Lady Sings the Blues - Billie Holiday [61]
That joint grows every bit of food they use the year round, except the turkeys and some other things we got for Thanksgiving and Christmas.
One day I got so sick of hearing those squealing-ass pigs, I crawled up on the roof of the pigsty and went sound asleep. I might have slept there all day, but suddenly I heard the sirens blowing, and it woke me up and I walked back to the cottage. When I got there everybody started grabbing me, asking where I’d been, saying they were looking all over for me. Two girls had escaped a week or so before.
“Where the hell you think I’ve been?” I said. “Sleeping on the roof, and now I’m going to my room.”
“Oh no, you’re not,” they said, “you’re in trouble.”
And I was, too. I was put in seclusion and lost my cigarette privileges. It was like the cooler at Welfare Island, only not so bad. You got your three meals a day, but you’re still locked up all by yourself, and that’s hell for me. The prison doctor knew it and got me out after four days. He knew I had claustrophobia and he reminded them I was a city girl. “There must be something this girl can do,” he told them.
After all the big personnel experts got together to figure out a job that was right for a city girl like me, I was cast for the part of Cinderella of Cottage No. 6. This was nothing but a fairy-tale name for permanent K.P. I worked in the cottage kitchen as a handy gal and helper. It was my job to wash the dishes, clean the windows, bring up the coal—no gas there in the country, nothing but a big coal-eating stove—lay the fires in the evening with papers and stuff ready for the morning.
By the time my chores were over in the evening, the recreation time was over and it was time for bed. Then I had to be up at five in the morning, have the dining room open, the tables laid, the cereal cooked, the milk poured into glasses, the bread counted off in slices, the water poured, and the coffee made.
And although they grew all their own food on the grounds, they treated it like it was money in the bank. Man, every carrot was counted. You were given just enough for one portion for each girl in the cottage—no more, no less. If the census changed one day, so did the food ration. If you messed up, having too much or too little, you had to pay—the only way it mattered—by losing your cigarettes for a day or a week, depending on how serious a jam you were in.
I always caught hell over the coffee. I always made it too good, and the supply ran out before it was supposed to.
I used to steal food for the girls, too, but I never got caught for that. Especially those girls who were just coming off a habit. When you’re kicking, you get what we call the chucks, and after that you’re hungry all the time.
I never did get the chucks while I was kicking. I guess I was too busy thinking about “the street” all the time and the life I’d left. But the girls that had them really suffered. They’d leave the table so hungry they’d cry all night. I would steal grub for them and they’d take it in their rooms, hide it in their mattresses or wherever they could. Sometimes they’d get caught and busted, but nobody ever squealed.
Being Cinderella was a hard job, especially the part that called for carrying up twelve buckets of coal every night. But I never minded any part of it except the last chore at night, which was locking the cottage door. As soon as that door slammed locked, I would start thinking about being locked in that Catholic institution with the body of a dead girl, and my back would begin to crawl. I didn’t mind anything much except that locked door.
During my months in the joint they told me I was receiving packs of mail every day. It gave me a terrific kick to know people remembered me. At Christmas time especially I got over three thousand cards from every state in the Union and from towns like Shanghai, Bombay, Cape Town,