The Producer: Brenda Watkins

Brenda Watkins is in her 40th year of a life without parole sentence at SCI Muncy. She has produced plays for the people at Muncy, and she was the lead singer for This Is Not My Home, an original song presented at TEDxMuncy. Read her story below and scroll to the end to watch the music video.

I was born into a family of eight in a small town called Hoffman, North Carolina in 1960. We were really poor, but we also lived in a beautiful place. We had a pecan tree in the yard. We had plums, grapes, strawberries, blackberries, watermelon—these things were right there in our backyard. Looking back, I think we took it for granted that we were surrounded by such good fruit all the time that we could just pick and eat and have our fill. 

Linda was my oldest sister. Then there's me, Phyllis and Faye, my brother Lewis and my brother Robert. There were six of us, four girls and two boys. We didn’t have much in Hoffman, North Carolina, but let me tell you: we had each other. Up the hill from us was a cornfield, and you know that hair that comes out of the corn? Well, my sister, Linda and I, we would take the hair out of the corn and stuff it in Coca Cola bottles to make dolls. Those were our baby dolls. It sounds embarrassing now, but it was fun back then. We really did make the most of what we had. 

There was a lot of racism at the time. My siblings and I, we loved to go swimming over at Broad Acres Lake. But when we tried to go swimming, the white folks would often throw rocks and bottles at us. They’d be like, “we don't want you swimming down here,” and they’d chase us away. We really had to go through something just to go swimming. My mom usually left us in the car when we went into town over the weekend, over in Aberdeen or Southern Pines, because if we encountered any white people when it wasn’t our day to go to town, we had to move out the way and put our heads down to give them the right of way. 

I want to say I was maybe 10 when my sister Linda was hit by a truck. We had to go down the road to a cousin’s house to pump water, and we had these big tin tubs we would fill for drinking water. Then we’d fill other tubs for bathing water, and we’d haul the water back up the road to our house. Well, one day, my sister and I were carrying this tub, and we saw a truck coming. We didn’t pay attention to it because we weren’t in the road—we were walking on the side of the road just hauling our water. All of a sudden, I felt the tub snatched out of my hand and saw my sister Linda getting dragged down the road under the truck. When the truck finally stopped, my sister was laying there soaked in blood—blood pumping out of her neck and her mouth. She was in a whole body cast for an entire year after that, a whole year of her childhood. I can’t say if it was racial or not, but the driver was white. 

The situation with my uncle Danny is what did my mother in, though. My uncle Danny was my favorite uncle. He taught me how to drive at a very young age, long before we were supposed to be driving. It was a sad and scary night when we heard my Uncle Danny was killed. All my cousins from down the road were coming around, and my aunt Dale was crying hysterically. We kids didn’t know what was going on, but all the grown folks were in the other room, on the porch, and I remember feeling sick to my stomach. Well, it was later when my mother told me he was killed by the Ku Klux Klan. 

Shortly after that, we moved to Philadelphia. “I'm getting out of this racist ass town,” I remember my mom saying. She had a sister named Maggie who lived in North Philly, and we moved into her apartment. It was a small apartment, and she had three children. With the five us cramming in that made it nine people in a tiny apartment—it was a big mess. It was only a matter of weeks before my Aunt Maggie put us out. I will never forget it: I’m walking in front of my mom, and she’s crying. We’re carrying our two boxes, and that’s all we’ve got—those two boxes. We were at 31st and Clifford Street, and I remember standing in front of my mother like I was protecting her. There was nothing I could do, so I remember thinking that I just needed to stand in front of her fiercely to try to protect her. I was just so helpless. Well, we had one uncle, Ed, that lived in West Philly. My mom eventually called him, and he said, “Stay right there—I’m going to come pick you up.” And that’s how we ended up in West Philly. 

I was enthralled by Philadelphia. It was so bright with all the signs and street lights—we didn’t have anything like that in North Carolina. Then there was the music: nice music on almost every radio channel. And the people! All kinds of different people. I had only ever played with my siblings coming up. At 12 years old, I was this naïve country girl coming up here and finding all these gangs made up of different kinds of people, and gangs didn’t seem like a bad thing in the 70s. I thought it was so cool. 

So, of course, I joined the girl gang. We called ourselves 39 Street because that’s where we were living. I started smoking cigarettes, cutting school, just getting into mischief. I really struggled in high school because that’s when I became aware of how poor we were. My mom did the best she could dressing us, but we had cheap clothes and sneakers. I remember I had this brand new pair of $3.99 sneakers, and I was so excited about my new sneakers. When I wore them to school, I started noticing the kids would break out singing this song when I came around. I was excited. I was like, “They’re singing about me!” I’m basking in all this attention. I had no idea they were making fun of me until one of my girlfriends pulled me aside, and she said, “No, Brenda, they’re busting. They’re busting on you because of your cheap sneakers.” I was mortified. The first thing I tried to do was scuff up my shoes to make them look dirty so no one would know they were new. Then I started cutting school even more. Once I became aware that I wasn’t dressing as well as the other kids, it was just too painful to go back. I dropped out in the 10th grade. 

