Chapter 9 The Monster Inside

By 2011, a couple of years before my Initial Parole Consideration Hearing, I busied myself with understanding the board process. Most men did not share their transcripts, but I had gotten a glimpse of Alabama’s back in 2007. I knew there was so much knowledge to be learned in the failures of others.

Brian Tracy’s book Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life had me thinking of what he had coined inverse paranoid. It is a person who is convinced that the world is conspiring to make him or her a better person. I loved that way of thinking and saw many examples every day of the universe conspiring to help me out. I realized that prison, and in essence my life sentence, could be viewed as a way to make me into a better person. I saw around me people who were paranoid, who believed the world had conspired to screw them over. I did not want to become bitter and resentful like them. Instead, I began to look at my surroundings with positive suspicion. A game I liked to play was trying to discover who would cross my path that day to help me out on my journey.

There was a guy named Bobby on the yard who lived in my building. He was thin of build and in his late fifties, with thick glasses and a small mustache. Although he worked in the optical lens lab, he still continued to wear the same pair of glasses that he most likely had during his arrest in the early ’80s. One of the arms was wrapped up with some medical tape, causing the glasses to sit on his long pointy nose a little askew. He was quiet and kept to himself. Our friendship began over our mutual interest in books. Bobby had this habit of leaving a book square in the middle of my bed whenever he finished one or was returning one that he had borrowed from me. On top of the book, there would be a pack of the prison-issued chocolate chip cookies. They had plastic wrapping and were stale and tough to bite into. Most men dipped them into cold milk to soften them up. I loved to bite into mine and let the piece soften in my mouth while I read my books.

Bobby went out of his way to please everyone. Unfortunately, a lot of guys preyed on his kindness. Bobby was paid seventy-five cents an hour, one of the highest pay rates one could achieve while in prison. So he always had money to buy extra food from the canteen, such as chips, cookies, and meat sausages. The same two or three guys would ask to borrow food from him every month, but they never repaid him. Of course, this was none of my business since he was a different race. He reminded me of a loyal dog. Even when it gets kicked, it will come back, happy and wagging its tail.

Bobby had been to the parole board at least eight times. In the course of our friendship, he opened up to me, and one day in our conversation he offered to let me read his transcripts. I saw a pattern in the hearings. During a typical hearing, the commissioner always stated on the record that they were not there to retry the case. They made sure Bobby understood they were there only to determine his suitability for parole. I found it odd that they always stated this at the beginning of every hearing. Later, I realized this was the key to everything. 

According to the transcripts, Bobby had killed his wife by stabbing her to death. She had been verbally abusive and left him numerous times but always came back after several months. He never had any run-ins with the law before. One day, he had stabbed her to death in their kitchen. He swore to me that he had accepted responsibility, but when I read his transcripts, it did not look that way.

Every time the commissioners asked about the sequence of events before the murder, Bobby insisted there was a shadow that had startled him. He stated he had grabbed a nearby knife and stabbed at it, and it was his wife. Throughout his whole prison sentence, he was a model inmate and did not get into any type of trouble. But in reading the transcripts, it dawned on me why the board was not finding him suitable: he was not accepting full responsibility for his actions. He continued to cast himself in a good light, especially when speaking about his darkest moments as a human being. I noticed it took away from his authenticity and the Bobby that I knew. In the hearings, when the commissioners denied parole to Bobby, they outlined several reasons, the same reasons I had noted when I read the transcripts.

The theme was similar over the course of eight different transcripts that I read. After reading them, I still did not understand what caused Bobby to stab his wife to death, and more importantly, I did not feel Bobby did either. Donnie’s words of wisdom continued to resonate with me: “You ain’t got it unless you give it back.” I knew that I could help Bobby, but I was unsure how.

One evening, as we were sitting in the dayroom together, we began talking about one of the books I had shared with him recently, Sensible Self-Help. We were discussing one of the terms in there, self-responsibility. In essence, it was the understanding and acceptance of the fact that it was our interpretations, and not outer circumstances, that determined our ability to respond to people, situations, our feelings, our awareness of choices available, and ultimately our behavior. It was my subtle hint to Bobby that he needed to learn some self-responsibility. Since I was practicing these concepts for about a year now, in my arrogance, I figured I could teach it to him.

