THE MISEDUCATION OF ELAINE BARTLETT

New York's War on Drugs Held Her Hostage for 16 Years. A Story of
Prison, Politics, and One Woman's Pride.

By the time the sheriff's van lurched into the parking lot, she no
longer cared if anyone noticed her wet cheeks and swollen eyes. Tears
had been rolling down Elaine Bartlett's face for two hours—the entire
drive from Albany to Westchester County—and she struggled to wipe them
away with handcuffed hands. Locked up for the last four months in an
Albany jail, Elaine had heard plenty of horror stories about her new
home, ugly rumors that swirled through her head. The women at Bedford
Hills will attack you, rape you, steal all your stuff.

Elaine stumbled out of the van, her leg irons scraping the pavement as
she joined the line of new arrivals. The brick buildings of Bedford
Hills Correctional Facility surrounded her, and its residents shouted
their welcome:

"Hey, look at the fresh meat!"

"Move up here so I can take care of you!"

"I'm going to make you my woman!"

She shuffled into the building designated "Reception," slumped in a
chair, and waited for her new life to begin. First on the authorities'
to-do list was a shower with lice-killing disinfectant. Elaine
surveyed the row of stalls with no curtains and the female guards
milling around. "Get in the shower!" an officer shouted.

Elaine folded her arms across her chest and refused to move. Okay, she
had posed for an ID photo and given them her fingerprints. But allow
strangers to watch her strip down and shower naked? No way. "This
isn't no fashion show," Elaine told the guard. "You're not going to be
looking at my body. The judge sentenced me to 20 years. He didn't say
I had to be subjected to all this."

"We've got a real live one over here," the officer announced, then
turned to Elaine. "You're at Bedford Hills now. This is a
maximum-security prison. You're going to do things the way we tell you
to!" Elaine glared and didn't budge. She kept up her one-woman
rebellion for hour--it felt like eight or nine--before she finally
uncrossed her arms and trudged to the shower.

What else could she do? She had been arrested for selling coke, gone
to trial, and lost. Her punishment: a prison sentence of 20 years to
life. For the moment, Elaine tried not to dwell on the fact that she
was only 26 years old, that she had left behind four young kids, that
she would be middle-aged by the time she walked out of here.

All she could think to do was keep an angry pout on her face, a mask
to hide her fears. A guard handed Elaine her new state-issued
wardrobe: one zipper-back green jumper dress, two pairs of green
pants, two green shirts, three white cotton panties, three white
cotton bras, a pair of white canvas tennis sneakers. No blue, black,
gray, or orange—those colors belonged to the guards. Elaine slipped on
her uniform shirt and noticed her new identity on the tag glued to her
chest: #84G0068. As soon as she moved into her cell block, she found
an iron and melted off her number.

November 8, 1983

An Easy $2500

She grabbed the package wrapped in brown paper, shoved it down the
front of her jeans, and marched out of her East Harlem housing
project. Elaine knew she was taking a huge risk—after all, the bulge
in her pants hid four ounces of cocaine—but she also knew she needed
cash. Her welfare checks didn't cover her $127-a-month rent plus the
costs of raising her four kids—Apache, 9; Jamel, 6; Satara, 2; and
Danae, 1. Elaine earned extra cash working as a beautician, braiding
hair and manicuring nails at a salon on 125th Street. Her financial
woes never seemed to ebb, though, and one day a customer promised a
solution. If she carried just one package of cocaine to Albany, he
would pay $2500.

His name was George Deets, but Elaine didn't know much more about him.
He was a clean-cut white guy, maybe a numbers runner, she thought.
She'd bumped into George at a few parties, seen him around the salon.
For months, he'd pushed her to do this job for him. "It doesn't feel
right," Nathan Brooks, Elaine's boyfriend, told her. Nate, 24, worked
as a late-night custodian shampooing rugs in midtown offices, but he
also knew something about the drug business. In recent years, he'd
done two eight-month stints on Rikers Island for selling coke.

Elaine had snorted cocaine at parties, but she'd never sold drugs or
worked as a mule. In fact, she'd never even been out of New York City.
But, she figured, if she delivered drugs for George just once, well,
how much trouble could she really get into? Outside the Wagner Houses,
Elaine raised her arm to flag a cab and saw Nate come running down the
street. Left behind in her fifth-floor apartment, Nate had decided he
was too anxious to relax, too worried to let his girlfriend go to
Albany alone.

