Chapter 17
Seventeen
Pounding heat and rain returned the last days of June, paralyzing the prison.
Waldeen caught me by the sleeve as I hung the mop in the utility closet and reached for my bag of books. “The warden just sent for ya. And she seemed a mite agitated.”
Agitated. It seemed everyone was. The soupy, festering air was wrapped in molasses and barely crawling inside the penitentiary. Even the wind carried a cry when offering up a stingy breeze.
Many of the women soaked their sheets in cold water and draped themselves to escape the heat and foulness, but it still felt like we were trapped under wet woolen blankets.
Some slept on the cool concrete floors, their heads swathed in dampened towels.
But despite the temporary remedies and having all the windows open behind curtains of water-sopped bedsheets, a stubborn anger gripped the prison.
I rubbed my painful arm. The unrelenting weather rioted against my newly knit bones, aggravating the tender joints and nerves whenever I mopped the cafeteria floors.
“Scuttlebutt is, Warden is still griping about funding again. But luckily, our budget’s not in her crosshairs.” Waldeen lifted the tail of her apron and wiped the dampness off her brow.
I still didn’t have any library visitors, but a few of the girls in my wing had been requesting books. Slowly, more had followed. But would a handful be enough? Or would she fire me because I hadn’t lived up to her expectations?
“I’ll take your books. Ya better hurry, kid.” Waldeen grabbed the bag.
As I stepped out of the cafeteria, I bumped into Regina. She shoved me, and my shoulder hit the wall.
“Wonder if book witches bruise blue,” she said and hurried by.
I brushed off the injury and swiftly made my way to Warden’s office, almost colliding with a corrections officer. “Slow down. Walk with your eyes open, Lovett. And dammit, step lightly; you sound louder than a parade of elephants,” he scolded.
***
A guard came into the warden’s tiny waiting room some forty minutes later. “Go on in, she’ll see you now.”
I smoothed down the wrinkles on my dress, tugged at the damp collar and clinging bodice, the sweltering heat a weighted misery as I cracked open the door. “Ma’am, you wanted to see me?”
“Come in. Sit,” the warden replied crisply, and I took the chair in front of her desk, once more hiding my shadow-darkened hands inside the folds of my skirts.
“I have several reports we need to address.” She lifted a stack of papers and squared them with several taps to her desk, then thumbed through the pages.
Breaths of wild honeysuckled winds pushed through the open window, blousing the drab green curtains. In the distance, thunder rolled across a crow’s graveled cries as the promise of another summer rainstorm lightly perfumed the dark-paneled office.
Drawn to the lazy hum of the oscillating fan perched to the side of her desk, I tilted my head to the whirls, feeling its miserly breeze on my flesh.
Selecting a typewritten page from the stack in front of her, Warden lassoed me back. “Okay. Let’s start with Officer Holt’s report.” She studied her papers. “With Odette in Forensics.”
“Ma’am, she likes the poetry books, sure enough.”
“Her seizures have all but ceased.”
Seizures? “That’s what it was. Odette had one when I first met her.”
“Clark came in over a year ago and shortly after began having these fits. The books are the only change in her life, and some of the doctors believe they may have somehow eased her disturbed mind.”
I bobbed my head, proud my work was meeting her approval.
She picked up another page and skimmed it.
“It appears Odette is finally communicating with the prison psychiatrist. Like most in her ward, the girl had been housed over at the old Central State Hospital asylum and always violently refused to speak, and even struck the guards and medical staff. It’s no wonder they’ve discussed performing a lobotomy to keep her docile and obedient.
” She talked freely. “The director believes these type of surgeries have been a blessing to our prisons, thanks to Moniz. Now it looks like the books may offer something new for the doctors to muse over.”
I shifted uncomfortably, thinking of Chaney in Geriatrics.
I’d read about the Nobel Prize winner and heard plenty of tales in here about Kaintuck’s horrid lunatic asylum, the torturous experiments and surgeries doctors used on afflicted folks they’d shackle in manacles.
The drilling into brains, ice-water baths, forced shock treatments, and more.
“Officer Holt said he can’t believe the change in his ward.
Nor can the guards in Geriatrics,” she went on.
“The elderly inmates have greatly benefited from your library service, the nurse reports. Our former librarians would never step foot anywhere near those wards. But”—she raised a pointed finger toward me—“I should’ve known a Pack Horse librarian would. ”
“Thank you, Warden. I’m mighty grateful for the job.”
