She straightened her blouse and trousers. She needed a hot bath and a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow she would talk to her lawyer and see what options remained. Tomeo would have to bow to the American legal system. On paper, she owned the store. That was another one of Tomeo’s mistakes. In order to protect the family’s holdings and spread the risk, her name alone was on the deed, giving her complete power and control. He could not afford to take her to court and risk exposing the extent of the family’s holdings or some of their marginally legitimate businesses. It was just the leverage she needed to break away and become fully independent at last.
A hot bath, a glass of wine and her favorite Chopin piano concerto eased away some of the strain and cold lingering from the confrontation with Tomeo and the drive home. As she toweled off and applied the silky blue lotus and lavender lotion to her skin, jangled nerves and the pounding pulse at her temples eased. She slipped into silk pajamas and released the carved bone pins from her hair to brush it out before getting into bed.
Warm and comfortable beneath her embroidered satin comforter, Joo-Eun listened to the wind howl and shake the windows. Succumbing to the heavy weight of her eyelids, she opened wide the doors of her mind and embraced sleep, drifting on a warm, placid sea. On the nightstand, an antique baroque French clock gently ticked away the minutes.
Cold hands gripped her arms and dragged Joo-Eun from bed. Rough laughter raked her ears.
“Get dressed.” In the harsh glare of the overhead light, Joo-Eun blinked, her eyes watering, as she struggled into an embroidered satin brocade robe. She bent down to grab her slippers and was yanked upright by her arm. Before she could get to her feet, she was dragged through the door and into the hall. “What are you doing? Let me go.” Both hands were pinned roughly behind her back until she cried out in pain. “You are hurting me.”
“Get moving.” A blue-clad officer grabbed her by the hair and dragged her toward the steps. She fought to break free and was stunned to silent immobility when she saw her brother standing at the foot of the stairs smiling up at her.
“Tomeo. You cannot do this.”
“It’s done, little sister.”
She numbly followed the officer down the stairs. Twice she tripped and twice she was dragged her feet.
“Why?” Joo-Eun’s strangled cry turned to a wail. As he stood there looking at her, one eyebrow arched, a self satisfied smile playing about his lips, she became angry. “Tomeo, why?”
"Do not presume to question me," he said and slapped her, rocking her head back. Rage glittered in her dark eyes and Tomeo slapped her again. Her head bounced off the wall as she staggered and fell. She tasted blood. With one hand at the corner of her mouth where blood trickled down her chin, she braced against the wall as she stood up. "Take her," he said.
"I will not go."
"You have no choice, little sister." The officers grabbed her arms and Tomeo tilted her head up with one finger. "After a little vacation, you will see things differently." He nodded to the officers.
Tomeo’s triumphant smile slipped sideways into a smirk as the officers handcuffed her and pushed her out the door and into the frigid night. She fell to her knees on the sidewalk only to be dragged to the squad car by her arms, a rag doll between two pit bulls. They tossed her inside as though she weighed nothing and was of no value. The door slammed, banging against the soles of her bare feet. Pain shot up both legs. She struggled to squirm to the other side of the seat and sit up, hampered by the burning pain in her shoulders. Cramps seized both arms. The handcuffs were so tight her hands were numb. Unable to right herself, she lay on the seat while hot tears seared scalding tracks down her cheeks.
A short while later she was hauled out of the car and frog-marched up the cement steps and into a bedlam of sights, sounds and foul smells. She tensed, muscles and sinews taut, ready to run. Her skin crawled, repulsed. She cringed away from the filthy tile floors and was shoved forward. She stumbled through icy puddles of melting snow and dirt, slipping in slimy puddles of warm yellow liquid too foul to contemplate. One of the officers spun her around and unlocked the handcuffs. He pushed her into a long room flanked by hard wooden benches. The heavy metal door banged shut and echoed in the sudden silence.
None of the four women doggedly devouring white bread sandwiches filled with pallid brown patties that might be meat—or something worse—looked up as she sidled to a corner and sat down. She covered both knees with the filthy, wet robe and wrapped her arms around them. Head lowered, her long black hair drifted down to cover her face while she silently wept.
The image of Tomeo’s triumphant smile while he toyed with his platinum Cross pen still burned in memory. She had been betrayed.
