Lady Sings the Blues - Billie Holiday [59]
The judge seemed to be saying they were doing me a favor. And he kept talking about an indictment and conviction, but there was nobody there to object.
Then the judge started on me again, asking me where I’d been on tour, who was with me, how much money I made, and where it was. This might have gone on forever except that somebody came in, went into a huddle with the judge. He must have been a probation officer or a social worker or something.
Then the judge lowered the boom.
“I want you to understand, as I intimated at the time of your plea, that you stand here as a criminal defendant, and while your plight is rather pitiful, we have no doubt but that you, having been nine years associated in the theatrical world, pretty well appreciate what is right—and your experiences have been many, I have been led to understand.
“I want you to know you are being committed as a criminal defendant; you are not being sent to a hospital alone primarily for treatment. You will get treatment, but I want you to know you stand convicted as a wrongdoer. Any other wrongdoer who has associated with you is a matter that is not for our consideration now.
“In your imprisonment you are going to find that you are going to get the very best medical treatment which can be accorded to you. That is the beneficial part of the government’s position in this case.
“I do not think you have told the whole truth about your addiction at all.… Your commitment will depend largely on yourself, that of the supervisor and the government generally, and we hope that within the time limit in which you are to serve you will rehabilitate yourself and return to society a useful individual and take your place in the particular calling which you have chosen and in which you have been successful.
“The sentence of the court is that you undergo imprisonment for a period of one year and one day. The Attorney General will designate the prison in which the incarceration will be made.”
It was all over in a matter of minutes; they gave me another shot to keep me from getting sick on the train, and at nine o’clock that night I was in an upper berth on a train headed for the Federal Woman’s Reformatory at Alderson, West Virginia, with two big fat white matrons guarding me.
They acted as though they were scared to death of me. When I asked one of them to get me a bottle of beer she gasped and told me it was against regulations. Hell, I had a package of stuff to keep me from getting sick. That was against regulations too. Except nobody wanted to take a chance of letting me get deadly sick on the train. Finally one matron gave up and went and got me one little old bottle of beer.
But the Philadelphia story wasn’t over. They started bringing me back from Alderson to Philly to question me and question me. I hated that. They brought me up so often, the girls at the place began to think I was a stool pigeon. And there’s no place worse than the Philadelphia jail where they used to keep me. It’s worse than Welfare Island, damp all the time, with rats in it big as my Chihuahua. There were women there with t.b. and worse, doing life terms for murder and stuff, and I had to eat with them and sleep with them.
When they weren’t finding out what they thought I knew, the Treasury agent fixed it so I’d arrive at the Philly jail on Friday night and have to lay over in that hellhole until Monday before I was questioned. Talk about your brainwashings, I’ve had it.
What made it worse was they brought me up when they tried Jimmy Asundio and again later when they tried Joe Guy. Both of them stood on their legal rights, had good lawyers, and both of them got off. Jimmy’s conviction was reversed by a higher court because the federal agents had come into his room without a warrant. And Joe Guy was