A Girl Called Honey

Ten

It was a big metal room full of women. High on the back wall was a barred window, above the woman-crowded metal bench. That bench, running the full width of the back wall, was the only furniture in the big square metal room. A dozen women sat hip-crowded on the metal bench, dressed in shapeless gray bags of dresses. Another dozen women sat on the scuffed black metal floor. A few more leaned against the gray metal walls, trying to talk. But it was tough to talk, because of the screaming.

Up front, draped against the metal bars like an old newspaper flung there by the wind, Honour Mercy Bane hung screaming. Honey Bane now, Honey Bane now and forever more.

Honey Bane was a mess. Her chestnut hair lay tangled, dull and streaming, stuck to her head like a fright wig. Her face was white, the white of the underbelly of a fish, except for the gray around her staring eyes and the dark red gaping wound of her screaming mouth.

She’d been screaming for a long while, and her voice was getting hoarse. They’d brought her in at three in the morning, two rough-handed cops, and tossed her in the female detention tank with the rest of the dregs scooped from the murky bottom of the city that night, and at first she’d stood hunch-shouldered in a corner, leaning against the wall, chain-smoking and glaring at the hollow-eyed broads who’d tried to talk to her.

At four, she started to pace back and forth across the metal floor and around the perimeter of the walls, pacing and shaking her head and rubbing her upper arms with trembling fingers, as though she were cold. Some of the women, knowing the signs, watched her in silence, like beasts of prey. The rest ignored her.

At five, she began to tremble and stretch and rub her cheeks with hard fingers, and the watching women licked dry lips. At five-fifteen, she fell, rolled, struggled up and lunged into the bars. She hung there, quivering, and at five-twenty-five, she started to scream.

With the first scream, three of the women had darted forward. The first one to reach her jabbed into the pocket of Honey Bane’s prison dress and pulled out the crumpled remains of her cigarettes, then ducked away form the angry, envious clutching of the other two. And Honour Mercy screamed for the second time, neither knowing nor caring that her cigarettes had been stolen. It wasn’t cigarettes she wanted.

Now it was seven o’clock, and she was still screaming, though her voice was getting hoarse. One or two guards had tried to stop her, telling her the doc would come at seven, but she neither heard nor understood. One or two of the other women, unnerved by the screaming, had tried to stop her, to pull her away from the bars, but she had clung and shrieked and they had given up.

And now it was eight o’clock, and the metal door down at the end of the long gray metal hall clanged open. Two guards came through, followed by an annoyed young man in a business suit. They came down the hall, their shoes ringing on the black metal floor, and the annoyed young man waited while the guards unlocked the detention tank door. The three of them came in, and the guards efficiently peeled Honey Bane from the bars and held her rigid, still screaming, her back against the wall.

The annoyed young man put down his black bag and slapped Honey Bane twice across the face, forehand, backhand. “Stop that,” he said, and his voice was emotionless and cold. “I’m going to give you something now.”

The silence itself was like a scream, coming so abruptly. Honey Bane blinked rapidly, her eyes tearing, trying to focus on the annoyed young man. “Give — give — give me—”

“Got to get you ready for the judge,” said one of the guards. He grinned, holding her arm with one hand, rolling the gray sleeve up with the other. “Can’t have you all shook up in front of the judge,” he said.

Honey Bane fought the two realities, the hot hurtful hating reality within, the cold cruel killing reality without, and slowly she forced her attention away from the reality within and saw and heard and smelled and felt the reality without.

She looked upon the real world. In the background, a mob scene from the Inferno, women in shapeless gray, milling and staring, scratching their sores, grimacing their lips. In the foreground, the annoyed young man, down on one knee and crouched over his now open black bag, preparing a hypodermic.

A hypodermic. The needle glinted in the light from the unshaded bulbs high up against the metal ceiling. The needle glinted and gleamed, drawing her eyes, drawing her attention, drawing her soul.

Her mouth opened, working. “You’ll — give — me — something?”

“Sure thing,” said the guard. “Got to make you pretty for the judge,” he cackled, showing yellowed teeth.

The world was coming back, stronger and stronger. To either side there was a man, holding her. Men in uniform, guards, and the annoyed young man was rising up with the golden gleaming needle, and the one guard had rolled up her right sleeve.

With sudden violence, she shook her head, pulling away, her mouth distorted wide. One thing she knew in all the world, one thing and one thing only, and she screamed it at them. “Not the arm!”

“Hold her still,” said the annoyed young man. He was petulant, unjustifiably detained, left standing there with the cotton swab in one hand and the golden gleaming needle in the other.

“Not the arm!” shrieked Honey Bane. “The leg, the leg, not the arm!”

The two guards held her, crowded her close against the wall, and the annoyed young man came forward, the cotton swab moving with practiced indifference on her upper arm. “Where you’re going,” he told her coldly, “it won’t make any difference.” And the golden gleaming needle jabbed in.

When they let her go, she slumped back, sliding down the wall, her legs crumpled beneath her, her knees sticking up and out, the gray shapeless skirt falling away to her hips. The prison dress was all she was wearing.

