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midnight and give them bus fare to New Orleans or a city of their choice in Louisiana. We
dispatched staff to Angola, which was several hours away, to meet the men when they were
released, sparing them the midnight bus trip.
Exhausted, I wandered the halls of the courthouse while we waited for one more piece of
paper to be faxed and approved to clear the way for the release of Mr. Caston and Mr. Carter.
An older black woman sat on the marble steps in the massive courthouse hallway. She looked
tired and wore what my sister and I used to call a “church meeting hat.” She had smooth dark
skin, and I recognized her as someone who had been in the courtroom when Mr. Carter was
resentenced. In fact, I thought I’d seen her each time I’d come to the courthouse in New
Orleans. I assumed that she was related or connected to one of the clients, although I didn’t
remember the other family members ever mentioning her. I must have been staring because
she saw me looking and waved at me, gesturing for me to come to her.
When I walked over to her she smiled at me. “I’m tired and I’m not going to get up, so
you’re going to have to lean over for me to give you a hug.” She had a sweet voice that
crackled.
I smiled back at her. “Well, yes, ma’am. I love hugs, thank you.” She wrapped her arms
around my neck.
“Sit, sit. I want to talk to you,” she said.
I sat down beside her on the steps. “I’ve seen you here several times, are you related to Mr.
Caston or Mr. Carter?” I asked.
“No, no, no, I’m not related to nobody here. Not that I know of, anyway.” She had a kind
smile, and she looked at me intensely. “I just come here to help people. This is a place full of
pain, so people need plenty of help around here.”
“Well, that’s really kind of you.”
“No, it’s what I’m supposed to do, so I do it.” She looked away before locking eyes with me
again. “My sixteen-year-old grandson was murdered fifteen years ago,” she said, “and I loved
that boy more than life itself.”
I wasn’t expecting that response and was instantly sobered. The woman grabbed my hand.
“I grieved and grieved and grieved. I asked the Lord why he let someone take my child like
that. He was killed by some other boys. I came to this courtroom for the first time for their
trials and sat in there and cried every day for nearly two weeks. None of it made any sense.
Those boys were found guilty for killing my grandson, and the judge sent them away to
prison forever. I thought it would make me feel better but it actually made me feel worse.”
She continued, “I sat in the courtroom after they were sentenced and just cried and cried. A
lady came over to me and gave me a hug and let me lean on her. She asked me if the boys
who got sentenced were my children, and I told her no. I told her the boy they killed was my
child.” She hesitated. “I think she sat with me for almost two hours. For well over an hour,
we didn’t neither one of us say a word. It felt good to finally have someone to lean on at that
trial, and I’ve never forgotten that woman. I don’t know who she was, but she made a
difference.”
“I’m so sorry about your grandson,” I murmured. It was all I could think of to say.
“Well, you never fully recover, but you carry on, you carry on. I didn’t know what to do
with myself after those trials, so about a year later I started coming down here. I don’t really
know why. I guess I just felt like maybe I could be someone, you know, that somebody