The White Rose (30 page)

Have you answered each and every one of these questions truthfully, and are you aware that failure to answer truthfully may result in criminal prosecution?

Marian has always been cowed by authority. “Yes, we have,” she says, looking down at Soriah, but Soriah is impassive. Then both of them are scanned with a handheld sensor—a vaguely lewd and humiliating experience—and given stamps of invisible ink on the backs of their hands, as if they were entering a fun fair, or a party. After this, they are allowed to put their coats on again.

Just past the first guard, a second man, seated inside a glassed-in booth, opens the gate for them and they go through it to a small holding area where their new stamps are illuminated beneath a black light. Behind them, the gate closes, and for a moment they are trapped there, between locked doors, before a second gate is opened, and they are outside again. Marian, though she realizes that she is now actually within the prison, emerges from the small enclosure with relief. Soriah begins to walk up a long hill by a pathway bordered by dormant flower beds toward a building marked
ADMINISTRATION
, and Marian follows, hoisting her great bag. Inside the new building, they each sign a large logbook and have the stamps on their hands illuminated again. A guard, behind his glass partition, makes a phone call, and Marian understands that Soriah's mother is being summoned. He pushes a button under his desk and the gate before them slides open. Soriah leads the way through, then turns left past some vending machines to a bright waiting area, lit by windows all along one wall. At the far end of the room is a yellow door, marked with a
NO UNAUTHORIZED ADMITTANCE
sign. Soriah stands looking placidly at this door, which—Marian supposes—marks the way to where her mother is waiting. Almost immediately, it opens, and a woman in a gray guard uniform calls Soriah's name. Soriah goes without a backward glance.

Marian sits in one of the chairs and lets her bag fall to the floor. From parking lot to waiting room the transit has taken no more than fifteen minutes, but the effect is wearying, as is the realization that she is—for the first time in her life—inside a prison. The room is clean, and the view of the lawn through the wall of windows is pleasant, but nothing alleviates the sadness lingering here. Stacks of withered magazines teeter on one table in the corner, and Marian, by force of habit, gets up and goes to look.
Family Fun
, says the issue on the top of the pile. She returns to her seat.

Being caught without work is a circumstance Marian tries to avoid, a precaution responsible for the current weight of her leather bag. Today's burden is comprised of applications for two tenure track openings in her department. Given the glut of newly minted PhDs on the market, Columbia's ad in the
American Historical Review
has netted more than eight hundred CVs, the majority of them belonging to qualified applicants. Whittling down these applicants to a shortlist of serious contenders (each of whom will have to be interviewed at the AHA) is a task that will surely consume an unreasonable, painful proportion of her time over the next month, and of course she begrudges it. They're all fine, Marian thinks, flipping past a specialist in medieval fortification design, a postcolonialist with an interest in the Belgian Congo, an Americanist with a major work on the French and Indian Wars due out from Yale. It would be one thing if the department had an actual hole to fill, she thinks, shaking her head, and noting the fourth Marshall Scholar out of just the first ten CVs she has managed to get through. But the vacancies only exist because two new chairs have been endowed, creating openings at the other end of the tenure track. The hiring committee has the luxury of choosing whoever wows them most, which Marian knows is an enviable position to be in, but the wall of achievement and aspiration and urgency lurking behind the circumspect language of the cover letters (Isn't the New York native desperate to return from exile in Texas? Isn't the associate professor at Stanford married to a woman who teaches at NYU?) is already overwhelming. And she's still at the top of the pile.

Marian looks up. Across the room, seated before one of the windows, a woman with unnaturally red hair is hard at work on her own stack of papers. On a chair beside her, a little girl sits, looking directly at Marian. The girl's hands are politely clasped together, and her hair is tightly braided in cornrows. She looks about four, Marian thinks. Maybe five. She is dressed in good clothes: pretty green dress, pink tights, white sneakers. She has gold studs in her ears. The woman beside her is writing on a pad. The girl's face is perfectly expressionless, even when Marian attempts a smile. The woman beside her does not look up.

