Chapter 16 Emily
EMILY
“Now lie back, put your feet in the stirrups, and stay still.”
Emily swallowed and complied with the prison physician, Dr. Eris Stone.
She was a short woman in every respect: her stature, hair, tone, nails, temper.
She was clipped and efficient to the point of being disconcerting, and wore a white coat over a black dress.
Her hair was black, and her eyes were dark in a pale face.
She was as colourless as the prison itself.
The smell of bleach from the sheet beneath Emily filled her nostrils as she stared up at the ceiling, hands clenched together on her abdomen.
Through her trepidation about the medical exam, she thought of her grandmother, how she smelled of bleach until the day she finally stopped working at the Royal York laundry.
Emily had always wondered whether the years of exposure to all the chemicals were responsible for the asthma and lung troubles that now plagued her nana.
Emily gasped and her focus was jerked back to the present as something cold and hard pressed up against her vagina.
“What is that?” she demanded, alarmed. She’d never been with a man. No one had ever touched her in such an intimate, sensitive place.
“The genital exam,” Dr. Stone said.
“But what is that—”
“Do not speak, Radcliffe,” the doctor snapped. “It will only make the procedure more difficult for me. Stay still, or I shall be forced to employ the restraints.”
Emily clenched her teeth, eyes falling on the leather strap near her wrist. There was one on each side.
Then she gasped as pain shot through her privates, a sort of pain she’d never experienced, not even during her worst periods.
There was a metallic sound akin to screws being tightened.
She strained her neck to try to see, but her view was blocked by the white sheet tenting her knees, which began to shake.
“Inmate, I said keep still,” Dr. Stone growled. Emily set her head back down, willing herself not to cry out. Why is this necessary? she wondered frantically. Her alleged crime had nothing to do with her body. Why was a genital exam required at all?
The doctor continued poking around, jabbing at her and stretching her skin to the point that Emily feared injury. Blinking back tears drawn from the pain and indignity, she held her breath and did her best to focus on the ceiling until, mercifully, it was over.
“Get dressed and return to your duties,” Dr. Stone said. “I’ll see you again in a month.” She gathered the metal tools and rolled them away on a cart toward the sink.
“Why?” Emily demanded.
“Routine exam.” Dr. Stone disappeared into her office at the back of the infirmary.
Emily sat up, breath coming in shallow spurts. She slid off the table and shuffled to the hook on the wall where she’d been told to hang her uniform. She tore off the hospital gown and threw it to the floor, then dressed hastily, desperate to get the hell out of there.
In the corridor outside, she pressed her back against the brick wall, mind reeling as the ache between her legs persisted.
She took a deep breath, then, driven by a trickling sensation, scooted around the corner to the inmates’ washroom.
She sat down on the toilet and lifted her skirt to check her underwear, which was heavily spotted with blood. Her entire body went cold.
What did she do to me?
But there was no time to dwell on it; she was due downstairs for cleaning duty.
She directed her attention instead to making a mental list of all the details of the infirmary and the horrendous experience.
But she stopped short then, horrified at the prospect of sharing with the world the invasive and degrading thing Dr. Stone had just done, the thing she didn’t even have a word for.
It hadn’t fully occurred to her that things might happen to her at the Mercer that she wouldn’t necessarily want repeated or shared.
She’d thought mostly of the things she would witness being done to the other inmates.
She exhaled in a little puff, recalling what she’d told herself the day before: She must try to welcome each event for the sake of the article.
Perhaps there was a way she could report on this to simply suggest the more personal details.
She would speak with Doris about it. But right now, she was already late for duty.
She wadded up some crunchy toilet paper for a makeshift sanitary pad and left the washroom, encountering few other inmates on her way.
As Emily headed for her cleaning shift down on the main floor, the prison throbbed with sounds of institutionalized life, much like a school.
A constant hum of female conversation was peppered with barked instructions and admonitions from matrons.
Doors slammed and creaked, the telephone rang in the warden’s office near the main entry.
Emily wound her way down the echoing staircase and crossed the X-junction of the main hall to the kitchen doors. A handful of inmates was already there and looked up at her when she entered.
