The women—there were more than twenty of them this morning, a larger crowd than usual—walked in two lines on either side of the hallway, with Effie setting the pace right in the center. Once they reached the dining hall, they wove into a single line to be served from the vast pot of porridge before taking their places at one of the five long wooden tables.
As was her custom, Dana sat alone while the others gathered into tight groups to complain about the food, never mind that they gulped it down like starving dogs and would end the meal fighting with each other for a second portion. They made disparaging remarks about the comfort of their beds after being prodded to wakefulness, and they bemoaned the system that would put them in prison, even though most would be returned to their life’s pursuit within a week’s time.
Dana merely listened, keeping her eyes focused on the scarred table in front of her. Deemed an “odd duck,” she heard snickers and stories whispered around and about her, the essence and details of her crime growing with each new wave of inmates, until she was regarded as something monstrous and vile. It was a reputation that granted her solitude, and she bore it with what mustering of dignity she could.
Suddenly two small hands came into her line of vision, and she looked up to see Effie standing in front of her, hands planted on the table.
“Dana Lundgren, you have a visitor.”
The spoonful of porridge turned to paste in her mouth, and she spoke around it. “A what?”
A slow grin stretched across Effie’s face. “A visitor. Lady and a gentleman. I’m to take you to the courtyard.”
“But I’ve never had a visitor.”
“You have one now, don’t you? Finish up.”
She could barely swallow what was in her mouth, let alone imagine eating more as her stomach turned into an impenetrable stone. She slid her half-eaten breakfast for Effie to take and deliver to the next table, where the women feigned disdain to be given scraps from a baby killer’s bowl. At least one of them, Dana knew—a fat one named Lottie who’d been in residence for three months after beating her husband close to death for eating more than his fair share of a beef pie—would tear into it the minute she left the room.
“Who is it?” They were walking past the empty cells, but she whispered in deference to her bunkmate, whose snores still echoed. “Is it somebody who can tell me about my mother?” And then a new hope seized her. “Is it my mother?”
“You know what I know,” Effie insisted, walking so agonizingly slow as to make Dana want to burst forward and leave her behind. “A lady—not much more than a girl, mind you. And a young man.”
“What do they want?”
“Ask me more questions and I’ll knock you down and send them home.”
Effie might have intended the threat to be humorous and empty, but Dana had seen too many instances of her discipline to take any chances. She bit her lip and slowed her steps, walking with her hands clenched at her sides through the familiar corridors to the open courtyard, where two figures sat side by side on a bench.
“You recognize ’em?” Effie spoke from the corner of her mouth.
“No,” Dana said, though she squinted as if doing so would spark an idea.
At seeing her approach, the visitors stood. The lady, as Effie had so generously dubbed her, was probably not much older than Dana, but quite a bit taller, with an enviable glow of health radiating from her dark-toned skin and impressive stature. Her hair was somewhat contained beneath a crumpled hat, but a few dark, springy curls had escaped, and that’s when Dana knew. The last time she’d seen that hair, it had been a mass of braids tied with bright strips of red cloth.
“Carrie?”
In confirmation, the visitor approached with open arms. “I knew it! I knew you’d still be here.”
Dana allowed herself to be taken into the unfamiliar embrace, trying not to stiffen against what was clearly intended to be an extension of affection, but she could not bring herself to return the gesture in kind. Her arms remained limp at her sides.
“Do you see?” She spoke over Dana’s head. “I told you she’d still be here.”
She stepped away to allow Dana a clearer view of the young man accompanying her. He was equally tall, but with a heftier girth, his face almost perfectly round, his head topped with a crop of close-cut curls.
“This is my cousin Christopher Parker.” Carrie introduced him with a mixture of hero worship and maternal pride. “He came here to visit from Cleveland, and I told him all about you, and he says he’ll be able to help you.”
He was holding his hand out, looking expectant, but Dana simply stared, having no idea what to do with such a gesture. She turned back to Carrie, soaking in her familiarity. She’d stayed at Bridewell for longer than almost any other kid—nearly three months—and had been the closest thing to a friend Dana had ever known.
“How are you?” Dana asked, hardly able to believe she was back after all these years. “Where have you been? You look—” tears threatened to choke her words—“you look so pretty.”
Carrie laughed a beautiful laugh and took Dana’s hand, leading the two to sit on a bench. Her cousin, looking uncomfortable, took a seat on another, and Effie moved to stand behind him.
“As soon as I got out, Mama moved us to Cleveland, near her side of the family. And I tried to write to you a few times, but when I didn’t hear back . . .” She shrugged.
“Mrs. Karistin must have kept your letters from me.”
“That old cow.” Carrie’s eyes darted toward Effie, anticipating rebuke, but she became emboldened at the woman’s passivity. “I never did trust her for nothin’.”
“With good reason,” Dana said. She, too, glanced at Effie as her words ran up against a wall strong enough to trap her story.
The older woman breathed a deep sigh and checked the watch pinned to the bodice of her dark-blue matron’s dress. “You visit,” she said. “I’ll be back in thirty minutes.”
