 |
Episode #2007
Loving the Unlovable
Bullock-Brown: Natalie Bullock-Brown, Host
McCalvin: Jaki McCalvin
Sweeper: Queen Sweeper
Bullock-Brown: Imagine your husband or boyfriend is arrested and convicted of a crime that lands him in prison. Would you remain committed to your relationship with him? Well, in a few moments, you'll meet two women who stayed with their incarcerated men and you'll hear their stories tonight on Black Issues Forum.
Voiceover: Funding for this program is made possible in part by UNC-TV members.
[THEME MUSIC]
Bullock-Brown: Good evening everyone. I'm Natalie Bullock-Brown. Welcome to Black Issues Forum. Since 1990, the US prison population, already the world's largest, has almost doubled. According to a Justice Department report released in 2003, the US prison population surpassed 2 million for the first time in our nation's history. More alarming, perhaps, is the fact that about 10.4% of all African American males in the United States between the ages of 25 and 29 were incarcerated at the end of 2002. That is by far the largest racial or ethnic group existing in American prisons to date. That is compared to 2.4% of Hispanic males and 1.2% of white males. With all of those black men in prison, it is no wonder that some black women feel as though their chances of meeting and eligible black bachelor are highly unlikely. However, there is a contingent of women throughout the country who are not losing their men to the prison system because they are choosing to stick by them. We have two of these women with us this evening. I'd like to introduce Jaki McCalvin, author of the book What Happens when Brothers go to Prison and Leave Sisters Alone?, and the wife of an incarcerated man. I'd also like to introduce Queen Sweeper, a minister in Greensboro, and also the founder and a member of a support group for the wives of incarcerated men and the mothers of their children. Ladies, welcome to Black Issues Forum.
Sweeper: Thank you.
McCalvin: Thank you.
Bullock-Brown: Now I want to start off by just kind of summarizing each of your stories. Queen, you and your husband were high school sweethearts right? And you were an honor role, A student. After graduation you entered the military and eventually the two of you married. Within two months of your marriage, you were separated. Is that correct?
Sweeper: Yes.
Bullock-Brown: And your husband had had several run-ins with the law including jail time, so you divorced at that time. Here is where your relationship began what you've termed a sea saw effect. Can you just briefly explain what you mean by that?
Sweeper: It seemed as though we just could not, even though the love was there and we wanted to be together, he had so many things that he wanted to do away from me. And not knowing what he was doing, because a lot of times I'd be home, just as a good girl friend at that time, just waiting for him to come home. He'd come late, and then all of a sudden, different things he would bring home-he would say. His attitude started changing and he started changing. His crowd changed. I realized this is a little deeper and more than I wanted to be a part of.
Bullock-Brown: Let's keep going with your relationship, because six months after you divorced, you discovered you were two months pregnant with your first daughter. But to distance yourself, you moved away to Texas. What did that do for you?
Sweeper: It allowed me to separate from what he was going through. I'm pregnant, this is a different lifestyle now. I'm not just a girl friend; I'm going to become a mother. Well then I thought, the news may have caused him to change, but it did not. So I thought getting away and starting over in a sense, so that I could regroup and learn how to be a mother, because before that time I'd never really had any contact with having a child. So I had to learn how to be a mother and I didn't want to do that in the midst of trouble. I did that, and-not successful, but I think I came a long way with it.
Bullock-Brown: Your daughter is 12 years old at this point, right? It looks like you did a pretty good job.
Sweeper: Thank you.
Bullock-Brown: After many discussions, you decided it would be good for you husband to be with his daughter. And so he was going to join you in Texas, but the night before he was scheduled to come, he got arrested again?
Sweeper: That is correct.
Bullock-Brown: And this time he was sentenced to prison for five to seven years. At this time you were also still divorced. But when he was released in 2000, you decided to remarry him and you were back in North Carolina. You were soon pregnant again. Tell me a little bit about that time.
Sweeper: That was very unusual, but the one thing that was great was that when he did come home, and a lot of people talk about recidivism, but he got a job. He had a job and he began to work. We maintained the home together. We were having fun together. But at some point, even after the child was born, the old crowd came back and he went back to doing those things again.
Bullock-Brown: After your second daughter was born, and she is now three, is that right?
Sweeper: Yes.
Bullock-Brown: Your husband was again sentenced to prison time and he is still incarcerated to this day?
Sweeper: That's correct.
