A Knock at Midnight: A Story of Hope, Justice, and Freedom

Barnett’s mother Evelyn was “a tall, long-waisted, young Black woman with the deep-set paisley eyes and the high, full cheekbones of her Filipina and half-Cherokee grandmothers” (10) when she had Barnett and her younger sister Jazz. Evelyn was from Greenville, Texas, which at the time had a welcome sign proclaiming itself as “the blackest land and the whitest people” (10). While the sign allegedly referred to the citizens’ moral purity, Black people in town knew a more sinister meaning. Willful and intelligent, Evelyn had planned to escape Greenville by entering a basic training and airborne program at Fort Jackson in South Carolina. However, she became pregnant with Barnett instead.

Evelyn had fallen in love with a handsome young man named Leland Barnett. Leland, the author’s father, was from a small town called Campbell. His family, the only Black family in town, was well known and successful. Barnett’s parents had an intense relationship, but theirs was the “kind of love that burns out fast” (11). By the time Jazz turned one, their relationship was over. After a short time living with extended family, Barnett’s maternal grandfather fixed up his old house so she could live on her own with the girls.

Meanwhile, Evelyn worked hard to earn a nursing license despite cuts in financial aid. The whole extended family helped care for her daughters. While their home was rickety, the girls were rich in love. As Barnett puts it, “Black love was Black wealth” (13). Evelyn found love again in Billy, who became the girls’ loving step-father in 1991. The family moved to Bogata, Texas, which was almost all white. Evelyn, now a nurse, worked in a nursing home, and Billy in a coal mine. In short, Barnett’s early years were happy ones.

In the early 1990s, when Barnett was 10 and drugs “were everywhere in popular culture” (19), Evelyn fell into the throes of addiction. This reality hit Barnett after her little sister Jazz found a crack pipe in her mother’s pocket. In these early years Evelyn was a functioning addict, but the “addiction kept getting worse” (20). Her step-father, Billy, convinced Evelyn to enter residential rehabilitation, but it did not work. It was extremely difficult for Barnett to see her mother suffering from this addiction and to cope with the behavior of an addict. For example, she would hear her mother pacing in the middle of the night, turning the stereo up and down.

During this difficult time, the love of Barnett’s extended family helped her enormously. In particular, she spent more time with her biological father and his parents, Daddy Sudie and Mama Lena. She describes the “sense of healing and solace” experienced at church with her paternal grandparents and the bonus of her maternal grandmother, Granny, being present at the same church. After church, she spent time at Daddy Sudie and Mama Lena’s house, with her father’s five brothers “and sister, countless cousins, and their kids” (27). They would eat soul food, laugh, tell stories, and enjoy one another’s love. Daddy Sudie also gave Barnett life lessons about responsibility.

Barnett’s father also struggled with addiction but was able to overcome it. He too gave her advice that would help her achieve her goals, emphasizing the power of intention and telling her, “You can’t be it unless you can believe it” (31). At this time Barnett also found friends who were experiencing similar trauma, with at least one parent addicted to drugs.

At 14, Barnett found life with her mother’s worsening addiction intolerable. With a heavy and guilty heart, she left Billy, Evelyn, and Jazz to live with her paternal grandparents in Campbell. That town was minutes away from Commerce, a much larger town with a big high school. Commerce had been a sundown town, a place where Black Americans risked a lynching if found on the streets after the sun set. That racism left its mark even years later; like so many towns in the rural South, railroad tracks “marked the dividing line between Black and white” (35). Known as the Hole, the Black side was neglected by the government and had few businesses. Barnett describes it as the “Commerce hood” (35) but emphasizes that she loved it and felt a sense of belonging there. It was the first time she was in a place with “nothing but Black people” (36).

While Barnett excelled academically in high school, her mother’s condition declined. A few months after Barnett left, Evelyn and Jazz moved to Commerce too. While the community in the Hole tried to shield Barnett, she could see her mother driving up to buy drugs. This was when Evelyn was first arrested. After spending two months in the county jail, Evelyn was given a court hearing. Barnett attended that with Granny.

