Everything She Ever Wanted (79 page)

it look as if it were a hundred-dollar dress.

She carried the cane that she would use all through her years in

prison.
 
In the slightly blurry photographs, Pat's parents d as proudly

as if she had just gradustood beside her and smile ated with a Ph.D.

ren had posed too when Susan and Debbie and the grandchild they

visited, a family united.
 
"In a way, I was relieved.
 
I bes all right,

lieved that, without drug , my mother would be Susan remembered.
 
"I

was happy to see her healthy and responding so well.
 
She had had a

problem, but now things were going to be all right.
 
I loved my mother,

and some of the happiest moments of my life had been spent with her.
 
I

just can't describe how good she could make you feel when things were

going all right.
 
I told my whole family back in 1977 when she was

convicted that, if I ever saw any signs of something like that I'd stop

it, and I reminded Mom of that happening again, I was
 
in prison.
 
I

knew she was all right when she said, 'Well, I certainly hope somebody

would!"
 
and Boppo agreed."

For Margureitte Radcliffe, there may have been an irony in having her

daughter in prison.
 
For the first time in a long, long time she could

plan her life.
 
She could play cards and go out to s had a passion for

bingo.
 
She lunch with friends.
 
She had alway was a natural, able to

play a whole tableful of cards all by herself, and she thoroughly

enjoyed gambling benignly at Fort Mac.

The weekends were Pat's, of course, but the time between belonged to

Margureitte.
 
Her granddaughters marveled that they had never seen

Boppo so happy.
 
She was still at her daughter's beck and call, and

there were myriad things that upset Pat, but her phone calls home could

only come in the evening at Hardwick's pleasure.
 
There had always been

emergencies with Pat.
 
But now, at least Margureitte knew where she was

and that she was safe.

She talked often about her "poor, innocent daughter" locked up in

prison through a "terrible injustice."

No one dared phone Margureitte on the nights Pat was due to call.
 
She

still had to report all her activities to Pat, who wanted to know every

detail of her mother's days.
 
But with Pat in prison, Margureitte's

obsessive concern for her daughter could be compartmentalized; for a

time, it didn't override everything else in her life.

Margureitte had always had certain self-indulgences, small things that

perhaps allowed her to devote herself so slavishly to her family.
 
She

adored peanuts-she was never without a jar of them-and she drank coffee

and smoked from morning until night.
 
"I want to be buried with my

cigarettes, eanuts, and MY p my coffee," she often said laughingly.

Margureitte's preferred dishes disgusted her daughter: fried liver,

scrambled pork brains and eggs, escargot, chicken gizzards, and smoked

oysters.
 
While Pat was in prison, she could cook whatever she wanted,

she could sip her coffee, smoke, and watch her favorite soap opera,

Days of Our Lives.

The Radcliffes moved from their rented house to a townhouse.

It didn't take a lot of upkeep, and they were able to relax.
 
Far away

in Texas, Susan was pregnant again.
 
Debbie was giving her marriage

another go.
 
A year later, Ronnie married too, and he and his wife

expected a baby.
 
Without Pat, all the Radcliffes achieved a degree of

normalcy in their lives, something that had been very rare.

It would also be very brief.

For the most part, the guards and matrons at Hardwick liked Pat.
 
She

was a perfect lady, and she gave them little trouble.

She was gracious and concerned about their lives, remembering to ask

about their children and grandchildren, and her sewing and fancywork

were flawless.
 
They admired the little smocked dresses and knit things

she made for Susan's new baby, Courtney, and they lined up to have Pat

make dainty things for their special babies, bringing her all the

thread, lace, and cloth she needed.

Later, when she had earned the privilege, they drove Pat all the way to

Atlanta to a crafts store to pick out the materials herself.

In prison, Pat found a way to shine.
 
Her manners were cordial, but she

held herself clearly above the mass of women who languished behind

bars.
 
Many of the other prisoners were illiterate blacks, and she

often alluded to the fact that she was the daughter of a colonel from

Atlanta; she had never really associated with blacks.

Now that she bunked with a trailerful of black women, she tried to keep

her own space inviolate-without letting them see her distaste.

Pat had insisted that she was not prejudiced.

She Heretofore, had regaled her daughters with a story of the time she

had defied the Ku Klux Klan, marched into a midnight gathering, and

even as they circled a shouted at them that they were wrong, burning

cross in a North Carolina field.
 