The two guards looked at her, grinning, but the annoyed young man curled his lip and pointedly looked the other way. The guards unlocked the tank door, and they and the annoyed young man stepped through to the hall. The door was relocked, and three men walked back down the echoing hall and through the door at the far end.

Now that there was silence, more of the women got into conversations, and some of them lay down on the floor to try to get a little sleep before appearing in court. A few of them, new and curious and uncertain, watched Honey Bane with wondering eyes.

But she didn’t notice the looks or hear the conversations or know that her skirt was piled high about her hips. The outside reality had faded away once again, and the reality within had taken over. Slowly, quiveringly, painfully, far down within the crumpled huddled body that was and wasn’t Honey Bane, she was beginning to live again. Slowly, she was being reborn, she was returning from the dead. High hot color began to glow in her face. Her hands, which had been trembling and shaking so badly just a few moments before, grew still and languid. Her whole body relaxed, as tension drained away, leaving her limp and unmoving. Her eyes were distant and high-seeing, gleaming with a pale life of their own.

She stood, with slow and languid movements, and waited unmoving, her arms hanging still at her sides, her eyes almost blank-looking, staring far off at the reality within.

She had returned from the dead. On the island of Haiti, they would have called her undead, the zombie. On Manhattan Island, where the magic phrases were different, they called her junkie, the snowbird.

It took a while for the first high keening to wear off, and for Honey Bane to gradually circle down from that high-flying cloud and descend close enough to make out the details of the reality without. Finally, though, she did come down, and saw and realized where she was.

And this time, she realized, they’d picked her up just before she was due for a needle. And she was carrying the stuff on her when she’d been grabbed. So now they had her on a user rap.

That was bad — very bad. A simple charge of soliciting wasn’t anything to worry about all by itself — she’d been through that she didn’t know how many times, and she’d never gotten more than a suspended sentence out of it for disorderly behavior — but a user rap was something else again. It would mean six months at Lexington, taking the cure. It would mean getting dragged in by the cops every time there was a general narcotics pick-up. It would mean having cops banging on the door all the time, breaking in and looking for more of the stuff.

That’s the way it had been with Marie. Twice she’d been grabbed and convicted on user raps. The first time, she got the six-month taper-off cure at Lexington. The second time, she got the cold-turkey cure at a state hospital out on Long Island.

The third time they hadn’t wasted time with a user charge. She’d taken a fall for possession, and was now in the woman’s prison upstate, on a seven-to-ten. And Marie wasn’t the type to get time off for good behavior. Whatever years she had left when she could make a dime hustling, she’d be spending behind bars. By the time she got out, she’d be through. Too old to make it on Whore Row; too beat up to make it anywhere else. And she’d be back on the big H in forty-eight hours, with no way to raise the cash to feed the monkey on her back.

That was no way to go. Honey Bane was now starting down the same three steps Marie had taken, and she knew she couldn’t afford to go down more than just the first step. She’d have to make sure she fell no farther.

It never occurred to her to keep away from the stuff once she’d had the cure and been freed. No, that wasn’t a solution, not conceivably a solution. She would simply have to be more careful in the future, that was all. She’d have to find some absolutely safe hiding place for the stuff.

There was Roxanne. Since Marie had been sent up on the possession charge, Honey had found herself a new lover. Roxanne, a young kid from South Dakota somewhere, a short, fiery brunette, now working Whore Row. Roxanne wasn’t a user, and she’d never even been pulled in by the cops on a soliciting charge. Her place would be as safe as a convent. The stuff could be left there, and Honey could stop by every time she needed a fix. That would work out, all right, that would work out fine.

As for Lexington, there was nothing to worry about there. As a matter of fact, it would be a nice little vacation. No hustling, no crazy hours or eating greasy meals in Eighth Avenue luncheonettes, no dodging the cops all the time.

And the best part of it was that they believed in the slow cure at Lexington. That meant she’d be getting free H for the next few months, and that was heaven. The amount would gradually taper off, and eventually they’d stop feeding it to her completely, but that was way off in the future somewhere, and she didn’t have to worry about it. Free H. It was the goddam answer to a maiden’s prayer that’s what it was.

And when she came back, she’d stash the stuff with Roxanne. No problems.

One problem, maybe. Roxanne was young, damn good-looking. She was just liable to get switched to the phone business. That would be a good break for her, of course; she’d make damn good money, have a nice apartment uptown and go out with the better class of customers. But it would also mean the end of her relationship with Honey Bane. Honey knew how that worked. She’d been on the phone herself, and she knew that the girls who worked the phone didn’t hang around with the girls who worked the street.

She nodded, smiling to herself, lost in her memories. She’d been on the phone herself, she had, and she’d had a great little apartment uptown. Until that one lousy customer had seen the marks on the insides of her legs and bitched that he hadn’t paid to get mixed up with a junkie. Then all of a sudden she hadn’t been working the phone anymore. She’d been back to working the street.

But maybe it wouldn’t happen. Maybe Marie — no, Roxanne — maybe Roxanne wouldn’t get switched over to the phone. There was no sense worrying about it, anyway. No sense worrying about anything.

