Chapter 6
Six
I waited by the crash gate with a laundry bag of books and a pass from the warden while the officer unlocked the door to the Geriatric Ward.
“Thirty minutes and not a second longer,” the guard warned.
“Sir, Warden said I could take an hour with the women—”
He shoved three fingers in my face. “And not a second more,” he growled, then grabbed my book bag and searched inside.
My eyes watered from the stench of soil and looming death. Coughing, I took a folding chair from the wall and dragged it over to a group of seven women in wheelchairs.
One woman’s eyes fluttered open and then quickly shut, a small moan escaping her thin lips.
Another looked empty-eyed at the big clock hanging on the wall, lost in trapped memories of yesteryear, clicking her teeth to the loud ticking of the second hand.
A few more stared blankly ahead while others drooped their heads toward their laps and worried shaky, knotted hands. I set down my bag and righted my chair.
“Ladies,” I said, doing my best to ignore the smell of urine and decay hovering above the circle.
I blinked and wiped my watering eyes against a sleeve.
“I’m the new prison librarian—your Book Woman, at your service.
My name is Cussy Lovett, and I’m here to read to you today and loan out books from the prison library. Would you like that?”
Silence.
Then: “They sent her to infect us so we’d kill off quicker.” An inmate pointed an accusing finger at me.
“I’m perfectly healthy, ladies. Promise, my color isn’t catchin’ or killin’.
” I rummaged through my bag and pulled out the new copy of Charlotte’s Web, hoping some of the elderly women had come from farms and would enjoy the tale of the young girl, Fern, and her barnyard characters.
Softly, I cleared my throat and began, “Where’s Papa going with that axe—”
“We know where ol’ Lila went with hers.” A woman mimicked striking an axe and darted eyes to a frail inmate who glared back at her.
I noticed in the back row a younger woman slumped in her chair, murmuring with spittle collecting in the corners of her mouth. I moved toward her, but the guard blocked me and shook his head. “She won’t understand any book that you could read her.”
A half hour later the guard tapped my shoulder, pulling me from the story. “Time’s almost up.” I looked up from the page, surprised to see seven sets of attentive eyes on me.
One woman quietly said, “Grandma once saw a spider write her brother’s name in its web. He died within three days.”
I winced, remembering the scattered feathers of the pillow and the angel crown left behind on the porch the day the lawman took me into custody.
“My pappy said for every spider you kill, you kill an enemy,” one recalled.
Another chimed in, “I ’member my granny always swore that if you have a headache, swallow a spider’s web and it’ll go away.”
“Time to leave,” the officer said. “Dinner trays will be here soon.”
One woman frowned. “Not now, Officer McGee. I want her to read one more chapter.”
Another had tears in her eyes.
“And just what are you blubbering about, Geraldine Clark?” one of the women asked her.
“Quiet, Bess,” the guard warned.
“I once had a pet goat named Wilbur. Always stuck to my side like beggar’s tick. Can we keep the loan?” Geraldine stretched out a wobbly arm.
“I’d like a book,” Bess said.
“If Bess and Gerry gets one, I want one too,” someone else piped up. “Ma never could afford ’em when I was growing up.”
“Same, Dottie. We were so poor I had to steal scraps from the dog bowl,” a reed-thin woman told the inmate beside her.
Several more chorused “I’ll take a book” and “Me too.”
Finally. My very first patrons.
I all but tumbled over to Geraldine to hand her the book, then quickly fished inside my bag for more. Still, I looked to the inmate slumped over, babbling to herself.
The woman named Dottie caught my eye and said, “That’s Chaney—or what’s left of her. Prison done went and gave her one of them lobotomies.”
I stared, horrified for the younger woman.
“She tried to stab two inmates. They do it to all the crazy ones too.” Dottie circled a finger over her temple. “Even to some of the ones who ain’t”—she leaned toward me and barely whispered—“dutiful, or gets too lippy with ’em.” Her old eyes warned.
Beyond Chaney, a feeble woman watched in silence.
After I wrote down everyone’s names and their books on the index cards to catalog, I looked again at the women sitting alone in the back, smiled, and motioned to her.
The birdlike woman held back and refused to roll her wheelchair over to the bag of books. I walked over to her. “Ma’am, would you like a read today?” A waft of foulness lifted. She grimaced, and I could see she was in pain. “Ma’am?” I took another step and she flinched.
I hesitated, thinking I’d scared her.
