Among Women

by J. M. Cornwell

  “Sure you can. You can sleep on the couch and we can go to work together. We’ll see each other every day.”

  “I don’t think so. It would be too weird. You, me and your wife, won’t that be cozy?”

  “Let’s go.” A guard took the phone and hung it up.

  “Soon,” he mouthed as the guard led her away.

  The guard knocked on the door and Pearl was led back to the quad. Something shifted inside her, a small spark of hope.

  The rest of the afternoon, Pearl was on auto-pilot, going through the motions of playing cards. When Betty talked to her, she was far away.

  Her stories were being read on the radio and printed in the newspapers. Elke and Sarah were gone. They had rolled out just after her stories were mailed. Martha had disappeared and Cap had visited. What would happen next?

  Pearl didn’t want to get her hopes up, but she couldn’t help it.

  An hour after dinner, much earlier than usual, the guards announced lights out. It didn’t take long for the quad to empty and the cell doors to shut. Martha’s door remained open. It was still open the next morning while four guards stood in front of the guard station.

  During breakfast the next morning the lieutenant, a tall, imposing, light-skinned woman impeccably dressed, every seam straight and every crease sharp, announced the Michael Jackson concert would take place before lunch. The women bubbled over with excitement and were quickly stifled when the four guards came through the quad door and flanked the lieutenant, two pair on either side. With a curt nod to the sergeant, the lieutenant turned smartly and left.

  Once again, the cells were cleaned in silence while Martha’s door remained open, her pillow lying on the floor next to the rolled up pallet by the door. The women mopping the lower tier hallway avoided getting too near the door.

  The women settled on their usual perches, hands folded in their laps or on the tables, eyes trained on the quad door. Betty dealt cards and slid her pen and a piece of paper in front of Pearl. “You keep score,” she said.

  Pearl hesitated before picking up the pen. Betty nodded. Pearl picked up the pen and wrote the names at the top of the sheet, underlined them and concentrated on the game, her ears trained on the door. She didn’t glance into the guard station lest they were looking back at her.

  She laid down her last card a moment before her name was called to pick up her canteen order. She tried to be nonchalant when she walked up to the guard and took her sack. Her order was short: no pen and no paper. Hers wasn’t the only short order.

  Angela held her bag out to the guard. “I ordered a pad of paper, envelopes and a pen. Can’t write a letter without paper. Where is it?”

  Angela didn’t realize how close to danger she was.

  “Where is it?” she asked.

  “Back ordered.” Deputy Walpole called another name.

  “Envelopes are no good without paper,” Angela said.

  “Move it or lose it.” Deputy Walpole’s hand rested on the mace canister.

  “Ain’t that some shit?”

  The can came halfway out of the leather holster and Deputy Walpole stared down at Angela; a sardonic smile played about her lips. Angela sniffed once and disappeared down the stairs, mumbling and grumbling, shooting angry glances at the deputy.

  Five other women stood in line to complain; they backed away when Angela barreled past and scurried to their seats without a word. No one got paper or pens and no one else complained.

  The women ran back to their cells to wash their faces and put on whatever clean clothes they had before running back to the quad and lining up at the door, ready to go to the concert.

  “Are you going?” Pearl asked.

  Betty sucked her teeth. “Ain’ got no choice. Ain’ goin’ come.”

  “Why would they announce a concert if there isn’t going to be one?”

  “Boo, you a fool for true.” Betty chuckled.

  “Why?”

  Shaking her head, Betty used the last piece of bread to mop her tray clean and popped it into her mouth. “Guards got to clear us out somehow.”

  “So Michael Jackson isn’t coming?”

  Maureen stepped closer to the table. “’Course it won’t be Michael. Maybe his brothers, but not Michael,” Maureen whispered. She winked.

  Betty sucked her teeth. “Jes watch.” A bark of laughter cracked the silence then dissolved into hoarse chuckles.

  Thirty-Six

  Paired guards herded the stragglers toward the door. Betty put the cards into the box and put them in her pocket, following closely behind Pearl. They marched across the hall past the door to the cafeteria into another larger quad. It was a mirror image of their own and it didn’t look like anyone lived there.

