If Tomorrow Comes

Old Iron Pants had Tracy Whitney assigned to the laundry. Of the thirty-five work assignments available to prisoners, the laundry was the worst. The enormous, hot room was filled with rows of washing machines and ironing boards, and the loads of laundry that poured in were endless. Filling and emptying the washing machines and toting heavy baskets to the ironing section was a mindless, backbreaking job.

Work began at 6:00 A.M., and prisoners were permitted one 10-minute rest period every two hours. By the end of the nine-hour day, most of the women were ready to drop from exhaustion. Tracy went about her work mechanically, speaking to no one, cocooned in her own thoughts.

When Ernestine Littlechap heard about Tracy’s assignment, she remarked, “Old Iron Pants is out for your ass.”

Tracy said, “She doesn’t bother me.”

Ernestine Littlechap was puzzled. This was a different woman from the terrified young girl who had been brought into the prison three weeks earlier. Something had changed her, and Ernestine Littlechap was curious to know what it was.

On Tracy’s eighth day working in the laundry, a guard came up to her in the early afternoon. “I got a transfer here for you. You’re assigned to the kitchen.” The most coveted job in the prison.

There were two standards of food in the penitentiary: The prisoners ate hash, hot dogs, beans, or inedible casseroles, while the meals for the guards and prison officials were prepared by professional chefs. Their range of meals included steaks, fresh fish, chops, chicken, fresh vegetables and fruits, and tempting desserts. The convicts who worked in the kitchen had access to those meals, and they took full advantage of it.

When Tracy reported to the kitchen, she was somehow not surprised to see Ernestine Littlechap there.

Tracy approached her. “Thank you.” With difficulty, she forced a friendly note into her voice.

Ernestine grunted and said nothing.

“How did you get me past Old Iron Pants?”

“She ain’t with us no mo’.”

“What happened to her?”

“We got a little system. If a guard is hard-ass and starts givin’ us too much of a bad time, we get rid of ‘em.”

“You mean the warden listens to—?”

“Shee-et. What’s the warden got to do with it?”

“Then how can you—?”

“It’s easy. When the guard you want to get rid of is on duty, hassles begin to happen. Complaints start comin’ in. A prisoner reports that Old Iron Pants grabbed her pussy. The next day ‘nother prisoner accuses her of brutality. Then someone complains she took somethin’ from her cell—say a radio—and sure enough, it turns up in Old Iron Pants’s room. Old Iron Pants is gone. The guards don’t run this prison, we do.”

“What are you in here for?” Tracy asked. She had no interest in the answer. The important thing was to establish a friendly relationship with this woman.

“Through no fault of Ernestine Littlechap, you’d better believe it. I had a whole bunch of girls workin’ for me.”

Tracy looked at her. “You mean as—?” She hesitated.

“Hookers?” She laughed. “Naw. They worked as maids in big homes. I opened me a employment agency. I had at least twenty girls. Rich folks have a hell of a time findin’ maids. I did a lot of fancy advertisin’ in the best newspapers, and when they called me I placed my girls with ‘em. The girls would size up the houses, and when their employers was at work or outta town, the girls would gather up all the silver and jewelry and furs and whatever other goodies were around and skip.” Ernestine sighed. “If I told you how much fuckin’ tax-free money we was pullin’ down, you wouldn’t believe me.”

“How did you get caught?”

“It was the fickle finger of fate, honey. One of my maids was servin’ a luncheon at the mayor’s house, and one of the guests was a old lady the maid had worked for and cleaned out. When the police used hoses on her, my girl began singin’, and she sang the whole opera, and here’s poor ol Ernestine.”

They were standing at a stove by themselves. “I can’t stay in this place,” Tracy whispered. “I’ve got to take care of something on the outside. Will you help me escape? I—”

“Start slicin’ up them onions. We’re havin’ Irish stew tonight.”

And she walked away.

The prison grapevine was incredible. The prisoners knew everything that was going to happen long before it occurred. Inmates known as garbage rats picked up discarded memos, eavesdropped on phone calls, and read the warden’s mail, and all information was carefully digested and sent around to the inmates who were important. Ernestine Littlechap was at the head of the list. Tracy was aware of how the guards and prisoners deferred to Ernestine. Since the other inmates had decided that Ernestine had become Tracy’s protector, she was left strictly alone. Tracy waited warily for Ernestine to make advances toward her, but the big black kept her distance. Why? Tracy wondered.

