June 1941

“Get up,” I whisper, crouching on the concrete, grasping the bars with fingers picked raw and bloody. I consider rapping the bars with the key — the precious key!— but I don’t dare. The guard might be a light sleeper.

“Gloria,” I hiss, watching for movement down the darkened corridor. Gloria moans and rolls toward the wall. My eyes glued to the anteroom’s dim light, I slowly insert the key in the lock, turn it, push the barred door with my hips. It creaks. I drop down and curl into a ball, wishing I could squeeze into invisibility. Holding my breath and the door tightly, I listen for the guard’s heavy steps, but all I hear is Gloria’s snoring.

I knew I would need courage when I left Manhattan for Hattiesburg, Mississippi. I thought I’d need it to ask difficult questions of strangers who had been deprived of their land by armed and greedy men generations ago. Instead, I need it to escape armed and indifferent women right now.

 My stomach and head aching, I crawl into Gloria’s cell. If they catch us, not only will they take away my key — the key they give to “good girls” who did one bad thing — they’ll charge me with a serious crime. I’ve kept from going crazy in this “treatment center” because I know I don’t belong here. Escaping is my right, the only way to undo the injustice done to me. They wouldn’t have given me a key if they’d expected me to stay here. But helping Gloria escape is different. Helping Gloria escape is a felony.

I’d been at the Hattiesburg Treatment Center for Women three hours when Gloria yelled  at me.

“Enough crying! You’re gonna learn real quick they don’t like cryers.”

I cried harder. A guard appeared.

“I know you’re scared but you can’t carry on like this.”

Her concern surprised me. I stopped sobbing.

“I hear you’re one of the good ones.” Her hand poked through the bars. “You can have this as long as you do what I say. But one bit of trouble from you, I’ll take this away and you’ll never get it back.” She dropped the object on the floor and walked away as it bounced and clanged.

A key! I unlocked the door and began running away from the guard. She instantly appeared and took the key. “This isn’t for any time. If you need something, you can come out and come straight to the guard station.” She pointed down the dingy passageway between the cells. “And when your treatments begin, you can let yourself out to go to those. That’s it.” She held the key above my head, the way I’d hold treats for our dog Amelia when I was trying to get her to do a trick. “Do you understand?” I nodded, even though I didn’t understand why I was here or what treatments she was talking about. She jerked her chin toward my putrid cot, still holding the key high. I walked back into the cell, head down. “Here you go.” She handed me the key with an approving smile, as if I were a toddler rewarded for returning to bed. I grabbed it and turned away, ashamed by my clumsy escape attempt and the guard’s patronizing reaction to it.

“Do you have a key?” I asked, hoping the woman in the next cell knew I was asking her.

“Me?” she asked incredulously. “Honey, I’m just happy to be out of isolation. One more day in that shithole and I would have poked someone’s eyes out.”

I shuddered.  Was my neighbor being detained for some act of violence?

She read my silence like a Dick and Jane primer.

“It’s a figure of speech, you know? I would never poke anyone’s eyes out.” She sounded annoyed but sincere.

“Why were you in isolation?”

“I wouldn’t let the old geezer paw my private parts with his wrinkly muffs. The only oldies who get to play with me are those that pay first.”

“What old geezer?” I tried to hide my shock. I had passed prostitutes once walking through Times Square, but I had never spoken to one. My body buzzed.

“You’ll meet him soon enough. Claims he’s an M.D., but I don’t buy it. There’s no Board certificate hanging in that interrogation room he calls an office.”

“Why did he want to examine your...personal area?” There was a long silence. I regretted asking such an intimate question of someone I hadn’t formally met, even if she was a prostitute. “I’m Rose.”

“Gloria,” she said brusquely. More silence. “Do you know why you’re here, Rose?”

“I broke curfew. Can you imagine? Curfew! The south is so archaic!”

Perhaps I’d offended Gloria by criticizing the south. Maybe she still sang Dixie and discussed the War Between the States.

Finally, Gloria asked, “Rose, where are you from?”

“Long Island, but I’m living in Manhattan, going to college.”

“Well, you’re not in New York anymore, Rose. Here in Mississippi, they like their women home, tending to their men dawn to dusk and all night long. And those nights sure can get long.”

“So, Hattiesburg is one of those places,” I said. I’d arrived in Hattiesburg two days earlier to research my senior thesis on the displacement of the Choctaw Indians.

“It is now.”

“Why now?”

 “The war, Rose. Unchaperoned women present temptations to our good boys in uniform, temptations nobody would expect them to resist. They need to save all their energy to resist our enemies overseas. We women are ripe with disease, especially in our personal areas.” I blushed. “That’s why you’re here, Rose. Someone suspects you of having a disease in your personal area.”

“That’s not possible!”

“Reality is irrelevant,” she said.

I know breaking out of the detention center is wrong, but if reality is irrelevant, right and wrong don’t matter. Perhaps they don’t even exist.

“Wake up, Gloria,” I whisper now, crouching beside her cot, shaking her. “We have to go!” Gloria opens her eyes and starts. “We have to go,” I repeat, straining to detect footsteps.  Gloria rolls off the bed, and we crawl out of the cell. We slither past the snoring guard and down the dingy hall, cautiously open the detention center door and slip into moonlit freedom.

Gloria holds a finger to her lips and squat walks to the side of the building where the windows sit above the treetops. I follow, trying to set my feet into Gloria’s foot imprints in the brown grass. The less evidence we leave, the better. Gloria grabs my arm and lifts her head, squinting at the ribbon of road across the broad lawn of the detention center.