“Sheree?” someone says.

Marian turns to see the same corrections officer who took Soriah.

“Come on, honey. Your mama's waiting to see you.”

The red-haired woman stops writing.

“Go on, Sheree,” she says, not unkindly. “I'll wait here for you.”

Sheree hops off the chair. She looks at Marian. Marian tries another smile, but she does not feel remotely like smiling, and the resulting grimace must not be very reassuring. The girl walks slowly to the door and disappears through it. The woman in the next chair has already gone back to her work.

“Uh, Marian?”

It's Soriah's voice. Marian turns in her seat.

“That was quick,” she says, trying for a light tone.

“No, it's just—my mom was wondering if you'd come back and talk to her.”

Marian goes still. The unexpectedness of this request has caught her completely by surprise, and she wants very badly to say no. But of course she can't say no. Soriah stands in the doorway, waiting, the gray uniform of the corrections officer just visible behind her. How close to this can I come? Marian thinks. To walk through this scuffed yellow door is to abandon all hope of detachment.

Marian gets to her feet.

Beyond the yellow door is a yellow corridor lined with library posters. Soriah leads her to a large open room, lined on one side with bookshelves and filled with low plastic tables. There are women in the room, and children running everywhere, crawling everywhere, being held. The place looks like a day care center, Marian thinks, looking around and trying to get her bearings. She has, she realizes, been expecting the kind of bleak setting she has seen in films and on television, where inmate and visitor face each other through glass and speak via telephone. There is no glass here, except for the windows, which admit white winter light. It is very nearly pleasant.

“So many kids!” she says wonderingly to the slim black woman standing a few feet to her right. Soriah has crossed to a far corner of the room and begun reading a picture book to three small girls, one of whom—Marian is glad to note—is the child from the waiting room, Sheree.

“Yes,” the woman says. “We have about five hundred kids visit a month.”

“It's a lot nicer than I expected,” Marian admits. “I thought it would be terrible.”

“It is terrible,” says the woman. “Only, it's not as terrible as it could be. We work really hard for that.”

Marian nods. “How long have you worked here?” she asks the woman, who has very short hair and is dressed in green.

“Ever since I got here. I'm Denise Neal,” she says, holding out her hand. “I'm Soriah's mother.”

Marian looks at her in shock. “I thought you worked here,” she says finally, shaking Denise's hand.

“I do. I work in the children's center. It's my job.”

“But I thought…”

“It's all right,” Denise says flatly. “We can sit over here.”

She crosses to one of the plastic tables, and the two women sit, uncomfortably. Marian, who doesn't know what to do with her legs, ends up in an awkward posture with her knees tightly together, like a matron at a suburban ladies' lunch, circa 1958. Soriah's mother watches a massive woman at the next table with a massive infant on her lap. The woman, ignoring the infant, is lecturing a teenaged boy, who predictably sulks. “Is the baby visiting?” asks Marian.

“No, he lives here. Babies can live here till they're eighteen months old. Then they have to go out.”

“Oh. Well, I guess that's good,” says Marian. “I mean, I guess it helps start a child off right to be with his mother. And they're too small to know they're…”

She stops, horribly embarrassed.

“Yeah. They know later, though,” Denise says. “Somebody told me before I got here, it's always hardest on the kids. I didn't doubt it. Thank God for my ma, taking care of Soriah.”

Your ma
, thinks Marian,
can barely take care of herself
.

“Soriah's a great kid,” Marian says, instead.

“Yeah. So. Can I ask? How did you meet my daughter?”

There is the faintest note of parental concern in the question. Denise looks directly at Marian, and Marian sees clearly now how pretty she is. She has even dark skin, a long, sinewy neck. She has hair cut quite close to her head, and very neat.

“Didn't she tell you?” Marian asks. “She sent me a letter. About a book I wrote.”

“You wrote a book?” says Denise.