The next morning, though, I learned my own lessons from the most unlikely teacher. The morning call for breakfast was announced over the PA system, and the men gathered in front of their dorms. I noticed quite a few of the men were wearing their bright yellow raincoats. The raincoats were heavy and hot and smelled of mildew. I walked up to the top tier, looked out the windows, and saw the yellow reflection of the prison floodlights on the damp concrete; the rain had stopped. I decided not to grab my raincoat.

The familiar “click, click” of the officer pressing the button on the PA system signaled our release for breakfast. Like everyone else, I wanted to beat most of the crowd, so I shuffled to the front of the line and through the sally port. The whispers of the men talking early in the morning, before sunrise, was comforting. It reminded me of how my father and I had spoken quietly during our early morning road trips. As we walked along the sidewalk toward the chow hall, the blaring of an alarm stopped us all in our tracks.

“Get down!! Get down!!” Correctional officers ran toward one of the buildings, and as I started to sit down, I realized the ground was wet. Instead, I squatted, while keeping an eye on my surroundings. Why do I always think of the worst-case scenario when an alarm goes off? I thought. Other men who did not have raincoats on around me also squatted to avoid getting damp. Men in rain jackets had plopped onto the small puddles of water in the concrete.

Most of the time, alarms sounded because one of the prisoners had a medical issue. Other times, though, it was because of a fight or, even worse, a race riot. I continued to watch my surroundings. A medical golf cart began to make its way across the yard toward the same building the officers had run into, and the tension left my body. The golf cart signaled a medical issue.

“Get down on the ground!” a gruff voice barked. It was one of the correctional officers. He stomped up to where we were crouched on the ground. He had a light green rain jacket over his dark green uniform, and I recognized him as Officer Stanley. He was a stickler for the rules, and I knew he would not hesitate to harass or write us up if we did not sit down. I saw an area of concrete that did not have a puddle, slid over, and sat down. I felt the cold dampness seeping into my pants and boxers. I became irritated with Stanley. Other men around me were grumbling, and I could feel the tension of hatred and anger directed toward him. Officer Stanley walked up to a nearby man who was still squatting on his haunches. “Do you want to sit down, or do you want me to lay you on that ground?”

The other man pleaded with Stanley. “But it’s wet, Stanley. You know there’s no fight over there. It’s only a medical issue.”

“I don’t give a fuck what it is. The alarm went off; you are to be sitting on that ground!” He pointed, and the man sat down into a puddle of water. At that moment, the skies opened up, and rain began coming down. I felt my body becoming tense and I glared at Stanley. This guy is such an idiot. I am getting soaking wet because of him!

Nearby, I heard someone giggling with joy, and it didn’t make sense. I looked over and it was Bobby, with the most serene smile on his face. He was dripping wet, drops of rain on the edge of his nose and on the tips of his mustache. His wet clothes clung to his body.

He started laughing again, then whispered to me, “Self- responsibility! We should have grabbed our rain jackets! This is what the book said!” He then looked up at the sky, and the rain continued to caress his face. He looked back over at me and smiled. It was the most gentle, heartwarming smile.

I realized I had a choice in all this. I could choose to be angry at myself for not grabbing the raincoat. I could choose to be angry at Stanley for making us sit down. I could choose a million different thoughts that would further taint how my day would start. Instead, I decided to choose to let it all go and consciously chose to enjoy that moment, sitting in the rain with no raincoat on. When the officers let us all back up, everyone quickly walked to the chow hall. Bobby and I, without even talking about it, were the last ones to walk in. Here I was, thinking I was the one helping Bobby, but he had given me the gift of a lifetime with one simple smile and a lesson about choice in the rain. I could still choose happiness, even with a storm of thoughts raging through me.

Several days later, we sat across from each other at one of the dayroom tables. In Bobby’s transcripts, I used yellow post-it notes to point out areas that I felt we needed to address. In each of his transcripts I saw one common thread—an inability to accept complete responsibility for his actions. Bobby would admit to stabbing his wife, but then in the next sentence he would say something like, “But I didn’t mean it,” or “It was only an accident,” or “But it wasn’t intentional.” In reading his transcripts, this is where I felt Bobby lacked any understanding of his motivations the day of his murder. Instead, he had told himself a script over the years, and this became such a core part of his identity. It came out in every hearing. I shared with him my thoughts and pointed out to him where I saw the issue. He seemed receptive, but I was determined to make sure that he did not make that mistake again in the boardroom.