“Get down flat,” she commands. “Stay still.”

My fingers tremble in the scratchy grass. I hear the low hum of a car’s engine. The hum grows, joined by the sound of tires grinding into gravel. A car door creaks open, slams shut. Heavy footsteps and deep voices move toward the detention center. Squeezing my eyes closed, silently I recite, When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes...

“Let’s go.” Gloria runs across the lawn toward the pine forest. Running in the moonlight seems incredibly risky, but I jump up and follow Gloria.

In the forest, she pulls me down onto the trees’ discarded needles. The night buzzes and chirps. The air lies heavily across us as we listen for alarms or barking dogs. Gloria rolls onto her stomach and crawls deeper into the trees. The pine needles sneak under my flimsy facility-issued shirt as I follow, pricking my forearms and stomach like dozens of dulling straight pins.

“This is deep enough,” she says, rolling onto her back.

“Won’t this be the first place they look?”

Gloria snorts. “If their detective skills resemble their medical skills, we’ve got nothing to fear.”

“What did they do to you?” I ask, blushing. I’ve never discussed my woman parts with anyone other than my doctor, and I turn the color of my menstrual blood discussing it with him.

But Gloria doesn’t hesitate. “They took me to the doc my first week,” she begins. “I waited in this windowless room, a few bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling, two long tables, one covered with strange objects the doc called his ‘instruments’.”

“What’s on the other table?”

“Nothing. Until the doc directs his victim to lie down on it.”

“Victim?”

Gloria half laughs, half snorts. “Me. You. Us. The women they’ve gathered from street corners and restaurants and parks, where we brazenly and boldly went without a man at our side.” I say nothing, still struggling to make sense of it all. “The doc told me to lie down on the table. I asked him why. ‘I must examine you to determine your condition,’ he said. I told him my condition was angry, that I had a ticket to New Orleans on a train leaving in less than an hour  and nobody had told me why I was being held against my will.

“He squinted at me, turned away and scribbled in a folder the color of droppings from a diarrhetic dog. ‘Are you telling me you are certain you are free of diseases carried by loose women? We cannot have women infecting our brave boys.’

“ ‘Do you honestly think those soldiers are innocent boys falling prey to women like me?’ I laughed.

“The old man turned crimson from the base of his neck to the crown of his hairless head. He made a noise like a goose’s cry. ‘On the table now!’

“I looked at him, saying nothing, moving nothing. Just stared and stared and stared, until he sputtered something and pushed a button on the wall. Two guards appeared, handcuffed me and led me to the isolation cell.” Gloria shudders. “That shithole made the sketchiest boarding houses I’ve stayed in seem like luxury hotels.”

“Why did he want to examine you?”

“Rose, do you think the masterminds of this scheme believe us when we tell them we’re clean? Even if they do, they like examining us to satisfy their sick sexual fantasies.”

I still don’t understand exactly what’s going on, but I realize I’m suspected of something more serious than a curfew violation.

“What will happen to the other women they’re holding in that place?”

“Get some rest, Rose,” Gloria says, turning away from me. “We’ll start walking soon and go until sunrise.”

I crawl around so I can see her eyes. Even in the dark, I see the fear. “Tell me, Gloria. What will they do to them? What will they do to us if they find us?”

Gloria rolls onto her back. I stretch out beside her, watching the stars, waiting. I’m almost asleep when she speaks.

“Before they put me in isolation, I had a cellmate, Sallie. Sallie’d been in the detention center two months. I saw right away she wasn’t feeling good. She trembled so bad her cot shook. Every day they’d come get her for ‘treatment’, but she got worse instead of better. On the third day, the guards dragged Sallie through the cell door. She fell to the floor as soon as they released her, and those bitches turned around and left her lying there. Her legs dragged behind her as I moved her onto the cot.

“I didn’t sleep that night, I was so worried about Sallie, and scared for myself. Sallie whimpered most of the night, but she must have slept some because a few times she cried out like she was being tortured in her dreams.

“The next day the guards took me to see the old doc, and like I told you, I wouldn’t get up on his table. I’d seen what happened to Sallie. I figured no punishment they gave me could be any worse, and I was right. Isolation’s cold and dark, but I came out of it okay. When they brought me back to my cell, Sallie was gone.”

“Maybe they let her go home since she was so sick,” I suggest, knowing Gloria won’t believe it. I don’t believe it either.

******

Trees slowly take shape above me, black giants towering into a starless sky. Gloria is pacing, pausing, pacing. She cocks her head as I force my aching body to stand.

“What are you listening to?”

“Nothing.” She walks away from me, pauses and cocks her head again. “No footsteps, no rustling, no distant roar of a car engine.”

“That’s good, right?”

“Walk behind me, as quietly as you can,” Gloria directs. “Listen for sound, look for movement. If you feel something’s not right, stop. I’ll sense you’re not behind me and come back for you.”

The Mississippi forest comes alive at night with hoots and chirps, croaks and screeches. A bird dives for my head, and I run to Gloria.

“Relax!” she says. “These bats are harmless.”

“Bats?” I shriek. Animals terrify me. I fell apart when my father found a mouse in our kitchen. It took my mother longer to calm me down than it took my father to dispose of the mouse.

“Quiet,” Gloria hisses. “Stay close to me if it makes you feel safer.”

I keep one hand on Gloria’s back for the rest of the night, trying to ignore the buzzing and whooping and hooting. At the edge of the forest, the sky begins to lighten. Gloria pulls me toward pine trees that have grown in a tight circle, creating a tiny hiding place in their center. We crawl between the tree trunks and lie down.

