"You'll wake Cora."
It took a couple seconds for Grace to register that Karen was real.
"She gets mad when her sleep is disturbed. You wouldn't like Cora when she's mad."
After what had happened earlier, Karen's statement was so ridiculous Grace laughed. Then the laugh turned into a cry. Soon Grace was sobbing in Karen's arms, all the loss and terror and pain of the last six months flooding out of her body like pus from a lanced boil.
Finally Grace asked, "Why didn't you do something this afternoon?"
"Do something? About what?"
"About the attack! When Cora tried to kill me."
"Honey, that was nothing. If Cora'd tried to kill you, you'd be dead."
"But you didn't even move. You just sat there and let her assault me."
Karen sighed. "Let me ask you something, Grace. Do you want to survive in here?"
Grace thought about it. She wasn't sure. In the end she nodded. She had to survive. For Lenny.
"In that case, you better get one thing straight. Ain't no one gonna rescue you. Not me, not the guards, not your appeal lawyer, not your mama. No one. You are alone here, Grace. You gotta learn to rely on yourself."
Grace remembered her phone call to Honor.
When are you going to start taking responsibility? You're not Daddy's little princess anymore. You can't expect me and Connie to fix everything.
Then she remembered Lenny.
I'll take care of you, Grace. You'll never have to worry about anything again.
"The advice is free," said Karen, creeping back to her own bunk. "But when you remember where you hid all that money, maybe you can send me a little token of your appreciation."
Grace was about to protest her innocence again, but changed her mind. What was the point? If her own family didn't believe her, why on earth would anybody else?
"Sure, Karen. I'll do that."
GRACE TOOK HER CELL MATE'S ADVICE. For the next two weeks she kept her head down, her wits about her, and her thoughts and fears to herself. No one's going to help me. I'm on my own. I have to figure out how life here works.
Grace learned that Bedford Hills was admired across the country as a model for its progressive outreach programs aimed at helping incarcerated mothers. Of the 850 inmates, more than 70 percent were mothers in their thirties. Grace was astonished to learn that Cora Budds was one of them.
"Cora's a mom?"
"Why d'you look so shocked?" said Karen. "Cora's got three kids. Her youngest, Anna-May, was born right here. Baby came two weeks early. Sister Bernadette delivered her on the floor of the prenatal center."
Grace had read an article once about babies being born in prison. Or had she heard something on NPR? Either way, she remembered feeling appalled for the children of these selfish, criminal mothers. But that was in another life, another time. In this life, Grace did not find the children's center at Bedford Hills remotely appalling. On the contrary, staffed by inmates and local Roman Catholic nuns, it was the one bright spot of hope in the otherwise unremittingly grim regime of the prison. Grace would have dearly loved to get a job there, but there was no chance.
Karen told her, "New blood always gets the worst jobs."
Grace was put to work in the fields.
The work itself was backbreaking, chopping wood to build the new chicken coops, clearing swaths of weed-covered ground to make way for the bird runs. But it was the hours that really killed Grace. The Bedford Hills "day" bore no relation to light and darkness, or to the rhythms of the outside world. After lights-out at 10:30 P.M., prisoners got only four hours of unbroken sleep before low lighting came on again at 2:30 A.M. This was so the fieldworkers could eat breakfast and be outside in the bitter cold, working, by four. "Lunch" was served in the communal mess hall, at nine thirty. Dinner was at two, eight and a half long, boring hours before lights-out. Grace felt like she was permanently jet-lagged, exhausted but unable to sleep.
"You'll get used to it," said Karen. Grace wasn't so sure. The worst part of all was the loneliness. Often, Grace would go entire days without speaking to a single soul other than Karen. Other prisoners had friendships. Grace watched the women she worked with lean on one another for support. During breaks, they would talk about their kids or their husbands or their appeals. But nobody spoke to Grace.
"You're an outsider," Karen told her. "You're not one of us. Plus, you know, they figure you and your old man stole from people like us. So there's a lot of anger. It'll pass."
"But you're not angry," Grace observed.
Karen shrugged. "I used up all my anger a ways back. Besides, who knows? Maybe you really are innocent? No offense, but you don't come across as no criminal mastermind to me."
Grace's eyes welled with tears of gratitude. She believes me. Someone believes me.
She clung to Karen's words like a life raft.
"BROOKSTEIN. YOU GOT A VISITOR."
"Me?" Grace was coming in from the chicken runs. It was two days after Christmas and a heavy snow had fallen overnight. Grace's hands were red raw with cold and her breath plumed in front of her like steam from a boiling kettle.
"I don't see no other Brookstein. Visiting hours almost over, so you better get your ass inside now or you'll miss her."
Her? Grace wondered who it could be. Honor. Or Connie, perhaps. They've realized they were too tough on me. They're going to help me file an appeal.
The guard led her into the visitors' room. There, sitting at a small wooden table, was Caroline Merrivale. In an oversize fox-fur coat, her fingers glittering with diamonds like Cruella de Vil, she looked uncomfortable and laughably out of place in the dismal box of a room, a visitor from another world. Grace sat down opposite her.