“I know what you want and I don’t have it.” Pearl gritted her teeth. Never had she wanted to hit someone so much. The vehemence of the emotion scared her a little. She had never been violent and avoided confrontation whenever possible, but at that moment she wanted to slug Joy in the nose.
“We was interrupted yesterday. I waited for you, but Letty tole me they was bringing you a new cellie. Now,” she said as she stroked Pearl’s bare thigh, “how ‘bout me and you gettin’ to know each other better.”
Pearl picked Joy’s hand up, resisting the nearly overwhelming urge to squeeze it until she screamed, and put it back on her own leg. “I don’t have the book and, even if I did have it, I would not give it to you.” She wiped, flushed, stood and pulled up her pants. Joy hopped up and barred the way. Something primal and hot surged inside Pearl. She faced the smaller girl down. Her voice low and icy she said, “Move.” In that one word was the burning force of her anger and all of her frustration. She was tired of feeling helpless.
The silence lengthened. Joy started to take a step forward, a sharpened toothbrush in her hand. Pearl didn’t move. “I’ll cut you,” she said. Pearl stood her ground and Joy’s arrogance melted. She backed up a step. Pearl took a step forward. Joy backed up again and Pearl moved forward one step at a time and Joy kept backing up. “You’ll be sorry,” Joy spat at her. “Just you wait.”
When they were clear of the wall, Joy looked over her shoulder. What small privacy was afforded by the wall was gone. Behind her, the women who had been sitting at the picnic tables had gotten up and formed a solid phalanx that left one way out. Joy turned, hands up, fingers like claws ready to scratch Pearl’s eyes out, and the women moved forward. She glared at Pearl, turned and ran down the wall near the sinks and the women turned en masse watching her sidle around the far side of the quad, past the high windows and out near the stairs. Joy hesitated, looked toward the guard station. The women milled around in front of the station. There was no way for Joy to get the guards’ attention, so she ran down the stairs and across the hallway. A few women stepped from their cells as she passed. Joy ran the gauntlet until she reached her own cell, the way blocked by Maureen, who sauntered up to her, put one arm around Joy’s shoulders, leaned down and whispered something. Joy struggled briefly, nodded her head and went quietly into her cell. Like magic, the women dispersed. Pearl sagged against the wall, her heart racing as the women went back to the tables, dispersing like smoke on the wind. She felt drained, but a warm glow welled up inside her and tears spilled down. Brushing them away, she walked back to Betty’s table, head high and muscles shaking, sitting down as carefully as if she would shatter at any moment.
There was no way to know what would happen next or if Joy was right about her being kept in here until the book was found. It didn’t matter. Pearl had faced her down. What surprised her most was how the other women reacted. Something had changed. It was subtle but it was there. It was over so quickly the guards hadn’t noticed.
Women drifted away to their cells, one by one and in pairs. Angela had not emerged since breakfast. She was still asleep when Pearl tossed the pen into the trash and got ready for lights out. Shoes under the bunk. She got ready for bed, dragged the comb through her hair, and climbed into the bunk.
A faint miasma still hung in the air, barely hidden beneath the odors of industrial cleaners and soap. Maybe it would fade with time and more bathing, lots more bathing.
As the bolts slammed home, locking them in for the night, Angela woke up and talked. Pearl listened politely for a few moments. “Well, good night, Angela.” Angela kept chattering on until her words blended together and became a buzz of sound. Mental and emotional exhaustion took their toll and Pearl drifted off.
Thirty-One
The confrontation with Joy bothered her. It seemed the girl was shut down for now, but there was no way to know for certain. Joy was tenacious or she would not have lasted long; snitches seldom did. She must have some resources or Pearl she would not have been put on the quad with Joy, except that Joy was here before Pearl arrived, at least as far as she could remember. She had no doubts that there would be another confrontation and she must be ready.
A loud snore dragged Pearl back to the present. Poor girl was completely fagged after her ordeal. Looking at Angela curled up on the pallet on the floor, Pearl doubted she had the strength to blow her own nose. It would be amazing if someone that thin could even stand up to a stiff wind.
