Among Women

by J. M. Cornwell

  Joy lunged and Betty bent her back against the desk. “Don’ make me get rough.” She let go and held out her hand again.

  “They won’t like this one bit. Said she gotta go.”

  Betty shook her head and waited.

  Joy thought about going for Betty first and then stabbing Pearl. At least she would get some of her own back. Still gripping the toothbrush, she raised it higher. Betty stepped back just as the lieutenant burst through the door, grabbed Joy by the arm and tossed her to the floor. Without another word, two beefy blonde guards stepped inside.

  “You ignorant fool.” The lieutenant’s voice was tense with suppressed anger. “Get her up,” she ordered. “You’re going to solitary.” She nodded to the guards who hustled Joy out. Letty was already waiting in the hallway between two more guards.

  The lieutenant leaned over Pearl and listened for breathing. “She be all right,” Betty said. The lieutenant nodded and walked out of the room.

  Angela sidled past the crowd at the door and sat down on the pallet.

  Betty went back to her table.

  Pearl slept and dreamed.

  In dreams, Pearl no longer cared where or when the black depths took her. She wanted to disappear. She waited for the waves to close over her head and carry her away. Someone called her name. She didn’t hear them.

  Far from the shore, the words dropped like pebbles into the crash of the surf. The consonants and vowels of her name were weak ripples that barely reached her. On the shore, whoever called her kept calling, dropping bigger and bigger pebbles, disturbing her rest, forcing her to turn around and face the shore.

  Deputy Walpole entered the quad at 10 p.m. carrying a paper bag. The light from the vestibule outlined her ample figure, the Michelin man in silhouette. Her deep alto voice had a hollow ring in the silence. Three times she called.

  She stomped across the quad, down the stairs and jerked open the door. “Get up. You’re rolling out.”

  Angela rubbed her eyes and struggled to her feet. The guard thrust an empty bag at her and banged on the doorframe. “Pearl Caldwell. You’re rolling out.”

  Thirty-Seven

  Deputy Walpole pushed a lacquered curl into place, humming to herself. She was far too happy about something. Pearl was convinced she was going wherever Martha ended up. She clutched the paper bag in both hands. At least they let her pack up the few things she owned: a toothbrush and the cardboard backing from the tablets with the pages sandwiched between. She left everything else for Angela. She rolled up the paper bag, clutching it with both hands as she exited the quad door one last time. She shivered when they passed the room where Deputy Walpole had probed her with sadistic, rubber-gloved efficiency when she arrived. As they walked, Pearl was certain she was going deeper into the labyrinth farther from the green-washed windows and the light.

  Unable to take the silence any longer she asked—and she was answered.

  “The DA refused your case.”

  Why now? After all these weeks of silence, why now? She did not dare ask. Or did she? “When?”

  “This morning.”

  She had been set free this morning and they had waited until nearly midnight to let her go. A flush of anger blazed across her face. She tightened her hold on the paper bag, her knuckles white. “Does it usually take this long to process the paperwork?” Pearl was surprised at how calm her voice sounded.

  “Sometimes.” The guard turned and grinned down at her, wet, dark red lips stretching slowly over teeth as white and straight as newly planted marble headstones.

  “What does that mean, the DA refused my case?”

  “Means you’re leaving.” The guard rolled her eyes and tightened her hands around the thick black leather belt around her ample waist, shifting it higher.

  Pearl didn’t want to probe further. Best to shut up and speak only when spoken to if she didn’t want to end up back in her cell—or worse.

  The elevator door opened. The guard led the way down a short hall and through double doors over to a counter. “Pearl Caldwell,” Deputy Walpole said to the officer behind the desk. She turned on her heel and went back through the still swinging doors.

  The officer behind the desk returned with a small plastic tray and a piece of paper for her to sign. It was all there: birthstone ring, watch and necklace. Pearl put them on and asked how to get out of there. The officer pointed down the hall to another set of doors opposite where she came in.

