"Mama."(Kevin Hughes) Debbie sat back on her bunk for the last time. Tomorrow was Christmas Eve. She was to be released on Parole after serving Forty six years of her life sentence. Forty six years. That thought rummaged around her brain looking for any signs of resentment, anger, revenge, or the unfairness of it all. She found nothing but distant memories.

A small girl, straight A student, Student Council President and the first (and still the only member of her Family to graduate with Honors). The Local Paper boasted about her being the first person from that High School to win an Academic Scholarship to an Ivy League school. Well, the first who wasn’t an athlete. She had graduate early, at just sixteen. Sixteen. It made her smile at the girl she was back then. So full of hope…of promise…of dreams. It was that summer before she would have gone to Harvard. The world was her oyster.

Until…

He was gorgeous. The prettiest man she had ever seen. It was like one of those statues they make of Gods-got dipped in chocolate- and then covered with the most wonderful scent. She wasn’t the only one at the playground to watch him play basketball, or hustle older men at the nearby Chess tables. She liked to think it was his intelligence that attracted her…but really, it was just basic biology. He was a hunk. Period. He was all man, from the bottom of his toes to the top of his six foot four inches. His waist was barely smaller than hers…and she weighed more than a hundred pounds less than his two hundred fifteen sculptured frame.

She was thrilled when he chose her to talk to…she should have known better. His reaction to losing to her in Chess, in only seven moves…she should have seen the red flags. She didn’t. He took her virginity on their second date…two weeks later she moved in. A week after that…and the beatings started. Then the “sharing”. She would have to comply with any request his “friends” made. It was the only way she could get food. He thought he had broken her. He had not.

Finally, one of the thugs he brought over to “play” with her, left his Glock carelessly on the side table next to the bed. She distracted him with a wild ride he wasn’t expecting. He told her he was a freak and he was so worn out…he couldn’t move. He died with a surprised look on his face. The door burst open when her “boyfriend” (and even after forty six years…that brought a scowl to her face) stormed into the room to see what happened.

“Baby! NO!”

Were his last words. She emptied the rest of the clip into him. Even as he tried to crawl away….she continued shooting him. The anger, shame, humiliation and innocent gullibility of the last three months poured out with the bang of each shell she sent on its way. She spoke to him one last time before his eyes lost the ability to see:

“I am not your Baby.”

They tried her as an Adult. She only had a Public Defender (and that brought a bitter sweet smile to her face). A Public defender she met exactly once before the trial. Times being what they were…and maybe still are…being a woman wasn’t a mark on her side. The Prosecutor made it sound like she wanted to be a whore. That she killed the two men in cold blood just to get ahold of the money they charged for her “Services.”

“Guilty.”

She was numb when she heard the word. And that was that. She was sent upstate to a Woman’s Prison. Life went on outside of Prison, and she found ways to cope inside the Prison. She managed to get her Bachelors Degree…then a MA…then a MS….then, finally…a Ph.D. She left all her rancor and victim hood behind after that first year in prison.

By the fifth year…everyone called her “Mom.” She had just turned 21. It was an honorary term. She earned it by not only listening without judging, but by giving back practical tips to help guide them when they got out of prison. She helped them discover the joys of learning, the Bible and the Koran too. She wasn’t picky about what Religion or Faith was the one True Faith, what she knew is that Faith is what will sustain you in times of trouble.

“Find the God that is worthy of your love…then love like a God.”

That is the simple message she both talked and walked. She loved God, hated Religion, and felt the message was the same in every Faith:

“Love, help, forgive…and grow. Leave this Earth a better place and as a better person.”

She lived those words. You can’t fake that belief in a place like she was in. All of the inmates were familiar with every kind of con, every kind of lie, and every kind of self delusion. She rose above all that, and taught other women to do the same. Over the years, dozens, perhaps hundreds, maybe even thousands of women where churned up and spit out by that System. If they were lucky, the System put them in her prison.

Like a good Mother, she taught the new inmates to make their beds, eat good food, read good books, take care of their body, and to never ever let some one else’s opinion of you determine who you are. She used to quote one of the books she asked every woman to read: Victor Frankl’s small volume: "Man’s Search for Meaning." For those that couldn’t read, she read it to them…without even looking at the text.

“They can take your Liberty away, but no one can take your Freedom.”

Sometimes it took years for others to get the message that beauty doesn’t go away just because you are surrounded by grey walls and barbed wire. Your thoughts are as free as you want to make them. She had them read Toni Morrison, Nelson Mandella, Langston Hughes, Fredrick Douglas, later she even included works by Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Mea Jamison the Astronaut, Madame CJ Walker of beauty potion fame, and others. She showed the other female prisoners the works of both men and women who turned their lives around. She introduced them to other Authors like China Achebe, and Paulo Coelho. And Mother Teresa made her list too.

By the time she was in her thirties most folks had forgotten her name. She was just: “Mama.”

“Go see Mama!”

Was told to the most troubled of the women.

