His
name was Alejandro Sosa, but everyone just called him Sosa. He was a Dominican
from the South Bronx. When he was 17 he was jumped by two men. In retaliation
he shot and killed these two men, in cold blood, as they walked out of a
nightclub, one after the other. He was serving consecutive life sentences. He
was well into his thirties, but his face, void of any facial hair, didn’t look
a day older than 18. One of the effects of incarceration is preservation. When you’re
on the inside you’re not exposed to any of the elements. You don’t have to work
for a living. When you’re locked down for 21 out of 24 hours of the day,
naturally you do a lot sleeping. As a result Sosa aged at a fraction of the rate
he would have on the outside.
We
were housed in a level 4, 21-hour lockdown facility, meaning that for 21 out of
24 hours of the day we were to be in our cells; locked down. For three, one-hour
periods a day we were let out into the pod, a small triangular area, with a
total perimeter of roughly 300 feet. These periods were called “recreation” or
more commonly “rec”. Level 4 facilities housed both sentenced and unsentenced
inmates. That’s how Sosa and I found ourselves together, in the spring of 2011
I was 21 and awaiting trial for a drug-related theft.
Sosa,
from many years of being locked up, had developed a phobia towards germs, and
had taken to using pieces of toilet paper to touch any surface outside of his
cell. He did other strange things, like changing his shoelaces different colors
at least once a day, always before we went out for rec, as if it was a fashion
statement. When we were out at rec he would be surrounded by a group of Latinos
constantly laughing and joking, and making these ear-piercing whistling noises.
I played scrabble with the few, or only older white men. Which I actually
really enjoyed, and began to look forward to. That’s how prison was, very
racially polarized. From a glimpse Sosa seemed like any other criminal-inmate,
a car thief, drug dealer or burglar, doing a 2-5 year bid. But he was so much
more than that, he was also my cellmate.
One
day he came back from rec with a big shampoo bottle filled with bleach. He
poured the bleach into the toilet, took a rag, put it in the toilet and then
began wiping down every surface in the whole cell including the ceiling. The
fumes were noxious; all I could do was hide under my blanket and wait for him
to stop.
Sosa
was also a five-star jailhouse chef. He possessed a prohibited “stinger”, a
severed electrical wire, stripped so that the wire is exposed. It is then
plugged in and the severed end is dipped into water. It could bring 2 cups of
water to a boil in less than 30 seconds. Stingers of course weren’t allowed,
but I think the Correctional Officers overlooked it in Sosa’s case and the case
of the other lifers. He made all sorts of things, from the various commissary
items. Some of them were quite good, in comparison to the jailhouse slop. He
made these wraps that contained either meat or fish. The filling was wrapped in
crushed up crackers or potato chips with hot water added. He would then take
the dough like substance and wrap the hot meat and fish up. He also manufactured
items to bring out and try to sell during rec, melting down Jolly Ranchers and
Now and Laters and make lollipops out of them, using Q-tips as the stick. He
also made “s’mores” out of two frosted oatmeal cookies with marshmallow fluff,
and other things like M&M’s or brownies, in the middle. He Utilized me as
part of an assembly line, never asking or requesting my assistance, just
assuming that I was there, so I might as well help. I didn’t mind. I’d hand him
the oatmeal cookies, and he would put the fluff and the other various items on
them. Then he handed them back to me, to be wrapped up in pieces of a clear
garbage bag. He would sell both of these items for one Ramen Noodle Soup, which
was only worth 25 cents. I doubt he yielded much of a profit, but I think for
him it was more about passing time than anything else.
He
was very clean and specific, almost compulsively so. He yelled at me one day
for not taking my shoes off and leaving them at the door. Everything had its
particular place, and he took up almost all of the space in the cell with his belongings,
his 18 years worth of stuff. Sosa had several Bankers’ Boxes filled with
paperwork from his various legal endeavors. He had one lawsuit going against
the kitchen, one against medical, and others against various Correctional Officers.
And he also had his appeals. He relied on legal advocates for their support and
advice. In addition he had several hundred photographs, as well as newspaper
clippings of obituaries of people he had lost during his time on the inside, he
also had the articles about him, that read “Drug Figure Indicted for Murder.”