The experience was traumatic. Evelyn was brought into court “shackled at her feet and wrists, prodded along roughly by a white sheriff in a cowboy hat,” and she was wearing a “soiled uniform with thick black-and-white horizontal stripes” (39). Barnett saw the shame in her mother’s eyes, and it profoundly affected her. Seeing her childhood hero so humiliated inflicted a “primal wound” (40). Barnett recalled that her father had served 30 days in jail for a bounced check. She was beginning to realize the common Black experience in the South and the ease with which Black citizens were sent to jail. At this time, Evelyn was released but put on probation for five years. She was offered no help for her addiction.

Graduating at the top of her high school class, Barnett began a full-time bank job at Chase and was set to start college at the University of Texas at Arlington. However, she was also “a young woman immersed in a culture where some level of drug involvement was the norm” (43), and she was dating a drug dealer named Red. At first, Red was “easy to talk to, charming, and funny” (42). Seventeen years old and feeling in love, Barnett moved to Arlington with Red.

During Barnett’s senior year of high school, Red lost his brother due to a motorcycle accident. That tragedy increased Red’s responsibilities in the drug trade and changed his easy-going nature. He began to abuse Barnett. With bruises to hide, Barnett avoided her family and found herself trapped in a cycle of abuse. One of Barnett’s coworkers at Chase, Eleanore Murrell, an older Black woman, took Barnett under her wing. She took Barnett to church with her, and one Sunday, the pastor seemed to speak directly to Barnett. He said, “It’s clean-up time” (48). The message was about not hiding problems but confronting and properly dealing with them. Inspired, she ended her relationship with Red.

When Jazz graduated high school, Red sought revenge, and Barnett had to run for her safety as he shattered the patio door. She safely got away to a neighbor’s house, and the police took Red into custody. She emerged stronger from this experience, feeling secure in herself. On the advice of a friend, she changed her major from finance to accounting. Despite her addiction, Barnett’s mother attended her graduation ceremony. Sadly, Evelyn could not attend the next year when Barnett received her master’s degree, as she was in a concrete cell, a reality that left a “gaping hole” in Barnett’s chest.

Because she had failed drug tests while on probation, Barnett’s mother was sentenced to eight years in prison. She was being punished for her addiction instead of treated for it. Her family was stunned. Just prior to her sentencing, she called Barnett from the county jail and said she feared she would “pull chain” this week (55). Pulling chain is slang for being transferred from a local jail to a state-run prison. At the time of the sentencing, Barnett was 22.

Barnett described the indignity and humiliation embedded in the Texas state prison system. On her first visit to the low-security prison in Gatesville, Barnett, to her horror, saw a group of women swinging hoes into the soil in sweltering heat while observed by a white guard on horseback. Upon entering the prison, visitors were treated with suspicion. When she told a guard her mother’s name, she was told that only the inmate number mattered. Barnett had memorized it. Once the guard looked up the number, she said, “Dog pound” (61). This was the term for the “virtual quarantine” (61) where new arrivals to the prison were placed. It meant that Barnett could not have a contact visit with her mother and would have to speak to her via a malfunctioning phone through plexiglass. Barnett observed that her mother had lost weight due to the extreme heat inside the prison.

Following that visit, Barnett and Jazz went to see their mother monthly despite the long drive. It was emotional torture to experience the rudeness of the guards and to see their mother so powerless. In August 2007, after over a year in prison, Evelyn was transferred to another facility outside Austin. Conditions were better there, with air conditioning and more programs, but the drive was longer, four hours each way. However, the visits were similarly humiliating, and on one occasion when Jazz forgot her identification, she was not allowed to see her mother and had to wait in the car.

Despite the emotional suffering that comes from having a loved one in prison, Barnett’s professional life was going extremely well. Working as a certified public account at PricewaterhouseCoopers and making good money, Barnett decided to pursue her dream of law school. She cold contacted an attorney in her building who was a young Black woman. That attorney, Christa Brown-Sanford, met with Barnett and encouraged her to apply, giving her good advice. Writing a powerful personal statement, Barnett confronted the trauma she had endured for the first time and articulated her vision for a project called GEM, Girls Embracing Mothers, for girls with mothers in prison. Barnett was in her first semester of law school when her mother, now determined to defeat her addiction, was released.