I begged the guard for a few more minutes with her and then let her select from my bag. Timidly, she picked outThe Little Lame Prince and His Travelling Cloakand handed it to me. After I read several pages, Marigold rubbed her wet lashes.
“Would you rather I read something else?”
She shook her head and said in a strained voice, “Mother read this to me when I was a little girl. It was my favorite, and she’d sewed me a magic cloak to play in.”
“I’ll leave it with you, Miss Marigold. It’ll be just like having your own magic cloak again.”
Minutes later, the guard unlocked the crash gate, and I slipped out to go on to the next wing—the one I dreaded most.
***
I stared at the dark-red letters on the sign hanging over the entrance to the next cell block, feeling in my bone and flesh a sense of dread.
DEATH ROW
Shortly, a guard opened the door and carefully inspectedmy books before escorting me down a dimly lit hall of empty cells. Ahead, a radio hummed its static, curling around the gray concrete walls of the darkened chamber.
The officer stopped at the last cell. “Sassyann, company’s here.” He walked over to a windowed office, cast back a glance before slipping inside. After a few seconds, he closed the sliding window and picked up the telephone, then turned his back, lost in conversation.
I peered through the bars at the prisoner resting on the mattress, her eyes shut, her face contorted in pain.
“Ma’am? Miss Sassyann, I’m the prison Book Woman, Cussy Lovett, and I’ve come to read to you. Would you like that?”
When she didn’t move, I began reading from the book, raising my voice above the radio, peeking over the pages and past the bars.
I stopped after three pages. “Ma’am, I don’t want to disturb you. Would you like it if I leave the book instead?” Sassyann didn’t budge. I stepped over and set the book quietly against the bars.
Sassyann swung her legs over the cot, the scarlet-red cotton shirt and baggy britches wrinkled and stained. She turned off the brown Bakelite radio on the small table beside her. Slowly, the death-row prisoner eased herself over to the bars.
“It’s right there whenever you’re ready to look at it.” I pointed to the book. “Unless you would like me to read a few more pages?”
Suspicious, she stared at me, then finally nodded, smoothing back her wavy brown hair.
I had almost finished with the first chapter of a tattered copy ofNational Velvetwhen she held up a palm. “Show me that word, girl.”
I looked at her, puzzled.
“Horse.” She blinked and tried to peer over the book, her glazed eyes pulling to life.
“Horse—oh, here it is.” I tapped the page and lifted it to her.
Her eyes chewed over the words, then she pointed. “Where?”
“Right here.Horse.H-O-R-S-E.”
“H-O-R-S-E,” she repeated, slow and painful.
“Here, there’s some illustrations inside.” I fanned the pages and stopped at several.
“Horse.” She pointed to the word on another page.
“Do you read, Sassyann?”
“My pap would never let me go to school. After my brother died, he said I needed to help on the farm.”
“Would you like to learn?”
“At sixty-three? With the ol’ Sparky chair waiting for me, its clock a’tickin’ faster each day, it’d be a sorry waste.”