Rule number 7 in the official ten-page pamphlet issued to new prisoners read, “Any form of sex is strictly forbidden. There will be no more than four inmates to a cell. Not more than one prisoner shall be permitted to be on a bunk at one time.”

The reality was so startlingly different that the prisoners referred to the pamphlet as the prison joke book. As the weeks went by, Tracy watched new prisoners—fish—enter the prison every day, and the pattern was always the same. First offenders who were sexually normal never had a chance. They came in timid and frightened, and the bull-dykes were there, waiting. The drama was enacted in planned stages. In a terrifying and hostile world, the bull-dyke was friendly and sympathetic She would invite her victim to the recreation hall, where they would watch television together, and when the bull-dyke held her hand, the new prisoner would allow it, afraid of offending her only friend. The new prisoner quickly noticed that the other inmates left her alone, and as her dependence on the bull-dyke grew, so did the intimacies, until finally, she was willing to do anything to hold onto her only friend.

Those who refused to give in were raped. Ninety percent of the women who entered the prison were forced into homosexual activity—willingly or unwillingly—within the first thirty days. Tracy was horrified.

“How can the authorities allow it to happen?” she asked Ernestine.

“It’s the system,” Ernestine explained, “and it’s the same in every prison, baby. There ain’t no way you can separate twelve hundred women from their men and expect them not to fuck somebody. We don’t just rape for sex. We rape for power, to show ‘em right off who’s boss. The new fish who come in here are targets for everybody who wants to gang-fuck ‘em. The only protection they got is to become the wife of a bull-dyke. That way, nobody’ll mess with ‘em.”

Tracy had reason to know she was listening to an expert.

“It ain’t only the inmates,” Ernestine went on. “The guards are jest as bad. Some fresh meat comes in and she’s on H. She’s strung out and needs a fix real bad. She’s sweatin’ and shakin’ herself to pieces. Well, the matron can get heroin for her, but the matron wants a little favor in exchange, see? So the fish goes down on the matron and she gets her fix. The male guards are even worse. They got keys to these cells, and all they have to do is walk in at night and he’p themselves to free pussy. They might get you pregnant, but they can do a lot of favors. You want a candy bar or a visit from your boyfriend, you give the guard a piece of ass. It’s called barterin’, and it goes on in every prison system in the country.”

“It’s horrible!”

“It’s survival.” The overhead cell light shone on Ernestine’s bald head. “You know why they don’t allow no chewin’ gum in this place?”

“No.”

“Because the girls use it to jam up the locks on the doors so they don’t close all the way, and at night they slip out and visit one another. We follow the rules we want to follow. The girls who make it out of here may be dumb, but they’re smart dumb.”

Love affairs within the prison walls flourished, and the protocol between lovers was even more strictly enforced than on the outside. In an unnatural world, the artificial roles of studs and wives were created and played out. The studs assumed a man’s role in a world where there were no men. They changed their names. Ernestine was called Ernie; Tessie was Tex; Barbara became Bob; Katherine was Kelly. The stud cut her hair short or shaved her head, and she did no chores. The Mary Femme, the wife, was expected to do the cleaning, mending, and ironing for her stud. Lola and Paulita competed fiercely for Ernestine’s attentions, each fighting to outdo the other.

The jealousy was fierce and frequently led to violence, and if the wife was caught looking at another stud or talking to one in the prison yard, tempers would flare. Love letters were constantly flying around the prison, delivered by the garbage rats.

The letters were folded into small triangular shapes, known as kites, so they could easily be hidden in a bra or a shoe. Tracy saw kites being passed among women as they brushed by one another entering the dining hall or on their way to work.

Time after time, Tracy watched inmates fall in love with their guards. It was a love born of despair and helplessness and submissiveness. The prisoners were dependent on the guards for everything: their food, their well-being, and sometimes, their lives. Tracy allowed herself to feel no emotion for anyone.

Sex went on day and night. It occurred in the shower room, in toilets, in cells, and at night there was oral sex through the bars. The Mary Femmes who belonged to guards were let out of their cells at night to go to the guards’ quarters.

After lights out, Tracy would lie in her bunk and put her hands over her ears to shut out the sounds.

