Prison Baby

by Deborah Jiang-Stein

  They understand, they understand.

  I rise to my feet, leave the spread of files and papers fanned across the carpeted floor and lean a shoulder into my sliding-glass patio door. I press my forehead against the cool pane, inhale a world of air. How much more of this can I take? But I can’t stop.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  ANOTHER LETTER

  Martha feels now she has grown up to the point if she were free, she could and would accept her responsibilities as a mother and make a home for Madlyn and her son. She seems to be attached to her daughter and we do not want to take the responsibility of placing the daughter elsewhere.

  As far as we can ascertain, Martha has never harmed anyone but herself. At an early age she became addicted to narcotics. It might be if given a chance to prove she is sincere at this time, given help and the knowledge if she made good she could keep custody of Madlyn again, it would be the one incentive she needed to straighten up. It is thought she allows her emotions to sway her decisions and she has strong likes and dislikes. However, she can do sound thinking when her emotions are under control.

  Under control? You’re kidding. Who controls her emotions when they’re pregnant and locked up, then delivers in prison and faced with the prospect of losing the baby?

  However, she does control herself and tries to prove it when she pleads the court:

  I am writing you regarding my baby who was born here. I’d appreciate if you would advise me of my rights concerning this baby. I do not want to lose my baby completely. I want to be able to get her upon my release. Could custody of her be taken from me by the fact I am in a Government Penal Institution at the present, or because of my past?

  I am eligible for a hearing with the Parole Board next year, but I feel as though I don’t stand a chance because I already have a different outlook on life since this baby was born.

  She fights and fights for me in one last letter.

  To County Welfare Department.

  When the baby is made ward of the court, does this mean I lose complete custody of her? When I am released can I visit Madlyn? Also, will Mady be moved from home to home? Above all, I do not want Madlyn placed in an institution.

  Wait. I’d just left an institution—prison. But she knows this was home for me.

  Her letter goes on.

  Do the people who have Madlyn want her for other reasons besides an increase of their income? I am going to continue sending money for her care to the best of my ability. My intentions are to regain custody of her upon my release.

  I realise your focus is on the child. But please try to understand this experience I am going through is difficult and if I do sound selfish where she is concerned, please know I really have her welfare at heart.

  I do not want her to live the life I have. I want her to have love, security and affection.

  My heart rips into jagged shards. It’s all I’d wanted from her.

  And truthfully no matter how much my heart aches, I want to do the best for her. But I also want to know in detail the exact procedure you have to go through to place her.

  Since court action has to be taken and if I lose custody, what happens to her if adoption papers are not signed by me? Above all please answer that question. You see, I want Madlyn more than anything in this world, and my love for her is deeply rooted.

  If the court isn’t in favor of letting me have Madlyn, I wouldn’t be so selfish that I would hold ties to cause her any unhappiness in the future.

  Please answer my questions as soon as possible, as I need to come to a decision for her welfare in order to have some peace of mind myself.

  Sincerely,

  Martha

  Unbearable sorrow floods me but I need to keep reading. To this day I can’t read this letter, though, without falling apart.

  COPIES OF THE CORRESPONDENCE I sent in high school to request details of my beginnings lay buried at the end of these files—the same letter mailed several years in a row.

  Dear Warden:

  I’m writing to get information about my birth and racial origin. All I know is I was born in Alderson, West Virginia in the United States Government Federal Prison for Women. I somehow got separated from my natural mother and placed in an orphanage. I don’t know her name. She came from Seattle, Washington, but I have no other information about her, other than she gave birth to a girl.

  I am interested in any information you may offer me about my mother, such as nationality of her or my father, her age, present location, and reason for incarceration. It is unlikely that you will reveal my mother’s identity, but may I please know her racial origin? May I also have any other information you can disclose about my birth and first history?

  I’m sure you can appreciate my desire to learn as much about myself as any ordinary citizen knows. Thank you for considering my request and for any information you might be able to provide me.

  All I ever got in return was a cautious letter that the information couldn’t be released.

  Dear [blocked],

  We’ve heard again from the daughter of Inmate # [blocked]. What shall I tell her this time?

  Sincerely, Warden [blocked]

  Page after page, my prison mom pleads in her letters to judges and lawyers and social workers, from coast to coast, begging to keep me. From a prison official:

  To date she has refused to sign the request papers, partly because we think she believes if she does not sign the papers she will delay the child’s release from the institution, and because she is of the opinion if she signs the papers her baby will be taken from her by the courts.

  My prison mom loses her custody battle, and my story takes the road in these pages.

  I’m relieved to read that, by the end of her prison sentence, she found some peace.

  She is a popular member of the inmate group and is the inmate council representative. She is willing and cooperative, willing to do any assignment given her. She volunteers for extra work and does her work well. She attends the movies and other recreation; attends religious services occasionally. She likes and needs approval. Martha is well adjusted to institution routine, but at times is extremely bitter about institutional life and her part in it.

