The bus packed with visitors rolled down the paved road into the gated confines of Angola. Delia engaged in a conversation with a girl from Kansas. She was such a pale girl, the kind of plump face that was outlined in pink around every orifice. White hair, too, lips painted in place with pencil and glossed like varnish. Her face was softened with tiny white hairs. She was visiting her husband and introduced herself as Virgie.
I had forgotten to tell Delia how to talk to prison visitors.
“What did your husband do?” Delia asked her.
Several women glanced at Delia and then the young woman with white hair.
“Who are you visiting?” Virgie asked, evading the question.
“He’s a half brother. We don’t know him too well, but he’s a lifer,” said Delia, although that was not true.
“Do you visit often?” I asked.
“Twice a month, all that’s allowed. If you come the last of the month, then when the month rolls over the next week you can come back and that makes the visit seem longer,” said Virgie.
“Hmmph!” said Delia.
The bus rolled into the lot next to a gate where prison guards waited for the visitors to disembark. The guards were tall and enticing to Delia. She grinned at one, but he did not return the smile. We were stopped at the gate. One guard gave us instructions on emptying our belongings into bins after we entered the visitor check-in. I choked down headache medication dry and then prepared to surrender my handbag and jewelry.
The group jostled forward, separating Delia and me. She was hitting it off with Virgie and not as interested in me, so she used the occasion to ditch me as was her habit when fresh blood entered the picture. I was stripped of all identification and accessories. The woman taking my belongings made direct eye contact, wanting me to know that if any item not acceptable to her passed that prison wall, I would be at her mercy.
The high ceilings and block walls of the visitor entry room were painted gray, a reminder that I was leaving the world and all color behind. I could distinguish the first-time visitors from the ones who could do the visitor intake-song-and-dance by rote. Show your ID. Clean out your pockets. Remove your jewelry and belt. Show us your shoes, as in, take them off and give us a peek into the soles. Hand over your pocketbook; handbags are still called that in the South.
My guard was female and black, dressed in a uniform the color of the room. She could clean down a visitor of trappings in less than a minute. I would not have defied her but felt the resistance seeping up. I was not a prisoner, but I had to remind myself of that as a means of self-comfort.
Delia grinned at the male guard across the counter.
His badge said, “Guitreau,” and he was as fat as he was tall. “Check in all items. No jewelry or purses, no writing tablets or writing instruments, recording devices, personal belongings, photos, cameras,” he told her.
She held up her arms. “I’m clean.”
His eyes narrowed. “Earrings, watch.”
She touched the watch face. “How do I know I’ll get this back, that you aren’t just going to take it?”
“Henry, escort this visitor back to the bus,” he said.
“She’s new,” I said. “Delia, hand the man your watch and earrings.”
“Humph!” she said. She unsnapped her watch, then slid the long, turquoise Texas earrings from her lobes and put them on the counter.
Inside Angola, Delia lost her power over men. She looked small, standing in the intake room and stripped of her goddess powers. “What do you make of this joint?” she asked.
We fell into line and were led out into the prison yard. There were a few benches and picnic tables. Wives and children gathered expectantly. I tried to find my mother’s brown eyes in the face of each man who filed out into the yard. There were men who nearly ran, but some inward control kept them from bolting and scooping up child and wife in a delirious show of affection.
I sat atop a picnic table, and Delia took the seat beside me. A man in uniform mingled in the crowd. It must have been his job to link prisoners with visitors. “May I ask your names?” he asked.
“I’m Gaylen Boatwright, and this is my sister Delia Cheatham,” I said.
“Prisoner you’re visiting?” he asked.
“Truman Savage,” said Delia. She looked past the prison employee.
A prisoner moved toward us, his ears pricked by the sound of his own name. He walked amiably and smiling. “Baby sisters!” He threw open his arms.
A prison employee escorting him moved ahead and approached me. “Ms. Boatwright, I’m Buddy Fortune, counselor to Truman Savage. Truman,” he said to my brother, “greet your sisters.”
I held up my hand in protest, but Truman put his arms around me. His white uniform had the tang of mildew and bleach. His neck touched my nose. I flinched.
Fortune turned and left.
Truman took a seat next to Delia. “You look just like you did when you were a baby. Blue eyes. Do you still like ice cream?” he asked.
Delia nodded, mesmerized.
Truman’s graying cropped hair was pushed back in the front in a cowlick like mine. Lines gathered around his mouth and, of course, the eyes, brown like Mother’s. While he talked, I calculated his age. If he was eleven years older than me, then he was forty.
But he looked older, like a man in his sixties. His pants bagged at the torso. He was too thin for his clothes.
“Delia, why don’t you sit over here, and then I can talk to both of you,” he said.
My sister complied. I felt the hair rising on my neck. Truman moved next to me. He reached up and touched my forearm as I was still sitting on top of the table. “Gaylen, you have such long hair now,” he said.
“That’s right,” I said. “I was bald when you left.”