George picked up Elaine and Nate at the train station in Albany and
brought them to nearby Latham, where he had rented room 224 at the
Monte Mario Motel. Elaine dropped the bag of cocaine in George's
hands, then curled up with Nate to take a nap. George lay on the other
bed, working the phone. Close to an hour later, strangers' voices woke
Elaine, and she rubbed the sleep out of her eyes to see three people
walking into the room. The only one she recognized was Richard
Zagorski. A few days earlier, Richard and George had come to her home,
freebased cocaine in her kitchen, and tried to talk her into making
this trip. It was the only time she'd met Richard and the only time
George had come into her apartment.

"Elaine, this is my friend Ken, and Sue," George said, gesturing to
the two strangers. "And Ken and Sue, this is Elaine and Nathan."
Elaine glanced around and realized she and Nate were the only African
Americans in the room, a fact that did not make her comfortable. And
she noticed that someone had placed the sack of cocaine on a scale,
which she didn't remember seeing before she fell asleep.

Quickly, the conversation turned to the question of price. Ken and
Sue, the buyers, were reluctant to pay more than $2000 an ounce, but
finally compromised. They settled on $2200 an ounce for a total of
$8800. Sue left the room, then returned with a stack of cash. Ten
seconds later, a pack of shotgun-wielding state troopers burst in.

January 26, 1984

The First Lesson

Nate squeezed Elaine's hand as the judge's words rang through his
chambers: "I now pronounce you man and wife." The phrase sounded
familiar, but nothing else about this moment made it feel like a
wedding. There was no elegant dress, no crisp corsage, no three-layer
cake, no Electric Slide. Elaine wore her son Apache's jeans—the same
ones she'd had on when she got arrested. They now hung low on her
hips; the stress of 11 weeks in jail had proved to be the ultimate
weight-loss program. Instead of a tux, Nate wore dungarees, too, with
a sweatshirt.

Elaine and Nate had been dating for six years and had two daughters,
but they'd had no wedding plans and certainly never imagined marrying
in Albany. That was before the arrest, before everything changed and
they realized they now had only each other.

The prosecutor had offered Nate and Elaine the same deal: Plead
guilty, work as an informant, and your prison sentence will be five
years to life. Joseph Teresi, Elaine's public defender, met with her
once in jail. He advised her to cop a plea, warning her about the
harsh sentence she'd get if she lost at trial. But Elaine couldn't
imagine returning to her neighborhood wearing a wire and setting up
people she knew. After all, New York City was her home. If she
snitched on her friends and acquaintances, where would she go?

She decided to go to trial and persuaded Nate to take the same gamble.
"Everything is going to be all right," she said. "They don't have
anything on us." Elaine, like Nate, had never made it past the 10th
grade. She didn't know much about the legal system, but she did know
that she'd been set up. George had nagged her to come to Albany,
arranged the cocaine drop-off at her apartment, rented the motel room,
brought the scale, negotiated the price, and found the buyers. Surely,
she figured, the jurors would see that George had entrapped her, that
she hardly fit the profile of a drug kingpin. After all, when the cops
arrested her, the only money in her pocket was a $5 bill.

Elaine got a crash course in how cops and prosecutors fight the drug
war during her two-day trial. George turned out to be an informant,
and so was Richard. The would-be buyers, Ken and Sue, were actually
state police officers. George and Richard had been arrested on drug
charges in the past, and they had a long history of helping cops
arrest unsuspecting acquaintances. By working as snitches, they earned
a little money and avoided prison.

The jury took only 40 minutes to decide Nate and Elaine were guilty of
selling four ounces of cocaine. Because they were convicted under New
York's Rockefeller drug laws, which are among the nation's strictest,
Elaine and Nate faced a minimum prison sentence of 15 years.

Elaine had never heard of the Rockefeller drug laws before her arrest.
She didn't know that New York governor Nelson Rockefeller had started
the nation's War on Drugs with this 1973 legislation, which
established the first mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes. She
had no idea that these laws had led to an explosion in the state's
inmate population and a prison-building boom. And Elaine had no way of
knowing that African Americans and Latinos would eventually make up
more than 94 percent of New York State's drug prisoners.

