Mothers of Bedford: Mothers in Prison
This post by guest contributor and film director, Jenifer McShane
For many women I know it is hard to imagine being separated from their children for a week or a month. Imagine being separated for ten or twenty years. What does that mother-child relationship look like?
Later this month my recently completed documentary, Mothers of Bedford, will screen at my favorite CT movie theater, Madison Art Cinemas!
It has been a long labor of love taking years of fundraising, filming, and more fundraising. I was inspired to make Mothers of Bedford when I learned about Sister Elaine Roulet’s work inside Bedford Hills Correctional Facility. Sister Elaine decided that bars could not separate a child from their mother’s love and pledged to make it easier for mothers to see their children. I was struck by the hopefulness and love involved in her work. By founding The Children’s Center inside the prison and promoting opportunities for incarcerated women to see their children she has created space for positive change in the least likely of settings: prison.
As a mother myself, I was fascinated by the work happening in The Children’s Center as I observed the inmates working hard to maintain their role as mother. The issues the mothers in prison worry about: school grades, hanging with the wrong friends, and dating are not all that different from what the Guilford moms I know are worrying about. Of course, mothers in prison do not have day-to-day access to their children and have limited control. They also often have boat loads of guilt about being in prison and how that is affecting their child.
In my daily life parenting two boys I delight in the joy they bring to my husband and me but am also amazed at how challenging the role of mother can be. I say this as someone who has the benefits of education, a happy marriage, and safe environment to raise my children. What if I had none of these things? Is it possible to remain close to children from prison?
Every day I hear people who see the world definitively in black and white. In contrast, I believe many of life’s situations are somewhere in the complicated, gray area where problems are not easy to define or solve. Of course, there are the occasional exceptions, but generally speaking, regardless of why the mother is in prison, it can only benefit all concerned to allow a mother to nurture and possibly strengthen the relationship with her child.
My goal in making the film is to illuminate and raise the level of discussion regarding incarceration. Over the past several years, with the permission of the NY State Department of Corrections I have visited incarcerated women and their families in an effort to document their stories and have their voices heard. Mothers of Bedford gives us a look at a life that most of us know very little about. It has been a transforming experience for me, as I hope it will be for those who watch the film.
Mothers of Bedford is showing at Madison Art Cinemas February 17th @ 7:45 followed by a Q&A with the filmmaker, Jenifer McShane. Jenifer lives in Guilford with her husband and two sons.
This brings to mind so many repercussions for the families once a mother is incarcerated. For the children, especially if the Mother is unmarried, or has no partner living in the home, everything changes, as child loses their Mother, they lose their home as well. Very disturbing. I can only imagine the pain of both Mother and child.
Excellent issue and I look forward to the screening.
A personal reflection of a child born in prison.
It was a typical hot spring day in April in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1987. We had
had our daily 30-minute rain, and the streets were steaming and quickly drying so all the
Bottom children could reconvene to their normal activities: roly-poly, touch football, or
hide-n-go-seek. I was a chubby, gap-toothed, eight-year-old, and my other three siblings
at the time were slender and fit, twelve, ten, and four-year-olds. I was always different
from them. As I was the one “just like my mammy” as I was often reminded whenever
my behavior was not suitable for a little southern A.M.E. Zion church girl, or when I was
acting “like a Phillips.” Whatever this behavior encompassed, I displayed it on a daily
basis. On this particular day, I was to meet my match – someone who would not put up
with my intolerable behavior and ungrateful attitude. This “bad mamma jamma” would
“tear my a– up” because that is what she liked to do. My birth mother, Irene Yvonne
Phillips, or Mean Rene, as the neighborhood, and everyone else who seemed to hold on to their glorious high school days affectionately knew her, was guaranteed to straighten me out.
I remembered when she entered my grandma’s house. Her image was nothing like what I imagined or possibly remembered. She looked nothing like me. In fact, she looked like my older brother and sister, Bardenie and Cardennia. She was a dark almond, petite
figure, standing about 5’7 inches tall; with soft reddish-brown eyes and nappy corn rowed
hair that was 10 years overdue for a perm. Surprisingly, she was pretty, and even more
shocking; she was pregnant! I thought to myself, while making a screw face, “She is not
like me at all,” or more specifically – I am not like her at all.
For days we had been expecting her. Mama Hazel and Uncle Alvin had
encouraged us to clean up and look presentable. The most memorable part of their
behavior was their efforts to get us excited. They told us stories about her, and sometimes
threatened our behavior with the stories. Mama cooked up a big meal, and Alvin gave
Aunt Zelda money to take us shopping for new clothes. Zelda also made sure my hair
was stylishly braided, my sister’s Carefree curl was fresh, and my brothers’ peas were
neatly cut and picked for the early summer. On the day of her arrival, we were to keep
the phone lines free because she would call once she reached the downtown Greyhound
Bus Station, and Alvin would pick her up. I knew when she entered the house because of
my other maternal uncles, Hal and Charles’ warm and enthusiastic greetings. They
laughed and hugged and indirectly beckoned for us to do the same. I do not remember
much of what my siblings’ reactions were; I think for a minute I tuned out my environment. When I was brought back to reality with an inclined baritone pitched
“Traboo!” I went to her and waited for her to hug me. She did. It was tight and
accompanied with a wet kiss that reaped the scent of “Newports in the box” and
peppermint candy. I liked it. I liked it a lot.
This would be the one of many times my mother would come home from prison
or being incarcerated. In fact, this was her third prison release. Her first, and I guess, the
most significant to me, was her sentence to Federal Prison, in 1978, for “3, 6, 9″- three
years, six months, and nine days. The year – 1978- was my birth year, and I, unlike the
rest of my family who brags about being born and bred in Duval County, Florida, was
born in the foreign land of Fort Worth, Texas. I later learned that I was born in a
Methodist hospital that allowed inmates at the Federal Correction Institute of Fort Worth
to deliver on their premises as opposed to the prison grounds. However, I, and those like
me, were denoted from the “normal” infants with a Federal Correction Institute of Fort Worth, Texas, black, ink stamp on the top left hand corner of the back.
Invisibly, the number is still on the top left hand corner of my back. Humorously, my siblings and I often entertained each other with activities exploring our body parts. In a birthmark game, I concluded that everyone in the world must not have a birthmark because I was not born with one. As usual, I was told that I thought I knew it all, and was proven to not know it all because I had once had a birthmark on my back, although it had since faded.
Dazed and remembering my siblings’ firmness, I searched for this “mark” as a
twenty-four-year-old adult. After bringing up the topic to my first caregiver, Aunt Hazell she then informed me of its issuance and significance. I concluded my family must have conjured up a story to satisfy the curiosity of my siblings and inquiries of “nosey niggas” who don’t mind their business.
My mother’s habitual efforts to indulge in unlawful acts resulted in her being
away from her children during most of her early adult life. Ultimately, she was not a
mother, and we were motherless.