One night Ernestine pulled out a box of Rice Krispies from under her bunk and began scattering them in the corridor outside the cell. Tracy could hear inmates from other cells doing the same thing.

“What’s going on?” Tracy asked.

Ernestine turned to her and said harshly, “Non’a your business. Jest stay in your bunk. Jest stay in your fuckin’ bunk.”

A few minutes later there was a terrified scream from a nearby cell, where a new prisoner had just arrived. “Oh, God, no. Don’t! Please leave me alone!”

Tracy knew then what was happening, and she was sick inside. The screams went on and on, until they finally diminished into helpless, racking sobs. Tracy squeezed her eyes tightly shut, filled with burning rage. How could women do this to one another? She had thought that prison had hardened her, but when she awoke in the morning, her face was stained with dried tears.

She was determined not to show her feelings to Ernestine. Tracy asked casually, “What were the Rice Krispies for?”

“That’s our early warnin’ system. If the guards try sneakin’ up on us, we kin hear ‘em comin’.”

Tracy soon learned why inmates referred to a term in the penitentiary as “going to college.” Prison was an educational experience, but what the prisoners learned was unorthodox.

The prison was filled with experts in every conceivable type of crime. They exchanged methods of grifting, shoplifting, and rolling drunks. They brought one another up to date on badger games and exchanged information on snitches and undercover cops.

In the recreation yard one morning, Tracy listened to an older inmate give a seminar on pickpocketing to a fascinated young group.

“The real pros come from Colombia. They got a school in Bogotá, called the school of the ten bells, where you pay twenty-five hundred bucks to learn to be a pickpocket. They hang a dummy from the ceilin’, dressed in a suit with ten pockets, filled with money and jewelry.”

“What’s the gimmick?”

“The gimmick is that each pocket has a bell on it. You don’t graduate till you kin empty every damn pocket without ringin’ the bell.”

Lola sighed, “I used to go with a guy who walked through crowds dressed in an overcoat, with both his hands out in the open, while he picked everybody’s pockets like crazy.”

“How the hell could he do that?”

“The right hand was a dummy. He slipped his real hand through a slit in the coat and picked his way through pockets and wallets and purses.”

In the recreation room the education continued.

“I like the locker-key rip-off,” a veteran said. “You hang around a railroad station till you see a little old lady tryin’ to lift a suitcase or a big package into one a them lockers. You put it in for her and hand her the key. Only it’s the key to an empty locker. When she leaves, you empty her locker and split.”

In the yard another afternoon, two inmates convicted of prostitution and possession of cocaine were talking to a new arrival, a pretty young girl who looked no more than seventeen.

“No wonder you got busted, honey,” one of the older women scolded. “Before you talk price to a John, you gotta pat him down to make sure he ain’t carryin’ a gun, and never tell him what you’re gonna do for him. Make him tell you what he wants. Then if he turns out to be a cop, it’s entrapment, see?”

The other pro added, “Yeah. And always look at their hands. If a trick says he’s a workin’ man, see if his hands are rough. That’s the tip-off. A lot of plainclothes cops wear workin’ men’s outfits, but when it comes to their hands, they forget, so their hands are smooth.”

Time went neither slowly nor quickly. It was simply time. Tracy though of St. Augustine’s aphorism: “What is time? If no one asks me, I know. But if I have to explain it, I do not know.”

The routine of the prison never varied:

The rules were inflexible. All inmates had to go to meals, and no talking was permitted in the lines. No more than five cosmetic items could be kept in the small cell lockers. Beds had to be made prior to breakfast and kept neat during the day.

The penitentiary had a music all its own: the clanging bells, shuffle of feet on cement, slamming iron doors, day whispers and night screams…the hoarse crackle of the guards’ walkie-talkies, the clash of trays at mealtime. And always there was the barbed wire and the high walls and the loneliness and isolation and the pervading aura of hate.

Tracy became a model prisoner. Her body responded automatically to the sounds of prison routine: the bar sliding across her cell at count time and sliding back at wake-up time; the bell for reporting to work and the buzzer when work was finished.

Tracy’s body was a prisoner in this place, but her mind was free to plan her escape.

Prisoners could make no outside telephone calls, and they were permitted to receive two five-minute calls a month. Tracy received a call from Otto Schmidt.

“I thought you’d want to know,” he said awkwardly. “It was a real nice funeral. I took care of the bills, Tracy.”

