Authors: BRET LOTT
And I’d secretly thrilled at the intimacy of our glances, Cleopatra’s and mine, and at how there were secrets we knew of others, and how we’d nod our heads at each other when some other girl was around, the both of us knowing precisely what we meant. I thrilled at that, because I’d never known such closeness, not even when I’d been reading to Cathe ral.
This was a friendship, the kind, I figured, maybe only sisters could know, and I was happy.
Another girl, this one about my height though a year younger, brought nothing with her, only showed up one day in late July, my first summer there, wearing only a pale blue dress stained with dirt and grease and who knew what all, her hair matted and filled with burrs, her fingernails bit to the quick, several of them bleeding. She’d been brought in by one of the hall mistresses, Mrs. Archibald, who’d simply said, “Ladies, this is Bessy Swansea, ” all the introduction she ever gave. She turned, left the room, at which point Bessy Swansea backed into a corner, slowly slid down the wall. She crouched there, elbows on her knees, hands open, palms down, sizing us all up, her eyes catching on each one of us a moment, then moving on to the next. Dil “Hey, ” Cleopatra said. She was Lying on her bed, just as the rest of us were, all of us at work on the summer course homework we had to finish before dinner, courses during the summer simple things like Proper Care of the Home and Farming Chores and Preparing Vegetables, the rest of the year was spent with the real courses, Latin, Geometry, Grammar.
But she said nothing, only stared at each of us in turn. Mavis, a finger already wrapped in a lock of hair, glanced from me to Cleopatra to Beaulah another girl in our room, famous for her nightmares every Wednesday night, her waking us all up like clockwork with loud screaming about horses and rifles then to the last girl in our room, Duchess, a bigbosomed girl with blond hair like broomstraw and brown eyes as dull as mud. We all waited.
Finally, Cleopatra rolled onto her tummy, turned her back to the new girl. She said, “It’s only hey, ” and let out a sigh, shook her head.
We all did the same, turned our backs on the new intruder, me the last, all of us waiting now for the dinner bell.
It was a week solid before Bessy finally spoke to any of us, and then it’d been to Mavis, and it’d been to ask if she could touch Mavis’ brush. By this time Bessy’d been soaped down enough to where the grime and burrs and all else had disappeared, leaving behind a girl prettier than any of us could’ve imagined the night she’d come and sat in the corner, though her nails were still bitten all to pieces, two or three on each hand bright red and sometimes fairly dripping blood. We all wore the same uniform, a gray cotton blouse and black cotton jumper with black leggings, but there’d been something in how the clothes wore on Bessy that made all of us look at her more, see her differently than the rest of us. Her skin was soft, begged you to touch it, and her hair, worn now in a single ponytail low on her neck, caught early morning light when we took the mandatory four times-around-the-school walk, all 165 of us in one big chain encircling the school grounds, Bessy in front of Cleopatra and me bringing up the rear. Her eyes were always on the ground before her, her arms crossed and held tight to her chest like this were dead winter, though we were still in July.
The night she first spoke, she’d only whispered to Mavis, “May I hold your brush? ” All of us turned from our homework. Mavis clutched the brush to her chest, all of us up off our beds now, wanting in on whatever was happening. “No! ” Mavis whispered, then reached quick to the comb that lay next to her, afraid, I figured, Bessy might take that up instead.
“You can’t, ” Mavis cried, “you can’t.”
My eyes were on Bessy. She opened her mouth, showed for the first time a line of perfect teeth, white and shining and straight. She leaned her head back, her mouth open wide, and let out a laugh that shot through all of us, made me blink and shiver at once, her ponytail quivering with that long laugh.
“You, ” Bessy said, and pointed a finger at Mavis, the tip blood-red, the nail sheered off. She pointed at each of us, one at a time. “All y’all, ” she said, smiling, perfect teeth, perfect skin, perfect hair.
“All y’all, you’re all nothing but scared, that’s all.” She paused, let out a chuckle, but nothing to compare with that laugh of a moment ago.
“You’re all just a gang of scared, mewly, snot-nosed burrhead babies, ” she said.
It was Cleopatra to answer. She said, “And who the hell are you? ” Her hands were already in fists at her sides, ready for whatever this new girl could muster, her head cocked, her hair out of the ponytails and falling off her shoulders.
