Elizabeth saw the women who had been called out of their cells ahead of her sitting at a table on the far side of the room. So much for Whittaker’s claim they’d all been released.
After Matron Herndon had verified all of Elizabeth’s information, the woman sent Elizabeth to join her “suff friends.”
Elizabeth happily obeyed. The other women, all as miserable and weary as she, greeted her with weak smiles. “Where’s the old lady?” she asked after glancing around the group and finding it one short. “Mrs. Nolan?”
“We don’t know.”
“No talking!” Mrs. Herndon shouted.
The next prisoner came in, and Mrs. Herndon started questioning her, so Elizabeth felt safe to whisper, “Maybe they let her go.”
The other women nodded, wanting to believe but obviously as unconvinced as Elizabeth herself. One by one the other prisoners arrived. They came more quickly now. Whittaker was probably tired of lying to them and asking them to pay their fines. He wasn’t even seeing some of them at all. Eventually, Mrs. Bates appeared. The older woman scanned the faces of the other prisoners until she found Elizabeth and flashed her a radiant smile.
Elizabeth had the oddest sensation in her chest as she felt herself smiling back. It almost felt like happiness, but why should she even care if Mrs. Bates was glad to see her? And why should she be happy about it?
The table where Elizabeth sat was full, so Mrs. Bates took a seat at another one. Elizabeth found herself looking up anxiously every time another prisoner came in, not even sure what she was worried about. Then she saw Anna, and she knew. Relief flooded her.
For her part, Anna was craning her neck to see the other prisoners, not even noticing where the guard was leading her. When she caught Elizabeth’s eye, her whole face lit up, and she waved. The guard jerked her around and practically threw her toward the table where Mrs. Herndon sat, but even that didn’t wipe the smile from her face. She was still smiling when Mrs. Herndon had finished with her.
Taking no notice of the fact that Elizabeth’s table was full, Anna hurried over and inserted herself into the nonexistent space on the bench beside her. The other women made room for her.
“I knew it!” she cried, slipping her arm beneath Elizabeth’s and snuggling against her.
The other women instantly hushed her, but she continued to gaze adoringly at Elizabeth.
“I knew you wouldn’t leave,” she said more softly. “He told me you did. He told me all of you did,” she added, glancing around the table. “But I remembered what Elizabeth said, and I knew she wouldn’t have. You gave me courage.”
The other women stared at Elizabeth in a way no one ever had before, making her want to squirm. What were they thinking? What were they seeing? She had no idea, and the realization puzzled and terrified her at the same time. Why should she care what they thought?
“No talking!” Mrs. Herndon shouted again, silencing the soft buzz of whispers coming from every table. Apparently, she’d finished with all the prisoners, and now she came striding toward them. “No talking is allowed in the dining hall. You are here to be punished, and you must be conscious of your guilt at all times. After you’ve eaten, we’ll take you to your ward.”
At the word “eaten,” Elizabeth heard her own sigh echoed by every other woman in the room. She hadn’t swallowed a thing since breakfast yesterday, and her mouth watered at the thought.
The female guards got them on their feet and began herding them toward a long window at the end of the room where some Negro women waited. Anna still clung to Elizabeth’s arm, and for some reason she didn’t mind.
The women ahead of her moved surprisingly quickly. When she had her turn, she saw why. One of the servers, a girl who looked to be no more than sixteen, handed her a small glass of skim milk and a piece of dry, cold toast. Swallowing the toast and milk was the work of a moment, and then she moved on, following the line of women down a dismal corridor until they came to the women’s ward.
Here they found a double row of cots in a large room, but when the first women in line tried to sit down on them, the guards ordered them on their feet.
“Why won’t they let us rest?” Anna asked.
“This is a workhouse, that’s why,” Elizabeth replied, and tried not to think about what the Old Man would say if he could see her here. Then she remembered his stories about being in prison and how after a month, he’d figured out how to run a con even there. What was it? Oh, yes, he had them paying for all the incoming supplies twice so he had a nice score when he finally got out. She almost smiled.
“Take off your clothes,” one of the guards said.
Elizabeth looked around. This was clearly the women’s section of the workhouse, and all the guards here were female, but Elizabeth didn’t want to undress in front of them or anyone else.
“Take off your clothes, all of them!” Mrs. Herndon shouted. “Take them off or we’ll take them off for you!”
Slowly and with obvious reluctance, the other women began to fiddle with buttons.
“Do we have to?” Anna asked in alarm.
“We’re all women,” Mrs. Bates whispered. “And it’s for the cause.”
That’s not what it was for, Elizabeth knew, but she removed her coat and unbuttoned her dress and slipped out of it. The unheated air raised gooseflesh, and she shivered. Others around her were removing petticoats and unrolling stockings. Beside her, Anna trembled visibly, nearly falling when she snagged her foot in the waistband of her skirt. Like the others, Elizabeth paused when she was down to her chemise and drawers. Glancing around, she could feel the wave of reluctance they all felt at this final humiliation. Then Lucy Burns, the red-haired Amazon who had been manacled to her cell most of the night, raised her bruised hands and determinedly opened her chemise. As if that were a signal from which the others derived strength, everyone followed suit. Elizabeth peeled off her chemise and let her drawers fall.
She stood there, naked and vulnerable and hating them, hating all of them, hating Whittaker and Herndon and Thornton and Jake and the Old Man and everybody who had brought her to this place.
When everyone was naked, the guards made them stand there a long moment, just to make sure they all realized how humiliated they were. The guards—women who in the outside world would have said, “Yes, ma’am,” to those who were now their prisoners—leered and gloated. Elizabeth wanted to scratch their eyes out, but she stood like the others and refused to quail or even lower her gaze.
After what seemed an eternity, Herndon said, “To the showers!”
The guards prodded the naked women into motion, and Elizabeth followed, shivering and furious, for what seemed like a mile to the shower room. The concrete floor was icy beneath her feet, and the smell of mildew and damp nearly gagged her. When they arrived, she saw there was no privacy here, either. A row of showerheads along one wall were turned on, each producing an icy trickle.