  She nearly bumped into a man standing on the other side of the doors, lighting a cigarette and inhaling slowly.

  “Pardon me,” Pearl said, “but how do I get to Canal Street from here?”

  He gave her directions and pointed the way.

  For the first time in six weeks, Pearl looked outside where street lights glowed amber in the darkness, little spotlights partially obscured by the heavy rain and wind blown trees.

  “It’s cold out there.”

  Pearl nodded.

  “You got money for the bus?”

  Pearl shook her head.

  “Anybody know you’re out?”

  “No.”

  “Where you headed?”

  “French Quarter.” Pearl checked her watch.

  The man, now that she looked closely at him, was probably thirty, if that. He dug into his pocket and handed her a few coins. “That should get you there and some hot coffee. It’s a long walk to Canal.”

  “I’ll make it.” She didn’t tell him she didn’t drink coffee. Instead, Pearl smiled up at him, resisting the urge to throw her arms around him and hug him. She buttoned her blouse all the way to the neck, pocketed the change and thanked him. Then she pushed open the heavy door and walked out into the ice-glazed night.

  Skeletal trees encased in ice loomed over the street, a tunnel that led from the floodlights of the jail into darkness.

  Pearl fought the urge to check behind her and make sure no one was coming to take her back to a cell. Staring straight ahead, eyes and mind focused on getting to Canal, she began walking.

  The street and sidewalks were slick with freezing rain, so she kept to the shadows under the trees, struggling to keep from sliding on the glassy grass and mud. She shivered from the steady drip, drip, drip of cold rain on her head and down her back, but not once did the thought of going back to the jail cross her mind. She was free. Neither freezing rain nor howling winds would keep her from getting back. Shards of ice drove into her face and slashed every exposed inch of skin. She felt like she had been kicked out in the middle of Ragnarok, but even that wouldn’t keep her from reaching the world she knew, the world of the French Quarter where fantasy and reality rubbed shoulders.

  The bus on Canal would take her downtown. Thank all the gods for great public transportation. From there, it was a couple of blocks to the café on Bienville. Cap would be there drinking one last cup of chicory-laced coffee before walking home. Laura and Leo would be counting their money to see which flea bag motel they could afford. I wonder if they’re sharing the bed now that Chip’s on the oil rig. She doubted Chip would mind since Leo was gay. He was also warm-blooded, like sleeping next to a pot-bellied stove, and didn’t mind sharing that warmth on cold nights. She sped up. She was going home.

  By the time she reached the bus stop, Pearl was soaked to the skin and shivering hard enough to rattle her teeth. Her hair, eyelashes and clothes were brittle and frozen and her skin sickly pale in the feeble light that struggled through the heavy coating of deadly ice. If the bus didn’t come soon, she would succumb to the creeping weariness that taunted her and promised eternal warmth.

  Pacing back and forth in the bus stop enclosure, she rubbed her arms and hugged herself, mumbling prayers to whichever deity was on duty.

  Cars shiny with ice, slick and sleek and looking brand new, toiled against the treacherous winds along the black frozen river of Canal Street, slipping and sliding, fishtailing and sliding from traffic light to traffic light. A bright light chiseled a path through the darkness belching diesel fu
mes—a bus. It stopped in front of her. Acrid exhaust fumes gushed out. She breathed them in and coughed. It stank and it smelled wonderful. It smelled of outside.

  Pearl struggled up the stairs and through the heat barrier to drop her coins into the box and slump into a seat near the front. Her skin prickled and itched, growing pink as the vents blasted volcanic heat at her. Ice melted and dripped from the clotted strings of her hair and onto the grooved rubber flooring. Violent shivers set her muscles jumping, the ligaments snapping and popping as her body was attacked by a storm of stinging, white hot needles.

