Basheen

I didn't know what I was being locked up for,

because by then I was living in Amityville, Long Island with my wife and kids. I had moved out of the housing projects and wasn't in the streets anymore, was making a nice salary, and was getting used to the family life. Every week I had to put my paycheck on the counter—I had to get used to that part, but I enjoyed it—and I made sure I had a couple of dollars for whatever I wanted. I came home to dinner and spent time with the kids chilling, laughing, and joking. Life was good.

But sitting in that courtroom, I almost lost it. They said something about a shooting or a robbery, and I told my lawyer, "I was at Attica Correctional Facility at the time and don't know nothing about that." He tells that to the judge, and that goes away. Then they ask my whereabouts on a date in February. It happened to be the same date as my sister's birthday and I'm just sitting there, baffled. In disbelief, I asked my lawyer, "What is the crime?" Then the stunned feeling came. I sat down and just started crying. After the tears, the numbness set in.

Later, the victim took the stand and pointed to a gentleman sitting in the second row of the courtroom, saying "That's him sitting in the second row. I'll never forget his face." The man she identified was darker than me and 5'5". I'm 6'1" on a good day. I had also given DNA, because I knew I’d done nothing. The DNA evidence said the possibility I committed the crime was one in 500 million, but my lawyer was acting like he didn't want to do nothing. Now, I'm getting mad and ready to hurt my lawyer.

I ended up being sentenced to 50 years and serving 26.

I'm not going to take that pain from the victim either. But while sitting in prison, I felt like a victim, and I was internalizing that victimhood and hurting myself. I was lashing out, getting into trouble, and fighting prison staff. I kept being sent to solitary and spent 7 years there, learning to live with myself and learning how to see myself in the mirror.

The hardest part of my bid in prison was being accused of such a heinous crime and being alienated, not by my peers, but by myself. I would never raise my hand to a woman. To lose my mother, then to be raised by my grandmother in a household of up to fifteen women—it's impossible to abuse a woman when your whole upbringing was around strong women.

Everything changed on November 24, 2004. I was in solitary, Greenhaven Box, and I woke up paralyzed. I fell out in that cell and the only thing that kept coming to mind was my mother. I saw the flashing lights from the road, felt an overwhelming terror, started crying, and screamed my mother's name! It was the first time I had mourned my mother's death.

When I was four years old, my mother was going out with a girlfriend one night. As she was leaving the house, I wanted to get a hug from her, so I went downstairs as fast as my little feets could go. The cab stopped on the corner of Franklin and Putnam. My mother's friend was getting in on the passenger side and my mother was on the street side when a truck came barreling down and hit my mother. I remember the truck hitting her, the lights, her flying up in the air, and falling to the ground. I can't say for certain if I went to the hospital, but for forty-five years, my recurring dream has been of me in the hospital when my mother was being pushed on a gurney. After that night, and until I was about eight years old, everything is a black hole. Other than that, I just carry the hurt and pain.

After her death, I was a shell, living but not living. By age seven, we moved away from 122 Putnam Avenue. Trauma has a way of triggering the brain to remember certain things and stopping the brain from remembering other things. I remember her hugs, but over the years, I lost the image of her face. My uncle really loves her, so you can't even say her name around him. As a kid not being able to hug your mother is the most terrifying thing in the world. I fought a lot of kids for saying "your mother" and was angry all the time, because I couldn't hug her. But nobody asked me why I was acting out. Nobody. You want to tell me I have ADHD or psychoanalyze me, but you never asked me what was going on or what was wrong.

To me, I had no purpose, and I thought I was dying. I couldn't sleep at night and would sleep with a baseball bat, then go to school angry in the morning. When I was twelve, one day I had just gotten into a fight with this kid named Larry, and Ms. English heard about the fight. She was a petite woman, 5'4", but she was the strongest 5'4" you will ever meet, because she knew how to keep us in line. She was the first person to ask me the question, "Why are you always mad?" "I miss my mother." She didn't know my mother had passed, and when I told her about my mother dying and my story, she just hugged me. Once she really heard it, she just hugged me. I couldn't get away with nothing in school after that! You would think that lady became my second mother, but I was already too far gone and numb.

By the time I was sixteen, I had my first run-in with the law. It started when my grandmama got sick, right after my great Aunt Hattie Mae, her twin sister, passed away. So somewhere, internally, I knew my grandmother wasn't going to be on the Earth long. There was a neighborhood fight, and I won. But when my sister was then smacked, I was going to protect my family. I'm already living through trauma, living in a dysfunctional family, in the housing projects, and at sixteen, I'm still an impulsive child, and the fight escalated.

So now I'm a kid going to jail, and I think I'm invincible. Let any man tell you about the first time he went to prison and that gate closed on him. If he didn't say that he called out to Jesus, his mama, or somebody, then he lying and his breath stink. I promise you that. Once that gate closed on me, I probably had more conversations with God than I ever had with any human being. But I had a demon riding me for so long at this point in my life that I just didn't believe I would live to my next birthday.

For three years, I lived each day on the edge, but that street life is all part of an imaginary system. Like when I was selling drugs on the block, I used to tell dudes, "This is my block. I own this block." I was selling myself a hoax. How did I own them blocks? Matter of fact, the block I was on, it don't even look like the block it was! I just walked down it the other day for the first time since I've been out. It was weird. Really weird. There are buildings there that were never there. Mind blowing! I sold myself on a dream that was not mine. I was living in a dream from somebody else, until I started to create my own life in Amityville, Long Island—but that didn't last.

I've been through a lot. I was convicted on a case that should have been overturned by now, but my lawyer never put my alibi witnesses on the stand. My marriage didn't survive, but I knew it wouldn't, and I wouldn't allow my wife to do that time with me anyway. To the world, I'll wear your stigma because I can't erase that even though it hurts to walk around with it every day. 

These are the cards I was dealt. But to that little boy that wanted a hug, one thing is for certain, two things for sure—I was given birth by Barbara Ann Rush, and they ain't made nothing that can break me.

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Basheen’s Interview
Written by Antoinette Cooper