Sidney Sheldon - If Tomorrow Comes

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, дlskade.”

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” — Emestine 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.”