Most of the folks sat around on stools, watching the small dance floor where a few daring—or drunk—people did their best. The sawdust on the floor gave the place the smell of a barn, if the barn had recently been caught in a rainstorm of beer. We sat down on three bar stools trimmed with dark brown leather straps. Beauregard perched in the middle.
I looked around. In the back of my mind, this irrational fear surfaced that I might run into the old head cook—that this was the kind of place he probably frequented every night after work and maybe he’d sneak back in to see old friends. I felt my pocket for that piece of mug, which I carried with me now whenever I left my shanty to walk the streets alone.
After asking our preferences, Beauregard ordered himself a beer and us two gin and tonics. I’d gone with whatever Evelyn wanted, knowing now was perhaps not the time to swig whiskey.
Evelyn leaned in, even prettier up close. “So, who’s this friend who’s not a friend?”
“Rhodie. Her name’s Rhodie. We used to be real close but fell out.”
The drinks came, and Beauregard toasted. “To Rhodie!”
Just as we clanked glasses, the Warden walked in with two field captains, who spent most of their days overseeing the fields. He saw us right off and walked over.
“This a kitchen night out?” he asked, smiling at me.
Beauregard smiled. “Impromptu, but yes, sir.”
The Warden smiled at me. “You all toasting a good day?”
Evelyn raised her eyebrows at the Warden, clearly liking men with authority. “We are toasting some friend of Dara’s who just graduated college. To Rhodie!”
Beauregard held up his glass again. “To Rhodie!”
I sat there while my stomach and other vital organs fell to the floor. Would the Warden remember that Rhodie was the name given by the old head cook as the writer of those love letters to me?
I raised my glass, but didn’t repeat her name. The Warden stared over at me and I knew that he knew, him being clearly the kind of man who remembered details.
Without commenting, he tipped his dark brown cowboy hat to me. “Miss Dara.” He turned to Beauregard. “Keep it light, Beau. It’s going to be hot in that kitchen tomorrow.”
“Light it is,” Beauregard said as he held up three fingers for the bartender, letting her know to pour another round.
The Warden laughed—though without much feeling in it—and turned to join his friends. This was a man I’d come to deeply respect. I was overwhelmed with this feeling that I had let him down, that he thought of me as a liar now.
I watched him, but he never turned back, so I apologized to him in my mind, wondering how long I was going to keep being this person who betrayed people.
MARRY HIM?
Mama died in 1928 of heart failure. I took the train back to Midland for her funeral, saddened most that we never figured how to conversate the way I’d heard so many mothers and daughters do. I kissed her goodbye—her all powdered up in the white coffin that Daddy’d picked out—and whispered to her, “I fell in love once, Mama.”
Not a year later, I returned to Midland to set Daddy up in a home since he’d become too forgetful to live alone. The nurse said it was common for both parts of a couple to go—in one way or another—within a year of each other. And sure enough, as soon as I signed him in, he promptly forgot everything about this world and let his mind wander to places far beyond the walls of any of life’s prisons. I wrote to him every month, but I doubt he knew who was sending the letters.
Sugar Land Prison withstood the crash of the stock market in 1929, while many folks in Sugar Land and other cities didn’t. Our country grew accustomed to seeing soot-covered men walking the streets, offering to do odd jobs, while Sugar Land got $350,000 to upgrade itself.
In 1932, they—here meaning the inmates themselves—finished the project, which included a new concrete housing unit to replace some of those horrible wooden barracks at the work camps and twelve acres of fenced area with a meat packing plant and a cannery.
Then one day—a day that snuck up on me the way debt sneaks up on you—it was 1933, and I’d been in the Texas penitentiary system for ten years. A God damn decade. I couldn’t believe it. Ten years, with more than my share of guilt at not having escaped, the way I promised Huddie I would.
For eight of my ten years at Sugar Land, Beauregard worked the prison kitchen. Then he married that dimpled Dallas girl, Evelyn, and joined her father’s business. I sang at their wedding, with his brother on piano. He kept in touch afterwards by sending me strange little postcards with coffee cup rings on them. Over the years, they had two sons—he named one Beau and the other Regaurd.
