Enemy Women (12 page)

Who denounced you? Asked Adair.

Nobody did. I denounced myself. When Anderson burnt down Danville and the Seminary, the Union Militia came and took everyone that was walking around, including me. I told them right out, I stand for Dixie. Tears sparked in Rhoda’s eyes. And that landed me here. I’ve been here three months without a trial. In the General Ward. And I do feel my soul has been cultivated here by suffering.

Adair said, Don’t you have a plan to get loose?

Rhoda drew herself up, or together, as drawstrings clench a purse. The Union Army put me in here, and they can just take care of me. They owe it to me.

Well, if that’s your idea of a good time, Rhoda, said Adair. I wouldn’t differ with you for the world.

They have to be made to account for their treatment of people.

If I were to try to get over the wall, would you help me?

Rhode stiffened even more. She said, Adair, there are the right ways to go about things. There are still rules in the world. And one of these rules is that women must suffer our abusers without resistance. Ladies do not help themselves, Adair, we make appeals. We pray our complaints might be heard, but nothing more. Now the Mayberry girls bribed the guards with ten dollars in gold and went over the wall. I consider that very low-class. That is for white trash and the laboring classes. This is what the Yankees want to do to us. Destroy Southern womanhood.

Adair stood looking at the height of the wall. It was only about five and a half feet. But there were always guards on it. They seemed to use the top of the thick wall to sun themselves and smoke and talk. Did she have to have ten dollars in gold for each one of them? That they would turn their backs?

Well, Rhoda, I hope you can stay a lady and find somebody to abuse you.

I dwell on it often.

I bet.

Did you go to an academy?

Adair was still looking at the wall. She rested her chin on her fist, and said, I was in the Catholic one in Sainte Genevieve for six months. After my mother died. I wasn’t a very good girl.

Rhoda laughed. They never taught us how to get along in a prison. They never imagined the United States Government would imprison ladies, I suppose. Just because of their opinions.

Adair said, I never told anybody my opinions.

Well then your family is Secesh.

I don’t know if they are or not.

Well, you
should
know! Rhoda said. Of
course
you should know. General Sherman has gone down through Georgia and South Carolina and burnt everything in his path. Burnt, robbed, and stole all that lay in his way.

Good, said Adair. They been beatin up on us for solid four years, let those rich planters get their share of it, they started it.

Rhoda said, If you sign that awful confession and take the oath, there are all kinds of favors for you. She looked narrowly at Adair. There is another courtyard on the other side, for the matron. It’s nice. Sign a confession and you can go there and sit and sew or fold her linens. You would like that, I suppose.

I don’t think I’ll sign anything. Outside the walls harness bells jangled and somebody’s far thin voice shouted Merry Christmas! down the city streets. The newspaper boys screamed Nashville casualty lists! Savannah surrenders!

AT NOON THE
matron and a single guard brought in a kettle of ham hocks and navy beans. Adair held out her letter to the matron. She held the spanish milled dollar under her thumb. Please. My sisters don’t know where I am or anything. It’s addressed. The other women were holding out letters as well. They called out names and requests.

Mrs. Buckley read the address. Dalton’s Store, Wayne County, she read. This is behind the lines. Down in Secesh territory.

The guard stared at Adair. His eyes watched from beneath the bill of his forage cap like the eyes of a stiff doll.

Well, where’s the lines? asked Adair. Ma’am.

At Iron Mountain. Around there.

Well, said Adair.

Maybe I will. Or maybe I’ll throw it in the street, said the matron.

Adair turned away before she found herself saying something that
would get her in trouble. Now, she thought, I don’t have a farthing of money.

Does anybody want to play some whist? The fortune-teller looked around, wiping her hands on her skirts.

Them cards are fallen to pieces, said the redheaded woman. She started coughing again, and coughed so long she bent her head and started to cry.

Whyncha read? It was one of the blonde whores. Look here. She got up and brought a sheet of newspaper over to Adair and stood in front of her. You can read, kentcha?

Adair said What? She sometimes could not understand their St. Louis accent.

Read this thing to us.

Go away, said Adair. She bent over her sewing. Rhoda was murmuring to herself in the corner; she had draped her shawl over her head and was praying into its fringes.

Yeah, said Cloris. She can read okay. Then the actress and the old lady began to say, Yes, yes. Let’s have reading. Everyone ignored the redheaded woman, who was sobbing quietly and then fell to coughing again and said Oh Lord, Oh Lord.

Adair put down the green dress and stuck the needle into the fabric.

In the corner, the very old woman began to pray aloud. She said, Lord release me from this prison and from those in authority over us who hold us here.

Cloris got up and walked over to Adair. The brown-checked woman took hold of Adair’s upper arm in such a grip that Adair knew there would be bruises. She gave her a shake.

Now, you read to us.

You let go of me or I’ll kill your dog when you ain’t looking, said Adair. She looked up at Cloris.

You touch my dog and I’ll break your bones, said Cloris. She let go.

Yes, but it won’t do you no good, said Adair. Because that dog’s going to be drowned in the latrine.

God damn you, said Cloris. You wouldn’t.

Yes I would, said Adair. You touch me again or anything I got, that dog will not live out the day.

