Bandit Queen

by Jane Candia Coleman

  “Ai,” Rosa murmured. “Pobrecita.”

  Tally smiled. “Yeah. Pobrecita. Only I was too dumb to know it. Things went on. The Army moved, and we moved with it, walkin’ and ridin’ in old wagons all the way from Texas across that desert to Arizona. And then one day my mama died. Passed out in her washtub and never woke up. After that I was on my own. Oh, they was nice to me. I was a kid, and homeless, and the colonel’s wife took me in to nurse her babies.” Her face softened at the memory. “They was nice babies, and I loved them. I rocked them in my arms and sang them songs, and never thought about the future…theirs or mine.”

  She pushed back from the table and started to walk, back and forth, back and forth, her heels thudding on the ground like drumbeats.

  “Then the colonel got transferred, and the new man didn’t have kids, so I was out of a job. It was the first time in my life I realized death was just around the corner, and it was up to me to keep him away.”

  Knowing how she must have felt, I nodded in agreement.

  “The colonel’s wife gave me a letter. It said how good I was with children, and she sent me to town to a lady she knew. And the first thing that lady said when she see me was…‘I never hire colored help.’ It took me a minute to figure she meant me. Me! Nobody ever called me that before, and it hurt, but I said…‘Try me for a week.’ And she did, and, when the week was up, she said…‘All right, Tally, you can stay. As long as you behave yourself.’ She had cold eyes, just like a snake’s. I didn’t mind the babies, just her, always waitin’ for me to make a mistake. I had all the chores, too. It was like I didn’t have feelings or a body that got so tired I couldn’t hardly move around. But I stayed. I didn’t have no choice.” She stopped then, blinking away tears.

  I said: “It’s all right. You don’t have to tell us.”

  She turned on me, fierce as a wounded animal. “Yes I do,” she hissed. “You been sayin’ how what’s inside is killin’ me, and that’s the truth. So I’m lettin’ it out, and you gonna sit there and hear it. Every word. Like it or not.”

  She went back to pacing. “I had every other sunday off, and I used to go out in the fields and smell that sweet air, and stick my feet in the water just like a little kid. Sometimes, I’d take me a nap, and, when I woke up, I’d feel like the Lord had just created the world and me in it, and I’d be happy for the littlest time out there with the sky and the water and the plants growing.

  “But one day I woke up and…”—her voice trembled—“and they was four men sittin’ there, watching me. I knew they were trouble and tried to run, but they brought me down, and then they had their way with me. Each and every one. Hard and quick, like they’d do to a whore, and laughing and grunting like the hogs they were.”

  She shuddered. “I can still see their ugly faces. And smell ’em, too. Sweat, dirt, stinking lust. When they finished, they left me lyin’ there. Just went off and left me. Maybe they thought I was dead. I don’t know. But I was scared to move for fear they’d come back and start again, maybe kill me. They didn’t, and I got up and washed off in the ditch, and drug myself back to town. I never said nothin’. What was there to say? Who could I tell? Nobody’d believe me. Not that woman with the glass eyes. So I went on workin’, and then found out a child was coming.”

  She whirled around, staring at us with the eyes of a madwoman. “You think I wanted that baby? You think I was gonna love it? I tried every which way to get rid of it, but it stuck, fastened on me like a snail in my belly. I hated it. And I hated it worse when I got turned out of that house for being a loose woman, not fit to be around white babies. Then I had to steal my food or beg. I had to sleep wherever I could find a place. And that baby was born in a barn in a pile of hay, and no one to care for either one of us.

  “And then, a funny thing. I looked at her, and I saw those big eyes, those little hands and feet so helpless but so sure of livin’…and I fell in love. I never been in love. And I won’t ever be again. Love’s a knife in your belly. It tears out your heart, so’s all you are is skin walking around, and you emptied out. And I was empty. I didn’t have no milk to feed her. I didn’t have nothin’. I went to the sheriff, and he turned me out. That’s right, turned me out like I wasn’t even a person. And all the time that baby screamin’ and hungry, and gettin’ weaker. Both of us fit to die right on the street, and nobody to help. Nobody!”