Donnie had taught me the power of sitting across from someone and looking them in the eye while they spoke. Bobby continued to shift in his chair as I threw questions at him. I definitely did not know what I was asking, but with my notes from the transcripts, I began to find my way. This became a weekly ritual of ours, where we would sit at a dayroom table and do our mock hearings. Of course, since we lived in a fishbowl of sorts, everyone soon knew that I was trying to help Bobby prepare for the board. People scoffed, and Bobby was asked the simple question, “How can Quan help you prepare for the board when he has never even been to one?”

The men began to whisper that I was crazy to think that I could ever help anyone or to think that I could go home. They were right, of course, until I realized they were wrong. The more Bobby and I sat, the more I realized that humans wanted to portray their best selves. Bobby’s main issue came down to facing why he had stabbed his wife to death. In not wanting to face it, there were certain words that came out in the way he described it. One evening in one of our exchanges, Bobby insisted once again that he saw a shadow. 

“Bobby, there was no shadow.” We were sitting at a table in the middle of a crowded dayroom. Everyone around us was doing their regular prison routines: working out, playing chess, dominoes, or pinochle. However, all I saw was Bobby seated across from me.

He looked up at me and said, “Yes, there was, Quan. I am telling you, that is what startled me.”

“Bobby, I am your friend. Do you trust me enough to listen to what I am saying? I am telling you, this is why the board is not finding you suitable. Remember, we talk about self- responsibility and how we are trying to practice it. How can you say that you accept responsibility and yet blame it on a shadow? Do you hear yourself?”

“I am not blaming it on a shadow! I did stab Elizabeth! But there was a shadow before it happened!” His hands gripped the table, and he glared at me.

Listening to the words that come forth from someone else’s mouth gives me a good glimpse of how they see the world. I realized this is what Bobby believed. He had told himself this story for so many years, and it had become ingrained into the fabric of his thoughts. It was now part of his self-concept and identity, and to admit to himself a part of his identity was fake was, in his mind, terrifying for him. I understood that. I had been there. I wonder what parts of my own identity are still fake? I pushed the nagging thought away.

“OK, Bobby. Tell me what was going on leading up to that day.” Bobby told me the same story he had shared previously. He and his wife constantly argued. She was verbally and emotionally abusive, would leave him, come back, and Bobby would accept her with open arms. Whenever Bobby spoke about the dynamics with his ex-wife, in both his transcripts and with me, he always blamed himself for why she became angry. He continued to blame himself for her leaving him. Bobby then dropped a bombshell on me.

“After the last time she left me, I thought it was over. But a few months after, she came back and told me she was pregnant with our kid!” Bobby smiled but did not look happy.

“Bobby! How come you never spoke about this before?”

“Because she was pregnant with our child!” He then grabbed the white handkerchief that he always carried, removed his glasses, and wiped his eyes. He looked back up at me. “I killed two people that day, and nobody knows!” Bobby began to cry while looking like he was laughing. He set his glasses back on, and his voice became a monotone as he looked up at me. “We already had names on what we were going to name our child. I thought everything was finally OK with us. Then that day in the kitchen, we started arguing again. I don’t remember what it was about, but just like all the other times, I wish I didn’t make her mad. If that hadn’t happened, she wouldn’t have said what she said.” Bobby was still looking at me.

“What...what did she say?” I leaned forward and saw Bobby for the first time in a new light. Here was a man who had been abused for so long. It still happened to him in prison. He still blamed himself for every conflict that happened and still had the same pattern of wanting to please the other person. 

“She told me the child was not mine,” he whispered. “I felt so angry and betrayed. I always suspected she might be cheating on me, but I never dared to ask in case she would yell at me. So for her to throw it in my face like that...” He put both hands over his face and sat still. I could feel my heart thumping in my chest. He folded one hand over another and put his chin on his hands while staring at me. “There was no shadow. I was so angry, and I had pushed everything away for so long. I grabbed the kitchen knife and stabbed her. I stabbed her over and over. There was so much blood. And once I started, I couldn’t stop.” Bobby took out his handkerchief and wiped his nose. He leaned forward and whispered, “The monster is still there, inside.” He was pointing to the temple of his head. “The monster is there. The guys around here don’t know that. Nobody knows that.” He began to cry and laugh again, then stopped.