“Emily Radcliffe,” she said to the matron on duty. “I was called to the infirmary, but I’m meant to be here now.”
The matron was hardly older than Emily herself, but her features were strained and tired. Her blond hair was pulled back in a bun and her apron was stained in front.
“Emily Radcliffe?” she said, sparing Emily half a glance before consulting a clipboard. “You’re new. First time on shift?”
“No. I cleaned yesterday, but it was in the basement.”
“Ah, you been promoted already?” one of the other inmates asked, smirking.
Emily detected a slight Irish accent. She was just a girl, really, hardly older than sixteen.
She was a tiny little thing with strawberry-blond hair, bony with a sharply defined chin and high cheekbones, like one of the fairies in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
“Enough, Eliza,” the Matron reprimanded wearily, as though this wasn’t the first time she’d heard the complaint.
“What? The basement’s the worst!”
The matron rolled her eyes. “Right,” she told Emily. “You can do the floors with Eliza. Grab a mop and get to it. Soap flakes are in the store cupboard in the corner. Fill up your bucket in the kitchen sink and dump it in the toilet down the hall when you’re done.”
Emily nodded and seized the required materials, then she and Eliza moved to the attached dining hall while the three remaining inmates stayed in the kitchen to clean.
She glanced at Eliza, whose wide hazel eyes stared back at her, and she offered a tentative hello.
They walked to the sink to fill up their buckets.
“I’m Emily.”
“Yeah, yer new, eh.”
“Yes.”
“I seen ya talkin’ to one of the Blues at breakfast yesterday. Wasn’t that you? With Crazy Annie?”
Emily looked up from her bucket. “The Blues?”
“Yeah. Crazy Annie and the others. All the lunatics hafta wear blue dresses, so they’re easy to see.”
“Oh,” Emily said, taking note. She paused. “How many of those inmates are there?”
They turned off the taps and made their way back to where they’d started.
“Dunno,” Eliza said. “They’re all behind that gate on the second floor. Where’s yer cell?” She dipped her mop into the steaming, sudsy water. “I’m on the third. Matrons’ quarters are on the fourth.”
“Second floor,” Emily said. “The south corridor. I did wonder about the gate.”
“Yeah. They ’ave their own bathroom ’n everything ’cause most o’ them are violent whacks. But some o’ them are allowed out with the rest of us. Like that Annie woman.”
“What do you know about her?” Emily asked, kneeling to wring the mop with her hands. The warm water coursed up her forearms, wetting her pushed-back sleeves. She set the mop back down on the floor and wiped her gritty hands on her apron.
“Well, I heard she killed ’er own baby. Total loony.”
Emily’s hands stilled. “Are you serious?”
“That’s what they say. Tried to kill ’er man, too.”
“But…why is she here, then? Why isn’t she in Kingston?” Violent criminals were sent to the maximum-security penitentiary there.
Eliza shrugged. “Search me. Word gets ’round here, though. So, if I was you I’d stay clear of ’er. She screams in ’er sleep, too, we can hear it even up on the third floor. Good luck gettin’ a decent rest. They usually hafta sedate ’er when that happens.”
“Ah. Yes. Thanks,” Emily said, shooting her a half-smile.
The Mercer wasn’t meant to be a prison for violent offenders.
It was allegedly a reform institution. But Emily had to admit that so far, she hadn’t observed much in the way of reform.
The place was one giant holding cell powered by its inmates’ labour.
Over a hundred women waiting out their months- or years-long sentences for petty offences.
Emily considered Eliza’s claim, piecing it together with what Annie Little had told her directly at breakfast the day before.
Prison terms at the Mercer were limited to two years under the FRA, except under very extreme circumstances.
“So what are ya in for?” Eliza asked.
Emily cleared her throat. She had a spiel planned, the details as generic as possible. “My parents thought I was too unruly. Unmanageable. I think they did it just to frighten me into behaving the way they want me to.”
Eliza scoffed, laughed. “ ’S it working?”
Emily shrugged. “I’m in for six months. But I think once I’m out, I’m leaving my parents.
