Bandit Queen

by Jane Candia Coleman

  “No-good bitch.” Ed was buttoning his fly. “She’ll be all right. Tough as nails, this one. Needed a lesson. Needed a good fuck.”

  My whole body trembled as I lay there, listening. “A good fuck!” What I needed, what I had always needed, was kindness. Tenderness. Given those, I would have been able to give in return. Where was the man with gentle fingers, loving eyes, the ability to shareff Where was Cal, whose kindness was only a memory? I was lost, a wanderer in the desert that was my home, a woman looking for comfort that glimmered like a mirage, tantalizing and always false.

  Tears ran down my face and mixed with the blood in my mouth. I heard them leave, the two men, but I lay there a long time, too miserable to move, too bruised—heart and soul and body—to care.

  When I finally got up and staggered down the row, Rosa met me. “Madre de Dios,” she said, and her voice seemed to echo off the stone walls and into the night. “Madre de Dios, what has happened?”

  I couldn’t tell her. Not then. I found my way to my cot and lay there in silence all through the dark night, alone as I had never been alone, and, outside, the hot wind, the flight of bats, the smell of the river pushing its way between its banks as those men had pushed their way into me—without thought, without feeling.

  Alone in the dark, I cried until I hadn’t any more tears, and then, blessedly, like Tally, I slept.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  “You don’t understand!”

  In my mind I kept seeing Simmons’s maddened face, kept reliving the shock, the horror of violation. Over and over, I saw it, felt it, as if the first time hadn’t been enough. And further back there was Frank, his face twisted with rage and lust, and Burke in the alley in Phoenix, all of them after, not me, but that entrance to my body that gave them such pleasure and me only pain.

  “No matter what,” I said to Rosa and Tally, “he’ll say it was my fault. He can do it, don’t you see? He hates me, and he’ll take it out on all of us, put us in the pit till we go insane or die. We’re prisoners. We don’t have any rights.”

  Tally bristled. “Rights? Rights? Seems I heard that word before.”

  “Be quiet!” Rosa snapped. “We must think what to do.”

  “Nothing. We’re not going to do anything.” I pounded my fists on my knees. “If I ask to talk to the super, Simmons’ll go with me, and he’ll get me before I cross the yard. Then he’ll come back for you. All I want is to be left alone. To not talk about it and try to forget. And never to see his face again. Never, never, never!”

  I was screaming when he arrived with breakfast.

  “Cut the racket!”

  Rosa, wildeyed, turned on him. “You little cockroach,” she hissed. “Someday I will find you and I, myself, will pull off your little boy’s parts with my hands and stick them in your mouth and make you eat them.”

  In her fury she seemed to tower over him, a dark angel set on revenge.

  “Shut up, greaser.” He shoved past her and plunked down our breakfast, and his tone, his arrogance, the stillvivid memory of what he’d done, turned me ice cold with anger.

  Though I hadn’t ever wanted to see him again, I got up and looked squarely in his face, and, when I started to talk, my voice didn’t sound like my own. It came out hard and mean, the way I felt.

  “I’m going to tell you something, and I want you to remember it. When I get out of here, I’m going to get you. I’m going to make you suffer like you made me suffer. You won’t know when, and you won’t know where, but I’ll get you. So you better be watching your back trail because I’ll be on it. And the worse you treat any of us now, the worse it’ll be for you later. Now get out of here.”

  For a minute nobody moved or spoke, then Simmons grinned, uneasily, because I’d obviously shaken him. I took advantage of the silence to drive home my point.

  “And if you ever…ever…call Rosa a greaser again, it’ll go worse for you. Remember that.”

  He spun on his heel and left, quickly for once.

  “¡Dios!” Rosa exclaimed.

  “Dios my foot,” I said. “I got mad. I got mad at the whole bunch…Frank, Julio, those men who hurt Tally. They all came together, all of a sudden, and he took the rap. I’d have killed him if I had a gun.”

  “But you will kill him?” Rosa looked hopeful.

  “I’ll do something.”

  “And I will help.”

