What The Hell America!

In this powerful mother-daughter exchange, Summer Knight and Kwaneta Harris reveal how nearly a decade of forced silence through solitary confinement shattered their bond—and how they’re fighting to rebuild it, piece by piece.

Editor’s note: This pair of essays—in conversation with each other, about the visceral impact solitary confinement has had on Kwaneta and Summer’s mother-daughter relationship—is co-published with Solitary Watch, a nonprofit watchdog organization that works to uncover the truth about solitary confinement and other harsh prison conditions in the United States.

Summer

I was only four months old when my mama got arrested. That’s what my grandma told me.

For most of my life, she’s been just a voice on the phone or a character in stories others tell me.

I’ve only seen her twice in person that I can recall. The first time I was 4, but that memory is so hazy I can’t tell if I’m really remembering it or just reciting what others have told me about that day.

The second and last time, in October 2015 at 7 years old, is when I truly remember seeing her face-to-face. Mama somehow managed to hold all three of us: me, my sister and my brother by our hands at the same time. But her eyes stayed on me the longest. My siblings look just like her, but I’m my dad’s twin, so I guess she was trying to memorize my face. We were getting to know each other, and I remember telling her she “talked like a white girl” because her voice sounded different in person than over the phone.

Then everything changed in January 2016. Mama was put in solitary confinement, and she stayed there until just recently, when I turned 16. We had been talking on the phone daily—me in Michigan, her in Texas—and then it all just stopped. No explanation, just silence.

Everything I did in my daily life, I’d wonder how Mama was doing the same thing in that hole. Was she cold? Could she see the sky? 

Grandma was crying all the time. My sister started acting out, getting involved with boys and being bullied at school. Nobody really explained what was happening, they just said, “Mama’s in the hole.”

I was only 8 years old then, and I thought she was literally living in a hole in the ground. I would lay awake at night worrying about how she ate, where she slept, how she went to the bathroom. That’s when my stomach problems started. Everything I did in my daily life, I’d wonder how Mama was doing the same thing in that hole. Was she cold? Could she see the sky? 

We were supposed to visit Mama every year. Her friends and other people would pitch in for the trip. But suddenly we couldn’t go because “she’s in the hole.” I started thinking maybe she didn’t want us to come because they might put us in holes too. I couldn’t talk to anyone about it because we weren’t supposed to tell people where our Mama was.

I still don’t understand why me, my grandma, my brother and my sister all had to be punished too. They definitely succeeded at breaking our family apart. I had relatives on my dad’s side who were in Michigan prisons, and they came home on the weekends. Some of them even called home when they were in “the hole.” I didn’t understand that Texas had different rules. I was angry and convinced myself that Mama didn’t want to talk to me.

We didn’t have phone calls anymore. Once, after years of silence, Mama called very late at night, grandma woke me up … but when I got on the phone, Mama thought I was my sister. That really hurt me, made me feel invisible.

I started stealing not long after Mama went into solitary, candy and treats from the corner store and Walmart. I kept getting caught by my dad and grandma. First, I was grounded, then my dad spanked me. He told me if I kept it up, I would go to jail. But that’s exactly what I wanted, to go to jail, so I could be with my mama and help her get out of that hole.

It was incredibly hard without having Mama just a phone call away. Grandma tried her best, but she was stuck in the 1950s with her ideas about how a lady should behave, quiet and obedient.

Now that Mama’s back in our lives, she’s always saying she needs to “deprogram” me from grandma’s outdated views on womanhood.

The hardest part was when my dad died. I felt completely alone. I worried constantly about who would take care of me if Grandma died next. My grades plummeted to all F’s. Grandma was so ashamed of Mama being in prison that she kept us away from the rest of the family.  

My sister, who’s five years older than me, started showing signs of mental illness, and nobody explained anything to me. Everything felt scary and uncertain, so I started overeating to cope. It got out of control and caused health problems that grandma, who isn’t exactly “body positive,” made me feel even worse about.

When I think about Mama’s time in solitary confinement, I think about how deeply it damaged both her and us. She never complains or tells us much about it. I’ve only learned bits and pieces from things she’s written, which she told me not to read because she didn’t want me to worry. She downplays it all, but I know the truth, we’re social creatures. Being cut off like that destroys something inside you.

Grandma would force us to sit and write snail mail letters to Mama. I hated it. I couldn’t sit still, so instead, I’d draw pictures for her. One day, I found a stack of my artwork returned from the prison denied because the paper wasn’t plain, because I used colored paper, because I used glitter markers or construction paper. I was devastated. For years, I thought Mama was sending them back because she didn’t want them. That wears you down, bit by bit.

Solitary confinement doesn’t just punish the prisoner, it punishes everyone who loves them too.

I have a counselor now. Since Mama’s been out the hole and earning money from her writing, she pays for me to see someone. She tries to talk to me every day, but I’m in my senior year and really busy. Plus, I can only talk to Mama from my grandma’s phone because I’m not 18 yet. Over eight years, I had an old recording of Mama reading a story that I would replay constantly. I’d watch her wedding video from the 90’s just to see her face.

Everyone always talked about how beautiful Mama’s hair was, so I asked her to send me a strand to show me how long it had grown. But the prison blocked that too. We’re planning to see Mama this fall, but all the time lost can never be made up. 

I’m proud when I see Mama take care of Grandma now. She’s the only one Grandma listens to (sometimes) about her health. Right now, we’re all trying to recover from the effects of solitary confinement. I pray that someday we can just be a normal family. It was hardest when my dad died and everyone in Michigan said Mama should be at the funeral, but Texas wouldn’t allow her to even call me. Standing alone at my dad’s casket, I’ve never felt so isolated in my entire life. That moment crystallized everything about how solitary confinement doesn’t just punish the prisoner, it punishes everyone who loves them too.