“Gloria, where are we going?”

“To the train station.”

The train station! I could get a train home to New York, to my warm, safe dorm room,  where my biggest worry is getting a bad grade.

Then I remember.

“But we have no money for tickets.”

“You have no money,” Gloria says. “But I do. It’s with my business associate, who lives one more night’s walk from here, I’m figuring.”

 Panic races through me, tears threaten to fall. Gloria is abandoning me in this savage state. I turn toward the tree trunks, hoping Gloria won’t see how scared I am. The fear of what the Mississippi men will do when they find me is sharper and more shameful than any fear I’ve known. I start to sob.

“What’s wrong, Rose?” Gloria asks. I sob harder. The only person in this entire state who cares about me is leaving.

“I...I can’t,” I gulp. “I don’t know what I’ll do after you go.”

“I thought you wanted to go home to New York.”

“I do! But how can I get there without money?”

 “I’ll buy your ticket. I have enough money.”

“Really?” I ask, shocked, then worry I sound ungrateful. “I mean, thank you! Thank God! Thank you!”

Gloria puts her arm around me. “It’s okay.”

“How did you end up there?” I ask, resting my head on her shoulder, comforted by its warmth. This is a little brave, I think. I so rarely touch other people.

“I’m no innocent, Rose,” Gloria says, sighing. “But I’m not a criminal, either. Do you know prostitution is legal in Germany? The Germans recognize women like me as legitimate workers providing a valued service. But here in the United States everything sexual is shameful and illegal.”

“Gloria, are you really a...” I can’t say it.

“Yes, Rose, I’m a prostitute.”

I still can’t believe it. Prostitutes are crude and selfish and smelly, and Gloria is none of those things. She smells fresh and outdoorsy, as if all the pine needles bled their scent into her skin while she slept. And she speaks so well. I know girls at Barnard whose vocabulary isn’t half as good as Gloria’s. And if she were selfish, she’d be leaving me behind.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Gloria asks.

“Like what?”

“Like you feel sorry for me. There’s no reason to feel sorry for me, Rose. I have skills, and I get paid quite well for using them. How is that any different from a ballet dancer? We both use our bodies to bring pleasure to others. The only difference is I don’t have to starve myself.” She laughs, a deep, husky sound.

I don’t know whether Gloria’s dancer analogy makes sense, but I feel sleepy, so I say, “That makes sense.” I close my eyes, burrowing my head deeper into Gloria’s arms.

******

A bare field stretches into the horizon. No trees, no bushes, just the large, low moon threatening to rise high and bright.

“Should we wait in the forest for a darker night?”

“We go tonight.” She crouches and pulls me down. “Stay low.”

We squat walk across the field, although the grass is too low to hide us. Our heads and shoulders bob above it, like targets at a carnival shooting booth.

“Maybe we should crawl on our stomachs,” I suggest.

“Excellent idea.” Gloria flattens herself onto the ground. I follow suit, but soon Gloria is far ahead, morphing into dark motion that could be any large, nocturnal creature.  I drag my body forward, struggling to catch up. Several drags later, I’m breathless, my elbows burn, and Gloria keeps moving until she disappears into darkness.

I can’t let her leave me here! Jumping up, I race across the field, nearly tripping over Gloria’s slithering form. She pulls me down beside her.

“What are you doing?” she hisses. “I told you to stay low.”

I grab Gloria’s leg. Gloria grunts as she pulls me along but doesn’t shake me off. We reach the end of the field breathless, red Mississippi dirt clinging to our skin like half-dried  paint. We rush into the dense patch of trees, more oaks than pine now, providing us better cover thanks to their thick leaves.

Gloria stops, tilting her head. She takes my hand and leads me in a new direction, off the dirt path, through fallen leaves and silent twigs wet with Mississippi heat. We walk a long time. The trees thin, and the moon’s white light reaches through, giving the forest an otherworldly glow. Strange shapes form among the tree trunks. I hear what Gloria’s been listening for as a car whizzes past. I grab Gloria’s arm.

“It’s okay,” she says. “I think this road leads to the house of my business associate. It can’t be more than four or five miles from here.”

“Four or five miles?” I squeal. “I can’t walk that far.”

“You will walk that far, Rose.” She reminds me of my mother telling me I would eat my carrots.

We walk without speaking. I think about the detention center, where women like us lie sleepless and frightened. The silence, the scent of honeysuckle, the silky moonlight illuminating our way, suddenly seem like gifts. I’m ashamed that I complained about the distance.

A car’s motor dents the silence. Gloria pulls me into thicker trees. We stand motionless long after the silence returns. Finally, Gloria walks again, and I follow, staying close to the deep forest. We walk like strangers now, single file. A chill runs through me despite the night’s warmth.

Another car approaches. Gloria has edged closer to the road, and I stop, waiting for her to dart back into the trees. Instead, she starts running and shouting. Peering out from the trees, I see Gloria get into a stopped car. My desire to hide battles the urge to rescue Gloria, who’s clearly lost her mind. I’m paralyzed by conflict. The car backs toward my hiding spot, and I run farther into the forest.

“Rose!” Gloria cries. I keep running, breaking through branches, leaping over fallen logs, almost enjoying the feeling of flight and adrenalin, until a tree root trips me and the world goes dark.

******

“Thank the Holy Mother and Saint Joan of Arc!” Gloria peers into my opening eyes.