Ken, that big ape, became my friend. Stranger things. He confided in me on more than one occasion about issues he had with his mousy wife and teased me about why I never took to anyone. The Warden, meanwhile, occupied himself by growing out his sideburns or his mustache or sometimes both. He never said anything about my lying to him about those letters from Rhodie, and gradually, the shadow cast by my guilt dissolved, as most things do over time.
Over the years, he and I talked about life—how he just wanted to live long enough to meet his grandchildren; how he wanted to be remembered as a good husband and a great father—in that order.
I had it good with my Sugar Land friends and our card games and Huddie’s music. I even had it good in my steaming kitchen with that filthy window. It was like I’d married Sugar Land, and—as with any good marriage—I’d learned to love it even when I sometimes didn’t like it all that much.
Everyone who lasted ten years got a nice pen and a bonus as part of a small ceremony led by the Warden. So, on March 4, 1933, I slicked back my hairnet, lumbered up to the portable stairs that had been rolled in, and walked up the small wood stage like Frankenstein in a gunmetal gray dress. I looked out at the two dozen or so guards—all who’d taken their hats off—who’d come to congratulate me.
Standing up on that stage like the winner of some pageant for awkward big girls, I’d resigned myself to being here for another decade. Maybe I’d get a higher spot in the kitchen—maybe, someday, even head cook. There were worse things.
I had no idea then that what I’d be getting that day was a husband.
The Warden stepped up onto the creaky cafeteria stage, looking nervous and overly groomed, with his hair so slick I could see the comb marks and his extra-stiff white collar rubbing red lines along his neck. The crowd clapped and smiled when the Warden stepped up to the fist-sized, silver microphone.
The Warden cleared his throat. “Ten years, is it?” he said.
The microphone shrieked with feedback. Someone in the crowd whistled out for me. I smiled.
“Miss Dara,” he said, alternating between looking at me and looking out at the cafeteria, “you have lit up this place with your wit and wisdom and graced us with knowing exactly how much garlic salt to add to the short ribs we were all so excited to add to the menu last year.”
More than a few people nodded to that last one.
“Here is your pen.”
Everyone clapped and stomped their feet for me. I held my hand up in thanks, accepted my pen, and started to walk off. That’s when the Warden pulled me back.
A gasp went through the crowd. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched their faces change from happy to shocked to confused.
“Warden?” I asked.
Then the Warden—a man who’d probably never made a showy move in his entire life, a man fifteen years my senior, a widower with two girls not yet teenagers—did the unthinkable. He knelt down on the stage and held out his hand for mine.
I dropped my ten-year pen. “What the hell?”
“I know you got ten more until pension, but marry me, Miss Dara. Leave the prison and come to my home.”
My mouth hung open for a very long time.
Marry him? It had never really crossed my mind that the Warden had held any thoughts for me that weren’t, well, brotherly—especially after learni
ng about Rhodie.
Marry him? The Warden was a handsome man in his ironed khaki pants, to be sure, and many women would love to help brush his daughters’ hair and go get them measured for bras—many other women.
Marry him? Well, he did make me laugh—and I always heard that was half of it. Half.
It was the clapping that snapped me out of it. I looked down. The Warden was still there, his belly sliding off his knee, holding out a ring. And I thought: wonder if that belonged to his first wife.
Beauregard, still as dapper as ever despite marriage, had driven in for the ten-year ceremony. I heard him cry out, “Do it, Miss Dara!”
I promised Huddie all those years before that I would get out of here, and this was my chance. It wasn’t perfect, but it was damn good. I tapped the center of my breastbone, where I imagined a delicate metal box that held my secret love for Rhodie, and I put my hand in the Warden’s.
“Miss Dara,” he said, “will you?”
Truthfully, knowing that a man the Warden’s age only had so many years left in his pecker made my decision much easier.
I leaned over him into the microphone and shouted, “Hell yes!”
