PRISON IS A MEMBER OF THEIR FAMILY (Part B)

1994-1996: New Relationships

If reason played a part in Lolli and Toney's relationship, its role kept
changing. They broke up, and got back together, then broke up again and
reunited, for reasons both of them eventually lost track of. Toney
threatened and cajoled her to bring the children, but Lolli was chronically
broke. Meanwhile, Toney tested Ily's level of devotion. When he left
Southport and was moved farther north, to Clinton, he invited her up: "I
was the farthest I could be. If she can troop here, then I'm cool." Toney
still corresponded with Lolli, and on the envelope of one of his
conciliatory letters to her was a reminder that suggested he knew, even if
Lolli didn't, the inevitable outcome of the growing distance between them:
"Use your mind to control all your body parts."

But it was too late. Lolli had already cheated. An old flame with whom she
had been corresponding while he was in prison had been released and had
paid her a visit. She was pregnant. Shortly after Toney heard the news, he
proposed to Ily. They married in February 1995. He was fond of Ily, but, he
said: "I wasn't focusing on what a relationship should be -- I was focusing
on what I could get out of a relationship." But even the limited connection
motivated him to behave. "I didn't want to get in trouble no more because I
wanted to keep getting trailers," Toney said. "My main concern was sex."

Lolli's main concern was how to survive. Her newest baby was premature and
remained in intensive care for several months. Meanwhile, Lolli had been
placed in her own apartment, but dealers ruled the decrepit building, and
her kitchen was infested with rats. Her mother's apartment was no better: a
dealer was using one of the bedrooms as a stash house, and with all the
traffic, Lolli worried for the safety of her daughters. Lolli decided to
move upstate, outside of Albany, with a friend who promised to help with
the children. The friend was caring for three of Toney's nieces (Toney's
sister having been sentenced to 10 years in prison). When Lolli learned of
Toney's marriage, she impulsively asked a boy she knew, Capone, to move
away with her. She wasn't in love, but she didn't want to be alone. She
cared for Capone, and he was good to her daughters. And he wasn't a player.
Nina, who was nearly 5, reserved judgment, but within weeks, Che Che and
Tati called him Papi, and he treated the newest baby like his own.

Despite their ties to other people, Toney and Lolli kept in touch.
Sometimes they grew nostalgic and spent hours on the phone. In one call,
Toney and Lolli fantasized that on his release date, he'd take Nina and
Tati somewhere far away -- maybe Florida -- where they could be a family
just once, before Toney returned to his legal wife.

Lolli pretended more generosity toward Ily than she felt: "Who knows? You
could fall in love with your wife." Lolli still loved him absolutely, but
felt foolish telling him -- not so much because he'd married, but because
she'd let him down again.

1996-1997: Problem Child

For the next few years, Toney and Lolli had erratic contact as their lives
ran along parallel tracks, each trying to scrape by financially and make
their new relationships work. Nina was the glue that held them together.
She was very bright, but she was starting to have disciplinary problems at
school and was difficult at home. Lolli tried to control her, but she
didn't know how to hold the line. If Capone got involved, Nina yelled, "You
ain't my father!"

Lolli would write Toney for advice. Sometimes she was desperate: "I need
help with your daughter so bad." But what could Toney do from prison? He
spent more time with Ily's son, Jay, than with his own child. He asked
Lolli to bring Nina to visit, but the prison was too far and money too
tight. Toney wrote to Nina, but she was still too young to write back. Nina
did, however, dedicate songs to him that she liked to sing with the radio,
and she took seriously her job of teaching Tati that Toney, not Capone, was
her dad. Nina quizzed her sister with photographs. But too many nights,
Nina stomped to bed, screaming, "I want my father," raging until,
exhausted, she fell asleep.

At one point when things were especially hard, Lolli wrote Toney about her
urge to move back to the city. But Toney thought she would be resigning
herself to a lifestyle she'd tried to escape. He wrote back: "I really
don't want my daughters growing up in the Bronx. . . . I don't want my
daughters to come out like you or me."