  She screamed out the word, and I was scared. She seemed like she was in a trance, back on the street, and living the horror all over again. I wanted to stop her, but Rosa put a hand on my arm.

  “Let her finish,” she whispered.

  And so we sat there, side by side in silence, while Tally fought through her nightmare a second time.

  “Seems like then I lost my mind,” she went on. “I went out of my head. I went back to those fields where it all started, with that baby in my arms, still cryin’, but softer, like she didn’t have no more strength. And I looked down and saw the life goin’ out of her, like a door closing, inch by inch, and I vowed I’d make it easy. Why should dyin’ be so hard? Why should a child have to suffer, and maybe live to suffer more? So I put her in the water, gentle as I could, and watched her sink. Her face like a little fl ower, her arms reachin’ out to me like she was sayin’…‘Save me!’ But I had saved her. And that water was like a baptism. She never done no harm, that child. ’Twas me that done it, bringing her into this world that had no use for her or me.

  “And now I’m here, payin’ all over again, and what they don’t none of them know is that I’ll be payin’ ever’ day I spend on this earth. Seein’ it happen, when I close my eyes and when I open them. That baby I loved, and the water takin’ her in. And those men that did it…those men went free. They out there, doin’ to every woman what they done to me. You think that’s fair? If you do, you better start thinkin’ some more.”

  Then she lay down on her cot and curled up as she had done on her first day, as if she were protecting herself from all harm and all memory.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Tally was still sleeping the next morning, so small, so still on her cot that I thought she was dead.

  Rosa put her fingers to her lips. “It’s good that she sleep,” she whispered. “Leave her.”

  In the pale light of early morning, Rosa looked like a statue, tall, with broad shoulders, and a smile that reminded me of a painting I’d seen in a church. I wondered at the change in her. No longer the screaming shrew, she was, instead, someone I trusted, even leaned on. There was strength in her, and compassion, and a natural wisdom that seemed to have its roots in the earth.

  “How do you know so much?” I asked, also whispering.

  She looked from Tally to me with those bottomless, dark eyes, and it seemed as if she, too, was remembering the cruelties of her past, had carried them with her into our cell.

  “My abuela is a curandera,” she said, keeping her voice low. “When I was little, I went with her to the mountains, to the little fields along the rivers to find the herbs, and sometimes I watched while she helped the sick and called out their devils. I learned many things. Many times she tell me that sleep is better than medicines, that our bodies know more than any doctor. You understand this?”

  “I guess,” I said, not sure what she meant or whether to believe in her grandmother’s home remedies.

  Rosa glanced over at Tally. “Yesterday,” she said, “she let out the devil in her. Now sleep cures the marks of his claws.”

  In a strange way, what she was saying made sense, the same way religion made sense, at least to me. Some things you couldn’t see, but took on faith. I had always been skeptical.

  “If she isn’t awake by this afternoon, I’m calling the doctor,” I said.

  Rosa scowled. She hated opposition. “He will tell you the same thing.”

  “Asking him won’t hurt, will it?”

  “It’s a waste of time. Besides, you are asking for yourself, not for her.”

  I laughed. She had a way of sl
icing straight to the truth, uncomfortable sometimes, but comforting, too. I always knew where I stood in her opinion—not a bad thing, in prison or out.

  “I think you like this doctor,” she said. “Better even than your Señor Dan.”

  “You wish I did!” I retorted, seeing where she was headed.

  “Señor Dan is a good man,” she purred. “If you had stayed with him, you wouldn’t be in here.”

  It was, again, the truth. I’d have been on the road, singing with a man who genuinely cared about me. Maybe we’d even have been in a house of our own. There would have been no children, at least not the ones I had. At the thought of Emma and Joe, I stopped dreaming.

  “Well, I didn’t,” I said. “He asked me, but I was too scared to go with him. Frank had me so I couldn’t think from one minute to the next. He had me believing I was dumb and helpless, and without him to take care of me I’d probably die. Then he’d beat me to make sure I knew just how helpless I was. That’s how I lived. It’s different now. At least, I hope so.”