  Outside the windows, the bus passed through the darkness, windows double-paned—an inner pane of glass and an outer pane of wavy, shifting ice—as the swish-swish of the windshield wipers kept time with the beat of her heart. The fierce glow in the distance grew closer and closer, welcoming and enveloping the bus until it reached the steady beating heart of the city.

  The streets began to look familiar. The streetcar’s double rails curved out onto Canal and headed down the center, bisecting the street. She was close. Almost time to reach up, pull the bell and move to the door. Her heart beat faster as they approached and passed well known street names. She recited their names to herself.

  She pulled the bell cord and carefully made her way to the front doors, stepping down onto the first step as the bus rumbled to a stop and the doors swooshed open. She grasped the cold metal rail and walked out into the rain, stepped back as the bus lumbered forward and waited for the light.

  The smell of spices and warm food and chicory coffee muscled toward her, drawing her into the dark channel that led between grimy brick buildings and down the cobbled path to Bienville where the boundary between worlds lay. On the other side of the line, strident colors pulsed. Waves of sound crashed over her. Holiday voices, barkers enticed tourists and music—ragtime, whiskey-voiced chanteuses and smoldering jazz—enveloped her.

  Pearl stopped and filled her lungs with the familiar scents, closed her eyes and let it all wrap around her. When she opened her eyes again, it was all there, no longer a dream but bright and insistent reality.

  The frigid rain hissed on the cobbles. The warmth of the Quarter thawed the ice before it reached the ground. Every surface glimmered with rain warm with the promise of spring.

  Turning right down Bienville, she walked back into the half lit shadows along the edge of the Quarter, moving faster and faster until she stood in front of the café. She fingered the coins in her pocket and swayed in the slight breeze as the door opened. A couple walked past her without a second glance. A brief trickle of laughter slipped out before the door closed. She moved closer and peered through the glass.

  In the right hand corner booth, sat Cap. Pearl’s friends sat with him. Joshua’s mime makeup had run and his top hat with the sign that read “Tipping is not a city in China” sat on the table in front of his gloved hands. Laura lounged back against Chip’s shoulder, probably just in for a two-week leave. Cap’s horn-rimmed glasses were fogged and speckled with rain, dark hair, sleek as an otter’s fur, curled against his collar. This was probably Leo’s week to work nights at the Pontchartrain Hotel. They were all there as though the past six weeks had never happened, as though waiting for her to get off work.

  Tonight she needed a place to sleep.

  Tomorrow she would contact the editor at the Times-Picayune and collect the money for her articles.

  After that, she would keep her promise to the women on the quad and make sure their stories were told.

  Right now, she wanted to join her friends, pretend she had just gotten off work and laugh and talk and forget about the past six weeks for the night.

  Her hands smoothed the dripping length of her hair. She took a deep breath and opened the door, smiling as Cap grinned up at her and slid over to make room. They all turned to look, smiles lighting their faces. Laura got up, ran across the intervening space and hugged her. “You’re home. You’re finally home.”

  Cap smiled at Pearl from behind his black-horn rimmed glasses, still speckled with rain, his cap pulled low over his glasses. Laura clucked about the state of her clothes and hair, both dripping wet, and patted at her exposed arms and face with napkins Chip kept handing her, and Leo tut-tutted like an old hen as he patted her hands folded on the table.

  The waitress arrived with a steaming mug of hot chocolate—Cap knew what she liked, and craved at that moment—and set it down in front of Pearl, who immediately wrapped her shivering hands around it and pulled it closer, inhaling the aroma of chocolaty steam. The whipped cream swirled over her tongue and sent a blast of sweet slithering foam to all the taste buds, followed by a searing scald of chocolate. Her tongue went numb, but she didn’t care because it felt, it tasted, too good to be true, almost like one of the dreams she had in jail.

  Words and sounds buzzed around her and Pearl, a bit shell shocked, didn’t try to pin them down and assign meaning. She was enveloped by the companionable voices of normalcy, or as normal as it ever got since arriving in New Orleans.