She also didn't know that law enforcement officials routinely lured
people from New York City to Albany because of the capital's
reputation for tough-on-drugs judges. She didn't realize that the
local district attorney considered her a big catch, though four ounces
of cocaine might not seem like that much to a Manhattan prosecutor. If
she had been arrested in New York City, she likely would have received
a plea offer of three or four years in prison without having to snitch.

Standing next to the judge at Elaine and Nate's wedding was Thomas
Neidl, the chief drug prosecutor for Albany County, who had convinced
a jury to convict the couple. Neidl saw a beautiful, statuesque woman
whom he knew would not hug her husband again until she was past 40.
What a shame, he thought. He wished Elaine had accepted his plea offer
and spared him from trying her case. The evidence was so strong—two
police officers had testified that she'd helped negotiate the
sale—that Neidl figured even his eight-year-old son could have
prosecuted this case and gotten a conviction.

Judge John Clyne asked the bride and groom if they had any last-minute
words before he sentenced them. "I still say that I'm not guilty and I
did not make a first-degree sale, a felony," Elaine told the judge. "I
feel that I am being railroaded and doing someone else's time. . . .
George Deets . . . [is] the one that should have sat in this court and
been tried for this matter, not me or Nathan Brooks."

Inside the Albany County courthouse, Elaine's judge was known as
"Maximum" John Clyne, and today he lived up to his nickname. The
Rockefeller drug laws required Judge Clyne to send the newlyweds to
prison for at least 15 years. For reasons he did not bother to
explain, the judge tacked an extra five years onto Elaine's sentence.
He hit Nate even harder, handing him a prison sentence of 25 years to
life. For their honeymoon, Nate and Elaine went to the visiting room
of the Albany County jail, where they spent an hour talking on a
phone, separated by a thick pane of glass.

September 16, 1995

The Only Hope

Elaine tried to hide her shock when she walked into the visiting room
at Bedford Hills and saw her mother. Diabetes had long afflicted her
mother, Yvonne. In recent years, Yvonne's kidneys started failing, she
became wheelchair-bound, and doctors amputated half her foot. Yvonne
had always been a big woman, six feet three inches and 450 pounds. Now
she was only 78 pounds.

Like her daughter, Yvonne was fiercely proud. She didn't let people
see her cry, and she never talked about her problems. "It's going to
be all right," she'd say. "Don't worry. Keep your head up." But today,
Elaine could see tears in her mother's eyes. Yvonne rolled up her
sleeve and showed Elaine the scars her dialysis treatments had left.

"You still look pretty," Elaine told her. "You still look good to
me."

"Stop lying," Yvonne said. "I look like shit. I wish somebody would
take care of me. I wish you were home to take care of me."

Yvonne had always taken care of everybody. When Elaine went to prison,
her four children moved in with their grandmother. For nearly 10
years, Yvonne had brought the kids to prison every weekend to see
Elaine. And when she became too sick to ride the train, Yvonne would
pay a friend with a livery cab $70 to drive to Bedford Hills and wait
while she and the children visited.

Of Yvonne's seven children, Elaine was the eldest daughter. Elaine had
been only eight years old when her father died, and she became a sort
of second mom in the house. She would take her younger siblings to
school and to the doctor's office, and also to Coney Island and the
Bronx Zoo. Elaine tried to keep playing this role even after she went
to prison. When her mother's health began deteriorating, Elaine
researched medications in the prison library, phoned Yvonne's doctors,
and berated her sisters for not taking better care of their mother.

Despite Elaine's efforts, her family was falling apart. All four of
her brothers were now dead or caught up in the prison system. Ronnie,
34, died of AIDS in 1992. A few months later, Frankie, 36, was fatally
stabbed on his way home from delivering pianos. Kenneth joined a
Boston drug gang as an enforcer and got sent to prison for murder. And
Don Juan had recently finished a 10-year prison term for robbery.
Elaine's sister Sabrina had begun smoking crack after she lost a baby
to crib death. And now Michelle, the youngest sister, was raising her
five children as well as Sabrina's four kids.

