. And my bother Durrell got a cut too trying to calm Davon down.
This is why Davon ended up going to Wasco State Prison—assault with a deadly weapon. I believe he was supposed to get nine years, but the then mayor of Bakersfield intervened and said Davon’s probation officer should have done something when our family was calling and asking for help. So Davon was sentenced to two years, and he served fourteen months.
A FRESH START
I hardly got along with Davon’s parents. I guess his parents didn’t like the way I spoke my mind, and I just didn’t let them talk to me like they do everyone else. It also seemed like when Davon was away from his parents, he was more calm. It was stress free. My mom had left Bakersfield again, this time moving up to Anchorage, Alaska. Davon and I were living with his brother, right next door to his parents.
So in August 2013, my mom invited us to come up to Anchorage to visit for my birthday. I could be around
family, and I could be happy. I wasn’t even sure we were going until we bought our tickets like two days before.
Davon and I went up there for a weekend. Unfortunately, Davon’s parole officer visited his brother’s house to check in on him, and his brother told the officer Davon was in Alaska. Davon wasn’t supposed to have left California. So the parole officer put a warrant out for his arrest. All that led to us deciding to stay in Alaska, for a fresh start, and so Davon wouldn’t go to jail when we went back. We just stayed. Davon put in job applications and got hired at Toys“R”Us, and that was that. We were staying with my mom, and I was putting in apartment applications.
My second son, Davontae, was born a few months later, on November 29, 2013. Davon was a good dad. He’d hold Davontae, watch TV with him, talk to him, read to him, play video games with him. He’d prop Davontae against a pillow, put a controller on his lap, and Davon would be playing a game as if Davontae was playing with him. He’d be like, “Hey, bug. You see that? We winning.” I’d be like, “Shut up.” It was cute though.
But it was hard. I had postpartum depression. My mood was all up and down. I was always tired. My mom was saying that I was going through too many emotions at one time and she told me I should go get checked, to make a doctor’s appointment and basically see what was going on. The doctor prescribed some medication that wouldn’t affect the breast milk because I was breastfeeding at the time.
The medication helped, but my doctor thought we might need couples and individual counseling. Davon and I were on a waiting list to get couples counseling and that’s when it started, that’s when everything happened.
HIMSELF AGAIN
In February 2014, Davon had an episode. His dad and I were arguing over the phone and then Davon got on the phone, and either his dad called me a bitch or he called me something that made Davon get mad. He hung up on his dad, and his dad called back. It was going back and forth.
