The Real Kids of OSP
I faced the 75-year-old door that led into the house my great-grandfather built. Anything but ordinary. I grabbed the folded cardboard that helped keep the door wedged shut, seeing as there was only a hole where the door knob had once resided, and pushed the heavy, aged door open.
A door is so much more than what meets the eye. It is the first handshake. It is the smile you receive on a first date. It is the gateway into someone else’s world.
On the outside the aluminum sided house gave the appearance that drugs and danger were amiss behind the knob-less door. In reality, it harbored anywhere from three to fifteen people, some family and some not, who loved, fought and laughed together.
Some of the people who came through my door where in fact on drugs or struggling to get off them but I never saw it.
Every door holds an amount of mystery. What lies behind your neighbors Benjamin Moore Million Dollar Red door? Who lurks behind the cold grey prison bars at Oregon State Penitentiary (OSP)?
Life is sprung in the bed sheets of a newlywed couple. Goals of being an astronaut are made under glow in the dark stars. Bathtubs filled with bubbles become a tumultuous pirated sea. A plastic family comes alive in the pink room of a lonely child.
My door hid the cracked plaster and holey walls. It concealed the moldy dishes and floors so full of toys, clothes and dust bunnies that walking became a game of Minesweeper.
If you find yourself wondering where my family placed economically, your guess is probably correct. My family and I lived below that line. Below the poverty line.
In 2014, the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and participating collaborators conducted a survey in Oakland, Ca. Their research showed that many families struggle when a family member is removed from their household.
“Nearly 2 in 3 families (65%) with an incarcerated member were unable to meet their family’s basic needs. Forty-nine percent struggled with meeting basic food needs,” the report said.
Every now and again, as I sat doing my homework, eating dinner or reading the newest Harry Potter book I’d look up at the door. I’d hope to hear that scrape against the floor that would produce the impossible. That scrape that could only mean someone was walking through the front door. I hoped it was the person I wished on every time a star shot across the dark sky.
Of course, when your father is serving a twenty-five-year sentence in prison the likely hood of him busting through the front door is zero to none.
***
In 1997, three days after my third birthday my father began a streak that would land him in prison. He hit a 7/11, Dari Mart, Albertson’s and a bank all in the name of addiction to cocaine. Unfortunately, or rather fortunately, he accidently forgot his knife at the bank leaving his fingerprints.
Sitting on the white carpet of my college apartment room soaking wet from my photo shoot earlier in the morning my phone begins to vibrate.
1 (866) 516-0115 glints across the screen. Quickly I snag the rose gold iPhone 6s with my cold fingers. My pointer finger hovers above the number one as I wait for the automated woman to hurry through her pointless speech:
“This is an automated call from–Edmund Bradshaw (said in my dad’s voice)–an inmate at Oregon State Penitentiary. Press one or star to answer this call,” she drones. My finger finds the number one, not waiting to her the electronic woman finish her sentence.
“Hello? Dad?” I say.
“Hey so you’re going to have four to five kids calling you today for your project. Make sure you stay by your phone. My buddy’s son is going to call you any minute now.” He says in an almost rushed voice
“Do you know what time specifically? I was about to shower.” I say as I look down at my blue and white towel wrapped around my body.
“Hold on one second,” He says. I hear him yell across the room. “Hey Rob, what time is your son calling?”
“He’s on the phone with his son now so he’ll be calling you.” He says returning to our conversation.
“Thanks again dad for helping me out. I really appreciate it.”
“Of course but I have to go. I’ll talk to soon. Love you.”
“I love you too. Bye”
Within the next two minutes Robert Walker Jr. (also known as JR) calls me. I explain my project to the 19 year-old in as much detail as I can.
“I just want to tell stories of kids that have parents in prison. I don’t think people realize when someone goes to prison for twenty-plus years their children have to serve that sentence as well.”
318.9 million people go to the grocery store and purchase turkeys, potatoes and pie crust for a Thanksgiving family dinner in America.
However more than one in every 100 adults in America bite into the oven roasted turkey and buttered mashed potatoes while sitting with their fellow murderers, thieves, rapist and con artist in prisons and jails around the country. Maybe, behind their door less cold grey bar-celled rooms, they dream of buying groceries at an Albertson’s.
As each inmate tears off a piece of biscuit to dip into the gravy made for hundreds, 2.7 million children eat their Thanksgiving dinner with one or both of their parents missing from the table due to incarceration.
The empty seat at dinner is met with the ongoing struggle of waiting for the latest Curvy Barbie Doll or the new 65 Chevy® Impala™ Hot Wheel. At a young age maybe the child doesn’t realize the financial instability, shame, and institutional stigma that can accompany a parent in prison. At an older age these attributes become clear as the mist of normalcy dissipates and clears the way for the opinions of society to take hold.