The Warden—crunching knees and all—grabbed me and hugged me tighter than I’d ever been hugged, God love him. He took my hand and twirled me around like a sailor after months at sea. While I spun in the dizzy lights of the bright cafeteria, I remembered Huddie making music on that beat-up, second-hand twelve-string that constantly went out of tune, and I knew that, like him, I would do the best with what was given me to make something beautiful.
BOOK TWO
nana dara
I DID
It’s odd that a Warden would be the one to take me from the jail I’d set myself in, but that’s how it happened. First, though—before the marriage—we decided we should date a bit.
On our third date, the Warden made me dinner. When I walked into his house and saw that he had put out five vases of flowers, all different kinds since he said he didn’t know which kind I preferred, a happiness filled up inside me like steam—to feel that special, that considered.
But the flowers also caused me to worry. A lot.
As the Warden stood there in his ironed blue shirt with flowers all around him and a roast in the oven, all I could think about was that I had no idea what I was going to do with his penis. There wasn’t easy access to books the way there is these days, so my lack of penis knowledge—or girlfriends to consult—tormented me from that dinner throughout most of our short engagement.
As the summer drew on, I managed to deftly avoid his member altogether—as was the way of many women back then. I’d felt it a few times, banging against me while we kissed in his car or on my couch after a movie. Once, when I let him reach up and touch my breasts outside my blouse, I’d felt him push urgently into my leg. Rather than be excited by the move, I was reminded of a disturbing scene I’d witnessed when I was a teenager between my dog Roger and a particularly curvaceous table leg.
Of course, I knew the overalls: his penis goes into my Venus flytrap, bumps around a bit, explodes, and then goes back to sleep. That chain of events didn’t cause me any alarm—indeed, if I’m being totally honest, I’d given myself more than a few private moments contemplating just such a scene, despite my inclination toward women. It was the rest of it that worried me.
How do I touch it? Do I help it find its way? Will it hurt if I squeeze it?
When I realized it sounded like I was talking about a beached whale, I gave it all over and moved on to the other topic that plagued me that summer of our engagement: my feet.
It was July. Since the Warden and I agreed to marry two months earlier, we’d had ten dates—twice a week on his nights off. We saw Duck Soup and 42nd Street, ate pizza, went to a barbecue with a few of the guards, and played a round of miniature golf that had tested my patience on a cellular level. Until then, my feet had never come up.
“Whew,” I said as I slid off one of my shoes, “my dogs are barking! I sure miss my kitchen orthopedics.”
Then and there, as the Warden stirred a glass of nighttime tea, he set a tone for what he offered in our marriage: “Can I rub your delicate feet for you, Miss Dara?”
My feet? I blanched.
When you have been given a sturdy build, such as myself, and you spend time on your feet, they work a lot. Working this much, your feet do what any thing would to protect itself from pain and suffering: build a cocoon.
So, by that time, at thirty years old and after ten years standing in the Sugar Land slop hall, my fat feet rested on top of a solid inch of brownish-yellow callus as strong as any horse’s hoof. Every few months, I’d take a pair of scissors to the callus and cut away at it, then pumice down the rough spots, leaving an impressive pile of waxy-looking shavings on my shanty floor that I swept out with a wire broom. It was managed. Managed, that is, until the cracks.
What years earlier had been half a dozen small fissures on my heels expanded, so by the night the Warden asked if he could rub my feet, I sported deep cracks where the callus had split and pulled back, leaving gaps as wide as a shoestring.
“Warden,” I said, putting it off, “let’s save that for later.”
He smiled. “Yes, ma’am. I look forward to everything we’re saving for later.”
“Thank you.”
He handed me my sweet tea. “You know,” he said, “I had this moment a few years ago, Miss Dara, when I wondered what it might be like not to see you every day. That’s when I knew I needed to see you every day. I needed to see you more than I saw you at work. I wanted to see you in the morning making eggs or out on the porch or bundling your sweater tight against the winds. I wanted to see everything about you, from your feet to your sleepy blue eyes. I love you, Miss Dara.”
I smiled, thinking: Dear Lord, I cannot let a man like this down.
