Chapter 18 Emily
EMILY
Emily stood at the large basin sink in the prison laundry, which was located in the basement, scrubbing at her hands and forearms with a harsh yellow soap to clean off the chemical residue.
Every morning as she worked in the laundry after breakfast and prayer time, her skin becoming more cracked and dry by the day, Emily thought of her nana.
She wondered how similar their experiences were.
For how different could a laundry have been in an upscale hotel?
It required the same sort of labour, the same conditions, chemicals, and muscles.
Sheets and towels, clothes and rags were boiled and scrubbed and wrung out to dry.
But slowly, she was acclimating.
She had already lost weight from her average-sized frame, as she was doing more manual labour than ever before, and eating less.
She would have committed a crime worthy of her sentence to have a roast beef sandwich on rye from her favourite deli on Gerrard, the one that threw in those really excellent kosher pickles on the side at no extra charge.
She had dark circles under her eyes from poor sleep, though that had slowly begun to improve.
The hard springs poking into her back from the old mattress in her cell combined with the stress of her situation had made sleep difficult in the first few days.
But being kept so busy with such physical exertion, plus the lack of food, meant she fell into bed most nights too exhausted to even notice the discomfort.
And between the conditions and what she’d learned of a few of her fellow inmates, she was steadily gathering the ingredients for the story, setting them side by side in her mind as she mapped out the article.
Every day, Emily ate supper with Eliza and a couple of inmates she was now friendly with.
There was Gertrude, a twenty-year-old lesbian who’d been caught in bed with another girl six months before, and whose case file was allegedly stamped with a “D” for “deviant.” She’d met Gertrude in their mind-numbing “typing” class, which was devoid of any typing whatsoever.
Gertrude was tall, smart, and boldly sarcastic in a way Emily envied, and she’d liked her immediately.
Then there was her cell neighbour Lizzie, who had five children by three different fathers.
“They locked me up to keep me away from men,” she told Emily, dark eyes shadowed beneath thin black brows.
“Can’t go having any more kids, they say, or they’ll take the rest of ’em, too.
” She was four months into a two-year sentence at the Mercer; her children had been separated and sent to live with each of their fathers for the duration.
“Judge gave me the option of being sterilized or coming here.” Emily had never heard of a woman having that many children by different fathers, but she reminded herself that she was here to observe, not judge.
Lizzie was obviously intelligent, patient, and unwaveringly kind—particularly to a woman named Peggy, whose cell was across from Lizzie and Emily’s.
She was a slight, mousy young woman who didn’t talk much.
Lizzie said Peggy had been routinely beaten by her husband and was in such a state of hysterics when the police arrived to sort out the most recent disturbance that she was arrested instead of him.
“If it isn’t one prison, it’s just another, or another,” Lizzie had told Emily one morning, downing the last of her watery tea. “It’s all just a bunch of bullshit, isn’t it?”
Emily had made furious mental notes of these women’s stories, which she planned to include in the article, substituting their names for false ones. She had never in her life felt more fortunate for her position. She had agency and options and family support. They didn’t.
The alarm that indicated a shift change went off beside the laundry room door, shattering the quiet.
Emily set down the soap, rinsed then dried her hands on the already damp and slightly musty hand towel hanging on a rusted nail by the basin.
She made her way up to the main floor for “exercise” hour, which mostly consisted of the inmates milling around the centre hall, gossiping.
From her usual spot, pressed against the wall near the staircase, Emily utilized this time as an opportunity to quietly observe her fellow inmates and the supervising staff.
But she wondered how much longer these indoor break times could go on.
Surely, I thought, there must be some regulation which guaranteed the prisoners a certain amount of fresh air and exercise about the yard each day?
But no. It seemed that we were all sentenced not only to restrictions on our general bodily liberty, but on our lungs and souls as well.
The only glimpses afforded of the summer sky were the slivers of view we snatched through the cold bars of our cell windows.
It was another piece of the story she would need to research and confirm once she was out.
She was growing desperate to go for a walk, even just around the prison yard.
She felt caged. She was so used to walking all around Toronto, usually preferring it to other transport.