To add to these issues, some children experience emotional and behavioral problems. Younger children can experience, “disorganized feelings and behaviors upon their parent’s incarceration and older children displaying more antisocial behavior, conduct disorders, and signs of depression.”
***
Walking up to JR’s house in the Dalles you are met with a blue wooden door. Woven throughout the door are diamonds and squares. Each shape has been replaced with dimpled stained glass. The affect resembles a sheet of metal that has been sporadically hit with a hammer until each quadrilateral is covered in concave hills. The bronze doorknob may as well be the hand of a non-memorable stranger. Nothing out of the ordinary. The knob begins to gain character as you notice the high-tech security device that allows one to enter a code to undo the deadbolt securing the inhabitants inside. Of course with a household of children, the odds that a sibling undoubtedly will change the passcode and leave the other sibling scrambling to break into the house rises immensely.
“I was privileged enough growing up in the Dalles (Oregon) we had a two story home, nice five bedrooms which as I’ve grown up I’ve realized how much that really cost,” JR says.
JR’s dad went to prison on murder charges of a five-year-old after the boy bled to death from six lacerations to his bowels after physical abuse.
When you have a parent in prison you serve their sentence with them but apart from them. You live with their mistakes and life is altered. Activities that are normal to most become odd to you, while moments that seem odd to the world become your reality.
Take a birthday for instance. People outside of prison may buy or make a red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting that makes your tongue tingle and leaves you wanting another bite. For a child who has a parent in prison such mundane experiences are a little different.
“Eating with your parent is bizarre. That’s what happens when you have an incarcerated parent like that is a reality we all have to face.” JR says to me as we sit in his college apartment in Corvallis, Or. On the side of the couch is a family portrait taken during a visit at the prison.
JR resembles his father. He is six feet tall with two-inch blonde hair that looks like light airy waves. His dad is a little over six feet with short graying blonde hair. While JR’s blue eyes pop against his red shirt, which is designed with an American flag and stripes of black and white adorned with stars, his dad’s blues eyes are stark in contrast against his dark blue t-shirt provided for him by OSP.
Two years ago, Robert Sr., now 47, had served half of his twenty-six-year sentence. The Walker family decided to celebrate, as many other families do, with a cake.
Sitting in the visiting room with his father, sister and grandmother, JR and his family begin to assemble their traditional celebratory cake. The visiting room itself is quite simple. The 100x40 yard room is divided by cement pillars that separate groups of three or more from single and double visits. In the back there is a play room that has a windowed wall so guards can watch the fathers, uncles and grandads play with their children from their stations. Vending machines filled with Twixs, Snickers, jalapeño potato chips, Dr. Peppers and wintergreen flavored mints line the far wall of the room.
“Making a cake in prison is very hard. But we’ve done it every year for birthdays.”
As JR begins to describe the cake, I am instantly amazed that I never thought of it myself.
“You know those highly produced grandma’s cookies its like a plastic bag that contains two delicious cookies that is all nasty unhealthy stuff? Well you take those and put one down on the table in the wrapping and tear it open so it’s a nice little plate area,” JR says leaning forward in his red arm chair.
“Then you put one down and then you put lots of Rollos down and that’s the supports for the second tier of the cake which is the second cookie.”
I start to picture JR and his family surrounding the round table in the back half of the visiting room, huddled around the table as if in on a secret that only they know about, delicately placing the Rollos on the peanut butter Grandma’s cookie. Laughing as they go and trying to out do their last recipe.
“You can do M&M’s or whatever candy for candles. As we got older the more intricate we got. We would be driving and be like, “Dude how are we going to make this cake?”
They’ve done it with Twinkies; substituted bear claws; put Twizzlers in as candles. It’s a challenge to create the best cake. Find the newest recipe that will offer the best taste. The vending machine becomes the pantry and the tooth aching snacks become the flour and eggs to a great, multi-layered dessert.
JR pauses and I realize my face must be giving away my inner thoughts as he asks, “Do you do any of this stuff or am I just super weird.”
I explain that I’m jealous that my family never did anything like that. I almost feel like I missed out on an experience.
I have no memory eating birthday cake with my dad in or outside of prison. I assume it would be similar to JR’s experience just with the addition of my brother’s stinky feet due to his resistance to socks and my dad’s anal obsession with us washing our hands every time we wanted a Skittle.
Later, going through my notes, I realize I never asked JR how he felt about what his dad did. Did it affect him on an emotional level or did he have any memories of his dad prior to his arrest?