All of which were brittle and stained yellow by time. Looking at his photos was
like traveling back to the early 90’s, in the South Bronx; the hairstyles, and
women wearing big hoop earrings. On occasion he would lay a great many of his
photos out on his bed, and sit in one of the two plastic chairs we had in our
cell. He spoke to them, mumbling things here and there, sometimes in English
sometimes in Spanish.
When
I first was informed, or told rather, that I would be moving into his cell I
was a bit worried to share a 12x8 room with a double murderer. But once I got
to know him, and understood why he was the way he was, I was able to look past
his past. What I came to learn was that Sosa was only a child when he committed
his crime, and was still very much a child 18 years later.
There
is a lot of growing up that one does between the ages of 17-35, none of which
Sosa was able to do from the inside. One day Sosa and I, and some random
others, got called down to medical to take drug tests. As he walked down the
hallway every light switch he walked by he turned on and off in a rapid
succession, the whole time saying “on-off-on-off-on-off”. He found it
hilarious. Our cell had a small window roughly three feet tall and six inches
wide. When a female C.O. was on duty, Sosa would be glued to the window
sometimes all night, as she made her rounds. With his back to me, he would slap
his semi-erect penis against the door. It made audible thuds.
There
was one day when he got into an argument with one of the C.O’s, and yelled at
him “I’m going to die in here! This place is more mine than it is yours!” I
thought about that, what he had said. What it must be like to know that you
will never leave such a godforsaken place. The dismay that must set in, but for
him it didn’t. He had come to accept his life on the inside. When he came back
to the cell, from grabbing his tray, I choose not to get mine I rarely could
ever stomach lunch, I asked him what had happened. He replied that the C.O was
eating one of the trays, our trays. Why anyone would eat prison food, who has
an option not to is beyond me. He then told me, “So I said something to him,
cause I don’t tuck my dick in for nobody.”
Sosa’s
world was all about respect, respect that he temporarily lost the day he was
jumped, but avenged a few days later when he killed those two men. It was all
that really mattered to him. That’s why he let nothing slide, no one
disrespected him, and if they did he would react physically. Violence was the
only solution in his mind to any problem with another human being.
Sosa
got no visits, made no phone calls, and received no mail, except from the
occasional but infrequent legal advocate and his mother who mailed a card along
with a $100 money order to his account once a month. She was his only lifeline,
his only remaining tie to the outside world. I remember seeing his eyes light
up when they yelled “Sosa”, and slid an envelope under our cell door. I thought
about his mother, what it must have been like to make the journey to New York
City from The Dominican Republic, the whole time hoping and praying for
something better for her children. Trying to earn an honest living, and set a
good example for them. But instead they were drawn to the easy money of the
drug trade, and eventually end up in prison. I think that Sosa spoke to the
disconnect that occurs between so many Latino immigrant parents and their
American born and raised children.
I look back at my time spent in jail as
something I had to experience, so I would know what true powerlessness feels
like. What it feels like to be in a place where no one cares about you, or how
you feel. A place where you know that there is nothing you can say or do to change
the current circumstance. It’s all up to someone on the outside to do it for
you. A place where you’re made to feel like an animal who gets fed three times
a day, and is let out three times a day, and then returns to it’s cage. There
is no arguing with “The Brass”. A truly unsavory place where you constantly
need to have your guard up, because you never know who is going to try to get
over on you.
Finally
after four months in jail, my lawyer made some headway in court and I was due
to be released in two weeks. It was great news because I thought I was looking
at at least a year, the minimum for a burglary in the State of Connecticut, but
the excitement was quickly followed by anxiety. I didn’t want to tell someone
serving life that I would be getting out, going home, in two weeks. I waited a
week, and then I figured I had to say something, so I did. I just told him flat
out, “Sosa, in one week I’m going home.” He jumped up and was genuinely happy
for me. He asked why I hadn’t told him earlier, and I explained my reasoning.
He told me “ah man don’ be stupid, that’s great you going home you deserve it
you a good kid, you don’ belong in here.”
The
day I left, I was to be released from court, so I was awakened early. Sosa got
up too, and when they popped our door he gave me “dap” a street greeting halfway
between a hug and a handshake. In that brief and fleeting embrace, when Sosa
and I came together, and my chin rested on his shoulder. And the sides of our
faces touched, I looked over his shoulder, blankly, at the 12x8 room that I
shared with him for the past 4 months. I thought about how I was now leaving
this place, leaving Sosa, and how it really was Sosa’s. How it belonged to him,
and how it was all he would ever know.