“I told you she’d be all right,” the driver proclaims in a soothing voice. “I’m guessing a nasty bump will be the worst of it.” I run my hand across my forehead, wincing when I reach the bump. “We’ll get some ice on it as soon as we get to the house.”

I start to remember, but only a little, and it only makes me more confused. Why would somebody Gloria’s hitching a ride with be so nice to me? I ease myself into a sitting position to look at the driver.

She is Black.

I have never been this close to someone who looks so different from me, unless you count waitstaff and bathroom attendants in fancy hotels. Morningside Heights may be adjacent to Harlem, but the two neighborhoods seem worlds apart.

I remember suddenly that Gloria said she was looking for her “business associate.” I’m probably the only person in the car who isn’t a prostitute! I wonder why this doesn’t bother me.

We turn down a dirt road, clumps of pine trees on one side, the other marred by low fences of rusted wire and worn wood. Nothing moves except us. No cars pass, no animals roam behind the fences. Gloria falls into easy chatter with the driver, Batilda, and I surrender to a mercifully dreamless sleep.

******

The car rolls to a stop in front of a lavender two-story house with a wraparound porch and a front door the color of sunshine.

“You must want hot baths,” Batilda says, wrinkling her nose as she leads us inside. Inside, the house is full of sunshine too. It falls through tall windows, painting the honey-colored wood floors with patterns of light, peers from the painting of daffodils and yellow tulips hanging above the fireplace, graces the tables in the hall and dining area through vases of yellow roses.

Batilda leads me upstairs, gets me a towel and washcloth, and points me toward a door.  I doze off in the warm bath, eucalyptus-scented bubbles blanketing me neck to toes. The song of a bird through the open window wakes me as water starts to submerge my chin. Piano music drifts under the door. I can almost believe the past few terror-filled days were a nightmare from which I’m finally waking. I realize my head is throbbing and touch the bump on my forehead, which is very real.

“Rose, you all right in there?” Gloria calls.

“Uh-huh.” It’s the closest I’ve felt to all right since the police approached me in the diner.

“Batilda found you some clothes her niece left when she visited. They’re outside the door. And she’s cooking up some gumbo. Come down and have some.” Surprisingly, the clothing Batilda gave me fits in style as well as size, the button-down blouse, skirt and stockings in the same muted beiges and browns I wear to classes every day.

The gumbo smells so good, I forget everything except my hunger as soon as I enter the kitchen. Batilda stands at the stove slowly stirring the pot with one hand, her other long arm extending gracefully above her head to open a cabinet and remove three glasses. “Bourbon’s on the tea cart in the dining room,” she says, and soon we’re each holding a glass of the amber liquor. Gloria drinks all of hers hastily, but Batilda takes a small sip and sets the glass on the counter. I hold the glass to my nose and sniff. The strength of its scent overwhelms me.  I set the glass on the table.

Batlida’s face turns ugly. “What’s wrong, Rose? Afraid drinking from my glass will give you a disease?”

“No, I...I haven’t ever had bourbon,” I say, my face burning. “Or any alcohol, other than a little champagne on New Year’s Eve.”

Batilda looks at me funny for a second, then she grins. “Well, well, we have a novice among us. Just take it slow, honey, and remember you have earned this bit of firewater.” She raises her glass, and Gloria brings hers up to touch Batilda’s. They look at me.

My hand trembles as I raise my glass to theirs. They take sips, Gloria’s more measured than her first but still longer than Batilda’s and look at me again. I drink cautiously. The bourbon burns my mouth and throat but leaves me feeling more warmed than charred. I take a longer sip.

“Whoa, Rose!” Gloria says. “Let’s get some gumbo in you first.”

Batilda’s gumbo is the best thing I’ve eaten since childhood, when I’d wait eagerly each week for Sunday afternoons and Grandma Lucia’s manicotti and braciole. Long after the dinner plates were cleared, Grandma Lucia’s tables remained set with desserts, cups of coffee and bottles of wine tipped repeatedly into the same small glasses I drank my juice from, my grandmother and her four sisters laughing more joyously than my parents ever did. Emboldened by my memories and long sip of bourbon, I ask Batilda, “Are you Gloria’s business associate?”

Batilda raises an eyebrow at Gloria.

Gloria nods.

“What do you think about our business?” Batilda asks.

I spoon gumbo into my mouth and consider the question. A week ago, I would have said Gloria’s work was demeaning to women, unsanitary, unsafe. But Gloria and Batilda seem neither dirty nor sick. “I don’t know.”

“Neither do I, these days,” Gloria sighs.

“What do you mean?” Batilda asks.

“Our business isn’t exactly safe right now.”

Batilda drains the bourbon from her glass. “God damn Elliott Ness. Why couldn’t he stay focused on the mob and leave us alone?”

“Isn’t Elliott Ness the guy who captured Al Capone?” I’m proud of my small bit of knowledge.

“The very same,” Batilda answers, filling everyone’s glasses. “After they convicted Capone, Ness fought crime in Cleveland, convinced himself he’d beaten it, and started a war on women.”

The contempt in her voice surprises me. My parents, teachers and fellow students call Ness a hero. Nobody has ever mentioned his “war on women.”

“Did you know, Rose, you have Ness to thank for your arrest and detention?” I shake my head. Batilda turns to Gloria. “Civics lesson?”

“Good idea.”

Batilda looks back at me. “Mr. Ness, believing he’d eliminated crime in Cleveland and eradicated the dangerous elements of the mob, turned his attention to protecting our boys in uniform. And what do you think Ness decided was the greatest threat to our boys in the armed forces?”

I hold up my hands to show my ignorance.

