On the morning Makeda Davis was coming home, her mom, Georgia Davis, cleaned her studio apartment, smoothing a tablecloth over a table and putting out bowls of Doritos and pistachios and a Welcome Home balloon. Makeda’s daughter, Merhanda Pierre, had bought a charm bracelet featuring a heart engraved with the word Free. Later, as the two women pull into the parking lot of Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in Bedford Hills, New York, they buzz with energy: After seven and a half years in prison, Makeda is getting out for good.
Behind barbed wire, the prison grounds (green grass, brick buildings) look dull and still on this rainy November day in 2018. Merhanda, 21, tumbles out of the car, batting at unruly gold K and E balloons (for her mom’s nickname, Ke). Georgia, age 59, clutches her purse, a bit more hesitant. That morning, Georgia looked around her small home, describing how “everything fell apart” after Makeda went to prison. Before, they lived in a much bigger place thanks to Makeda’s salary. “She was the heart of the family,” she said. “Now, it’s like she’s coming back to put the pieces back together.” She paused, then added softly, “Maybe not.”
Makeda Davis on the day of her release from Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in November 2018. (Image credit: Gillian Laub)
Then, a door of the trailer where visitors are admitted—and where, every once in a while, inmates are discharged—opens. It’s Makeda: brown skin, black hair, wide brown eyes, a giant smile. As she walks down the trailer steps, wearing a rain poncho and holding a plastic bag—all she’s taking with her from this place—Merhanda and Georgia run toward her as though pulled by magnets. They move together, Georgia crying and saying, “My heart burst” as she hugs her daughter and pulls the hood of the poncho over her head. Merhanda wipes her mom’s nose. “Hug me, Mama,” she says, and the three women meld closer.
Makeda and daughter Merhanda Pierre in 1998. (Image credit: Courtesy of Makeda Davis)
Makeda, as much as she’s been waiting for this moment, doesn’t know quite what to expect. She was convicted of assault after a 2006 nightclub fight. When she went into prison, her daughter was a kid; now she is an adult living on her own. “I don’t know what life is going to be like after all these years,” Makeda mused a few weeks earlier, sitting inside the prison library at Bedford. She ticked off outside-the-walls things she didn’t understand: Uber, streaming TV, avatars, online banking. “Things are changing so fast—and where do I fit in?”
The first year out of prison is critical for ex-inmates. They’re often leaving prison with little money, uncertain housing, fractured relationships with family, and no job, not to mention the psychological toll of incarceration. “They’ve got to construct a whole life for themselves: Where am I going to live? How am I going to have money in my pocket to eat, clothe myself, get across town?” says Ann Jacobs, executive director of the Institute for Justice and Opportunity at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
Makeda has some sense of how hard this next year will be—but there’s also a lot she’s looking forward to: eating Jamaican oxtail, fresh vegetables, and sushi; decorating for Christmas; a big 40th birthday party. More than that, though, she wants her career back. Before she went to Bedford, she had a good job as a legal assistant for the city of New York. “I think of my daughter; she’s so beautiful, and she has all these expectations. I’m gonna be so hurt if I’m a mom that can’t be there for her child,” she said just before her release. Her eyes reddened. “I have things that I want to do in my life; where I start, I’m not exactly sure.”
Makeda and Merhanda reconnect at Georgia’s apartment in Queens, New York. Makeda hadn’t worn a tank top in years; it wasn’t part of her prison uniform. (Image credit: Gillian Laub)
For now, it’s about getting Makeda out of the rain. Her mom and daughter walk her to the back of the SUV’s open trunk, and she sits between them, a little dazed. Merhanda, tall and curvy with intricate makeup and long braids, combs her mom’s hair while Georgia, petite in a sweater, slacks, and glasses, fixes her bangs. Between them sits Makeda, smiling so wide, her teeth don’t touch. Merhanda snaps a selfie and shows her mom, who stares at it. “I didn’t know that was me,” she says.
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