Bullock-Brown: Jaki, it seems that you lead maybe a little bit of a parallel life in that you met your husband when you were also a young woman, right? You were a teenager.
McCalvin: Yes.
Bullock-Brown: And you instantly fell for him?
McCalvin: Yes.
Bullock-Brown: He has been described as a man about town. You found him charming, good looking and popular. And then the first time you realized he wasn't who maybe you thought he was, and that he had had some prior run-ins with the law was when?
McCalvin: There were little things that I noticed. For example, there were pictures that he didn't want me to see, that I realized later were pictures of him actually having been in prison. There are pictures of him with his mom or his parents in prison. He didn't want me to see those. And then he would have conversations with different people and they would say something like, "Oh. Remember when you were in the joint?" And he would totally change the subject or say, "Oh, well. That's when I was somewhere else," or, "In the Y," or something. He would just find a reason to say that that is not exactly what happened. There were just little things like that. But I mean, he was-at the same time, I didn't realize that he had been in prison because he was so smart. He spoke well, he was educated, he was a gentleman all the time. I just didn't associate him with being an ex-con, if you will.
Bullock-Brown: And you decided to stay with him despite the fact that you found out, or suspected at least that he had been incarcerated before?
McCalvin: And I'll tell you one of the reasons why. Unfortunately. Well, fortunately, I'm born and raised in Harlem, but in Harlem you have. I mean, the men that are in Harlem, probably 90% of them have been in prison or have had some run-ins with the law. That doesn't necessarily turn you away from them. You have a lot of the. It's the ghetto. You've got a lot of people that have been out in the street and who had been in different situations. Just the fact that he had been in prison isn't really something that is going to turn me away because of where I was born and raised and what I had been around.
Bullock-Brown: By and by, your boyfriend at the time was arrested for robbery and he was sentenced to prison. And the first time you visited him in prison he asked you to marry him and you said yes?
McCalvin: Um-hum.
Bullock-Brown: Why did you say yes?
McCalvin: I said yes because I always tell people love is not like a light switch. You can't turn it on and then turn it off. I love my husband, I love him very much. I've loved him for years. I knew of him before I met him. He was very popular. When we got together we were best friends. We hung out together. We did everything together. We were partners. People envied that relationship that we had. So here it is, he is in prison, and I just couldn't turn the love off. And so I said I wanted to be with him, whatever that meant. I still didn't know what that meant, but I did, I wanted to be with him. I wanted to marry him.
Bullock-Brown: We are going to go into that a little deeper a little later. But let's keep going with your story. You married him, you said yes. And eventually, you had a child with him while he was still in prison. Is he still in prison to this day?
McCalvin: Yes he is.
Bullock-Brown: How much longer does he have?
McCalvin: About another year.
Bullock-Brown: Okay, so he's close.
McCalvin: Oh yes.
Bullock-Brown: And you wrote a book called When Brothers Go to Prison and Leave Sisters Alone that chronicles your love story with your husband, Eric. May I say his name?
McCalvin: Yes please.
Bullock-Brown: Okay. Now, both of you made the decision at some point, even though you were no longer married to your husband, Queen, to marry someone who you knew had either been incarcerated or was incarcerated at the time that you decided to marry him. We've heard your rational for doing so and why you felt compelled to do so. Queen, tell us a little bit more about what you were thinking about and why you decided to marry your husband.
Sweeper: It is funny, because mine almost parallels her in that you cannot turn love off. You have issues in relationships-even people in marriages now have issues in their relationships. It doesn't mean you stop loving the person. A person asks, "What is love?" Well, who can really define it? When you have someone that becomes your friend, you can share anything with them. I think what draws you closer is, "No matter what I share with you, if you still accept me, that is reason for me to draw closer to you." That is what happened. Even though he'd share with me some of his issues and I'd share with him some of mine, it didn't cause us to go in separate directions. We stuck by each other. That becomes a battle between, "Do I go or do I stay?" And sometimes it is hard to truly make that decision, but you just take one day at a time.
Bullock-Brown: I think that there are probably some of our viewers who would say, "Well, yeah, I wouldn't have stayed with him, girl. There had to have been something going on with you for you to stay with a man that is incarcerated. You can't even see him." What would you say to someone who would question why you would make that sort of decision? Jaki, I'll ask you to answer that. Sorry, just as you picked up your water. [LAUGHS]
McCalvin: What would I say?
Bullock-Brown: Yes.
