“Is it hard work?”
“No worse’n any otha kinda work, just mo’ physical.”
The story of their relationship unfolded.
Calvin had talked Betty into letting him stay with her for a couple of nights, just until he got paid. Two nights turned into a week and then into months. Betty had been lonely and didn’t make friends easily. She had been respected by the men and her boss, but wasn’t really one of the guys. Working every available hour, all she had wanted at the end of the day was a hot bath, a hot meal, time to write letters to her mother and children in Texas and a comfortable bed—maybe even a warm body now and again. Then Calvin had walked into her life and awakened a part of Betty she had believed put away on a shelf.
“Didn’ have no time for no mens. Mens jus’ gets in the way. Turn ever’thin’ upside down and inside out wif they games, but I needed to get me some and Calvin be handy. Too handy by far, boo.”
Calvin had not been easy to lose, even after the boss had thrown him off the site. He had disappeared for days and then showed up drunk one night ready to take what he felt was owed.
“Jes' when I be so glad he gone, he come knockin’ on my door."
Pearl imagined the scene as Betty told her story.
Four: BETTY
Calvin whipped out the gun, pulling it from the waistband of his jeans. "Get over there. Strip."
Betty stepped away and he shut the door.
"Scream and you're dead."
Betty nodded and unbuttoned her blouse.
"Pants first. On the bed."
One-handed, he unfastened his jeans and slithered out of them. "Get ‘em off."
Betty dropped the clothes held in her arms and lay down on the bed.
"Spread ‘em."
She kept her eyes on the gun, her mind a whirl of emotions and suppressed action. He shoved the gun between her legs. The slick, cold metal sight scraped her insides. He jabbed deeper. She grunted in pain.
"Never shoulda throwed me out, ugly, stupid bitch." The gun slid up and down, in and out, faster and faster raking her tender insides.
Betty squirmed away.
"Move and die."
She stopped, her guts churning, muscles tense.
He pointed the gun at her lips. "Suck it." Blood snaked along the barrel, gathering into a thick, dark head ready to strike, weaving hypnotically as it moved closer and closer.
She opened her mouth, tasting salty copper, gun oil and rust, and something more complex, sweet and musky. Her stomach heaved.
Thrusting the gun deeper, he mounted, plunging, driving, grinding her into the silky down comforter. The bed springs squealed. He stroked the gun down over her breasts and belly, weaving a slimy trail up and down the outside of her thigh and back up into her mouth, thrusting between her lips.
Her body betrayed her, pulse quickening, hips thrusting. A moan escaped, tinged with shameful pleasure. Body warmed to the primal rhythm. Nerves tingled. Flesh softened and accepted, welcomed. Her mind cringed from her body’s betrayal, moved away, distanced from shame and disgust, separate from her baser instincts, waiting for the chance to regain control.
The slats squeaked and creaked, headboard bump, bump, bumping the wall faster and faster. He stiffened and groaned, the gun slipping out of her mouth.
Every sinew and muscle tensed. Now! Her hand snapped up and out, wrenching the gun from his hands.
A fist rocketed out and slammed into the left side of her head. Deep inside, he jerked. Hot seed spurted. He pinned her and grabbed for the gun. She held on, clinging to consciousness desperately as she clung to the gun. Another sharp pain burst inside her head. Remember the gun. She hung on, nails tearing and catching on sight and trigger. It was pointed the wrong way.
Digging her heels into the edge of the mattress, she bucked, thrusting one hip higher to unbalance her rider. The left side of her head exploded again. She held on. The last vestiges of her sight were spangled with dark starbursts expanding outward and merging. She bucked, heaved, and bucked again.
They grappled, twisted, fought for control. Betty forced the gun down, thrusting, driving, pushing, shifting and writhing against his greater strength and weight. A muffled shot sounded and then - silence.
