Shut up in prison, kept without my food, Whipped and tormented
—Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
She’s heard stories about what happens in jail to women like her. Trade unionists. Suffragists. Women who don’t know their place. Women who speak up. Women who make trouble.
Annie Clements is not scared. She’s big. She’s strong. Like most women, she’s been beaten before. She thinks she’s ready for what will happen after her arrest. She is wrong.
Separated from the others. Frog-marched into the jail. Slammed against the sandstone walls of an unheated cell. Kicked when she falls. Hauled upright and stripped by policemen. With her hands cuffed to a hook in the ceiling, her arms above her head, her feet reach the floor if only barely. When the beating begins, she kicks and tries to use her knees, but the cops dance out of reach and laugh because all she can do is twist and squirm, hoping to take the billy club blows to her buttocks and back. When she’s too tired to fight back, they aim for her unprotected breasts and keep at it until she is sobbing and snot pours out of her nose and down into her mouth. After they’ve had their fun, they take the cuffs off and let her crumple, naked, to the floor. Chuckling, they lock the cell and leave. She hears them laughing again as they walk down the corridor, talking about how funny it was when she tried to protect herself.
The lights go out. She curses them, and weeps alone.
When she can gather herself, she gets up off the floor and feels along the masonry walls until she finds a wide wooden platform that is slightly warmer than the cement floor of the cell. Cold, scared, aching, alert for the sound of footsteps and keys rattling, she lies down and waits for whatever comes next. Sleep is impossible.
In the morning, a patch of sky becomes visible through a small window near the ceiling. There is a slop bucket in the corner, with a pail of cold water next to it. Her breasts are a mass of bruises. Her back aches fiercely. When she uses the bucket, she sees why: there is blood in her urine.
She will not cry. She will not cry. She will not cry.
Sitting gingerly on the plank that serves as a bed, she eases herself back down and lies flat until she hears a man’s voice say, “She’s in there.”
Despite the pain, she springs up, ready to fight.
A middle-aged woman in uniform approaches the cell. There is no sympathy, no encouragement in the other woman’s eyes.
Annie stands as straight as she can. Naked. Determined that she will not be ashamed. “I want a lawyer,” she says, and her voice does not crack.
“What you want and what you’ll get are two different things.” The matron tosses a gray cotton dress and a faded apron through the bars. “Put that on. It’s the biggest we’ve got. If it won’t button, put the apron over your front.”
“I’ve committed no crime. I am a political prisoner. I want my own clothing back.”
The woman makes a little noise of dismissal through pursed lips. “Your hearing’s in ten minutes. I’ll take you to court like you are, if that’s what you want.”
It’s a challenge Annie considers. Let the judge see what the jailers have done, she thinks. Let him see the bruises and cuts. But . . . no. He’ll just assume I resisted arrest.
Bending carefully at the knees to keep her aching back straight, she reaches down for the dress on the floor. Keeping her eyes on the matron, she steps into the dress. It stinks of the last woman to wear it, but she is glad of its slight warmth and the small dignity the garment provides. The buttons won’t close over her bosom, so she pulls the apron on. When her eyes are clear of the fabric, she stares defiantly at the squat, dyspeptic woman before her.
The matron shakes her head. “Jesus. They said you were a big bitch, and that was no lie.” She throws Annie’s own shoes and stockings through the bars. “Put those on.”
“I want—”
“What you want doesn’t make a bit of difference to me or anyone else in here. Put your shoes on or walk through the snow barefoot.”
Sitting on the wooden shelf, Annie leans over as little as is necessary to draw up her stockings and tie the shoes, gritting her teeth against the groan she will not allow to escape. When she’s done that, the matron calls for a bailiff to come and unlock the cell door.
“That way,” the woman says, pointing down the corridor with a truncheon. “Try anything on me, I’ll make you wish the boys still had you.”
* * *
The windows of the courtroom are half-blocked by snowdrifts, and it’s still snowing. Somewhere in the building, a furnace pours out waves of heat; the judge doesn’t appreciate it nearly as much as the barely dressed prisoner does. Opening his robes to keep from perspiring, he looks bored and annoyed behind an imposing wooden desk.