“Yes, but not a book for children. To tell you the truth, I was very surprised to get a letter from an eleven-year-old reader.”

Denise nods. “Yeah. Soriah's smart. She's always reading.”

“Not just smart,” Marian leans forward across the plastic table. “She's curious. She reads to learn, not just for entertainment. And when she's done with a book, she doesn't just put it down. She asks questions about it. She wants to talk about it. She has—” Marian stops. She is aware, suddenly, of how this sounds, and how it is about to sound, but she can't stop herself. “Soriah has a really good mind. She could go to college. I mean, of course she could go to college. What I mean is, she really has to go.”

Denise looks at her. “I went to college,” she says quietly.

Marian, mortified, says nothing.

“I didn't graduate, but I went. Brooklyn College.”

“Good school,” says Marian.

“I was doing business administration. I did two years.”

“You'll go back,” Marian says, with an attempt at a reassuring tone.

“No. I'm trying to finish in here. They have a college program.” She stops, then says, “It was drugs, you know. I guess Soriah told you.”

Marian nods. She doesn't trust herself to say anything out loud.

“I didn't hurt anybody. I want you to know that. But I had a habit, I'm not denying it. What they found, though, it wasn't even mine. It was something I was keeping for my boyfriend. He held someone up, and when they came to search the house, they found it in my stuff. So he got five years for holding someone up with a gun, and I got fifteen for possession.”

This is spoken tonelessly. Marian has been a reader of the
New York Times
long enough to know that Denise's situation is far from unique. Her story, in its basic parameters, very likely serves many Bedford Hills inmates.

“You think she's okay?” asks Denise.

Marian turns to look at Soriah, far across the room. “I'm worried her school isn't keeping up with her,” she says. “Of course, it's none of my business.”

“What do you mean, not keeping up?”

“Nobody's pushing her at the school. And if somebody doesn't push, they'll just leave her alone.”

“But if she's doing okay,” Denise says, “it's good they're leaving her alone.”

Marian shakes her head. “I don't think it's good. Look, she's a great kid. I don't think you need to be worried about her.”

Denise leans forward. “Why don't you help her with the school? Why don't you tell them they should be teaching her better?”

Because I'm not her mother,
Marian thinks, recoiling.
Because it has nothing to do with me
. She is on the point of taking offense, but then, abruptly, she sees something in Denise's face that is not an abdication of responsibility, and not an imperviousness to her daughter's needs, and not the narcissism of a mother who failed to reject both drugs and gun-wielding boyfriends the minute she gave birth to another human being. This is unfettered misery. And it is a supplication.

“I'm not getting out, you know,” Denise says abruptly. “I don't know if Soriah told you that. She used to pretend I was going to get out and we were going back where we were living, but I'm not getting out. I've got nine more years, and that's it.”

Marian nods.

“What you just said? About how she's reading to learn? There was a girl like that here, when I first came. Her mama's still in here, for killing her husband, because he beat her up. But this girl, she came to visit a lot. She was about six years old then. Her name was Samantha. You see that bookshelf?” Denise points to where Soriah is sitting. “She just sat herself down and read when she came here. She must have read every book. But the last time I saw her? She had on high heels and real tight pants, and she was wearing a shirt that looked like a bra. Her mama told me she was on the pill. And the mama was happy! She said, ‘Samantha's not gonna get pregnant like I did.' But she's thirteen.”

Marian, speechless, nods.

“I don't want that to happen to Soriah. I don't want her coming in here looking like that, you understand?”

Her tone hovers between desperation and command. Marian waits.

“When I first came here, Soriah used to say, ‘Mama, let's play memories.' She wanted to talk about what she remembered, from when I took care of her. Now she doesn't ask that. I guess she doesn't like to remember that now.”

“Maybe,” Marian says carefully, “it just means she's thinking about the future, not the past.”

Denise turns a pained face in the direction of her daughter. “I don't even know you,” she says quietly. “I don't know anything about you. You got kids?”