“Go ask Mama!”

Was told to women wanted to know what life was all about…and if they could change either it…or them.

When young children came to that prison to visit their actual Mothers…Mama would join them at their tables and make them laugh, think, and feel loved. After a few visits, the children would want to see their own Mothers…but also “Mama" too. Teens destined to follow in their Mother’s footsteps found themselves being guided down a different path by the woman they called: “MaMa.”

Sometimes it was just the fact that someone listened, really listened…and cared that moved them off the path to perdition. Other times it was a Letter written by Mama herself to a Judge, Dean, or Parole Officer that got them a chance…at least a chance, to make a difference. Sometimes, she sent them to a Priest, Rabbi, Minister, Hafiz or Imam, or rarely a Pandit. She had met them all over her decades in Prison. She was familiar with almost all Faith’s…but most comfortable with her own. A quality she thought was probably how most folk found their Faith. Comfortable.

She had no desire to convert, or do missionary work…to her, she just wanted you to have Faith. Faith that could help you become a better you. She believed God was in all of us…and it was up to us to find her.

And now…she sat on the edge of her bunk. Two years ago an Interview on Sixty Minutes had explained her story to an eager to hear it audience. People began to question her trial. Even the Judge that sentenced her …now in his late seventies…said that under today’s Social Conditions and changes to the Law…she would have been considered an Abused Spouse and probably charged with either Manslaughter or Self Defense. He argued that she had paid her debt to Society a long time ago.

Maybe part of his change of heart was that he had daughters now…and granddaughters…and he could imagine what they would go through if they met the wrong man at sixteen, or even later in life. And so it was that the long process of shifting Public Opinion ground away to ensure her release. Forty six years after getting a life Sentence, Mama was paroled.

Most convict get just fifty dollars, a bus ticket home (wherever home might be) and a set of used clothes- and then they are sent outside the gates to find their way. Usually a way back inside the prison. Mama didn’t want that to happen. Nobody who knew her wanted that to Happen. The hat was passed among the Guards and Warden. So Mama patted her brand new purse (hand sewn, soft leather, made by her cellmate Cissily) filled with over three thousand dollars in cash.

She had job offers from several Universities too. One she was seriously thinking of taking…it was a prestigious college up North. She thought it might giver her a much longer reach to the people who have to be reached, than to take a job in the Private Sector, or Business. She was a natural born Teacher. Now she would have a chance to show that to the world. Everyone in the Prison already knew.

She had no family. Her Mother had died of heartbreak just weeks after the trial ended. Her younger brother Marcus was killed in a drive by. As innocent of any crime as anyone could be…just another statistic. Her older brother…well, who knows where his drug life led him…only that the Death Certificate claimed: “accidental overdose.” And all those deaths were decades behind her.

She had no one. No Family. No friends (so she thought) on the outside. It would be Christmas Eve…when they walked her out that gate. She was hoping to find a nice hotel, and maybe a Church that had a Christmas Dinner for those without family or friends. That would be enough for her first day out. On Christmas she was going to go to as many churches as she could…just to enjoy the celebration of love and life it entails.

And so the gates opened.

She stared out into a rainy and cold (at least for the South) Christmas morning. Her small back pack slipped out of her hand in shock. She fell to her knees. Her face echoed the shock that left her hand nerveless and useless. For out in the parking lot were hundreds of women, many with a man or woman standing proudly next to them. She recognized many of them…for they had come to ask her for help when they were on the inside.

Many of them she didn’t recognized, the good life outside had transformed them to resemble the good person inside of them. They looked younger, healthier, happier…and proud. Some of them she had never met. The Dean of the School she would start working for…she had pretty much decided…was there to greet her. The Governor and his Staff were there. News folks from all around the USA were there.

One of the woman she shared a cell with back in those early years…who had only served four years for stealing a car…was there too. She hugged her and handed her a set of keys. Keys to a brand new SUV. She made Mama laugh when she said”

“Don’t worry, I didn’t steal this one…I bought it!”

There were close to a thousand people packed into the parking lot. Every single one of them touched somehow by MaMa…and MaMa touched by them all.

They linked hands and sang Jingle Bells and at the end…as if they had planned it…they yelled out in the most loving roar imaginable:

“Merry Christmas, MaMa…Merry Christmas. “

She had Family now. She had raised many of them, guided many more and was responsible for the breaking of the cycle in more households than could be counted. She was free now. Free to go anywhere. She almost turned to go back into the Prison. When she turned to look back inside, every single Prison Guard, and inmate was pressed up against fence:

“Merry Christmas, MaMa….you go now. Go! You are free. But don’t forget about us!”

MaMa let the tears fall. She wouldn’t forget. She would be there for any of them who needed her.

Because who doesn’t need their MaMa?

The SUV had so many flowers stuffed into the back it smelled like a Florists shop. A column of cars followed her…and one led. She was not going to spend her night in a Hotel after all. She was spending it with Family.

Her Family.

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