  Laura sulked over Chip’s short leave and Leo kept checking his brand new watch, angling it in Pearl’s direction to show it off. Pearl sipped her drink and nodded, eyebrows cocked in approving appraisal. Cap sopped gravy with his biscuit and leaned closer, his thigh and hip warm and comforting, as Pearl’s clothes, warmed by the closeness, warmed in turn and lost that cold, clammy feel.

  As the talk turned to where she would sleep that night—Chip and Laura were bunking with friends, Leo had the night shift, and Cap decided he couldn’t spring her on his wife until tomorrow—Pearl found she didn’t care. She could—and would—get through whatever happened.

  The past six weeks had been awful at first and then enlightening. Pearl doubted she would ever forget what time stretching endlessly with nothing ahead, no sense of place, floating in limbo among strangers, or how it felt to be accepted and connected to the people around her in a way she never had before. She had nothing in common with the women at first—other than gender and location—and gradually came to understand she had so much more in common with them. By forging a link with the other inmates and seeing how they all wanted the same things (a better life, more money, respect, a future), Pearl saw connections everywhere around her, even among the guards.

  Now that she was home, or as much of a home as she had at the time, she knew where she was headed. The job she had was lost, but another opportunity would come along, one always did. In spite of her situation, as she looked back on the path leading to this moment, she knew she had been incredibly lucky—if luck was the word—not to have been hurt more than she had been. Everything was relative and now there was a way to get through the tough times, the same way she had gotten through the weeks she had been in jail—by taking each moment, each hour, each day as it came and making the best of it.

  There, among her friends, as they chattered away telling Pearl what she had missed and how far they had come, she knew she had come so much further than they had. One thing she knew for certain, whatever happened, she would survive.

  For now, she’d find a place to sleep, take Cap up on his offer to move in with him and his wife, go back to work at Lucky Dogs, and wait for J. D. to come back. That was something else she knew; J. D. would be back—and she would be ready for him. If someone was still looking for her, she’d point them in his direction. If not, then she’d find a way to get the book out of the glove compartment and keep it with her. Someone would come and she would have a get out of jail free card handy.

  Until then, there was tomorrow, a place to sleep, work, the step after that, and the one after that until she had a good job, a place of her own, and a future. Nothing was impossible.

  From books she learned how to survive in the wilderness; jail taught her how to survive in the real world. It was a lesson she would not soon forget and one she would need in the coming weeks.

  A car cruised down Bienville. “Are you sure she’s out?”

  “Very sure.”

&nbs
p; When the car reached Bourbon, they turned left, hesitated at Canal and turned right, back toward the jail. “It’s a long walk.”

  “No matter,” the driver said. “We’ll catch up eventually. She won’t go far, not without money.”

  ###

  About the author:

  J. M. Cornwell began writing at the age of eight while living in Panama. Under the influence of Homer and Edgar Rice Burroughs, her first book was about a girl lost in the jungles of Central America who discovers an ancient civilization. Since then, Ms. Cornwell has written articles and won awards, raised a family, divorced and moved around the country with the Air Force on her own, always coming back to her first love - writing.

  In the shadow of Pikes Peak, she spins stories about relationships and secrets. Stories have been included in several anthologies, including A Cup of Comfort and Chicken Soup for the Soul. She also writes book reviews for Authorlink, has ghost written eight nonfiction books, and her debut novel, Past Imperfect, was published by L&L Dreamspell in 2009. Among Women is her second novel, the first of two connected stories that take place in New Orleans.

  Stop by and read or comment on her blog.

  Other books by J. M. Cornwell:

  Past Imperfect is available in ebook and print.

  Among Women is available in print

  Dreamspell Revenge in ebook and print.

  Among Men, the sequel to Among Women, coming soon.

  Table of Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four: BETTY

  Five

  Six

  Seven: MAUREEN

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen: JOO-EUN