Once, when Dana was very little, her mother had taken her on a train to visit her father. She remembered standing on the platform between the cars, feeling the wind whip across her face as the landscape rolled by in a perpetual blur. She felt like if she jumped, she would take flight. Now, in this unguarded minute, speaking to a friend who lived outside these walls, she had that same sense of freedom, made all the more valuable by its fleeting nature.
“About a year ago, they said they had to move me because I was too old to be housed with the children anymore. But that same day, the warden let all of the children go home. All of them but me. And it’s because, I suppose, I don’t have a mother or a family to go home to. At least, I don’t think I do. I’m not even sure about that. Nobody talks to me. Nobody has told me anything. I’ve never seen another child here since, so maybe they stopped locking them up for good. All I know is that I sit in this room all day, save for a little time in the afternoons when I get to come out here and sit in the sun, breathe in the fresh air. But then they take me back, and they lock me up, like I’m some kind of animal. Worse for me, even than the other women, and I know some of them have done horrible things, and I—I—”
Her voice had risen in pitch and volume as she spoke, until the words were tumbling like water out of a bucket. She had to say them all—every one—before the shamefulness of the picture they created called her to hold them back. She clung to the hand of her friend as if she were holding on to hope itself, telling every event of note from the time they’d last seen each other until this very moment.
“It’s just like Mrs. Karistin said. Nobody knows I’m here. I’ve been forgotten.”
“I didn’t forget you,” Carrie said. “And neither will my cousin.”
It was the first Dana had thought of him since embarking on her tale, and she turned now to give him her full regard.
“Hello,” she said before remembering a long-buried formality. “Nice to meet you.”
“You as well.” His voice was deep, but unnaturally so, as if he were trying to assume a
n age he hadn’t yet attained. “Carrie says you never had a trial?” It was both a question and a statement, and Dana, quite unused to conversation of any kind, kept silent, puzzled as to how to respond. “You didn’t go in front of a judge. Never heard anyone say, ‘I hereby sentence you . . .’”
“No!” Dana exclaimed, remembering this exact conversation from all those years ago. “I mean, yes, that . . . no. None of those things ever happened to me. And I understand a horrible tragedy occurred, and I have a price to pay. I simply want to know—”
“What the price is?” Christopher Parker asked.
“Yes,” Dana said, whispering now. “And if it’s my whole life, I suppose that’s fair.”
“But nothing is fair without a trial.”
“And you can help me with that?”
Christopher’s eyes glittered, black as onyx. “I hope to, someday.”
She’d been inching forward on her seat, growing more and more invested in the possibility of the answers so long denied, until she heard that word. Someday. The same word that had been haunting her own cloudy vision since the morning she woke up in jail.
“He’s going to be a lawyer,” Carrie said with obvious pride. “First one in our family to go to college.”
“Someday.” She could barely speak the word.
“That’s right.” Parker beamed as if Dana shared his family’s sense of destiny. “I graduate from high school this spring, and I’ve already been accepted to three universities.”
“Always been the bright one of the family.” Carrie continued to hold Dana’s hand and gave it a squeeze while gazing in adoration at her cousin. “He’s from the good side. That’s why I went to live with them after . . . here. I got to go to school, too. For a little bit.” Her voice trailed, uncomfortable in the shadow of Dana’s unconstrained envy.
“Is there anything—anything you can do for me now?” She hated that she sounded like she was begging. She was not used to asking for anything for herself. Not an extra blanket when she was cold, or a second slice of bread when she was hungry. Her only request had been to Mrs. Karistin, to mail her letters, and once again she saw this as her hope. “Could you mail a letter for me? To Mrs. DuFrane?”
“Of course,” Carrie said, looking relieved at the simplicity of the request.
“I don’t have one right now,” Dana said, wondering just how long she had before Effie returned. Why did she not keep such a missive ready, tucked within her sleeve?
“He’ll write one for you, won’t you, Christopher? He’s one of the best writers in his class. All the teachers said so.”
Christopher attempted to look modest under his cousin’s praise. “I don’t know if I’m the best, but I’ll gladly write something on your behalf. What should I say?”
Dana closed her eyes, picturing every word. She’d written the same letter ten times on paper, and a thousand on her heart. “Tell her that I’m sorry—”
“Wait a minute,” Christopher interrupted. “That could be seen as an admission of guilt.”
She shook off his rebuke. “Tell her I would take it back, if I could. And ask if she can forgive me, ever. I could live if I knew I’m forgiven. Live here, even, if I have to. Tell her I don’t think God can forgive me if she doesn’t.”
By now Christopher was up from his seat and kneeling in front of her, looking into her eyes. “I’ll do what I can for you. What’s best for you, but it might take time. I’m not anybody right now.”
Dana sensed movement out of the corner of her vision and saw Effie making her steady, purposeful way across the yard. “You’re a friend, aren’t you?”
“Yes. I promise.”
“Then you’re more than I’ve ever had.”