“Delia said in her letter that Mr. Syler had passed away. I’m sorry to hear of your loss.” He was cordial, like a church usher. “I hope he left you two in good shape. I know your father and my mom lived on a shoestring. Your daddy worried over money. My father did too, but he invested in oil. It was a good investment obviously.”
“I’m sorry about your loss too,” I said.
Delia covered her mouth with her hand.
“You have to understand the corruption strung out between Texas and Louisiana. The judges are wolves. That’s why I need you to help me. We’re going to need a lawyer,” he said.
“I met a lawyer, and we got his card,” said Delia.
“Sure, we can give you his name,” I said. “He’s a real ambulance chaser.”
Truman said, “We’re family. We have to stick together.”
“Let’s talk like a family, then,” I said. “Do you remember our grandmother, Mother’s mom?”
He said, “We were close. She loved me more like she was my mom.”
“Tell me what you remember about Grandma,” I said. I sat back, watching while he spoke. He never flinched or indicated he was anything less than sincere. But there was a tension in his posture and the way he spoke, his eyes looking past me; it was a speech he was giving me, careful use of language that would draw me in as an ally.
“She loved working in her rose garden. She wore big hats. Her favorite place to go was church. I went to church with her. I memorized a verse. ‘Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?’ She was proud of me.” His eyes misted. He turned his face away and wiped his eyes.
“I didn’t know you were close to Grandma,” said Delia.
Truman settled into his story. “There was this time that I wanted to buy a toy gun. Mom wouldn’t let me buy toys, so I asked Grandma. She didn’t have money, she said. But if I would gather eggs from her hens, I could sell them to the neighbors, and she would let me keep the money. I made a dollar and a half, enough for the plastic pistol. Then an irate neighbor knocked on Grandma’
s door. When she cracked open one of the eggs, it had been fertilized. A chick was inside. Grandma had me pay back the money. She was sorry that I had worked so hard and couldn’t keep the money. Then Grandpa walked up, jangling coins in his pocket.” Truman said to Delia, “Remember how he did that?”
Delia agreed. “He was always jangling coins in his pocket.”
I was suddenly observing a story about a stranger’s family, while Delia absorbed it all as fact.
“He paid me the difference, and I got the pistol.” He grew quieter. “But Mom accused me of stealing it. I never stole a thing, but she had that perception of me.” He said to me, “Whatever she said, she was troubled. Mom didn’t mean to lie.”
If Delia wanted to prattle on or agree, she held back anyway.
“There were uncles,” I said. “Tell me what you remember about uncles.”
“Grandma had sons and then your father had brothers. There were always uncles underfoot.”
“Do you remember our uncles?” I asked.
He said, “Tell me about your life, Gaylen. What have you done with yourself? You were a smart little girl. I’ll bet you went to college.”
“I didn’t finish,” I said.
“You will.”
“I plan to,” I said, taken off guard. He was encouraging me as a big brother might outside Angola’s walls.
“What do you like to study?” he asked. “And what was your least favorite subject, while we’re at it? Math, I’ll bet.”
How did he know? “Algebra, least favorite. I liked literature.”
“I was awful at math too,” he said. At least he was being confessional.
I kept talking. “Mother was awful at math. She couldn’t help with homework,” I said.
“Mama yelled at me when I did math,” said Delia.
“She was a yeller,” said Truman.
“Loud,” said Delia. “Like nobody’s ever been loud.”
“What about boyfriends?” he asked.
“Why, sure,” said Delia.
“I married a pilot,” I said.
“What about your first kiss?” he asked.
I glanced into the prison yard. The families were conversing. Laughter was rising from the gatherings of reunions. “What kind of a question is that?” I asked.
“I remember the first boy that kissed me,” said Delia. “He gave me a hickey. I was twelve. I didn’t even know what a hickey was.”
“I’ll bet you were a good kisser,” he said.
“I’ve been told by more than one that’s true,” said Delia.
“I guess you have children by now,” he said.
“No kids. I don’t stay married long enough,” said Delia.
I did not answer, so he asked me directly again. I told him, “Braden and I are separated. No children. One dog.”
“I like dogs,” he said. “Tell me your favorite pet growing up.”
Delia waved at Virgie, the Kansas girl, across the yard.
Virgie waved her over. “Come meet my husband,” she said.
Delia got up and ran to the other side of the yard.
So as to not cause a lull in the conversation, I answered, in order to hide the prickly feeling rising up my spine. “We once had a lap dog, a yapper, Daddy said. We dressed the dog in our doll clothes. He allowed almost anything. I think it’s because he liked to be touched, so he tolerated doll clothes, bonnets, lace socks.”
“We never had a dog when I lived with Mom,” he said.
“You didn’t have toys or pets. Tell me, what did you have?” I asked.
“It’s kind of a fog. I don’t remember much about childhood. What about you?”
“I remember some of the past,” I said, trying not to give too much away. “I was four when you left.”
