to be sent to The Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded. The child was aborted and a court-ordered hysterectomy was performed on Miss Epps.”
The whole gallery breaks into outraged whispers and Bobby Rudd is up out of his chair so fast he knocks it over. “Objection, Your Honor! Objection!”
Judge Whitmore says, “Sit down, Bobby. You’ve seen the hospital records. You’re makin’ an ass out of yourself.”
The prosecuting attorney tries to squeeze back a smile and is not successful when he asks Curry, “After hearing Miss Epps’s story, is that when you realized that the Colony might be a perfect place for the Carmody family to hide Mrs. Evelyn Carmody, so she’d be unable to testify against Mrs. Ruth Love Carmody for attempted murder?”
“Yes,” Curry simply says.
“It’s my understanding, Detective Sardino,” Judge Whitmore says, interrupting the questioning, “that you had the sheriff suggest to me that you might benefit from spending time at the hospital.” By the scarlet color the judge is turning, and the pointed way he’s looking at Andy Nash, it seems like the sheriff didn’t exactly tell him that Curry was really an undercover cop who was looking for my mother. “I believe I signed the papers that sent you there for observation.”
Curry says, somewhat contritely, “That’s right, Your Honor. I apologize to the court. It was the only way we could think of to place someone there in order to investigate our suspicions.”
Judge Whitmore is still looking at the sheriff, who is nervously mopping his brow with his kerchief. “Proceed,” His Honor finally says in a way that makes me think there will be quite the kick up between him and the sheriff in his chambers later on.
“Once you were admitted to the hospital, how did you go about attempting to prove your theory that Mrs. Carmody might have been committed?” Mr. Stockton asks.
“Mr. Moody had given me a picture of Mrs. Carmody. I showed that around, but none of the patients seemed to recognize her.”
Mama squeezes my hand very tightly at that point. I heard her tell Mrs. Tittle at the picnic when I was eavesdropping that she was rarely allowed out of her room.
“I also asked if they’d ever come across a patient who might be claiming that she was somebody other than who the hospital said she was,” Curry says. “Except for mentioning a woman who was known as Marie Antoinette, no one volunteered any information. I had no luck until late on the second day when I overheard the nurses talking about a woman named Laurie who insisted that her real name was Evelyn. They were discussing which of them should call Doctor Keller to up her medication. I was pretty sure then that I’d found Mrs. Carmody.”
I look back at E. J. and Dagmar again and think of the poor souls up at the Colony. I wonder how many of the patients there are truly bad off in the brain and how many are there for reasons that have nothing to do with them getting some help.
Mr. Stockton asks, “Once you were sure it was Mrs. Carmody, what did you do next, Detective?”
“I waited until the nurses went about their duties and used their phone to call Sheriff Nash and apprised him of the situation. Since the hospital is out of his jurisdiction, he had no power to have Mrs. Carmody released. We decided the quickest way to get Mrs. Carmody out of there would be to come back with Doctor Chester Keller, who was responsible for committing her in the first place.”
Judge Whitmore pounds his gavel and says, “Order.” Just about everybody in the room is saying something. Doc Keller has treated them and their children for many years. It’s hard for them to believe he’d do anything so hypocritical.
The lawyer asks a few more technical questions and then tells Curry to step down. He tips his hat as he walks past Woody, Mama, and me and right out the courtroom door. He’s leaving to go back up north to his Indian wife and his papooses, who I am sure have been missing him so badly. I told him last night after supper
When Sheriff Andy Nash gets up to the stand, his testimony is to the point. Even though he is sweating so bad that his uniform shirt has turned from brown to black, he is coolly concise when he relates his part in rescuing Mama. The folks in the gallery let out a cheer for our hometown hero when he steps down from the box.
And, of course, my uncle Sam. He gets up and corroborates what Curry had to say, only in his much slower way. There’s a cheer for him, too. But mostly from the colored people.
Others are waiting to tell their side of the story as well.
I’m sure Dagmar Epps will be asked by the prosecution to testify to what she told Curry up in the hobo camp about being taken away to the Colony to have that operation by order of Papa, who would only do something that awful because Grampa made him.
Doc Keller, who committed Mama to the hospital even though there wasn’t a thing wrong with her except a desire to be her own untrampled person, also has a lot to answer for.
And Remmy Hawkins. He told the sheriff he found Mama’s bloody blouse over at the Triple S under a rock, which was a big fat pimply lie told to incriminate Sam-I hope he gets sent to Sing Sing, but he’ll probably only have to report to the detention center over in Bedford County.
My mother still has to say what happened to her, too. But she met with the judge earlier today and asked that Woody and me be disallowed from hearing any testimony that might “scar my children more than they’ve already been scarred.”
So at high noon Judge Whitmore pounds his gavel and says, “We will break for lunch and resume in one hour without the children present.”
On our way out of the courtroom, I look over at Papa, Grampa, and Uncle Blackie. They barely made it out of the burning house alive and I bet some days they wished they hadn’t. I’ve spent enough time in my father’s courtroom to know that the three of them will be bound over for trial. They will be found guilty and sent away for a very long time for what they’ve done. If I never see Grampa or Blackie again, it won’t be too soon, but to Papa I stop and say, “I’ll write to you,” and then I run out of that courtroom before he can say, “Don’t bother. I don’t ever want to hear from you again, you little traitor.”
We stop for an ice cream on the ride over to Granny Beezy’s. (She has given Woody and me permission to call her that, which we took to right off.) Mama wants Woody and me to stay at her house on Monroe Street for the rest of the afternoon until she is finished up in the courtroom.
Mama and my twin and I are sitting on the banks of the Maury River, cooling our heels, eating our cones, and watching the water float by. I am certain that Mama is about to say something about tomorrow being a river ready to carry us to our fondest dreams because it seems like something she would say at a time like this, but after being still for the longest while, she tells us in a voice that sounds like it’s about to break into many pieces, “Emily Dickinson wrote, ‘The past is not a package one can lay away,’ but… we’re going to do our best to do just that, aren’t we, peas?”
Woody nods in agreement, but I don’t. I think to myself-that Emily Dickinson. She is always right on the money.
We’ve been settled in our new house for almost three weeks.
The gray Victorian is sort of run-down and does not show a lot of promise of picking itself up. It reminds me a lot of something you’d find over at What Goes Around Comes Around. There are no glorious woods of birch and ash and no creek with stepping stones. No wide veranda with a welcoming porch swing that invites you to while away an afternoon. No barn. In the backyard, there’s a dilapidated doghouse. Ivory uses it to store his bones, but is happier snoring on the other side of Woody at bedtime.
It didn’t take us anytime at all to get set up. We had nothing to unpack. Everything we owned was destroyed in the fire. Even my binoculars. We have done some shopping. Mama bought us books and clothes and a new hi-fi. She