Cleopatra said, “Little Miss Pretty Fingers.”
Bessy lit into her with a shriek that brought girls from the two floors below heading for our room, the two of them falling backwards onto the floor with a heavy sound that seemed to shake the beds. Bessy was on Cleopatra’s chest, her knees holding her down, and she was pulling at Cleopatra’s hair, held two fistfuls of it, shook and shook and shook so that Cleopatra’s head seemed almost pulled off her neck. Neither of them made any sounds, though, Bessy’s shriek was gone, replaced by the echoes of girls running in the hall toward us, and with Duchess and Beaulah and Mavis, all three of them sobbing.
Then, in a move so quick I couldn’t even figure how it happened, Cleopatra was on top of Bessy, though Bessy still had hold of her hair, still shook. But Cleopatra’s hands were free now, no longer pinned down by Bessy’s knees, and Cleopatra started slapping Bessy’s face, one hand after the other, first the left then the right then the left again, each hit a solid strike, and I could see the welts already rising on Bessy’s skin, that perfect skin all welling up red. Still she shook Cleopatra’s head, and when I took my eyes off that beautiful skin Bessy’d once had, I saw on the back of Cleopatra’s head a bloody spot the size of a peach.
Girls flooded the room, all of them surging in and around and hollering, choking me off from what I’d finally realized had been on its way since Bessy’d come in here, and since Cleopatra’d said Hey.
They were fighting, trying to figure who’d be boss around here.
I didn’t move, let the girls who didn’t belong in the room take over and fill the room with more noise than the entire school’d heard since as long as I’d been there.
Finally Mrs. Archibald and Mrs. Winthrop, the other hall mistress, and Tory, the nigger janitor, made it to the doorway, pushed their way through the girls, no one moving out of the way on her own.
Above it all I could hear Mrs. Archibald, the older of the two, hair gone to gray, eyes heavy with wrinkles we called carpetbags. “Girls, ” she was hollering, “girls, girls, ” though no one was quieting down, in front of her and doing the most work through the crowd Mrs. Winthrop, silent, only holding on to girls and pushing them aside. Tory, a sad-faced nigger with red eyes that always looked like they were ready to bust out in tears, only pushed along behind Mrs. Archibald, eyes as much on the ground as they always were.
Mrs. Winthrop stopped, disappeared below the heads of all the girls, all of them suddenly gone quiet, as though they’d never even noticed her coming up.
Then she had a girl in each hand, held them by the collars of their blouses. Both of them were taking in quick, shallow breaths, hair down in their faces, the two of them so alike in how they breathe , how their hair fell down and across their eyes, mouths open, they could have been sisters. Both had bloody noses, both looked at each other, both did nothing, only held there by Mrs. Winthrop.
Mrs. Archibald stood before them now, looked first at Bessy, then at Cleopatra. Then she turned to Tory, who stood off a few feet, the girls finally having cleared space for all that was going on.
She said, “Tory, bring the belt.”
“Yes’m, ” Tory said, and bowed his head, turned and headed for the door, the girls he’d had to push through a moment before making clear a path for him. He was out in a second.
Girls were leaving almost as quick as they’d come in, all silent, all heads down and looking at the floor, some even with hands folded in front of them. In less than a minute the room was empty save for we six girls, and Mrs. Winthrop and Mrs. Archibald.
Tory came in, held the thick leather belt reserved for occasions just such as this, though I’d never seen it before, only heard tell of it in legends that went round the school. It shone with the gas light above us, glistened for having been oiled Tory only knew how many times. It was four or five inches wide, maybe a fingernail thick. And, I saw, it wasn’t a belt at all, but only a long piece of leather, fashioned just for this use, no buckles, no holes, nothing. Only leather.
Mrs. Winthrop let go the two girls, and without another word they all turned, headed out the door. Once there, Mrs. Winthrop, the last one out, turned, leaned into our room. The girls behind me were still crying, their sounds no different one from the next, just three girls crying.
She whispered, “Lights out, ” and reached with her hand to the gas key, twisted till the gas popped. She closed the door, then yelled, “Lights out, ” her voice as deep and heavy as any man’s.
