Redemption (32 page)

Another Kind of Freedom

he first week of the New Year had passed. I got a message through the officers that Ellen needed to talk to me, and I was to call her the next day at 3 p.m. I thought it couldn’t be anything important. She was just checking in on me to see if I was okay. Everyone—Mom, Christy, Tom W.—had been calling or visiting to make sure I was all right since Christmas, when we knew it was over.

I called her on a Wednesday—no big deal.

“Hi, Stacey,” Ellen said.

“I just want you to know I’m okay. I’m disappointed, but I’m okay,” I shared immediately. Ellen was always worried about me, and the last thing I needed her to do was call the prison and tell them I needed observation. Suicide observation—stripped nearly naked in a padded cell—was the last thing I could handle. So I acted almost cheerful on the phone.

Ellen cut me off. She said, “Stacey, it’s not over.”

“What?” I had no idea what she was talking about. I did
not
want to get my hopes up.

“Governor Blunt’s office called me, and they’re investigating your petition. They’ve already talked to Detective Schulte, and we should find something out on Monday.”

I told her thank you. We hung up, and I couldn’t breathe.

When I went back to my room, an officer was there helping pack up one of my roommates who was moving back to Chilli. I looked like I’d been run over by a car. I wanted to cry so badly, but I couldn’t let the officer or the other inmates see me upset. I had to maintain a straight face that said everything was okay. I sat down.

I looked up, and two caseworkers were in my room wanting to know what was going on. I told them I didn’t know, but I might still get an answer on my clemency petition soon. I told myself,
Don’t lose it; don’t lose it; don’t lose it
.

I went to take a shower so I could bawl my eyes out. I needed the release. As soon as I found peace, I found out I might get set free. It was absolutely too good to be true.

I wasn’t expecting to hear anything else until Monday, so I tried to calm myself down. It was no easy task. Then three days later, on Saturday, I was sitting on my bed at count time—just what I was supposed to be doing—reading a magazine about the tragic death of John Travolta’s son. Over the speaker system, my name was called to the rotunda.

That was unusual. I thought,
Great, I wasn’t sitting the right way on my bed during count, and now I’m going to get in trouble
.

When I arrived, an officer told me there was a call for me in the rotunda on the prison phone. That made me nervous, because we’re not allowed to receive calls on the rotunda telephone. It was the shift captain on the other end of the phone.

“You want me to do what? And isn’t it count time?” I was institutionalized. I didn’t like varying from the protocol. I was stunned.

Then the captain said, “Stacey, write down this phone number, then hand the rotunda phone to the officer so I can tell him it’s okay. Then go use the collect phone.”

All of a sudden, I was in a can’t-function mode. This kind of thing happens only when a family member dies. I handed the receiver back to the officer, I walked into the phone room, closed the door, and made my call.

All the women were in their rooms for count, and they were listening in the hallway because I got called to the rotunda. I dialed and reached Ellen.

Ellen answered, yelling, “Stacey!” She couldn’t breathe, let alone form words. “We got it!”

“Really?” I said, not knowing if my heart was still in my chest. I laid my head on the little table and started bawling. Sobbing. Trying to control my emotions was of no use.

Ellen cried, too. She’d been waiting sixteen years for this news. “He commuted you to twenty years,” Ellen said.

“I don’t understand. We were just asking for parole to be added at some point in my life.”

Ellen interrupted me. “This means immediate release. The order was given for twenty years but with
immediate
release.”

Even under the best of circumstances, I thought I’d get the possibility of parole, and then I’d have to wait at least six months to go before the parole board. I couldn’t really fathom it. What she was saying was too good to be true.

She said she didn’t understand all of the details herself. She would call me later in the evening to discuss it.

I hung up the phone. I couldn’t call anyone else. I closed the door and walked down the green mat into the main hallway where everyone was looking at me. I went into the bathroom. Shelley met me there. As soon as I saw her, I started crying. I hugged her and told her what had happened. She started bawling, too. Within a few minutes, twenty-five women were in the bathroom with me. Some were crying, others were cheering.

An officer called me to the rotunda and asked me what had just happened.

“I just received commutation!”

He shrugged his shoulders like, “Oh well,” and waved me back to my room.

In my room, I fell into child’s pose with my head on the floor. I sobbed like I had never sobbed before. No one had ever seen me do that. But this time, everyone could hear me, and I didn’t care. I couldn’t hold myself back.

A girl, Delilah, whose room was kitty-corner to mine, said, “You cry, girl.”

As soon as count cleared and I got myself together, the next thing I did was call Christy. She was hysterical with happiness and relief.