McCalvin: I would say, "Don't judge. Walk in my shoes." You don't know what you are going to do until you get into that situation. I'll tell you that maybe 10 years ago, you couldn't have told me that I would be in a situation like this. I would have said the same thing, "You have got be kidding. There is no way!" But like we were saying, love just doesn't stop. You just don't know what kind of situation you are going to be in until it actually happens. So basically, that is what I'd tell them. You just don't know. It happens. It just happens.
Bullock-Brown: Queen, what would you say?
Sweeper: Something that fail to realize, and because kids come out of this. I remember, my mom and dad were not together, and I remember at 12 just needing, what I believed was a male role model or a male person in my life. And I began to look at some of the things my daughter was going through. She wasn't a bad child. She is very smart-a very intelligent young lady. But she got to 10 and 11 and I began to notice her really paying to attention to boys. I was thinking that was kind of soon. As I began to pray to seek wisdom, God says, "She is desiring a male companion, which normally a father does" And I had to ask myself, "Am I going to cause me to be so separated from him that I affect my daughter coming up?" What I went through, she could go through the same way, if at some point I don't say, "Let's stop the trend." What caused me to say, "Let me not turn them back," is the love, but also the fact that I had a daughter sitting in front of me and she needed her dad. I believe so many people need to stop and look at, "I have to forget about my feelings sometimes," because some women hate the men and they go on and they say, "I'm sick of this. I'm tired of this." But you have to stop and say, "But how am I affecting my children? What am I doing for them?" That child could probably change if they just had that father-whether it is a boy or a girl, right there with them. That is one of the things that really caused me to sit down and think about where I was going.
Bullock-Brown: Well, before either of you made the decision to marry, knowing what you did about your potential spouses, did you think about the things that kept you in the relationship afterwards, prior to making the decision to marry them? Did any of it cross your mind or was it just, "I'm compelled to stay with this person because I love them and that's it?" Jaki?
McCalvin: I struggled. I'm not going to say that automatically, "Oh my God! I love him! I'm going to stay with him." I struggled with that decision for awhile.
Bullock-Brown: What were you struggling with?
McCalvin: I struggled with one, the companionship-the day to day. The having the normal relationship, having a husband or a boyfriend home with you everyday. I struggled with it sexually. I struggled with it mentally and emotionally having him not available to me the way that he was. I mean, there are all those issues I struggled with. I remember the day that he was in court and I looked at him and I said, "My God. He's not coming home. What am I going to do?" It is almost as if they almost die. They kind of die out of your life in a sense. You have to decide what you are going to do and how you are going to deal with. I had to decide if I was going to just dismiss him totally or was I just going to deal with whatever I had left? He was still there. He wasn't gone totally. I just dealt with whatever we could have.
Bullock-Brown: And Queen, did you think about. Before you had children with him, did you think about, you know, "How can I have children with someone who is incarcerated? They aren't going to be here to help me raise this child. They aren't going to be available for their child?" How did you process that?
Sweeper: Well, unfortunately, you have a lot of people who plan when they are going to have children. I did not. I just got pregnant. And each time, which seems like a repeat. [COUGHING] .excuse me. Each time I found out when I was two and a half months pregnant that I was pregnant. The first time it was a shock, because again, the only thing I knew was that I was single, enjoying life and had a boyfriend. I couldn't make it a sound decision of, "I have this man. Do I want to have children by him?" It is, "No. I'm pregnant by him. What am I going to do?" I battled. I still struggle, even up to today, 20 years after this, I'm still struggling with, "What do I do?" And I had to conclude, and I just heard this expression, "Don't eat the whole elephant at one time. Do it piece by piece." I realize that I have to take one day at a time. There are some days I'm saying, "I need to get out of this. This is just not for me. I've got to go." But there are certain things-the little three year old will do something, or my 12 year old will say something that triggers me to say, "Think about what you are doing again. Rethink about why you are here or why you wanted to go. Is it for selfish reasons or do you see a future?" That is what we fail to do. I think scripture says, "Without a vision, people parish." I can look at what I'm going through now and feel the pain of loneliness and lack of companionship and no relationship, or I can say, "If this occurs, if we plan properly, we can complete this whole picture." One of the mottos of Women with Incarcerated Husbands is, "Fighting for the Family." If I'm fighting for my family, I have to be willing to stick it out and be committed. That is how I've made some of the decisions.
Bullock-Brown: Let me ask you guys one more question regarding your children. Do you have a daughter or a son?
McCalvin: Yes.
