Blue Moon (25 page)

She waved her hand in the air, a signal for Mrs. White to take me on my way. On our way to collect my prison uniform, my companion congratulated me on my perfect manners—really, my readiness to comply with the regulations forced upon me. Although not placed in isolation, I was, she informed me, to be carefully segregated from the rest of the prisoners for at least two weeks, so they could slowly become accustomed to me, perhaps chat with me from a distance, allow me to assure them that I was not a baby murderer. She also took me on a tour of the facility.

We descended to the basement where the delouser room was located; I had been exempted from a visit to this chamber because “all the girls from Barton Street are always immaculately presented to us,” Mrs. White assured me. There were also storerooms and a large sewing-room. In addition to the warden's office, the first floor consisted of a large receiving room, the kitchen, the matrons' mess hall and the doctor's office. On the second floor were the range and the wings.

The range consisted of two tiers of cells with bars across one end. I was sequestered in this older section, my cell consisting of a bed, dresser, toilet, sink and a row of bars serving as a door. After the range, amenable prisoners graduated to one of the two wings, where there were no cells, just simple rooms which contained, in addition to the basic ingredients of the range, a small desk, a wardrobe and a chair. Each door on the wings had a small window curtained on its exterior, allowing the guards easy viewing at any time. Toilets, sinks and baths were placed at the end of each wing, so that residents were allowed to have access to them at any time. No prison cell contained
outside windows. Of course, all inmates yearned for the luxuries of the wings and so, it was hoped, adjusted their behaviour in order to merit this superior accommodation.

The pillows on my new bed were small and rock-like; the sheets were made of unbleached muslin; the mattress constructed of straw; the blankets of regulation army weight. Mrs. White waited while I removed the clothes I was wearing; she handed me a striped dress and a pair of shoes. I would be given underwear only when I was allowed to leave the range. (I later learned that undergarments and stockings were forbidden lest a new girl hang herself with them.) My new frock was a faded grey, the stripes having faded from much washing; its consistency had been reduced to that of a scrubbing cloth. The shoes were so large that I fell out of them as I walked.

Nighttime in jail or prison is incredibly frightening. My experience at Barton Street had terrifying moments, but my first impression of my new home was even worse. First, there was the stench of sweating bodies forced to breathe too closely to each other. Sharp, acrid stinks arose in waves now and then above the usual pervasive reek. These odours were of urine and faeces. In the middle of the night could be heard a cacophony of snoring sounds. I was, I told myself, in a black pit cut off from the world.

In Hamilton, I had been given decent, uninteresting food, although not very much of it. Now, there was even less, none of it enticing. On my third or fourth day, my breakfast corn flakes were one half cereal, the other half maggots eager to consume the cereal ahead of me. I later learned that some of the guards, nurses, and cooks routinely filched and plundered the commissary, laying claim to all the best provisions and, in the process, not being overly concerned about the safety of what they left behind.

My first excursion into the world of the prison was two hours per day in the sewing room, where the bed-coverings and clothing for P4W and the nearby men's prison were manufactured and repaired. My task was to wash and mend the sheets from the men's prison. This was a deeply repulsive task left to new arrivals, mainly because of the high amount of dry semen, urine stains and perspiration embedded in the bed linen.

“The perfect job for a whore,” shouted Big Bertha, the obese woman seated next to me. “She's used to spunk. Put her mouth on a
lot of pee holes in her time. Made the bastards sweat when they fucked her.” Her comments were mild compared to those mouthed by the minuscule Goldie, who sat diametrically opposite me. “Nothing too bad can happen to a dame who kills babies. Baby pops out of her cunt and, hey presto, she smothers it! Then covers the body with cement and puts it in a suitcase. Sort of trophy or love cup. Right, dearie?”

During my first week in the sewing room, I made no reply to the taunts. None was really expected. A grim silence in my presence ensued. Within a few days, I was required to work full shifts. Mrs. Nelson, I later learned, had private contracts with manufacturers and used our labour to fulfill them.

Only at the beginning of the second week did I attempt to communicate with Goldie, to whom I whispered one afternoon when she came over to hand me some sheets to mend: “I love children. I am sick to death that I am separated from my daughter, Heather. I might never see her again. I would never kill a child of mine or anyone else.” Her face did not register any acknowledgement of what I had said.

