The Silent Gift

by Michael Jr. Landon

  Eleven, thought Felix as he watched them wheel the girl out of the zoo. Eleven times he’d seen—they’d all seen—the lollypop come out of that deep pocket in Dr. Tanner’s coat. Felix turned to look at the boy in the corner, see if there was any reaction at all. But he—“Jack,” it was—had never moved from his post at the window.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Oakdale Reformatory

  JANUARY 1939

  AS FAR AS MARY WAS CONCERNED, she was on a ride into limbo. The engine of the prison bus droned on, its constant, unvarying rumble grating on every nerve in her body. The ride made her think of her marriage to Jerry—something to endure, something to tune out, something to get through as best she could. But at least when she’d been living with Jerry, she’d had a single bright spot in every day. Jack. For a tiny moment she let herself wonder how she would have carried on if Jerry still had Jack—and knew it would have been impossible. She shuddered—then quickly pushed the thought out of her head. No! Don’t even think about it. Agnes has him. That’s why she never came to see me. She knew she had to take him away from Jerry. She’ ll take good care of him for me. And somehow, she’ ll figure out a way to get in touch with me and let me know where they are. These sentences were well rehearsed, a litany she constantly replayed whenever her imagination betrayed her.

  Mary knew Agnes to be a smart, informed woman. She felt sure that if her friend was still anywhere close to Chicago—merely anywhere inside the state lines—Agnes would have seen the newspaper articles about the trial and Mary’s sentencing. Patrick O’Sullivan had said the story was in all the papers—right after he’d apologized for the guilty verdict the jury had returned. “I’m so sorry, Mary.” He’d sounded genuinely regretful. “I’ll file an appeal, but to tell you the truth . . .”

  He didn’t have to finish his sentence. Mary knew that the jury had been against her from the moment Robert Nevins had painted her as a self-absorbed woman who had nothing but selfish motives for taking her son away from his father. “She wanted her son all to herself for one reason and one reason only, ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” he’d told them in his closing arguments. “She didn’t want to share the cash cow. She wanted to exploit Jack’s handicap without his father standing in the way. And even now—well, I believe she’s involved in her son’s disappearance. I believe Mary Sinclair knows exactly where her boy is, who he’s with, and she’s not talking! I believe you need to send a clear message to parents everywhere that says we won’t tolerate this kind of behavior—especially when a handicapped child is involved!”

  They had sent a message all right, Mary thought as she watched sleet hit the glass of the bus windows and roll down, settling on the gunmetal gray frame of the vehicle. They sent a message that will last eighteen months. But as horrible as her situation was, she had convinced herself she could tolerate anything as long as she knew Jack was safe with Agnes and someday they’d be back together again. Agnes had been a godsend—of that Mary had no doubt, despite the efforts of the prosecuting attorney to paint her in a bad light. Mary knew the truth—Agnes would take care of her boy.

  The bus driver slowed down, then made a sharp turn, and suddenly through the windshield Mary and the other passengers had their first view of the Oakdale State Reformatory for Women. Mary knew they were someplace south of Chicago, and they’d been traveling for a couple of hours.

  The building looked more like an exclusive country manor than a facility for society’s female criminals. Pine trees stretched halfway up round turrets on the front and sides of the brick building. Shrubs formed a winding fence around the structure, now glistening with shiny ice from the current sleet storm. Mary could hear the other women muttering.

  “Doesn’t look half bad. . . .”

  “Kinda pretty, really.”

  “Never seed a hotel lookin’ that fancy”

  The driver pulled the bus around back to another large rectangular brick building. The windows were all barred, and a wire fence ran behind it. The women’s chatter stopped at once, and Mary was sure there wasn’t a doubt among them that this building was to be their new home. The driver cut the engine, and almost immediately a uniformed woman hurried out into the weather and onto the bus. Water dripping from her billed hat and coat, she gave each of them a long, appraising look.

  “The state of Illinois welcomes you to Oakdale, ladies. And in all honesty, we hope you have an unpleasant stay,” she finished with a grim smile.

