The Warden's Daughter

  “I wondered where it went. And your bike?”

  “Into the creek! Dad”—and suddenly I wasn’t laughing anymore; I was sobbing—“Daddy, I was hell on wheels. I was a basket case.”

  He kissed my hand. He wiped the tears from my face. He smiled, “You were perfect.”

  What a curious thing to say. I blew my nose into a napkin. I sniffed, “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve been thinking about it for four years,” he said. “Maybe you were just what she needed. Maybe you were a package deal. Fixing you was her way of fixing herself.”

  “More than fixing, Dad,” I said. “She saved me.”

  He nodded. “Amen.”

  He went to the fridge for the ice cream. He scooped out two dishes. Chocolate for me, butter pecan for him.

  “Dad,” I said, “why so long? Four years. Why didn’t you tell me all this sooner?”

  “As I said, following orders. ‘Wait till she cops to the cigarette.’ ”

  “Fine,” I said. “But why? Why wait?”

  He considered the question. “I think she wanted to put some distance between you and her and that summer.”

  Distance.

  I thought of her moving silently about the apartment. No laughter. No chitchat. Cool. Cold. With those few precious exceptions.

  “You know, don’t you?” I said. “That’s why I was puffing away in the laundry room. I wanted to provoke her. Show me some emotion. Holler at me. And she acted like she barely noticed. Or cared.”

  “A big bluff. She noticed. She cared.”

  “ ‘Call me Cammie,’ I used to tell her. I hated the Miss.”

  He took a spoonful. “Even I told her it was okay to show her feelings more. But she wouldn’t hear of it. She knew you were broken. She wanted to leave you better than when she found you. But not interfere. Not come between you and your mother. She did not want you to think of her as your mother.”

  Ha! I thought. You sure botched that, Eloda.

  “So, not too chummy,” I said.

  “Not too chummy,” he said.

  An unwelcome question came creeping. I thought I knew the answer, but I needed to hear someone else say it out loud. “So…Dad…you said package deal. Fix us both up. At the end of it all, is that what I was? A way to help her fix herself? A project?”

  His smile was small and private. “See if you still think that way when I tell you the last part.”

  “There’s more?”

  “Hey, I told you I’ve been rehearsing. Save the best part till last. That’s what a good story-writer does, right?”

  “Yeah, Dad,” I said. “The climax.”

  “Only one problem,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “You’re not going to believe it.”

  68

  He put his spoon down. He leaned forward. He looked me in the eyes. “Okay,” he said. “Remember, I told you she came to my office?”

  “Yes, Dad,” I told him. “It was only ten minutes ago. She said she wanted to be more than a housekeeper. You asked why. She said, ‘She needs me.’ ”

  He nodded. “Very good. One more question. The date I asked you to remember?”

  “April twenty-ninth,” I said. “Nineteen fifty-nine.” For a silly moment I felt all proud, like a first grader.

  “Very good. A-plus.”

  “Thank you,” I said, playing along. “And someday are you going to tell me why I’m memorizing this date?”

  “Because…,” he said, clearly savoring the last taste of this information he’d waited over four years to release. “That’s when her time was up.”

  In my memory the following silence lasts for hours. Of course it was really only seconds. But packed into that time were my frantic efforts to make sense of what my father had just said. This was information that needed fitting into my world, but there was no place for it. So I rejected it. And asked a dumb question: “What time?”

  “Jail time,” he said. “Time served. She was free. That’s the part I didn’t tell you before. When she came to my office in April and said she wanted to be more than a housekeeper, she was due to get out in a couple of weeks.”

  “Dad—no.” He had to be wrong. “She was here all summer.” I rapped the tabletop. “Here. I saw her go back to her cell each day. After she did our dinner dishes.”

  He nodded. Agreeable. Encouraging. Letting me work it out.

  “I woke up that morning—that September morning—and she was gone. I asked you where she was. You said ‘released.’ You said ‘as in time served.’ ”

  Nod.

  “And now you’re saying she didn’t have to be here that summer? Because way back in April she could have gone home? Free as a bird?”

  Nod.

  “You’re saying an inmate asked to stay in jail four months longer than her sentence?”

  Nod.

  “Well, you’re right,” I said. “I don’t believe it.”

  He gave a sniffy laugh of self-congratulation. Then all expression left his face, all trace of levity. He locked me in his eyes. He said in a voice that left no way out: “Believe it.”

  I had to get up. I had to move. Something massive was shifting beneath me. I went to the living room. Lapped the sofa. Came back.

  “I never knew.”

  “You weren’t supposed to.”

  “But people don’t do that.”

  “This one did.”

  “Dad, she lived on Swede Street. Just blocks away. She could have walked home each night.”

  “That’s what I told her,” he said. “All she said was she wanted to stay. It seemed important to her to share that summer with you as totally as possible. To be under the same roof with you. Fixing you. Fixing herself.”

  I reached for another objection, for common sense, but nothing was there. My defenses were gone. I felt myself tilting. I grabbed the table sides to keep from falling. “So she stayed in jail…”

  I was kneeling on my chair.

