Chapter 19 Emily
EMILY
I was pleased about the hiding place I had procured for the toilet paper notes upon which I was recording the details of my incarceration.
Time would tell whether I was in fact able to keep it a secret, but for the moment, at least, I was calmed somewhat by the assurance that I had a reliable backup record if, months later, my memory failed me.
As I could no longer use the tap for water during the night, I resolved to have my evening drink in the inmate washroom before returning to my cell at lights out.
Two days after Emily had decided how and where to take her notes, she finished recording the entry with a sharpened crayon she’d swiped from the warden’s office the day before.
The morning bell clanged out in the corridor, and she vowed to try to do a little writing early in the morning every few days, or when there had been a development or observation that called for it.
She rolled it up as tightly as she could and fed it back into the tap on the wall.
She’d given a lot of thought to her mission the night before, now that she was a little more settled into life at the Mercer.
She was used to her routine now—unpleasant as it might be—and had been recording her observations about the matrons, her fellow inmates, the physical prison and its conditions.
She missed her parents, her sister, and even Jem, a little.
She missed hot baths and privacy and her mother’s cooking.
And God, she missed the office. But she was coping well with the immersion so far, approaching it all from a place of curiosity in the hope that it might feel like more of an adventure than a misery.
Emily had several questions that she needed answers for, but currently, her biggest fascination was with Annie Little, and how she had come to be incarcerated at the Mercer for the past fifteen years when the maximum sentence was meant to be two.
That seemed like a monstrous abuse of the Female Refuges Act, and Emily needed to learn more.
As she waited outside her cell for the Chamber Pot Parade, Emily’s thoughts were interrupted by the sound of whistles from the psychiatric wing.
She’d noticed that the matrons had whistles tied to a string on the belts of their dresses—not unlike old-fashioned housekeeper’s chatelaines—which were used to call for assistance in the event an inmate became unmanageable.
Emily had heard them used twice since she’d been in the Mercer, both times in the psych wing.
A drawn-out shriek echoed down the hall.
“Enough, Rose. Quiet now!” Emily heard. A muffled shriek again, then silence.
After she’d been to the bathroom, Emily got back in line in front of Lizzie as the inmates made their daily stampede downstairs to the dining hall for breakfast. But as she stepped onto the main floor, Emily was suddenly shoved into the brick wall.
Looking up in alarm, she saw Thelma, who sneered before turning her back on Emily.
“She’s such a shit,” Lizzie said beside her. “Are you okay?”
Emily’s shoulder hurt where it had hit the brick.
“What’s her problem? I haven’t done anything to her.
” Inmates swirled around them as they stood still, like rocks in a stream.
Emily wasn’t easily intimidated, but this situation with Thelma unsettled her.
She hadn’t come here to make enemies, and having someone intent on antagonizing her would be a waste of valuable energy.
“She’s just a creep,” Lizzie assured her. “She’s picking on you because you’re new and you’re nice. She thinks she can bully you. My advice is don’t let her.”
“But why is she such a creep?”
Lizzie shrugged. “Some people are just bad, Radcliffe. Come on, let’s get breakfast before Eliza eats it all.”
Trying to shake off what had just happened, Emily turned with Lizzie into the dining hall, determined to focus on her objective and get more information out of Annie Little.
She sidled next to Eliza and they made their way through the cafeteria line.
When she spotted Annie alone at her usual table, Emily decided now was her moment.
“I’m going to sit with Annie,” she said.
“Why?” Eliza demanded, gaping at her. “Yer crazier than she is if ya keep doin’ that! Yer gonna get in trouble, Emily. It’s no joke, associatin’ with the Blues.”
“I’ll catch up with you later,” Emily said as Eliza walked off, shaking her head.
As Emily approached Annie, who looked as alone as a lost dog, she noticed two other women in blue, both seated together near the doors. A dark-haired matron loitered nearby.
Emily sat down.
“It’s back bacon,” she said, nodding at Annie’s plate.
The fatty meat had been set aside as Annie ate her eggs with a spoon.
“Thought you might need it cut. Is there a reason they can’t do that for you in the kitchen?
” It seemed like the easiest and most reasonable thing to pre-cut a woman’s meal if she wasn’t allowed a knife.
Annie stared at her a moment, swallowed her egg with a passive expression. Her skin was so pale, from lack of sunlight or nutrition or both. But Emily tried not to see through her. “No one has ever offered,” Annie said. “And I can’t ask.”
Psychiatric inmates are denied basic eating utensils (or assistance with same) and ostracized in the dining hall, relegated to isolation among their fellows even when they are considered safe enough to fraternise with the general prison population.
Emily frowned. “Well, here,” she said, proffering the knife.
She didn’t glance over at the security matrons, but they would either see this or they wouldn’t, would discipline her or not.
She couldn’t very well sit there and do nothing while Annie tried to eat her bacon with her hands, like some animal.
There wasn’t much dignity in this place, and surely the inmates—even the Blues—were entitled to some.
And besides, Annie had information Emily needed.
Annie’s chest rose and fell on a deep breath before she accepted the knife. “Why are you being so friendly?” she asked quietly. “You know what the blue means, don’t you?”
Emily nodded. “But you don’t seem insane to me. Why are you here?”
