Ask for Me Tomorrow

I don’t understand how it all happened between Gilly and me. She was a lot of fun and we had some laughs but then suddenly she was expecting me to marry her. She asked me to, I’m not kidding. I was flattered. I had to really talk fast to get you even to consider marrying me and here was this other woman anxious to have me. I’m not making excuses Ethel. I just want you to realize that often things just happen to people like me. Ordinary people must see things coming and duck maybe, or fight back or run away. But there are some of us who don’t see what’s coming and we end up in a place like this. I won’t try to describe it for you. You wouldn’t believe it anyway being you’re so clean in mind and body. Do you still take all those showers every day? My God what I’d give for a long hot shower right now. To be clean again what a luxury that would be. Everybody and everything at the Quarry is slimy. It’s funny how the people in the U.S. have so many nicknames for prison like it was kind of a joke — pokey, slammer, clink, brig, cooler, tank etc. Here nobody ever calls it anything but the Quarry. It’s too serious to have a nickname. I must get out. I must.

Ethel you are the only hope I have left. One of the guards told me that my case is finally coming up next month. I can’t explain how this crazy system works but it’s not the way ours does with a jury, etc. The man who is the magistrate assigned to me will decide my fate. Word from the grapevine is that he charges a fixed price to release Americans $10,000. Guilt and innocence and justice they’re only words here. No matter what I did nor didn’t do, for $10,000 I can get out of this place.

Please help me. Please for the love of God help me Ethel. I’m going to die here unless you get me out. I am filthy. My clothes, my cot, the food I eat, it’s all filthy. My teeth are rotting and my hair is falling out and my eyes are so bad I can hardly see what I’m writing. I’ve paid a hundred times for every hurt I’ve done anyone. I can’t take it much longer. I am at your mercy Ethel.

B. J.

Gilly folded the letter and put it back in the envelope very quickly so that Ethel might not notice how badly her hands were trembling. She felt sick, as if someone had struck her a mortal blow in the stomach, and the lump in her throat was so large and heavy that she was afraid her voice couldn’t push past it: “Why did you ask me to read this?”

“So you’d understand how useless it is for you to go on searching for B. J. Even if you found him, he wouldn’t want to live with you anyway. He turned to me in his hour of need, not you. It’s all there in the letter. I am the only woman he ever loved and admired and respected.”

“Shut up, damn you! Shut your vicious mouth, you—”

“B. J. was right,” Ethel said softly. “You have no class.”