Roll call sounded and breakfast passed in a blur. Joy kept to herself and as far from Pearl as possible. The air felt tense, electric and breathless as though an impending storm threatened. When it did finally break, Pearl hoped she would still be standing, preferably outside on her way back to the Quarter to safety.
It didn’t take long to finish the chores. It was almost soothing to put everything in its place and straighten the bunk, smoothing the sheet and blanket, tucking in the corners.
“Half dead cat stinking up the place,” Letty said as she passed Pearl’s cell.
Pearl didn’t hear them. She was too busy.
“Best keep quiet,” Joy said. She hurried past with barely a glance inside where Pearl swept the floor.
“Ain’t no one gonna hear nothin’.”
“Shh.”
“Shush yourself. I done heard they had the smelly bitch chained hand and foot to a bed down at Charity. ‘Course they gotta do somethin’ since she done passed out down at Central. With the stank and all, probably took her to Charity to hose the nasty bitch down.” Letty and Joy’s voices faded and Pearl caught the barest hint of what they said and continued cleaning, whistling while she worked.
There was something to be said for regimented order. It had the effect of helping Pearl to order her thoughts. Cleaning was a meditation of sorts that allowed her to concentrate on other things while her hands moved in familiar patterns. Their voices faded and Pearl went back to work.
Angela thumped down on the pallet. “Aww, you done finished it all.” With her feet outstretched and leaning against the wall, Angela’s disappointment was less convincing.
“You could make your bed,” Pearl said. Angela responded by curling up on her side and closing her eyes.
Bringing the mop from the hall, Pearl did the floor and took the mop back, stepping over Angela’s feet and nearly tripping when the girl turned over. Pearl was about to say something when she saw the bottoms of Angela’s feet. They were bruised and lacerated, the pale skin mottled, scabbed over slashes crisscrossing from toes to heels. What had she done to herself?
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said.
“It’s fine.” Pearl flicked an imaginary bit of lint from the blanket, turned and started to leave. Angela popped up like a Jack-in-the-box.
“I heard ‘bout you writing stories ‘bout everyone.”
“Not everyone.”
“Kin I talk to you?”
Pearl nodded. “If you like, but right now I have something to do. I’ll be back later.”
“Yeah, sure.” Angela curled up facing the wall. “Whatever,” she said.
Angela was little more than a darker blot among the shadows even in the bright fluorescent lights of daylight. She melted into the meager shadows cast by desk and stool, becoming another wrinkle against the navy blanket. The black peak of her hair reminded Pearl of Beaker from the Muppets show, but Angela was thinner. She was little more than dried skin stretched tightly over a rack of bones. Her wrists, knee and elbows were callused, rounded knobs. Each bony ring of her throat stood out plainly. The sharp ends of her shoulders were as prominent as the individual bones of her spine and the curving arcs of ribs beneath the prison blue. Pearl vaguely remembered Angela saying she was pregnant, three or four months. It was a wonder she and her unborn child were still alive. Angela looked as hollow as an empty and worn paper sack, her last decent meal decades ago.
Somewhere inside the frail rack of bones burned a passionate fire, something that had kept her going despite the danger to her
self and her unborn child and no matter what adversity they encountered. Right now, the fire was banked as Angela slept, getting up to eat or go to the bathroom. Otherwise, she was barely there and not much of an irritation—yet. Pearl did hope she didn’t repeat last night’s performance, waking up after the lights out to chatter like a deranged magpie. It made sleeping difficult.
“I’ll be right back. Just give me a minute.”
“All right,” Angela said, her words muffled by in the pillow. It sounded as if she was crying.
There was no help for it. She had things to do.
There had been a subtle reshuffle of the usual groups. Maureen and Martha sat at one of the tables with Lainie and Sarah. Some of the other women came and went, kneeling briefly at the ends of the table to join in what looked like a serious discussion. The hair-braiding group on the stairs trickled over in twos and threes to join the confab, stopping at the other tables briefly like bees flitting from flower to flower. Something was definitely up. Only Betty was immune to whatever was going on, playing solitaire, the other chairs at her table empty.