My mom was like, “If you’re not gonna go to school, then you better get a job.” So, I ended up working in a factory. I was still a teenager, around 15 or 16 years old, working on an assembly line. It was relentless, boring work—getting up early, separating clothes all day on the line. I had a hard time getting up early and staying awake for it.  That’s when a girl on the job introduced me to crank—a kind of speed, like cocaine. 

When she first taught me how to use it, I was snorting it. It burned my nose so bad, but it gave me energy! I was able to work, work, work, work, work. It gave my life a sense of possibility—like I could really do this. Then I met this girl, Crystal; I’ll never forget her name. She was like, “You should mainline this because it doesn’t burn.” She told me I was wasting it. At first, I was like, “Oh my god, I could never do that!” I was afraid of needles, and I kept telling her that I wasn’t into drugs like that. But at some point, my curiosity got the best of me, so I tried it. I will never forget the rush that it gave me—this burst of energy. I was immediately hooked. That’s what started my downward spiral. Then it all happened so fast. I remember the 80s was coming, and it was supposed to have been a big year. Everybody was thinking big changes were going to come. Then it came, and I wasn’t faring any better. 

I was doing drugs and selling my body to get money. Honestly, I was a real scumbag: robbing people, lying, doing whatever I could to get a buck and get by. At one point, I was maybe 22 at the time, living at home because I didn’t have anything. And my mom was like, “Brenda, you’ve got to get yourself together. You can’t just live here under my roof and behave like this.” I was stealing from her and using drugs, even if I tried not to be high around the house. But eventually, she put me out. So, I went to live with my girlfriend, Diane, one of my friends from childhood. We were living in the projects up on 46th street, and I wasn’t paying rent, but we were stealing. We were hustling. We were getting money however we could. That’s just kind of the life I was living from the age 15, 16 to 24. 

I am haunted every day by the actions that landed me in prison. A John had taken me in. I was trading sexual favors with him for money, and he was a good guy. But when I started living with him, he was expecting more, and I wasn’t getting the money anymore because I was living with him. The arrangement had changed, and it just wasn’t working for me. I wanted out of the situation. The actions I took led to me being charged with second-degree murder at the age of 24. I’ve been incarcerated at SCI Muncy for 40 years now and let me tell you: not a day goes by that I’m not haunted by my actions. He was a good guy. He didn’t deserve it. 

The first five years here, I didn’t accept this life sentence. I came in like a wrecking ball, making bad decisions. I was like, “I’ve just got to get out of here.” It was all I could think about, was just trying to escape, because I couldn’t accept that I would never see the light of day outside these prison walls again. My poor choices landed me in the Restricted Housing Unit, and I was a level 4 for a while, which was the lowest level. It meant I didn’t get to do certain things: I couldn’t live in certain units or get work details. My behavior gave me a bad reputation. 

Well, one day, after that first 5 years, I saw this CO, Officer Williams, God rest his soul. I told him I needed a detail to support myself and asked about working over in the school building, doing maintenance work. Mr. Williams said to me, “Not a snowball’s chance in hell!” I had a real bad reputation at that point. Then the next week, I asked him again. That time, he looked me dead in my eyes. He said, “You know what, Miss Watkins? I'm gonna go against my better judgment. I'm gonna give you the detail.” Then he says, “I’m gonna give you the detail, but you better not screw me over or there’s gonna be hell to pay.” I gave him my word, and I never looked back. 

The detail was over in the school building: sweeping the floors, cleaning the bathrooms, doing maintenance work. I took pride in my work, and I was getting noticed for it. I felt appreciated, which made me want to keep doing better. It was little things, like maybe an extra pencil would be lying around, or different color eraser—something we aren’t supposed to have. And I would think maybe it was left lying around for a reason, to see if I would pick it up or if I would report it back. So, I would always report stuff that was out of place. I started building trust, and it felt good. It gave me a sense of purpose for being here. 

What really broke me open, though, and gave me a reason to change was my time in the House of Hope. The House of Hope is a domestic abuse program here in the prison. To be honest, I didn’t enter into it for the right reasons. It was 2005. I’d already been in for about 20 years, had gone through all my denial and troublemaking, and I was settling into the idea that I would spend the rest of my life at SCI Muncy. I wasn’t trying to work on myself in the way programs like the House of Hope required, but I did want to do my bid comfortably, and it was a much nicer unit. 

Once you’re on the unit, you have to participate in all the exercises. The day starts with a community meeting, and then we break out into issue-specific small groups. We each have a big sister that’s like a mentor to support us through the process. And then we get together in the afternoons to make cards for different occasions. They celebrate everything over there—milestones like a clean date, birthdays, anniversaries, any ways we can make each other feel special. There’s also a lot of pain.   

One exercise we did really set me on a new path. We had to write a letter to our younger selves, so I wrote this letter to baby Boo. That’s what I called her. I started telling her how sorry I was that I failed her—that I never gave her a chance at a decent life. It just came pouring out of me, all this sorrow over how I had screwed up baby Boo’s life. I tear up now just thinking about it because I feel so tender for her. I just want to protect this kid that I never gave a chance. It softened me. That’s when I started getting honest with myself and my peers. 

