her. You’ll have to do whatever you think best with your baby , Charles had said. She wanted to have her baby. And yet , she thought, they won’t let me keep it. They’ll take it away from me because I’m going to be in prison for the next fifteen years. It’s better that it never knows about its mother.
She wept.
At 5:00 in the morning a male guard, accompanied by a matron, entered Tracy’s cell. “Tracy Whitney?”
“Yes.” She was surprised at how odd her voice sounded.
“By order of the Criminal Court of the State of Louisiana, Orleans Parish, you are forthwith being transferred to the Southern Louisiana Penitentiary for Women. Let’s move it, babe”
She was walked down a long corridor, past cells filled with inmates. There was a series of catcalls.
“Have a good trip, honey…”
“You tell me where you got that paintin’ hidden, Tracy, baby, and I’ll split the money with you…”
“If you’re headin’ for the big house, ask for Ernestine Lit-tlechap. She’ll take real good care of you…”
Tracy passed the telephone where she had made her call to Charles. Good-bye, Charles.
She was outside in a courtyard. A yellow prison bus with barred windows stood there, its engine idling. Half a dozen women already were seated in the bus, watched over by two armed guards. Tracy looked at the faces of her fellow passengers. One was defiant, and another bored; others wore expressions of despair. The lives they had lived were about to come to an end. They were outcasts, headed for cages where they would be locked up like animals. Tracy wondered what crimes they had committed and whether any of them was as innocent as she was, and she wondered what they saw in her face.
The ride on the prison bus was interminable, the bus hot and smelly, but Tracy was unaware of it. She had withdrawn into herself, no longer conscious of the other passengers or of the lush green countryside the bus passed through. She was in another time, in another place.
She was a little girl at the shore with her mother and father, and her father was carrying her into the ocean on his shoulders, and when she cried out her father said, Don’t be a baby, Tracy , and he dropped her into the cold water. When the water closed over her head, she panicked and began to choke, andher father lifted her up and did it again, and from that moment on she had been terrified of the water…
The college auditorium was filled with students and their parents and relatives. She was class valedictorian. She spoke for fifteen minutes, and her speech was filled with soaring idealism, clever references to the past, and shining dreams for the future. The dean had presented her with a Phi Beta Kappa key. I want you to keep it , Tracy told her mother, and the pride on her mother’s face was beautiful…
I’m going to Philadelphia, Mother. I have a job at a bank there.
Annie Mahler, her best friend, was calling her. You’ll love Philadelphia, Tracy. It’s full of all kinds of cultural things. It has beautiful scenery and a shortage of women. I mean, the men here are really hungry! I can get you a job at the bank where I work…
Charles was making love to her. She watched the moving shadows on the ceiling and thought, How many girls would like to be in my place? Charles was a prime catch. And she was instantly ashamed of the thought. She loved him. She could feel him inside her, beginning to thrust harder, faster and faster, on the verge of exploding, and he gasped out, Are you ready? And she lied and said yes. Was it wonderful for you? Yes, Charles. And she thought, Is that all there is? And the guilt again…
“You! I’m talkin’ to you. Are you deaf for Christ’s sake? Let’s go.”
Tracy looked up and she was in the yellow prison bus. It had stopped in an enclosure surrounded by a gloomy pile of masonry. A series of nine fences topped with barbed wire surrounded the five hundred acres of farm pasture and woodlands that made up the prison
She wept.
At 5:00 in the morning a male guard, accompanied by a matron, entered Tracy’s cell. “Tracy Whitney?”
“Yes.” She was surprised at how odd her voice sounded.
“By order of the Criminal Court of the State of Louisiana, Orleans Parish, you are forthwith being transferred to the Southern Louisiana Penitentiary for Women. Let’s move it, babe”
She was walked down a long corridor, past cells filled with inmates. There was a series of catcalls.
“Have a good trip, honey…”
“You tell me where you got that paintin’ hidden, Tracy, baby, and I’ll split the money with you…”
“If you’re headin’ for the big house, ask for Ernestine Lit-tlechap. She’ll take real good care of you…”
Tracy passed the telephone where she had made her call to Charles. Good-bye, Charles.
She was outside in a courtyard. A yellow prison bus with barred windows stood there, its engine idling. Half a dozen women already were seated in the bus, watched over by two armed guards. Tracy looked at the faces of her fellow passengers. One was defiant, and another bored; others wore expressions of despair. The lives they had lived were about to come to an end. They were outcasts, headed for cages where they would be locked up like animals. Tracy wondered what crimes they had committed and whether any of them was as innocent as she was, and she wondered what they saw in her face.
The ride on the prison bus was interminable, the bus hot and smelly, but Tracy was unaware of it. She had withdrawn into herself, no longer conscious of the other passengers or of the lush green countryside the bus passed through. She was in another time, in another place.
She was a little girl at the shore with her mother and father, and her father was carrying her into the ocean on his shoulders, and when she cried out her father said, Don’t be a baby, Tracy , and he dropped her into the cold water. When the water closed over her head, she panicked and began to choke, andher father lifted her up and did it again, and from that moment on she had been terrified of the water…
The college auditorium was filled with students and their parents and relatives. She was class valedictorian. She spoke for fifteen minutes, and her speech was filled with soaring idealism, clever references to the past, and shining dreams for the future. The dean had presented her with a Phi Beta Kappa key. I want you to keep it , Tracy told her mother, and the pride on her mother’s face was beautiful…
I’m going to Philadelphia, Mother. I have a job at a bank there.
Annie Mahler, her best friend, was calling her. You’ll love Philadelphia, Tracy. It’s full of all kinds of cultural things. It has beautiful scenery and a shortage of women. I mean, the men here are really hungry! I can get you a job at the bank where I work…
Charles was making love to her. She watched the moving shadows on the ceiling and thought, How many girls would like to be in my place? Charles was a prime catch. And she was instantly ashamed of the thought. She loved him. She could feel him inside her, beginning to thrust harder, faster and faster, on the verge of exploding, and he gasped out, Are you ready? And she lied and said yes. Was it wonderful for you? Yes, Charles. And she thought, Is that all there is? And the guilt again…
“You! I’m talkin’ to you. Are you deaf for Christ’s sake? Let’s go.”
Tracy looked up and she was in the yellow prison bus. It had stopped in an enclosure surrounded by a gloomy pile of masonry. A series of nine fences topped with barbed wire surrounded the five hundred acres of farm pasture and woodlands that made up the prison
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