Pearl sat down and Betty shoved a pen and a sheaf of paper across the table. “You gonna need those.”
“I can’t take your paper.”
“Ain’ mine, ‘ceptin’ fo’ the pen.” Pearl didn’t know what to say. “Now, go on and do what you gots to do. You messin’ up mah rhythm.”
Pearl reached for the pages and Betty took hold of her hand. It was a fleeting touch, warm and comforting. She did not look up once from her cards. “Thanks,” Pearl said. She grabbed the pages and headed for the stairs, the way blurred by hot tears threatening, stopping only to collect the rest of the stories from Martha.
“I’m not done with this one. I’ll get it to you later,” she said.
“As long as I get it,” Pearl told her.
When she walked into the cell, Angela stirred, wiped her nose on her sleeve and sat up. “You ready now?”
Pearl settled onto the stool, uncapped the pen and laid it down. “I’m ready.”
“You know,” she said, “all I wanted was my babies. I never thought it would take so long. Frisco be a long way away when you gots to walk.”
“You walked all the way from San Francisco?”
“Didn’t have no choice. Didn’t have enough money to take the bus and I couldn’t wait ‘til the first of the month for my welfare check.”
“You walked all the way?”
“Not all the way. I hitched a couple of rides.” She wiped her nose on her sleeve again and Pearl handed her a Kleenex. She wadded it up in her hands. “Then, when I gets here, them N’awlins cops acted so stupid, pulling me up like that and putting on the cuffs, I didn’t have time to think. All I wanted was Charity Hospital. Shoulda seed the blood trickling down my laigs.
“Guess I best start at the beginning. Shoulda knowed he was up to something ‘cause he was nice to me. Any time a man be nice, time to look for the knife he ‘bout to stick in your back. I shoulda ‘membered.”
Thirty-Two: ANGELA
She stared at the note. A wail deep down forced its way up and out as she crumpled to the floor. “My babies. He took my babies.”
“Miss Angela, please get off the floor.”
Groceries lay scattered across the kitchen floor. A can of corn rolled to a stop under the refrigerator as Angela continued to wail.
“They all right, Miss Angela. They’re with their daddy.”
Tyrone had unexpectedly come visiting all the way from New Orleans. He’d been in San Francisco a month, spending money like he got it by the truck load. He took Nathaniel and Kendall and Angela to Disneyland and talked about getting married. After all this time, Tyrone wanted to get married. Angela didn’t trust him or his motives, not after all these years. He’d never mentioned marriage in spite of their three children and seldom visited. When he did, she ended up pregnant and he ended up gone.
With her cynical side keeping watch, she decided to see where he was headed. He didn’t make a single wrong move and she began to enjoy herself, getting caught up in the fun and excitement. He took her out to dinner. He bought her flowers. She should have known better. With Tyrone, dinner and flowers always ended in trouble—baby trouble.
Tyrone swore he had had a vasectomy but the proof was on the little stick with the bright blue plus sign. Either Tyrone got a vasectomy last week and hadn’t had sex since then or he was lying. If experience taught her anything, it taught her that Tyrone would lie with his dying breath. He was the only man Angela knew who would lie when the truth sounded better.
Tyrone said spermicides irritated his skin and he was allergic to Latex. Not a problem. Angela counted on her diaphragm—until she found a hole in it. It hadn’t been there the last time she used it, but that was more than a year ago. She supposed the diaphragm could’ve been old and worn, except it was new a year ago when she got it.
When it came to Tyrone, she was a fool, a fool who trusted him to watch her babies while she went to the store, a fool that Tyrone played again. This time he left her pregnant and stole her babies.
There was no time to call her social worker or the police. She had to get moving.
“How long ago did he leave?”
Alanna would not look Angela in the eyes.
“How long, Alanna?”
“Hour, maybe hour and a half.”