  A month later I threw up my breakfast. When I’d thrown up three days in a row, we sat around the table and looked at each other.

  “You better go see your friend, the doctor,” Rosa said at last.

  “No. I’m all right.”

  “Honey,” Tally said, “you ain’t all right. Least it don’t seem so. Better go get looked over.”

  So I went. And when he’d examined me, Milton Tatum shook his head.

  “How?” he asked sadly. “How, Pearl?”

  “I can’t say.” I sat up on the examining table. “I can’t tell you, and I don’t have to. But I want you to get rid of it.”

  He bent his head. “I’m sorry. I can’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “I took an oath.”

  “Bullshit!” I wriggled off onto the floor and pulled down my skirt. “I don’t want this baby! You hear me? It was rape, and I’m telling you that much so you’ll do something.”

  He took my hands and pulled me close. “Pearl,” he said. “I can’t. It’s against what I believe. Do you understand?”

  I didn’t. He was an idealist, but I was carrying the child of a man I detested down to my bones. Without hesitating, I slapped his face. “You damned fool!” I yelled. “You hypocrite!”

  He refused to look at me. “Yes,” he said. “I am those things. But I value life.”

  “Life!” I snorted. “What you know about life you could fit in your ear.”

  Then I ran for the cell—home, haven, place of refuge where two others understood and shared my grief, my shame.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  After days of thinking, I came up with a solution.

  “We’re getting out of here,” I said. “All three of us. Together. At the same time.”

  “Hah!” Tally said. “You got fine dreams.”

  Rosa only watched me, halfway smiling. “Tell us.”

  I did. “I’m writing to the governor. And to the super. And I’m going to tell them I’m pregnant. That I got pregnant in their sacred jail. And if they don’t pardon me…and the two of you…I’ll make a national scandal. All those newspapers that loved my story will like this one even better. It’s political, and it’s true.”

  “How you mail these letters?” Rosa was doubtful.

  “The doctor. He’s my friend. At least, I hope he is. And when he’s asked, he’ll have to tell them the truth.”

  Rosa handed me paper and a pencil. “Then write. Write for all of us.”

  So I wrote. And Milton Tatum, as I knew he would, told the truth in letters of his own.

  He said to me: “For God’s sake, I’d marry you myself if I hadn’t a wife already.”

  That made me laugh. “I wouldn’t have you. No off ense.”

  “Ah, Pearl.”

  “Ah, Pearl, nothing,” I said. “You’re a nice man, but I wouldn’t have you.”

  He looked ashamed, and I was glad. Once I’d found him attractive. Now he was only another in a long list of men who didn’t live up to what seemed to be their promises.

  “Pearl. The super wants you.” It was Simmons. Always there was Simmons and his evil face. I thought he would haunt my dreams for the rest of my life.

  “What for?” I pretended innocence.

  “He didn’t say.”

  I took Rosa’s hand, then Tally’s. “We’re all going.”

  “He don’t want them. Just you.”

  Hand in hand, the three of us advanced toward him.

  “Simmons,” I said, “I’m not walking anywhere in this prison alone. For good reason. Got it?”

  “Damn you.�
�� He looked worried.

  “No. Damn you. Now let’s go.”

  If Herbert Brown was surprised to see all of us, he didn’t let it show. “Sit down, ladies,” he said.

  My letter lay on his desk, and he looked from it to me. “This is a serious matter, Pearl.”

  A smart retort rose to my lips, but I squelched it. “Yes,” was all I said.

  “Further, Doctor Tatum confirms the fact that you are, indeed…er…with child.”

  The whole situation was horrifying to him. His feelings showed plainly on his face, and also his fear that he might—in fact, would—lose his job if word got out.

  I said nothing, just folded my hands and waited. Beside me, I could feel Rosa’s tension mounting.

  “Can you tell me how such a thing came about?”

  I took a deep breath. “No, sir. I can’t. At least not yet.” “Why not?”

  “Because I can’t.”

  “Are you afraid? Is someone threatening you? Tell me. Perhaps I can help.”

