“Let them come and take me,” Bertha said.
“Don’t kid yourself. They can do that, too. But I’d go along if I was you. I think they’re going to turn you loose.”
“Well, I’ll stay right here.”
“For how long?”
“From now on.”
“That won’t do you no good. Lots of them feel that way, but you don’t hurt nobody by staying here. You’ve got to go some time, and then they have the laugh on you.” The trusty spoke in the same dejected, flat monotone with a leisurely drawl, as though the effort of speaking wearied her and consumed too much vitality. “I remember one woman said she was going to stay here, and they told me just to leave the door unlocked and tell her she could go whenever she wanted to. She stayed there all morning. It was the middle of the afternoon when she finally went out, and everybody gave her the ha-ha.”
Bertha, without a word, got up from the cot and followed the trusty down the echoing corridor, through a locked door into an elevator, down to an office where another matron who was a stranger to Bertha looked up from some papers and said, “Is this Bertha Cool?”
“This is Bertha Cool, and you’d better take a good look at me because you’re going to see more of me. I’m going to—”
The matron opened a drawer, pulled out a heavy, sealed Manila envelope and said, “These are your personal belongings which were taken from you when you were put in last night, Mrs. Cool. Will you please look them over and see if they’re all there?”
“I’m going to take this damn place apart,” Bertha said. “You can’t do anything like that to me. I’m a respectable woman making a decent, honest living, and—”