“Us. Ness convinced the United States government that any woman spotted without a man at her side could be a prostitute carrying a venereal disease. To protect our fine fighting boys from syphilis and the like, Ness set the federal government on a mission to seize and sanitize any woman who appears the slightest bit suspicious.”

“For example, a woman dining alone in public,” Gloria adds pointedly. I’d told her how the police escorted me, handcuffs held against but not locked onto my wrists, out of the diner where I’d been lunching alone.

“Under Ness’ plan, these suspicious women are detained, invasively examined and dangerously treated.”

“Treated how?” I ask, thinking about Gloria’s cellmate.

“With infusions of mercury, arsenic cocktails and sometimes sterilization.”

The gumbo travels backwards from my stomach and threatens to erupt. “Bathroom please,” I beg, and Batilda hurries me down the hall. I fold myself over the toilet seconds before the gumbo flies in semi-digested bits from my mouth. Wiping what missed the bowl with trembling hands, I try to make sense of what Batilda said. Growing up on Long Island, surrounded by fields of corn, allowed to walk unchaperoned into town for ice cream sodas, I’d always felt safe. Danger existed across the ocean. My arrest cracked that illusion. Batilda’s history lesson shattered it.

Gloria and Batilda rise when I return to the kitchen. Batilda fills a glass with water, adding a few leaves she plucks from a plant on the windowsill. “Mint soothes the stomach.” My hand trembles, the ice rattles. Gloria guides me to my chair.

“Drink slowly,” she advises.

I sip my mint water, willing it to cool the fire in my throat and stomach.

“Will you return to New Orleans?” Batilda asks, and Gloria nods.

“I’m not going back to the Villa Convento,” Gloria says. “Ma Taromina is tough, but even she can’t protect us from the anti-erotica army.” She pauses, biting her bottom lip. “I would like to see Maya.” She stares into her bourbon.

“She’ll be happy to see you,” Batilda says.

Gloria looks up, eyes bright. “You think so?”

Batilda reaches across the table and takes Gloria’s hand. “Ma said that girl was torn up when you disappeared. She told me Maya looked like she didn’t sleep a wink until she knew you were safe in Hattiesburg with me.”

“Why did you come to Hattiesburg?” I ask Gloria.

“New Orleans is a grand city, but it has its challenges,” she answers. “I needed a break from the ruckus.”

Batilda shakes her head. “It wasn’t any ruckus you ran away from, it was your own damn feelings.”

“As if you didn’t run away from New Orleans yourself five years back.”

“That was different. They took my Robert from me, your Maya was right there, just asking you to be brave enough to love her.”

Gloria and Batilda glare at each other. Before either can throw another verbal dart, I ask, “Are Maya and Robert your children?”

Batilda stops glaring at Gloria and sighs. “No, Rose, they were our lovers.” Gloria’s cheeks flame red. “Robert built me this house. He’d traveled to New Orleans to bring me home to it the night they killed him.”

Clumped together, my gumbo’s sausages, shrimp and tomatoes make me think of bloody body parts, and my stomach tightens. Death has always felt gruesome to me, even the timely death of octogenarians.  I suspect Batilda’s lover was neither old nor ready to die.

“I should have insisted on meeting him at the station,” Batilda continues, staring out the window at the black night sky. “He begged to see where I’d been working, said he wanted to appreciate all of me, even the pieces I was leaving behind. I warned him it would cause problems, a man as dark as him visiting a place that catered to men with skin light as moonlight. Even Ma Taromina’s own cousins didn’t come to the Villa Convento, their Mediterranean complexion being a shade too beige for local law enforcement to abide.

“But I figured that would be the worst of it, local cops making some arrests and Ma having to pay them more than usual to clear things up. But . . .” Batilda drains her bourbon, looks back out at the night. “Robert never made it inside the Villa Convento. The cops took him off the porch in handcuffs and by the time Ma and I got to the jail, he was gone.” Batilda’s eyes hide what’s inside, like windows dirtied by too much dust.

We sit silently around the table, Gloria pouring herself more bourbon, me moving rice and beans in a circle around sausages, Batilda staring at the white wall above the stove. The kitchen clock ticks like a bomb.

 “Rose, where are you heading?” Batilda asks finally.

“New York.”

Batilda nods and gets a wrinkled, yellowed paper from a drawer. “Trains run on the same schedule they ran on five years ago.” She spreads the schedule on the table and runs her fingers across it.  “Both your trains come through the Hattiesburg Station in three days.” Batilda turns the schedule so Gloria and I can read it. My eyes immediately fall on the fare chart, and I start to sweat. If Gloria doesn’t have enough to pay for her fare and mine, Batilda will have company far longer than she wants, if she’ll even have me without Gloria.

Batilda crosses to the hutch, pulls something out of a flowered vase and places the roll of cash in front of Gloria. “I haven’t used a single dollar,” she says. “Robert paid for everything needed to build this house before they’d even laid the foundation, used almost everything he saved all those years he practiced law and lived like a monk in Baltimore. And Ma Taromina sends me my share of the profits from Villa Convento every month.”

“Thank goodness we invested in the business way back,” Gloria says.

“It seems it may be time to invest in something new,” Batilda says. “Villa Convento may be out of business soon if the Morality Military takes control of New Orleans nightlife.”

******

The Mississippi sunlight floods the floorboards of the strange room where I wake. My mouth feels like it’s stuffed with spiderwebs and the pain in my head is so sharp I fear I’m having a stroke. I can’t figure out where I am; from the high four-poster bed and lace curtains, it could be a fancy hotel.