As the years rolled by, there always seemed to be more bad news. The
number of secrets everybody was keeping grew, creating walls so high
that sometimes Elaine felt as though she didn't even know her own
family. At times, she thought, all their relationships seemed to be
built entirely on a single, reassuring phrase: "Everything's all
right." Things would go awry—her mother would go to the hospital, a
brother would get arrested again—and nobody wanted to tell Elaine. She
already felt completely helpless, they thought, why make her feel any
worse?

Elaine, too, had a stash of secrets she couldn't share. She no longer
ironed off her inmate number, but she never got used to the fights,
the frisking, the way officers spoke down to her. She never got used
to the the ritual that followed every trip to the visiting room, when
she would have to strip off her clothes, press her palms against the
wall, and spread her legs. And depending on the guard's mood, Elaine
might also have to cough and squat, to prove that she wasn't hiding
drugs.

Every morning, Elaine stared in her cell mirror and wondered, "Is it
me that's going crazy, or is it everyone else around me?" She heard
about other women swallowing safety pins, eating glass, dragging razor
blades across their wrists. One day, she watched an inmate climb onto
the hospital roof. A guard grabbed her foot, but she unlaced her shoe
and jumped, landing on a mattress and barely surviving.

Sometimes, Elaine felt as though she was surrounded by zombies, women
taking Thorazine who seemed only half alive. She knew inmates who lied
about hearing voices to get drugs, but she didn't want to do her time
in a haze. She wanted to go home. In the recreation yard, she would
watch cars whiz along the highway nearby and fantasize about scaling
the fence.

Nights were the hardest. As she lay on her prison cot in the dark, the
demons she struggled to silence all day would take over. Guilt
consumed her as she thought about how Nate was doing 25 to life
because of her, how her mother had 15 kids living in her three-bedroom
apartment, how her children were raising themselves, how Danae kept
begging her to come to her school graduation, how Satara talked about
running away from home, how Apache had given up a basketball
scholarship to college to care for his sisters.

Elaine watched herself grow more bitter and more defeated, and she
worried she was becoming somebody she no longer recognized, somebody
she did not want to be. Surviving inside Bedford Hills required so
much energy—biting her tongue, hiding her fears, watching her
back—that she felt she might never relax again, might never be able to
peel off all the masks she now wore.

Rubbing lotion on her mother's skinny arms, Elaine decided she had to
do something or her worst nightmare would come true: Her mother would
die while she was stuck in prison. She didn't think she could survive
losing her mother. She didn't think she could stay sane inside Bedford
Hills without her greatest source of strength. If only she could get
home, Elaine thought, she could prolong her 64-year-old mother's life.
She wanted to put some joy in Yvonne's final months, to begin to pay
her back for raising Apache, Danae, Satara, and Jamel all these years.
She would do whatever she had to do. She knew New York's governor
traditionally commutes a few prison sentences every Christmas, and so
she decided to send a letter.

December 24, 1997

Mom Behind Bars

Apache, Satara, and Danae came to Bedford Hills to spend Christmas Eve
with their mother, but nobody was in a festive mood. They had already
celebrated too many holidays in this dingy, fluorescent-lit room with
pale pink pillars, nine vending machines, and the lingering smell of
microwave popcorn. By now, Elaine was supposed to be home.

Elaine had applied for clemency in 1995. Months passed before she
learned that she would get an audience with a special parole board.
When the clemency bureau rejected Elaine in 1996, her children were
stunned. They thought she was coming home soon because state
investigators had come to their apartment and interviewed them about
their mother. As for Elaine, the memory of her parole meeting haunted
her. What had she done wrong? Did she not answer the questions the way
the parole board wanted? Was she too straightforward? Should she have
lied?

Suddenly, a prisoner's cheers echoed through the visiting room. Elaine
Lord, the superintendent of Bedford Hills, had just delivered some
good news. Governor George Pataki had commuted the sentence of Angela
Thompson, 27, a first-time offender who had served eight years for
selling two ounces of coke to an undercover cop. A retired judge had
spearheaded Angela's clemency campaign and convinced a New York Times
columnist to champion her cause.