Bullock-Brown: All of you children are daughters. What do you tell your daughters now that you have gone through this experience? How would you feel if they brought someone home who later on became incarcerated and they wanted to stick with them?
McCalvin: That would be really hard. It would be hard because I know that the struggles I went through were so difficult. You would not your daughter to go through what you went through, so I don't know how I would deal with that. I would. I mean, I would think about the stuff that I had gone through and I would hope that that wouldn't happen. Because it is a struggle, and like she said, it is a day to day struggle. I mean, everyday, I'll get overwhelmed or I'll go to visit him, and now that I'm in North Carolina, I have to go all the way back to New York. So I go and visit him and every trip I'm like, "Why am I doing this?" I could just walk away. Temptation will say, "You can have somebody else, surely." But like you were saying, I look at the bigger picture. It is for the family. I know that my husband is going to come home and I believe that by supporting him, I am helping him so that he doesn't go back into this revolving door system that is constantly in and out of prison and he'll become the man that he needs to be for his family.
Bullock-Brown: Because you are standing by him?
McCalvin: Because of the fact that I'm standing and he has somebody to fight for.
Sweeper: Ironically, my daughter and I just had this conversation. Again, she was the main reason that caused me to sit and think about this issue and I talked to her about it constantly. I even shared with her how to decide if a guy likes her or not. And it goes back to sometimes if you can build a person up to be strong, they can make a solid, sound decision. Maybe if she meets someone and she starts seeing some signs that I've shared with her, she'll know how to walk away, and she'll have the strength to walk away. Or she can choose to stay. If she does, at least she knows, from what her mother has experienced, what she is up against. She knows what she is going to face. She knows how she is going to be without. She knows that if at some point she gets pregnant, she is going to do it as a single parent. I always stress to her, "Single parenting looks cute to some people, but there are some things that you have to deal with day by day." I said, "If this is what you want, it is your choice, but I'm going to still love you." That is how I encourage her with it.
Bullock-Brown: I think that there would be some in our audience who would probably be amazed at your responses to these questions because I think probably most people, they just would not go through it. They would not be willing to go through it, but as you said, you don't know what you'd be willing to go through until you are in that position. Let me talk about another issue that perhaps viewers might be concerned about. It is a concern. That is the risk of HIV/AIDS. From statistics that we have been looking at, the rate of HIV and AIDS in prison populations is almost four times that of the general population. Since you don't have that constant contact with your husbands or with your ex-husband, you do not see your man on a regular basis. You don't know what is going on in the prison. Do you ever wonder about that? Are you ever concerned about that? Jaki?
McCalvin: No, because I know my husband and I trust my husband. I knew him before he became incarcerated. I do see him. I do have conjugal visits with him. I don't think there is any reason that I would have to worry about that.
Sweeper: I have to admit that I hadn't really thought about it, but it is an issue that I must confront him with or share with him because I do desire that we have contact. Whether or not he has it or not, my thought has always been that they have doctors in prisons and how often are the tested? How are they tested? At the same time, are they allowed outside physicians to help them? And secondly, once they come out, allowing him that full physical. And if that be the case, again, that is just another issue that someone out here has to deal with. They have someone at home that may have HIV. Do you leave or do you stay? That is just another issue to deal with.
Bullock-Brown: Well, it is a very serious issue, but another issue is how are women who are going through this-how are they supported? Where do they get support? Queen, I know that you have begun, very recently actually, a support group for the women-for the wives of incarcerated men and the mothers of the children of incarcerated men. Tell us a little bit about what prompted you to start that.
Sweeper: My first term with my husband was hard because there was absolutely no one to talk to. Again, sometimes if you work in a corporate atmosphere, you don't want to share this, so you become ashamed of it. I realized that first term that I really needed someone to help me through this and help me make a decision. Maybe if I had somebody I could have walked away the first time and there wouldn't have been a second time. But in going through it the second time, I realized there are programs for the men, there are programs for the children, but there is no program for that woman. She is the head of the household. She has the children. But if nobody is supporting her, you risk the chance of the child repeating what daddy is doing. That is when I realized, "Okay. I've been through this twice. It is time to do something. Why sit back and go trough something and keep it to myself?" It is a shame to have to come forth, but I never come forth, who is to say that somebody will? I'm here now. Somebody needs to talk-just to get out what they've been doing, what they've encountered and what they've been hurt by. Why they are there and why they want to leave-what the children may be going through. That is what Women with Incarcerated Husbands is there to do. We need to talk about it. We can't keep silent anymore. We need to let people know we are living in this condition and you can make it whether you stay or go.
