When she got back downstairs, the kitchen was filled with the warm aroma of apples and cinnamon, which normally would have made Rachel’s mouth water, but she was too sidetracked to be enticed.
“Hey Gran,” she said, laying the three stockings out in front of Dora on the kitchen table, a patchwork blanket of green and scarlet.“I found Mary’s—Mom’s—old stocking.But…I was wondering…are these both Grandad’s?”
Rachel’s eyes moved from the large and small stockings embroidered with the letter “W” up to Dora’s face, which had blanched.
“Gran?”she asked, concerned.“What’s wrong?”
But Dora was shaking her head, lips pulled back over a trembling smile.She blinked fast, eyes bright.
“Nothing, of course.And yes, the uh…the small one was from when your grandfather was a boy.His—his mother made it, I think.”
Rachel looked back down at the identical gold stitching on the two green stockings, made of the same fabric as hers and Mary’s, and even Dora’s own.And then she looked up at Dora as an uncomfortable, unfamiliar sensation trickled through her body.
Her grandmother was lying.
To the best of Rachel’s knowledge, Dora had never lied to her before.But she did it now, not a half-hour after she’d reassured Rachel that she wouldn’t turn out like her mother.Was she lying about that, too?
“Well,” Dora said, stacking the “W” stockings one on top of the other, not looking at them.“Go put these back in the box and hang up your mother’s with ours on the banister.There’s a good girl.”
There’s a good girl.
It was the phrase Dora had always used when she was trying to hustle Rachel along.Because Rachelwasa good girl, and she knew it.She liked to be good, liked to obey her grandmother, follow the rules and fit in.
Go get your shoes on.
It’s ten o’clock, off to bed with you.
Your mother and I need to have a grown-up conversation.There’s a good girl…
And it was that, more than anything else, that made Rachel wonder why her grandmother was lying.Why now?Why this?And what did it mean?
She made her way back up to the attic and the old Christmas box.She set the “W” stockings back in and watched them disappear into the darkness as she closed the flaps, packed away and hidden from sight once more.The buried evidence of something Rachel couldn’t yet understand or make sense of.
There’s a good girl.
CHAPTER 18
EMILY
Mercer Women’s Prison, Toronto—July, 1961
Day 15 (168 to go)
Emily stood at the large basin sink in the prison laundry, which was located in the basement, scrubbing at her hands and forearms with a harsh yellow soap to clean off the chemical residue.
Every morning as she worked in the laundry after breakfast and prayer time, her skin becoming more cracked and dry by the day, Emily thought of her nana.She wondered how similar their experiences were.For how different could a laundry have been in an upscale hotel?It required the same sort of labour, the same conditions, chemicals, and muscles.Sheets and towels, clothes and rags were boiled and scrubbed and wrung out to dry.
But slowly, she was acclimating.
She had already lost weight from her average-sized frame, as she was doing more manual labour than ever before, and eating less.She would have committed a crime worthy of her sentence to have a roast beef sandwich on rye from her favourite deli on Gerrard, the one that threw in those really excellent kosher pickles on the side at no extra charge.She had dark circles under her eyes from poor sleep, though that had slowly begun to improve.The hard springs poking into her back from the old mattress in her cell combined with the stress of her situation had madesleep difficult in the first few days.But being kept so busy with such physical exertion, plus the lack of food, meant she fell into bed most nights too exhausted to even notice the discomfort.And between the conditions and what she’d learned of a few of her fellow inmates, she was steadily gathering the ingredients for the story, setting them side by side in her mind as she mapped out the article.
Every day, Emily ate supper with Eliza and a couple of inmates she was now friendly with.There was Gertrude, a twenty-year-old lesbian who’d been caught in bed with another girl six months before, and whose case file was allegedly stamped with a “D” for “deviant.”She’d met Gertrude in their mind-numbing “typing” class, which was devoid of any typing whatsoever.Gertrude was tall, smart, and boldly sarcastic in a way Emily envied, and she’d liked her immediately.Then there was her cell neighbour Lizzie, who had five children by three different fathers.
“They locked me up to keep me away from men,” she told Emily, dark eyes shadowed beneath thin black brows.“Can’t go having any more kids, they say, or they’ll take the rest of ’em, too.”She was four months into a two-year sentence at the Mercer; her children had been separated and sent to live with each of their fathers for the duration.“Judge gave me the option of being sterilized or coming here.”Emily had never heard of a woman having that many children by different fathers, but she reminded herself that she was here to observe, not judge.Lizzie was obviously intelligent, patient, and unwaveringly kind—particularly to a woman named Peggy, whose cell was across from Lizzie and Emily’s.She was a slight, mousy young woman who didn’t talk much.Lizzie said Peggy had been routinely beaten by her husband and was in such a state of hysterics when the police arrived to sort out the most recent disturbance thatshewas arrested instead of him.
“If it isn’t one prison, it’s just another, or another,” Lizzie had told Emily one morning, downing the last of her watery tea.“It’s all just a bunch of bullshit, isn’t it?”
Emily had made furious mental notes of these women’s stories, which she planned to include in the article, substituting their names for falseones.She had never in her life felt more fortunate for her position.She had agency and options and family support.They didn’t.