The long, slender, black second hand on the wall clock jerked in the empty silence moving along eons stretching into eternity. Her heart drummed slower and slower, losing speed and strength while she lay unmoving, barely breathing. The second hand jerked relentlessly around the hash-marked face of the big institutional clock. One jerk, one breath. Two jerks, one breath. Three jerks, one breath. Four and one. Five and one. Slow and even breaths rasped loudly in the interminable silence. Six and one. Seven and one. The drumming slowed. Breathing crawled and hitched in painful, searing whistles.
Wet warmth spread between their locked bodies, trickling down in a rush of completion, pooling beneath her. She held her breath, waiting for her heart to stutter to a stop, for the big death to claim her.
She breathed in. Exhaled. Breathed.
Screams exploded. Footsteps drummed. The door banged and clattered in its frame.
Inhale. Exhale.
The door crashed into the wall, the knob buried in flaking plaster.
She’d have to pay for that.
The world was fuzzy and her eyelids drifted down, shielding her eyes against the bright, white glare. The warm wet spot spread, cooling beneath her. The room faded and brightened.
I’m not sleeping in the wet spot. She tried to shift sideways, but could not move. Dead weight pressed her down.
Rough hands reached out and yanked the heavy weight away. Like a wet sack of taters, it thumped to the floor. Gentle hands lifted away the heavy steel pressed to her belly, helped her to sit up and wrapped her in soft blue warmth. Beside her, blood soaked the cream-colored silky down comforter. It was brand new, another expense.
The second hand jerked. New wall.
It jerked again. New comforter.
Another jerk. Broken lock.
Jerk. Doctor bills.
The blanket was warm and she was so cold.
Shudders wracked her body, shook her muscles.
She had never been so cold, so tired.
Sleep, she needed sleep after such a long day and a rough night.
Everything would look better in the morning.
Sleep.
Not in the wet spot.
Five
“All I could get my mind roun’ was I warn’t sleepin’ in the wet spot. Never did like that slimy cold ‘neath me. What was worstest be the silence like I’d gone deaf or everyone in the whole world done disappeared and took all they noise wif ‘em.”
"I don’t understand. How could they convict you? It was self-defense. You could even make a case for it being an accident." Pearl leaned closer. She reached out to touch Betty’s hand, but stopped. Indignation and tears warred with a need to offer comfort. She doubted that Betty would welcome pity. It was not pity Pearl felt. It was a connection, a feeling so strong there were no words to express it. Respect? Understanding? Righteous anger?
Here was someone who knew what it was like to be scammed, to trust someone so they got close enough to hurt you.
As much as Pearl found in common with men, she had to admit many of them were jerks. Men like J. D. and her ex-husband used women and tossed them aside when something better or richer or prettier came along. Except for J.D., Pearl knew never to outstay the welcome or suffer a cheating man. She’d been lucky; none of them had come after her with a gun. “It should not matter that you knew him. Rapists usually target women they know. Calvin brought the gun. It wasn’t hidden under the mattress or in a drawer. It wasn’t even yours. You didn’t intend to kill him. He raped you and you protected yourself."
“I killed him."
"And if he had killed you?"
"He probably woulda got two years. Maybe five. He was light. I'm dark."
"But he raped you." Pearl was not sure she wanted to understand, but co
uld not help asking, "How long did you get?"
"Life. Thirty years." Betty turned over another tile. "Gotta pay attention, boo. You goin’ lose."
A life sentence for self-defense. How is that possible? Nothing had prepared Pearl for what she had heard. She had seen a lot in her lifetime, but nothing like that.
As an Army brat, Pearl had traveled all over the world, known different cultures, different climates, different people, and loved it all. She did not love being here.
Betty was a stranger, yet something inside burned to be acknowledged or else why tell Pearl her story? Why blurt it out like that? Betty must have sensed Pearl’s discomfort and fear of her—yes, it was fear—and wanted to make her feel at ease. What was it she had said? Pearl didn’t look like she belonged—she didn’t—like she didn’t fit in her own skin. That was true enough. Her skin crawled at the idea of being locked up. Some adventure. It was certainly one for the books.
All the books she had read, all the stories of prisons and hardship were nothing to reality. If she got through this intact, she could survive, would survive, anything. Pearl turned over another tile and smiled. "Looks like you lose."