Annie sighed again and cut the pork, glanced up briefly from beneath her dark lashes to check that the matrons weren’t watching. Emily remained focused on Annie, tried to ignore her own increased heart rate. Her interviewee handed back the knife.
“No, I’m not insane,” Annie said, taking a bite of her meat, chewing slowly. She swallowed, eyes still on her plate. “I haven’t been insane—not really, anyway—for fourteen and a half years.”
Only Emily’s need for sustenance kept her eating now.
Her appetite had vanished, but she knew she would be hungry well before dinner if she didn’t finish this measly breakfast. She forced down a spoonful of over-salted, lukewarm egg and waited for Annie to say more.
It looked like she was deliberating. Emily offered a small smile to nudge her. It worked.
“What have you heard about me?” Annie asked, a bitter smirk tickling her lips.
Emily decided on the truth. It seemed unfair to lie to her. “I heard you killed your child,” she said gently. “But something tells me there’s more to the story than that, if it’s true at all.”
Annie blinked rapidly. “That rumour’s gone around since I got here, I think.
” She paused. The chatter in the room swelled, which always meant everyone was nearly finished eating; it was good cover for a secretive conversation.
“I didn’t kill my child,” she said, finally making eye contact with Emily.
“But after Gregory was born, I did go insane. It’s blurry, especially now, after all this time, and the medications and shock treatments.
” Emily’s ears pricked. “I sometimes wonder how much of what I remember is real,” Annie said.
“Good and bad.” Another deep breath. “I think I thought there was some sort of ghost or demon or something that was trying to hurt me. And somehow that idea got mixed up with my baby’s cries, like he was a demon screaming.
Or something.” She shook her head. “I remember lunging at my husband, but I don’t remember hurting my child.
I really don’t think I did, but my husband got me committed.
I haven’t told anyone this in years,” she added, looking nervous.
Emily’s throat swelled with pity. “Why not?”
“No one asks. Word gets around to the new inmates and they all stay away. Why didn’t you?” She looked skeptical. “I’m sure your friend over there must have said something.” She nodded in Eliza’s direction.
“You’re observant,” Emily said with a half-smile.
“Yes. That happens when you’re invisible. People see right through you, but in turn, you begin to see them more clearly.”
Emily waited again. She knew how to interview—leave an empty space, and someone who’s already willing to talk will always fill the silence.
“I was here on an indefinite sentence, because they called me a lunatic. ‘Puerperal insanity,’ they said. Something about new mothers going mad after their babies are born. Sort of like hysteria, I think. But after a few months here, I felt back to normal. Well…as normal as I could be in a prison.” Her eyes slid a little out of focus, and Emily saw the past fifteen years of Annie’s incarceration slide across them like a dark cloud.
“And then I was just left with sadness. But I’m not insane. ”
Emily watched her with a piercing ache in her heart. “I believe you, Annie,” she said, her own voice barely audible over the clamour of the dining hall. “So why do you think you’re still here? I don’t understand.”
Annie didn’t hesitate, and her voice was stronger now.
“I’m here because she thinks I’m still insane.
Dr. Stone. Because I raged at them, once I was back to myself, to let me out.
I wanted to be with my husband and child.
The law says she needs to sign off on my release, but she won’t.
She tries me on some new drug every few months.
But I’m not going to hurt anyone. I have nightmares sometimes, but they torture me alone, no one else.
And that’s more than my husband can say, let me tell you.
My son was conceived after John came back from the war, in forty-four.
He used to thrash and scream in his sleep like I do.
Seeing things, you know. Reliving them in his nightmares. ”
Emily opened and shut her mouth. “But couldn’t your husband ask for—”
“He stopped writing ten years ago, without a word. I can only suspect he moved on to someone else. Men can divorce their wives if they’re insane.” She offered a pained smile, then was silent for a long moment.
“At least the girls who come here pregnant get to have their babies with them.” Annie flicked her chin to the left, and Emily followed her gaze to Vera, who was sitting with another pregnant girl.
“For a while at least. That’s more than I ever got.
I never go within twenty feet of the nursery. I can’t bear it.”
The bell rang, and Emily jumped, so invested she’d been in Annie’s tale. They both stood.
“Thank you for telling me this,” Emily said.
Annie nodded. “I appreciate your kindness. Maybe tomorrow you can tell me your story, how you got here. We’ve all got one.”
Emily warmed at the idea that Annie was looking forward to speaking with her again. They parted ways, Annie disappearing back up to the second floor.
As other inmates swarmed around her, Emily gravitated toward the nursery down the hall, in the south corridor across from the chapels.
She hadn’t taken much notice of it before.
The doors were always shut against the noise of the main floor.
She peered in through the small glass window in the centre of the door; it was dim in there, the curtains over the large windows half shut to block out some of the sunlight so the babies could sleep.
Emily could see two lines of wooden cradles, twenty or so in all, though fewer than half appeared full.
Two mothers were seated in armchairs, nursing in the soft light.
One looked up at Emily, hollow-eyed with a single tear track bisecting her cheek, a stream through a dark wood.
Emily saw a flash of Eleanor in the woman’s face, glimpsed the torment in her eyes before two strong hands gripped Emily’s upper arms and hauled her away from the window.