Despite everything, I’m proud of Mama’s resilience. She survived years in that “hole” and still came out determined to be a good mother, to take care of her family, to make a living through her writing. She never gave up on us, even when the system did everything possible to break our bond. And now, as I prepare to graduate high school and start my own life, I’m carrying her strength with me. The system tried to erase Mama from my life, but they failed. Our connection survived—damaged but unbroken.

Kwaneta

My breasts were still engorged when they arrested me in Michigan and dragged me to Texas, away from everything I knew and everyone I loved. By then, I had been a mother for 14 precious years. My son was becoming a teenager at 13, my daughter was just starting school at 5, and my baby—my sweet Summer—was my 4-month-old nursing infant.

By the time they put me in solitary, I’d already missed birthdays, first days of school, and scraped knees I couldn’t kiss better. Eight and a half years, 3,043 days: That’s how long they kept me in solitary. Eight and a half years of silence and separation, of phantom cries in the night from a baby who was no longer an infant.

Without communication, we became strangers. She grew up with a ghost for a mother, and I mothered a memory.

The reality of my isolation set in slowly but devastatingly. The pain is unexplainable. How do you explain what it’s like to have your heart beating outside your body, unreachable? Summer went from a nursing infant to a young woman while I sat alone in a concrete room. I’d close my eyes and try to remember the weight of her in my arms, the smell of her head, but memories fade like photographs in the sun.

The physical separation created an unbearable emotional pain. The ache of not being able to hold her, it’s like phantom limb pain, but worse. Your child is alive, growing, changing, hurting and you can’t reach out. You can’t comfort. You can’t protect.

I’d press my hand against the cold wall and imagine Summer was doing the same somewhere, miles away. I missed her first steps, her first words, and her first crush. I wasn’t there to braid her hair or explain what it means to be a woman. I wasn’t there when her father died, when she needed me most. She thought I didn’t want to talk to her. A child thinking her mother abandoned her? There’s no crueler punishment than that. They didn’t just take my freedom, they stole my motherhood.

What made everything infinitely harder was the communication barrier. The most obstructive barrier that solitary placed on maintaining my relationship with Summer was the silence. The crushing, endless silence between us. When you can’t communicate, you cease to exist in each other’s worlds, and that was my biggest fear. A five-minute phone call every few months, if I was perfect and if staffing allowed. How do you compress motherhood into five minutes at midnight? How do you explain to a child why you’re not calling on her birthday, her graduation, after her father died? The silence created a chasm between us that was impossible to bridge. Summer’s letters begged me to call for her fifth-grade graduation, for awards ceremonies. She didn’t understand why I couldn’t call. 

But despite everything, I fought to maintain our connection. I refused to disappear. I wrote every week, even when my mother told me to stop because the letters were piling up unopened and unanswered. Not knowing if they were thrown away by guards or if my babygirl had given up on me. I created worlds in my cell by arranging a circle of family photos around torn-out Food Network magazine pages for holidays. I’d talk to Summer’s picture, telling her all the things a mother should say: Be brave, be kind, I’m proud of you, I love you. I studied her handwriting in the few letters she sent, memorizing every curve and line like it was her face. I prayed for her, sang to her through walls that couldn’t hear. She couldn’t know that I was screaming her name in a soundproof room. Without communication, we became strangers. She grew up with a ghost for a mother, and I mothered a memory. 

Most importantly, I chose survival over surrender. I stayed alive. I didn’t follow my friends into suicide, though God knows the thought came in the darkest hours. I kept breathing and kept loving her from a distance. Because, someday, I promised myself, I would have the chance to mother again. And until then, I had to be worthy of that chance.

How do you compress motherhood into five minutes at midnight? How do you explain to a child why you’re not calling on her birthday, her graduation, after her father died?

Now, as I reflect on our lost years, my wishes for Summer run deeper than any parent’s normal hopes. I wish for her what every parent wishes: to be safe, healthy and happy. I wish she could unlearn the abandonment that led her to eat her grief, gaining over 100 pounds in a year, after her father died. I wish I could erase the nights she cried herself to sleep, thinking her mother didn’t care enough to call. I wish she hadn’t navigated menstruation, trauma, consent and all those fragile teenage years alone. I wish someone had been there to explain why her mother’s letters came but her mother didn’t.

Above all, I carry a profound regret about the mother she never knew. I wish she could know the mother I was before. The mom who documented every moment of her siblings’ lives with photos and videos, who attended every event, who was there. I wish she could have had that mother, not the ghost who writes letters from behind walls. I wish she could heal from the wounds I couldn’t prevent, even as I fear some scars will never fade.

Yet in our rebuilding, I find hope in the smallest gestures. Now, my favorite thing about our relationship is when she calls me “Mama.” Such a simple word that I thought I might never hear from her lips again. And I cherish when she tells me all the trivial things about her friends: Who said what? Who’s dating whom? What happened at lunch? These details that most parents might find tedious, I crave like oxygen. These mundane moments are sacred because they mean she’s letting me in, allowing me to be part of her ordinary life after missing so many extraordinary ones.

We’re still getting to know each other. I’m learning the woman she’s become while mourning the girl I never knew. But when she shares those small moments, when she lets me glimpse her world, I feel like her mother again. Not just someone who gave birth to her, but someone worthy of knowing her heart. After so much silence, even the smallest whisper is a symphony.