Claudia Shivers, Gratitude Journalist

“Don’t Forget Us When You Leave.” – Shirita James

With a back East, down South North Carolina twang Rere said to me, “Claudia, why you ain’t tell me you was leaving?”  Her words asked a question.  Her tone held an accusation.  She knew the answer. 

I was coming out of the bathroom with my head down, not paying attention, pretty much sleep.  Against prison rules, but I just wanted to forget where I was for a minute.  Forget these damn khakis.  Forget these grays (sweats).  Forget these bright orange moo moos.  I just hated it so much.  I created momentary amnesia as often as I could.  My mind doing a thousand things and none at all, all at once.  I just didn’t see her at first. 

Her inquisition caught me off guard.  Boss ladies didn’t talk much in the bing so believe me when I say, this act was significant.  Feeling cornered I did what I had been trained to do.  I erected my head, met her gaze, and lied.  “Girl, I thought you knew.”  She sized me up.  Looked firmly into my soul’s windows and held me without a touch.  Her response, “Don’t forget about me when you leave.” 

As quietly as she appeared, she disappeared.  Magic.

My lack of consciousness had been cured with a dose of accountability.  An old wound opened in my stomach.  That infection turned into fire inside my chest.  Because it could not escape my mouth, every apology I had never given my Mom came out of my eyes.  Before anybody could see a thug cry, I went to my cube and put on my headphones.  “Nobody Else” by Summer Walker.  “Come on sis, you gotta make the song sound so deep?” I thought.  In a matter of fact tone she just replied “I can’t see them coming down your eyes so I gotta make this song cry.”  She sounded like Big Brotha Jay-Z when she said it though.  Prison offers a safe place to hurt but no security to show it.

I thought I had learned to tell a necessary lie, but always, and by any means necessary, live the truth.  Now I doubted my entire preceding reality.  Had I been living a lie and telling the truth?  Damn, I been doing it so long I forgot which one it is.  Now I had to figure it out. 

Shirita James, Rere, had a 135 month bid.  She had been down about 36 by the time I got there.  This interaction occurred when I had been down eight.  She had 100 months left.  One hundred months.  Eight years.  No, I didn’t want to think about it.  I had every plan to forget.  I would never think about the friends I was leaving behind.  The staff always said that there were no friends in prison, but I would have never survived without them.  These sisters had offered me comfort when a community that I had done so much for had thrown me away.  My value to them at this point was as just a salacious article in the Winston-Salem Journal.  I had become “North Carolina Tax Preparer”, or “Winston-Salem Woman” to an ungrateful, nosey, and cowardly part of my previous community.  They must have had a hero reporter, Super Scribe, because that article was written faster than a speeding bullet.  So many had forgotten who I really was, so I did the same.  That’s that amnesia again. 

My new village reminded me though.  “Bitch, you a whole woman. They can’t treat you any kind of way. We federal.”  I now knew how Neo felt in the Matrix.  Morpheus was an outcast, a deviant.  Because he was fearless though, he was The One who had awakened The One. 

I can no longer continue to hold this ache in my bowels.  It just gets regurgitated anyway.  Emotional Bulimia, an emotional disorder involving the distortion of one’s image and an obsessive desire to no longer carry the weight that remembering holds.  It does not heal itself.  Pain was trying to make me forget my own Momma.  The woman who walked her children to the Public Library because she didn’t have a car, but she did have the determination and desire to give her children the gift of education.  Pain lied and told me it was ok to forget because she sold drugs, and made mistakes, and was unapologetic about it.  She was fearless.  She was Rere.  She died in pain and misunderstood.  Pain killed her once and I was going to let it kill her again by forgetting her when she left.  “Don’t forget me when I leave.”

Disregard and neglect are the blessings to the meals that trauma serves for dinner.  Amen.  Society has too often given us permission to forget and rewards us for inaction and silence. 

Today, I needed a minute.  The pain comes first thing in the morning.  Now I embrace it.  It reminds me that I am alive.  It calls me to purpose.  Right now, bravery sounds like “Savage” by Megan Thee Stallion, the remix with Beyoncé.  (Cause she got that shit from Tina).

I will not forget about you when I leave.  I will not forget me when I leave.  I will not forget.  I will not forget.  I will tell everyone about you.  I will tell everyone about all of you.

I am a Truth Teller.

What is Prison?

Do you know what prison is?  It is the constant desire to be anywhere except where you are.  Only, if you go somewhere else, especially back to where you used to be, how will you belong?  Prison is a loss of identity.  Who are you now?  It’s like Sam Cooke was killing me softly when he was “strumming my pain with his fingers, singing my life with his words.”  He told y’all that it was “too hard living, but I was afraid to die, because I don’t know what’s out there, above the sky.”  I don’t know why he told my secrets, and he told them before I was born. I couldn’t even stop him.  How did he even know?

Prison is what put that look in Brother Malcolm’s eyes.  That look of determination, love, and sadness.  The look of the highly qualified intensive care surgeon.  That look when you know you have to wake up a million people in a short period of time because it means the difference between life and death of a nation.  And the ones you need to wake up the most have been put into a socially induced coma to minimize the swelling from the lifetime of pain they have experienced so they have a fighting chance… Or their love language won’t turn into the language of pain and cause an allergic reaction of a breakout of riots.

Prison is the devil’s answer to my righteous prayers.  I called out to God and asked Him for relief from the messy life I had ignorantly created.  Lucifer replied with a knife in my back so deep that I begged for death.  Just when I got used to the pain, he pulled it out halfway and sent me to the house and asked me for gratitude. 

Well, no matter what prison is, I am a survivor, a winner, a truth teller.  I just need someone to listen.  I am a calm, casual conversation.  Now I need you to be an open, excited audience because I am just getting started.

I am Claudia L. Shivers. I am a breast cancer survivor.  I am the single mother of 5 very intelligent, beautiful Black children.  I am a grandmother.  I am a revolutionary.  I am a freedom fighter.  I am a lover of all of God’s creations.  I am afraid and I am afraid to be afraid and so I am courageous because that’s fearlessness’ younger sister.  Oh, and I am a sister. 

I want to tell you who I am based on my pedigree, but I don’t know who that is.  I mean, I am the daughter of Minnie Lou Clodfelter and Lawrence Edward Shivers, Sr.  I am the granddaughter of Liza and Hollis and Walter and Queen Esther, but only Walter and my dad still survive.  My mom sold drugs, well pain pills to feed her addiction, but she was an amazing mom until the addiction.  My dad gambled and manipulated women their entire marriage, but he empowered me with emotional intelligence.  They were both always my biggest cheerleaders.  They always encouraged me to learn more, do more, be more.  They reminded me every day that I could be and do absolutely anything.  So, here I am today, a social justice advocate, a business woman, a wonderful mother, a loving and dedicated friend, a whole beast.

Hold on a minute, Sister Giovanni is sending me a message from our Universal Mother.  I feel her breath on my neck as she whispers in my ear. “Sister Warrior Queen, this is not a struggle.  This is an Ego Trip.  This is when you turn yourself into yourself and become Jesus.  Men will intone your loving name.  YOU are the one who will save.”

So, the short answer to your question is, I AM READY.