Betty dug some papers out of her box of games and held them out. “This be from the trial. Read it.” While Betty mixed, no washed, the tiles for another game, Pearl read.
The trial was a joke. All the neighbors that testified said Calvin had lived with Betty and that they argued and fought. Betty had sent Calvin to the hospital with a busted lip that had required stitches. He sent her to the hospital with two broken ribs and a black eye swollen shut.
One neighbor said that after each fight the squeaking, creaking bed and the headboard banging against the wall were clear signs all had been forgiven. No one noticed when Betty kicked Calvin out because he took off once in a while, disappearing for days or even a week at a time before showing up with flowers or Chinese take-out with an apology. He wheedled his way back in. She listened to his lies and excuses and let him in.
Betty's boss testified for her, but the prosecutor twisted his words. The men who worked at the site told how she got into fights the first couple of days on the job.
"Yeah, they picked on her. It was a joke. Warn't no need for her to go and whup em,” one of her co-workers said.
The defense called the construction boss once again to the stand. "Betty did not start no fights, but she finished every one of them. Working construction, you gotta show ‘em you can handle yourself. Betty showed ‘em."
Things went from bad to worse and she was convicted. Crime of passion. Sentenced to life in prison. Her children, Tisha and Jermaine, would grow up without her. Betty refused to allow her mother to bring them to see her. She did not want them to remember her that way.
"I come here 'cause there warn't no work. Now my kids ain't nevah gonna see me free."
"Don’t they come to visit?" Pearl wanted so much to reach out and take Betty's hand. She clenched her fists on her lap beneath the table.
"Too far to come. Momma don' got no car. Cain't afford no bus 'cause she gotta raise them kids. Ain’t no money for friv’lus things like trips." Betty carefully chose seven tiles. "Pick yo’ seven." Pearl took seven tiles and laid out the double six.
“Best they believe I be dead.”
“Why would you let them think you’re dead? You could be free some day.”
“Not long as things be the way they are. Best they ‘member me lovin’ em, not like this. Ain' right my babies believe they mama a killer.”
“But you’re not.”
Someone tapped Pearl on the shoulder. "Lunch."
Betty laid her tiles face down and pushed them to the side. She got up and walked to the door, the line of women parting to let her go first. Pearl laid down her tiles, got up and stood, rear end against the table, while the women plodded past her. The girl with the withered right arm and nodded. Pearl stepped into line in front of her. “Thank you.” She followed the stream through the food line.
A plastic-gloved hand slopped beans and rice and greens onto a stainless steel divided tray, slapped down bread and one pat of butter and shoved it at her. Red Kool-Aid this time. Pearl didn’t touch it. She'd already heard it was laced with saltpeter to keep the women's baser instincts in check. Hot water, tea bag, and two packets of sugar. She looked up at the sweating servers. "Is there any vinegar?"
"Keep it moving," a guard ordered from the door at the head of the line.
Pearl took her tray and drifted with the streaming current along the corridor and back to the table. Nothing had been touched. No one sat at the other four empty chairs. Betty spooned up beans and rice, and piled greens on buttered bread.
“I thought you said we wouldn’t get another hot meal until morning.”
“Forgot ‘bout Sundays and Wednesdays. Them be beans, rice and greens days. Them kinda foods wif all the starch keep the womens slow and heavy. Better’n cold sammiches.”
Someone snatched the sugar packets from her tray—probably the same girl who took them at breakfast. She took the bread and butter and laid them on Betty's nearly clean tray. Betty buttered the bread, wiped the rest of the tray clean, shoving the folded mass into her mouth.
Pearl tasted the beans. They had a slight vinegary taste. She frowned. Vinegar on greens was one thing and vinegar in beans something entirely strange.
"Pickled pork. Gots to have that to make real red beans ‘n rice."
She ate another spoonful and pushed the tray toward Betty.
“Tuna sammiches tonight. Ain’t gonna get no mo’ hot food till breakfus'. Bes’ eat. Gonna be cold tonight. 'Nother ice storm." She pushed the tray away and Pearl ate slowly. It was not half bad, but she really wasn’t hungry. "Gotta keep up yo' strength for when ya get out." Betty turned the tiles up. "Got a good hand this time."
