It was freezing cold and no heat came up to the third floor where I was. In that room with falling plaster and buckling floorboards and darting roaches, I sat wearing every stitch I owned, with a sleazy blanket and a faded quilt draped around me waiting for the heat to rise, when in swept Mrs. Crowe’s niece in a fur coat and a fur hat and shiny leather boots up to her knees. Her face was beet red from anger when she started telling me that she had traced me through a private detective and I was to give her back the heirloom I had stolen.
Her statement made me forget the precious little bit I knew of the English language. I couldn’t say a word, and she kept on screaming that if I returned the box immediately no criminal charge would be made against me. Then I got back my voice and I said that box was mine and that Mrs. Crowe had wanted me to have it, and she asked if I had any proof or if there were any witnesses to the gift, and I told her that when I was given a present I said thank you, that I didn’t ask for proof and witnesses, and that nothing could make me part with Mrs. Crowe’s box.
The niece stood there breathing hard, in and out, almost counting her breaths like somebody doing an exercise to get control of herself.
“You’ll see,” she yelled, and then she left.
The room was colder than ever and my teeth chattered.
Not long afterward I heard heavy steps clumping up the stairway.
I realized that the niece had carried out her threat and that the police were after me.
I was panic-stricken. I chased around the room like a rat with a cat after it: Then I thought that if the police searched my room and couldn’t find the box it might give me time to decide what to do. I grabbed the box out of the top dresser drawer and scurried down the back hall. I snatched the back door open. I think what I intended to do was run down the back steps and hide the box somewhere, underneath a bush or maybe in a garbage can.
Those back steps were steep and rose almost straight up for three stories and they were flimsy and covered with ice.
I started down. My right foot slipped. The handrail saved me. I clung to it with one hand and to the silver box with the other hand and picked and chose my way across the patches of ice.
When I was midway I heard my name shrieked. I looked around to see a big man leaping down the steps after me. I never saw such anger on a person’s face. Then he was directly behind me and reached out to snatch the box.
I swerved to escape his grasp and he cursed me. Maybe I pushed him. I’m not sure — not really.
Anyway, he slipped and fell down and down and down, and then after all that falling he was absolutely still. The bottom step was beneath his head like a pillow and the rest of his body was spreadeagled on the brick walk.
The almost like a pet that wants to follow its master, the silver box jumped from my hand and bounced down the steps to land beside the man’s left ear.
My brain was numb. I felt paralyzed. Then I screamed.
Tenants from that house and the houses next door and across the alley pushed windows open and flung doors open to see what the commotion was about, and then some of them began to run toward the back yard. The policeman who was the dead man’s partner — I guess you’d call him that — ordered them to keep away.
After a while more police came and they took the dead man’s body and drove me to the station where I was locked up.
From the very beginning I didn’t take to that young lawyer they assigned to me. There wasn’t anything exactly that I could put my finger on. I just felt uneasy with him. His last name was Stanton. He had a first name of course, but he didn’t tell me what it was; he said he wanted me to call him Bat like all his friends did.
He was always smiling and reassuring me when there wasn’t anything to smile or be reassured about, and he ought to have known it all along instead of filling me with false hope.
All I could think was that I was thankful Mama and Papa and Mr.
Williams were dead and that my shame wouldn’t bring shame on them.
“It’s going to be all right,” the lawyer kept saying right up to the end, and then he claimed to be indignant when I was found guilty of resisting arrest and of manslaughter and theft or robbery — there was the biggest hullabaloo as to whether I was guilty of theft or robbery. Not that I was guilty of either, at least in this particular instance, but no one would believe me.
You would have thought it was the lawyer being sentenced instead of me, the way he carried on. He called it a terrible miscarriage of justice and said we might as well be back in the eighteenth century when they hanged children.
Well, that was an exaggeration, if ever there was one; nobody was being hanged and nobody was a child. That policeman had died and I had had a part in it. Maybe I had pushed him. I couldn’t be sure. In my heart I really hadn’t meant him any harm. I was just scared. But he was dead all the same. And as far as stealing went, I hadn’t stolen the box but I had stolen other things more than once.
And then it happened. It was a miracle. All my life I’d dreamed of a nice room of my own, a comfortable place to stay. And that’s exactly what I got.
The room was on the small side but it had everything I needed in it, even a wash basin with hot and cold running water, and the walls were freshly painted, and they let me choose whether I wanted a wing chair with a chintz slipcover or a modern Danish armchair.
I even got to decide what color bedspread I preferred. The window looked out on a beautiful lawn edged with shrubbery, and the matron said I’d be allowed to go to the greenhouse and select some pot plants to keep in my room. The next day I picked out a white glox-inia and some russet chrysanthemums.
I didn’t mind the bars at the windows at all. Why, this day and age some of the finest mansions have barred windows to keep burglars out.
The meals — I simply couldn’t believe there was such delicious food in the world. The woman who supervised their preparation had embezzled the funds of one of the largest catering companies in the state after working herself up from assistant cook to treasurer.
The other inmates were very friendly and most of them had led the most interesting lives. Some of the ladies occasionally used words that you usually see written only on fences or printed on sidewalks before the cement dries, but when they were scolded they apologized.
Every now and then somebody would get angry with someone and there would be a little scratching or hair pulling, but it never got too bad. There was a choir — I can’t sing but I love music — and they gave a concert every Tuesday morning at chapel, and Thursday night was movie night. There wasn’t any admission charge. All you did was go in and sit down anywhere you pleased.
We all had a special job and I was assigned to the infirmary. The doctor and nurse both complimented me. The doctor said that I should have gone into professional nursing, that I gave confidence to the patients and helped them get well. I don’t know about that but I’ve had years of practice with sick people and I like to help anybody who feels bad.
I was so happy that sometimes I couldn’t sleep at night. I’d get up and click on the light and look at the furniture and the walls. It was hard to believe I had such a pleasant place to stay. I’d remember supper that night, how I’d gone back to the steam table for a second helping of asparagus with lemon and herb sauce, and I compared my plenty with those terrible times when I had slunk into supermarkets and nibbled overripe fruit and raw vegetables to ease my hunger.
Then one day here came that lawyer, not even at regular visiting hours, bouncing around congratulating me that my appeal had been upheld, or whatever the term was, and that I was as free as a bird to leave right that minute.