“I shoulda known something was up when he asked me to pick up his dry cleaning . . . since I was going out.” When it came down to it, how long did not matter. Her car was out of gas and she didn’t have enough money to buy enough gas to get to New Orleans, even if the car would make it. She’d have to take the bus. She knew exactly where he’d go—his mother’s house in New Orleans.
“How much money you got, Alanna?”
“’Bout sixty dollars.”
It wasn’t enough for a bus ticket. God gave her two good feet. “Get it.”
As Angela put away the groceries, Alanna came back and held out the money. Angela counted it and stuck it in an inside pocket of her purse. “Keep an eye on things for me, please?”
“Sure, Miss Angela, but what you gonna do?”
“Go after them.”
“Oh, Miss Angela, you can’t.”
She pushed Alanna out of the way. Sliding a plastic milk crate into place with her foot, she climbed on top of it and dragged her overnight bag from the shelf in the closet, ran upstairs, grabbed an armful of washing and ran back downstairs to stuff them in the bag. “Toothpaste and hair brush,” she muttered. She ran back up to get them.
“Sixty dollars won’t get you there, Miss Angela.”
“It’ll be enough for food.”
“What about gas and motels?”
“Won’t need them. I’ll hitchhike.”
“You’ll be killed or robbed, left for dead like as not.”
Angela jerked open the silverware drawer and pulled out a serrated steak knife. She tested the blade against her finger and drew a ruby drop of blood. “It’ll do.” Then she took off her jacket and hung it up, taking down a heavy Mouton fur coat. That would keep her warm.
“Please feed the cat and water the plants.”
“Yes, Miss Angela, but I wish…”
Angela didn’t hear what Alanna said. She was off down the sidewalk just in time to catch the bus at the corner.
Angela wrapped her fur coat tighter around her slight figure, a wild-haired shadow crossing the Arizona desert along U.S. 10. Right foot, left foot. Keep walking. Each step brought her closer to her babies.
A hot trickle snaked down the inside of her thigh. She was bleeding again, but she didn’t dare stop. Even a moment’s hesitation would drag her to the ground and into sleep. When had she last slept? Five days ago? A week? It was getting hard to keep track of time. Right foot. Left foot. One foot in front of the other. Turn into the approaching headlights, stick out a thumb and keep walking. Don’t stop.
Hot exhaust blasted her, kicking up sand and rocks, as cars passed he
r under the bruised sky. Don’t stop. Keep walking. Don’t think about the yawning abyss of her stomach or the blood coursing down her legs, pulsing in time to her heartbeat. Keep moving. Do not stop. Not yet.
An air horn blasted at her. She side-stepped onto the shoulder of the road, moving forward on autopilot. Right foot. Left foot. Keep moving. Don’t stop.
“You want a ride, lady?”
Angela stopped. The words sifted down through the road dust and stink of diesel fumes, down past the sweat and reek of the fur coat. “Please,” she said, her voice a harsh croaking wheeze.
“Where you headed?”
“New Orleans.”
“Get in. That’s where I’m going.”
The overnight bag dragged across the gravel and drifting sand as she strained to lift it onto the first step.
“Let me help you.” A deep voice rumbled next to her and she jumped. The driver took her arm and helped her into the cab, dropped her bag onto the floorboards at her feet and closed the door. He got back in and checked his mirrors before angling back onto the road. “Climb up in the back and sleep. I’ll wake you when we get there.”
Angela fingered the knife in her deep silk-lined pocket. “I’ll be fine.”
“Suit yourself, but you’ll be more comfortable back there.”
“No.” She glanced at him from the corner of her eye. His attention was all for the road. She tried to remember her manners. “Thank you, no.” She took her right arm out of the sleeve and bunched it up against the glass, leaning into the makeshift pillow to keep the matted fur in place. Her eyes drifted shut, ears alert to any sudden movement. Fighting against the inexorable tide of too many miles on her feet, Angela drifted away where the ache of battered and bruised feet and the hollowed out center of her body couldn’t reach her.
“New Orleans, Miss.”
“Already?”
“You been asleep all night and most of a day. Near suppertime.”
Among Women Page 25