I text him, “Hey hope you’re doing well! I was wondering if I can give you a call and ask a couple more questions about your padre.”
Within minutes my phone vibrates and “Robert Walker Jr.” pops up on my phone.
“Over the years I’ve asked a lot of questions about what happened and I’m not sure if it’s my reality or not.” JR says. As he answers there are multiple moments silence.
“It’s definitely a lot of cold realities…”
“It doesn’t put a damper on our relationship…”
“It’s kind of sketch to people… I guess.” JR says as he begins to get lost in another moment of his own uncertainty.
***
Sitting in my car to avoid the loud hipster music of Governor’s Cup in Salem, Or. I begin “prison talk” with twenty-three-year-old Alicia Neal. Her wavy amber hair curves around her face, reaching well past her shoulders. Her black rectangular glasses frame her blue eyes.
Alicia is an art major at Western Oregon University graduating in the next couple days with hundreds of other undergraduates. The only difference between her and most of the other students, is her father will be a couple miles away behind the tan walls and barbed wired fence of OSP.
Her front door is a deep burgundy that her mother distressed in order to give it an antique, weathered appearance. It has a half circle window near the top that resembles an orange slice. There are four panels below the window and the circular knob is brushed bronze. By Alicia’s words, “a pretty basic door.”
Alicia’s dad, Danny Neal went to prison for kidnapping, coercion and unlawful use of a weapon after he found out his wife was having an affair and set up a plan to murder her lover. He has served five out of his seven-year sentence.
“Me, my sister and my mom stopped doing everything. We stopped cleaning. We stopped eating. We just sat around crying all day. It was super pathetic,” Alicia says with a laugh. “It was needed, we needed to have that time. It was kind of like he died.”
Alicia’s first visit to a prison was different than mine. I was three. I don’t remember the check-in. I don’t even remember the actual visit. But do I remember staring at the big steps inside the jail in Eugene, Or. I remember being small enough to stand on the counter in front of the glass separating my father and I. I was too young to feel anything but curiosity of why we were talking through a phone.
Alicia first visited a prison 5 years ago when she was eighteen. “So if you’ve never been to Hermiston that’s the worst place in the world, actually Umatilla but Hermiston is the bigger town.” Alicia says.
Although it was her first visit, her mom, sister and aunt had gone before. However, they forgot to tell Alicia the rules. The rules that restrict what you can and cannot wear. No blue jeans. No underwire bras. No metal. If you do these steps wrong, you are sure to beep while walking through the metal detector. If you beep, the eyes of the other 40+ people will be on you with mostly annoyed expressions because you are slowing down the process.
So Alicia wore the wrong pants. She wore the wrong bra and she even wore the wrong undershirt. Her visit started at 6am and the weather outside was already hot and muggy.
“Everyone was waking up and putting their hair up and make up on. My hair was on top of my head in a weird bun and I was wearing too many layers. I was terrified and sweating. I had never been to a prison before. This was scary and I hadn’t seen my dad for two months at this point for the first time in forever. He was always there.” Alicia says.
Between the time it took to put their car keys, phones and purses into the lockers in the waiting room Alicia began to cry. Her family reminded her she didn’t have to do this. She calmed down and began to unlace her high top converse. Their last name was called which motioned them to approach the two metal detectors. She took off her earrings and watch. After beeping more than once she made it through but then got stopped for gum in her mouth and had to do the whole process over again before finally making it to the next step.
“It was like a caged hallway and an open field. It was weird. It was really hot all of the sudden. That is the most vivid memory of the time. Walking from the first building to the second building. It felt like it took us 10 minutes to get from one building to the next. We sat down… [on] blue plastic chairs.” Alicia says as she readjusts herself in the passenger seat.
Eventually her father came out and they hugged. Sitting back into the hard plastic chair she moved it closer to him. A mistake only someone who has never been to a prison will occasionally make. The guard on duty made her move it back.
She doesn’t remember who said it but it was said.
“If you do anything bad your dad will get in trouble.”
“I was scared to see my dad because I didn’t know what he was going to look like. I was afraid to get him in trouble.” Alicia says almost with a laugh as she pictures the visit. “I was afraid of all the other inmates because these people are in prison for a reason. It’s a super max so its all the murderers.”
So she sat there in silence for the three-hour visit. Having a panic attack, no one else noticed. She started sweating more and the feeling of bile in her stomach began to pile up, while her chest began to tighten. Words swirled through her head but she couldn’t comprehend them. The smell of the TGIF Potato Chips she had been eating mixed with the smells of the prison. The smell of sweat, plastic, mold and stale building. Not to mention the manure from the natural farm town aroma.
“And then we did it all again the next day, [except] I talked.”