Lauren Kessler - Free: Two Years, Six Lives, and the Long Journey Home

When she was eighteen, Belinda was convicted of stabbing her pimp. She hadnt meant to kill him, just hurt him. Shed been on the streets since she was fourteen, when her mother stopped the car and told her to get out, and she had learned to take care of herself. Or at least stay alive. She spent the next twenty-two years behind bars. The day she was released from the Coffee Creek Correctional Facility, it was raining. She was wearing sweatpants a size too large and a cheap nylon jacket, clothes brought in by a friend the day before. She was lit up, like a girl rushing out to meet her prom date. There was no prom date. There was a clutch of late-middle-aged women from a faith-based group that had connected with her in prison. There was a dog. It was one of the dogs she had helped train as part of a prison-run canine companions program. She briefly hugged the women then got down on one knee and nuzzled the dog for a long moment. The dog remembered her.

The ladies knew exactly where Belinda wanted to go. In two cars, they caravanned to the nearest Starbucks, less than two minutes away. Shed heard about this Starbucks from someone inside, a woman whod come to prison more than a decade after Belinda. Belinda hesitated at the door. Two of the ladies walked in. A third stood next to her, waiting, silent. Then she gently laid a palm on Belindas back and ushered her in. They found a table. They ordered for her. She wanted a caramel Frappuccino. Someone had told her about caramel Frappuccinos. When she took that first sip, she closed her eyes.

***

A month later, Belinda and I sit in a booth at a chain steak house. She had allowed me to witness her release that day because we had connected while she was still inside. I had interviewed her about her experiences with the prisons hospice unit, where inmate volunteers sat with the dying as their lives ended behind bars. It was part of my research on incarcerated life that became my first book about life inside prison, A Grip of Time . I liked Belinda. She was tough. She had to be. But the hospice work had, I thought, touched a place inside her that maybe had not been touched before. I wanted her to do well on the outside. I thought I owed her at least a dinner for the time she spent answering my questions, for her honesty. And so I had proposed this get-together.

Now, sitting across from her, I take note that she has ordered the most expensive item on the menu plus three extra sides. The food on the plates in front of her could feed a family of four. Belinda hardly touches it. She has not looked up from her phone since we sat down. A month ago she had never held a smartphone in her hand. Now she is nonstop texting with her thumbs. She had gotten the phone three weeks before. She had acquired a boyfriend a week later.

She was in the throes of what sociologists call asynchronicity. While Belinda was in prison, her age cohort moved on. Inside, time was frozen. Outside, other young women acquired (and dumped) boyfriends or girlfriends, went to concerts, got (and lost) jobs, maybe went to college. On the outside, other young women moved to new apartments, new towns, new countries, had adventures, changed their look, had career aspirations that worked out or didnt. On the outside, other young women grew into their thirties, found their place, lost it, reinvented themselves, settled in. They had children. Inside, Belinda had experienced a lot, but none of this. At forty, she was still in many ways a teenager. She was a teenager with a new phone texting a new boyfriend.

I watch her. Her hair is dyed matte black. Her eyes are thickly rimmed with black eyeliner. I can see a light etching of crows feet in the corners of her eyes. She has that hard look women have when theyve spent a lot of time in prison. She looks her age, maybe older. Prison does that to you. But she acts like a high schooler. I wonder what this disconnect might mean for her reentry. That night I offer to mentor her, be a sounding board, listen to her stories, take her out to lunch or dinner every few weeks. She agrees.