She twirled a lock of hair over a dirt-stained finger, rocking her shoulders from side to side. “Odette,” she said.
“Fitting for a princess.”
Odette beamed. “Mama sawSwan Lakein the city when she was a young girl and never forgot. Promised she was gonna take me one day.”
After inspecting, Officer Holt granted me permission to pass the leather-bound volume ofLeaves of Grass. “I can bring you more poetry books if you like, Odette,” I told her.
She squealed. “Oh, yes, Book Woman, I would love that.” Then her eyes took on a strange distance, rolling back into her head, and she fell onto her cot, jerking.
“Officer,” I called out.
“Move along, Lovett.” The guard shoved me over to another cell and let himself inside Odette’s.
I straightened, smoothed back my hair.
A tall older woman stood from her cot and walked over to the bars as I held up a copy ofHunter’s Hornby the Kentucky author Harriette Simpson Arnow.
“I remember that book. My auntie had a copy. And my pa was a foxhunter and farmer like Nunn Ballew.” She pointed to the cover, her eyes glassy from the prison drugs. “Raised himself some fine hounds. We lived in Horse Hollow, not too far from Mrs. Arnow. Auntie traveled to Cincinnati and got her autograph one time.” She lifted a lopsided grin, approving of my selection.
“One of my favorite authors.”
When I finished the first chapter, I peered over to Odette’s cell, puzzled, hoping the girl was okay. The guard had settled back into a chair behind his small wooden desk, reading a newspaper, seemingly indifferent to the girl’s strange behavior. Irecalled granny woman Emma McCain back home, treating one of the children on my book route with ginseng once when they had such a fit.
I studied her a bit more until Officer Holt shot me a disapproving look, moving me on.
When I’d look back at the guard each time to seek permission to leave a book and move on to the next prisoners, he’d stodgily nod. But I could also catch something more—a tiny wonderment and curiosity sweeping across his eyes as his rigid stance grew a bit more relaxed.
The lost women had calmed somewhat. Come home for a moment, even if briefly.
I dared to chance another peek at the guard and then back to the women, studying each hollowed face. The ghostly shells of robbed lives.
For the first time since I arrived, a deafening quiet carpeted the row of cells.
Officer Holt followed my gaze. He turned his surprised eyes back to me, feeling it too.
The tumultuous ward had shivered into a quavering charge and surrendered itself to a peaceful stillness for the printed word.
And I know’d somehow the books would heal these women.
Me.
All of us.
Nine
I visited the Geriatrics Ward a few days later. Much to my surprise, the grim room grew loud as the women raced their clacking wheelchairs toward me. Bright-eyed and eager, they surrounded me. “Read us more about Charlotte and Wilber.”
“Another chapter.”
“Read to us,” they pleaded.
When I passed a newspaper to the officer, I could tell he was more than happy to turn his charges over to me and relax with his coffee and morning paper.
“Charlotte’s Web,” I began.
Pausing occasionally, I welcomed the women’s interruptions, smiling at their memories, encouraging them to share more. A healing from the pain and suffering.
“I had an uncle named Wilbur. Did I tell ya, Book Woman?”
