With all the work Warner has had to do writing papers and cramming for final examinations, he has not had time to fret about the box of mementos Minerva took by mistake from the house. Several days before graduation, when he listens to the telephone message from his mother-in-law, saying she inadvertently threw out the box with the trash, it takes him a moment to figure out what box she means. When he does, the news hits him like a train wreck.
That’s bullshit, Warner thinks, stopping the message before Pat has finished her long, rambling apology. Pat did not throw out that box. Minerva is the petty cunt who threw out his belongings.
Warner waits until several days after his last final exam to call his in-laws’ house again. “She’s coming,” Pat says, returning to the phone after leaving Warner waiting for at least a minute.
“About time,” Warner says.
“I agree she shouldn’t have thrown away your things,” Pat says. “But you ought to go easy on her. You know she’s pregnant.”
The receiver nearly slips out of Warner’s hand as he hangs it up. In what seems to be barely a minute later, he arrives at his in-laws’ house, shocked that the Camaro did not get pulled over on the highway by a county sheriff for speeding. Without knocking, he pushes the front door open and enters.
Neither Pat nor Clayton is home. The house is quiet.
“Just a minute,” Minerva calls from the back.
Warner settles on the sofa, realizing he has driven here having no idea what he will say. Minerva’s pumpkin-colored hair is fixed in a single long braid. Watching her enter the living room, he realizes that the casualness in her walk suggests that Pat has not told her that he knows she has thrown away his mementos.
“I suppose you’re here to see the baby,” she says, handing Warner a beer. “She’ll wake up from her nap pretty soon.” Minerva sits down cross-legged on the other edge of the sofa. “I heard you’ve been up in Vermont.”
“Who told you that?”
“Randy. I guess this means you’ll be able to vacate the house by the end of the month, like you said you would.”
Warner snaps open the beer can. “I didn’t come here to talk about me moving up to Vermont. I came here to talk about the news I got from Pat.”
Minerva shifts on the sofa. “I’m sorry I threw away the box.”
“Not as sorry as I am.”
Quiet prevails in the living room for long moments. There have been similar chilly pauses during past arguments, but the two of them have now entered new territory. He wants to rail at her for throwing away his things. She knew what they meant to him. Warner takes a sip of beer, glancing at Minerva, who is staring at her feet. His sorrow is not something she cares about right now. Pointing out that she has hurt him by throwing out his family mementos is not something he can use against her now—especially if she is thinking about Pinky.
“Pat told me you’re pregnant,” Warner says. “Is that true?”
Now Minerva looks uncomfortable. “I don’t think the news changes much. Do you?”
Warner dislikes the taste of beer from a can. Still, to cool the flush of heat coming off his chest and neck, he takes a long drink. “Have you been wanting another child?” he asks.
“Have you?”
“I asked you first.”
“I know, but I always go first in situations like this.”
A Betrayal
A few weeks later, when Warner arrives at Pat and Clayton’s house to drop off Jennifer, he finds a note taped to the door.
Taking Minerva to the hospital. —Pat
Probably nothing that serious, Warner thinks, returning to the car. By the time he gets home there will no doubt be a telephone message from Pat saying everything is fine. Before turning the ignition, he reaches into the back and touches Jennifer, still asleep in her car seat. If he leaves now, he could get to the prison before visiting hours end and still deliver his daughter back here. But there will be hell to pay if he takes Jennifer to Mississippi.
“She’s a little shook up about the stomach cramps,” Pat says when she calls at a few minutes before four o’clock. “The doctor wants to keep her at the hospital to monitor her for the rest of the evening.”
“Is there a chance she might lose the baby?”
“Oh, I’d rather not talk like that,” Pat says. “Let’s keep things positive.”
But several days later, near the end of another visit to Peace Correctional, Warner is barely able to keep his voice steady as he delivers the bad news to his great-grandmother: the baby has died.
“I am sorry to hear that,” Zera says. “No mother wants to lose a child.”