I knew I needed to get myself in order to be as beautiful as possible for our wedding night—from the feet up.
× × ×
In June, five days before the wedding—and the wedding night—I executed a massive trim on my feet. I decided to wait until the last moment so the calluses wouldn’t have time to regroup, while giving myself a few days out to let the redness and swelling go down—my private science.
I sat down and cut away at the callus with my kitchen shears, despite what my mama had taught me about never letting them touch anything but food. In one or two spots, I was particularly stern, cutting down so far that the edges of my feet where the callus met the skin turned bright pink and throbbed.
There are injuries in war, I told myself. Injuries in war.
My forearms hurt from pressing the scissor blades together. My wood floor looked like it had snowed pieces of skin. My eyes watered from the strain—but I forged on.
An hour or so later, both of my feet were a mess of angry pink lines. I had made headway.
The trouble was, I couldn’t really grind down the center of the callus, even with my pumice stone, so I hobbled into the kitchen, pulled out my cookie tin of tools, and got the heavy-grade sandpaper. I sanded and sanded my feet for half an hour, only to have the paper clog with callus residue.
I struggled back into the kitchen area and brought out the big guns: my potato peeler.
Even with its sharp steel blade, the God damn thing had no effect. It just dragged impotently across my feet. Clearly that tool was not meant to combat anything with more imposing skin than a potato. Sighing, I gave up for the moment, rubbed Vaseline on my damaged feet—especially in the crevasses that still remained—tucked them into thick wool socks, and went to bed, dreaming that I’d wake up with the feet of a queen.
Instead, I woke up with the feet of a peasant—but although the crevasses were still there, the overall foot felt a little softer, thanks to the Vaseline that had filled in the big gaps. That gave me an idea.
I wrapped my tender feet in gauze, put on my thick socks, and headed slowly to the local grocer for a big bottle of glue. With on
ly a slight glance from the skinny adolescent clerk who clearly thought a stained sleeveless shirt was not a flattering look for a woman of my considerable heft, I purchased my glue and limped back to my shanty.
After pulling the curtain closed, I propped my left foot up on my wooden coffee table. With a towel underneath to catch any runoff, I squeezed the glue into my three widest fissures, blowing to help it dry.
At first, I left the twenty or thirty little cracks around my heel alone—knowing that if I kept up the scissors and pumice attack I could make headway with them—but when I saw how perfectly the glue had filled up the large cracks, I figured what the heck, and started gluing them all up.
My right foot required extra glue and extra drying time. It had massive cracks starting about a third of the way in on my heel and widening as they went up around the back—plain as day if I were ever to dare slippers, as any wife might. I was glad I’d been proactive enough to set the bourbon nearby.
“Here’s to you, Warden!” I toasted.
After my right foot dried, I took another swig then pumiced my glued calluses down to a flat surface. I admired my handiwork. My feet were as damn close to perfect as this peasant was going to get.
“To my wedding night!” I said, drawing out another pull of bourbon.
Feeling some warm encouragement, I toasted my little shanty, which I’d soon be leaving—my quiet, unimposing home where I’d lived a simple life for ten years. Next, I toasted my nerves—that they would stay strong when the time came for me to meet the Warden’s girls. Lastly, I toasted Rhodie.
“Rhodie,” I said to the crickets and the stars behind the thin curtain out my front window, “I’m getting married. I know you already are. I hope you have those kids you wanted. I never had any kids, you know—even though I wanted them. Every time I see a baby, even now, I still think how beautiful you would’ve been holding a baby.
“A while ago, I thought that I’d been brave, but anyone can be brave for three weeks! What was true bravery was to keep writing me—to keep holding on to our love even when everything says it’s not coming back.” The bourbon burned the back of my nasal cavities. “You were always the brave one, Rhodie. You kissed me, remember? You were the girl who went to college when hardly any ladies did—and in a new city, no less!” I took another swig. “None of this matters much at this point, though. At this point, I’m just a simple woman with glued-up feet who finally understands what you might’ve known all along—that maybe you only get one soul mate, but that doesn’t mean the rest is donkey shit.”
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