I smoothed down the wrinkles on my dress, tugged at the damp collar and clinging bodice, the sweltering heat a weighted misery as I cracked open the door. “Ma’am, you wanted to see me?”
“Come in. Sit,” the warden replied crisply, and I took the chair in front of her desk, once more hiding my shadow-darkened hands inside the folds of my skirts.
“I have several reports we need to address.” She lifted a stack of papers and squared them with several taps to her desk, then thumbed through the pages.
Breaths of wild honeysuckled winds pushed through the open window, blousing the drab green curtains. In the distance, thunder rolled across a crow’s graveled cries as the promise of another summer rainstorm lightly perfumed the dark-paneled office.
Drawn to the lazy hum of the oscillating fan perched to the side of her desk, I tilted my head to the whirls, feeling its miserly breeze on my flesh.
Selecting a typewritten page from the stack in front of her, Warden lassoed me back. “Okay. Let’s start with Officer Holt’s report.” She studied her papers. “With Odette in Forensics.”
“Ma’am, she likes the poetry books, sure enough.”
“Her seizures have all but ceased.”
Seizures?“That’s what it was. Odette had one when I first met her.”
“Clark came in over a year ago and shortly after began having these fits. The books are the only change in her life, and some of the doctors believe they may have somehow eased her disturbed mind.”
I bobbed my head, proud my work was meeting her approval.
She picked up another page and skimmed it. “It appears Odette is finally communicating with the prison psychiatrist. Like most in her ward, the girl had been housed over at the old Central State Hospital asylum and always violently refused to speak, and even struck the guards and medical staff. It’s no wonder they’ve discussed performing a lobotomy to keep her docile and obedient.” She talked freely. “The director believes these type of surgeries have been a blessing to our prisons, thanks to Moniz. Now it looks like the books may offer something new for the doctors to muse over.”
I shifted uncomfortably, thinking of Chaney in Geriatrics. I’d read about the Nobel Prize winner and heard plenty of tales in here about Kaintuck’s horrid lunatic asylum, the torturous experiments and surgeries doctors used on afflicted folks they’d shackle in manacles. The drilling into brains, ice-water baths, forced shock treatments, and more.
“Officer Holt said he can’t believe the change in his ward. Nor can the guards in Geriatrics,” she went on. “The elderly inmates have greatly benefited from your library service, the nurse reports. Our former librarians would never step foot anywhere near those wards. But”—she raised a pointed finger toward me—“I should’ve known a Pack Horse librarian would.”
“Thank you, Warden. I’m mighty grateful for the job.”
“Indeed.Now”—she cleared her throat—“about the library. How many visitors have you had?”
“Visitors?” I asked, suddenly struck with the horror that she was finally going to dismiss me.
“Your patrons.”
I couldn’t meet her eyes. “None, ma’am, except for the weekly needlepoint club.”
She picked up a slip of paper, set it in front of her, and wrote something down.
“That’s about to change.”
Would she make more demands I couldn’t meet?
“There’s also this report from Death Row,” she said. “He notes she’s been asking for stamps, anticipating writing her first letter when she finally graduates from your lessons. Thank you for working with her.”
“Sassyann wrote her first letter and did a fine job, ma’am.”
“Oh, which reminds me.” She pushed two envelopes to the edge of her desk. “A letter from your lawyer and one from your daughter.”
I snatched up the opened mail, looking at it like it was gold. It was my first letter from Honey.
“Take this note.” She reached over her desk and dropped the paper close to the edge, still cautious about touching me.
“You’ll need to bring those numbers up. But I’m releasing you from kitchen duty, though Waldeen has requested you continue keeping her books and help with the budget.” Again, she paused to study the paper. “Therefore, I’ve decided to grant it.”
Released.I glanced down at the note that declared it.
“Starting tomorrow morning, you’ll be assigned as our new full-time prison librarian.”