I did not know what to say, and everything in me wanted to fill up the uncomfortable silence in the loud dayroom with something. But I could only clear my throat.

“I am ready to come clean and let the board know the absolute truth.” He breathed deeply, and there was a new resolve and brightness to his eyes. “There was no shadow, Quan. I have been lying all these years to everyone, especially myself. This is part of my journey of taking responsibility, and I am finally ready to do it from here on out.”

Inside, I was leaping for joy for Bobby. At that moment, I knew that Bobby was going to be able to demonstrate that he was suitable. From reading his transcripts, I could tell the board only wanted him to accept complete and total responsibility, without blaming it on the shadow or any other external factors. Bobby was finally ready, and although I had never been in a board hearing, I knew in my heart the board was going to have a favorable ruling for him.

Bobby’s hearing was still a couple of months away, but for those next two months, Bobby was a changed man. He walked with more purpose each day, and each evening he would come by my bunk area with a new thought he wanted to share.

That same week, another man came up to me and asked if I could help him prepare for the board. His name was Gee, and he was one of the fellow Asians on the yard. He had been to the board twice already. I told him I would only agree if he gave me his hearing transcripts. At first, he was hesitant but then finally relented and gave them to me. He was actually due to go the week before Bobby, and we started sitting down each evening. Gee had actually sat with Donnie before and was much further along than Bobby. As we began to go through his transcripts, I shared the same concepts of self-responsibility with him.

Gee was in for a gang-related murder. He and his homeboys had seen their rivals at a nearby park. When they pulled up next to the rival gang’s car, Gee aimed his weapon to fire, but the gun had jammed. His rivals, in their panic, had jumped out of their car and run, and Gee’s homeboys in a different car gunned them down. One person died, and one was injured. Everyone was convicted of murder and sentenced to fifteen years to life.

In his transcripts, although he admitted to being there, he still cast himself in a good light and did not accept complete responsibility. I pointed this out to him, and although he agreed, he was terrified of what coming clean meant. “I have told them for two hearings that I did not pull the trigger, which I did not. Now I am going to go in there and admit that I had intended to, and the only thing that prevented it from happening was my gun jammed. Dude, are you sure this is what I am supposed to do?”

I was unsure myself, but I did not let Gee know that. It felt right in my gut, though, and that is what I went with. Of course a part of me questioned my own motives. Gee would be testing my theory, and it was his life and freedom on the line, not mine. Whatever happened to him, I would learn and apply to my own hearing, which was still over two years away. I shared with Gee my own dilemma of taking complete responsibility at the board. The trial court had found me not guilty as the shooter. In reading every transcript, though, every commissioner stated on the record that they were not there to retry the case.

There were two options for me. One was to go into the hearing and give the same story I had given on the stand, that I was not the shooter, and blame it on the person who had turned state’s evidence. It felt much safer that way. I definitely did not want the people who were going to decide my fate to think the worst of me, that I somehow had gotten away with my crime. Logic told me the commissioners would deny me parole on that alone, and I should never tell them the whole truth.

The other option for me was to go in and confess it all, let them know that I had lied on the stand, let them know that I was the shooter, and own up to everything. The choice of personal responsibility felt in alignment with everything I was reading. This option felt right in my gut even though it was terrifying in my mind to have to own up to it. Yet, in Gee’s case, it was obvious to me that that was what he was supposed to do. When Gee told me I should own up to it, I realized we had the answer to each other’s dilemmas. I decided then and there that when I walked into that hearing in a little over two years, I would hold myself accountable for all of my crimes, no matter what the board thought.

During our weekly meetings, we shared perspectives on our gang lifestyles. One of the things we both discovered were the similar reasons each of us felt compelled to join a gang. In listening to Gee’s story, I realized I had the same insecurities of fitting in, a poor sense of self-identity and self-worth, and a need to be recognized and liked. Part of the allure of the gang life was the ready-made purpose by having enemies to fight. Being in the gang with the constant gang wars gave us an excuse to push everything else to the side, and that is why I never resolved any of the other issues in my life at the time. Each of us was a broken child with an overwhelming need to fit in. Over the years, with our experiences, we became hardened and cold to the outside. During our talks, I felt such a loss for my true self-identity, having hidden behind the warped sense of self that I developed as a gang member. I learned so much more from Gee during this time than he learned from me.