One night, when Nina was 6, she asked her mother if she would write a
letter to her father. A few weeks before, Lolli had bailed Capone out of
jail after a minor charge. Nina had been preoccupied by what had happened.
She dictated as Lolli scribbled:

Dear Daddy,
How you doing? Fine I hope. As for myself I'm confused about something.
Mommy's boyfriend got locked up, and she bailed him out. I want to know why
she didn't bail you out. . . . I don't understand. Mom tried to explain to
me. I want to hear what you have to say now. Daddy I'm telling Tati every
day that you love her. Daddy write back once you get my letter. I love you.
Love,
Nina and Tati

Lolli didn't know where to begin the explanation. She dreaded Nina's
reaching an age where she would ask serious questions. Lolli had never
explained to Nina why her father was locked up, or why her sisters had
different fathers.

1997-1998: Forced Reflection

While Nina was getting into trouble at home, Toney descended into the
self-destruction of the prison mix. He had long ago decided not to join a
gang for protection, but his independence meant he had to prove he was
capable of doing anything. He fought often and had many enemies. He spent
part of 1997 in the box for carrying a shank. In a panic, he wrote his
oldest sister, who was also in prison, about his greatest fear: "The only
time I feel at ease is when I'm with Nina. Tati and my other daughter are
lost to me. They don't treat me like their father. . . . Nina is all I have
left. And she's slowly slipping away. . . . Once she's gone . . . I will
lose myself."

In 1998, he almost did. After not seeing his daughters for more than a
year, Toney arranged for Ily to bring Nina and Tati along with Ily's son
during their next trailer visit. The trailer happened to coincide with
Nina's 8th birthday. For weeks, it was all she spoke about. But at the last
minute, the trailer was canceled -- there had been a fight at the prison,
and Toney had been slashed. In the mix, such trouble was inevitable. He was
thrown into protective custody, with 29 stitches across his back. Nina was
crushed. And Toney was once again shipped back to solitary confinement at
Southport.

In the hole again, without distractions, Toney felt the pain that he'd
caused his family outside. In addition to having to cancel his trailer with
his daughters, he was looking at one to three more years added to his term
for possessing the shank. Serving time for killing his best friend was
justice; hurting his wife and children was unbearable.

The trailers forced fidelity to a single woman and exposed him to a more
conventional notion of family. Temporarily losing the trailers made him
acutely aware of what he needed. Not just the sex, but something he'd never
had in his own home: three days of living in peace. "The first time I've
ever been truly able to be part of a family has been at those trailers," he
said.

Prison had been the perfect place for shutting down, and when Lolli became
pregnant with another boy's baby all those years back while Toney was in
juvenile detention, he'd sworn never to make himself vulnerable again. He'd
been conning Ily all along -- not thinking about what he could offer her
but scheming to make sure that she didn't stop taking care of him. Ily, on
the other hand, had stood by him, throughout all his prison troubles, with
a faith that he could barely imagine for himself.

"She gave me her life," he said later, still stunned at the enormity of it.
He wanted to be the family man he was on those weekends. To be there for
his children he had to plan for a future. For that, he needed hope. And
there was no way to hope without being vulnerable.

1999-2001: Out of the Mix

By the spring of 1999, after turning 25, Toney had finally stepped out of
the mix and kept to himself. Toney said, "I was either gonna end up killed
or murdering someone, and I thought about how that would make my daughter
feel, to come to my funeral for that."

He volunteered as a speaker for teenagers from juvenile hall. Toney told
them about his own days in juvenile, wanting to be a gangster, being locked
up. The interactions inspired him, but he remained troubled at the paradox.
He was a better father to others' kids than he was to his own.

He stopped writing to other girls and told Lolli their relationship was
truly over. It hurt Lolli, but her feelings for Capone had been growing,
and eventually she said that she was happy for Toney. They'd failed each
other, but still had their kids.