” She scrubbed hard at a sticky spot on the floor and swallowed, realizing that what she said was inadvertently the truth.
She’d mused about it before coming to the Mercer, but now that she was out of her parents’ house—for better or worse—the idea of living apart from them felt more possible than it had before.
“I mean…women have more options than we used to. I don’t think you have to be a spinster to have an independent life.
” She caught herself. She’d gotten too personal.
“So uh.” She cast around for a useful change of subject, and saw an opportunity to wheedle some information.
“Do you know why we aren’t allowed outside for exercise hour?
Warden Barrow said some inmates had misbehaved, but—”
“Oh, yeah,” Eliza said, eyes widening. “They think somebody musta contacted somebody on the outside, told ’em what’s goin’ on ’ere.
” She nodded knowingly and dipped her mop back into the bucket.
“The mail gets checked before it goes out, so anything bad anybody says isn’t gettin’ out—remember that when ye write yer letters.
I’m not sure how else they coulda done it except during yard hour.
But I heard from Pearl Wilson that she heard Barrow’s secretary talkin’ about some reporter lady that called askin’ questions. ”
Emily’s stomach flipped with guilt. “Can ya believe that?” Eliza went on. “Don’t know why a reporter would care, though,” she said with a dismissive shrug. “Nobody ever has.”
Emily paused, chose her words with care. “But really,” she said in a low tone, “it’s awful in here, isn’t it? The food alone, my goodness. If you can call it food. Do you know if this place ever gets inspected?”
“Oh, it does,” Eliza said, chuckling. “Once a year or somethin’. But Warden Barrow oughtta be a stage director, she’s so good at puttin’ on that show. It’s scheduled, so she has lotsa time to plan it.”
Emily supposed she shouldn’t be surprised. There was no way a place like this could have gone on undetected as long as it had without some kind of cover-up, or corruption. But she would need to see some of it for herself if she was going to name names. She squinted at Eliza.
“How have you learned all this?”
“Hey, ya keep yer head down and stay friendly, ya hear stuff.”
Eliza was right, of course. Staying friendly and keeping her head down was precisely how a person could overhear important things. But what Emily needed to do was witness them. “Can I ask why you’re here?” she inquired.
“Ah,” Eliza said, shaking her head at the floor. “Well, home’s a wreck. Da’s a drunk, Mam’s his punchin’ bag. Six kids, never enough food. Electrical gets cut off all the time, we get evicted. An’ when Mam’s had enough, Da beats on us kids.”
Emily grimaced. “Good Lord.”
“I’m the youngest,” Eliza went on, eyes still on the floor as she worked.
“All but two of me brothers already up and left, nobody finishes school. Mam won’t do nothin’ about it, so I get meself tossed in here on purpose.
” She looked at Emily, whose mop had stilled.
“Hey, ’s three meals a day. Me own bed. Some clothes, heat ’n electricity.
’S better here than home. And no men tryna get at me, like on the street.
After they turf me outta here I just steal and let meself get caught til they send me back. ”
Emily was unsure how to respond.
“And no beatings here unless you step outta line,” Eliza continued.
“So s’long as I keep me head down, it’s fine.
Once I’m grown up like you I’ll skip town.
Try to get a job. I’ll know enough about cleaning and laundry, anyway.
I can do somethin’ for meself. I seen what it cost me mam, needing Da for money. Hell, I’m not doin’ that.”
Emily processed all Eliza had said. “I’m very sorry,” she said, and meant it. No child should have to live like that.
“Ah, hell, some’s got it worse, right? I can’t gripe.”
Emily didn’t know what do other than nod understandingly. But her ears had pricked. She waited a moment before speaking again.
“So there’s no beatings unless we step out of line?” she asked quietly.
“Yeah. If you really piss ’em off, they’ll beat ya with leather straps in the basement. The doctor supervises it. I guess to make sure no one gets hurt too bad, but me, I think she likes it. She’s right twisted, that one. Soul’s as black as that hair o’ hers.”
After her encounter with Dr. Stone that morning, Emily had no doubt that Eliza was right.