  She is kind and understanding of other girls’ problems. She is especially thoughtful of those who are ill or handicapped.

  I wonder, Did my compassion come from her?

  IT FEELS WRONG but I’m proud like a parent impressed with her child’s school report. But it’s my mother’s prison record, for crying out loud. I still can’t quite grasp this truth, this discovery, the whole thing.

  Then, there it is, in one of the last letters about my placement. A hint but not a definitive answer about my race, still the unknown.

  From the very first, although Martha would one minute say she wanted the baby placed for adoption, she would later state she wanted to make other arrangements. She received a letter from [blocked] stating if the baby had no Negro blood in her, she [the letter writer] would try to place it with some reliable family. If possible, Martha wants her child adopted by someone who would permit her to visit the child.

  Whoa. Someone said this? Damn.

  My mom apparently refused to respond to this letter, because it was sent several times to her. Thus, she’s left me with a lifetime of unknowns. I can either battle or embrace this mystery of “one drop,” which, according to archaic law, defines someone as Black or biracial.

  WHAT FOLLOWS WARMS my heart—a list of my first formula, prison-style:

  The baby medical reports are as follows—fed every three hours during the day and once during the night on the following formula:

  One, thirteen (13) ounce liquid can of Carnation milk

  One equal can of water

  Seven tablespoonsful of White Karo syrup.

  Boil H2O, mix syrup, then pour into container with milk. Mix and place bottle. Martha states she usually places at least seven ounces in bottle but the baby does not always take this amount at each feeding. The ba
by is also given baby food such as strained vegetables and meats twice a day, at 2:00 o’clock and 6:00 o’clock. She drinks whole milk and orange juice.

  This tenderness sweeps through me about the feeding schedules and strained foods in prison.

  The documents also expose pieces of the story about my foster care and, for the first time, I learn that my placement into adoption was finalized at around age three or four. The courts had granted my parents custody when I was two or three, but the courts didn’t release me legally until Margo signed relinquishment papers. She took her own sweet time, several years, to do this.

  SOME OF MY toddler time falls into place at last. I can’t tell how many foster homes I was placed in, and as an adult, I don’t remember any of it. My destiny took many unexpected turns. I went from West Virginia to Seattle, then, a few years later, to Rome for my father’s sabbatical year, from a world of color to one without, from stories of the street to the Louvre, Fellini films, and Marat-Sade on stage. One of the documents discusses possible foster placement in West Virginia. So many “possibles” haunt me. What if the authorities had placed me in foster care in the Appalachian Mountains instead of Seattle? Might I be a coal miner’s daughter instead of the daughter of two English professors? Rather than going to temple with my parents, I could’ve spent Sundays in Alderson’s Baptist church.

  I flip through the files and root for her—“Right on” for my rebel prison mother. Prison didn’t even kill her spirit. Something comforts me as I read these documents. Some of them answer how close my apple is to her tree. I understand her fervor and fight, her fierce, illogical stubbornness, her impassioned view of the world. It all lives in me, too.

  I understand more her conflicts and struggles, but why couldn’t she stay clean? Why was each release just a pause in her prison career? Because she faced complex and impossible choices.

  Then it strikes me: She didn’t leave me. I left her. I left her locked up when I was scooped out of her cell in the middle of the night and taken into the free world. I left her behind—how can I feel anger towards her?

  How can I feel anything but infinite anguish about our severed bond?

  In the end she fought hard for custody but the courts decided: “Prison is no place to raise a child.” Torn from the one love of my first twelve months, the most important developmental stage in a child’s life, I was unmoored and set to sail.

  Maybe the rage I cast against my adoptive mother—the broken hand, the murder plot, the fire setting—maybe all this was meant for my prison mother. But I don’t think so. Maybe I should be angry about her part in the whole drama of my life, angry about her addiction, her crimes, her lifestyle, her multiple prison sentences, her lack of mental and emotional wellness, her shooting up while pregnant with me. Am I in denial about my anger towards her? I can’t find it.

  IN THE MIDDLE of the prison files I land on a letter from one of my foster mothers to my prison mom and in this one flip of a page, every single bit of self-image I’d held about my younger self is redefined.

  Monday night 10:15

  Dear Martha,

  I hope you will forgive me for calling you by your first name, but in a way I think your darling little daughter is introduction enough.

  I’ve had Mady ever since she was brought out here so have learned to love her very much. Until now I didn’t feel I could write you, but was given permission by my new worker for Madlyn. He has been the worker for the 2 other babies here so I was glad to have him take over for Mady too. He is such a wonderful person I know you will like him too.

  I know the only thing you are particularly interested in is this little daughter of yours so I am going to try to tell you all the things I would want to know if I hadn’t seen my baby for so long.