A few days later, during the ten-minute break we were allowed on our shift, she walked over to me. “A word to the wise. You must be careful of the Empress and her Shadow.” She immediately retreated. On the following day, I approached her. “I do not know whom you are talking about.” She turned her small, delicate face in my direction. “No one has told you?”

I assured her I had absolutely no clue as to the identity of these two creatures. She whispered: “I am giving you the lowdown on the head guard, June Morgan, and her stooge, Juliet Guilfoyle.” I stared at her. “Still not know what I'm telling you? It's not that difficult a puzzle.” Finally, she took pity on me, looked around and nodded her head in the direction of the stool next to hers. I sat down.

“Haven't you noticed the dope-addicts and the lady-lovers scuttling back to their cells before morning inspection?”

I hadn't been entirely sure of the noises I had heard towards dawn but now recognized them for what they were. “I guess so.”

“Guess so? Those two spend the better part of the night with their favourite inmates. They even arrange to have special girls sent here from out of province. They've made this place sex-crazy. Nelson and White know what's going on, but they won't admit it, even though White has ordered saltpetre in the grub to keep the prisoners'
drives down. Be careful the Empress and the Shadow don't drag you into their ring.”

This turned out to be a well-placed warning because the Shadow, a tall well-built black woman let herself into my cell during the middle of the following night. “I've followed all your trials in the paper, dear. I guess I'm the big spider waiting for a tiny fly to get caught in her web. I'd really like to get to know you, although you've put on a hell of a lot of weight.” When I told her I was not interested, she simply shrugged her shoulders. “There's a lot offish to fry here, honey.”

During next day's shift, I told Goldie what had happened. “Yeah, there's so many loaves of bread around here, they don't miss one or two holdouts. Another thing, though. Unless you're really desperate, stay away from the delivery area where the male prisoners drop off and collect the sheets and bedding. Only the toughest bulls are allowed in on that assignment—in fact, they'll kill to get that job. Those are the guys who don't do the homo stuff. They're here to get laid, and they're quick and brutal. The guards turn a blind eye to what they're doing—they think it calms those ruffians down. Gives them a release. Some of the girls line up to be serviced, but I imagine it's not very pleasant. Another word to the wise.” I thanked her for the information and forever afterwards made certain that I made myself scarce when our next-door neighbours visited.

When my first two weeks were up, I was allowed to leave the range for the wings. My friendship with Goldie paved the way for my acceptance within my new community. There were a wide assortment of types, including Laura the Candy Kid, just seventeen years old, an experienced shoplifter, prostitute, and drug addict. As Goldie put it, Laura was as pretty as a picture. Then there was Old Lady Cumo, almost 82, who swore in German and smelled like a fish factory despite frequent, heavily abrasive scrubbings by the matrons. She had practised as an abortionist even before the First World War. Her best friend was Dora Coningsby, drug-addict and prostitute, her body completely needle-pocked. In their circle was Bugs, a burly old Irish woman of indeterminate age who smoked a pipe and swore like the proverbial trooper. She was a good friend of Big Bertha, who had addressed the first salvo in my direction. This ghastly looking, obese creature kept her mottled hair in curlers and wore her skirts and dresses above bare knees.

After about a month, my existence was simple enough. I rose early every morning, breakfasted in the commissary, worked a full eleven-hour shift from 7:30 until 6:30 (half an hour off for lunch), ate supper, took exercise for a half hour in the cold weather—two hours in the warmer—and then made my way to my cell for the night. Two months after my arrival in Kingston, I was transferred to another part of the wings, where I had more space and tranquillity. Some evenings I read for an hour or so, although the prison library consisted of less than a hundred books. Although it was difficult to obtain paper in the post-war years, I began to keep a diary.

At first, I kept pretty well to myself. I would smile at my fellow inmates—in the late forties there were only about forty-five of us. Only Rosie wrote to me on a regular basis. I had to be careful what I told her because our letters were read twice before being put into the post. Mother never wrote me; I knew nothing of Heather. When my father was finally convicted in the death of John Dick, I saw it in the papers.