Fruit Salad

had six days until I left. It might as well have been six minutes. On the day I got out, January 16, 2009, Ellen was to pick me up at 8:30 a.m. I chose the early time because other prisoners were getting out that day, too, and I didn’t want to hold them up if there were reporters outside. Just after 6 a.m., I took a shower; then I planned to go to breakfast and say good-bye to everybody. But at 7:10 a.m., the captain said I had to leave. I was still fixing my hair, and I told him I wasn’t ready. Then I was like,
Okay, who cares? I’m outta here
.

Apparently, media crews were crawling all over the place. The officers wanted to get me out of Vandalia before my story created a circus.

There was a part of me that wasn’t ready to go. The release wasn’t what I had been expecting. I hadn’t had time to wrap my mind around actually going. I felt a moment of panic. I was leaving everything I’d known for the last eighteen years of my life. I was leaving my safety zone and my beautiful dog Emma. And not only was I going, they were hurrying up to kick me out.

I told myself,
You can do this. You can do this
.

I didn’t even have a coat. Oddly, I walked from my room to the reception area where they release inmates wearing my grays. It was so quiet. No one was up and out yet. The yard didn’t open until 8 a.m. I thought,
I’m never going to have to walk down that path again
.

I started to feel excited. Ellen was there. Only one person was allowed to pick me up, and I thought it was appropriate she be the one. She had brought the street clothes that Christy had given her. I changed into them in the bathroom in the reception area. I didn’t want to wear anything I’d owned inside once I got out. I gave away all of my property except my ratty, much-loved teddy bear and a few photos and poems. I sent those to Christy’s house before my release. I walked out with nothing. Literally.

Whenever we interacted in public, we had to wear our grays, and this was the first time in eighteen years I had worn street clothes. I was not immediately identifiable as #85704.

I had on Christy’s teal sweater and her jeans. I was not used to the new style of jeans that sat so low on my waist. I wore her black leather jacket and a pair of chunky black boots with heels. I hadn’t worn a heel in I don’t know how long, and I was afraid I might stumble out the door. But I walked out with my head held five feet, two inches high. It was all utterly surreal.

They made Ellen drive up to the carport and secured the gate behind her car, a green Oldsmobile. So when I got into her car, I was still in prison. She was nervous, too, because for those fleeting moments, we were both locked down.

Then the staff opened the chain-link gate. I held my breath. Newspaper and TV crews lined the sides of the road.

Ellen patted my knee as she drove.

“I’m okay,” I said. “Let’s go! Let’s go!”

My mother was in her car on the other side of the gates, and she followed Ellen’s car.

Ellen and I had planned to meet my sister a few blocks away at a restaurant called The Rose. We had called the restaurant a few days in advance to let them know we—and God only knew who else—would be coming. Everyone was there—Mike, Mom, Tom W., Robyn and Ed, my cousin Becky, and others.

The first thing I did was hug my mother—it was the first time I really meant it in twelve years. We knew we had a chance together, an opportunity. Our relationship may never be exactly what I want it to be; we had all made mistakes. But I was glad she was there.

Reporters asked me tons of questions while I tried to say hello to my friends and family. It was impossible to decompress. The restaurant had asked what I wanted to eat when we made the reservations, and I said a fruit salad. The ladies who volunteered at the prison leading our Bible study were the ones who brought it out for me. I started crying. I was too excited to eat, but I loved staring at my order—we had so little fresh fruit in prison.

I went to the bathroom for some privacy, but didn’t know how to use it. Mom came in and explained the automated toilets and faucets. Even the towel dispenser was electronic. Tom W. handed me a GoPhone, one of those temporary prepaid cell phones. He wanted me to give out a temporary number to the press, so they wouldn’t be able to reach me so easily later.

After our big breakfast, Mike Anderson drove me part of the way to the highway, about five miles. I was headed a few hours away to Arnold, Missouri, to stay with Christy, her husband Brian, and their baby Ali. He put on a CD of Josh Groban and pointed out a bald eagle that flew overhead. He gave me a lecture and $1,200.

“You’re free now; make your own choices,” he said. “You wanted this opportunity, so don’t let it go to waste. Don’t ever let anyone put you down.”

He told me the money was what people had sent him on my behalf over the years. I ended up using $700 of it for my first car. I thanked him over and over.

Then I switched cars again. I got into Christy and Brian’s SUV. It was Brian’s birthday, and he joked, “How many men do you know that get a sister-in-law for their present?”

Christy sat in the backseat with me and kept touching me on the shoulder, making sure I was real. We were so happy. Then I asked if we could stop at a gas station with an express mart. I wanted to go in.

“Do you want me to go with you?” Christy asked.

“No, I want to do this by myself.” Everyone had been showing me things for an hour and a half. I wanted to feel free, to be Miss Independent. I wanted a pack of gum.

Gum was contraband because offenders could use it to gum up locks. If we got caught with it, we’d get a violation. Sometimes an officer would sneak us some, but I’d be so paranoid, I could hardly chew it. So it meant a lot to me to buy my own real gum.