  First of all she is in excellent health and cute as a button. She weighed 19 pounds 2 ounces and is 28 inches tall. She has been walking ever since the week before her birthday, but if she is in a big hurry she will sometimes crawl even yet. I haven’t tried to do much toilet training for she is still rather young, however, if she is wearing training panties and puddles it breaks her heart. But if she has a diaper and plastic panties on she doesn’t see what she has done and it means nothing to her. She has just started coming and telling me after she has messed her panties, and of course that is the first step, then later she will tell me before it happens.

  I have 3 children of my own, a girl 10 and 2 boys who are 12 and 15, and have kept many foster children in my home but can honestly say we have never had one quite as sweet or smart as your little Madlyn.

  My husband actually makes a fuss over her more and takes her with him more than he ever did any of his own when they were little. We have all really fallen in love with her, and I am glad to say she is a happy little girl here.

  I knew it, sensed it—I was happy before my adoption. Prison as my birthplace wasn’t the problem. Neither was my foster care. Multiple moves from family to family took their toll on me. The letter goes on:

  She has taken her milk only from a glass ever since coming to us, and is the best little eater we ever had. She says many words now, and understands practically everything said to her even though she tries to ignore some things.

  The first words she learned were Hi kid! to my oldest boy every morning when she was brought out of her crib. She also says bye bye, no no, doggy, keekee (for kitty), Bobby, Bibby (for Billy), all gone, horsey, cookie, candy, I ub oo (for I love you), gink (for drink), ta too (for thank you), Daddy, Mommy, sissy, baby, tickle tickle, and her toes are Piggy Piggy. She also says bad boy and bad baby, nie nie for nighty night, and how do.

  She loves to play peek but is a little tease and instead of covering her face with her hands she puts them to one side and peeps around them.

  She is a friendly baby and makes up with strangers quickly. Everyone who has known her loves her.

  I took the pictures of her on her Birthday for I knew you would want to have them. The new little baby they just brought to me I am taking pictures of every week so the parents who adopt her will have a record of her tiny baby days too. I have several other snapshots of Mady I will also save for you. We had enlargements made of three of these Birthday ones and they are just beautiful. If you would like to borrow the negatives to have some made when you get back I would be glad to lend them to you.

  I am sorry I cannot tell you our names or where Mady is, but when it is time the Welfare Department will give you the information. In the meantime I will try to write and send pictures now and then so you can see how beautiful your baby is growing.

  Now to tell you some of the cute little things she does. I think the cutest is the way she loves to fight and argue with her Daddy. She has learned to go up and downstairs very well now, but at first we were afraid she would take some bad tumbles so we tried to keep her down.

  Whenever we saw her start up we stood at the bottom and scolded and shook our finger at her. Of course she just laughed for she is such a tease, but it got so she would start up just for the argument, and if we didn’t argue she’d come back down and start up again. Ours is a wrought iron stairway that runs up behind our large fireplace, and she goes up a few steps and sticks her arms out through the iron bars and shakes her fist and hollers and scolds until her Daddy goes over and does the same. She talks and jabbers more than any youngster we ever saw. I think every word of it means something to her, and sometimes I’m glad I don’t know what she is saying. Ha!

  Chatty? Friendly and jabbers? My tiny-baby days. This is me before the mute, insecure, scared little girl who suffocated in melancholy.

  My foster mother reveals more than I ever imagined I’d learn about my early years:

  When she looks through magazines she has started wetting her fingers to turn the pages for she has seen us do it.

  We always know when she is ready for a nap for she sucks her thumb and tweaks one ear or a lock of hair. One day she fussed to go to bed and I was busy with the tiny new baby so she went on upstairs. After I f
inished changing the baby I followed her up, she was standing with her head leaning against my daughter’s bed, her thumb in her mouth, and she was practically asleep. She couldn’t get over the side and into her own bed so she did the next best.

  When we feed her she always says “all gone” when her plate is empty, but if it isn’t empty and she doesn’t want any more she still says “all gone.” After the “all gone” we know she is full.

  My husband drives a school bus and has a car seat fixed on one of the seats just behind his driver’s seat so she can go along on the bus rounds. If the bus leaves without her there really is war in the house for a while until she forgets, and then, when he gets back home and she watches him back it into the driveway she starts scolding all over again.

  She loves the new baby even though she is still a little jealous. She likes to watch me change her and I let her rub the powder on her tummy and bring me diapers. If I say “nice baby” she draws out a big long Ohhhhhhhh and then leans over and kisses her, but if she has something in her hand she is just as liable to hit her one after the kiss. She isn’t selfish for she puts all kinds of toys in bed with the baby and wonders why she doesn’t play with them.

  I don’t think I told you she has 5 teeth and will have the 6th before long. Teething is the only thing she’s been slow in, but she made up for it in so many other ways.

  Well, I just can’t think of anything more right now, but if there are some other things you would like to know you might write my worker and he can let me know. I do hope you like the pictures, and I wish I were able to send the enlargements so you could really see how darling she is.