  “…gave up her freedom…”

  “Say it, Cammie.”

  “…for me.”

  He closed his eyes. A great burden seemed to fall from him. He said: “Bingo.”

  For me.

  Eloda Pupko, an ex-convict, an orange-haired angel, had stayed in jail so she could take care of me.

  I sat, stunned. Silenced. Staggered by the wonder of it.

  My ice cream was chocolate soup.

  When I finally found my voice, I said to my father, “Since you know everything, I guess you know she stayed with me that last night. She scratched my back. Held my hand.” I was losing it. “Kissed me.”

  The look on his face told me he hadn’t known. “No,” he said. “But I’m glad she did.” And added: “At least one time she was not so distant, huh?”

  I felt the spot where her lips had touched my cheek. “She never said goodbye.”

  “Well now…,” he said. He stood. “Maybe she did. Sort of.” He left the kitchen. He returned in a minute with something in his hand. Red. Gold.

  I snapped to attention. “Her diary! I gave it to her for her birthday. I assumed she threw it away.”

  “I know,” he said. He placed it in front of me.

  “But what are you doing with it?”

  “She sent it to me. She said I could read it, but I never have. ‘Give it to her when the time is right,’ she said.”

  The red cover looked brand-new. I traced the gold letters—MY DIARY—with a fingertip. I stared at the tiny gold key. Curious as I was, I felt like an intruder. As I had at Boo Boo’s funeral.

  My father sensed my discomfort. “It’s yours. She wanted you to read it. Keep it.”

  I tried the cover. It wasn’t locked. With trembling fingers I turned to the first page.

  June 24

  Miss Cammie O’Reilly gave me this Diary for my birthday last week. I never had a diary. I do not know what to write in it. But she wants me to.

  June 25

  I braid Miss O
’Reilly’s hair each morning. She is a tomboy. Her hair is so short I can not even make one full knot.

  June 27

  I still cringe when I think of her making the fire in the bathtub. That’s when I went to her father and told him I wanted to stay. She has no mother. I have no mother. Her father does his best but he can not be up there all the time. She needs somebody. I think of myself and what I have done. How can somebody like me be that somebody? But I want to.

  June 28

  I found cigarette butts in her room. She wants me to think she smokes. She wants my attention. I did not understand that at first, so now I must be careful. I remind myself that my job is not to make her like me but to help her be strong and not so sad and angry all the time. I wish somebody could tell me how. I let her think I did not tell her father about the cigarette butts.

  June 29

  My time was up on April 29th. I have been free for two months now. But except for my sister and the warden the world thinks I am an inmate. The other day after dinner when I came down from the apartment I almost went out the front door instead of back to my cell. I guess I am starting to believe in my freedom.

  June 30

  When my sister visited me today, I told her my time here will be over on September 7th. That will be the last day of Miss Cammie’s summer vacation. I must finish my job by then. I told Roxanne to get everything packed. Be ready to go. She thinks I am crazy.

  July 3

  Miss Cammie’s best friend Reggie went to Bandstand today. The living room was full of giggling girls. It is good to see her laugh.

  July 4

  I am missing the fireworks at the park. I could be there. I could be free. This is one of my hardest nights in the jail.

  July 10

  When Roxanne visited me today, she told me Mr. O’Reilly came to see her back in April. He could hardly believe I was serious that I wanted to stay in jail and help his daughter. She told him I am not perfect but I do not lie.

  July 14

  A little boy came to the apartment today. He is cute. I am glad they like each other. But I had to scold her. A child that young should not think jail is fun.

  July 17

  She touches my heart. This is what I did not want to happen. Or did I? She wants me to call her Cammie. Just that. But I must be careful. I can not allow her to become too attached to me. She does not know that at the end of the summer I must leave.

  July 19

  She never mentions her mother.

  July 24

  Up in the tower for hours what does she do? Does she cry? Does she say her mother’s name? Often she is grouchy. I almost like her grouchy because the other way is worse. When she is nothing. When her eyes are empty. Her father told me they go to the cemetery, but she never goes to the place where the accident happened.

  July 25

  She talks about Boo Boo Dunbar a lot. She seems to like Boo Boo best of all the inmates.

  July 26

  Miss Cammie has been staying overnight with her friend Reggie this week. They are reading Reggie’s fan mail. I am alone all day in the apartment. I think about her. She wants me to be like a mother to her. She tries to trick me into it. One day she pretended to cry so I would comfort her. She is such a bad actress. I said to myself do NOT laugh.

  July 27

  I think I was wrong about her eyes. I think they are not empty. I think they are looking. Searching. For her mother. They search for her mother in me. I want to tell her she is looking in the wrong place.

  July 28

  I know why she wants me to braid her hair. It is her excuse to talk to me. I go as slow as I can. I am surprised how long I can make one knot last.

  July 29

  Miss Cammie’s birthday is one month from today. She tells me she will have a party. She has invited the Jailbirds. That is what her friends call themselves. I will speak to Carl about a cake. I want to make her day special. People with picket signs outside today. They hate our most famous inmate Marvin Edward Baker. He murdered the Pinto girl.