“Thank you, Otto. I—thank you.” There was nothing more for either of them to say.

There were no more phone calls for her.

“Girl, you best forget the outside world,” Ernestine warned her. “There ain’t nobody out there for you.”

You’re wrong, Tracy thought grimly.

Joe Romano

Perry Pope

Judge Henry Lawrence

Anthony Orsatti

Charles Stanhope III

It was in the exercise yard that Tracy encountered Big Bertha again. The yard was a large outdoor rectangle bounded by the high outer prison wall on one side and the inner wall of the prison on the other. The inmates were allowed in the yard for thirty minutes each morning. It was one of the few places where talking was permitted, and clusters of prisoners gathered together exchanging the latest news and gossip before lunch. When Tracy walked into the yard for the first time, she felt a sudden sense of freedom, and she realized it was because she was in the open air. She could see the sun, high above, and cumulus clouds, and somewhere in the distant blue sky she heard the drone of a plane, soaring free.

“You! I been lookin’ for you,” a voice said.

Tracy turned to see the huge Swede who had brushed into her on Tracy’s first day in prison.

“I hear you got yourself a nigger bull-dyke.”

Tracy started to brush past the woman. Big Bertha grabbed Tracy’s arm, with an iron grip. “Nobody walks away from me,” she breathed. “Be nice, littbarn.” She was backing Tracy toward the wall, pressing her huge body into Tracy’s.

“Get away from me.”

“What you need is a real good lickin’. You know what I mean? An’ I’m gonna give it to you You’re gonna be all mine, älskade.”

A familiar voice behind Tracy rasped, “Get your fuckin’ hands off her, you asshole.”

Ernestine Littlechap stood there, big fists clenched, eyes blazing, the sun reflecting off her shiny shaved skull.

“You ain’t man enough for her, Ernie.”

“I’m man enough for you” the black woman exploded “You bother her again, and I’ll have your ass for breakfast. Fried.”

The air was suddenly charged with electricity. The two amazons were eyeing each other with naked hatred. They’re ready to kill each other over me Tracy thought. And then she realized it had very little to do with her. She remembered something Ernestine had told her: “In this place, you have to fight, fuck, or hit the fence. You gotta hold your mud, or you’re dead.”

It was Big Bertha who backed down. She gave Ernestine a contemptuous look. “I ain’t in no hurry.” She leered at Tracy. “You’re gonna be here a long time, baby. So am I. I’ll be seein’ you.”

She turned and walked away.

Ernestine watched her go. “She’s a bad mother. ‘Member that nurse in Chicago who killed off all them patients? Stuck ‘em full of cyanide and stayed there an’ watched ‘em die? Well, that angel of mercy is the one who got the hots for you, Whitney. Shee-et! You need a fuckin’ keeper. She ain’t gonna let up on you.”

“Will you help me escape?”

A bell rang.

“It’s chow time,” Ernestine Littlechap said.

That night, lying in her bunk, Tracy thought about Ernestine.

Even though she had never tried to touch Tracy again, Tracy still did not trust her. She could never forget what Ernestine and her other cell mates had done to her. But she needed the black woman.

Each afternoon after supper, the inmates were allowed to spend one hour in the recreation room, where they could watch television or talk or read the latest magazines and newspapers. Tracy was thumbing through a copy of a magazine when a photograph caught her eye. It was a wedding picture of Charles Stanhope III and his new bride, coming out of a chapel, arm in arm, laughing. It hit Tracy like a blow. Seeing his photograph now, the happy smile on his face, she was filled with a pain that turned to cold fury. She had once planned to share her life with this man, and he had turned his back on her, let them destroy her, let their baby die. But that was another time, another place, another world. That was fantasy. This is reality.

Tracy slammed the magazine shut.

On visiting days it was easy to know which inmates had friends or relatives coming to see them. The prisoners would shower and put on fresh clothes and makeup. Ernestine usually returned from the visitors’ room smiling and cheerful.

“My Al, he always comes to see me,” she told Tracy. “He’ll be waitin’ for me when I get out. You know why? ‘Cause I give him what no other woman gives him.”

Tracy could not hide her confusion. “You mean…sexually?”