Apache, Danae, and Satara knew Angela and her son. The children had
watched each other grow up in the visiting room at Bedford Hills. For
one week each summer, Elaine's children came to see her during the day
and stayed nights with a host family nearby. When they were younger,
Elaine's kids had been content to show her the latest dance moves,
splash in the plastic pool on the prison patio, pose for Polaroids.
Apache would perform raps he had written, while Satara would beg her
mother to give her braids. Elaine tried to keep these prison visits
happy, but it wasn't easy. When visiting hours ended, Jamel cried and
clung so tightly to her leg that the guards would have to pull him
off.

As the children grew older, these visits became less frequent and less
fun. Jamel stopped coming altogether, and Elaine could feel she was
losing him to the streets of the Lower East Side, where Yvonne and the
kids lived in a 13th-floor apartment inside the Lillian Wald Houses.
Elaine would hear Jamel was hanging on the corner outside, getting
into trouble for stealing cars and selling drugs. When she used her
phone privileges to track him down at his girlfriend's house, he would
promise to come see her, but she knew he wouldn't. Now he was 20 years
old and in prison, too, serving a two-to-four-year sentence at Attica
Correctional Facility for peddling drugs.

Elaine, Satara, Danae, and Apache listened to the whooping across the
visiting room and watched as officers and prisoners congratulated
Angela. Suddenly, Danae, 15, jumped up and began to rage at her
mother. "Why did she get clemency and you didn't?" Danae shouted.
"What makes her need to go home any more than you? What are you really
here for? Don't lie to us! You couldn't be in here for what you say
you're in here for. Who did you kill? You've been in here my whole
life! When are you coming home?"

March 12, 1998

The Longest Walk

As the van barreled through Manhattan, Elaine closed her eyes and
leaned back against her seat. The guards up front tried to chat, but
she didn't respond. She didn't even want to look out the window. The
van stopped on the Upper East Side, and the guards escorted Elaine
into the lobby of Beth Israel Medical Center. Everyone stared. Who was
this woman wearing shackles, handcuffs, and a chain around her waist?

Mothers pulled their children closer, as if she were Charles Manson or
some other vicious criminal. But today, Elaine didn't care what people
thought. She had too much else to worry about. Her walk through the
hospital corridors seemed to take forever; the chain between her legs
permitted only baby steps. Elaine's mother was dying, and she was
afraid she wouldn't reach her bedside in time to say goodbye.

What would happen to Apache, Danae, Satara, Jamel—and everybody
else—when her mother, the family matriarch, was gone? Elaine didn't
even want to think about it. She hovered over her mother's bed, trying
to figure out how to hug with her wrists cuffed together. She rubbed
her cheeks against her mother's face and caressed her shrunken body.
The two officers stood watching Elaine. They had refused to remove her
chains.

After an hour, a guard said, "It's time to go." Elaine began
interrogating the doctor, hoping to squeeze in a few extra minutes
with her mother. Two days later, she learned that her mother had
passed away.

December 19, 1999

Thirty-Eight Minute Grilling

Elaine decided to dress like she was going to a job interview. She
picked out a silk shirt with gold buttons up the front, a state-issued
green skirt, and magenta lipstick. At noon, Elaine strode into the
conference room near the prison's front entrance. A U.S. flag hung
from a pole in one corner, and through the windows she could see a
landscape of brick buildings and razor wire. Across the room sat her
interrogators, the two parole commissioners who would decide her fate.
Three years and two months had passed since her last trip before the
parole board, and now Elaine was getting a second chance.

Elaine had not planned to apply for clemency again. In prison, the
only thing worse than having no hope, Elaine had discovered, is to
believe you are going home soon and then find out you are not. But
Elaine's children had convinced her to try again. Apache, Satara, and
Danae had sent letters to Pataki begging him to release their mother.
"My family is falling apart and times are hard," Satara, 18, wrote.
"Sometimes I feel like killing myself because my mother lefted me and
know my grandmother is gone. She should of took me with her."

Elaine watched as her interrogators flipped through her file, and she
braced herself.

Do you really expect us to believe this was the first time you ever
sold drugs?

Sometimes they like to play devil's advocate, Elaine thought, to
provoke prisoners into revealing how angry or unremorseful they are.
Last time around, Elaine had launched into a bitter diatribe about
being entrapped by George Deets. But today Elaine wasn't going to take
the bait. She wasn't going to let any hostility creep into her voice.

"I don't really expect you to believe anything," she said. "But it's
the truth."