  August 1

  Sometimes I sit here in my cell at night and I stare at the wall and ask myself why am I doing this? Is it because she has no mother, like me?

  August 3

  I wish her hair was as long as that girl in the tower in the story. I could make our talk time last for hours.

  August 4

  How do you look for somebody you never knew?

  August 7

  As I braided Miss Cammie’s hair today—it is still too short to take a ribbon—she asked me about sputter something. It flies in the sky but it is not an airplane. It goes around the earth like the moon but much smaller. The Russians put it there. Boo Boo Dunbar told her about this.

  August 9

  How do you find somebody you cannot remember?

  August 10

  She was leaving this morning after the braiding. I was making her bed. Before she left, she called I am going out! I stood at her bed with her pillow in my hands and I cried. It was such a small moment. I am going out! It is something that happens in families. It is something that children call out to parents.

  August 11

  Miss Cammie stood up for me today! Her friend was smoking a cigarette and I told her to put it out and she said it’s not your house and Miss Cammie said yes it is. I wanted to hug her. They got into a fight because her friend tried to get Marvin Edward Baker to sign his name on a picture.

  August 13

  Today was a terrible day. But it began so nice. Miss Cammie went to the ice cream shop for a banana split. I am sure she was happy. She did not know what happened until she came back. Boo Boo Dunbar hanged herself in the shower. The cellblock is in shock.

  August 14

  She keeps talking about somebody called Delancy. She says Delancy was going to marry Boo Boo. She says she must find him and tell him what happened to Boo Boo. I am afraid to tell her there is no Delancy.

  August 15

  For the birthday party I want to have one of those bags that hang from the ceiling and the kids are blindfolded and hit it with a stick and candy comes out. Will she be happy that day?

  August 16

  She was in the tower all day. I am torn in half. I want to hold her in my lap and rock her to sleep. But I dare not get too close.

  August 17

  She went to Boo Boo’s funeral in the city. She rode her bike. She came home in the rain all wet. I took off her wet clothes in the kitchen. I dried her off with dish towels. She was in a daze. I was thankful for the rain so I could take care of her.

  August 18

  She was in the tower all day.

  August 20

  I think I did a bad thing. She has been so sad and silent. I wanted to hear her talk again. I wanted to give her a little life. So I gave her coffee before I braided her hair this morning. It worked. She talked. She told me everything that Boo Boo told her. It was hard to listen to. I believe she must face life as it really is. That is the only way. Even so I could not bear to tell her everything so I just told her one thing. I told her there is no Delancy. She screamed at me and ran out of the house. I am afraid she hates me.

  August 21

  In the cellblock they are saying look how strong our yarn is to hang somebody so big. They do not mean this as a joke. They are just very proud of their rugs. I asked Mrs. Butterfield if she would get a birthday party decoration downtown for me. I said I will pay but she would not take my money.

  August 22

  Mrs. Butterfield gave me a wonderful decoration from Woolworth’s. It is a banner that will stretch across the whole room. It says YOU’RE A TEENAGER! I am having so much fun doing this. I do not have to pretend. I do not have to bite my tongue. I am doing this for Cammie.

  August 23

  She spends her days in the tower or riding her bicycle. Her father is worried. I am worried. She sits for her braiding every morning but she does not speak. Her braid is two knots long now. I do not know how to tell her that by the time she gets to three
knots I will be gone.

  August 25

  Her birthday is in four days. Everything is ready except for one thing. I cannot decide what to give her. I have been thinking of this for weeks. I want to give her something special but it can not be expensive and I can not go shopping for it on Main Street. Except for my sister Roxanne and the warden the whole world thinks I am an inmate. A real inmate.

  August 27

  I know what to give her!!! I told Roxanne to bring me one of her scarfs from home. A green one. She will not miss it. She has so many. I will get a box. And scissors from the kitchen drawer. And wrapping paper from her father. You lucky Diary. Your writer is so clever! I am not even going to tell you what it is.

  August 28

  Her birthday is tomorrow. Maybe it will come just in time. Maybe the Jailbirds will bring her back to life. She sits on the morning stool and she rides her bicycle and she climbs into her tower. She is a lost little girl. I am sad along with her but for another reason. I have not been able to help her. In my mind I keep seeing her thrown by her mother flying through the air, landing on the sidewalk on Oak Street.

  August 29

  I gave her the gift this morning. She looked surprised. She said thank you but did not open it. I put it on the coffee table. I worked all day getting her party ready. She is still in her fog. She walked under the YOU’RE A TEENAGER! sign and did not seem to notice it. As I was leaving for the day, the Jailbirds were running up the stairs.

  August 30

  I am confused. When I arrived this morning, I expected to see girls sleeping all over the place. There was no one. Even Miss Cammie was gone. But the hanging bag was smashed—candy pieces everywhere. When Miss Cammie came back later, she smoked a cigarette in front of me. I pretended not to care.

  September 1

  She is different. The fog is gone. Now there is a wildness in her eyes. She does not talk. I braid her hair and then she is gone for the day. The birthday gifts are still on the coffee table. They are not opened.