“Let her draw it out,” sneers Wiggins. “Let her assault me. My lads and I can handle her, and then it will be my turn to deliver the strokes of the rod that have been promised her, and oh, that will be sweet, so sweet!”
I seethe, I fume, but I eventually subside, and Wiggins and his cohorts walk away, snorting with laughter.
I stand there totally perplexed and wounded, too. I have been called many things in this life, but this is new to me and it cuts me to my core . . .
. . . unfit mother . . .
Chapter 29
I was sick in my heart. It would have been better, I know in my heart of hearts, had I never come back to Boston, maybe never to have been born. I wanted to be back in the hayloft at Dovecote with Amy. I wanted . . . but never mind what I wanted—the Black Cloud swept over me and I just wished to pull the covers over my head and go to sleep for a good, long time . . . maybe forever . . .
But I did not do that, for Ezra pulled up in a coach this morning and Molly shook me out of sleep and I managed to dress and join him, all groggy, in the cab.
We are off to visit the kids in their confinements to see what can be done. I am not hopeful.
“As for Joan Nichols,” says Ezra, as we clatter along, “I shall try to have her remanded to the custody of Mistress Miranda Pimm of the Lawson Peabody. Mistress has already said she would agree to the arrangement, the school year starting up again shortly, so it should not be a burden on either of them.”
You don’t know Joannie, I’m thinking. And as for Mistress, I know she’d like to have me back in her office with my toes on her white line, the rest of me leaning over her desk with my skirts pulled up, my bottom ready for the rod.
“As for the lad,” Ezra continues, “that is a little more difficult.”
“Why’s that?” I ask.
“Well, he, unlike Joan Nichols, has been charged with an actual crime.”
“Wot?” I exclaim, incredulous. “How could that sweet little boy be guilty of anything?”
“The charge is ‘Littering the Streets of Boston,’” replies Ezra with a sigh. “Said charge being brought by Percy Tooley, Captain of the Free Men’s Fire and Insurance Company, Ravi having been peddling his peanuts outside the door of Skivareen’s, Tooley’s base of operations.”
“Littering?” I gasp. “Because people dropped their shells on the ground?”
“Even so,” says Ezra. “There’s no denying they did that.”
“And so the shells defiled the horse shit that was already lying in the street?”
Ezra shrugs.
“Good God,” I say, my teeth clenched. “I wish I were back at sea.”
And before I go, I’ll get you for that, Pigger, I swear I will!
“Well, be that as it may, here we are, Miss, the women’s asylum,” says Ezra, as we pull up in front of a very forbidding building.
He did not have to announce that, as we can already hear the howls from within. We alight and go in the front entrance.
Inside, we find a long table with several chairs lined along it, behind which is a row of bars running floor to ceiling. There is no door into the cage. There is, however, a barred window off to the left, about eight feet above the floor.
Behind the bars sits a thin, severe-looking woman dressed in what I suppose is to suggest the uniform of a nurse. Her face, however, shows no trace of the kindness and compassion we usually associate with women of that profession.
“Yes?” is all she says by way of greeting.
“Attorney Pickering and my client, Miss Faber, here to see Joan Nichols. I believe we are expected.”
“Sit there and wait,” she says, rising and going through a door in the back.
“Lovely place,” I observe, looking about as we sit down in the hard chairs.
“Indeed. I know on at least two occasions I have been successful in keeping a certain Miss Faber out of here,” says Ezra, with a sigh. “Just barely successful . . .”
Presently, the matron returns with a very sullen Joannie Nichols in tow, whom she pushes down into a chair on the other side of the bars. She wears a gray woolen shift, shapeless and coarse, buttoned to the neck. Her hair is dirty and hangs down over her face.
“Don’t try to pass her nothin’. I’ll be watching.” With that, the woman goes back to her desk.
“Get me out of here,” whispers Joannie through clenched teeth. “They’re all crazy in here . . .”
Just then a high, piercing scream is heard from within the madhouse, a scream that trails off to a piteous wail of utter despair.
“That yelling goes on all day, all night. The jailers are cruel witches. Some of the women spend their whole time tied to chairs or chained to the wall. The stink is awful . . .”
“Poor Joannie,” I say, reaching out for her hand but not getting it.
“Watch that!” warns the matron. “You do that again and this little meeting is over.”
I withdraw my hand and say softly to her, “Hold on, Joannie. Mr. Pickering is working on your case. The hearing comes up on Thursday, and he has gotten Mistress Pimm to agree to take you on as her ward,” I go on, bitterly, “since I have been found wanting in that regard.”
“Great,” says Joannie, not quite convinced of the wisdom of that. “I’ll have to go back to school.” The lower lip comes out. “And I won’t get to be in the big play.”
“There will be other plays, Joannie, and school starts up again next month.”
She considers this, then says, “If it doesn’t work, what then? Do I spend the rest of my life here?”
“Do they chain you up at night?” I ask.