Fourteen
“Tomeo has let nothing stop him from gathering power, but I believed his ambition limited.” Joo-Eun looked up at Pearl, dark eyes swimming with pain and questions. “I was wrong. I was thankful he did not kill me or sell me and now all I feel is anger.”
“He can’t sell you. He doesn’t own you, not here in America.” Pearl was horrified.
There were laws and protections for situations like this, weren’t there? The law had failed her, and it looked like so far they had failed Joo-Eun after all, so maybe not. She was not in much better shape than Joo-Eun when it came right down to it.
“There are people who would pay much for an educated woman.”
“Where?”
Pity stirred in Joo-Eun’s eyes, pity for Pearl’s ignorance and pity for herself. “Many places.”
“Maybe in movies.”
Thin, shapely arms wrapped about knees tucked up under her chin, Joo-Eun laid her head down and looked over at Pearl. “You have heard the saying ‘in art as in life?” Pearl nodded. “Just so.”
“How?”
“It is easy. Too easy. A world beneath this one I never thought to see.”
“But you know about it?”
“Does not everyone?” Eyes closed and head turned away, curtained by heavy silken hair and isolated by her grief, Joo-Eun was silent.
Pearl was frustrated with the system, but that was easier to bear than what Joo-Eun must feel. Being betrayed by family was much worse and she wondered if the rest of her family knew and refused to intervene. She wondered how they avoided knowing what had happened to Joo-Eun and where her family was through all of this. “How could he?” she started to ask and stopped. Why does the dog lick himself? Because he can. On some level, Pearl understood it was the same with any control freak.
It is so easy to be deceived, especially when looking too closely results in painful truths, like J.D. caring about her. Understanding people like J.D. and Tomeo wasn’t difficult when the eyes aren’t blinded by dreams or believing that families stick together no matter what. In the end, it was about control: who had it and who was willing to use it. Joo-Eun’s situation was, more perfidious and more painful because she had no idea how far Tomeo was willing to go to control her and the family name and fortune.
While Pearl understood how Joo-Eun felt, she couldn’t change the circumstances. She could listen and offer what little comfort she could muster. Tamara, Joo-Eun and many of the other women were victims of a corrupt system, as was Pearl, but that wasn’t the real issue. The system was merely the means, a tool used by those who were most willing to sell their family, their souls and whoever got in the way for money—and for power. They needed to stop allowing themselves to be victims and take control. But how?
The relentless sound of Maureen’s pacing forced Pearl’s attention back to the present. Maureen hadn’t moved far from Betty’s table, glaring at anyone coming too near. She kept her eyes on Joo-Eun.
There was something in Maureen’s stare that promised violence and it seemed to be directed at Pearl. It was as though Maureen saw Pearl as a rival. Surprising as it seemed, there was also something a bit sad in Maureen’s regard for Joo-Eun.
“This the fus’ time that one ever got hung up. She too busy acting the queen to care ‘bo
ut nobody but her own self.” Betty shuffled the cards and dealt. “You in for a hand or you goin’ stare a hole through Maureen?”
Maureen veered off and paced to the far wall, coming back slowly, stalking her prey.
“She makes me nervous pacing like that.” Out of the corner of Pearl’s eye, she watched Maureen as she paced, moving as close as she dared. She stopped a foot or two from the door and squatted on her haunches.
“Enough to make a body nervous the way she go on. She ain’ the fus’ and likely not be the last. Gotta get yo’ loving some ways.”
Pearl looked over at Joo-Eun and back at Maureen. Surely they weren’t lovers. “You mean…?”
A short bark of a laugh exploded from between Betty’s clenched teeth. “Guards, them.” She jerked her head at the other women. “Warm body be a warm body when the nights be cold.”
“Does Maureen think that I?” She could not finish the thought. “I would never.”
“Whether you does or dasn’ make no dif’rence if she think you does.” Betty jerked her head at Maureen.
“Well, I have to let her know.”
“Best not say nothin’, boo. Things, they work theyselves out.”
A crash against the quad door stopped Maureen in her tracks. Pearl had not seen her get up. Joo-Eun looked up, eyes full of hope as she came to attention, feet on the floor, hand braced against the back of the chair. Pearl followed Joo-Eun’s gaze.