Cloris turned suddenly and caught up the small terrier and stood with it before the fire. She glared at Adair over the dog’s upright ears. She stalked over to one of the prostitutes to snatch the sheet of newspaper out of her hand. It was the sheet of newspaper that had lined the corn dodger basket, the one the prostitute had rescued from the fire. She had been hoarding it for days.

Cloris handed the terrier carefully to the redheaded woman and shoved the greasy newspaper at Adair and indicated a great many illustrations.

There, she said.

Adair held it between her hands and read the insistent phrases. She shrugged. I might as well, she said. It’s too wet to plow.

Well gals, if she’s goin to read, she ought to sit here by the fire, said Cloris, generously. Come on here and sit your Jeff Davis butt down here on this barrel.

But these here are advertisements, Adair said. She wrapped the quilt again and gathered her skirts, struggled to her feet off the pallet, and sat on the upended half hogshead by the fire. She took up the sheet of newspaper and turned so that the firelight fell on it. This whole page is just advertisements, she said.

That’s what we like! cried one of the whores. We just love that stuff.

So Adair began to read.

Sterling’s Ambrosia, she read. For the hair. This picture—she held up the steel engraving of a woman standing at a dressing table with a Niagara of hair falling down to the floor—is drawn and engraved from life. She turned so everyone could see it. They gazed at it critically. Levina the actress, her makeup faded now, crawled forward to look at it and then sat back, shaking her head.

Well would you look at it, said Cloris. She petted the terrier. Looka there, baby.

Adair read on in her precise, stern voice. Dr. Sterling’s Ambrosia is a stimulating oily extract of roots, barks, and herbs. It will cure all diseases of the scalp, and itching of the head; entirely eradicates dandruff; prevents the hair from falling out, or turning prematurely gray, causing it to grow thick and long. Sold by druggists everywhere. Put up in a box containing two bottles. Price one dollar. Dr. H.H. Sterling, sole proprietor. Number sixteen Olive Street.

Oh let’s dash out and buy some, said the redheaded woman. By God alls I need’s my hair clean to the floor like that, shit fire, I could ride the omnibus naked down Market Street.

Musquito shield or guard. For the Army, Navy, Travelers, Sick or Wounded or anyone who is troubled with musquitoes, flies, or dust. National American Amusement Cards, colonel for king, goddess of liberty for queen, and major for jack.

The major looked at her out of his stiff armorial bearing, his mace upright.

9

Letter to “Dear Sister,” From Eliza Draper, Danville, Missouri, November 12, 1864, an account of “Bloody” Bill Anderson’s raid on Danville, Missouri, in which most of the town was burnt and sixteen civilians murdered. Bloody Bill Anderson advertised himself as a Confederate guerilla.

“[Several of the guerillas] came into the yard and said the Seminary should not be hurt . . .the minute they began to come to the gate the Rebel girls and a few of the Union girls went to the fence and stood talking to them all the time the town was burning. . . .

“The [Rebel] girls begged Anderson for buttons until he cut them all off. That coat was off one of the murdered [Union soldiers] at Centralia and the girls knew it and yet they begged for them. He was also carrying the scalp of one of the men he had killed in Centralia. . . .Mrs. Robinson and another girl and myself started out as soon as it was over, and I never heard such screams in my life as Mrs. Moore was giving, over her husband’s body in a house as we passed along. . . .Of course I know more about the Seminary than any other place. I can’t tell how the Rebels came in and which fired first.”

Eliza Draper
—
REPRINTED IN
Gateway Heritage,
Q
UARTERLY OF THE
M
ISSOURI
H
ISTORICAL
S
OCIETY, VOL.
3,
NO.
4, 1993

A
DAIR COLLEY! THE
sergeant bellowed. he was sober and important with the nature of the magisterial duty he bore and the keys jangled
in his hand. He was accompanied by two guards, as if it would take all three of them to drag her out of the General Ward. Here are the orders. He held out the papers that said he had escort duty for female prisoner Adair Colley. He stood at the bars and ran his eyes over the crowd of women.

They all turned to look at her.

Hey, you want us, fellows! You want us! The prostitutes snatched up their skirts to show the guards the tops of their black stockings, cruelly gartered into the whiteness of their flesh, and the hint of hair above.

Get that girl out of there, said the sergeant. The guards gestured at her to come quickly.

Adair gathered her skirts and stepped out of the barred door. The two privates stared at each other, then looked back into the great zoological cage of women. The sergeant slammed the barred door to. It rang like a church bell, the clash hummed all down the horizontal bars.

She went between them down the hall, refusing to be hurried, forcing them to either drag her by both arms or slow down as well. They slowed down. They went through another set of barred doors and then into a hall with the great doors to the outside at the far end. They came to the orderly room. Her mouth was very dry.

The sergeant bent forward and opened the door to the orderly room. Go on in, he said.

He shut the door behind her.

A man in Federal uniform was standing beside an oak desk, hatless. He wore a major’s insignia, and he was of a tall height and very gaunt. His face was long and square-jawed. On his hand a gold signet ring. Deep circles under his hazel eyes.

Adair saw that his insignia was that of the regular Federal army. He was not the Militia. She was standing there like a construction of salt, and before total crystallization could overtake her she walked toward the sofa. It was upholstered in yellow damask.

Well, she said. Pretty day, ain’t it? She smiled. How’s the war going?