Officer Holt stepped back, seemingly shocked, before inquiring, “Did they say if he was a local?”
“Don’t rightly know. Name was Danny, or maybe it was Daniel.” He pondered. “Daniel Prescott. No, Presland—that’s it. Doing time for performing lewd homosexual acts in public. Heard he dared to give a Frenchie kiss with another feller, and right in plain view of children at a local park. They’re burying that poor demented soul in Chicken Hill tomorrow.”
My hand flew up to my mouth, and I moaned.Daniel, dead.Oh, not sweet Daniel, dear God.
The men looked over at me, and Officer Holt hurried toward my door.
I slammed it shut.
Officer Holt called from outside, “Cussy Lovett, I need your help with a list.Book Woman?” He opened my cell door. “Odette’s been having the fits again, and I need a book for her—”
“Not now. I’m ill.” I clung to the basin and flung a shooing arm behind me, waving him away. “Ill!”
I heard him back out, then the clack of the lock.
Cradling my belly, I crawled over to the mat and curled up in a ball like a young’un again on her mama’s lap, silently weeping for healing hugs, my fists grieving a dark blue. Begging for mercy for Daniel, my unborn babe, Jackson, and all of us locked in misery.
Outside the cell, murmurs rose from the guards and dropped in a steady rhythm of conversation.
I squeezed my eyes shut, the despair burying me like coal sludge. And I know’d they wouldn’t be done until they stole all of me. Buried every inch of me.How much more could I take?How many of us in here were one step away from walking Daniel’s path?
For three days, Officer Holt stopped by to request my help.
And for two of those days, I stared up at the barred postage-size window that I couldn’t reach.
Then I thought I felt the tiniest of flutters.Could it be the babe?Surely not, but I became frightened. So much so, I turned over and traced invisible words onto the concrete wall. Again andagain, I gave breath to our promise.
His promise.
My promise.
They’d already beat me down once, and I’d be damned if I let them again. “I won’t give up. I promise,” I said to Jackson.
I smothered a last wheezing cry into the thin mat, then swept my wet face across its scratchy threads and drew a ragged breath.
Kneeling beside the door, I opened the tray slot and called out, “Guard?”
In a few minutes, I heard the keys clink against the lock.
“Tell Officer Holt to get Odette theComplete Poems of Robert Frost. It’s a blue book sitting in a stack on the table in my library.”
I spent another long night in solitary.
When the guards changed shifts in the predawn hours, I heard the outgoing officer’s latest gossip. The women in the two striking wards and Sassyann had not eaten for a week. Marigold had passed, and the newspaper reporters had finally come swooping and a’snooping, demanding their sensationalism while battering truths. “Looks like everyone’s gonna have to work the Fourth, unless Warden can get this mess ironed out.”
I wept for Marigold and, finally exhausted, dozed off, only to be awakened by breath-stealing nightmares of the old woman. Her twinged face and shaky hands were outstretched as her ghostly wheelchair rolled toward me. Then a red cloak descended over us both, leaving me to bolt upright, gasping for air.
Close to dinnertime, I heard keys clanging and then the startling click of the lock.
Sitting on the cot, I squared my shoulders and smoothed down my mouse nest of hair.
Warden Sanders stood on the threshold, holding a small stack of novels. “The library service is bigger than both of us. Get up, Lovett, and get back to work.” She dropped the books onto the floor and tossed an open letter atop them.
I snatched up the envelope from Honey and clasped it to my chest. It was like having a part of her back with me again.
***
June ’53
