Brandy Carpenter (BC): You always made me laugh and you always made me smile. I always wanted you to be around.
De’Marchoe Carpenter (DC): We just hung out, sitting on the porch talking. It was your eyes that allured me to you. They just dance. It seemed like we got close and then I was arrested.
BC: I had no doubt that you would be coming home. I knew it was just a big misunderstanding.
DC: I got found guilty for murder. I ended up receiving a life sentence plus 170 years. And I remember you being at my court date. And I held my head up high, you know, and I tried to maintain my composure. When I got back to my cell, you know, I put my head under my covers and I just cried. I remember I cried myself to sleep.
BC: I knew that they got it wrong. They got it all wrong.
DC: We lost contact, you know, and I was writing letters and I felt like you stopped writing me.
BC: And I felt like you stopped writing me. But I think we figured out it was my mom not letting me know that I had those letters.
DC: It was 13 and a half years later when you came back into my life. For the last six years of my incarceration, you know, you was there for me. You came to visit me every week.
BC: I remember coming in, having to take everything off — my earrings, my belt, my bracelets. I used to pray for this, ’I just wanna be able to hug him.’ Now it’s like I can’t sleep without you. But I worry about you.
DC: Prison, it – it messed me up. To see someone getting stabbed and, you know, to be confined to a cell 23 hours a day, or sometimes six months at a time when we’re on lockdown, it had an effect on me in a terrible way.
BC: I don’t believe people realize how bad your anxiety is. They don’t see the breakdowns, the meltdowns. I remember when you first got out, I woke up and you weren’t in the bed. So I get up, and I look outside. I see you pulling out of the driveway in the truck.
DC: Sometimes I just wanna get up and leave – just because. And, you know, not have to worry about, ’Where you goin’? What you doin’?’ For me it’s like, for 17 years my mom told me what to do. For 22 years prison officials told me what to do. I’ve never had the time where I called the shots for myself.
BC: I just wish that you would let me know what’s going through your mind so I can know how to help. But we’ve been through things worse than this — the visits, waiting on you to come home. If we can get through those things, we can get through these things.