  The new inmates filed into the processing room and stood with their backs against a beige wall. The guard who had led them inside introduced herself as Hannah Jorgenson—“Sergeant Jorgenson to you.” A substantial woman who looked even more impatient than she sounded, she paced back and forth in front of them while she recited the rules of the place. “It doesn’t matter to me what you did to earn your stint in here,” the sergeant said. “What matters is that you behave better here at Oakdale than you did out there in the world. Everyone here works. Everyone here cooperates. Everyone here wants to be anywhere but here. Your prison matrons are the final authority on everything that happens, and they aren’t looking to be your friend. They’re paid to keep you in line and make sure you obey the rules.” As if on cue, two other female guards entered the room. Sergeant Jorgenson pointed at each woman as she introduced them. “That’s Bonnie—she’ll give you your uniform. And that’s Ruth—she’ll take care of your personal effects.”

  Ruth and Bonnie stepped forward. Bonnie, short, gray-haired, and stocky, passed out plain gray muslin dresses to each woman, along with a pair of black stockings and shoes. Ruth, wearing a no-nonsense, no-sympathy expression above her khaki uniform, followed behind with four baskets.

  “Your clothes, shoes, jewelry—anything we don’t give you goes into the basket,” she instructed by rote.

  None of the women moved.

  “Let’s get to it,” she barked. “Strip off your street clothes—except for brassieres and underpants—and yank on those dresses.”

  A young woman on Mary’s left, who she thought was named Shirley, cleared her throat nervously. “You want us to change right here?”

  “That’s right, sweet pea. This ain’t Bloomingdale’s, where you get your own private fitting room.”

  Under the watchful eyes of Hannah, Ruth, and Bonnie, the women set about the humiliating task of undressing in a room full of strangers. Mary put her pocketbook in the basket and stepped out of her shoes. After unbuttoning her dress, she let it pool at her feet while she hurried to tug the long-sleeved gray muslin uniform over her head. Dressed in under a minute, Mary dropped her clothes into the basket with her pocketbook. The muslin dress buttoned up the front, and she made quick work fastening the buttons while the others finished their own metamorphosis from free women to incarcerated members of the Oakdale population.

  “Pick up your baskets,” Bonnie told them, “and follow me.”

  Mary held her own basket in her arms and started to follow Shirley, but Ruth put her arm in front to stop her.

  “We ain’t having high tea,” she said to Mary, looking pointedly at her gloves. “Take ’em off an’ put ’em in the basket.”

  “I . . . I always wear them,” Mary stammered. “My hands are . . . were . . . burned and they are ugly to look at . . .”

  “Yeah? Well, cry me a river, but it don’t matter,” Ruth said. “Let’s take ’em off.”

  Mary handed Ruth her basket while she peeled the glove from her right hand. Shirley, standing next to Mary, sucked in her breath. Ruth drew her brows together, then looked at Mary. “I’ll let the other guards know we’re making an exception,” Ruth said. “Put it back on.”

  Mary nodded and slipped her hand back into the glove. Ruth shoved the basket back into her arms. “Let’s go. Lunch in ten minutes, you got thirty minutes to eat—and after that you’ll hear a bell. When it rings, go to the west side of the food hall, and I’ll be there with your job assignments,” she said. “Any questions?”

  The women all s
hook their heads, then followed Ruth toward their new lives.

  The air in the dim corridor seemed to grow thicker with every step Mary took. She tried to match her pace to Ruth’s as the guard led her away from the food hall toward the job that would be hers for the duration of her stay at Oakdale.

  “Feel that?” Ruth asked over her shoulder.

  “Feel what?”

  “The wet air that we’re headin’ into,” Ruth said with a touch of impatience. “Do ya feel it?”

  Mary nodded as she took a double step to keep up. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “That’s where you’ll be working,” Ruth said. “We call it the swamp.” Mary waited for her to say something else, but the guard said nothing further for the rest of the trip down the humid corridor. Mary saw a large open door at the end of the hall, and as they got closer she read the simple sign posted overhead: Laundry. She followed Ruth over the threshold.