Zera has little to say as Warner tells her how much he feels the loss. “I wanted another child,” he says. “And the reason was not just so Minerva and I could get back together.”
After Warner leaves, Zera wishes she could have found more soothing words to say to him. Her recollection of the gloom she heard in his voice keeps her awake the entire night. By morning the bad news feels even more personal. Her own blood has died in a hospital room in Alabama. In the cafeteria she has no appetite for any of the breakfast dishes warming on the steam trays. She picks at her scrambled eggs and grits near a group of young women, alert to every word said about their children. For a moment she considers walking over to the bank of phones in the hallway to put in a call to Warner. But what would she say? Would she ask Warner to tell Minerva that his great-grandmother is very disturbed by the news about her lost baby? How would that be a comfort? Minerva does not know her.
For years Zera hated the fact that her birth had led to the death of her mother, Patience. It was not a stretch to believe that her life had also led to the death of her son, Omar. Yet during all the years of being incarcerated, most days Zera has been glad to be alive. What she wishes she had said to Warner yesterday was that he and Minerva should be glad to be alive, too. The two of them are lucky to have a child who continues to breathe on this earth.
Perhaps during one of Warner’s visits she will admit that she would be happy if he brought Jennifer to see her. After he left yesterday, she wondered why he had waited until it was time to leave to give her the news. Did he think it might upset her feeble constitution?
Zera wishes she didn’t feel so strongly about the fact that her great-grandson has lost a baby. Each day that passes she feels worse. The few women to whom she confides her sadness say they sympathize. But two or three others tell her to take it on the chin and shut up about it. “Shit happens,” one of the inmates says. “Be glad that you are alive.”
“That is such a sad way to live in the world,” Zera tells her friend Davida in the recreation and education annex, where the two are sorting through fabric odds and ends. “Some of the women in here have hearts as hard as lump coal.”
Davida is several years younger than Zera, and her eyesight is better, so she digs through the old army duffel bag for remnants that might suit today’s project: either pincushions or pot holders. “You ought to know better than to talk about that with some of these women,” Davida says, holding up a checkered pillowcase. “It will just get you upset.”
“I suppose.”
“Besides, you’re not that close to your family.”
“Don’t mean I don’t care about my great-great-grandchild.”
“Making yourself sick about it won’t help though.”
Zera looks at the blouse Davida has pulled from the bag. Her cousin Naomi wore a dress in a similar gaudy maroon to Zera’s wedding. Though she never said another word to Naomi after the gal refused to take in Omar, some days she misses her cousin. Death will do that to family.
“That’s one thing about Peace I have never liked,” Zera says. “After many years, there is always somebody who will never accept their own humanity.”
Davida begins picking up the remnants on the floor. “Did you eat too many fried eggs for breakfast?” she asks, stuffing the castoffs into the pillowcase. “You know eggs make you philosophical.”
Zera lets out a laugh. Davida is right about one thing. She should not have eaten that third fried egg. Her stomach is tight now. But in Peace, how many times a year does a woman get to taste a runny yolk? Zera is about to say the maroon blouse would make a nice Halloween design when she notices Davida’s head leaning back.
Hearing a light snoring, Zera wonders whether she should let Davida get in a short nap. But Davida had returned recently from a two-week hospital stay. And it’s anybody’s guess whether the stay was for Davida to rest while doctors monitored a mild seizure or to recover from being accosted by another inmate. Davida wouldn’t say. And now she might be ill again.
Zera goes into the hallway and turns to head for the infirmary. Hurrying to get the medic, she hopes all her complaining did not worsen whatever is ailing Davida. Knowing Davida Coleman has been one of the few pleasures Zera has had in Peace Correctional. She met her the year the annex began offering cosmetology classes. Zera was inhaling the smell of plum-scented pressing oil when she turned the corner and bumped into her. Zera tried to step back, but Davida took hold of her blouse. “Why don’t you come to the beauty class tomorrow?” Davida said, her hair smelling fragrant. “The teachers will show you how to put some color in that gray on your head.”