By early 2000, Lolli was dealing with her fifth child, a son with Capone.
And Ily was pregnant with Toney's baby. Toney had wanted to wait to be sure
that his marriage would hold before having another child. He also wanted to
focus on the children he already had. But Ily thought a baby would prove
Toney's commitment to a positive future, and Toney felt he was in no
position to resist.

In July 2000, Toney's security status was reduced, and he was sent to a
medium-security prison, Woodbourne, the calmest of all the prisons he'd
been in. Most of the inmates at the prison, which was in Woodbourne, N.Y.,
were in their late 30's and older. Toney was used to prisons where
stabbings happened daily; at Woodbourne, months passed between incidents.
His relative freedom was exciting. Toney's enthusiasm for the tiny,
substantial pleasures was contagious. He beamed like a child.

Two years ago, he signed up for an inmate-run college program. Higher
education for New York State inmates was a rarity. Of the 30 men who signed
up, only half stayed on. Toney was one of them. The inmates were tough
professors. He loved school.

But Nina weighed heavily on his mind. Lolli's letters showered Toney with
worries about Nina, who was expressing interest in boys and edging closer
to the street. At home, Nina, who was now 10, inherited more
responsibility. Lolli was working hard hours at a factory, and Capone, who
was unemployed, was supposed to watch the children. But Lolli would often
arrive home after her shift and find Nina taking care of the kids and
Capone hanging out with his friends on the street. At school, Nina would
fall asleep in class or be disruptive and resist authority -- she refused
to open her book or salute the flag and pounded the computer keys. Her
exasperated teacher often sent her off to the nurse's office or to the
guidance counselor, where Nina inevitably napped.

By the spring of 2001, after many suspensions, Nina was expelled from fifth
grade and placed on probation. Until the academic year ended, a home tutor
visited Nina an hour a day. The rest of the time she spent watching TV and
watching her siblings, yearning for something interesting to do. After
Nina's suspension, Lolli mailed Toney a copy of the thick packet of Nina's
school records. In his cell, he pored over the many pages and said sadly,
"It's like reading a book about myself."

Toney was taking parenting and psychology classes, and the more he learned,
the more he hungered for news about Nina that was positive. In his letters
to her, he made a point to acknowledge her strengths instead of just
reprimanding her for her weaknesses. He hated the long gaps between the
visits with Nina and Tati. "I don't think it's fair, you know. But I'm not
saying it's Lolli's fault. I gotta understand that she got all them kids,
and she's going through her own problems, and sometimes I say, You know, I
ain't got it that bad." The absence of Lolli and the kids was underscored
by the growing connection he had with Ily, her son, Jay, and their new
baby, Elexis, whom he saw nearly every weekend. He was a better father now.
When Nina was Elexis' age, Toney said, "I was more curious about what was
happening in New York City, what girls was over there, what's going on in
the street." Now he spent hours playing with Elexis in the walled-in
children's room.

Last January, Toney graduated near the top of his class. Lolli was proud.
She always knew he was intelligent -- just like his daughters -- and she
admitted her admiration for the steadfastness of his wife. "I got to give
it to her, sticking by him all this time," Lolli said. Lolli was
experiencing her own evolution. She had held several full-time jobs, and
had recently found one in which she thrived. She did "disaster
restoration," chemically cleaning up after fires, floods and bloody crimes.
Though the days were long -- she sometimes worked a 16-hour shift -- the
pay was poor and the job was dangerous, she liked helping people. And she
was considered one of the best workers in the region.

Now that Lolli was a working woman, being a prison wife was a lifestyle she
could no longer even imagine. But she and Toney worried that its lore
beckoned to Nina. Toney blamed Lolli for burdening herself and Nina with
too many children. But mostly he blamed himself. He'd been in prison for
most of Nina's life. Nina was 12, and all they'd really had together were
the rare, timed phone calls, and rarer visits.