Another turning point was when I produced a play put on by the women. It was a classic: For Colored Girls That Considered Suicide When The Rainbow Is Enuf. All the women in the play were abused. Well, there's this one part where the main character finally decides she’s done with her abusive man. She’s telling her lover, “I’m done,” and she says, “All these years, I’ve been watering this plant for you. Every day for the last 10 years, I’ve watered this plant, and I am done. Water it your damn self!” We nailed it! We absolutely nailed it. And it was moving for the women to embody this self-love and empowerment. I was so proud to produce it because the women were looking to me for advice, for affirmation and guidance, and I stepped up for them because I didn’t want to let them down. 

In the 40 years I’ve been here at Muncy, the women have become family to me. It’s just a given, especially among lifers, that we’re family. When I came to jail, I felt like I was “out of sight, out of mind” for my family in Philly. It was devastating because we were all very close growing up—we were all each other had. So I couldn’t believe it when it felt like my family just dropped me—no phone calls, no visits, nothing. 

Well, my older sister Linda gets pregnant, and she has a little boy named Stephen. When he’s 4 or 5 years old, she reaches out to me, and I didn’t even know she had a son. She was 42 years old when she had him. So Stephen and my other nephew start writing me letters, drawing pictures, and saying, “Can you send this to Aunt Brenda?” That was the beginning of us getting back in touch. 

When Stephen was around 8 years old, I called his mom one day, and he got on the phone and said, “Aunt Brenda, I want to come see you.” I told him I would love that! None of my siblings had been to visit me yet. Every couple years he would tell me he wanted to visit but that no one wanted to bring him, so he said, “When I’m old enough, I’m gonna come and visit you myself.” 

Years later, when he was 22 or 23, he reached out to me and said, “Aunt Brenda, I’m coming.” I was like, “Oh my goodness. This is all I’ve ever wanted!” And then he did. I’m telling you, when he walked to that door, I knew it was him. He looked identical to my brother! He was over 6 feet tall, and I grabbed him and started bawling. I’m hugging him and bawling because when I was hugging him, it was like I was hugging my sister, and my other sister, and my brother, and my mother. It was like he was a stand-in for all of them that I had missed so desperately for over 30 years. It was a good day, I tell you. 

That was the real start of getting to know my nephew, and we’ve been close ever since. He tells me all the time, “Aunt Brenda, when you get out, you know you’re gonna come live with me.” It’s the sweetest thing! He’s a farmer. How cool is that? I tell him he came by it honestly, the boy of a country girl. He loves my stories of growing up down south, and he wants us to go and visit my hometown together when I get out. We have plans to do that. He always says, “Aunt Brenda, when you get out of here, I’m gonna take care of you! You know that.” I’m so proud of him because he’s got a good job, he’s educated, he travels, he’s just so cute. I am beaming even now just thinking about him.  

I'm getting soft in my old age. I cry a lot. I’m so emotional! And I’m like, “Where did this come from?” It’s made me feel really tender toward the women here. We get a lot of new people coming through; there are really young girls, and they’re separated from their children. They often get depressed when the holidays come around. So, a couple years ago, I said, “We’re gonna do a gift exchange for Christmas. Anyone who wants to participate will put their name in a hat, and we’ll all draw names to get gifts for each other—$5 max. Once the girls got their gifts, I sat down and boxed them up, made the wrappings real pretty. 

Then I made 10 different gifts to go alongside them. I don’t smoke, but a lot of girls like these e-cigarettes, so I put an e-cigarette, a soda, and a cup of soup in 10 different packages. I gave everybody that participated in the gift exchange a number throughout the morning, and I said I would call numbers throughout the day. Let me tell you: it was like hitting the lottery! If your number was called, you knew you won a package, and it brought so much joy. It was incredible to give them such joy, for that one moment, to help them forget about all the things they had no control over and just celebrate them. 

I try to embrace the girls who really want to change. Not everybody wants to—they’re on their own timeline. But I try to support the girls coming through here. It blows my mind that a lot of them don’t know how to read; they’re uneducated. Even things like telling time: it’s a simple thing that a lot of girls don’t know how to read a clock. You wouldn’t believe the basic home training that us lifers teach the girls, like making a bed or hygiene. It really concerns me the conditions these girls are growing up in to come through here not knowing how to do these basic life skills. It’s nice to feel a sense of purpose, embracing these girls and giving them some of the support they’ve likely needed for a long time. 

If I get the chance to come home, I would love to get a house. It could be in North Carolina, but it could also be somewhere else: I want to get a house for women to give them second chances. So many of the women I've met here have nowhere to go, and I believe if they’re just given a chance, they’ll blossom. I can see it right now: me and a team of women coming together to help other women, teaching them, keeping them clean. Women are strong. We can make a difference in the world if we’re given a chance. I can see it right now in my heart.