An Acquaintance with Darkness - Ann Rinaldi [70]
"Emily! Oh, I'm so ashamed that you should see me like this. But I've been so sick with one of my headaches. And cold." Then she saw Robert. "And who is this? Annie, you haven't brought friends."
"No, Mama, he's a doctor. He's come to attend you."
Robert submitted himself and his doctor's bag to a search by the jailer, then made all of us wait at the end of the corridor. From down the dank hall I heard him making conversation with Mrs. Mary, heard her plaintive replies, though I could not make out the words. After a short time he came out.
"I've given her a powder for the migraine," he said to the jailer, "and I'm leaving some with her daughter in case she needs more." He handed a small vial to Annie. "Are you staying now or leaving?" he asked.
"I usually stay until they make me go home at night," Annie said.
"Then I want hot water and soap brought immediately so the woman can wash," he told the jailer severely. "I want those buckets emptied, a fresh ticking for the mattress, candles in her sconces on the walls, and two warm blankets."
"I don't have the authority," the jailer said.
"Then perhaps you have the authority to tell your superiors that if my instructions are not followed you will be reported to the Sanitation Commission. This place is a disgrace. You're in charge, aren't you?"
The man nodded.
"Well, your head will roll if your superiors get a citation from the Sanitation Commission. Don't think for a minute they won't blame it on you. Or perhaps you'd like the conditions here reported to the Intelligencer. Her case is being followed by newspapers all over the country, you know. Do you want to be written up as the jailer of a hellhole?"
The man was terrified. "No, sir. I don't need no trouble."
"Good," Robert said, "then we understand each other. Is there a place to make coffee?"
"My office down the hall."
"Then let Miss Surratt make her mother fresh coffee. I expect you to supply it." Robert drew some money out of a billfold. "Coffee will help her migraine. I'm going to keep tabs on things here. Remember what I said."
"Yes, sir."
When Annie saw us out the door she looked at Robert as if he were God. "Thank you," she said.
I looked at him with a little less admiration, maybe as an avenging angel. I was so proud of him! But my feelings were warring inside me. The horrors of the prison, the smells, dankness, clanging gates, had shaken me. How terrible to think of Mrs. Mary in a place like that! I shivered in the warm May sun. And then I looked around at the prettiness of the day. How wonderful to be out in the sunshine again, walking with Robert! Was I wrong to feel that way?
"I feel like I've come out of a tomb," I said to Robert.
"You have." His face was grim. "And it makes me wonder how the other prisoners are faring. I'm going to ask your uncle if maybe I can get onto the ironclads in the river to see them."
It was Myra Mott's birthday on the twenty-second. There was to be a big party at school. I did not want to go. But when you live with a doctor you can't very well say you're too sick to go to school. Unless you are sick. So I went. I made fudge to bring, and Uncle Valentine gave me money for a present. I bought Myra a book of poetry, Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman.
Of course Myra simpered and preened and held sway over all of us that day. Lessons were shortened all morning so that we could have the party in the afternoon. It was a tea. Mrs. McQuade insisted we make a formal tea and mind our manners.
But a tea, presents, and being fawned over weren't enough for Myra. She wanted more. She wanted to be looked up to as the most clever, daring, and exciting girl in the class. And that day, for her fifteenth birthday, she had found a way.
Satisfied that the tea had gone off properlike, Mrs. McQuade left us to ourselves and went down the hall to her office. The