“No. The buggers know I’m not a loony. That’s why they use me to clean up the slops of the others, thems that can’t control themselves.” She looks down at her filthy hands. “It’s lucky for you that you were not able to take my hand. No, I’m locked in a room by myself.”
“Could you get out if you had to?”
She manages a small smile at that. “Who are you talking to, Jacky? Some wet-nosed kid new to the streets? Nay, I scoped it out early on—the lock is simple and I’ve already found me a nail to lift the latch. So what’s your plan?”
“You know there’s a window over there. Don’t turn around to look, for it’s there, all right. So if things don’t go our way in court and they send you back here, that night, listen up for a faint chiming of a firebell, ding-ding-ding, then three dings again. When you hear it, get up and go to that window. You still can climb a rope, can’t you? Or has all that easy livin’ here in Boston softened you up?”
She chuckles, considerably brightened by what I have said—trust a Cheapside Cockney to trust more in one’s friends than in the courts—and says, “I could climb it faster than you, that’s for sure, you fat, lazy thing, you.”
That’s my girl!
“We are done here, Matron,” I say, rising. I put my hand in my purse, draw out a ten-dollar gold piece, and snap it down on the table. “Take this, please, and see that she has something decent to eat over the next several days. Thank you.”
I know that most will go into the warder’s pocket, but it just might buy a little better treatment for Joannie.
Joannie is led off, and Ezra and I leave the asylum.
We climb back into the coach for the short ride to the Reformatory for Stubborn Boys, it being in the same run-down neighborhood.
There is large iron gate at the front of the place with a guard sitting by it.
“Open the gate, please,” says Ezra.
“Hain’t visitin’ hours,” answers the lout, chewing on a pipe stem and not getting up.
“We are expected.”
“I didn’t ’spect you.”
Enough of this.
I fish out a dollar coin from my purse and hold it up before him. “Is this the key?” I ask, my face a stone mask of contempt.
He shows his yellow teeth in a gap-toothed smile and rises to open the gate. As Ezra and I enter, I toss the coin in the dust at his feet.
We find ourselves in a courtyard area, bare of anything except the rough gravel underfoot. Certainly the place lacks any smidgen of cheer. There is a heavy wooden door at the first level of the stone building, with a row of barred windows above, against which are pressed the dirty faces of many, many boys.
Ezra goes to the door and pulls the bell-rope. Presently, the door opens and a man peers out. Ezra speaks to him, and the door is closed again. Then, after a while, a large man comes out holding Ravi—not gently by the hand, but roughly by his thin upper arm.
Upon seeing him, my eyes well up and I put my hands to my face. I can see plainly that he has a cut on his right cheekbone, and his left eye is bruised and almost swollen shut.
“Five minutes,” says the jailer firmly. He releases Ravi and crosses his arms to wait out the short time. Ravi runs to me and I kneel and put my arms around him and hold him to me.
Haw, haw! I hear from the window above me. That little black boy’s got a fancy lady! Lookit that! Lookit that!
The jailer turns back to the door and shouts within, “Igor! Knock ’em back!”
Shouts of pain and anguish are heard from above as the unseen Igor’s stick is undoubtedly falling to great effect upon the backs of the unfortunate boys, whose faces all disappear from the windows.
“Ravi, dear boy, what have they done to you?” I whimper through my tears.
He looks at me and then back at the jailer, who glowers down upon us, and I can sense Ravi’s street smarts clicking in.
“Oh, is nothing, Memsahib, not to worry. Merely rough play between other lads and me. Most jolly,” he says, looking back up at the guard with his big, brown eyes. “Ravi meet many fine fellows here in this place. Teach him many things.”
I notice that his knuckles are bruised and bloody. Oh, Ravi, by the many-armed Kali, Goddess of Death, I hope you gave as good as you got!
“You remember Mr. Pickering, don’t you, Ravi? He is a lawyer and he is working to get you out of here,” I say, choking back tears. “The hearing comes up next week and we are hopeful that we can get you released. But you must be brave till then. Can you do that, Ravi?”
“Yes,” he says. “But still, Ravi wonders, if he may, why he was brought here?”
I choke back yet another sob and manage to say, “They . . . they say I am not a . . . a fit mother for you. It is all my fault.”
“Time’s up,” says the jailer, coming up and grabbing Ravi once again by the arm.
“No,” says Ravi with a wan smile as he is hauled off. “Is not Missy’s fault. She should know that she is best mother in all the wide world . . . Is just karma, is all,” says my wise little man. “Goodbye, Memsahib. I go back to see new . . . friends now.”
I stand and watch his small, brave little back disappear through that heavy door.
“If I have to burn down this entire goddamn town to get him out of that place, I will do it!” I promise, seething with fury, when we get back in the coach.
“I hope it will not come to that, Jacky, but given your past history I do not entirely discount that possibility,” says Ezra dryly. “But, where shall you go now, Jacky?”