Locked up, she use derisive racial

slang.

oached by Pat confided to her family that she had been appr lesbian

prisoners; she had been frightened, but she had managed to stay free of

any involvement.
 
A woman utterly obsessed with men for years, she no

longer spoke of love or even the possibility of love.
 
Actually, she

seemed more fulfilled by her knitting, sewing, and craft projects than

she ever had been by her passionate sexual affairs.

Margureitte and Clifford tried to keep worrisome news from Pat.
 
Ronnie

and his wife divorced, and he was given custody of his tiny daughter,

Ashlynne.
 
The tradition of the Siler women continued.
 
Mama Siler had

raised Pat for her first five years, Boppo had always been there for

Pat's children, and now she was a darling stepped in to raise her

grandson's child.
 
Ashlynne baby and the Radcliffes doted on her.

Papa had always preferred dainty little girls in rutty dresses, and he

carried Ashlynne around, proudly showing her off - When she cried, he

and Boppo tucked her into bed between them.

Pat did not approve of Boppo and Papa having Ashlynne.

Like Dawn, Sean, and Courtney, this baby was her grandchild, but she

didn't appear to have any feelings toward her.
 
It may have been

because she was in prison and didn't have a chance to really know the

baby; it may have been because Ashlynne had taken her place at home.

And she ruined Boppo's visits too; Boppo brought the baby along all the

time and fussed over her instead of over Pat.

Margureitte idolized that baby.
 
Just as Mama Siler had doted on Patty,

Margureitte loved Ashlynne with a fierceness that was almost

visceral.

When Pat called home and heard Ashlynne in the background, her voice

took on a hard edge and she asked, "What is she doing there?"
 
Even

though her mother played down how much Ashlynne meant to her, Pat was

suspicious.

There were other things Boppo and Papa didn't tell Pat.
 
On July 13,

1978, Debbie was arrested by two Atlanta Police Department vice squad

members, J. T. Cochran and W. F. Derrick, and charged with two counts

of soliciting for sodomy, masturbation for hire, and escort without a

permit.
 
Debbie explained that she had merely taken a job as a

receptionist for the escort service, and that she had no idea what the

real business taking place was.

The officers' follow-up report was more specific, and far more

graphic.

Acts of sexual intercourse and oral sex were offered and agreed to by

Debbie, representing "Atlanta's Finest Model Agency," to be charged at

a hundred dollars apiece, with an additional eighty quoted to Officer

Cochran for "intentional erotic stimulation of the genital organs .

.

. by manual contact."

On her booking papers, Debbie listed her relatives as her husband and

her brother.
 
She did not mention her mother or her grandparents.

Boppo found out.
 
She found out everything; she always had.

But she didn't tell Pat.
 
Margureitte was a woman who strove to do the

"correct" thing, but her equanimity was sorely tried.
 
Her daughter and

her ex-son-in-law were in prison, and now her granddaughter had been

arrested for prostitution.
 
She was nearing sixty, and it didn't seem

fair when she had spent her whole life trying to make her family

happy.

It was not the way she herself had been raised.
 
"I am a lady," Boppo

said often.
 
"My mother and father brought me up not to lower myself-I

am civilized.
 
I am a better and bigger person.
 
I am a lady."

Debbie requested a jury trial, and the matter was not adjudi + 379

11, 1979.
 
Debbie pleaded nolo contendere.
 
Her cated until June red in

c grandmother appea ourt, standing proud and tall with oppo addressed

the judge, explaining, "Sir, this Debbie.
 
B s given twelve months'

woman has a child to care for."
 
Debbie wa concurrently.
 
She

exprobation on all three counts-to run plained she had pressing medical

bills and other debts, and the three hundred-dollar fine was

suspended.

the trial were, finally, too much for Mar Debbie's arrest and stainless

steel martyr, gureitte- She, who had always been the finally buckled

and was admitted to a local hospital.
 
After juggling, countless family

problems for so long, she found solace and peace in the quiet, white

rooms.
 
But not for long.
 
Debbie stormed in and

pointed an accusing finger at her grandmother.
 
"How could you do this

to me?" she cried.

Even more upsetting to a woman in the

grip of physical nate leave I exhaustion, Pat was given a compassionate