2002: Nina Visits

Last month, I took Nina to see her father. Woodbourne -- a 90-minute drive
from her front stoop -- was the 10th prison Nina had visited of the 12 that
had housed her father over the past 13 years. Lolli rarely sees Toney
anymore, but he speaks to his daughters periodically. Lolli is happy to pay
for Toney's calls when she can: the fathers of her two other daughters have
been out of prison for years, but they rarely call in.

In the Woodbourne visiting room, Nina bought her father his favorite snacks
from the vending machines -- inmates cannot handle money -- walked over to
their assigned table and sat down. Toney came over and stood above her,
radiant and wanting.

"C'mon!" he said, pulling Nina up from her chair to hug him. She
reluctantly stood, grinning shyly into his broad chest. He reached across
the table, grabbed her pale cheeks and pinched.

"Stoppit!" she yelled, burying her delight.

"How's your new school?" he asked excitedly.

"They trying to give me a disability," she continued, the current of
connection tugging her toward her trouble. The disability referred to a
school meeting she faced in a few weeks time, the purpose of which she
didn't understand. It involved assessing whether or not Nina should be
placed in special ed. "They didn't tell me what for -"

"They are probably going to say you are psychologically unstable, and have
an attitude that they can't control -"

"Tell me what they mean," Nina asked, frustrated by the verbiage.

"I am," Toney said, "psychobabble -"

"Just stop please with them big words -"

Toney paused, and tried again. "They're saying you're crazy."

Wounded, Nina replied, "But I'm not."

Toney looked hurt. "I'm not saying you are."

Toney explained how the same things had happened to him before he dropped
out of junior high. "I want you to learn from my mistakes. I don't want you
to walk in these footsteps. If I was home, I would take you on a crash
course on the streets. I'd show you for real what the streets are."

"I know what the streets are like," she said.

Toney nodded. "That's what I'm worried about."

These days their infrequent visits often went this way: Toney lecturing,
determined to cram in life's larger lessons in their limited time, while
Nina demanded to know why she couldn't have a boyfriend or get an eyebrow
ring. Toney saw through the surface to the dangers Nina couldn't see -- a
street culture that pooled around their lives and whose currents were made
stronger by the absence of other, more positive things. Toney tried humor.
He tried facts -- rape, early pregnancy, drugs. He tried to explain that
both he and Lolli had grown up too fast, that there was life beyond the
street. But, he later admitted, he didn't really know what that life was.
It was a world he himself was trying to reach.

Nina had some inkling of that larger world. After being on a waiting list
for two years, she had been assigned a Big Sister mentor. Each week they
spent time together outside Nina's neighborhood. They have gone
apple-picking and have carved pumpkins, things Nina had never done before.
The match is not unlike Toney's marriage to Ily, a vital relationship, but
one that exists in a vacuum.

Toney knew that Nina's future rested on what he had learned the hard way --
how to create some sanctuary within yourself. For him it was a precarious
balance -- holding out hope for a normal life while still needing to cope
in the prison world. Nina faced a similar challenge: how to find a future
she couldn't know, while navigating the minefield of adolescent street life.

Toney, now 28, is scheduled to appear before the parole board in May. He
has four children and has never held a legitimate job. But he is better off
than most inmates like him: he managed to acquire some higher education,
and he has a home life waiting for him.

As she did on every visit, Nina begged her father to give her his gold
chain, a cross he has had from the beginning of his bid. As he always did,
he told her he didn't want her to have something from prison. "Kind of like
superstition," he said. Nina wanted to make the bad time good. "If I have
that, it's like I have him, because that was him those years," she said.

Toney knew that their shared past was lost. He could look forward only to
the future and hope that Nina would be a part of it. She will soon be the
same age that he was when he met Lolli. "Everything at the tip of your
fingers," Toney said, "and at the same time slipping away."

Adrian Nicole LeBlanc has written for The Times Magazine about female gangs
and other topics. This article is adapted from "Random Family: Love, Drugs,
Trouble and Coming of Age in the Bronx," to be published next month by Scribner.