The door opened and Deputy Walpole pushed through the door backwards, guiding a big wheeled cart with paper sacks of all sizes and parked it by the television. She nodded at the guard station and the television blinked off. Joo-Eun folded back onto the chair, deflated and silent.
It was Tuesday. How easy it was to lose track of time. Canteen day. Birds fluttered in the pit of Pearl’s stomach, not for the butter pecan ice cream, but for paper and pen. Maybe there was something she could do after all, if not for the other women, at least for herself. For the first time in over a week, a sense of possibility lightened Pearl’s heart. She felt a little giddy.
Deputy Walpole had taken pains with her appearance and had applied a new coat of dark blood to fingernails and thick, pursed lips. Why does she always look like she’s about to kiss someone? Pearl could not imagine who would kiss those over ripe, near to bursting, bloody lips. Does she think she’s being seductive?
Whatever the reason, Deputy Walpole made Pearl uncomfortable. There was something about the deputy’s appearance that reminded her of an overblown rose with a worm hidden deep within the petals eating away at its heart. Even her perfume smelled wrong, a noxious cloud of funereal flowers, the essence of death and decay.
From every corner they came, some with their hair partially braided and hanging loose. They clustered with hushed and avid attention about five feet away and moved no closer. Feet shuffled and clothes rustled as they shifted from foot to foot, their hands prayerfully held in front of them or clasped behind their backs. The air was heavy with anticipation, children forced to wait for someone to turn on the lights before being allowed into the living room on Christmas morning.
When Deputy Walpole was certain everyone’s attention was focused on her, she grabbed a sack with one bloody-clawed and beringed hand and snapped out a name. The crowd parted to allow each person through and quickly swallowed her up when she rushed away to examine the haul. The deputy’s languid motions in picking up each bag were in sharp contrast to the snap of her voice and the way she shoved the bag into each inmate’s hands. Like a vulture, she circled around one sack, picking up the bags around it and emptying the second shelf until there was only one left.
As the number of sacks dwindled, so did Pearl’s spark of hope until she had begun to give up.
A sly smile lit up the dark pits of Deputy Walpole’s eyes. With a tight moue of distaste, the deputy spit out Pearl’s name as though it were a rotten plum pit. “Caldwell.”
Hearing her name caught Pearl off guard even though she expected it. Walpole stared directly at Pearl, her grin a little wider as she picked up the sack and dangled it between thumb and forefinger. Going once, going twice - Betty nudged Pearl. “Boo, that you. Don’ make her wait. She get nasty.”
The cordon of women still gathered at a distance from the cart parted to let Pearl through. The guard shoved the sack at her. “Next time I’ll keep it.” Walpole checked her list and took a plastic spoon from a canister and poked it at her. Pearl clutched the sack and went to her cell. She sat on the neatly made bunk and inventoried the contents as though unearthing precious relics from an archaeological dig.
Sweat ran down the white and gray-lettered sides of the ice cream tub. She pried off the lid, sank the plastic spoon into the melting pecan-flecked ice cream and slid a melting dollop between her lips. Nothing had ever tasted so good. Laughter bubbled up as the ice cream went down. How long it had been and how good it tasted. It is just ice cream. Not like I haven’t had it before. It tasted better than she imagined the Greek gods’ ambrosia must taste: rich and creamy with a hint of salt in contrast to the slight bitterness of the pecans.
Resisting the urge to gobble it all in great dripping spoonfuls, Pearl moved the sack to the end of the bunk with one foot and tucked in her legs, closed her eyes and lingered over every mouthful. Lifting a mounded spoonful, she thoroughly chewed each morsel of pecan and shuddered with delight when the melting goodness slipped along the tongue and trickled down to her stomach, spreading a delicious chill that left her shivering.
How she had missed ice cream and normal food. The food she got was likely nutritious, and there was plenty of it, but it left her feeling torpid and weighed down—when she ate it. That was pretty much the point. Load the prisoners down with starchy food and they will be less likely to rebel or cause trouble. Difficult to rebel from a food coma. She had never thought food was addictive, until now. She lingered over another bite. I could easily become addicted to this. I wonder if the chocolate chocolate chip or the mint chocolate chip would taste as good.