  “For you, I hope so, too,” she said. “And for me. Maybe little Tally was right. Maybe we do not need men like we think.”

  “We don’t need Frank or your Julio, anyhow. We’re better off in here, which sounds funny. At least, we’re thinking for ourselves.”

  “As long as we don’t lie to ourselves,” she said. “Seeing the truth is hard.”

  “Not with you around, it isn’t.”

  She was pleased. I could see it in the way she tried not to smile and failed. “It’s better so,” she answered finally. “You take your life and do what you know to be right, and never mind what they tell you…the old ones, the cowards, the husbands forced on you, the priests who believe you must suffer.” She spat on the floor as if she had tasted bitter herbs. “Suffering,” she went on in a hard voice, “is for fools. I know this. Here, and here.” She pointed to her head, then to her breast. “We three have suffered enough.”

  I said: “I’ve been a fool most of my life.”

  “But no more.” Her eyes burned like candles, and something in them suggested prayer and healing, and for the first time in years I felt at ease, at peace, as if I belonged in a body that was completely my own.

  Happily, I couldn’t see the future, couldn’t know that I, my body, and my self would not be mine much longer.

  That afternoon I sent for Milton Tatum. Tally was still deeply asleep, and I was worried.

  The doctor came immediately, good man that he was, and he asked us questions, some of which we didn’t know how to answer.

  “How long has she been like this?”

  “Almost twenty-four hours,” I said.

  “Why? What happened?”

  Rosa and I looked at each other and spread our hands in a gesture of helplessness. Then Rosa said: “She let out the devil. Now she is at peace.” “Don’t let her die!”

  I pleaded. “Help her, please!”

  “Right now the biggest danger is dehydration,” he said. “We have to get liquid in her, however we can.” He lifted her into a sitting position and gestured for me to bring water.

  Together we spooned it into her mouth and watched as she swallowed. He made sure she was breathing easily, then put her back down on her cot, and turned to me.

  “Give her water, just like we did now. Every hour, as much as she’ll take. And call for me if there’s a problem, or if she seems feverish.”

  “Tally can’t die!” He took my hands in his. They were warm hands, strong, and I responded to the feel of them.

  “She’s undernourished,” he explained. “And bearing a burden of guilt we can’t begin to understand. It’s up to you two to bring her back. And up to her if she wants to die.” His eyes were kind and steady.

  Rosa came to stand with him. “She will live,” she pronounced, her voice deep as an organ. “I tell you this because it is so.”

  The doctor bowed his head. “I’ll come first thing in the morning,” he said. And as he left, he pressed my hands.

  Rosa didn’t miss the gesture. “So!” she said. “It isn’t only you.”

  I wasn’t in any mood to discuss my feelings. “I’ll take first watch,” I said, remembering Joe and vowing to stay awake, regardless. Tally’s death wasn’t going to be on my head.

  “Call me when you want,” Rosa said. “Me, I don’t need so much sleep.”

  Together we spent the night watching, praying, because Tally’s fight had become our own, and, if she died, then something in us would die without ever having the chance to flower.

  We didn’t talk about it. I’m not sure we even knew what we were feeling during those long, dark hours. Knowledge came later—many years later, in my case. All I knew for certain that night was, if Tally went, something in me would go with her, some belief, some raw courage, some dream I hadn’t dreamed yet, but that lay in the years ahead.

  And so we took turns, Rosa and me, spooning water into her mouth, putting damp rags on her forehead, and watching her thin, brown face for signs of life or struggle.

  What I remember most about that night is the voice of the wind, the sand blowing through the iron bars, and how the river, on the rise, rumbled at the base of the prison walls with a sound like distant thunder.

  In the morning, Tally opened her eyes.

  “I been asleep,” she said.

  Our relief was so great that we burst out laughing, while Tally looked at us in amazement.

  “Did I miss something?” she wanted to know.

  “Not a thing,” I answered.