THE WRITTEN CONFESSION OF MARGUERITE DUFRANE, PAGES 54–58 AND 80–85
IN THAT MONTH BEFORE you were born, three fears consumed me. The first, of course, was the idea that you would be immediately taken away from me. I had nightmares of your mother wrapping you up in one of my precious Mary’s blankets and escaping with you in the night. Escape, I’m sure, is a word my attorney would discourage me from using, as it implies that Mrs. Lundgren was some kind of prisoner in my home, rather than a guest invited to experience comforts and luxuries she could never have known, given her limited resources. Still, those fears pursued me. Daily, friends would stop by, bringing little tokens and gifts—some for me, some for you. Personally, I think they liked the idea of being part of such a dramatic turn of events, this tragedy-turned-blessing, or at least that’s what they liked to call it. The way they babbled on, all these words spilling out of their mouths. How this new baby would mend my broken heart. How my Mary’s angel would bring celebrations to heaven.
“The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away.” Over and over again I heard this as they ate my cookies and drank my tea and told me how happy I should be that the Lord was giving me another child. As if I should forget what he had taken away.
Which gave birth to my second fear: that you wouldn’t be enough. Oh yes, how a child can heal! Perhaps if you’d truly been my child, growing within me, filling my body with your presence, there wouldn’t have been enough room for my bitterness to take root and become the cancerous vine that now chokes out my very life.
I felt it even then, you know. My physicians say that is impossible, but as I watched Mrs. Lundgren grow bigger and bigger with child, I sometimes felt a solid mass growing inside me, flattening my lungs to the point that I couldn’t breathe. No one guessed that I wasn’t in a family way. Everything about me grew enormously fat, from my face to the swollen tree stump–like ankles that defied any footwear other than your father’s leather slippers. Only Mrs. Gibbons, who had been with me through my two pregnancies, hinted that all wasn’t quite right.
“If you’ll pardon me, missus,” she said one afternoon as I wolfed down a plate of scones and a tall glass of buttermilk, “it just don’t seem like you have the glow that you did with those other ones.”
I assume she referred to the fact that my skin had stretched to contain the extra soft flesh of my face, hanging loose at my jowls and beneath my eyes, where no expensive cream could make it conform to its former beauty. I reminded her that I was still in mourning, and that no mother would be expected to glow with one child in her belly and another in the grave. She never mentioned it again.
And then there was the matter of your father. I remember being pregnant with Calvin, and the two of us would lie in bed, fascinated with the boy’s movement within my body. Arthur would fall asleep with his hand on my belly, so eager to meet his son. (Somehow he knew it was a boy.) And he was protective of Mary even before she was born, hiring nannies to take care of the boy so I could get plenty of rest. I don’t think my feet hit the floor during the last six weeks of my confinement with her. The minute he held her, he wept, and did so every time he looked at her for days on end. So steeped was he in grief over Mary that I had to repeat myself three times when I told him we were going to have another baby.
If it matters at all, those are the exact words I used.
We are going to have another baby.
There will be a new little one in the spring.
Calvin is about to get a new brother or sister.
Phrases carefully crafted to absolve me of a lie. Looking back, it seems silly to spare myself that one falsehood when I was near to drowning in deceit.
I remember as a child going to the circus and seeing the woman high above, walking along a single, suspended rope, and the audience gasped each time she tilted to the right or the left. When I could stand it no more, I squeezed my eyes shut and prayed for her, harder than I’d ever prayed for anything in my young life, and when the audience applauded, I opened them to see her safely on the platform, waving to all of us before triumphantly descending the ladder and riding out of the ring on a glorious white horse.
Oh, if only I could have closed my eyes and opened them again to find myself safely delivered of this dangerous trail of deceit. To confess
one sin to my husband would have meant revealing another, followed by yet another, until we were bound to each other by only a fragile thread of lies. He would leave me if he knew that a pregnant Mrs. Lundgren rested comfortably in a hidden third-floor room while her daughter had been secreted away at my behest. Indeed, now, looking at my actions thus writ, they appear far more malevolent than when they were mere thoughts in my grief-addled head.
But Arthur—he was not one to employ emotion as a justification for choices, right or wrong. When I had occasion to confront him about his adultery, he wanted me to believe that his decision to dally with another woman was simply a calculated risk based on availability and opportunity. It had nothing to do with his feelings for me, and certainly never implied that he had any affection whatsoever for those with whom he strayed. I’m sure he meant his explanation to give me reassurance, but his utter disregard for the physical expression of our love manifested itself not only in his wanton disrespect for our marital bed, but also in his failure to acknowledge the improbability that the child I “carried” could be his. Not once did he question—in word or regard—either the validity of my pregnancy or its source.
And so I kept my eyes open, carefully balancing each of my lies, praying for God to reward my intentions and make a way, though deep down, I didn’t deserve a shred of grace. I prayed on behalf of this unborn baby, for the sake of Mary’s soul, for the divinely ordained justice that banished Cain for the slaying of his brother.
I have done my initial duty with this document to explain your parentage, dearest Celeste, but I’ve yet to complete my confession of my role in the imprisonment of Dana Lundgren, even as I indulge my conscience with the insistence that, while I may have been the whisperer of words, if others had not taken action, my thoughts would never have come to anything beyond unfulfilled wishes. Except for the case of your natural mother. Never in my life would I have wished such a thing. God’s actions are beyond our understanding.
All for a Sister Page 19