  Echoes bounced off the walls. Freed from the oppressive and guarded atmosphere of their own section of the jail, the women began talking, quietly at first and then with more excitement. They were going to see Michael Jackson.

  The guard at the far edge of the quad standing at the railing overlooking the lower tier directed them to sit on the floor, twenty-five to a row. The room filled quickly as women from other sections of the jail sat down behind them. When the last woman was seated, the room was filled from two feet in front of a raised wooden stage all the way to the back, over four hundred women sitting cross-legged on the floor. When the chatter got too loud, a look from the guards prowling the perimeter calmed things down for a while. The volume waxed and waned.

  Next to Pearl, Betty turned to face her, took the cards out of the box and dealt out a game of two-handed solitaire. They played game after game, the room getting warmer as the hours dragged on. Around them, the women shifted from position to position until they finally gave up and sprawled over the floor. Soft snores, interrupted by sharp snorts, were soon the only sounds other than the shuffle and snap of cards.

  Metal clanked against the doorway, waking everyone. Sitting up straight and rubbing their sleep-fogged eyes, they waited expectantly. Instead, boxes of wax paper wrapped sandwiches were handed out, passed from hand to hand; everyone was ordered to take two sandwiches. Pearl unwrapped hers. Bologna on white bread. Mustard smeared the wrinkled wax paper.

  Fluorescent lights flickered on. The lieutenant stepped up onto the wooden stage, trailing a microphone cord. “The Jacksons have been delayed. Please keep your seats for a while longer and keep it down.” She nodded at the far end of the room. “Pass the boxes back and put the paper inside.” She took the microphone and walked off the stage.

  Pearl picked up the cards Betty dealt.

  “They be delayed for true, ‘bout fo’evah.” Betty slapped a card down on the growing pile. “Tole you.”

  Grumbled agreement rippled like a rock tossed in a pond. The room buzzed with disappointment verging on anger until a phalanx of guards reappeared and prowled the edges. They had been duped and Pearl had a good idea why. She found out she was right when they were finally told the concert had been canceled.

  Back in their own quad, it didn’t take long to figure out what was going on. Mattresses drooped onto the floor, desk drawers were open and the contents strewn about. The only cell that was clean was Martha’s, all her belongings gone. Joo-Eun was gone, too.

  The women rushed to their rooms to see what else was missing. Pearl took her time as though she had nothing to hide, her heart thundering against her ribs. From the doorway, mattress and blankets had been tossed on the ground. Good thing she hadn’t hidden the papers beneath the mattress or inside the pillowcase. The pillowcase lay out in the hallway, a boot print clearly outlined on it.

  When she walked into the cell, she saw the desk drawer turned upside down on the bunk shelf. Angela scooped up her things from the floor while Pearl knelt and put the drawer back into the desk, feeling up inside. Her writing was safe. The folded pages were stuck to the top with a piece of chewing gum. The guards had not thought to look inside the desk, just under the drawer.

  She and Angela were still straightening their cell when t
he call for dinner came. No one said anything. They walked through the food line, picked up their cold dinner, ate quietly and returned their trays in sullen silence. The guards were gone, but an atmosphere of fear and distrust hung as heavy as a bayou summer—stifling, breathless and hot. Tempers were close to the breaking point, held in check only by the certainty of reprisals.

  Long before lights out, the quad was empty and all cell doors closed. They had all been cheated. They should have known better, but their anger wasn’t for themselves or for Pearl. They were angry at the guards for lying to them. They felt cheated.

  Pearl felt the palpable shift in consciousness.

  Lainie rolled out that night. Somewhere in the warren of separated enclaves, Martha would join Lainie on the trip to the federal penitentiary where she would give birth, finish her education, get her diploma and rejoin the world.

  Darla rolled out the next morning before breakfast, walking down the hall past the cafeteria line. She glanced up as she passed Pearl, stumbling deliberately to hide her brief touch on Pearl’s hand. A quick grin from beneath the greasy tangles of her hair and Darla was gone, prodded by Deputy Walpole, her full, blood red lips pursed with distaste.