I avoided controversy; I courted loneliness. Since I had always been a conformist, my existence was not entirely a living death. Since I had so little self-love, I had little self-pity. I informed myself constantly: you have reaped what you have sewn.

The Empress came by her nickname honestly. Obviously of German ancestry, she reminded me of the Marlene Dietrich character in
The Devil is a Woman,
the Josef von Sternberg film. The film poster for which showed a scheming yellow-haired Dietrich embraced by Cesar Romero, whose dark, regular features contrasted with his co-star's. Emblazoned on the poster is the seductress's motto: “Kiss Me … and I'll break your heart!” Obviously, the illustration is perfectly emblematic: the virile handsome Latino will, in the course of the movie, be reduced to putty by the wily German. Although she lacked a foreign accent, June Morgan was immediately compelling, a Circe luring everyone with whom she comes into
contact to their doom. She was not more than two inches over five feet and cadaverously thin. When she fixed her icy blue eyes—like Dietrich's, they were large and glaucomatous-looking—in your direction, you were reluctant to deny her anything.

The statuesque, almost six-foot Juliet Guilfoyle, perhaps ten years younger than the fortyish-looking Morgan, usually accompanied her boss on rounds. In every way, the Empress looked a bigger person than the black woman (in those days, we said “nigger woman” or—if we were being polite, “coloured woman” or “Negro woman”).

The rumour was that the two had been lovers but now wandered further afield in pursuit of game. Thus, their frequent overnight stays at P4W. The two, always clad in white, wandered the range and the wings together every day, June doing all the talking, Juliet busily scribbling in her notepad. At first glance, it appeared as if the two were being attentive to those in their charge, but, in reality, the prisoners were placing orders, sometimes for necessary items, such as sanitary napkins and underwear, that the two women claimed could be supplied only when appropriate or for a negotiable fee.

At P4W, a Darwinian law of supply and demand—nature red in tooth and claw—was controlled by the Empress and her Shadow. Luxury items—such as soft pillows and blankets—were in their purview. They also took orders for special food, which would be delivered late at night. Of course, cigarettes and drugs were their most popular commodities. Sometimes, an inmate could exchange sexual favours in exchange for, say, a new brassiere. More often than not, the prisoner would have to give her scanty wages over to these two—or she would have to beg money from visiting relatives and friends.

As I got to know my fellow inmates, I realized I was always hearing the same story over and over again. As Millicent had observed, all the prisoners were guiltless. Many of them came from extremely poor families, where, like myself, they had experienced some sort of sexual intrusion. If not a father, then a teenage brother or an uncle or a family friend. Virtually all of them had left home at the age of 12 or 13. Some became streetwalkers, most worked in factories. All of them tended to have disastrous relationships with men, but many
times they were behind bars because they had been hapless accessories to the crimes of their men friends.

Yvonne had been asleep in a hotel room after she had helped her boyfriend rob a bank. In the middle of the night, the door was battered down, a policeman made his way into the room and was shot dead by the boyfriend, who, in turn, was killed by another policeman. Yvonne was subsequently tried and convicted of second-degree murder, although she had been asleep when the policeman was shot. The judge at her trial informed her that she was, in society's eyes, just as guilty of the death of the policeman as her deceased boyfriend. According to the Parties Act, he told her, she should have been aware or known that a violent death might ensue from her activities earlier in the day. When he sentenced her, the judge gave her life imprisonment, although she technically owed the Board only fifteen years, and parole would be considered—and probably granted—after that period of time. In P4W, every prisoner talked of her obligation to the Board as if paying off a heavy mortgage.

My limited sense of camaraderie with my fellow inmates stemmed from a common point-of-view: we had done nothing wrong and, even if we had done something heinous, we really weren't responsible for our actions. A lot of double-thinking is what I would now label it. Somewhat philosophically, I began to consider the whole notion of blame. Although I endured a strong sense of guilt, I wondered if I could really blame everything on my parents, horrible as they had been. I may have started on this line of thought because I was trying, in a snobbish way, to segregate myself from the other wretches with whom I was confined. Perhaps my sense that I should own up to my responsibilities was a way of seeing myself as better—certainly more virtuous—than my compatriots.