Then a tear dropped, wetting her pale cheek. “The morning guard wouldn’t let me relieve myself when I asked. Now I’m soiled.”
The officer strolled over and wrinkled his nose. “Dammit, not again, Marigold,” he said, the disgust souring his voice. “The nurse’s aide won’t be here for another two hours.”
Marigold bowed her head and wept quietly.
“I’ve a mind to order you an ice bath.” I followed as he jerked on Marigold’s wheelchair, swung it around, and then pushed it across the room and into the washroom.
Another hard shove and he let go, and Marigold and the wheelchair went crashing into a large metal bucket shaped like a horse trough, empty and waiting to be fed its next meal of ice and a warm body.
She moaned.
“You can just spend the afternoon alone in your own stink till the aide comes,” he said.
I stepped in front, hoping he wouldn’t pick up the frail woman and dump her into the trough. “Sir, since I’ve finished my reading for today, I can help Miss Marigold clean up.”
He seemed unsure and darted his eyes between us. Then: “Be quick.” He left with a disgusted breath curling into the air.
I opened one of four stalls, saw an enamel washtub, and turned on the faucets.
Lifting her out of the wheelchair, I helped her over to a sink while the tub filled.
Marigold gripped her corded necklace of a blackened crucifix while I slipped the cotton shift over her head.
I sucked in a breath, horrified by what I saw.
Her pale buttocks were pocked with oozing, angry bedsores caked in feces.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, I tried to hol’ it…
” Her apologies were warbled, soaked in shame and agony.
“We’ll have you freshened up in no time, Miss Marigold.
First let’s wipe you down, then get you a warm soak so you’ll feel better,” I soothed, fighting back the bile threatening to rise.
“No time and you’ll be feeling better, and then I’ll leave you with a nice read.
” I raised my strained words, chatted lightly, trying to distract her with book suggestions, fighting to swallow down the anger sloshing against the threatening heave in the pit of my stomach.
She clung to the basin—naked, trembling, and quietly sobbing—while I took a soapy, wet cloth and carefully washed down her backside, bottom, and legs.
Gently, I helped her into the tub.
Again, I soaped the rag and washed down her back. “Do you have any favorite books, Miss Marigold?”
She coughed out a strangled reply, her words drowned.
When I had finished and covered her wounds with an ointment the guard had reluctantly fetched, I helped Marigold into a fresh prison gown and clean necessaries, the garments baggy and swallowing her small frame.
“Maybe we can find you a good book now,” I said, wheeling her back into the common area.
I begged the guard for a few more minutes with her and then let her select from my bag. Timidly, she picked out The Little Lame Prince and His Travelling Cloak and handed it to me. After I read several pages, Marigold rubbed her wet lashes.
“Would you rather I read something else?”
She shook her head and said in a strained voice, “Mother read this to me when I was a little girl. It was my favorite, and she’d sewed me a magic cloak to play in.”
“I’ll leave it with you, Miss Marigold. It’ll be just like having your own magic cloak again.”
Minutes later, the guard unlocked the crash gate, and I slipped out to go on to the next wing—the one I dreaded most.
***
I stared at the dark-red letters on the sign hanging over the entrance to the next cell block, feeling in my bone and flesh a sense of dread.
DEATH ROW
Shortly, a guard opened the door and carefully inspected my books before escorting me down a dimly lit hall of empty cells. Ahead, a radio hummed its static, curling around the gray concrete walls of the darkened chamber.
The officer stopped at the last cell. “Sassyann, company’s here.” He walked over to a windowed office, cast back a glance before slipping inside. After a few seconds, he closed the sliding window and picked up the telephone, then turned his back, lost in conversation.
I peered through the bars at the prisoner resting on the mattress, her eyes shut, her face contorted in pain.
“Ma’am? Miss Sassyann, I’m the prison Book Woman, Cussy Lovett, and I’ve come to read to you. Would you like that?”
When she didn’t move, I began reading from the book, raising my voice above the radio, peeking over the pages and past the bars.
I stopped after three pages. “Ma’am, I don’t want to disturb you. Would you like it if I leave the book instead?” Sassyann didn’t budge. I stepped over and set the book quietly against the bars.
Sassyann swung her legs over the cot, the scarlet-red cotton shirt and baggy britches wrinkled and stained. She turned off the brown Bakelite radio on the small table beside her. Slowly, the death-row prisoner eased herself over to the bars.
“It’s right there whenever you’re ready to look at it.” I pointed to the book. “Unless you would like me to read a few more pages?”