Living My Life - Emma Goldman [206]
Twenty-four hours in the prison gave me an approximate idea of its routine. The institution had a number of progressive features: more frequent visits, the opportunity to order foodstuffs, the privilege of writing letters three times a week, according to the grade one had reached, recreation in the yard daily and twice on Sunday, a bucketful of hot water every evening, and permission to receive packages and printed matter. These were great advantages over conditions in Blackwell’s Island. The recreation was especially gratifying. The yard was small and had but little protection from the sun, but the prisoners were free to walk about, talk, play, and sing, without interference from the matron who presided in the yard. On the other hand, the prevailing labour system required definite tasks. The latter were so difficult to accomplish that they kept the inmates in constant trepidation. I was informed that I would be excused from making the complete task, but that was small comfort. With a woman serving a life sentence on one side of me, and another doomed to fifteen years, both forced to do the full amount of work, I did not care to take advantage of my exemption. At the same time I feared that I might never be able to accomplish the task. The subject was the main topic of discussion and the greatest worry of the inmates.
After a week spent in the shop I began suffering excruciating pain in the back of my neck. My condition was aggravated by the first news from New York. Fitzi’s letter conveyed what I already knew, that Sasha had been taken to Atlanta. It was far away, she wrote, and it would prevent our friends from visiting him. She had many worries and hardships to face. The Federal authorities, in co-operation with the New York police, had terrorized the proprietor of our office. He had ordered Fitzi to remove Mother Earth and the Blast, without even giving her a week’s notice. [ ... ]
Two weeks after I had been delivered to the prison, the same deputy marshal and his wife arrived to take me back to New York. Irrepressible Harry Weinberger had succeeded in getting Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis2 to sign the application for our appeal, which admitted Sasha and me to bail and temporary freedom. [ . . . ] I was sure that our liberty would be of short duration; still, it was good to return to our friends and resume the work where it had been interrupted by our arrest.
It was with emotions quite different from those I had felt on my way to prison that I boarded the train for New York. [ ... ]
The return journey had many pleasant features, the main one being the absence of the deputy. His wife also did not intrude, both remaining outside my compartment. The door was left ajar, more to afford me air than to keep me in view. It was an unusually close day, and I had a foretaste of what was to be meted out to such a godless creature when I should have joined the departed.
In the Tombs the keepers received the prodigal daughter with glad acclaim. It was late and the prison had closed for the day, but I was permitted a bath. The head matron was an old friend of mine, of the birth-control fight days. She believed in family limitation, she had confided to me, and she had been kind and solicitous, once even attending our Carnegie Hall meeting as my guest. When the other matrons left, she engaged me in conversation and remarked that she saw no reason to be excited about what the Germans had done to the Belgians. England had treated Ireland no better during hundreds of years and recently again during the Easter uprising.3 She was Irish, and she had no use for the Allies. I explained that my sympathies were not with any of the warring countries, but with the people of every land, because they alone have to pay the terrible price. She looked rather disappointed, but she gave me clean sheets for my