“You cried. I remember that. You didn’t want Mom yelling at me. She was mad at me again. She thought I had stolen money from her purse, but that wasn’t true.”
“You must have felt misunderstood,” I said.
He talked more, telling one story after another. I tried to remember a henhouse in Grandmas yard. Her house was in town, not a house where chickens would be kept. But his stories were detailed. I could picture my mother angry and yelling.
“How old were you when your parents split?” I asked. “My mother and your daddy.”
“I was really young. Only four. My daddy wanted custody, but Mom wouldn’t hear of it. She was marrying a man. I don’t remember him. He left her anyway. Then I was ten and she wanted to take me away, to California. That was when she was marrying your father, husband number three. She wanted to go away to live with him. My daddy told her not to take me away. They never could agree on matters, but especially about me.”
I tried to imagine Mother married to Truman Senior. She and my father seemed married forever. I once asked my father how he proposed to her. He told me that she had proposed to him. She jumped into the conversation, arguing that she had asked him his intentions. There was that hint in her voice of something I could not determine as a child. By intentions, she meant that since he was taking liberties with her, she wanted something in writing. I pieced that together all of a sudden. Daddy shook his head at her, his way of chastening her for saying too much. Mother teetered on the edge of saying more than she should while Daddy exercised restraint. I realized now it was because of his family’s disapproval of my mother.
It must have been her need to confess. Sitting in front of Truman, her hinted codes came back to me.
“Did you live in an apartment in California?” I asked, remembering what the aunts told Delia.
“It was a small place.”
“What was she like back then?” I asked.
“Loud. Mad.”
“There was something my aunts said about you,” I said.
He seemed to withdraw. His pupils shrunk. “Which aunts?”
“Renni and Tootie, my father’s sisters.”
“I don’t remember them,” he said.
“They said that my mother neglected you.”
Buddy Fortune walked casually out into the yard. He and Truman exchanged glances, and he walked on past us. Truman’s shoulders lowered. His face relaxed again. “How would they know she neglected me?” he asked.
“Tootie lived two doors down from my mother.”
“What did she say about me?” He was more relaxed, as if he truly did not know.
“That you came to her door asking for food,” I said.
“Was that in Boiling Waters?”
“According to Tootie.”
“One of your aunts hated her. Is that the one you mean?”
They all hated my mother, but I held that thought in reserve.
“When we lived alone, when I was four, we lived in Boiling Waters. There was a neighbor woman who gave me food. Maybe that is when Mom met your father. He was coming to visit his sister.”
He was obviously trying to remember as much as I was.
“Did she neglect you?” he asked. “She wouldn’t though, would she? She seemed different with you.”
“Different, how?”
“She liked dolling you up. She dressed you in clothes passed on by the aunts. But she could sew and make anything look new.”
A piece of Mother’s code floated up. “I like doing for girls. Boys are trouble. I was meant to have girls.”
“What kind of baby was I?” I asked.
“Beautiful. Your uncle, your daddy’s other brother, Rudy, he said you were born with curves,” he said.
So he did remember an uncle. “What kind of thing is that to say about a baby?” I asked.
“He was quite taken with you.”
“Uncle Rudy was gay, everyone said,” I told him. Mother had said it, and also Renni.
“He was kind,” said Truman.
>
“Most of the time, he was gone,” I said. “What do you mean, ‘kind’?”
“He gave me things. Not anything big or new. Just toys. I don’t know where he got them. He was poor as Job’s turkey. Mom was always punishing me.” He talked faster, repeating himself. “I wasn’t allowed toys or my own things.” He started rubbing his hands. Maybe that meant he was growing irritable with his memories. But I didn’t want him to figure me out and clam up. His letter had proven him paranoid enough.
I remembered the dissection kit. “You had a dissection kit. There was a dead frog, and you were showing me how to cut it up.”
“How could you remember? You were only four.” That disclosure flattened his buoyant tone.
“I do.”
“I remember your yellow dress,” he said, and then, pleased with his own ability to recollect, he laughed, “Ha-ha! You were pretty as a daisy. Delia called you Daisy Girl.” He laughed to himself, pleased that he could remember so much.
Delia lingered across the prison yard, yucking it up with Virgie.
“So you remember me at age four. What else?”
“The biology stuff belonged to Mom’s sister-in-law. She used it for her biology class. I think she wanted to be a nurse. She was always reading science books. But she let me have the dissection kit. I wanted to show you and Delia how to dissect a frog.”
“Why would that make Mother angry?” I asked.
“Who knew what was going to make her angry? My existence made her angry,” he said.
“I’m trying to understand her. Can you appreciate that?”
“You’re wasting your time.”
“The woman you knew and the mother who reared me were not the same two women. What changed her?”
“You.”
“What do you mean?”
“You were the first good thing that came her way.”
“But what about you? Why did she not see the same good in you? You were her baby too.”
“She was sixteen. I was the thing that would keep my father around, or so she thought.”
“What do you think your father is doing now?”
Painted Dresses Page 23