  How could I trust him? I weighed the aspects and decided that I couldn’t.

  “When I’m free…when I’m outside these walls with a pardon, and these ladies with me, then I’ll tell you,” I said. “That’s a promise.”

  “I see.” But he didn’t…couldn’t see. He was a man, and he had never been at the mercy of another’s strength or brutality, never had his person violated by another.

  “I meant what I wrote,” I told him. “I won’t have a child born in a prison. The child is innocent, and I pray it remains so. I want to be released, and I want these women released with me. Otherwise, I’ll tell the whole unhappy story to the papers.” I leaned forward in my chair and put my hands flat on his desk. “And I will do it, Mister Brown. That’s a promise, too.”

  He was silent a minute, probably seeing the newspaper headlines in his imagination.

  BANDIT QUEEN GIVES BIRTH IN YUMA PRISON

  ORGIES IN PRISON SAYS PEARL HART

  Oh, they’d have fun with this story, and it would cost him his job. He knew it, and so did I.

  He sighed. “This is blackmail, as you no doubt realize.”

  “Call it what you like,” I said.

  Again he sighed. He knew when he was beaten. “I’ll have to speak to the governor,” he said. “I don’t have the authority to grant your pardon. Or pardons for these women.”

  I played my trump card. “I’ve already written to him.”

  Slowly he sat back in his chair. “My God, woman,” he said.

  Once again I curbed a smile. “I meant what I said, Mister Brown. I will not…absolutely will not…give birth to a child in this jail or any other. It’s up to you. And, of course, the governor.”

  “It will take a while,” he said. “These things aren’t arranged overnight.”

  “Any time within the next two months will be fine,” I assured him. “After that…well, my condition will be obvious, and I don’t think you want that.”

  “I never wanted women here at all,” he said. “They’re nothing but trouble. As you have proved.” He stood up. “You may go now. And I trust you’ll behave yourselves.”

  His tone was insulting. “Mister Brown,” I said, “I have behaved myself from the moment I entered this place. What happened was not my fault, but the fault of your administration.”

  Then I took Tally’s and Rosa’s hands and swept out the door with as much arrogance as I could muster.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  It was the longest month I’ve ever known, waiting for a pardon that might not come, for a summons to Brown’s office, for a word of hope, any word at all, while trying to hide the fact that I was sick every morning as soon as I looked at breakfast. Tally and Rosa did their best to calm me down, as I alternated between tears and fits of anger.

  “I hate being a woman! I hate having babies! I hate this baby! I wish I was dead!” Like a crazy person I paced the cell, slamming my fists into the stone walls and kicking the furniture.

  “This baby’s gonna get us out of here,” Tally said. “And you don’t hate it. You ain’t even laid eyes on it yet.”

  “A lot you know!” The words burst out, and then I was sorry and said so, forgetting my own misery at the sight of her face.

  “I’m the only one of us does know,” she answered. “And I’m telling you, so’s you’ll feel better. You can’t hate no baby, whatever else you feel.”

  “It’s his, damn it! How am I going to love his brat? Every time I see it, I’ll think of him.”

  She shook her head. “No you won’t. And, besides, maybe it’s the other fella’s.”

  “That’s supposed to make a difference?”

  “No, honey. But I’m telling you that a child is innocent and you got to do for it, come what may.” She put her hands on her hips and faced me, and once again I thought of her as a fierce little terrier, fighting for her beliefs. “You helped me when I come in here and just wanted to die. Now it’s my turn, and I’m telling you what you oughta know. You got other babies, and you hated their daddy, too. He beat you, and he raped you, but when they was born, you loved them, and you love them now. It’ll be the same with this one. Wait and see.”

  “Besides,” Rosa said, “we will all help. It will have three mamas. Lucky little niño.” In spite of myself, I recognized the truth of their logic. I had loved my children from the moment they were born, in spite of the circumstances of their conception and the pains of labor.

  “Damn it, Tally, why can’t you let me hate?”

  “Hate a bad thing. It’ll kill you sure as a bullet in your heart.”