Outside, the normal hum and chatter of a hundred women’s voices was dim and far away, the clatter and slap of feet on the tiled floors muted. Nothing else existed. No one breathed or moved or gossiped as she let herself drift on a cloud of memory to hot summer days and ice cream cones dripping down sticky fists, pink tongues lapping the drips and smoothing the soft creamy mounds back behind the crisp airy dam of the cone.
Time had no meaning in the drifting passage of sun and moon, the stars winking brighter and brighter. Day faded into nights lit only by moonlight where fireflies danced, their green fiery trails like fairies beckoning tireless children. Everyone on the quad was either in a food-induced coma or busily sharing their largesse and paying off debts. It would not last. To everything there is an end, even pleasure.
Soon the ice cream was gone, the last salty-sweet smear licked away. Pearl licked the inside of the cup as far as her tongue would stretch and then stopped herself, licking her lips and scouring every crease for missed microscopic residue. The return of sound outside broke through and she stopped herself. She washed the plastic cup, lid and spoon and turned the cup upside down to dry. She was desperate for some sense of normality, not that acting like a ravening wolf was normal. She was not starving, except that she was. She was starved for decent food, windows that opened, color, doors that did not electronically lock and beds with soft sheets, down-filled comforters and blankets that did not itch, and were more whole than hole. And she missed the fleeting touch of friendship—and sex.
Voices and the sound of rustling paper bags intruded. The weekly haggling had begun. Just like the week before—her first week inside—traders haggled. It amazed Pearl that people with no family or friends outside to send them money managed to prosper by barter and cards. With nearly fifty women, all with their own monthly stipend of twenty-five dollars, the tally mounted up quickly for card sharps and loan sharks.
From whispers, Pearl learned that sex for food was also a common trade. Prostitutes on the ou
tside remained prostitutes on the inside, trading favors for food like women in bombed out cities in the wake of war trading for silk stockings, Spam and chocolate bars. Some things never changed.
Pearl checked the plastic ice cream tub, but it was not dry yet. The lid would do her no good, so she tossed it in the trash. The spoon would be good if she decided to splurge on ice cream next week or just to have something of her own, even if it was cheap plastic.
Possessions were important, a way to mark the territory and claim a corner. The more she thought of staking a claim, the more she feared the comfort. She was giving in to what seemed inevitable, giving up hope and settling down. Best not to think that way. Think about getting out. Think about anything but claiming jail. Think about - writing. Writing and pens, a small window onto the outside world, the world she still yearned for.
The tub would hold her pen. Her pen. First the tangible and then the intangible. Paper and pen she could touch and use; hope and possibilities were less concrete, and one will create the other. She dumped the contents of the bag onto the bunk.
Yellow legal pads lined in blue lay empty and waiting. The felt tip pen she tested on a small corner of the cardboard. Pearl pulled out the stool and sat down. With the pads lined up in front of her in the exact center of the desk beneath the mirror, she lined up and centered the pen on the right hand side. It felt more like a working desk instead of an extension of the wall. She scooted the stool back and opened the drawer, arranging and rearranging the toiletries Tamara left her alongside the new deodorant and toothpaste. A bar of Ivory soap went into the drawer and the other she unwrapped, the pure clean scent inviting a closer sniff that imparted distant memories of home and family.
After dropping the wrapper in the trash, Pearl went to the sink, turned on the water and adjusted hot and cold until she got the right temperature. As she washed her hands, memories foamed up like soap bubbles.
Aunt Edith, her favorite aunt, used to lather up her own hands and take each of her children’s hands between her own and wash them. The scent of the soap filled the bathroom and wafted down the hallway, the tangible evidence of love. Gentle hands smoothed soapy foam over dirty cheeks and behind ears and rinsed them with thick, soft washcloths. It was not the slap-dash action of children washing themselves, but an intimate ritual, a connection between mother and child that opened an aching void inside. She dried off with the bleached and washed-to-sandpaper towel. It scraped the tender skin of her once delicate peaches and cream cheeks, chin and neck, adding chapped and roughened patches of red. Her less sensitive hands were still soft and they nearly glowed beneath the scratching onslaught. Air-drying only made it worse. She wiped the sink and placed the bar of soap on the molded, corrugated slot on the sink.
Among Women Page 13