The iron bedsprings were digging into her back.
She was cold, uncovered.The air smelled different—musty and humid.She gasped a breath and, eventually, her eyes fluttered open.Her body felt heavy, her mind and reactions slow.She blinked several times, noted the dark stone wall across from her.She winced, and shifted her weight with a little grunt.She sat up, ran a hand over her face.
She was in the basement, she realized.She looked around.In one of the isolation cells.She took a deep breath, massaged a particularly painful spot near her right kidney.She glanced down and saw, through the dark, that the mattress had been removed from the bed, leaving only the springs for her to sleep on.Her eyes flicked to the corridor beyond her cell door.The only light came from the sconce on the wall opposite.She couldn’t tell, from here, whether it was night or day.Perhaps whatever White had drugged her with had knocked her out all night.Perhaps it was already her discharge day.
She stood then, shaking her head once more to try to clear the fog that was only just beginning to lift.She staggered to the cell door and clutched at the bars.A cold fear gripped her as she saw the woman sitting on the old wooden chair across from her cell.
Eris Stone stood and slowly stepped forward, just out of Emily’s reach.Her glasses flashed, white coat glowing eerily yellow in the light of the sconce on the wall.Emily swayed a little, knees feeling as though they might buckle.
“Stone—”
“No one threatens me, Radcliffe.”
Emily’s mind was slow, struggled to respond.
“So you may as well get comfortable,” Stone said with a terrifying grin that didn’t meet her eyes.She turned and disappeared down the corridor, her footsteps growing quieter.
Emily stood at the cell door, her breath coming shallow.And in the dim light, her gaze finally landed on the skirt of her dress.
Emily’s scream tore from her lungs and echoed down the barren corridor as she stared in horror at her brand-new, unmistakably blue dress.
PARTFOUR
indomitable
(Adj.: that which cannot be subdued or overcome; unconquerable)
The older I get, the more I see how women are described as having gone mad, when what they’ve actually become is knowledgeable and powerful and fucking furious.
SOPHIE HEAWOOD
CHAPTER 36
EMILY
December 21, 1961
Day 3 in isolation
By my count, it was the winter solstice; the darkest night of the year, when this little corner of the earth turns as far away as it will ever be from the light of the sun, crouching into itself in protection from the bitter cold.It is the lowest point of the valley we descend into each year, beginning in October, as the light starts to retreat from us to go warm others on the opposite side of this great, swirling globe.It’s only fair that they have their turn with the sun’s attentions.But how lonely and dark it becomes at the bottom of that vast wintry canyon.And all we can do is forge on, one day at a time, ascending back up the hill as the light grows slowly brighter, until we finally feel the heat of the sun on our skin again and are reminded that this is the cycle, the ebb and flow of light and dark that conducts the rhythm of our lives.
But that day, I could only see the darkness.I kept blinking my eyes to adjust, but they would not.I could only assume, at that point, that it would always be black.
Emily shifted her weight a little to tuck one of her cold feet beneath her.She was huddled in the loosely knitted blanket on the springs of the bedframe; she couldn’t even lean her weight against the stone wall, because it was too cold.One or two degrees colder, and she would see her breath in front of her face.
She listened to the sounds on the floor above her, the distant hum of chatter from the dining hall.It was suppertime, and her stomach ached.She was starving, her head throbbing from dehydration, but she’d been declining the food and drink Matron Grimes brought her over the past two days.After what happened to Annie, she couldn’t trust that it wasn’t poisoned.
She swiped at a tear, warm against her cool cheek.She could hardly believe that after witnessing the murder of one of their own, right there in the dining hall, these women could carry on like they were, chattering and eating as though it didn’t matter.Emily scoffed in disgust, for the hundredth time.It was every woman for herself in here.She should have known that.Everyone was just greedily scrambling for their piece of the very limited pie, the small sliver they felt they were entitled to as they were fed through the meat grinder that was the Mercer Women’s Prison.
Over the past two days, Emily had had plenty of time to reflect, with nothing at all to occupy her time besides her own tormenting thoughts.In hindsight, she couldn’t believe she thought she could just waltz into a prison and take some notes and bring it all down from the inside.Nellie Bly might have done it, but that didn’t mean just anyone could.Emily had vastly overestimated herself, as had Doris, her parents.She felt ashamed that she’d failed at what she’d come here to do, failed as a journalist.And she’d also failed these women, and all the women who would come after them, funnelled into the prison system by laws that sought to punish them for things men were never punished for, solely because they were women.There was no law that could put teenage boys in prison for sneaking in after curfew, or impregnating a girl of another race.Emily had come in here to try to make a name for herself, and that need had morphed into wanting to make adifferencefor others.But she’d failed at both.
White—and by extension, Eris Stone—had declared her insane and forced her into this blue dress.Her file would now be marked with a “P,” for “Psychiatric.”Would she be left here in isolation interminably, shewondered, or would Stone ever release her up into the psychiatric wing?Emily wasn’t even sure she wanted that.It might be warmer up there, but she’d then be in the company of truly insane women like Rose, who probably wanted to harm her even more than she had before, since Annie was dead.
And it was all Emily’s fault.
She buried her face in the tent of her knees.
None of it mattered.The system was rigged to beat them at every turn.They never could win.