  After the floors were mopped, Pearl straightened her bunk.

  Angela squatted next to her pallet, smoothing the blanket and straightening the pillow, her voice barely above a whisper. “Did you write down ever’one’s stories?”

  “No, just a few.”

  “How ‘bout the ones that got out yesterday and today? You write ‘bout them?”

  “Yes.”

  “You wrote down what I told you?”

  “Yes, but I haven’t had a chance to get it out.”

  “Will you tell someone? When you get out?”

  “I don’t know when or if I’ll ever get out.”

  “You’ll get out.” She sneaked a look into the hallway. “I heard the guard say you’re next.”

  “When?”

  “When I went to get more toilet paper. Didn’t know I was there.”

  Angela hadn’t heard when, just that Pearl was supposed to leave next. “Called you a troublemaker making them look bad.” Settling onto the floor, Angela pulled the stool closer, opened a package of unsweetened Kool-Aid and laid it on the stool. She dug out a spicy dill pickle in a plastic pouch of green juice, nipped the edge with her teeth and slurped down half the contents. She poured the last of the dill pickle juice into the Kool-Aid packet, holding the top closed, shaking it to mix the mess, and then drank it down.

  “Did I tell you ‘bout how I almos’ lost my baby?”

  “When you got to New Orleans?”

  “Naw. I almos’ did when I was hitchhiking. Probably what made me bleed.” She licked the inside of the packet. “Some guy picked me up and we was driving along when he grabbed me. I pulled out the knife and told him to keep his hands to hisself. He tried to punch me, but I wrenched open the door and dove out of the car. Car must’ve been going forty-five miles an hour when he hit the ramp. I jump out and landed in the weeds.

  “When I got up, I felt the blood runnin’ down my laigs.”

  She had limped back to the truck stop, stuffed her panties with toilet paper, got cleaned up and got back on the road. She had to get to New Orleans and that need was stronger than her fear of pain or rape or even death.

  “Don’t matter what Tyrone say. Those are my babies.” She balled up the packet and tossed it into the wastepaper basket. “I ain’t going back wifout my babies.” Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, Angela got up and washed her face and hands, drying them on the towel. “No law gonna take what God give me.”

  She keeled over on the pallet, pulled up the covers and went to sleep.

  Pearl was in no mood for cards or passing another wasted day. She unrolled several sheets of toilet paper, smoothing them out on the desk, took out the pen and wet it on her tongue. Careful not to press too hard, she tried to write Angela’s story. Pale black ink soaked into the thin tissue, obscuring the words, shredding as she outlined the words to make them clearer. She balled up the ruined tissue and flushed it down the toilet.

  She still had the cardboard backing from the legal pads, but it was too difficult to hide and almost impossible to smuggle out. She didn’t have enough saliva to make it work.

  “Maureen, you’re rolling out.”

  Pearl went upstairs to see Maureen leave, and she didn’t take long to leave. Someone must’ve told her she was rolling out today.

  Maureen tucked a tightly folded square of yellow lined paper into Pearl’s hand just before she left, briefly grasping Pearl’s fingers. One of her subjects handed Pearl a paperback book about reading body language. When she removed her finger from between the pages, Pearl saw a square of yellow paper.

  One after the other over the next few days the women slipped her a sheet or two of paper under her tray, dealt into a hand cards, tucked between the sheets of a newspaper or into the hollow center of a roll of toilet paper. Any way they could find to get it to her, they gave up stamped envelopes and enough paper to keep writing. They even scrounged a pencil and a couple of nearly spent pens.

  The prostitutes offered to do her hair, whispering their stories while they sat on the stairs. It was no different from any other day as far as the guards were concerned. Out in the open, next to her in the showers or on the toilets near the picnic tables, they came. While washing her hair in the big sink by the tables or mopping the floor outside her cell, paper appeared and tales were whispered. The bits and pieces of their situations came together on donated paper and disappeared in envelopes under the guards’ noses.

