Prison Baby is a revised and substantially expanded version of Deborah Jiang-Stein’s self-published memoir, Even Tough Girls Wear Tutus. Even at twelve years old, Deborah, the adopted daughter of a progressive Jewish couple in Seattle, felt like an outsider. Her mixed Asian features set her apart from her white, well-intentioned parents who evaded questions about her past. But when she discovered a letter revealing the truth of her prison birth to a heroin-addicted mother—and that she spent the first year of life in prison—Deborah spiraled into emotional lockdown. For years she turned to drugs, violence, and crime as a way to cope with her grief. Ultimately, Deborah overcame the stigma, shame, and secrecy of her birth, and found peace by helping others—proving that redemption and acceptance are possible even from the darkest corners.
Foster care? I’d no idea about my life before my adoption or even how old I was at the time or where I lived before then.
I read the letter over and over, these new truths forever im- printed into my memory.
I step back a few paces from the dresser and sink into the folded comforter at the end of my parents’ bed.
Prison? Born in prison? No one’s born in a prison. The worst place, the worst of the worst: prison. And the worst people, from everything I’ve heard in cartoons and seen in magazines and heard from talk.
I tuck the paper back under the liner and float from the dresser into my parents’ bathroom and stare at myself in the mirror over their sink, my body in overload. Time and space distort inside me. I don’t know where I am. My feet seem to lift, my body and brain separated by some wedge, and I’m disconnected from my house, from my neighborhood, from Earth, from humanity.
It can’t be true. If it is, what’s wrong with me? When people find out, then what? Who loves anyone from prison?
My skin itches as if tiny ants crawl along the bones in my fore- arms, and I scratch so hard red streaks rise on my skin. I splash water onto my burning face but give up after a while. I can’t wash away what I know isn’t there, but I feel dirty, as if grime coats my cheeks, hot to my hands. Still, I can’t stop splashing my face to rinse the grit from my eyes. My mouth has a sour taste.
Then something sinks in. My “real” mother’s an addict and a criminal. My “real” home is a prison.
The trauma of learning about my birth sends me into a deep dive, an emotional lockdown behind a wall that imprisons me for almost twenty years. The letter forces me into an impossible choice between two mothers, two worlds far apart. One mother behind bars, a criminal, a drug addict, tugs at me, her face and voice buried deep in my subconscious. The other, the mother I face every day, the one who keeps fresh bouquets of flowers on our teak credenza, I don’t connect with this mother.
I’m not hers. Not theirs.
It’s the first and last time I read the letter, and I never see it again. I don’t need to, for every word is etched in my brain, and it’s given me all the proof I need. I’m not the daughter of parents who toss Yiddish quips back and forth, of the mother who spends her Sat- urday afternoons throwing clay with a pottery teacher, then comes home with darling miniature ceramic vases, the mother who writes poetry with a Mont Blanc fountain pen and uses the same to correct her students’ papers. I’m not the daughter of the mother who cans cherries and whips the best whipped cream ever, the mother who says “I love you, Pet” so many times I want to smack her, the mother who waits for me after my ballet class every Saturday.
Don’t think about it. It’s not true, none of it happened. Not even the letter.
Some things we need to unthink and erase, just to endure living.
Deborah Jiang-Stein, author of the memoir, Prison Baby, and Women Behind Bars, collected interviews, is a national speaker and consultant, and founder of The unPrison Project (www.unprisonproject.org) a nonprofit working to empower and inspire incarcerated women and girls with life skills and mentoring. For more than 10 years, Deborah has championed support for people in need of education, literacy, shelter, and career development. Follow her on Twitter @deborahdash. For inquiries about speaking or partnerships, email info@unprisonproject.org.