Zera never attended any cosmetology classes, but she got to know Davida when the two of them were assigned to latrine detail. Zera liked her, even if sometimes when they parted Davida held her a bit longer than Zera thought was decent. Davida had also attended a college, and the two of them laughed about having to march to class or to Bible study in pairs and threes. Over the years, sometimes Davida slipped notes into Zera’s pockets, saying their friendship meant more to her than life itself.
Zera’s chest feels heavy as she watches the medic push Davida down the hallway in a wheelchair. Davida has a strong body. How else had she been able to endure the years of whippings at the hands of her husband? If the verdict is to be believed, Davida fed her husband a poison-laced gumbo that froze his heart and lungs. Living in peace is better than wasting away on a decaying, used-to-be plantation, Davida has said more than once.
Zera rips up a few shirts, wondering if the rumor is true that the black-and-blue marks she’s seen on Davida’s arms and shoulders are the work of the ladies Zera has seen following her to and from the cafeteria and the rec room. Complaints Davida has made to the guards have proved useless.
Zera long ago stopped wanting revenge on her cousin Naomi for refusing to take in her son. And when was the last time she woke up angry with the men who told lies about her at her trial? Still, it is a mystery to her how Davida, a woman with plenty of reasons to dislike her dead husband, can still preach restraint when it comes to saying bad things about the man’s evil brother. Everybody knows that her brother-in-law—an inmate named Brapper Coleman in the men’s facility—is behind some of the trouble the other female inmates have caused Davida.
The next day, after Davida loses her footing in a stairwell, she is rushed by ambulance to the hospital. In the rec room Zera sits doing nothing, certain that the woman who pushed Davida down the stairs did so on the word of Brapper Coleman. Angry about that, her first thought is to ask a guard, Chester Olms, to bribe one of the cooks in the men’s facility to put roach poison in Brapper’s oatmeal—just enough to tear up his stomach for a few days. On the walk from the cafeteria this afternoon, Zera waves at Chester. He’s at the exercise yard, watching several young women play tetherball. Zera has known Chester for nearly twenty years. Many times over the years she has handed him a pocketbook or wallet left in the bathroom by an absentminded visitor. The last time they rummaged through a nice purse together, Zera wanted the expensive lipstick. All Chester let her take were two emery boards and a packet of breath mints.
Despite her years of knowing Chester, to trust a white man in a plot to harm another white man on the say-so of a colored woman could be tricky, even in Peace. Better to wait until Randell Payton comes back from vacation.
Do me a solid. Do me a solid. Randell Payton used to say that often when he was a rookie guard, wanting a favor from the more experienced staff. Often the solid Randell asked for was a violation of a department of corrections rule or two. Near the exercise yard now, having no compunction about asking for her own outrageous solid, Zera approaches Randell, who sits atop a picnic table.
Before Zera speaks, Randell checks to make sure the two-way radio strapped to his belt is turned off. He is thirty-nine now and has been in correctional work as long as Mrs. Gobe, the deputy warden for women. Like her, lately he is always bragging about retirement. As he listens, Randell moves his hand to the radio several times, causing the dull gold chain on his thick wrist to shift. Word is, he once broke an inmate’s neck with pressure from that wrist.
“Rough up Brapper Coleman before the warden’s concert?” Randell says. “Any guard foolish enough to do that has to have marbles for brains.”
“Rough him up after the concert then,” Zera says. “And could you kill him?”
“Come on, now, Miss Zera.”
“Then break a rib or something.”
“That I can do.”
“I’d be grateful. And be sure to tell him why.”
“Not wise,” Randell says. “Might get back to you.”
Zera nods, studying the laces in his heavy boots. “Well then, tell Brapper some of the women in Peace hate his voice.”
“That’ll work.”
Randell looks down to check the radio again, the muscles in his thick neck bunching. “Was that a new color television I saw in your room, Miss Zera?”
“My great-grandson sent me that,” Zera says. “Don’t work worth a damn.”
“Fill out a W-5, and I’ll come take it off your hands.”