Pearl checked her tiles while she finished eating.
Betty took the empty trays and, without looking up, handed them to the girl with the withered arm when she walked past.
Day and night were the same. Minutes and hours lost their meaning. How did they stand it? Even the short time she’d been inside, she was beginning to drift with the tides, losing track of the hours. How did they do it? How did they cope?
For them, the days followed in seamless procession, punctuated only by food. The days were counted by the meals. Hot in the morning and at lunch on Wednesdays and Sundays, cold at supper. Get up. Roll call. Breakfast. Clean the cell. Change the linens twice a week: Wednesdays and Sundays. Play checkers or dominoes or cards. Braid hair. Sneak around for sex. Lunch. Play more checkers or dominoes or cards. Supper. More checkers. More dominoes. More cards. Some occasionally read books, the same tattered paperbacks over and over. The faces changed from time to time: new in, old out, sometimes old on a return trip.
The monotony was numbing. Didn’t they care that life was passing them by? Did they think of it as a paid vacation with three meals and a safe place to sleep?
The guard with the clipboard appeared in the doorway and called out a name. "You're rolling out." Smiles, laughs, groans of disappointment. Pearl’s heart leapt as the guard looked over the list, clunking like a heavy stone into the pit of her stomach when her name was not called. Someone else was getting out, but it wasn’t her.
Dinner was cold bologna sandwiches and a dazzling choice of condiments: mayo, catsup and mustard. No salad, no hot food, and no hot tea or coffee, just Kool-Aid or milk, and no hot water. Pearl took the milk and set it on the end of the table where it was quickly snatched up.
Two cold bologna sandwiches with thin, vinegary mustard, tasting more of salt than mustard, slathered over bland bread and blander bologna left a film of grease on the roof of her mouth and over her tongue. The sandwiches reminded her of her first night in the holding cell. That night a guard had tossed in a bag filled with stale white bread and cold congealed fat with a faint memory of meat. It had stuck in her throat and landed with a thud like a cement plug in her stomach. The way one woman ripped open t
he bag and shared out the wax paper wrapped bundles was like she was serving out gourmet fare.
Pearl had been hungry enough to eat half of the first sandwich. Once it hit her stomach, it felt like a lump of cement. The rest she put on the bench. The hippie girl with the withered arm scooped it up and into the crook of her arm, holding it close. As soon as she shoved the last dried crust into her mouth, Pearl’s share followed it.
Having known hunger and how good food tasted after a day or two of fasting, Pearl was surprised that the bologna sandwiches hadn’t tasted better. Even though she didn’t like the taste of beer, when her friends told her beer would help replenish fluids lost after donating plasma, she tried it. They were right; beer did taste good, just not for long. It’s the reason she gave up drinking beer at eighteen, giving away the cases of beer she had won playing the electronic trivia game at the neighborhood bar in Ft. Lauderdale. The only reason she played was to keep her memory sharp. The case of beer was a bonus quickly dispersed to whomever wanted it. It was not so much the taste of beer but the aftertaste: the Russian army tramping across the Volga River at low tide and across her tongue where furry green things took root and spread. Yuck.
Beer was not one of the drinks offered inside. She felt pallid and washed out. How else would she feel where the sun never shone and fluorescent lights buzzed and blinked? Right at that moment, a cold frothy beer sounded really good. She’d bear with the aftertaste, anything for a bit of normalcy. When she got out the first thing she wanted was a cheap beer. She would go to bed early so she could be at work early. At that moment, the only thing on her mind was her job. It was all that mattered.
For now, listening to Betty talk about her kids and how she only wrote to them for holidays, birthdays and milestones in their lives made her sad, almost sad enough to write her family. That wouldn’t happen without paper and a pen. She had no money and nothing to barter. Paper and pens were as precious as diamonds or gold. No one gave them up without something of equal worth to trade. Sex was not an option.
Among Women Page 4
