Chapter 10 Emily
EMILY
Later that night after the conversation with her father, Emily was holed up in her bedroom, staring down at her cornflower-blue patterned quilt and pinching her chin in concentration.
Her essential belongings were splayed out across the bed like archeological findings as she debated what to eventually bring with her to the Mercer.
It couldn’t be much, and she had to assume most, if not all of it, would be taken from her upon arrival.
But it also felt strange to go down to the courthouse entirely empty-handed.
Surely even within their fiction of a father trying to knock some sense into his unruly adult daughter, the “accused” would at least have her handbag with her: some lipstick, a pen, cash.
Emily had no idea what sorts of writing implements might be allowed within the prison, but she figured she would have to commit most of her findings to memory, anyway, as she couldn’t risk her notes being found.
She needed to get this story discreetly, fly under the radar of the guards and administration as she silently observed, then pour it all out onto the page after her release.
Two hours ago, she and her dad had sat in the living room with her mother and explained the story, the plan for Emily’s investigation.
Bess was very still as Emily recounted all the details—leaving out some of the finer points of the inmate’s note.
But, predictably, the conversation had rapidly dissolved into an argument.
“I can’t see how either Doris or you,” Bess had fired at William, “could possibly be comfortable with this!” Her hands were clenched atop the apron draped over her thighs.
“Because they believe in me, Mom. They think I can handle it, and so do I,” Emily exclaimed.
“It really is her big break, Bess,” William had said, shooting their daughter a sympathetic look that was neither smile nor frown. “And she won’t be gone too long. It’s a fantastic adventure, really—”
“An adventure?” Bess said, glaring at them both and leaning forward on the couch.
“It’s a prison, for God’s sake! You’re going off to try to prove that this horrendous treatment of those women is happening, Emily.
Which means you will be subjected to it yourself!
Or at the very least, witness these atrocities. ”
William had met her eyes then, and his tone was direct, yet gentle. “That’s what I did, too, Bess. Bore witness and was subjected to it. All to report on something important.”
“Yes,” Bess said, with a look of incredulity, “and look at what it did to you, darling. Look what it took from you.”
Emily swallowed. She was so used to seeing her father’s shirtsleeve tied in a knot just below the elbow that she sometimes forgot about his injury. The whole family had adjusted to it. Bess knotted his ties every morning and pre-cut his meat at suppertime.
“And this is not a war, you two,” she said, clearly making an effort not to scoff. “These are criminals in a penal institution. It’s not that important.”
“Except it is, Mom,” Emily said. “The entire point is that this law applies to every young woman and girl in this country. We can be tossed in prison for next to nothing. And if it’s as easy as we think it is, Dad getting a judge to sentence me there is part of the story, part of the scandal—that it is so easy.
And that sort of legal vulnerability should matter to every woman. Including you.”
“And what about Jeremy?!” Bess demanded, hands in the air. “Are you just to throw him over to go live in a prison? For goodness’ sake, he’s about to—” She stopped, looking regretful, and Emily suddenly felt sorry for her.
“I know he’s going to propose, Mom,” she admitted softly, letting her off the hook.
Bess didn’t ask how she knew, but glared at William as though he were responsible for the whole mess.
“This isn’t Dad’s fault,” Emily said. “I knew it was coming anyway.”
“And you aren’t at all excited?” Bess asked, exasperated.
Emily looked at her with a heavy heart, shook her head. “No, Mom. I don’t want to marry Jem.”
Bess’s mouth hung open for a long moment before she turned away, tears in her eyes. Emily had hoped she could do this with her mother’s blessing, but she didn’t need her permission. Still, she felt sick about making her mother feel so rotten.
The conversation had gone around in increasingly exhausting circles for another half-hour until Bess eventually stormed off.
“She’ll come around,” her father had said, nodding from his seat in the large, worn leather armchair. “It’s a mother’s job to worry for her children. I understand that. But I’m not as worried. I know you can handle it.” He watched her intently for a moment. “Are you afraid?”