“Union?” he asks the bailiff, who nods and shrugs.
She tries to speak, but the judge cuts in: “State your name and address.”
“Anna Klobuchar Clements. I want a lawyer.”
“Can you post bail?”
“No, but my lawyer—”
“How do you plead?”
“I don’t know what I’m accused of! I am guilty—” She is about to say, of nothing more than exercising the constitutional right of any American citizen, only before she can get the words out, the judge bangs his gavel.
“Guilty plea entered,” he says to the court recorder. “House of Detention. Fifteen days. Next!”
A scant breakfast of weak coffee and thin oatmeal is waiting for her on the plank bed in the cell. Hours pass. Eventually there are two other meals, each as meager as breakfast. The daylight fades. Aching from last night’s beating, she lies on the plank and waits, trying not to panic or despair.
This is part of it, she tells herself. They’re letting fear do their work.
Eventually exhaustion overcomes worry and cold. Sometime during the night, the cell door opens. Panicking, she sits abruptly, crying out from the stabbing misery in her back, but the newcomer is only a girl wearing a gray jailhouse dress. They both watch the jailer lock the cell and retreat down the dark hallway. The newcomer rubs her skinny arms briskly to get some warmth into them, and stands by the door for a few minutes while her eyes adjust to the darkness.
“Say!” she exclaims when she recognizes the tall woman on the bench. “You’re Big Annie! I seen your pitcher in the papers! I’m Betty.” Without missing a beat, the child turns back toward the corridor and yells, “Hey! Henry! You know damn well we get two blankets each! And there’s supposed to be a mattress in here!”
To Annie’s astonishment, a guard appears fairly promptly. He is holding a mattress so thin, he can feed it between the bars without opening the cell door.
“And the blankets, Henry!” the child reminds him. She winks at Annie as they wait. “You gotta know your rights, and you gotta make some noise.”
“Why were you arrested?” Annie asks after a time.
“Soliciting. My dad lost both legs in a cave-in. I’m the oldest, so . . .” When Annie stares, the girl shrugs, as though prostitution to support your family is simply expected of her. Then she grins, proud of her own canniness. “Made sure I got arrested tonight, though! I knew a hooker, she froze to death last winter.”
When the blankets arrive, Betty joins Annie on the filthy mattress, and they pull all four blankets over the two of them. Slowly, their shared body warmth works its way past their skin, into their muscles, and like the child she is, Betty falls asleep almost immediately, her bony young back curled against Annie’s belly.
After a time, Annie rises carefully on an elbow and studies the unlined face resting on a slender arm. Fifteen, maybe? Not much older than Eva Savicki . . . A child, on the street. A girl in jail because crippled workers and their families are tossed aside like used rags.
And I am here for the same reason, she tells herself, lying down again. I am here because miners and their families are discarded when their usefulness is done.
* * *
They wake to dim light and a woman’s howls, somewhere down the corridor.
Betty grabs one of the four blankets and wraps it around her shoulders. Moving to the bucket in the corner, she squats over it with nonchalant familiarity. Down the hallway, the moans and shrieks rise in pitch and volume.
“What is wrong with her?” Annie asks with more exasperation than compassion. “Is she having a baby?”
“Oh, that’s Beatrice. Bea’s a China girl. Opium, get it?” Wiping herself with a sponge left next to the bucket of water, Betty scoots back under the blankets and cuddles close. “Don’t you know anybody like Beatrice?”
Annie shakes her head, and Betty seems surprised. “A lot of the miners get the habit in Houghton, after they get hurt. Sometimes their families start using, too. Me? I don’t, but a good belt of whiskey helps when the johns get rough.”
All day long, Beatrice screams and cries. Sometimes the iron bars clang as the poor woman beats her head against them. Betty chatters casually about her life and the other girls who work the streets and how she hopes to be hired by one of the brothels in Houghton. She gives no sign that she hears Beatrice, even though that woman’s anguish—a relentless wail of insatiable, unbearable, unrelenting need—is the worst thing Annie has ever listened to. Worse than childbirth. Worse than cancer. Worse than a limb crushed by rock.
