Free Upstate by Kalisha Buckhanon Page A

knew I was safe. Then I knew that nobody was gonna take me away too or swarm the cell and deck me too. Things had been cool up to
this point. It hadn’t been no drama, but I hope that I never have another day like this again as long as I’m in here.
    Stay safe,
    Antonio
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    May 30, 1990
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    Antonio baby, I’m so sorry you had to go through what you went through and I wasn’t there so you could lay your head on my shoulder and I could make you feel all better. I could hear it in your voice the other day when you called that you wasn’t doing too good. Something was weird, like you wanted to tell me something but couldn’t find the words or get it out. Now I know what it was. You was scared baby, and that’s okay. I wish that I could talk to you and call you or you call me so I could calm you down whenever you get upset like that, but I can’t. Roy said something to Mommy about you calling here. He said that if I wanted to talk to you I needed to get a job and pay for the calls myself. Well, you know what? That’s exactly what I’m gonna do. I’m seventeen now. I can get a real job. I want to go and work at the Macy’s downtown so I can get a discount, or one of them stores on 5th Avenue so I can buy myself a lot of clothes and save up some money to go to college and get my own place and get the hell out of this house. So Antonio, I’m sorry I have to say this, but I don’t think you can call
here anymore. It’s not that I don’t want to talk to you, it’s just that I don’t want to make Roy mad because I don’t want him and Mommy fighting. It’s been real good around here. They haven’t been fighting, Drew been coming around. We even went downtown to see a Eddie Murphy movie the other day. So the last thing I want to do is cause some trouble over a phone bill. When I get my job I’m gonna get my own phone line, then you can call as much as you want.
    Love you forever,
    Natasha
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    June 7, 1990
Natasha,
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    Well baby I know I promised you I wouldn’t, but I got in trouble already. The other day I had met with this woman who come to the spot once every two weeks. They call her the Education Coordinator. She an older black lady named Ms. Harris. She’s not really that much older, only maybe thirty or something. The cats on the block told me her first name was Dream. I thought they was joking, but they said that her name really was Dream but it should be Wet Dream, cause every time after she come visit, everybody need to have their sheets washed cause they been thinking about her all night. She’s pretty, kinda remind me of you, a little bit of Janet Jackson when she was on Different Strokes
back in the day. She ain’t nearly as fine as you though before you start tripping. She just real nice and sometimes that can make the ugliest person look beautiful. It’s mandatory for all the new inmates, although I hate calling myself that, to meet with Ms. Harris when they first come in. She was like, Antonio I see from your file that you’re only seventeen years old, you’re just a baby. I told her, Miss, no disrespect, but after all I been through in my life I ain’t no baby. She didn’t get mad though. She just said real cool and sassylike, Didn’t mean to disrespect you brother. Now ain’t nobody who wasn’t really my brother ever called me that, so she got my attention real quick with that one. She just said, I didn’t mean to imply you’re too young or too inexperienced or that you weren’t an adult in this case being a baby is a good thing because you have a lot of time to fulfill your educational goals.
    Now Natasha, I had never thought about having any educational goals other than getting my diploma until I met you and decided I needed to do better with my life. So I didn’t say nothing for a minute and then finally I was like, I thought about