  It wasn’t hard for Mary to figure out how the prison laundry had earned its nickname. The air was hot and moist, and already she could feel the material of her rough-woven muslin dress starting to cling to her skin.

  The large room had institutional washing and drying machines along one wall, shelves and bins along another, and a long table in the center where four women were engaged in the doubtlessly endless task of folding clean laundry into stacks of linens, towels, and the muslin uniforms.

  “You start right after breakfast each morning, Monday through Saturday. There’s a service for believers on Sunday mornings,” Ruth said, then finished under her breath, “if you can still believe in anything in this place.”

  Ruth glanced around the room. “Dottie! Over here,” she called out when her eyes fell on a black woman. The woman, maybe in her mid-thirties, lowered the top of a large press, and steam enveloped her—then dissipated. After she raised the lid of the press, Dottie came toward Mary and Ruth.

  “This is Mary,” Ruth said to Dottie. “She’s been assigned here.”

  Dottie raised an eyebrow at Mary’s gloves. “Goin’ to a cotillion?”

  “I said she could keep the gloves on,” Ruth said firmly, “so lay off.”

  Dottie raised both brows. “You make the rules. Guess that means you get to change ’em.”

  “Just show her what to do.” Ruth turned and stalked away.

  Dottie looked again at Mary’s hands. “Must be somethin’ bad under that white cloth.”

  Mary nodded. “There is.”

  “You do it—or was it done to you?” Dottie asked.

  The question took Mary by surprise. She studied the woman in front of her. Everything about Dottie seemed to mirror the bluntness of her question. Her hair was pulled back in a no-nonsense braid; her large eyes were framed by deep lines that told more about a hard life than about age. The sleeves of her dress were pushed to her elbows, and she propped a hand on her hip.

  “Nobody’s ever asked me that before,” Mary finally said.

  Dottie shrugged. “So which is it?”

  “I did it.”

  “Huh,” Dottie replied. “How ’bout that.”

  Dottie turned away and Mary followed. The other women in the room barely glanced at her, continuing at their tasks. “All a’ the prison laundry’s done in here, and there’s never a shortage. Inmates are responsible for gettin’ their stuff to us.” She gestured to the bins on the wall, where black net bags were rolled and stuffed into small cubbies. “Everything’s marked with a prisoner’s number—when it’s clean, goes inside the bag.”

  “All right,” Mary said, nodding. They walked past two large washing machines. One woman was loading dirty clothes, and the other was taking clean ones out, giving each wet piece a good shake.

  “Irene shakes off the wet ’fore it goes in ta dry,” Dottie said. “I guess for obvious reasons we ain’t gonna put you on the washer. You’d spend your whole time wringing out those lady gloves of yours.

  “We got jobs in receiving, sorting, flatwork, marking, bundling,” Dottie continued with another glance at Mary, “but those the better jobs, an’ they go by seniority. Let’s see,” she said, looking around, “you be on the steam press. It’s back-breakin’ work ’cause you’s on your feet from the time you start till you quit for the day. If the temperature don’t kill you, the humidity’ll make ya wish you were dead.” She grinned. “I’m thinkin’ it’s got to be a little like being in the devil’s kitchen.”

  “How long have you been doing this?” Mary ventured.

  Dottie grinned again, but the smile didn’t reach her eyes. “You mean how long I been locked up?”

  Embarrassed, Mary swallowed, and Dottie laughed. “No need to look all uncomfortable. We both locked up and away from all the ‘good’ people out there. Fact is, in here you no better’n me.”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “Twelve years,” Dottie said as they stopped at the steam-press table—the same one the woman had been working at when Ruth called her over.

  Mary couldn’t keep the incredulity out of her voice. “Twelve years?”

  Dottie lifted the top of the large steam press. “That’s right.”

  “And you’re still working here—on this?”

  Dottie pulled a wrinkled dress from a pile next to the press. “I work the press ’cause I choose to,” she said with an edge. “Turns out I like being in the devil’s kitchen.”

  Dottie spread the dress out flat on the press, careful not to touch any of the hot surfaces. “You mess this part up, an’ the whole thing gots to be done over again,” she said. “A piece of fabric folded ’fore the top comes down, and it’s in there permanent like. Understand?”