I walked in thinking the clerk wouldn’t want to serve me. Maybe he’d know I was a prisoner and tell me to get out. I felt like Offender Lannert 85704. Surely, he knew my numbers, too. As it turned out, he barely looked at me, and I bought two packs of chewing gum without a hitch.

I didn’t even chew any. I just put it in my pocket and rubbed it every so often thinking,
This is mine
.

Men

spent my first full day of freedom in Christy’s apartment while they were both at work. It was great, and it was weird. I didn’t have anywhere to go because I didn’t have a car yet. I cleaned and did all of her laundry. I sat in front of her computer all day researching anything and everything on the Internet.

After work hours, my friends—many, like Sabrina, had been released—came and picked me up. All of these people called and stopped by. It was just so much fun. It hadn’t yet sunk in that I wasn’t a prisoner.

My old friend Roberta had been out for a while, and she invited me to live with her in Pevely, just twenty-five minutes away from my sister. I would have loved to stay with Christy, but her apartment was small, and she had a grown-up life to live. Roberta’s house was big, with an extra bedroom in the walk-out basement, so I accepted her offer. She was a good influence on me. She had opened her own hair salon and gotten back together with her husband. She was taking good care of her two kids. They rescued animals, so there were kittens and dogs and rabbits everywhere in her spotlessly clean home.

Every night, Roberta and I spent thirty minutes talking about groundedness, and how much I needed it. She was the amazing person I needed at the time I needed it most.

Ed and his boss, Charlie, helped me get a car, an old beat-up Honda that I loved even though it looked like hell. Charlie’s son, Dustin, worked on it every other week to keep it running. Tom W. eventually got me my own cell phone connected to his plan so it wouldn’t cost me that much. Things with Tom W. were great, but we had no expectations. We still loved each other dearly—but this time, in a more adult kind of way. He had a longtime girlfriend he knew from our high school. He was happy, and I didn’t want to interfere. I wasn’t ready for anything serious with anyone, and I cherished our close friendship. It was enough.

I started meeting guys and dating one or two, but that was very difficult. Even though I was thirty-six, I still knew nothing about men—nothing healthy anyway.

Shortly after coming home, I wanted to visit Dad’s graveside. Christy must’ve read my mind because she called me the day I was thinking about it. She asked if I had anything to do. I told her my thoughts.

She said she would go with me, and she picked me up.

It was so hard seeing his name on a tombstone in a cemetery in St. Louis. The guilt of knowing he was there because of me was overwhelming. I shook and cried. So did she.

Although this was the family cemetery plot, I begged Christy to never lay me there to rest. She agreed and asked for the same consideration.

I never forgot all of the pain that led to July 4, 1990. I never, ever forgot my own guilt. But I forgave him, and I forgave myself. He was my father, and he was supposed to protect me. He did protect me from most things—just not from himself.

I regretted that my father would never have the opportunity to change as I had changed. But I hoped that the good side of him would have forgiven me for what I did. I hoped that he would have been proud of the woman I had become.

I will always be his daughter, after all.

———

While I was in prison I met a man named Elliot Freeman, sixteen years my senior. He had visited me once as part of the Outreach program many years ago. We reconnected when I got out and started dating. He owned an aikido studio in St. Louis, and he was very patient and understanding. He was good for me in so many ways. All my life, I have wanted real intimacy and closeness. I hoped it wouldn’t be tainted by my past, but sometimes it was. I felt like I deserved love and sex just like everyone else, but it was harder for me. The first time I had sex with Elliot, I left the next morning without speaking to him for a month. His scent overpowered me. I had something of his I needed to return, so I eventually called him to tell him I was stopping by. He asked why I ran away.

I said, “Your smell was too much for me. Too musky.”

“Well, Stacey, we can always go shopping. I’ll let you pick out cologne and body wash that you like,” Elliot said.

So we went to Bath & Body Works, and we’ve been together ever since.

I could give myself to him, but I couldn’t snuggle afterward. I would smell something that reminded me of the past, and I would just get up and shower. I still had a lot to work through.

But I cared about Elliot, and I wanted to work through things with him. It was a tender balance because I wanted to be around the strength that a man has; I wanted to be able to lean into it. At the same time, I didn’t want that strength to dominate me like it had before. Elliot was great for me. He was a very strong man—strong enough to be gentle.

I couldn’t commit to anything complicated, so I called him Mr. Right Now.

When I said that, he replied, “You know, fifteen years ago, you would’ve destroyed me.” He insinuated that only a mature person could really handle me. He was probably right.

———

Mike made good on his promise that I would ride down the water with the wind blowing in my hair. On a gorgeous summer day, he and his wife took me to Big Piney River, which looks more like a creek. They wouldn’t even let me paddle. I was instructed to sit back and enjoy. The sun touched my face while fish jumped around the boat. Crickets chirped, and the birds sang.