In the darkness I could hear their footsteps down the hall, the slam shut behind them of the stairwell door. We all knew what was next, the sounds up and down the hall of everyone in the school crowding now to get to the windows. Though lights were out in every room, I knew there wasn’t a single girl in bed, the ones in the rooms across the hall from our side were sneaking out and into rooms on this side, though none were making their way into ours, this room cursed by what’d happened here.
The four of us stood at the window, heads almost touching, faces pressed up to the glass, and we waited, watched the dark down there.
Tory came out of the building carrying a lantern, the shadows dancing and moving all about him as he walked on the sidewalk below us, behind him first Mrs. Archibald, then the two girls, I couldn’t decide which was which, then Mrs. Winthrop.
No one spoke, either in our room or down there in the courtyard, but the moves they made were all perfect, as if they’d rehearsed it all, Tory stopped at the flagpole, set down the lantern, backed off a few feet, and stood with his hands at his sides, his head down. Next Mrs. Archibald went to the far side of the pole, followed by one of the girls. Mrs. Archibald stopped, the belt still in her hand. She turned around, and all I could see of her was her white face in the lantern light, her white hands holding the belt in front of her.
The girl with her turned around. It was Cleopatra, her hair tucked behind her ears now. She bent over, wrapped her arms around the flagpole, and I couldn’t see her face anymore.
Across from her stood Mrs. Winthrop, and then Bessy went to the flagpole, bent down and wrapped her arms around it, too. They were on opposite sides of the pole, arms touching, heads close enough to one another that they could have whispered to each other and neither Mrs. Winthrop nor Archibald’d ever know.
Mrs. Archibald folded the belt in half, held the ends with one hand.
With the other hand she reached to Cleopatra’s jumper, pulled it up over her hips. Then she stepped back, held the belt with both hands, reared back her arms, and brought the belt down hard on Cleopatra.
I could feel the sting inside the crack of sound the belt made through the summer night air, crisp and clean and cold. But then came the terrible surprise I’d had no way to prepare for, Cleopatra howled, let loose a sound from deep inside her that turned the crack of the belt into nothing, just punishment for a fight in a room. Her howl took out my breath, brought sweat to my forehead and neck and down the small of my back.
The sound stopped, and Mrs. Archibald stepped back, held the belt out to Tory. He took it, and went to Mrs. Winthrop, gave it to her.
This was how they were going to do it, I saw, one whipping after another, each girl given her turn, each hall mistress administering the whipping, Tory the middleman, his the task of handing the belt back and forth, back and forth.
Mrs. Winthrop lifted Bessy’s jumper over her hips, brought the belt back with two hands, just as Mrs. Archibald had, and for a moment I wondered if they hadn’t been given lessons in all this, some summer course in Proper Whipping of Delinquent Girls.
But before she brought the belt down and onto Bessy, she paused, looked up to the building, up at all of us girls hidden away in the dark windows of Lights Out. I knew she couldn’t see any of us for the dark, but still I flinched, pulled away an inch or so from the window, just as Mavis and Beaulah and Duchess did, just as every girl in the Mississippi Industrial School for Girls did, I was certain, and it came to me what was going on in all of this, they were doing the same thing to all of us as Missy Cook’d done when she’d burned our clothes, my dead momma’s words now floating up to me like ghosts themselves. This is for us, came my momma’s whispered words, You and me are supposed to be seeing this, supposed to be standing right here and watching it all.
Mrs. Winthrop turned back to Bessy and the task at hand, and brought down the belt.
I closed my eyes. The crack of leather split the night, and then came Bessy’s cry, one not at all different than Cleopatra’s, and I thought again of the two of them after the fight, and how they’d looked so like kin, sisters maybe a year apart.
I turned from the window, made my way through the dark. Before I got to the bed another crack came, another howl, Cleopatra again. I touched the iron foot board, felt the cold metal, heard the next crack, Bessy’s cry.
I undressed with my eyes closed, slipped over my head the sleeveless cotton nightshirt we all wore. Then I climbed into my bed, pulled the sheet up to my chin, turned my back to the window.
I wasn’t going to watch, wasn’t going to do precisely what they wanted me to do. They couldn’t make me see what they wanted, couldn’t control me that way. That was why I’d taught Cathe ral to read, why I’d kept close the stories my mother’d given me, why the photo of Jacob was still with me, jammed into my tablet and shoved beneath my mattress.