  Mary nodded. “Yes, it must be smooth.”

  “Right. Smooth,” Dottie agreed. “So how long you here for?”

  “Eighteen months.”

  Dottie stopped and looked at her. “That’s it? What’d you do?”

  “They say I kidnapped my son away from his father,” Mary said quietly, “but that’s not the truth of it. The reasons we ran had been building for a while—I finally just had a chance to get away.”

  “Mean son of a gun, huh?”

  “Yes, he sure could be.”

  Dottie took a moment, then nodded. “I know something ’bout that.”

  “You were married to a man like that?”

  Dottie drew dark brows together and scoffed. “No—never had the ‘displeasure’ of bein’ married. It was my daddy was the mean one. Man didn’t have a shred of a conscience ’bout what he did to me—or to my baby sister.”

  “So you took your sister and ran away from home?”

  Dottie lowered the press so the steam billowed out from the sides and swirled around both of them. “Nope. Shot ’im instead. A dead man can’t chase you.”

  Her cell was small, but thankfully she was alone during the night. She hadn’t ever spent this much time around so many people. The constant noise was grating—someone always talking, complaining, machines in the laundry whirring, and, finally, the cell doors clanking shut. Though Jack was always someplace in her awareness, she welcomed the time to sit on the hard cot in her nine-by-five space and let her mind create elaborate settings for what he might be doing right at that very moment. Maybe Agnes was sitting with Jack in a cozy room, and he’d be wearing his plaid flannels and slippers, working on a puzzle. Then the two of them finishing some hot cocoa and his favorite sugar cookies . . .

  A woman’s voice suddenly filled the air. “ ‘I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool. . . .’ ” she said, sounding as if she was quoting from something.

  Mary watched a woman pushing a metal cart filled with books come into view, stopping right in front of Mary’s cell. Her glasses, a black-framed pair with white surgical tape holding them together across her nose, made her eyes appear owlish behind the thick lenses.

  “ ‘You see, I think everything’s terrible anyhow!’ ” She almost yelled the words at Mary.

&nbs
p; “Excuse me?” Mary said, frowning.

  “The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald, chapter one . . . great book. Great, great novel. Would you like it? Got it right here—”

  “No, I don’t think so. . . .” Mary shook her head.

  “I’m Jenny, by the way,” the little woman said. “I heard about you.”

  “I’m Mary.”

  From down the way came a shout. “Jenny, quit yer gabbing and get on down here! I been waiting for that Pearl Buck story for a month now!”

  “Hold your water,” Jenny yelled back, then turned to Mary and lowered her voice. “I got other books . . . if you’re interested. Nothing quite like reading to help pass the time—make you feel connected to something outside this place. . . .”

  “Do you have a Bible?” Mary suddenly asked.

  Jenny nodded and started to rummage through the stacks of books. She ducked down and pulled a Bible off the bottom of the cart. She passed it through the bars to Mary.

  “I come around once a week,” Jenny said. “You can switch it out or keep it as long as you think you need it.”

  “You move slower’n molasses, Jenny!” The same woman’s voice from down the cell block yelled, “I want East Wind: West Wind, and I know you got it in!”

  “Sorry! Just gave it away!” Jenny hollered back.

  Jenny plucked the novel by Pearl Buck off the cart and thrust it toward Mary. Lowering her voice, she said, “Here—I don’t like to lie.” She offered a sardonic smile as Mary reluctantly accepted the second volume. “Some people never learn that impatience gets you nowhere but frustrated in here. See ya round.”

  Jenny started to move on down the line, continuing her recitation from Gatsby. “ ‘I know! I’ve been everywhere and seen everything and done everything!’ ”

  Mary went to the cot and sat down. “Another day’s behind us, Jack,” she whispered. “Tomorrow brings us closer to the day we’re together again.” She opened the Bible in her lap and pointed her index finger to the page. “And until then I’m missing you. Always missing you.” Softly she began to read aloud, her finger tracing under each word as she read.