“All I’m asking from you all is an opportunity to come home and do the work with my daughter that I wasn’t able to do. I want to be accountable as her father. As you can see, I’ve done the work while I’ve been here, so I really hope that you can find it in your hearts to allow me to do the work on the outside,” he finished.
With watery eyes, I looked at the members of the parole board, and you could see that he’d moved just about all of them with his words. Even the mean ass white lady sitting on the end dropped her head, and I could have sworn I saw her wipe a tear.
We watched the way they talked amongst each other. They literally only talked for about a minute or two, and that same white woman that has been fuckin with my nerves since I’ve been here, she cleared her throat again, and my head was spinning to the point that it felt like I was getting ready to passout because I knew that this was the moment where she would state their decision, and for that, I was scared shitless.
“Mr. Henry, on behalf of myself, and the members of the parole board, we would like to thank you for your remarks today. We would also like to extend our thanks to counsel, the prison staff, along with your family members that you have present. Moving right along, I just want to say that the board does not minimize the severity of the offense that brought you here before us. As a result of your actions, a life was lost. That will always be. Nothing that was said here today, or presented to us today will ever change that,” she was firm, and I literally started shaking.
I was crying. My crying progressed because it didn’t sound like she was headed in the direction that I wanted her to. I felt like it wasn’t going to work in my favor.
“However, we don’t bring people before us with hopes of erasing their past. We come here to determine if individuals are the same person that they were when they committed said crime. You’ve proven to us that you aren’t the same person. Based on your rehabilitation here, your institutional support, and all the facts that were shown to us this morning, we find that you are suitable for release,” when she said that, my head dropped down into my lap, and I cried out, feeling a relief in my body that I’ve never felt before.
I could hear screams and cries coming from my family as well because we had all been here, hoping for the same thing.
My daddy was coming home! I spent the last 37 years of my life coming to this prison, sitting in visitation rooms, where I had to be told how long I could hug him, or talk to him. Collect calls that were constantly monitored. Seeing him in shackles like this. It is all over now. My daddy was coming home!
Chapter 11
Antoinette Floyd
Fight the Feeling
Iwas at the welcome home party that Dionte’s family were putting on for him. Literally, they started planning his welcome home party on the way home from the prison. It was being held at Dionte’s mom, Danita’s house. My relationship with Danita was a wishy washy one. We could be good one minute, and then we could be beefing the next. Because she was my daughters’ grandma, back then, I used to try and keep it cordial with her, but these days, I would be on whatever time that she was on with me.
Dionne was older now, and I wasn’t with Dionte, so I really didn’t have much of a relationship with her. I used to call her years ago to check her and tell her to keep my name out of her fuckin mouth because one of the things that she used to do was talk about me, and all the kids, and baby daddy’s that I had. Dionne would come back, telling me what she heard, and when I would check Danita about it, she would tell Dionte, as if he was supposed to beat my ass. Him and I would be arguing over the phone, and I’ve lost count on the number of times that he told me he was going to slap the shit out of me when he saw me.
I was just glad that those days were over. Those days were hard times for all of us. Dionte was free now, and we were all in a much better place because of the news.
It was after nine at night, and I was in Danita’s backyard. Tommie was sitting next to me. Free left not too long ago. Even though this wasn’t Tommie’s and Free’s family, they knew just about all of Dionne’s family, so they came in support. Dionne was over at the table where they were playing spades. She wasn’t going to let her dad breathe. She was sitting in between him and Tank. It was easy for Tank, and Dionte to get along. I never questioned that they wouldn’t.
“I’m about to go back in the house, and ask Danita for another slice of cake,” Tommie said, carrying on like she was family. She’d already had two plates of food and dessert, and now she was going back.
I shook my head, watching her as she stood up.
I watched as she made it to the patio door, and one of Dionne’s cousins, Mark said something to her, and she waved him off, and then walked inside the house. He shook his head, and he walked over to me, holding a paper plate in his hands that was filled with the soul food that was cooked.
“Why Tommie always acting like that? Why she not trying to fuck with me?” Mark wanted to know.
Technically, Tommie, and Mark weren’t related, but it still wouldn’t be a good look because he was Dionne’s cousin at the end of the day. I knew my kids, and I knew the kind of men that they were all into. Tommie had a thing for hood niggas, and I hated that even with her getting older, that was still something that she was attracted to. Mark was hood, and he looked good, but the nigga didn’t have shit. If I taught my girls anything, I taught them to go for the nigga that had shit! Mark had multiple kids, multiple baby mama’s, and he still lived here with hisgrandma. I can very well see why my daughter was choosing not to fuck with him.
“Mark, where is your primary place of residence?” I asked him.
I was sitting, with my legs crossed, holding a red cup in my hands. There was a little bit of the sweet red wine left in the cup that I had been sipping on. I didn’t want to come to the party empty handed, and being as though they didn’t give us much time to prepare, I only had enough time to bring a couple of bottles of wine, and I made my infamous baked beans, since it was barbecue on the menu.
“What you mean what’s my primary place of residence?” he asked, not knowing what I was trying to ask him.
“Meaning, where do you lay your head every night,” I clarified, breaking it down for him to better understand what I was really trying to ask him. He must have got it now and knew that I was trying to be funny because he shook his head, and he sucked his teeth once it clicked for him.
“Damn, so because I’m currently in a fucked-up position right now, living with my grandma, that means that she can’t give a nigga no play? I got a job though. I ain’t no bum ass daddy, either. I always got my kids. All of them running around the house right now. None of my baby mamas got me on child support, either. This is the longest that I’ve kept a steady job, and if I keep at it, they could possibly move me up. Tell Tommie to fuck with a nigga with her fine ass,” he kept on going.
I didn’t have the mental capacity to sit here, and continue going back and forth with him, so I stood up, picking up my Prada handbag that I had resting behind me on the chair, and I placed it over my shoulder.
It clicked to Mark that I wasn’t going to entertain this conversation, so he eventually just walked off. My empty plate was still sitting on the table before me, so I grabbed it, going totoss it in the trash, once I made my way through the house, and said my final goodbyes.
I was tired. I was up since three this morning because we had to take the six-hour drive down to the prison for the parole hearing. Once the hearing was over, and Dionte was processed out and everything, we came back home. I only had time to come home, go to the grocery store, pick up the things that I brought with me to the party, and head back home, where I cooked the baked beans, showered, changed into some clothes, and I’ve been here for a few hours. I was ready to shower, crawl in my bed, and take my ass to sleep.
“Where you getting ready to go?” that deep voice called out to me from across the backyard. It’s like his ass had another set of eyes on me, that weren’t the ones that he was using to focus on the Spades game.
The second I picked my feet up to move, he called out to me, wanting to know where I was going. He didn’t give a damn either that there was a backyard filled with his family, and even some of Danita’s neighbors had come over. Some of them knew Dionte from when he was a little boy, and all evening, they had been telling him how happy they were that he was home.