This newfound perspective and understanding began to give me a stronger foundation in which to live out each day on the yard. I did not feel like I had to defend myself or my sense of identity. The whispers that I had gone crazy began to bother me less, and I no longer felt the need to explain or show anyone that they were wrong and that I was right. This became more a path of trying to find my own sense of self-identity in the world, even if I had to go back and rebuild it all. I also felt an overwhelming sense of freedom inside. I was no longer tethered to anyone else’s expectations of me and who I was supposed to be. It almost became an amusing secret; I was viewing the world with a different lens than I had been looking through all those years. I still inhabited the shell of my old self, but inside my mind, I saw the world with renewed clarity and purpose. 

The weeks went by, and I learned more about myself each day that I sat with Gee. We knew that everyone in the building thought we were crazy, yet Gee and I both joked that it was everyone else who was crazy. We had discovered the secret to inner freedom, and no matter how we tried to share it, nobody was listening. It felt unfair that nobody wanted to hear about it.

On the day of Gee’s hearing, I waited around nervously. I had stir fried some Chinese sausages with onions and bell peppers over a bed of rice for lunch and had made Gee a bowl. Parole hearings lasted anywhere from four to six hours, so I knew he would be hungry.

I sat at one of the dayroom tables when Gee walked through the sally port during the afternoon shift change of officers. He carried a small manila folder and had the biggest smile on his face.

“They found me suitable!” he screamed in the building. This caused an uproar, and men surrounded him. Others stood around and looked. I sat still, and my eyes blurred from the tears. We were right! This is what the board is looking for! They are human beings, and they only want to hear our stories and make sure that we are humans again.

It took over ten minutes for Gee to finally be able to make his way over to the table where I was sitting. We hugged each other tightly, and he sat down at the table. He opened the lid on the Tupperware bowl that I had put his lunch in, grabbed the sriracha bottle, and squeezed on a large red layer of the spicy sauce. He shoveled the food in his mouth.

“Homie, it’s everything we talked about,” he said between bites. His shaved head glistened with sweat from the spicy food. “They asked about my responsibility, and I let them know about the gun not working and that I intended to kill everyone.” He grabbed an apple and took a bite of it, as he always did, to take the edge off the spice. He shoveled a couple more spoons of the food into his mouth, then grabbed a napkin to wipe the top of his head; it came away damp. “Thanks for the food; this was perfect, homie! Let’s talk later. I gotta call my wife and then shower.” He bit into the apple and held it in his mouth while picking up his folder and bowl.

“Here, leave the bowl. I got it. Go call your wife,” I insisted.

Of course he refused. He mumbled something with the apple still in his mouth and shook his head. He grabbed the bowl to wash it and walked up the stairs toward his dorm. I noticed Bobby waiting at the top of the stairs, and both men embraced. Then Bobby looked over at me, smiled, and walked toward me.

“I’m ready to go in there and take responsibility for everything! I can’t wait to go next week!” Bobby proclaimed as he sat down. “I’m ready!”

“Are you going to be ready tonight? Gee and I can go through some last stuff with you if you need to.” Bobby was more than ready, but I felt it would be good to spend time with both him and Gee.

“No, I should rest between now and then. Things are going to be fine!” He took off his glasses, wiped them with his T-shirt, and put them back on.

During the next week while awaiting Bobby’s hearing, several men came up to both Gee and me to help them prepare for the board. Yet some of them, in my mind, were not yet ready. They still did not accept full responsibility for their crimes. I noticed the common thing was for each person to say, “I accept full responsibility...” and then the next word would be “but,” “just,” “only,” or something like that. It diminished everything that had preceded it. What was the point of owning up to something and then making an excuse about it? Yet, I noticed it happened often. Even in my daily conversations, the tendency to justify my mistakes or faults was a constant struggle. What better way to embody self-responsibility than to use my current circumstances as a training opportunity?