“The judge said I’d be sent to the House of Detention,” Annie says toward evening, trying to think of something besides Beatrice. “Is this detention? Is this where we stay?”
Betty laughs. “Oh, no. The workhouse is in Marquette. They’re prolly just waiting for the roads to get clear before they can send us out.”
“You’re coming?” Annie asks. To the workhouse, she means. Coming with me, she means. She tries not to look relieved.
“Yeah, this time I’ll go,” the child says ruefully. “When the weather’s decent, I just do the judge a favor so’s I can get out the next morning.” She winks and then laughs, amused when Annie’s eyes widen. “When it’s this cold? I’d rather spend a week at the workhouse. My family’ll miss the money, but I’m no good to them if I freeze to death out there.”
The girl’s voice hardens then. “ ’Bout time for my little sister to pay her own way. She’s old enough now.”
* * *
Sometime during the long black night, Beatrice falls silent. Is she dead or just asleep, Annie wonders. And she wonders, as well, which would leave the woman better off.
* * *
Two days later, there is a sudden spike in activity. While the matron trusts Betty to walk on her own, two guards come for Annie, shackling her hands behind her back, grabbing her by the arms, and half-dragging her outside.
There is no reason to drag her. They’re just doing it to humiliate her, so she lets her body go limp and makes it harder for them to move her. Someone cuffs the back of her head and says, “Walk, bitch.”
A small triumph: annoying her keepers.
The doors open to a high-walled, stone-cobbled yard ringed by mounds of snow too high to see over. Wearing cotton prison dresses, several other prostitutes greet Betty as one of their own. A bone-thin woman stands apart, hollow-eyed and silent. Beatrice, Annie thinks. That must be Beatrice.
For what feels like hours, the prisoners hop from foot to foot and clap their hands over their arms, trying not to freeze. “We’re waiting for the Black Marias,” Betty explains. “They bring us out early so we’re too cold to give them a hard time about loading up.”
The police van finally pulls into the yard. The back doors are flung open, and a set of rickety steps is tipped out on its hinges. The women climb inside, chatting with remarkable good humor, happy to be out of the wind swirling in the courtyard. Still shackled, Annie stumbles as she climbs in, and the guards laugh, but the other girls help her get to her feet and find a seat on one of the wooden benches.
The van is painted black inside and out. There are no windows, just a few louvers high on the walls. It would be an oven in the summer. In this weather, the closeness of their bodies provides the prisoners with a little welcome warmth.
Another long wait. Across the courtyard, a heavy door swings open, iron hinges squealing. Annie half-stands and cranes her neck to see between the van’s louvers. Chained yet heavily guarded nonetheless, male prisoners shuffle outside. She recognizes several union officers: Ben Goggia, Yanko Tersich, and Peter Jedda, all of whom look as though they’ve been treated as badly as Annie has been. She sees Ike Glass, one of Moishe Glass’s sons. He isn’t even a union member! she thinks. Then her breath stops when she spots Michael Sweeney.
Although he himself is limping heavily, he has both hands around the arm of a man whose blackened eyes are swollen shut above a nose that’s mashed toward his left cheek. “Two more steps,” she hears Mike tell the man he’s guiding, “then we’re at the van.”
Dear God, she thinks. That’s Charlie Miller!
“Michael?” she shouts. “Michael!”
“Annie!” he calls, looking around for her.
“Michael! How many—?”
“Annie, are you all right?”
“Yes!” she lies. “How many of us—?” How many of us are in jail, she means, but he answers the question he thinks she’s asking.
“Seven dead, I think. One in the hospital—”
“Dead! Who’s dead?”
“Shut up, you!” one of the male guards says, jabbing Michael in the back with a billy club.
Michael gets Charlie up the steps, and they disappear into the men’s Maria.
Motors are cranked and turn over. The vans ease forward and start their creaking, shuddering, skidding way toward the Marquette workhouse.