Bullock-Brown: Jaki, talk a little bit more about. I know that there are, or I suspect that there are women who will never share with someone that they are actually married to or committed to someone who is incarcerated.
McCalvin: It is just like you said, you deal with that shame. You live that double life. I worked in corporate America for many, many years. And when they would have company picnics or different things were going on, "Oh, my husband is out of town this week." You kind of get creative with your answers, because you are ashamed. You know that society will shun that. They do not understand that. You kind of are alone and you approach it alone. That is one of the reasons why I wrote my book, What Happens when Brothers go to Prison and Leave Sisters Alone. I wrote it because I wanted brothers to know too that when they commit crimes, it is more than just them that suffers. It is more the victims. The victims we always look at. "Oh poor lady that got robbed," or whatever. But we don't look at the fact that we are victims too. Our lives were turned upside down because these men have created these situations and done these crimes. We need that support. We definitely need that support. I didn't know about her organization, so we'll get together. We need each other! But you do. You don't have it. I haven't seen it anywhere.
Bullock-Brown: Tell me, in the last moments we have together, what do you want our viewers to take away from this conversation? What do you want them to know that maybe they didn't understand or know before? Queen?
Sweeper: You are not alone. The bottom line is for those who say, "I still would leave him," that is your opinion. But there are those that are still living it and they still have the pain of it whether they have been there a year or 20 years like myself. There is still the issue of, "I have to share this with my child." Or, if there are no children, "I have to live through this. I have to encounter this." There still needs to be a support to help that person walk through the situation. For the viewers, I'm saying to you, it is time to come out. Let's deal with it. The political parties need to deal with. The presidents need to deal with it. The answer is not building more jail cells. The answer is going to these brothers, going to these men and letting them know, "You are somebody. You don't have to live a life as that." As we build and support them up, then our men can come home and be fathers.
Bullock-Brown: And Jaki, any lessons that you've learned from you experience that you'd like to share?
McCalvin: First I'd just like to say that I want brothers to stop going to prison the way that they are going to prisons. We need to stop leaving these children alone. One of the reasons why men go into prison is because when they were children they didn't have fathers. Perhaps their fathers were in prison. This thing continues to repeat itself on and on. We've got to stop that. Secondly, I want people to realize that it is a lot more of us than you think. We are living this double life. In New York we are educated. We have nurses, we have secretaries, we have traffic officers and all kinds of people that I've come into contact with who will wait for husbands in prison. It is not like we are a couple of crazy people. It is a lot more of us than people realize.
Bullock-Brown: Queen, just quickly, what will your support group offer to women who come to you?
Sweeper: The first session is, "Who am I?"-Women with Incarcerated Husbands is WWIH, and I pronounce it why, because, "Why am in this situation? Why am I here?" We give sessions to help build them up emotionally and spiritually. We are going to have to walk them through the pain so that they can get past the pain into taking steps to start living. Not numbed or emotionless, because some of them are bitter and angry. We have to get it out so that they can start realizing, "I'm here. I'm in this situation, but I want to move on." The group's main support thing is to help you and let you know you are not by yourself, but also to say, "Okay. Let's move on from here.
Bullock-Brown: Jaki, finally, how do you want society to change in order to make the changes that you were talking about earlier?
McCalvin: I just think, like you said, we need to build more rehabilitation centers. We need to not just think that we need to build more prisons because that is not the answer. And in my book-my book is sort of like a support group on paper, because I get to talk about my experience. I go from the very beginning. I want to people to see that I was normal. We had a normal relationship, but things happened. People tend to think that this is not normal, but it starts off normal. We need to realize that this can happen to anybody. That is my whole point. It can happen to you. It can happen to anybody.
Bullock-Brown: Well ladies, I am just so grateful to you for being will to come and share your stories with us. I'd like to thank Jaki McCalvin and Queen Sweeper for sharing their personal and intimate stories with us tonight. If you'd like to learn more about the work of our guests or about prison statistics, please visit the Black Issues Forum website at www.unctv.org/bif. We'd also like to hear from you, so send us an email. Or you can call us on the BIF line at 919-549-7167. Be sure to watch Black Issues Forum every Friday night at 9:30 p.m. I'm Natalie Bullock-Brown, reminding you to stay encouraged no matter what. Good night.
[THEME MUSIC]
Voiceover: Funding for this program is made possible in part by UNC-TV members.
|
