SHAWANDA

 

 

Two years ago

 

Shawanda Jackson never wanted to be a mother, and Bedford Hills Correctional Facility was certainly no place to raise a family.

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A thin rain was falling on the prison, turning the granite walls a tired shade of brown. Built in 1894, its main building could be mistaken for a Victorian dormitory were it not for the chain link fence and razor wire and guard towers dripping in the rain. The other cell blocks were newer—heavy concrete, narrow windows, cold and unwelcoming. It was the largest women’s prison in the state of New York, just thirty miles north of the Bronx, hidden away amid the swanky exurbs of Westchester County.

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On any given day it was home to nine hundred and twenty inmates—women who had made bad choices, women who were at the wrong place at the wrong time. Some of them had children they were waiting to get home to. Some had their children taken away and shipped off to foster homes. Some of them were still children themselves. But all of them could agree—Bedford Hills was no place to be a mother.

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The rain fell harder as the morning turned to noon. A few women in orange jumpsuits and winter jackets braved the weather and walked the yard. Eyes down, no talking. The guards on the towers flicked through their phones, guns close at hand.

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Inside the facility, most of the women had already finished their lunch—today, cardboard sandwiches and green beans that tasted like they were canned back in the ‘70s. There was still fifteen minutes before the next work shift, so the pods were crowded before the women returned to their menial tasks around the prison, washing laundry or cleaning bathrooms or prepping the kitchen for dinner.

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Each pod was a wide circular room, two stories of cells around a central area with aluminum tables bolted to the floor. The cell doors were open, and the inmates milled around—the tougher ones talking and laughing and playing cards in the open, the weaker ones sticking to their cells, reading books from the library or looking at photos from their distant lives beyond the granite walls.

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The pods were all connected to an octagonal guard station by a long hallway lined with rec rooms, utility closets, holding rooms, and commissaries. Two corrections officers sat behind the shatterproof glass, the banks of bright monitors glinting off their badges. They had unobstructed views down the hallways into each of the eight identical pods, like the spoke at the center of a wheel. With the flick of a switch, they could lock-down individual cells or entire pods—whatever it took to keep the women in line.

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The inmates called it the Eye. They were always watching.

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Martha Greene sat at one of the tables in Pod 6, writing a letter in the dim light that came through one of the high windows near the ceiling, trying to remember a time when she was Ms. Martha Greene, a daughter and a sister and an accountant and a beloved aunt to Jordan and Madison, not inmate 2C9874, serving ten years for embezzlement and tax fraud. She hated being in the pit, which is what the women called the central area of the pod. You were vulnerable out in the pit—but today, being in her cell was worse. Some days were harder than others, and today she decided to brave the pit so she could at least see a sliver of cloudy sky as she wrote to her sister, Denise, who still somehow could afford to live in Park Slope on a teacher’s salary. Jordan had just asked his first girl out to the Winter Formal. Martha asked for pictures of him in his tux.

She was just starting page two of her letter when a group of women at the next table sprang to their feet.

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Latisha McGregor, 0A9098, threw her cards on the table. The tats snaking up her brown arms bristled with barely restrained violence. She was doing six for being in a car that was involved in a drive-by shooting. Her court-appointed lawyer argued she never touched a gun that night, and the judge bought it. She skipped out on a murder charge that would have landed her in a maximum-security facility for the rest of her life, but word on the yard was that Latisha had pulled the trigger.

 

“Bitch, I know you did not just bump into me with your country ass,” she spat as she turned to face Desiree Holmes, 6C3785. Didi was a big, middle-aged woman with pasty skin and a confusion of brick-red hair. She was doing fifteen for driving a delivery van into her boss’s office and crushing him under a desk.

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Didi laughed, showing teeth stained with years of coffee and cigarettes. “So what if I did?” She was tough. She knew she was tough. Latisha knew it too.

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This was not the first time the two had jawed like this. It had ended with bloodied lips and bruised ribs before.

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Martha was just stuffing Denise’s letter back into the envelope when one of the women started shoving. A body flew into Martha as she tried to get out of harm’s way. Her little golf pencil rolled on the ground as the shouts started to fill the pod.

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In the guard station, one of the officers saw the scrum on the monitor.

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“Looks like we got something in six,” he said, reaching for his radio. “I’m gonna call it in.”

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“Give it a minute,” his partner said, looking down the hallway. She dropped one of the sliding plexiglass panels in the door to listen to the commotion. “They could just be blowing off some steam.”

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The first officer shook his head. “That’s McGregor and Didi. I don’t want the same shit as last time. You remember the paperwork. I—”

 

He was cut off as a woman in an orange jumpsuit darted past their octagonal station, racing toward Pod 6. The first officer reached for the button to shut it down, not wanting the situation to escalate out of control, but he stopped short.

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“Was that Shawanda?”

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Shawanda Jackson, 1H2755, five years into a dime for aggravated battery and drug possession, was out of breath by the time her worn-out sneakers skidded across the polished linoleum of Pod 6.

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“It’s happening!”

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The pod went silent. Didi had Latisha’s jumpsuit clenched in her fists. Two of Latisha’s crew had their fists cocked. Half the pod had squared off for the fight.

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But none of that mattered.

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A second later, Shawanda was speeding back down the hallway with half a dozen inmates racing after her. Didi dropped Latisha and followed as fast as her bulk would allow. Martha stuffed Denise’s letter into her shirt and sprinted after them.

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Latisha sucked her teeth, smoothed out the knuckle prints in her jumpsuit, and watched them run.

“Buncha corny ass bitches.”

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Back in the Eye, the first guard still had his hand over the emergency shut down for Pod 6.

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“Wait!” his partner said, holding out her hand. She craned her neck out the door as Shawanda and seven other inmates raced past and down another hallway. “I think it’s happening.”

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Down the hallway, Shawanda dashed for one of the utility closets on the way to Pod 3. She came screeching to a halt, filling the doorway to the closet like a protective shield. The other inmates piled up behind her, desperate to see over her shoulders.

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“Is she alright?” Didi asked, choked with worry.

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“That’s a lot of blood…” Martha said, standing on her toes.

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Shawanda dropped to her knees. She moved the blankets aside and held her breath. A beautiful yellow Lab looked up at her, panting and smiling and beaming with pride.

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The first puppy had already arrived, wriggling around on the blankets with its blind eyes and its pink mouth and its pink little paws.

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The inmates all breathed sighs of relief as Shawanda scooped the little puppy into her hands, no bigger than a tennis ball. The puppy tried to nurse the pad of Shawanda’s thumb as she turned around and showed the women. The love on her face was unmistakable.

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Shawanda Jackson, a woman who had lived most of her life on the streets, a woman who had seen more and endured more than one person ever should, once again knew what it felt like to be a mother.