Bobby’s hearing date came. Gee was still in his 150-day waiting period before his release. We sat at one of the dayroom tables, sorting through some of his paperwork. He had made some of his special burritos, and we had a few waiting for Bobby. It was early evening when Bobby walked into the building. His head was down, and he walked straight up the stairs to his dorm. He refused to talk to anyone. The buildings at Solano were like an open fishbowl, and we all knew that walk. Bobby had been denied parole.

My stomach started churning, and I found myself asking what Bobby had done wrong. He must not have accepted responsibility. Did he stumble about the shadow again? Maybe the commissioners wanted to deny him because he finally confessed about the pregnancy of his wife? I was quite confused.

Several minutes later, Bobby came back out of the dorm and made his way to the upstairs shower. He was in his white prison- issued boxers and was carrying a plastic soapbox and washcloth. From where Gee and I sat, we could see the low partition wall of the shower. The showers held four people at a time, but I saw only one towel there, which meant Bobby was in the shower by himself.

“Let’s go up there and see what happened with him,” I said.

Gee agreed, and we walked up to the shower area. It was normal for men to talk to each other while they were in the showers. Common courtesy dictated that the person outside the shower would turn his back to the people showering. This would prevent them from being accused of “peter gazing,” our slang for looking at another man’s privates. One of the first things I noticed as I approached the shower wall was Bobby’s towel, neatly folded, with his old glasses set square right in the middle. From where I stood, I could still see the medical tape that held the arm to the temple.

Gee and I turned our backs to Bobby and leaned against the shower wall, with our elbows propped on the top part of it.

“What happened in there, Bobby? Why did they deny you? What did you say?” I asked him in quick succession. Only the sound of water hitting the floor of the shower answered me.

Gee nudged me and then simply said, “Bobby, how are you feeling?”

I felt so stupid. My questions, and the way I asked them, did nothing but blame Bobby for how the hearing went. Gee, instead, showed Bobby his support. Another thing to add in my journal tonight and another thing to practice from here on out, I thought. The books I was reading talked about the power of words and language and how they could build someone up or tear someone down. If I want to leave an imprint of goodness in the world, I need to do a better job of building people up. 

“I feel terrible and confused,” Bobby finally answered. “They denied me for another five years. I did everything we talked about. I took full and complete responsibility, and they still denied me. I don’t think I will ever go home. Looks like I will die in here. I don’t want to go to any more hearings. You guys don’t know how bad it was in there.”

I fought the urge to ask more questions about the hearing but instead took a page out of Gee’s book and stayed silent. This allowed Bobby to continue. “They attacked me about my unborn child. I never should have told them about it! I went in there and took personal responsibility, and it didn’t work! Gee, they gave you a date because you didn’t actually kill anyone! Quan, if you go in there and admit to yours, they will never let you go home!”

I felt the familiar feelings of self-doubt wash over me again. We messed up. It wasn’t this easy to go in there and get a date. What to do now? What was I thinking? Who was I to think I could look at this problem and solve it? What if he was right? Maybe Gee did get a date only because he didn’t do it? There was another part of me, though, that felt this was still right, regard- less if we were found suitable or not. Gee also looked confused.

Gee turned to me as we walked away. “The only way we’ll know is when we read those transcripts, dog.” I nodded in agreement.

The next few weeks became quite a blur because there were several men that I had agreed to help prepare for the board. One thing I mandated was that they had to provide me with their transcripts. There were quite a few that I had turned away, and one in particular, Rock, had become quite angry with me. Gee instead had agreed to help him, and I noticed they began to sit down often. 

These coaching sessions with other prisoners became quite fascinating for me. Their agenda in sitting with me was to be found suitable. Pure and simple. I knew that, and although I wanted to help them, I knew it was not some magic combination of words that would get them out but more so a shift in mindset. I wanted a way to share with them how I already began to feel free at that moment, yet my own board hearing was still over two years away. It was hard to describe or convey to them. These were men who had been in close to twice as many years as me. Their experiences during those years had shaped the way they saw and perceived the world. Who was I to dismiss that and tell them what to do? There was always that sense of self-doubt inside me.