“Indeed. Now”—she cleared her throat—“about the library. How many visitors have you had?”
“Visitors?” I asked, suddenly struck with the horror that she was finally going to dismiss me.
“Your patrons.”
I couldn’t meet her eyes. “None, ma’am, except for the weekly needlepoint club.”
She picked up a slip of paper, set it in front of her, and wrote something down.
“That’s about to change.”
Would she make more demands I couldn’t meet?
“There’s also this report from Death Row,” she said. “He notes she’s been asking for stamps, anticipating writing her first letter when she finally graduates from your lessons. Thank you for working with her.”
“Sassyann wrote her first letter and did a fine job, ma’am.”
“Oh, which reminds me.” She pushed two envelopes to the edge of her desk. “A letter from your lawyer and one from your daughter.”
I snatched up the opened mail, looking at it like it was gold. It was my first letter from Honey.
“Take this note.” She reached over her desk and dropped the paper close to the edge, still cautious about touching me.
“You’ll need to bring those numbers up. But I’m releasing you from kitchen duty, though Waldeen has requested you continue keeping her books and help with the budget.” Again, she paused to study the paper. “Therefore, I’ve decided to grant it.”
Released. I glanced down at the note that declared it.
“Starting tomorrow morning, you’ll be assigned as our new full-time prison librarian.”
I cocked my good ear, not fully soaking up the words. “Full-time librarian, ma’am?”
“Indeed. We’ll bring some of the less-disturbed women from the Geriatric and Forensic wards down to you.
You begin work at seven a.m. sharp and close nightly at six p.m., Monday through Friday, except for religious holidays.
Saturdays, you’ll keep the library open till three p.m., and Sundays will be your day off. You do still want the job, Lovett?”
I nodded, hardly believing what I’d just heard.
“For your work, I’ll continue to compensate you and will raise your state pay to eleven cents a day.”
My debt from Laundry would be paid off soon. I was thrilled that I would be able to afford stamps to write Honey and that I wouldn’t have to borrow from Waldeen again.
I’d seen my daughter once, and only briefly, back when they had me locked up in the infirmary. I had been drugged and could barely recall any of it, except for Honey screaming at the guards.
She’d not been allowed back since.
Warden Sanders said, “You’ll continue your visits to the other wings, Death Row, and also set a schedule for those who need to learn to read and write in the library. Your library, Cussy Lovett.”
My library. Mine. I was overjoyed by the unexpected gift.
It didn’t matter none where the reading materials were housed—whether in a boarded-up woodland chapel that had seen too many rains, a small room in the back of an even-smaller post office, or inside these dank prison walls.
I jumped up, unable to control my excitement, the burst of gratitude. “Much obliged, Warden Sanders.”
She studied me carefully before speaking.
“Remember, no excitement books. It just riles the women—and, well, it’d be a temptation.
Be mindful to use extra caution on selecting books for Forensics.
No books like Mrs. Dalloway, or such that could poison the mind and lead to self-harm.
We must not forget the long-ago Werther fever and how it incited the impressionable and less-educated to commit suicide and other tragic deeds. ”
I’d heard about The Sorrows of Young Werther and other similar books folks fussed and gossiped about, but still, I couldn’t hide the disappointment on my face.
Warden knitted her brows. “Why, it would be like putting Sassyann in charge of the kitchen,” she said, her tone wry. “Those type of reads not only poison but can cause more damage to unhealthy minds and morally pollute our fine correctional facility.”
I looked down at the floor.
“Warden Alton had asked if he could borrow you again. At least once a week in exchange for the men’s extra maintenance services that we are desperately in need of. He had hoped you would be willing to train one of his inmates for a librarian position too.”
To have another chance to see my husband would mean everything.
“Ma’am, I’d be happy to help the warden.” I had to clear my throat to add, “Pleased to do your bidding.”
“I will probably send you back over in late August. Perhaps things will settle down over there. I wouldn’t want to risk anything happening here.”
Settle down? I wondered what she meant but dared not question her.
“Warden Alton was grateful for your visits. He had his men pack up a crate of books for our library.” I followed her gaze to a cumbersome box sitting in the corner on the floor.
“Take a look. I think you’ll be pleased.
As librarian, you will of course get first dibs.
” She picked up her pen and made some notes on the papers.