Gloria’s voice outside my door makes the memories rush back like wildfire.

“Come down and eat.”

I change into the clothes set out on the trunk at the foot of the bed, gingerly adjusting my limbs to fit in the sleeve holes and neck, afraid sudden movements could plunge my head and stomach into greater agony. In the kitchen Batilda begins handing me a plate of eggs but sets it aside when she sees my expression. She sets a cup of black coffee before me.

“Can I see the train schedule, please?” I ask. Batilda gives me the schedule, fare side up. Gloria hasn’t said anything more about money for my ticket.

One-way coach fare to New York is thirty-one dollars. I stare at the steam rising from my mug as if I expect it to spell out how to ask Gloria for the money.

Gloria looks over my shoulder at the schedule. Then she reaches into her pocket and places a roll of cash on my lap. “This should cover the train to New York and a meal while it’s taking you there.”

I want to fall to my knees and kiss her feet, but I just mumble “Thank you,” afraid anything more would make me cry.

“Rose, can you grab me an apron’s-worth of tomatoes from the garden?” Batilda hands me a faded yellow apron. “Show her where the garden is, please, Gloria.”

Outside, the heat hits hard, like a wet towel thrown at my face. Gloria walks wordlessly to the rear of the house, heading toward a patch of green stalks and vines dotted with red and yellow and orange that become tomatoes and peppers as we get closer.

“I...um...I don’t know how to thank you for the money,” I say, my face growing hot. I’ve never understood why thanking people who help you in a big way — who save you — is so much harder than thanking people for everyday things you don’t even need, like a cup of coffee. Maybe it’s because most of us want to be able to save ourselves.

Gloria seems not to have heard me, she’s so busy yanking tomatoes off their vines.

“Gloria, I really appreciate—

“It’s fine!” she says. “I’m happy to help the woman who helped me bust out of that patriarchal purgatory.” She takes the apron from me, puts it on and scoops the tomatoes into it.

“Do you have enough left for your ticket to New Orleans?” I ask, worried.

“I’m not going to New Orleans.” She turns toward the house.

“Why?” My voice squeaks. “If you need some of the money back, I can—

“I have plenty of money,” she says curtly.

“Then why aren’t you buying a ticket to New Orleans?”

“See these dandelions?” She points to a cluster of yellow growing at the edge of the garden. “Growing up, I thought dandelions were the most magical flowers. They’re the color of the sun and of baby ducks, and when they grow old, they fill up with so much magic all you have to do is blow on them to make wishes come true. One day I brought my mom a bouquet of dandelions and just as she was about to place them in a glass of water my father ripped them from her hand.

“‘Damn weeds,’ he said, tossing my bouquet in the trash. “Pull ‘em out and a week later they’re back, spreading faster than chicken pox.’ I’d just recovered from a bad case of chicken pox, so I knew my father really hated dandelions. Later, I asked my mom why my father hated dandelions so much. ‘They’re weeds,’ she said. ‘People hate weeds.’”

“Hold on,” I grab her arm as she turns to leave. “What does your father’s dislike of dandelions have to do with you not going to New Orleans?”

Gloria’s violet eyes bore into me. “Convicts are the weeds of society. Once Maya learns I’m a convict, she’ll look at me just like my father looked at those dandelions.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I say, although Gloria’s words stir my fear. For the first time all day, I look around for someone in a sheriff’s uniform. “You can’t stay here! What will you do, hide in Batilda’s house wondering when you’ll be captured and—” I shudder. “Come with me to New York.”

“What?”

“You can’t live with me in the dorm, but you can find someplace close by.”

“Rose, you’re talking crazy. I’ll be fine.”

“You won’t and you know it,” I’m surprised by my certainty. “Even if you are, who wants to be just fine? Everybody is so busy telling us we’ll be fine that we never have time to figure out if fine is what we want. We deserve to be better than fine,” I say, feeling a rush, finally giving voice to what I’ve wanted to say to so many people — my mother, my father, my Barnard classmates. “If everything we have can be destroyed because some man thinks we’re dangerous, why shouldn’t we want everything we have to be extraordinary while we have it?”

Gloria tilts her head, smiles. “Extraordinary sounds lovely, Rose. Perhaps there’s an extraordinary life waiting for you in New York, but it’s your life, not mine. What would your college friends say if you told them your new friend was a prostitute?”

My face flushes as I consider how my Barnard teachers and classmates would react. I hadn’t thought beyond the train ride. Gloria would need a place to stay in New York, and a job, hopefully in a new field. Would she expect to meet my parents? I cringe at the image of Gloria sitting down for Sunday dinner with us.

“It’s not such a hot idea once you think it through, is it?” I look away. “Don’t feel bad. I can’t say my friends would take to your buttoned-up ways any better than your friends would to me.” She marches back toward the house. I hang back for a while, fingering the dandelions, plucking one to brush its feathery feel against my cheek.

A few minutes later I find Batilda sticking her head in the refrigerator. She emerges with celery, green peppers, onion and — of all things! — a garlic clove. “I didn’t know Southerners used garlic,” I exclaimed, immediately regretting it, worried Batilda might perceive the comment as a criticism. But she laughs.

“There isn’t a dish created that can’t be improved by adding a bit of garlic.” She pauses. “Unless it’s sweet. Nobody’s putting garlic in my Lemon Ice Box Pie.” Batilda sets the celery on a chopping block and clusters the other vegetables around the tomatoes on the counter.

“Can I help?”

“Can you dice?”

