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Under the gas light that supplemented a far, dusty window in the Recorder’s Court, stood Bess. She swayed, and her face twitched occasionally; but her glance was level, and her head erect.
Behind a high desk sat a man well past middle age. His florid complexion caused his long grey mustache to appear very white. His eyes were far apart and suggested a kindness that was born of indolence, rather than of wide compassion. His hands were slender and beautifully made, and he sat with elbows on desk, and finger-tips touching. When he spoke it was in a drawl that suggested weariness.
“What is the charge, Officer?” he asked.
“Bein’ under the influence of dope, an’ creatin’ a disturbance in Catfish Row, yer Honor,” replied the policeman who stood by the prisoner.
“Anybody hurt?”
“Not as we was able to see, yer Honor.”
The judge turned to the prisoner.
“Have you ever been here before?”
“No, suh,” came the reply in a low, clear tone.
“The officer of the day thinks she has, yer Honor,” put in the policeman, “but he can’t swear to it. She looks like a hundred others, he says, scar and all; an’ they change names so fast you get nothing from the records.”
The judge regarded the prisoner with amiability. The thermometer on the wall beside him registered ninety. It was asking too much of good-nature to require it to subvert itself in such heat.
“I suppose we will have to give you the benefit of the doubt,” he said. Then he turned to the officer.
“After all, it’s the man who sold her the poison we want. I was kept here three hours yesterday by dope cases. I want it put a stop to.”
He contracted his brows in a weak attempt at sternness, and directed a steady gaze at Bess.
“Who sold you that dope?”
She met his eyes squarely.
“I don’t t’ink I know um again,” she said in a low, even tone. “I buy from um in de dark, las’ night, an’ he gone off right away.”
“It’s no use, Your Honor,” put in the policeman. “They won’t give each other away.”
The judge fixed the culprit with a long scrutiny. Then he asked:
“Have you any money to pay a fine?”
“No, suh. Yuh’ll jus’ hab tuh gib’ me my time.”
A man entered the room.
“I beg your pardon, Your Honor,” he said, “but there is a cripple outside in a goat-cart who says he is prepared to pay the woman’s fine.”
“Eh; what’s that?” exclaimed the judge. “Is it that black scoundrel, Porgy, the beggar?”
“That’s him, Yer Honor,” replied the man, with a grin.
“Why, the highwayman takes a dime from me every time I venture on King Charles Street. And here he has the audacity to come and offer to pay a fine.”
“Don’t tek he money, Boss.”
The prisoner said the words steadily, then caught her lower lip with her strong, white teeth.
“Address the Court as ‘Your Honor,’ not ‘Boss,’” ordered the judge.
“Yo’ Honuh,” amended the culprit.
For a long moment the Recorder sat, his brow contracted. Then he drew a large, cool, linen handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his face.
“Go out and take ten dollars from the beggar,” he told the policeman. “It’s a small fine for the offence.” Then turning to the woman, he said:
“I am going to lock you up for ten days; but any time you give the name of that dope peddler to the jailor you can leave. Do you understand?”
Bess had nothing to say in reply, and after a moment the policeman took her by the arm.
“This way to the wagon,” he directed, and led her from the court room.
The street was a blaze of early morning sun, and the woman covered her eyes with her hand. The wagon stood, step to curb, and the officer hurried her across the narrow pavement and into the conveyance.
The bell clanged, and the heavy horse flung its weight against the collar.
Something impelled Bess to remove her hand and to look down.
Below the high side of the patrol, looking rather like a harbor tug beside an ocean liner, stood the goat-cart. For a moment she looked into Porgy’s face. It told her nothing, except that he seemed suddenly to have grown older, and that the real Porgy, who had looked out at her from the eyes for a little while, had gone back into his secret places and closed the door.
The wagon lunged forward.
Then Porgy spoke.
“How long?” he called.
The incessant clamor of the gong commenced, and the hoofs beat their noisy tattoo upon the stones.
Bess raised both hands with fingers extended.
The wagon rounded a corner and disappeared.
The jail in which Bess was incarcerated was no better, and no worse, than many others of its period, and the score of negro women with whom she found herself could not be said to suffer acutely under their imprisonment. When life reaches a certain level of misery, it envelops itself in a protective anesthesia which deadens the senses to extremes; and having no tasks to perform, the prisoners awaited the expiration of their brief sentences with sodden patience, or hastened the passage of time with song.
