Intends to Comply

Georgene Smith Goodin

 

I was supposed to bring their father but, instead, I brought fried chicken.

My husband, Rob, and I adopted three sisters and their younger half-brother from foster care. The girls’ father, whom the kids call Papa Kelvin, was incarcerated for armed robbery before the youngest girl was born. 

Kelvin turned his life around in prison. He took academic classes as well as practical ones on janitorial services and managing a commercial laundry.  He took parenting classes even though his parental rights were being terminated and he used those lessons to guide the kids through big feelings about their mother, foster care and adoption – all while being supportive of my parenting decisions.

We made the hour drive to visit Kelvin whenever we could and spoke with him almost daily. He helped the kids with their Spanish and kept tabs on their athletic accomplishments. He thanked me and Rob for letting him stay in touch and confessed that that continued contact was the motivation he needed to get serious about managing his addiction.

Kelvin shaved a significant amount of time off his sentence through good behavior. Rob inked Kelvin’s parole date on our calendar with black Sharpie and surrounded it with 4 stars. The kids looked at it sometimes, ran a grubby finger across the letters, but they lacked a precise understanding of when Kelvin would be released. For them, time consisted of weekends and school days, with the occasional birthday or holiday thrown in. 

The oldest had a basketball game the night Kelvin’s would be freed and Rob had to be in Arizona to help his mom. I couldn’t get even an estimate of when Kelvin would be taken from the prison to the bus station in Montclair so I needed to wait there all day. 

A friend volunteered to take care of the kids, to get them dinner after school and shuttle them to the game. I planned to tell them I had an appointment, which was sort of true. Rob and I had spent hours having the kids brainstorm the things they wanted to do with Kelvin and having him at sporting events was high on their lists. He’d taught them soccer footwork on a rutted field during our prison visits; coached their layups on a hoop without a net. They wanted a chance to show off these skills and I was excited to make this happen on his first day of freedom. I was excited to surprise them.

I had this fantasy of walking into the rec center gym with Kelvin just as the game started, of seeing smiles spread through other parents on the bleachers, people elbowing their neighbor and jerking their heads in our direction. The girls had never made a secret about their father being incarcerated and their friends had met his mother and brothers at birthday parties. Everyone knew we were counting down to Kelvin’s parole date; a coach told me our kids’ openness had helped another kid in similar circumstances.

In my fantasy, our oldest spotted Kelvin just as she made a basket and ran off the court to hug him, puzzling the refs. I imagined Kelvin crying, the way he did when we had our first video call with him, back when the prison started offering virtual visits during Covid; I imagined my phone buzzing as people flooded my texts with photos of the joyous reunion. Which ones would I post on Facebook and text to Kelvin’s mom?

In reality, two weeks before Kelvin’s release, ICE requested the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation transfer Kelvin to their custody. “CDCR,” the notice read, “intends to comply.”

We explained what was happening to the kids in the broadest of strokes. It’s hard to believe a single paragraph on an ordinary piece of white office paper could be so devastating. On his official parole date, Kelvin would sleep in his prison blues in the same cell he’d been in for years. And after that, who knew? El Salvador, Kelvin’s home country, has been in a state of exception for two years. Gang tattoos are a jailable offense and Kelvin had one. The prisons there hold people incommunicado.

I couldn’t bring myself to cross out the note and stars on our calendar. That felt too much like giving in and I’ve never been one to reverse on a tough road. I frantically worked the phones but none of the non-profits I contacted would take a convicted felon as a client. I started reaching out to friends for referrals to private attorneys.

There’s a sign in the rec center gym that says no food, but I brought a KFC family pack to the game the night Kelvin should have been there. Rob isn’t a fan of KFC, but the kids love it so I sometimes get it when he’s not around. Their mother used to bring it when she still had supervised visits, back before she jumped her parole for felony child abuse and moved out of state. It’s a bizarre comfort food when you know that history, but you play the hand you’re dealt.

I herded the kids to the top of the bleachers and heaped the mashed potatoes and coleslaw onto brightly colored plastic plates from Ikea, the kind divided into three compartments. The kids squealed and pushed around in the bucket for drumsticks. For them, this was “Rob’s out of town food,” not the world’s worst consolation prize. I envied them that and grabbed a napkin from the bag.  Before I rubbed it across my face, l licked my fingers so I could pretend it was for the grease.

***

Kelvin Rivera—aka Papa Kelvin—was deported to El Salvador on May 23. The author and her family have not heard from him since. His mother has learned through his lawyer that he is currently housed at CECOT.

 

 

Georgene Smith Goodin is a two-time Moth Story Slam champion. Her essays have appeared in The Washington Post and The Boston Globe. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, the cartoonist Robert Goodin, and their four children. Follow her on Bluesky @gsmithgoodin.bsky.social.

John Zywar’s current project is to interpret the intricate architectural designs at The Ridges, a repurposed insane asylum in Athens Ohio. The Ridges now houses an art museum at Ohio University. His link with the old building stems from his two summers working at a similar institution as an impressionable teenager. His writing and artwork surrounding The Ridges have been published by So It Goes. the University of Akron’s literary magazine, and Dipity Literary. Heavy post processing of these architectural features are a current obsession. Other non-insanity related photos have appeared in Massachusetts Audubon and in various literary/art publications including Burningword Literary Journal, The Poetry Society of New Hampshire’s Touchstone, The Closed Eye Open, 3Elements Review, Stonecrop Magazine, Wild Roof Journal, Beyond Words, Fusion Art, and Light Space & Time Online Gallery.

 

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