The Hamster Wheel
I got a call Monday from Antonio Battle’s parole officer, informing me that he’s had to take out a warrant because he hasn’t heard from Antonio in months. I didn’t tell him I’d gotten a call while I was moving last Thursday from a social worker at New York Presbyterian in White Plains telling me Antonio’d checked in with them and asking me how they could best help him. Instead, I called that social worker right after I got off the phone with his PO and left a message asking her to have Antonio give me a call ASAP. I got a call Tuesday morning from him while grocery shopping with my kids. I told him about the call from his PO, and he told me they were discharging him right then because they couldn’t find a permanent residence for him. If I’d known that, I might have held off on telling him about the warrant.
As it was, the combination of his involuntary discharge and the new warrant broke him. He told me he didn’t know what else to do but try again to end it all. “I tried running into moving traffic, I tried taking a bunch of pills, and they picked me up both times. They won’t let me die, but they won’t let me live. I’m too afraid to jump off the George Washington Bridge, I don’t want it to be painful. I just want to find a way to go to sleep one last time.”
I spent about 15 minutes in the frozen section at Trader Joe’s talking him out of it. I’m not trained as a crisis counselor; all I could think to do was to give him a short-term thing to do. “Alright,” I told him, “we have our reentry writing workshop tonight in Bed-Stuy. If you’re going back to the city, let’s find a place to meet, and I’ll pick you up and take you there. It’s a good group, and they all know about you. Just come through tonight.”
He agreed to meet me at City Hall Park between 6:00 and 6:30, and I told him he could call anytime before that. When I hung up, my seven-year-old daughter was looking up at me in concern.
“Was that one of your jail friends?” she asked.
“Well, he’s out of jail now,” I told her.
“But he’s still having trouble?”
“Yeah,” I sighed.
“Is he going to get better?”
I pondered whether to give her the brutal truth or the soothing lie, and split the difference: “I don’t know.”
When I got to City Hall Park at 6:30, he was nowhere to be found. I was frantically looking while my car was parked illegally off Broadway when I received a call from an unknown number. It was Antonio, calling from T-Mobile station off Washington Square. By the time I drove to pick him up there, it was well after 7pm. I called my colleague Joni at the workshop, which runs from 6-8pm. She agreed to just meet up with us afterward for some real talk.
We met at Applebee’s on Fulton in Bed-Stuy, and Joni recommended we go to a Thai restaurant she frequents in the neighborhood with a quiet garden out back.
Once we got settled and ordered, we talked out the day. By now Antonio had talked out the details of why he was discharged and I’d explained to him my conversation with his PO on the car ride there. He now turned reflective. At one point in the conversation, he used his belief in reincarnation to justify his suicidal thoughts, saying that he wanted to transform into something else, in another place.
“I think I’m a little more short-sighted,” I replied. “I like having you here as you.”
Joni mostly listened, and focused her comments on keeping him positive. I had a hard time masking my worry. By now he’d decided that he would check himself back into Jamaica Hospital, because they know him well and have his records, and also because apparently police officers aren’t allowed to remove someone from a mental health facility like they are with shelters. He said he just wanted to enjoy another hour or so in good company, enjoying just being “normal,” which is not his normal.
I agreed to drive him from there to Jamaica Hospital. On the way to my car he ran into many people he knew, including a youngish man on the block where I was parked. They slapped fives, the guy asked how he’s doing, Antonio said good, he’d holla back at him later.
“That dude runs this block,” he told me when we got in the car. “He always treat me good, buy me a meal, ask me if there anything I can do for him. He know my history, and he know I can fight. But I ain’t running drugs no more. He don’t ever pressure me though, and he don’t let me go hungry. More than I can say for any of these programs my parole officer want to get me in. You got to understand, we take care of each other out here in the street.”
Driving to Jamaica Hospital I felt his spirits rising. He was talking a lot, and when we got to the hospital he told me that once he checked into the ER he’d have them notify me.
And with that, Antonio Battle is back at the place he started from on his release from prison, Jamaica Hospital. I can’t help feeling the circularity of the whole deal, like we’ve just jogged a lap on a really long circuit workout, or like I’ve just had a long conversation before realizing that the person I’m talking to wasn’t even listening. Then I think that his road could have ended today, and I’m just glad he’s still running.
But he shouldn’t have to run. He’s 54 years old, and his city, his country have given up on him. We’ve given up on the practice of the social safety net, leaving our most economically vulnerable citizens with literally no legal choice that works for them, citizens for whom the corner drug dealer cares more than the programs that routinely discharge them after 10-15 days and send them on a hamster wheel to the next program, and the next, and the next, until they’re picked up and go back behind bars, which perversely feels the most secure because at least they know that correctional facilities, unlike mental health facilities and shelters, will always be there to welcome them back in.
Re/Creation is now running a fundraiser from July 12-31 with limited edition t-shirts and coffee mugs featuring Antonio Battle’s work. Please considering buying one (or more!). All funds will go to Antonio as he continues to struggle and strive in his work and in his reentry.