November–December 1935
North Carolina Reformatory for Wayward Girls
Cecily was given a scratchy gray wool uniform and assigned to a cot in the dormitory of a massive, cold stone building called Rathbone Hall, which was on the huge campus of rolling hills blanketed with tall trees of the North Carolina Reformatory for Wayward Girls.
She’d spent three weeks in the county jail, then the judge had sentenced her to Wayward, as it was commonly known, until she was “at least” twenty-one years old, at which point her case would be “reevaluated.” A social worker who’d claimed to be “familiar with the case,” citing an interview with Cecily’s “heartbroken, desperate older sister,” had testified it was clear that (despite the older sister’s “countless, selfless efforts”) Cecily was incorrigible, a transient, a sex delinquent, certainly feebleminded and a danger to herself and others. That she had reputedly “(whisper whisper) with a Negro” and refused either to confirm or deny it (“a sure sign of confirmation”), the social worker said, showed she was past the point of no return, a complete psychopath of a type rarely seen in girls native to North Carolina. “We have a certain prostitute and potential murderess on our hands; a clear and present danger to society,” said the social worker. “She cannot be allowed to roam free in our state.”
As the judge handed down her sentence, he told Cecily sternly that he hoped six years at Wayward would be enough to set her straight, but he wasn’t confident.
Cecily had held tightly to the Saint Jude card in her pocket, teeth clenched, knowing this was not the turn that her life had been meant to take, not at all.
“Oh, yeah, they say we’re all feebleminded,” said her new friend, Alice, who had the next cot over in Rathbone. Alice’s thick blond hair, cut bluntly short, looked like a bad mistake, and she picked at her scalp and face almost constantly, leaving behind angry pink welts. She looked to be about fourteen; she’d been at Wayward since she was ten. She’d warned Cecily already that, if you tried to run away, they never failed to catch you, and you’d get whipped.
“Whipped?” Cecily said.
“Hickory switch. They make the other girls hold you down. The more times you try to run, the worse the switchin’s get.” Alice spoke as if she knew this from experience. “But, if they decide you’re good, they move you on over to an honor cottage and you get to go on picnics.” She gave Cecily a swift up-and-down look. “I doubt that’ll happen for you.”
Cecily didn’t know if the other girls were aware that Cecily was expecting a baby. Tommy didn’t show much yet, at least not in the baggy uniform, though he was definitely a part of her permanent record. When Cecily had first arrived, she’d been sent to the office of the superintendent, Miss Peters, who’d sat behind her desk, peering through the metal-framed glasses perched on the tip of her long nose, scanning the notes from Cecily’s trial. When she looked up, her eyebrows were furrowed. “What it doesn’t say here is what a pretty thing you are. Your eyes are just stunning. Was the father of your child handsome?”
Cecily didn’t stop to think what an odd question that was. “Yes, very.”
Miss Peters sniffed. “A Negro?”
“No,” Cecily lied, crossing her fingers in her lap, down behind the desk where Miss Peters wouldn’t see. At her trial, Cecily had said nothing; had let Isabelle’s version of events stand as the truth. She was proud to love Lucky, and she didn’t want to take it back, not even in any small way. But now she was beginning to see that she needed to do anything she could to protect their baby, and that, right here and now, to protect him was to lie. She had not realized there were actual laws against her and Lucky being together; that he had been right to think it would make some people angry enough to kill them.
Miss Peters cocked her head. “Now, child, why wouldn’t you have said that in your trial? Your sentence might have been reduced.”
“Oh, I tried to tell them,” Cecily lied again.
Miss Peters sighed. “I tell you, this is a relief to me. I did not want to believe all that had been said of you, a pretty little thing like you. You were a transient?”
Cecily sat up straighter. “I was the star of a well-known traveling circus with an excellent reputation.”
Miss Peters laughed, made a note, then looked up again. “Did the father of your child have blue eyes, by chance?”
Cecily could tell Miss Peters wanted the answer to be yes. So, fingers still crossed, she nodded.
Miss Peters nodded crisply in return. “Very good. It may be that we can make some special arrangements for you and your baby. It may be that this may all turn out very well for all of us, indeed.”
Miss Peters then sent Cecily over to the reformatory infirmary for a “standard” two-week quarantine. A week or so in, the nurse told her that Miss Peters had made arrangements so that, when Cecily’s time came closer, she would be sent to a “home,” to stay until the baby arrived. “Lucky you! Not many girls get to do that. Now, don’t you worry, they’ll take good care of you there, and then you’ll come right straight back to us!” The nurse, whose name was Miss Everett, had said this cheerfully, as if it was good news. Cecily wondered what kind of home it was (with a nice family? she could dream), and where the reformatory planned to house her and baby Tommy upon return. Not in the dormitory with the other girls, certainly? She hadn’t seen any other babies here at all, and one thing she’d learned, starting when Isabelle had threatened her with the knitting needle, was that she wasn’t the first girl ever to have a baby before she was married.
