Day 1 (182 to go)
Emily woke at 7 a.m.to a clanging bell assaulting her eardrums.
Listen for the bell, Warden Barrow had said.A person would have to be dead to miss it.
She sat upright on the stiff, creaking mattress and massaged the stiffness in her neck with a wince.She stood up to stretch her hands overhead, and her stomach fluttered.She’d been more nervous than she cared to admit the moment her cell door slammed shut for the first time the night before.After gagging down the cold baked beans and stale bread Matron White had resentfully brought her, Emily had spent an hour staring at the ceiling, listening to the other inmates noisily returning to their cells before finally dozing off into a fitful sleep.
But now she was—mostly—excited.The conditions hadn’t been too much of a shock.She’d suspected it would all look and feel, well…like a prison.And it did.But there was a novelty about it, a sort of immersive rush, as though she were in costume on a detailed film set, or had been dropped into the pages ofThe Count of Monte Cristo.
She smirked in a little self-satisfied way as the first lines of her eventual exposé floated to mind, echoing Nellie Bly’s style:
Chapter One: A Delicate Mission.
It was on the 6th of June that I first became aware of the goings-on at the Mercer Women’s Prison on King West…
But she pushed the composition aside in her mind and tried to focus.
Emily shed her linen nightgown—which must have begun its life white, but was now greyish from an unknowable number of bleaching cycles—and exchanged it for the loose brown dress that was the inmates’ uniform, with a white apron tied overtop.The dress was wildly oversized for her frame and came right down to her ankles, but once she tied the apron around her waist, it cinched the whole thing in.She pulled on the white stockings and slid her feet into her new black shoes, thinking of how Jan the fashion editor would review this antiquated attire.Pinning her hair up, Emily waited for her cell to be unlocked, listening to the rhythm of jangling keys and the creaks of aged hinges as the cells down the hall were unlocked.A minute later, a matron different from the one who had locked her in last night came to the door and released her.Emily considered the method.
The cell doors must all be opened individually, rather than by a unified mechanism, which is most assuredly a dreadful fire hazard.
She stepped out into the hall, where her fellow inmates were lined up, each woman standing in front of her open cell door.She waited a few more minutes as the matrons released the women from the cells to her right, using the time to take in her surroundings.
There were about twenty women that she could count in her cellblock alone—the southern wing of the second floor.They were all dressed identically, down to the same black shoes.Emily studied their feet.Most of the shoes were worn and scuffed, though a couple in her line of sight were still shiny like her own—the newer inmates.She would try to speakto the women with the older-looking shoes.They would have witnessed more, might have more stories and information to share.
There was a smell of cooked eggs in the air, which was itself a bit damp, making for an earthy sort of atmosphere.
“Roll call!”one of the matrons shouted from twenty feet down the hall.Emily ducked her head a little to get a better view of Matron White, her hair tucked under a cap.She began to shout out inmates’ names, which Emily quickly realized were not in alphabetical order but rather by order of their cell geography.Finally, it was Emily’s turn.
“Radcliffe!”
“Yes!”Emily called back, echoing her fellow inmates.
“Cook!”
“Yeah,” the woman behind her answered, and the matron moved on down the line.“You’re new today?”her neighbour added in a quieter tone.
Emily turned around, nodded.“I’m Emily,” she whispered.
“Lizzie.”The woman was tall, with striking black hair and dark eyes.She didn’t smile at Emily, but nor did she appear mean.“Chamber pots are next,” Lizzie hissed.“We get to carry our own shit to the toilets.And get your toothbrush, too.”
Emily’s mouth fell open, but she composed herself a moment later just as, sure enough, the matron barked for them all to retrieve their pots.Emily seized her toothbrush and powder, and the pot, though hers was empty.She hadn’t emptied her bladder and was desperate to.But she’d assumed they would have an opportunity to use the toilet in the morning.Surely the metal pot was only in case of a midnight emergency?
Nevertheless, when her name was called, she hastened down the long hallway to the washroom, carrying the pot aloft, passing other inmates on their way back.
The entire washroom—including the tile floor and walls—was white but aged, the door dented and the paint scratched, revealing the rusted metal beneath.There were no mirrors, and only one large copper bathtub out in the open.Emily bolted into one of the doorless stalls.The ceramic on the toilet tank was chipped.With a deep breath, she set her pot downon the floor and hiked up her voluminous skirt, squatted over the seat to relieve herself.Two other inmates came in with their pots as Emily finished wiping with the crunchy paper.They eyed Emily with curiosity through the open stall as they walked into the ones on either side.She was treated to the sounds and smells of their pots being emptied into the toilets before she picked up her own and made for the trough-like metal sink to wash her hands.
She exhaled deeply as she rinsed them, cheeks burning a little from having urinated in plain view like that.But she thought of the article, thought of Nellie Bly, thought of all she would write about this first day’s experience once she had the chance.If she could leverage it into the story of her career, every humiliation and discomfort would turn out to be a good thing.Through her shock and distaste, she vowed to welcome it in the name of the article.
Once everyone had completed their business and was back in line, the inmates began to move, herding in single file toward the staircase at the matron’s instruction.Emily had tried to catch a bit of detail about the layout of the place the night before, as she was being taken to her cell, but was able to get her bearings better in the morning light.When she reached the staircase now she glanced around, taking in the other three long hallways.The one to the north looked a lot like hers, with cells lined up on both sides, the barred doors spaced less than ten feet apart.The walls were large bricks painted over in a thin whitewash, and most of the dim light seemed to come from the little windows inside the cells, but there were overhead lights as well, bare bulbs that were currently off.
A large side-by-side staircase led both up and down, and was situated in one corner of the crux where the four hallways met at the centre of the building.Following the short inmate in front of her, Emily glanced back and noticed that the cellblock to the west was gated.Down the hall to the east was another series of cells and a wide-open door at the very end, where sunlight poured in.Above it, a sign proclaimed INFIRMARY.
“Keep your eyes in front, if you know what’s good for you,” Lizzie muttered behind her.Emily quickly complied.
The women were herded downward, their footfalls thundering in the stairwell.Her cellblock was on the second floor, but the staircase leading up meant there must be a third, and she was sure she’d seen four stories from the outside.Just how many women were housed here?What was the capacity?It had to be at least a hundred.
On the main floor, Emily smelled food: the eggs she’d caught a whiff of upstairs, and something burning.She followed the rest of the women to a set of open doors she’d only briefly noted on her way upstairs the night before.It was the dining hall, a long, rectangular room with large barred windows on the north side facing King Street.Several round tables with battered wooden chairs were set around the room, with a handful of inmates already seated.The rest lined up at a buffet table along the far wall.Emily shuffled forward with the queue, glancing around surreptitiously as she waited.The women now dispersed from the quiet file they’d tramped downstairs in and became more talkative, some reuniting warmly with evident friends from other cellblocks.She saw several women watching her, and she imagined there must be a certain amount of curiosity about new inmates.She wondered again how often they were admitted.
