How I Got Pregnant While My Husband Was in Prison

Yah Yah

Back in the '80s, the Supreme Court of New Jersey ordered conjugal visits in the New Jersey state prisons.

The state prison had to set up a separate place, away from the general population, for conjugal visits.

The prison took the old death house and converted it into a conjugal visiting hall.

Me

I remember walking up those long steel stairwell steps into that old converted death row hall.

It wasn't well lit, and it was more damp than cold as I walked down that long hall, past open death row cell after open death row cell.

But you could tell the prison tried to do what it could, and the inmates did too, to make it comfortable for their loved ones coming to see them.

You know how you clean up when you know your girlfriend is coming over?

That's what it reminded me of.

They had very little to work with.

Somewhere in the middle of the tier was my husband, standing half in and half out of the cell where we would have our visit.

There was no bed.

Only benches.

And sometimes there was another couple in the cell with you. Sometimes two.

Yah Yah

In prison, there's a code of conduct.

You don't snitch on nobody.

Mind your business.

And during the visits, there was another unspoken law.

If you were coming in there with your children and your parents and all that, you went up front.

If you were there with your wife or your loved one, you went in the back.

This was respected by all.

The visitors who came with family stayed up front. The lovers stayed in the back and looked out for each other.

If the guards were busy up front, some of the couples would stand in the aisle, giving cover to the couples behind them sitting in the chairs, getting it on.