  “Then why you two acting so funny?”

  Rosa took charge. “Because you slept for two nights and a day, my friend. Because we thought you would die.”

  “I might die from hunger if that monkey don’t bring breakfast,” came Tally’s answer.

  I went to the door and yelled for Ed, who came grumbling. “What’s all the racket”

  “Get Doctor Tatum. And breakfast. His patient’s hungry.”

  “Pretty quick with orders, ain’t you?”

  Why was it, I wondered, that he was so destestable? Maybe it took his type to work in a prison, or maybe he simply enjoyed being a bully.

  I stamped my foot. “Just do it. Call the doctor. Or open up, and I’ll go get him.”

  “All right, all right. Keep your shirt on.”

  He walked slowly across the yard, and I vowed

  revenge on him. Some day, I said to myself. Some day, I’ll be out of here, and I’ll find you. Just wait.

  “Why you callin’ the doc? I ain’t sick,” Tally said.

  “Because it gives her pleasure to see him,” Rosa answered. “Be quiet, little one.”

  “Looks like all kinds of things been goin’ on that I missed.”

  “You had us worried,” I said.

  She thought about that for a minute, looking down at her hands that were folded in her lap. “No-body ever worried about me,” she said finally. “Not even my mama.”

  “Well, it’s past time somebody did,” I said. “Way past.”

  She chuckled. “We make an odd bunch, don’t we? Bad women and all sizes and colors.”

  “Color is for enemies,” Rosa said. “Friends see only hearts.”

  Once again I marveled at how she could come to the point. “Where were you when I needed you?” I asked her.

  She made a sweeping gesture with her hands. “I’m here now,” she said.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  I needed her desperately the day Ed Simmons and another guard, whose face I never clearly saw and whose name I never learned, dragged me into an empty cell and raped me. Ed took me by surprise as I was coming back from the prison dentist, miserable from having a painful tooth pulled. My mouth tasted like blood. I was biting down hard on a piece of cotton when he took my arm.

  “Need help?” he asked.

  “No. Can’t talk,” I mumbled through clenched teeth.

  “That’s a relief.”

  I glared at him—always there, al
ways finding ways to insult or touch me. I detested his face, his closeset, pale eyes, and the way he always looked unclean, as if he needed a bath and a good shave. I tried to jerk loose, but, light-headed, I stumbled and fell against him. He took full advantage, putting his arms around me, pulling me close, so close I could smell his stinking breath.

  “Let go!” I mumbled, afraid suddenly, realizing how small I was, how helpless.

  ld;Not yet, sweetheart.”

  I watched his face change as he ran his hands down my body, and I twisted in his arms, trying to run. He only laughed deep in his throat like an animal.

  “Not this time.” He picked me up and started walking, not to my cell but to one on the end that was empty and that looked to me like the entrance to hell.

  I writhed in his grip, and spat out the cotton, and with it a clot of blood that landed on his cheek.

  “Bitch,” he said, and, as I started to scream, he clamped a hand over my mouth, calling to another guard over his shoulder.

  “Gimme a hand here. I got a live one.”

  Oh, he gave a hand, all right, whoever he was, taking me so hard the blood ran down my throat and nearly choked me, after Simmons had rammed his way inside, not even stopping to take off his pants.

  I lay there, remembering Frank and how, when he was in a rage, he would come at me, hard and quick as if I wasn’t even human, thinking of a tree being chopped down in a forest, the axe biting deep, wounding to the core. I thought about dying, but

  death wouldn’t come. What came was pain, anguish, and hatred. Wave after wave of it—hate, hate, hate. I wanted to kill them both. I wanted to destroy the world.

  “You talk, and I’ll deny it,” Simmons hissed in my ear. “I’ll say you been a trouble maker from the start, and I’ll put you in the snake pit till you die down there. You and your girlfriends with you. You hear?”

  I heard, but I lay with my eyes closed and didn’t, couldn’t, answer. Anything I said at that point would have brought me more pain.

  The other guard said: “She’s passed out on us.” He sounded worried.