Randell pushes off from the table and lands on his large feet. Zera holds her breath, hoping he doesn’t ask for her record player. The player would be a small loss, but she does not want to give up the stack of classical records she’s been collecting for thirty years. Randell seems to be looking in the direction of the motor pool. Last month, a female inmate keeping time with a guard had a baby behind one of the minibuses. By the time Randell got there, the young woman and the baby were being carried off to the hospital. Zera suspects she may never hear what became of mother or baby. That’s how things happen in Peace.
Several days later, Zera is summoned to the office of the deputy warden for women.
“Sit down, Zera,” Mrs. Gobe says from behind the large oak desk where she sits signing papers.
“I’d rather stand, ma’am, if you don’t mind.”
Mrs. Gobe, looking thin and underfed, signs another document from the hefty stack resting on the leather desk pad. Zera had pushed the heavy oak door open, certain she was being summoned to hear bad news about Davida. The guard doesn’t wear a heavy face. Still, you never know.
Organizations that pushed for years to retry and secure death sentences for former members of the New Confederates—the activist group Zera had joined and whose members were now scattered in prisons around the state—were elated when Sherry Gobe was hired. With skin even thinner than her predecessor’s, Mrs. Gobe often complained that the head warden, a do-gooder from Biloxi, was responsible for allowing inmates like Zera to have apartments. Mrs. Gobe allowed the women to do quilting. But the women had to rip the cloth with their hands and teeth—no scissors. And to check out a needle, you had to fill out three forms at the armory. At least Mrs. Gobe no longer orders those beatings behind the mechanic’s shed. Mrs. Gobe even plays nice—sometimes.
“I need somebody to clean Davida’s room,” Mrs. Gobe says, picking up a sweating can of cola.
“She can do it herself when she gets back, can’t she?” Zera says.
Watching Mrs. Gobe’s mouth tense as her lips clench the straw, Zera feels her shoulders stiffen. She waits for more details. When none come, Zera leans against the chair. “Usually the guards clear out the cells,” she says, “when an inmate will not be returning.”
/> Zera added the last statement hoping she has misinterpreted Mrs. Gobe’s comment. She waits for her to say that Davida is simply being moved to quarters closer to the infirmary. But all the woman does is take another sip from the can of cola. What is she, sixty now? Another two years will make twenty years in corrections. Retirement time.
When Mrs. Gobe first took this job, she stated publicly that she thought Zera should have been hanged. Today she knows the bad news she is hinting at about Davida must eat at Zera. Over the years, the deputy warden has made tactical adjustments to her punishment arsenal. Her blows are no longer physical, but sometimes they hurt twice as much.
Davida’s quarters are much smaller than Zera’s, just a room. Zera arrives to find that the guards have already combed the place. Nothing has been put back neatly the way Davida would have done. Framed pictures of Davida’s daughters and her grandchildren are tossed in a cardboard box.
“Don’t bother to wrap anything,” the guard tells Zera from the door. “Just get everything packed.”
Zera waits until all the other personal items are in boxes before opening a drawer in the cardboard chest of drawers. Years ago, a young woman in C-Unit started the rumor that Davida had been keeping a diary, scribbling bits from Zera’s life for the deputy warden to pass on to the parole board. When Davida denied that she was the snitch, Zera believed her.
Zera opens the first drawer and tries to recall what personal information she has divulged to Davida. It’s been too many years to remember everything. Probably she had shown Davida one or two of the letters she helped other inmates write to their congressmen. Had she told Davida about the man she stole away from her cousin Naomi? Had she mentioned the butcher knife she once hid in her mattress? Had she told Davida the names of the two young men who had been on the houseboat with the others but who had not been arrested? Had she admitted to Davida that it was she, not Matthew, who suggested to the other New Confederates that they throw paint on the governor’s boat and that they leave a dead lamb on the dock? Surely she told Davida that she had testified truthfully when she said she didn’t know a bomb had been left on the boat. She learned about that only at the trial.
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