  From her first limping attempts at sarcasm and gallows humor through the endless empty hours of fruitless waiting, Pearl had a purpose. She wrote quickly, recording each story, detailing what she saw every day to provide a window into their narrow world. She tapped into emotions buried behind thick impenetrable walls, no longer merely an observer. She was connected to each of the women through their stories. They weren’t just criminals but people who made difficult choices. They took wrong turns but maintained their basic humanity and they weren’t afraid to reach out to her.

  Education had given Pearl an edge, but it also gave her a tool to help them and herself. She wasn’t better; she was simply different. They no longer offered to share their cons and street smarts, but the essence of who they really were, their dreams and history.

  Pearl wrote until the paper and envelopes ran out before Tuesday morning’s canteen orders. The guards informed them that legal pads were still back ordered. There was no more money in Pearl’s account. The pen she had been given was dry and no amount of spit made it write. It didn’t matter, though. She was finished and she hoped it was enough.

  Angela was wrong. She wasn’t getting out. It was another of the guards’ tricks like the Jacksons concert. Foti’s flunkies—the guards—had closed all avenues, shut off all communication. They had succeeded at last in silencing her.

  Writing had become her lifeline, a way to get a piece of herself back, and it was denied to her.

  She waited for the guards to call her name on visitor’s day, but Cap didn’t come to see her. She was cut off again. Alone. She had nothing left, no goals and no stories to write, just the endless empty hours.

  It had been cruel to give her a glimmer of hope and then so callously snatch it away. No doubt, that had been the point.

  She trudged through the line at breakfast, lunch and dinner, collected her tray and left it on Betty’s table. She cleaned her cell and got back into her bunk between meals, seeking the only freedom she could find by floating away on dark waves of fitful dreams.

  Unable to help, Angela and the rest of the women watched as Pearl retreated further and further from them. No one touched her tray. Betty waited until the last minute before putting it on the cart, hoping she would change her mind.

  Burned by fever dreams, Pearl tossed and turned on the lumpy mattress. The moon rose outside, playing hi
de and seek with the heavy cloud cover, while she drifted aimlessly on the waves and moved closer and closer to the rip tide that would carry her beyond help, beyond the shoals, beyond caring.

  She stopped getting food, rising only to go to the bathroom, stand for roll call and clean the cell. She read the tattered book on body language until the words blurred and her eyes grew heavy. And she watched everyone with the knowledge gleaned from the book. Everyone watched her door, waiting for her to emerge. Pearl didn’t feel like rising to the occasion. She was spent. Her body might not know it, but she did. Her body would catch up—or run down—eventually.

  Tired of hoping, she fell back into the depths where nothing and no one could touch her.

  Her cheeks, once plump and full, were hollowed out. Her body fed on itself as time fed on her soul. When she moved, the few times she got out of the bunk, her movements were hidden in the concealing folds of her clothing. First one and then two and then three safety pins tightened the waistband of her pants to keep them from falling off. She unfastened them when she crawled into the bunk.. She wore only her neon pink silk panties, now only shreds hanging between the elastic in legs and waistband. The bra went into the trash; she didn’t have enough to fill it any more. She drifted farther and farther away, less and less aware of those who came to the cell door and looked in.

  Angela ventured near when she couldn’t hear Pearl’s breathing, one dark hand touching the threadbare blanket over Pearl’s chest until she felt the slight movement. She was still alive.

  While Angela was out, Joy and Letty snuck in. Letty kept watch on the door while Joy crept closer to the bunk.

  “Uppity bitch. Think you better. You’re not.”

  Joy raised a sharpened toothbrush and waited. She wanted Pearl to turn over so she could watch her eyes and see the moment Pearl knew she was dying. A scuffle sounded behind her.

  Letty was grabbed from behind, a hand clamped over her mouth, and dragged out of the way. Betty walked into the cell and up behind Joy, took her upraised fist in a strong grip and turned her around.

  “I don’ think you wanna do that now, boo.” Joy’s eyes widened in fear. “Them what’s on the outside ain’ gonna do you no good in here. Bes’ give that to me.” She held out one hand.