Grinning, I take the knife from her hand and start on the celery. “Nobody in my family will make Puttanesca Sauce unless I’m there to chop the vegetables. I’m the family dicing expert.”

Batilda raises her eyebrows. “Do you know the magic of Puttanesca?” I shake my head. “Eating puttanesca sauce brings forth your wild woman, your sexy side.” She gives me a wicked grin and a wink. Blushing, I return to the celery.

Cutting the stiff stalks into bite-sized pieces, I wonder whether I have a sexy side. The closest I’ve come to feeling like a “wild woman” was the night of my senior prom, when my date and I skipped the after party and went to the beach instead. Heels in hand and taffeta skirt of my gown draped over my arm, I wandered ankle deep in the chill surf. Wetting my toes was as wild as I got that night.

Batilda adds my pile of celery pieces to the garlic and peppers starting to sizzle in the pan. She passes me the tomatoes, and I chop as she sprinkles spices into the garlic and peppers.

“What are you studying at college?”

“History.”

“What are you going to do when you graduate?”

It’s the first time anyone has asked. Before coming to Hattiesburg, I was close to accepting that a life raising children, cleaning and cooking was inescapable, even a bit desirable. I had dinner alone often enough at the Barnard dining hall that the idea of a man to talk with over evening meals was appealing. But now, I can’t imagine surrendering my freedom to some man. My mother enjoys a good bit of freedom, but it’s now terribly clear that not all men are as modern as my father. Some are misogynistic sex freaks.

“I have no idea what I’ll do after graduation,” I confess. Wrinkling her forehead, Batilda takes the tomatoes I’ve chopped and slides them into the puttanesca sauce. We watch the sauce silently until it starts speaking to us in bubbling blips.

 Batilda turns down the heat. “What do you want to do after you graduate?” This question stumps me more than the first. She pours us each a glass of wine. “Do you want to teach history?”

“No.”

“Do you want to work for a historical society or museum?”

“No.”

“Do you want to be a librarian?”

“No.”

Batilda pushes my untouched wine towards me. “Drink,” she directs, “while I think of a better question.”

I take a small sip, not wanting to repeat the bourbon incident. The wine slips down my throat, much gentler than the bourbon. I bring the wine to my lips again, this time pausing to sniff it. It reminds me of dirt after a rain, but sweeter.

Pouring dry pasta into the steaming water, Batilda asks, “If you were a white man with unlimited money, what would you do?”

I could do anything under those circumstances, I realize. Anything! “I would write stories and novels, maybe even poetry.”

“You don’t need to be a white man to do that.” She marches into the next room and returns with a book entitled A Room of One’s Own.

 “Virginia Woolf says all you need is your own room and money.” She pauses. “But you’ll need money regardless of whether you write novels, so I think we can eliminate that requirement as being unrelated to being a novelist and just a general requirement for being an independent woman.”

“Don’t you think it might be more important to have money as a writer than as a teacher who gets paychecks every week or month or something? Writers only get paid when — if — their books sell.”

Batilda frowns, then nods. “Excellent point, Rose!” She pours me more wine. “And relevant to many women. But does it matter to you? Surely your parents will house and feed you while you write. What more do you need?”

Would my parents allow me to live with them rent-free indefinitely as I toil over my novel? What would I write my novel about? What if I never come up with an idea, and my parents patiently pay my way through life waiting for the day I publish and make them proud, a day that never comes?

“Rose!” Batilda waves her hand in front of my face. “Where’d you go?”

Blushing, I say, “That’s a lot to ask of my parents.”

Batilda snorts. “But not too much to ask of a husband? Because most men out there don’t want their wives leaving for work every day. Just marry yourself off and you can write in solitude every day after you look after children and clean and cook for some man.” She looks out the window, a smile sneaking onto her face. “Unless you find a man like my Robert. All he ever asked of me was to tell him how my business was going and what my dreams were.” She blinks, inhales deeply. “But my Robert was one of a kind.” She turns back to me. “You’re far better off relying on your parents than on a man.”

“But as a wife I would cook, clean, do laundry for my husband. That’s a job. What will I do to earn my keep at my parents’ house?”

“How about cook, clean and do laundry?” Batilda asks. “I’m guessing they would welcome the help.”

I drink my wine. “It seems irresponsible, getting a college degree that my parents paid for only to become a writer and mooch off them some more.”

“Who taught you it was irresponsible to follow your dreams? It seems to me letting a dream die in its own dust, without once letting it out to see how it does in the light, is far more irresponsible.” It was the sort of thing my mother might say. Except she hadn’t said it. Ever.

“If that’s what my parents believe they would have told me so by now.”

“Are you sure?” Batilda challenges, as I shake off her offer of more wine. “Have you asked either of them how they would feel about your becoming a writer?”

“No.”

“Don’t you owe them the respect of asking for their opinion rather than assuming you aleady know it?” Batilda sits beside me and touches my arm gently. “Do you really think your mother wants you to be a housewife if it means abandoning your dream?”

I know my mother doesn’t want me to become a housewife. She hopes I’ll be a historian, teaching women about what came before them.  It’s important for women to learn what happened to the women who came before them. I haven’t explained to my mother that almost all the history we study at Barnard is about what happened to the men who came before us.

“My mother wants me to be more than a housewife,” I admit. “My mother is more than a housewife,” I add. “At least once a week my father and I had to make ourselves sandwiches because my mother forbid us to eat dinner until she finished sketching it.”

Batilda’s eyes sparkled. “You’re the daughter of an artist!”