By day they were at liberty to exercise in the jail yard, a square of about half an acre surrounded by a high brick wall, containing not so much as a single blade of grass. Like a great basin, the yard caught and held the heat which poured from the August sun until it seemed to overflow the rim, and quiver, as though the immense vessel had been jarred from without. But the soaring walls gave always a narrow strip of shade to which the prisoners clung, moving around the sides as the day advanced, with the accuracy of the hand of a sundial.
Before nightfall the prisoners were herded into the steaming interior of the building, and Bess and the other women were locked in a steel cage, which resembled a large dog-pound and stood in the centre of a high, square room, with a passageway around it. A peculiarly offensive moisture clung to the ceiling, and streamed in little rivulets down the walls. An almost unbreatheable stench clogged the atmosphere.
The jailers were not vindictive. They were not even unkind. Some of them evidenced a mild affection for their charges, and would pause to exchange greetings with them on their rounds. But it would have meant effort to better the living conditions, and effort on the part of a white warden in August was not to be considered. They locked them up, gave them a sufficiency of hominy and white pork to sustain life, allowed them to see their visitors, talk, and sing to their heart’s content. If they were suffering from tuberculosis, or one of a hundred nameless and communicable diseases, when they entered, it was none of the County’s affair. And if they left showing that ash-pallor so unmistakable in a negro, it was as lamentable as it was unavoidable. But when all was said and done, what must one expect if one added to the handicap of a dark skin the indiscretion of swallowing cocaine and indulging in a crap game?
Bess received but one visitor during her imprisonment. When the callers were admitted, on the day following her arrival, Maria loomed in the centre of the small, timid group. She went directly to Bess where she sat by the wall, with her eyes closed against the glare. The big negress wore an expression of solicitude, and her voice was low and surprisingly gentle as she said:
“Porgy ask me tuh bring yer dis blanket fuh lie on, an’ dese fish an’ bread. How yuh is feelin’ now?” Then she bent over and placed a bundle in the prisoner’s lap.
Bess opened her eyes in surprise.
“I ain’t been expectin’ no fabors off none ob you folks,” she replied. “How come yuh tuh care ef I lib er die, attuh dat row I mek?”
Maria lowered herself to a seat beside her.
“I lubs dat nigger, Porgy, lak he been my chile,” she told her. “An’ wut mo’, I t’ink I know what done happen tuh yuh.”
“Wut yuh know?”
“I been in my do’ dat night; an’ I seen dat skunk, Sportin’ Life, sell yuh dat stuff. Ef I had er known den wut it wuz, I’d a been hyuh long side ob yuh now fuh murder.”
After a moment, she asked: “Wut mek yuh don’t tell de jailluh who done um, an’ come on home?”
Bess remained silent for a moment; then she raised her head and looked into the eyes of the older woman.
“I’s a ’oman grown. Ef I tek dope, dat muh own business. Ef I ebber gits muh han’ on dat nigger, I goin’ fix um so he own mammy ain’t know um! But I ain’t goin’ gib um ’way tuh de w’ite folks.”
The hard lines about her mouth softened, and, in scarcely more than a whisper, she added:
“I gots tuh be decent ’bout somet’ing, ’less I couldn’t go back an’ look in Porgy face.”
Maria got heavily to her feet. The other visitors were leaving, and she longed to be free of the high, brick walls. She dropped a hand on Bess’s shoulder.
“Yuh do right, Sister. But ef dat yalluh nigger come tuh Catfish Row agin—leabe him fuh me—dat’s all!” Then the big negress joined the departing group, and passed out through the small steel doorway that pierced the massive gate.
Bess sat for a long while without moving. The sun lifted over the high wall, and drove its white-hot tide into her lap, and upon her folded hands.
“Wut mek yuh ain’t mobe intuh de shade?” a neighbor asked curiously.
Bess looked up and smiled.
“I jes’ settin’ hyuh t’inkin’ ’bout muh frien’,” she said. “Yuh done hear um call me ‘Sister,’ ain’t yuh? Berry well den. Dat mean me and she is frien’.”