She was not one of those women who could remain cloistered inside with domestic pursuits all day. It was enough to drive her mad.
After the stand-about hour, the bell blared and Emily filed into Classroom 2, in the east corridor near the factory.
This was, allegedly, the typing class. But upon her first visit to the classroom, Emily had been appalled to learn that there was no instructor, just two old, dusty typewriters in the corner, not nearly enough for the twenty or so inmates scheduled for the class.
All they did was chat and argue as their stomachs growled for dinner.
It was ludicrous. The women referred to the time as a “lesson” purely in jest as they sat draped over the mismatched chairs, loudly gossiping; others napped, their heads resting on folded arms. The prison had begun to heat up as they moved further into July, and the room was stuffy.
Several girls were fanning themselves ineffectually.
They weren’t monitored during this time; it was simply a place to stick groups of inmates on a rotation where they couldn’t possibly get up to any mischief—and of course, it was a way for the warden to tell the government inspectors that typing class was on the daily schedule.
The young woman beside Emily today was visibly pregnant.
Emily had seen her during mealtimes, and they shared a shift in the factory, too.
There were plenty of pregnant women at the Mercer, almost all of whom, Emily had learned, had been sent there because they were pregnant.
There was even a nursery on-site, just around the corner from where they currently sat.
The girl was slumped back a little in the small wooden school chair, fingers entwined on top of her belly, her face drawn, as though she were suppressing a complaint.
Emily recalled her sister’s two pregnancies, how she’d feigned nonchalance in front of Harry but had nearly broken down in tears one night when she was expecting Charlie.
Emily had wandered into the kitchen after Sunday dinner to fetch the tea tray and caught the end of Eleanor’s conversation with Bess.
“Feels like I’m sleeping on tree roots, no matter how many pillows I use,” Eleanor was saying. “I’ve hardly had any sleep for weeks. I know I’m supposed to love this, but I can’t wait for it to be over, Mom.” Her voice cracked, and Bess embraced her as Emily ducked back out into the living room.
Emily thought of the atrociously lumpy mattress in her cell, doubted whether this woman’s was any better. But it occurred to her it might be good to know whether anything was different for the pregnant women at the Mercer. She leaned over and smiled at the girl. “Hi. I’m Emily.”
The girl glanced up from her belly, eyes dull. “Hi,” she said. “Vera. You’re new here, eh?”
Emily nodded. “A few weeks. You?”
Vera sighed and wiped some sweat from her forehead. “I’ve been here about six months now. I’m due in a couple of months. Then I get out sometime after that, I suppose. I don’t know the details, really. My parents fixed it.”
Emily’s brow furrowed. “I’m sorry.”
Vera shook her head and looked down again, scratched at a spot on her upper lip. “My boyfriend is Chinese. My parents didn’t like that very much, even before I got pregnant. Neither did the judge. My dad reported me to the police, and now here I am.”
Emily had thought that by now her surprise at these inmates’ experiences and origins might have lessened, but hearing about how so many of them had come to be incarcerated for the most subjective moral and pseudo-legal reasons still astonished her.
Though it was a good thing, really. Hopefully that meant Chatelaine’s readers would be astonished, too—and outraged.
“My mother’s written a couple of times,” Vera said, “but she just talks around the fact that I’m expecting. Talks about the family business and getting me married off when I get out, the dresses she bought on sale. She doesn’t ask about the baby. Not ever.” She ran a hand over her belly again.
Emily hesitated on her next question. “And what happens after? When the baby’s born?”
Vera swallowed. “It will go to the nursery for a month until I finish my sentence, and then I’m not sure. My mother keeps talking as though there won’t be a baby with me when I get out.” Emily glimpsed a tear forming in the corner of her eye, quickly blinked into non-existence. “I—”
“Why are you talking to her, Vera?” a loud voice demanded from the front of the room.
Emily’s eyes snapped to the speaker, a tall, broad-shouldered young woman about Emily’s age with a pile of blond curls on the crown of her head.
“She’s friends with Crazy Annie. Probably crazy herself, too. Aren’t you?”