“You bet your ass. What goes on behind these walls has nothin’ to do with the outside. In here, sometimes we need a warm body to hold—somebody to touch us and tell us they love us. We gotta feel there’s somebody who gives a damn about us. It don’t matter if it ain’t real or don’t last. It’s all we got. But when I get on the outside”—Ernestine broke into a broad grin—”then I become a fuckin’ nymphomaniac, hear?”

There was something that had been puzzling Tracy. She decided to bring it up now. “Ernie, you keep protecting me. Why?”

Ernestine shrugged. “Beats the shit out of me.”

“I really want to know.” Tracy chose her words carefully. “Everyone else who’s your—your friend belongs to you. They do whatever you tell them to do.”

“If they don’t want to walk around with half an ass, yeah.”

“But not me. Why?”

“You complainin’?”

“No. I’m curious.”

Ernestine thought about it for a moment. “Okay. You got somethin’ I want.” She saw the look on Tracy’s face. “No, not that. I get alla that I want, baby. You got class. I mean, real, honest-to-God class. Like those cool ladies you see in Vogue and Town and Country, all dressed up and servin’ tea from silver pots. That’s where you belong. This ain’t your world. I don’t know how you got mixed up with all that rat shit on the outside, but my guess is you got suckered by somebody.” She looked at Tracy and said, almost shyly, “I ain’t come across many decent things in my life. You’re one of ‘em.” She turned away so that her next words were almost inaudible. “And I’m sorry about your kid. I really am…”

That night, after lights out, Tracy whispered in the dark, “Ernie, I’ve go to escape. Help me. Please.”

“I’m tryin’ to sleep, for Christ’s sake! Shut up now, hear?”

Ernestine initiated Tracy into the arcane language of the prison. Groups of women in the yard were talking: “This bull-dyker dropped the belt on the gray broad, and from then on you had to feed her with a long-handled spoon…”

“She was short, but they caught her in a snowstorm, and a stoned cop turned her over to the butcher. That ended her getup. Good-bye, Ruby-do…”

To Tracy, it was like listening to a group of Martians. “What are they talking about?” she asked.

Ernestine roared with laughter. “Don’t you speak no English, girl? When the lesbian ‘dropped the belt,’ it meant she switched from bein’ the guy to bein’ a Mary Femme. She got involved with a ‘gray broad’—that’s a honky, like you. She couldn’t be trusted, so that meant you stayed away from her. She was ‘short,’ meanin’ she was near the end of her prison sentence, but she got caught takin’ heroin by a stoned cop—that’s someone who lives by the rules and can’t be bought—and they sent her to the ‘butcher,’ the prison doctor.”

“What’s a ‘Ruby-do’ and a ‘getup’?”

“Ain’t you learned nothin’? A ‘Ruby-do’ is a parole. A ‘getup’ is the day of release.” Tracy knew she would wait for neither.

The explosion between Ernestine Littlechap and Big Bertha happened in the yard the following day. The prisoners were playing a game of softball, supervised by the guards. Big Bertha, at bat with two strikes against her, hit a hard line drive on the third pitch and ran to first base, which Tracy was covering. Big Bertha slammed into Tracy, knocking her down, and then was on top of her. Her hands snaked up between Tracy’s legs, and she whispered, “Nobody says no to me, you cunt. I’m comin’ to get you tonight, littbarn, and I’m gonna fuck your ass off.”

Tracy fought wildly to get loose. Suddenly, she felt Big Bertha being lifted off her. Ernestine had the huge Swede by the neck and was throttling her.

“You goddamn bitch!” Ernestine was screaming. “I warned you!” She slashed her fingernails across Big Bertha’s face, clawing at her eyes.

“I’m blind!” Big Bertha screamed. “I’m blind!” She grabbed Ernestine’s breasts and starting pulling them. The two women were punching and clawing at each other as four guards came running up. It took the guards five minutes to pull them apart. Both women were taken to the infirmary. It was late that night when Ernestine was returned to her cell. Lola and Paulita hurried to her bunk to console her.

“Are you all right?” Tracy whispered.

“Damned right,” Ernestine told her. Her voice sounded muffled, and Tracy wondered how badly she had been hurt. “I made my Ruby-do yesterday. I’m gettin’ outta this joint. You got a problem. That mother ain’t gonna leave you alone now. No way. And when she’s finished fuckin’ with you, she’s gonna kill you.”

They lay there in the silent darkness. Finally, Ernestine spoke again. “Maybe it’s time you and me talked about bustin’ you the hell outta here.”