What We See When We See

Some days I discover an article I wrote long ago that is relevent today, tomorrow, always. This is one. I offer it to you in an attempt to help you open your heart even wider, to think of crime and punishment, forgiveness and redemption in a new light. Sometimes life is veiled in such a way that we can’t possibly see what is really happening, or it requires a very different kind of looking. This is a long read but one I hope to find worthwhile, unforgettable. I wrote it when I was a reporter at the Washington Post. It was my painful pleasure to do so.

DEAD END ON THE ROAD TO REDEMPTION; COMING BACK WAS HARDER THAN YOU CAN IMAGINE FOR TERRENCE JOHNSON
March 9, 1997
The Washington Post Outlook
I was away on a book tour when Terrence Johnson died. I was making speeches all over the country about the magnificence of human beings, about our capacity to change. I told the story of how I had turned myself around, walking away from life as a heroin user and shoplifter to become a good mother, a reporter, a drug-free person. I told audiences more times than I can count: “We human beings have the power to do the seemingly impossible. We can shelter the homeless. We can stop the violence.” I implored people to
believe again in the seemingly impossible. Then I came home and my husband told
me, “Terrence Johnson robbed a bank and killed himself.”

In 1978, a 15-year-old Johnson had killed two Prince George’s County police officers who he claimed had been beating him. Convicted of manslaughter, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison, then paroled in 1995. He had enrolled in law school, and seemed off to a promising start. Then things got rocky, and in late February, he dropped  out of law school for financial reasons. He turned 34 the day he shot himself when police confronted
him and his brother after they had allegedly robbed a bank.

I went to his wake — the first stranger’s wake I’ve ever been to not as a reporter, but as a regular person, a black person, a mother. In a way, Terrence Johnson wasn’t a stranger to me. He was a fellow traveler on the road to redemption, whose quest for rehabilitation and forgiveness reminded me of my own.  I’ve been asked, “How long did it take you to really
change your life?” In truth, the line of demarcation — between changed
and not changed — was blurry. I changed in degrees. I shot heroin for eight
years, six of them after I was arrested and charged with possession of heroin
with intent to distribute. Even after spending a summer in jail and swearing I
would change, I shot up through my five years of probation and then for one
more year.

But even when I stopped using drugs, I wasn’t well. I just looked well. I had the trappings of a successful person — a journalism career, a child in college, a house, a nice car. The truth   was that I was an emotional bomb waiting to explode. The image could make other people think I was somebody, but I wasn’t fooled at all. Deep inside, I still believed I was
worthless. I had made one mistake after another, and I had hurt a lot of people. I couldn’t forgive myself.

Terrence Johnson fooled people too. He tried to make his life look the way society says a successful life looks. He had a nice red convertible. He was going to be a lawyer. He did
volunteer work. But ultimately, none of those things has anything to do with success. What matters is whether or not a person believes he is worthy simply because he exists. Whether or not he believes that, even if he loses everything, he is still somebody.

This is not something a young boy learns in prison. When, at age 33, he lost his law school scholarship and thus dropped out, Terrence Johnson must have seen his life slipping away. What would be left? A 15-year-old boy who killed a cop? I sometimes think about how different my obit would have read if I had died before I was 30. It would have said:
“Unemployed, single mother, convicted felon.” Terrence Johnson had two years to change, to try to figure out who he was. A cop killer? A good son? A law student? A man?

Sure, you could say he had 16 years in prison to get his life together. But have you visited a prison lately? I visit them often. I speak to inmates about change. But the growing trend is toward punishment alone — punish them for their crimes and don’t offer classes or therapy or anything that might nurture progress. And yet, we expect people to turn themselves around, and we want them to live right when they hit the streets again.

I once met a woman who told me her father had served more than 20 years. Since being freed he has lived a successful life. But, she said, “He will always suffer because he does not know how to have a normal relationship with a person. He doesn’t trust people. He is paranoid and manipulative, even if he doesn’t want to be. He tries. But the very
characteristics that saved him in prison are not acceptable now.”

I was lucky to spend only a summer in jail. I shared a cell with women who were repeat offenders. When I would complain about how lunch was always soup made from previous meals, about the green uniform and the lack of exercise, they would always say, “You are going to like the big jail. In the big prison you can go to classes, and the food is
better.” I remember thinking, “No way will I like the big jail,” and fortunately I didn’t have to go there. But I realized that these were women who had forgotten what freedom feels like. They didn’t aspire to be free –they only wanted a better jail. Prison had constricted even what they were capable of imagining.

I was 21 when I went to jail just for a summer. Terrence Johnson was a kid, 15, when he went for half his life. Jail does not raise a kid into a healthy man. And yet, one day Terrence Johnson was free to go out and live a “regular” life. How wonderful that must have seemed to him.

And how frightening.

When I got out of jail that summer, I could not find a job. No one wanted to employ someone who had been in jail. I was hired for jobs and then fired after they found out about my record. In the days before food stamps, I received surplus food. I lived in a low-income neighborhood where the yards were made of dirt and grass was rare. The only furniture I had was a dinette set given to me by a neighbor and a cot given to me
for my daughter by her day care center.

There were times when I considered suicide, but I always thought things might get better the day after I died. And ironically, it helped that I lived in another state, away from my family. No one I loved had to see me fail. In long-distance calls, I lied and told my mother all was well. I did not have to look into my family’s faces and see what I thought was shame.

Time helped me change. I grew weary of failing, of being beaten in abusive relationships, of having to stay a step ahead of everyone I hustled, of always looking over my shoulder. And I was lucky to be a mother instead of a father — because it meant I wound up with my
daughter. Though I wouldn’t see it until later, this meant I would always consider her life when thinking about what to do with mine. If I failed, I tried again for her. I wanted to live for her.

And there were always people telling me the right things — my mother and father and their friends — even if I wasn’t listening. I think their voices were waiting for me, like a tape on pause. When I was ready, I hit “recall” and heard a chorus of love. Did Terrence
Johnson have such a chorus, or did he just hear hate?

A lot of people tried hard to help Terrence.   The judge who urged the parole board to give him a hearing, the friends who gave him a rent-free apartment and others who offered support, the lawyer who mentored him, his family. But I was appalled that so many people at Howard University were opposed to the idea of his attending law school there and I was ashamed. I wonder how many people refused to give him a job, how many people looked at him and saw a crime and not a man.

“Change is a monumental accomplishment,” I tell people when I speak. I say it to the prisoners and to those of us who think we are free. Terrence Johnson tried to prove to us that he had changed. He did things that some people won’t do over the course of a lifetime. He reached out to help others. He fed the homeless, helped organize the Million Man March, used what life he had to try to inspire. In those two years, he gave me hope.

But then he stumbled. Before change took hold of me forever, I stumbled often, because it was easier than changing. But then I would be filled with shame, because I had disappointed the very people I wanted to please. Terrence Johnson’s shame must have been a zillion times greater than mine. He must have felt that shame as he pointed that gun to his head.

Still, I believe that if the sum total of Johnson’s life was “cop killer,” he had at that moment a perfect opportunity to kill more cops. Surely it would not have been any more risky than it was for a 15-year-old to go up against police officers inside a police station. And this time, what did he have to lose? Whether he shot at cops or killed himself, he was going to die anyway.

He chose to kill himself. But the truth is, Terrence Johnson died before he lifted that gun to his head. While no one was looking, his spirit slipped away.