Chapter 7
Seven
Waldeen nudged us back to the pantry. Inside, she stroked her neck as the wisps of cigarette smoke ghost-tailed up between us.
A guard called out from the kitchen, “Waldeen, you save me a slice of Patsy’s chocolate pie?”
She stuck her head out the door. “Saved ya the biggest piece, Cap’n. Put it over there on the counter.”
He grunted, and we listened until his footsteps faded and the door thudded his departure. She stubbed out her cigarette and slipped into the kitchen. I heard a drawer open and slam close.
Waldeen came back and lifted a pint of whiskey from her apron pocket, unscrewed the cap, and took herself a long pull. “If you’re nice to the guards, sometimes they return the favor.”
She offered me a sip, and I shyly shook my head and waited for the unspooling of her story.
“Well, about Rosebranch, kid. I had myself a working girl named Clara. I grew quite fond of her. Clara was one of my best. Lots passed through, but she was a madam’s perfect whore.”
I stared at her, trying to dare myself to conjure up what the perfect whore would be.
“But it didn’t last for long, no, sir.” She smoothed down her apron and sighed.
“One year, I delivered her sweet baby boy into the world on a cloud-soaked June afternoon, surrounded by eight working girls as scarlet as the birthing sheets on her bed. Right there in my chandeliered bordello bedroom. It was something else.” Waldeen smiled, reminiscing.
“I could never have babies, but I raised little William like my own his first two years.”
“The boy in your photograph.”
She nodded. “That’s William. He was a Blue just like you, though only on his hands and feet.”
A catch climbed into my throat, thinking about Angeline and Willie Moffit, my young library patrons who’d died in the hills.
I’d adopted their newborn, Honey, immediately after.
Honey was also like her pa, Willie, and this William, and what my kin called blue-eyed Marys, after the two-lipped blue-and-white wildflower.
Their color is only shown on those parts.
“Kid, I know the color’s not a spreader. Any more than that broke arm of yours. People sure get foolish notions about things they can’t understand. That’s why I don’t mind sharing my empty cot.”
“What happened to Clara?” I asked, appreciative that Waldeen had rescued me from the bowels of the prison’s infirmary.
“I always told my working girls two things: The walls of a whorehouse never talk, but watch for the fly parked on your headboard, and understand pen on parchment can leave a legacy of treachery.”
I cocked my head, trying to make sense of her words.
“Clara was drunk on love, and the daddy refused to marry her after she birthed his child. When she caught him stepping out, the girl eventually went to the ol’ tattler newspaper, and tattle she did.
Tol’ them about the Blue politician, Eldon, getting her pregnant after he became smitten with her.
I tried to tell the foolish girl Eldon wasn’t worth it. ”
Another Blue was out there somewhere. It’d been so long, I couldn’t recall if Pa had talked about an Eldon. Though the name seemed somewhat familiar.
“Don’t you know Eldon Carter had been laying his pipe all over my brothel for years? Hell, the whole county—and more pipe than Wheatly otherwise I’d be sitting right up there on Death Row with that ol’ poisoner, Sassyann. ”
“Death penalty.”
“Lots of respectable men paid visits to my place, kid. Businessmen, politicians, unpolished young lovers, and the souls stuck in loveless marriages. We catered to a few Bible-thumping johns, police chiefs, and honorary Kentucky Colonels. There were the stuffy old goats from the country club and wild bucks of spoon wealth from over at the university. All kinds of mighty an’ powerful people came from all over the country to partake of the special amenities we offered at Rosebranch.
And if any of ’em ever heard you’d talked, well, ya ain’t gonna be jawing for long.
’Lessen it’s with ol’ Lucifer, himself. I buried my little black address book and protected many powerful men. Least they could do is protect me.”
Heavy footfalls sounded in the cafeteria.
“Hurry, take it. The guard’s a’comin’,” she whispered, thrusting the book with the hidden contraband into my hands.
“I could never use it, Waldeen. My hand’s fine, and I have to get to the next wing.” I tried to give it back.
“In here, ya can’t carry yourself too tall or too small. Tricky, but you’ll learn the balance. Understand, Cussy?”
Not much different from outside. It felt like I’d lived most of my life as an apology. And I know’d that feeling all my life; when to rise and when to duck.
“When you feel too small and that dirt drops down, ya let this do the talkin’ to stand back up.” Her wise eyes warned. “Get on back to work, kid. And here, take this jar of honey for your wound.”
I shoved the jar into the bottom of my bag. “I’m headed to another wing, where I’ll be searched. Hold the book for me until I can tuck it inside my footlocker tonight.”
I would never use the weapon, but I know’d just what to do with the big jar of honey.
In the hall, I passed the guard who had taken me out of the prison infirmary in April. He scowled, reminding me again of the horrors I was about to visit next.
Weren’t nothing that could keep him from locking me in Forensics. After all, he’d already cursed me by calling me a crazy blue witch, and one misstep was all it would take to prove him right.
Tucking my head, I thought about Dottie, the woman in the Geriatric Ward. “They do it to all the crazy ones, lippy ones.”
They could experiment to erase my crazy blueness by performing a lobotomy on a whim. The surgery that could cause more than silencing the tongue. It could bring blindness, inflict pain and even death to the ones doctors and government had deemed the pariahs of their moral and godly society.
Terrified, I vowed to try to keep my head good ’n’ tucked, lips stiff, and legs starched to toe the line. I had to make it out of here alive. I had to make it back to protect my daughter so that these horrors would never happen to her.