When you reached the Albany train station, why didn't you give him the
package at that point?

Don't get angry or annoyed, Elaine told herself. Stay cool. "I've
asked myself that question every day for 16 years," she said. "I don't
have an answer for you."

Over the years, Elaine had become an expert on the Rockefeller drug
laws, spending hours reading cases in the law library. She knew it
cost taxpayers $32,000 a year to house one prisoner. If you multiplied
that figure by the number of years she'd been in Bedford Hills, the
bill for her prison stay exceeded $500,000. And she knew that Pataki
had promised to reform the drug laws when he got elected, and then
done next to nothing.

Elaine saw clemency as part of this political dance, a way for the
governor to show concern about the injustices of these laws without
actually changing them. She kept these thoughts to herself, though.
She figured these weren't the sorts of statements that would help her
win over her audience.

Since your last appearance here, what program has changed you
dramatically?

Elaine was confident she knew what the parole board wanted to hear.
She also knew the truth. She figured they wanted her to say that
Bedford Hills—and its many inmate programs—had reformed her. But
Elaine had never thought she needed much rehabilitation in the first
place. She hadn't been an experienced drug dealer or an addict in need
of rescuing. Maybe she deserved a few years in prison for working as a
cocaine courier, but 16 years? That was way too much time.

Since she had come to Bedford Hills, Elaine had kept busy. She
finished high school and two years of college. And she had
participated in dozens of programs, from training seeing-eye dogs to
working in the children's center to teaching other inmates to read. By
the time she met with the parole board in 1996, she already possessed
a thick stack of certificates, diplomas, and glowing letters of
recommendation. All that had changed over the last three years was
that she'd figured out how to play the clemency game.

In 1997, after her first clemency rejection and before her mother
died, Elaine walked into a coping-skills workshop and asked Lora
Tucker, the teacher, for help. Lora saw a woman devoid of all hope,
who had resigned herself to staying in prison until she was eligible
for parole in 2004. She looks like she needs somebody on her side,
Lora thought. She also looks like she could be my sister.

Lora had recently switched careers, quiting her job as an interior
designer to work on criminal justice issues. Now she launched her
first fight on behalf of a prisoner. Lora tracked down Governor Pataki
at a political fundraiser and handed him a letter from Elaine. She
persuaded more than 200 people—including critics of the Rockefeller
drug laws and members of her church—to write letters on Elaine's
behalf. And she became a regular at the anti-Rockefeller drug law
rallies sponsored by the William Moses Kunstler Fund for Racial
Justice. Holding a placard with a photo, Lora would tell Elaine's
story to every stranger who stopped.

Together, Lora and Elaine figured out how to work the media. Elaine
got talk-show host Charles Grodin on her visiting list. She showed up
in columns in the Daily News and The New York Times. Geraldo Rivera
came to interview her. For these moments in the spotlight, Elaine
purposely did not wear makeup so she wouldn't look any better than she
felt. And she didn't mention Nate to reporters. Over the years, Elaine
and Nate had traded letters, and they were permitted one phone call
every six months. Since Elaine was a first-time offender, they knew
she had a better shot at clemency. Nate was afraid his rap sheet would
jeopardize her chances, so he told Elaine to push her case in the
media and leave him in the background.

Elaine did not explain any of her strategies to the parole
commissioners. Instead, she served up a few calm words. "Education and
the death of my mother," she said, when they asked what had changed
her in the last few years. After her 38-minute interrogation ended,
Elaine thanked the commissioners, smiled sweetly, and walked over to
shake their hands.

January 26, 2000

Taste of Freedom

Elaine woke at 4 a.m. on her last morning in Bedford Hills. Exactly 16
years had passed since the day Judge Clyne had sentenced her to 20
years to life. Now she was 42 years old and had three grandchildren.
(Jamel, Satara, and Apache each have one child.) George Deets was
dead. Her former lawyer, Joseph Teresi, had the most high-profile
judge's job in the state, overseeing the Amadou Diallo trial. And her
former prosecutor, Thomas Neidl, had become a critic of the
Rockefeller drug laws.

Elaine flipped on 98.7 KISS-FM and began singing along. She had been
in a great mood ever since December 23, 1999, when the governor
granted her request for clemency. Pataki had commuted the sentences of
three women, all of whom had spent at least a decade in Bedford Hills
thanks to the Rockefeller drug laws.