Better to keep quiet than to ask too many questions, though. Questions would draw attention, and she was already dead set on running away, never mind Alice’s warnings. She just needed to get the lay of the land, so she could make a foolproof plan. She was determined to find Lucky before the baby was born, though how she’d manage it, she had no idea. The first step was to escape—soon, before Tommy made travel too hard. She was going to have to act quickly and decisively, same as turning a flip on Prince’s back while he was running, then figure out the rest after that.
“What did you do to get in here?” Cecily asked Alice, but Alice just shrugged, her eyes darting back and forth, before she looked at her shoes, began picking her scalp again.
Cecily had aced every single mental acuity test Miss Everett had given her, and Miss Everett had noted everything in a thick file, which she said with a smile would go to “the board” for “review.” Moreover, Miss Everett, showing she believed the results, had given Cecily an actual medical book to read, so that Cecily could learn all about how the baby was growing inside her. Miss Everett had also respectfully, even cheerfully, answered all Cecily’s questions on the finer points of the matter.
Alice said none of that made one bit of difference. “They’re still gonna call you feebleminded, ’cause they say only feebleminded girls do it.”
The girls were shoveling manure out of the hogpen. Cecily’s hands were cold on the rough handle of the shovel; her uniform itched her skin. But, Alice had said, better to be cold than to be in the heat of summer, when the manure stunk to high heaven.
“Do what?” Cecily said.
Alice laughed.
The food at Wayward was nothing like in the circus. Dried beans, mostly. Grits without butter. Cornbread, hoecakes. Canned tomatoes and green beans the girls had grown in the garden. Eggs from the chickens they kept. Alice said butchering season was coming soon, and then there’d be bacon and sausage. Certain girls were assigned to kitchen duty—cooking, cleaning, canning, sausage-making—and others to the farm. “We’ll do the butcherin’,” Alice explained. “And we deal with the shit, as you know.” She laughed.
Cecily, still a “new arrival,” on probation, had to make it through three months before she’d be considered for an honor cottage or a kitchen job, either one. Already she’d decided that escaping would be easier after she was assigned to an honor cottage, even taking into account that, three months from now, it would be the dead of winter, and she’d be more than six months pregnant. According to the book Miss Everett had let her read, that would mean she and Tommy both would be getting pretty big.
Still, she was convinced that waiting was the right plan. One, after she was in an honor cottage, the staff, having labeled her a “good girl,” wouldn’t be watching her so closely. Two, the honor cottages housed only twelve girls each, and they backed up close to the forest. All Cecily would have to do was not wake up eleven other girls while she sneaked out a back window and dashed for the woods. In Rathbone, 150 girls slept in wards of fifty each, and the slightest cough of one never failed to disturb at least a dozen others. Plus, six staff matrons were always keeping a strict eye over everything, and it was a long break over a wide lawn before you’d make it to any woods.
Everybody said there’d never been a girl who’d attempted escape and not been caught. But a lot of the girls in here weren’t the brightest bulbs, Cecily had noticed. The ones who’d tried probably hadn’t had a foolproof plan, or they’d blabbed to someone who’d ended up tattling.
So, Cecily didn’t say a word to anyone, not even Alice. She bided her time. She still did her best to look only ahead, never back. She tried not to think about Isabelle or Tebow, or even Prince—not even when she woke in the night to the coughing of some other girl.
She tried to think not about the brief time she’d had with Lucky, nor about the pain of his being gone, but only of finding him again. She would go to Harlem, she’d decided. He had spoken of a librarian there who had been his friend.
For now, for her plan to work, all she had to do was behave herself and be polite, so as not to get demerits.
She was feeding the chickens on a muddy, cold day just after Christmas when Fern Aiken walked by and said, “Heard you got a baby growing in you,” then added something insulting about what sort of baby she’d heard it was.
For fighting, Cecily was hauled to the office of Miss Peters, where she was given fifteen demerits, extra barnyard duty, and official notice that she would not possibly be considered for an honor cottage until the first of April—provided she didn’t cause any more trouble in the meantime.
Then Miss Peters consulted her notes. “And yet, I’ve scheduled you to go to the Home in the early part of March, because I’d thought you were a better class of girl.” She looked up, her mouth a placid line, her eyes pinpricks of mean. “I hope you won’t make me regret making these very special arrangements for you. It’s not one girl in two years who gets to go to the Home, you realize!”
Cecily flinched, cradling her belly in her hands. She was almost sure she felt Tommy kick. Her face ached where Fern had slugged her. Fern had gotten off scot-free, blaming Cecily for starting the fight.
“If we do have any more trouble with you between now and then,” Miss Peters added, “the state prison is also an option. I hear it isn’t so pleasant, giving birth there.” She sniffed, adjusted her glasses, straightened her sheaf of papers. “That’s all, Jacqueline.”
Since the moment Cecily had been hauled off the train in Asheville by the police, she had never told anyone her real name. Somehow, it made all of this easier to bear.
Anyway, savvy, sassy Jackie DuMonde could handle anything—even things that might break Cecily in two.