Emily thought of what her mother had said, the damage wrought on her father’s body in pursuit of the truth.
She knew she would be okay; that she could even cope with a limited dose of the treatment alleged in the prisoner’s letter, knowing it would be so temporary.
But she couldn’t deny that the prospect of it all made her apprehensive. She nodded. “A little.”
“I think about the women in the war sometimes,” he said.
“The nurses especially. They were as gritty as the men, just in skirts instead of trousers. Carrying bandages instead of guns. Courage and fear were both written on their faces, too, just like the men. So often they coexist, don’t they, those things?
I suppose because courage only exists because of fear. It grows out of, and despite fear.”
The sound of distant kitchen clatter had filled the silence that followed. Emily knew she would need to go talk to her mother again. She couldn’t leave like this.
“I know you’re aching to prove yourself, Em, and now’s the time to do the really dangerous stuff, before you have a family,” her dad said.
“And I don’t mean that as pressure,” he clarified.
“I mean it as encouragement, and, frankly, as advice. The war didn’t come to me; I had to go because we all had to go.
But I was terrified I wasn’t going to make it home.
It broke my heart to know my girls were all waiting, that I might never see you again.
It would have been a lot easier if it had just been myself that I had to be concerned for, that’s all I mean. ”
He’d risen then, planted a kiss on her hair as he headed for the kitchen. “I’ll see what I can do to soothe her.”
Emily had gone up to her bedroom, where she now plucked her toothbrush and toothpaste out of the array on her bedspread, stuffing them into her small purse.
It was a smart look for ladies to carry the clutch style, but Emily preferred a loop handle, which allowed her to hang the bag on her arm and free up both hands to hold her notebook and pen.
She went to her dresser and pulled out a pair of underwear and a brassiere, tucked them into the bottom of the handbag.
She supposed it might be odd when her bag was searched, as it almost certainly would be at the prison, but she had no idea what clothing or sundries would be allowed or provided, and it felt unprepared to set out on any sort of overnight trip without a fresh change of underthings.
She also grabbed three pens from the cup on her desk. She felt naked without one.
She had just stood to go take a bath when her mother appeared in the doorway.
“May I come in?”
Emily nodded, a little unsure of what to expect, but glad that they were speaking again. She sat back down on the bed. Her mother joined her, and for a beat they just took each other in.
“Your father came to talk to me,” Bess said.
“And he…reminded me of a few things I may have forgotten.” Emily watched her, waiting, stomach swirling a little.
She loved and respected her mother very much.
She didn’t want to upset her, but knew she had to do this assignment regardless of how Bess felt about it.
“Before I met your father,” her mother continued, “I worked on the line at the Princess Pat hairnet factory.”
Emily nodded. She knew that.
“You know your grandparents aren’t wealthy,” Bess said with a little dismissive twitch of the head, “and I had to contribute. When my father came back from the first war, he couldn’t work.
He had some physical injuries, yes, but mentally, well…
” She pressed her lips together—in sympathy or judgment, Emily couldn’t tell.
“I was born right before the war broke out, and as you know, my parents never had any other children—I think for the same reasons he couldn’t work.
He was just a shell of what he’d been before.
So I was terrified, when the second war started, that your father would come home that broken, too.
Or not at all. I feared I would end up in the same fix my mother had.
Thank God it wasn’t as bad as that for us.
At any rate, your nana held things together on her own as long as she could so that I could get some education, but I had to leave school at thirteen to go work. ”
Emily listened with waning interest, wondering where this was headed. She knew all this.
“She worked in the Royal York laundry for nearly thirty years, working her fingers raw. She used to come home with burns on her hands, blisters from grazing those big copper cauldrons she boiled the sheets in.”
Emily had seen the scars, but a person didn’t ask for details about such things. “I never knew that’s what the marks were from,” she said quietly.