For weeks, Elaine had been planning her exit. She gave away her hair
dryer, lamp, rollers, sheets, and pajamas. She practiced what she'd
say to the television cameras awaiting her release. She colored her
hair at the prison beauty salon. And in her mind, she created a to-do
list:

Spend time with Apache, Satara, and Danae
Visit Jamel on Rikers Island
Visit Nate at Green Haven Correctional Facility
Quit smoking
See parole officer
Go for seafood dinner with Lora
Swim
Buy gum
See The Hurricane
Find job
Stop cursing
Go back to college
Lobby for repeal of Rockefeller drug laws

The masks she had been wearing for years began crashing to the ground.
When guards told Elaine to hurry in the hallways, she would just
laugh. "Have your fun now," she said. "I'm going home soon. Just try
to tell me what to do on the other side of the fence."

A few hours later, Elaine entered the building marked "Reception" and
changed into civilian clothes. "I'm not stepping out in my greens,"
she had said, and so Lora had bought her a new outfit. Elaine pulled
on a black Victoria's Secret bra, black panties, an electric purple
pantsuit, and suede high-heel boots. Earlier, she'd painted her nails
with purple glitter to match. Pinned to her new raincoat was a photo
of her mother with a message: "Yvonne, I Carry You in My Soul."

Elaine had waited for this day ever since she arrived at Bedford
Hills. In the fantasy scene she liked to replay in her mind, three
white doves flew up in the air at the moment of her release while
Diana Ross sang, "I'm Coming Out." At 9:54 a.m., Elaine heard a
different sort of music. "We love you, Elaine!" shouted her fellow
inmates. They filled the windows of the prison's school building,
waving hats, mittens, and scarves. "You go, girl!" Along the asphalt
path to the front gate, Elaine stopped, spun around, and waved goodbye.

Some related articles:

US NY: O'Connor Rips Rockefeller Drug Laws

http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n161/a03.html

US NY: Editorial: Clemency and Unjust Drug Laws

http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n139/a05.html

US NY: Former Inmates Blast NY Drug Laws

http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n126/a07.html

US NY: Woman Jailed Under Drug Law Freed

http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n123/a05.html

US NY: Foe Takes New Aim At Rockefeller Drug Laws

http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n115/a06.html

US NY: 4 First-Time Drug Offenders Granted Clemency By New York Governor

http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v99/n1394/a08.html

US NY: A Loving Dad Dies In Prison

http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v99/n1117/a11.html

US NY: Chief Judge Appoints Panel To Review Handling of Drug

http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v99/n1107/a01.html

US NY: ReconsiDer - A Forum On Drug Policy

http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v99/n851/a10.html

US NY: Diverse Group Takes Drug Law Fight Off The Streets

http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v99/n816/a10.html

US NY: Advocates Pray For Drug-Law Reform

http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v99/n804/a06.html

US NY: Editorial: The Republican Shift on Drug Laws

http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v99/n764/a09.html

US NY: Editorial: Drug Reform Hope

http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v99/n736/a11.html

US NY: White House Drug Chief Critical of N.Y. Laws

http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v99/n683/a08.html

US NY: OPED: N.Y. Drug Laws Need Overhaul

http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v99/n677/a14.html

US NY: Catholic Church Leaders Urge Drug Law Reform

http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v99/n631/a03.html

US NY: OPED: Shift Policy On Drug Abuse

http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v99/n631/a04.html

US NY: Ex-Cop Pushes For Drug Legalization

http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v99/n627/a09.html

US NY: OPED: Politics Stalls Drug Reform

http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v99/n621/a08.html

US NY: Ad Blitz Latest Push To Reform Drug Laws

http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v99/n593/a06.html

US NY: Poll Finds Support For Drug Law Reform

http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v99/n571/a04.html

US NY: Editorial: The Rockefeller Drug Laws

http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v99/n549/a07.html

US NY: Editorial: Cynicism and Criminal Justice

http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v99/n537/a09.html

US NY: Drug-Law Reform Gains Steam

http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v99/n516/a02.html

US NY: Editorial: Drug Reform Sense

http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v99/n516/a06.html