“But my mother never sells her drawings. She piles them in trunks that sit in our attic.”

“All the more reason for you to write. Perhaps your courage will make your mother brave enough to bring her drawings out of hiding.”

“Okay.” My two glasses of wine are making me happy and hopeful. “I’ll do it. I’ll write!” Batilda raises her glass to me, and I clink it with mine, pretending a few drops remain.

“What will you write about?”

I think of all my unfinished stories, hidden in the old leather suitcase my father gave me when I graduated high school. Were any of them worth finishing?

“I’m not sure,” I confess. “Nobody has read anything I’ve written since I left grammar school.”

Batilda grabs my hand.

“You have to decide what stories are so good you feel guilty keeping them buried inside you. You have to choose the ideas that call you to explore them by writing them down and giving them freedom. You have to call up the pieces of yourself you’ve set aside and allow them to pull together into a character.”

I wish I felt even a sprinkle of the enthusiasm pouring out of Batilda, but I feel mostly fear. “What if my writing is terrible?”

 “Rose, you’re fortunate to have a desire you can fulfill without needing investors or a degree or any materials other than paper and pen.” Turning away abruptly, Batilda pulls a notebook and pen from the drawer and hands them to me. “Go to your room and write. I won’t bother you and I’ll keep Gloria busy.”

“But, I—

Batilda holds her hand up like a police officer signaling STOP. “You have food and drink. You have the tools you need.” She gestures to the notebook and pen. “And for tonight and tomorrow, you have a room of your own.”

“But—”

“If you’re still worried about your writing being ‘terrible,’ Gloria will read what you write and give her opinion.”

“I’ll do what?” Gloria appears in the kitchen doorway in fresh clothes, hair damp.

“Rose is going to write while you’re staying with me. And I said you would read what she writes.”

“Absolutely!” Gloria grins. “I’ve always wanted to be a literary critic.” She winks at Batilda.

Batilda pushes me gently out of the kitchen.

I pace in my borrowed room the next morning, kicking the crumpled pages of my failed attempts closer to the wastebasket. Each time I start a sentence, the words look listless on the page, bored by their arrangement.

I search my mind for something beautiful about which to write. But all I see in my mind’s eye are dandelions, field upon field upon field of dandelions. I try to picture roses or lilies or daisies, but all I can see are dandelions. I stand in front of the open window, eyes closed, the breeze smelling slightly of dirt. I remember how as a child I would roll the rubbery stem of a dandelion between my fingers over and over and over until I thought of the perfect wish. I’d blow as hard as I could so that when I opened my eyes, all but the stem and head of the dandelion would be gone, dancing away with my wish, carrying it across the world. It was one of the best parts of springtime.

For the rest of the day, I write about dandelions. Gloria asks to read it a few times, but I brush her off. I want my story to be perfect before she reads it.

Because it’s Gloria’s story, the one she told me about her father disparaging and discarding the dandelions she gave her mother as a child. But in my story, something miraculous happens the morning after the dandelions are tossed into the trash. The mother and father find their kitchen filled with downy dandelions seeds floating in the air and sitting at the table is a young soldier. They burst into tears. Their son, away at the war for over two years, believed dead, had come home.

I give Gloria my story to read that night. As she reads it, I gather the things Batilda has given me — clothes that belonged to her niece, blank notebooks, pens and pencils, and her copy of A Room of One’s Own. Inside the front cover, Batilda has written, “For my next favorite novelist. Write on, Rose!” I sleep with the book tucked in my arms.

The next morning my story is sitting on the kitchen table. Batilda flips pancakes onto a plate, sets the plate before me and hands me a cup of coffee. “It’s good,” she says, smiling. “You have real promise as a writer.” I feel a pinprick of disappointment, wishing she’d said talent or gift. “Promise is all you need,” Batilda says, reading my face, “as long as you fulfill it.”

“What did Gloria say?”

“What did I say about what?” Gloria enters the kitchen, Batilda’s borrowed suitcase in hand, dressed in one of Batilda’s dresses. I’m so surprised to see her ready for travel, I forget my question.

Gloria looks at Batilda, smiles. “I’m heading home to New Orleans and to Maya, if she’ll have me.”

Batilda hugs Gloria for a long time, then turns to me. “Rose wants to know what you think of her story.”

“Ah, that.” Gloria sets down her suitcase and takes a long sip of coffee, making me wait. “Your story, despite its overuse of alliteration and paragraphs that go on for three pages and shifting points of view, was okay. It reminded me there are different ways to look at the same thing, and that sometimes, on rare occasions, my viewpoint may not be everyone’s viewpoint.” She smiles.

I have difficulty smiling back because, despite saying the story was okay, she seems to think the writing was terrible. Batilda hugs me, then hugs Gloria again. Gloria mumbles something about not wanting to be late and heads outside carrying our bags.

The Hattiesburg train station is a one-room building with a covered porch. The porch’s tin roof is so rusted it seems purposefully patterned in puce and ghost-grey, the wood pillars beneath it bare in some spots, peeling paint in others. A man leans against a pillar, the weathered, sagging skin of his chest exposed beneath his overalls, a sack at his feet and a cigarette hanging from his mouth. He turns to watch Gloria and me as we step out of the car. Batilda hugs us and says, “You two take good care. Gloria, give my love to Maya. And Rose, make good on that promise!” Gloria and I watch her drive away. We walk down the platform.

“All aboard for New Orleans!”

Gloria embraces me. “Thank you,” she says as she rushes to the New Orleans train, climbs up the steps, and blows me a kiss before she disappears.