  Rosa nodded. “It’s true, what she says. Me, I don’t

  hate Julio. I just hope never to see his face again. I hope he burns in hell!”

  By this point we were all laughing, Rosa as much as Tally, and me at the contradictions in her speech.

  “Crazy Mexican!” Tally teased.

  “Poca negra,” came the retort.

  “What about me?” I asked. Rosa threw up her hands. “You!” she exclaimed. “Who knows what to call you?”

  We laughed harder. Some time, in the year we had spent together, we had forged a bond, and it was strong, and I knew it would carry us through the hardships of the next years of our lives without breaking.

  At Rosa’s urging, I wrote a note to Dan, telling him we were to be released.

  “He will come for us,” she prophesied.

  “You hope,” I said.

  She only smiled.

  Tally rolled her eyes. “That man’s a rolling stone, and you both past time to go traveling.”

  “And under the terms of these pardons, you will not return to Arizona until the time of your prison sentence has elapsed. Is that clear?”

  Herbert Brown put down the letter from which he was quoting and waited for our response.

  It came quickly. “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. You’ll be released a week from today.” He folded the letter, and it was obvious he was going to say something more. “I regret the circumstances,” he went on, looking at me. “I hope you will not do anything foolish. The governor has made another condition for your pardon, and that is that you say nothing to anyone about what happened.”

  “What if I do?”

  “Then you will be brought back to serve out your term.”

  Three more years! I swallowed hard. “I won’t say anything. I promise.”

  “Good,” he said again, and stood up. “I’ll have street clothes for you and enough money to see you out of the territory. What are your plans?”

  “We’re going on the stage.”

  He looked surprised, then suspicious, as if I’d deceived him. “How is that possible?”

  “It’ll be possible for a few months,” I said. “I have to earn some money somehow, and, under the circumstances, I can’t very well go back home, much as I want to.” I tried to keep the bitterness out of my voice, but failed.

  “Ahh.” To give him his due, he looked genuinely
sorry. He put out his hand. “I regret this happened. More than you know.”

  “Not any more than I do, Mister Brown,” I said, and the knowledge was like ashes in my mouth.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  “Hey, Pearl! How does it feel to be out?”

  “What’re your plans?”

  “Where’re you headed?”

  The newspapermen were lined up outside the prison gates. It seemed there were a hundred of them, yapping like a pack of hounds, their faces greedy for a word, a hint, a smile. I elbowed my way through them, dragging Tally with me. Rosa followed easily in our wake, her head high, her eyes flashing danger at creatures she considered to be peones beneath her notice. But if we hoped they’d leave us alone, we were mistaken. They trooped down the hill behind us, shouting and scribbling on their notepads. Finally, desperate, I turned and faced them.

  “Can’t you leave us alone? Haven’t we had enough trouble?” I sounded like a sparrow.

  And then came a familiar voice. “Gentlemen! She’s going on the theatrical circuit. I’ve got her booked from here to Kansas City. You’ve had Mazeppa. You’ve had Lotta Crabtree. Now you have Pearl Hart, the Bandit Queen, who sings like an angel.”

  Rosa swirled her skirts and held out her hands, while I stood frozen in place, my mouth open. “What’ve you done, for God’s sake?” I blurted.

  “Some welcome!” Dan grinned his familiar grin. “Sweetheart, we’re going to get rich. I’ve got us space on the train to Tucson. And then to Tombstone and the Orpheum in Bisbee.”

  He took my arm with one hand and Rosa’s with the other, but I pulled free, looking for Tally. She stood at the edge of the platform, watching us, fear and longing plain in her eyes.

  “Come on, Tally,” I said. “Where I go, you go.”

  She was trembling. “You sure?”

  “I’m sure. The three of us have to stick together.”

  One of her radiant smiles spilled across her face. “I’ll take care of that baby when it comes. Don’t you worry.”

  Although the unborn child had gotten us free, I still hated the idea of it. And now I had to explain to Dan why his grand tour would have to be cut short. “It’s all yours,” I said to Tally. “Now let’s go, before the train leaves without us.”