Yet, it always came down to the words they used and how they described their experiences. Listening to them gave me an intimate glimpse of how their mind and heart still experienced everything. Many times, I got the feeling these were men who had not accepted their faults yet, which then in turn got me to start thinking about the words I used to describe the world as I perceived it. My hearing was a couple of years away, and I knew I had a chance to continue to learn from these men as I helped them. Yet, something else also happened. I started to see how these words and the avoidance of accepting blame and fault for anything restricted these men from being their best selves. I wanted to try and become my best self.

Since his hearing, Bobby had withdrawn and did not come by my bunk area. I had tried to get him to open up to me, but it did not work. He did not want to discuss his hearing any further, and I was still confused about what had gone wrong in there. Little did I know that I would never sit down with Bobby ever again. 

One day, as I was doing dips on the yard, Gee came up to me, fuming. He had been helping Rock for at least two to three hours every night. “Let me get some sets in with you, homie.” He lifted himself on the dip bars and began doing his reps.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I should have listened to you! You had told me it was a waste of time to try and help them without transcripts, and now I see why. It’s like I was going in there blind and don’t even know where to start. I wasted all this time trying to help him and come to find out Rock was the trigger man! He tried to tell me this whole time that he wasn’t, but he finally let me read his transcripts earlier. The commissioner read it into the record!” Gee did another two reps, started struggling on his way down for his third rep, and hopped off the bars. “All that time down the drain!” He clapped his hands together to remove the dust from the bars.

We finished our workout routine and then headed into the building to get showered and cleaned up. I walked up the stairs to my dorm. There, placed right in the middle of the gray wool blanket of my bed, was a burgundy transcript with one cookie pack on top of it. Without even looking, I knew it was Bobby’s transcripts. I grabbed the transcript and started skimming through the pages to get a feel for how the hearing went. It seemed to be going fine, with Bobby expressing himself well at first. He shared about the pregnancy of his ex-wife. When the commissioners asked him why he did not disclose this at previous hearings, he started to make small, subtle excuses. Nothing major at first but justifications, nonetheless. Then the commissioners began to press Bobby on the actual murder. 

Bobby disclosed that his wife had told him that the child was not his. The words that came out next made me realize forever how hard it was to speak the absolute truth at all times. I was in absolute shock as I read the words and had to reread the statement to make sure. There, right when asked what happened next, Bobby stated in the transcripts, “There was a shadow.”

My mind spun, and I wanted to scream. I put the transcript down in disgust and had such an overwhelming sense of despair and sadness, mixed with anger and fear. It was easy to judge Bobby, yet I knew the fear of what he had faced in there was real. I was angry at Bobby because I felt that had he owned up to his crime completely, the commissioners would have found him suitable. But there was another part of me that was still unsure. I knew that my motivations in wanting him to say it were also selfish in nature, which caused me to become angry with myself.

I brought the transcripts over to Bobby’s bunk area. I wanted to yell at him and scream at him for still talking about the shadow. I wanted him to admit to me that he was wrong and to apologize for lying to us that he had accepted responsibility. I wanted him to tell me I was right. When I stepped into his dorm, he was already standing there with his head down and looking defeated. Instead of opening my mouth to even say one word, I walked up and gave him a hug.

“Bobby, it’s OK.” He began to sob, and apologized, and told me he did not know what had happened in the hearing. He was adamant that he had accepted responsibility and that the commissioners just had it for him because he had also disclosed about the pregnancy of his wife.

Before I could even say anything, he then looked up at me with a haunted look and said, “I even told them there was a shadow that had startled me, and they didn’t believe me.” His eyes had taken on that thousand-yard stare that is so common for men who have done decades in prison, and Bobby was no longer present with me.

At that moment, I knew I would never be able to get through to Bobby. He was the only one who would be able to come to terms with the script he had told himself about the day of the murder. He had told himself a series of lies for so long and believed that it had happened like that. I was in way over my head, and I felt stupid for thinking that I could help someone to go to the board and accept responsibility for something they had lied to themselves about for decades.

Bobby refused to sit down with me ever again. We still interacted on a superficial level, and he still would come by and leave his signature book and cookie on my bed, but we never connected and discussed our respective journeys of personal development ever again. I had lost my friend who had given me such a crucial lesson on personal responsibility. It was sad and discouraging, yet I told myself I had to look into my own lies that I had spun for myself over the years and make sure to eradicate them. Much easier said than done, I was realizing. 

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