At eight o’clock, a matron came, a stocky, sour-faced woman in an unattractive uniform, and took Honey Bane away, holding her with a too-tight grip on the elbow. Honey went willingly, not worrying about anything, not caring about anything, and the matron led her to a small room where her clothes were waiting, and she changed from the prison dress back to her own clothes, and the matron turned her over to a guard to be taken up to the court.

The courtroom was up on the next floor. The guard led the way to the stairwell, and stood aside for Honey to go first up the stairs. She did so, and the guard slid his hand up her leg, beneath the skirt, grabbing her.

Her voice flat, she said, “I hope you get syphilis of the hand.”

He jerked his hand away, and growled, “You’re a tough one, huh?”

She didn’t bother to answer.

He reached up and grasped her elbow, pinching it with his fingers, saying, “Not so fast, girlie. There’s no rush.”

She allowed herself to be led up the rest of the way and into the courtroom. Then she had to wait for fifteen minutes, sitting in the front row while the judge worked with people ahead of her.

This was Judge McBee. He smiled and told jokes, and called the defendants by their first names. He could skin you, slowly, with a hot knife, but he’d smile and joke and make friendly chatter all the while. Everybody along Whore Row knew Judge McBee. They hated his guts.

She sat, not listening, not caring, in a soft and pleasant haze. After the first hard jolt and the crystal clarity of thought, she had sunk slowly into a soft cottony mist, and she would be there now for most of the day. She sat, not listening, not thinking about where she was or what was happening to her, and they had to call her name twice before she realized it was her turn before the bar of justice.

She got to her feet, and a guard walked her forward, placed her in front of the judge’s high bench. She looked up at him, the round cheerful face framed with gray-white hair, and he beamed down at her, nodding and saying, “Well, now, Honey, I thought I wasn’t going to be seeing you anymore.”

She smiled a little in return. “Me, too,” she said.

“Looks like things are a lot more serious this time,” said the judge happily. He pawed among the official documents on his desk, and the young man to his right reached over his shoulder and plucked out the particular paper he wanted. The young man was Edward McBee, the judge’s nephew, a law student up in Connecticut. He’d asked Judge McBee to let him sit in at court, behind the judge’s bench, to see the proceedings from the judge’s angle of vision.

Judge McBee now took the paper from his nephew, beaming and nodding his thanks, and slowly read the document. Finished at last, he peered at Honey Bane and said, “It says here you were found with heroin on your person, Honey. You using that stuff now?”

“Yes,” she said.

Edward McBee strained forward, his eager face inches from his uncle’s black-clothed shoulder, and stared at Honey Bane, as though trying to see Honour Mercy, lurking somewhere far beneath.

“That’s terrible stuff, Honey,” said the judge. “You want to get off that, you hear me?”

Some answer was expected of her. She felt a moment of panic, until she realized she could answer the last part of the question. Yes, she did hear him. “Yes,” she said.

“Now,” said Judge McBee, “I’m going to have you sent to Lexington. Have you heard of Lexington?”

“That’s where they have the slow cure,” she said.

“That’s right.” He beamed paternally at her, pleased with the right answer. “I’ll have you sent there, for six months. And when you come back, I want you to stay away from narcotics. Completely.” He looked down at his papers again, and smiled suddenly. “I’m going to help you, Honey,” he said. “I’m going to help you stay away from narcotics. You have also been charged with disorderly conduct, you know. Soliciting again. The last time you were here, you promised me you wouldn’t be doing that anymore.”

She hung her head, hating him. There was nothing she could say.

“When you come back, then,” he said cheerfully, “you can begin a ninety-day sentence in the city jail for disorderly conduct. That’s to begin the day you are released from Lexington.” Uncapping a silver fountain pen, he wrote hastily, and looked up once again, smiling. “I won’t be seeing you for a while, Honey,” he said. “Not for nine months. You be a good girl in Lexington, now.”

“Yes,” she said.

“And I’ll see you in nine months.”

“Yes.”

He shook his head, smiling sadly. “Yes,” he said. “I’ll see you here again in nine months. You won’t be changing, will you? All right, Honey, that’s all. Go on with the matron.”

Another hand was gripping Honey Bane’s elbow, too hard, and she let herself be taken away, through the door to the left of the judge’s bench, as Edward McBee stared after her, his forehead creased in the lines of a puzzled frown.

Nine months. She hated that bastard. In nine months, Roxanne would be God knew where. She’d have to find somebody else to hold the stuff.

Court was finished for the day, and Judge McBee sat with his nephew in his office, smoking his first cigarette of the day. “Well, Edward,” he said. “How did it look from my side of the bench?”

“Frightening,” said Edward McBee earnestly. “Sitting back in the spectator’s seats, you don’t see the expressions on their faces. That girl—”

Judge McBee raised a humorous eyebrow. “Girl?”

“The one you called Honey. Charged with using heroin.”

“Oh, yes.” Judge McBee nodded, smiling. “She’s an old friend,” he said. “In once or twice a month, for playing the prostitute. Been around for years.”

“How old is she?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Twenty-four, I suppose, maybe twenty-five.”

“She looked thirty or more.”

“They get that look,” said the judge wisely. “It’s the kind of life they lead.”

“How does a girl like that get involved in such a life?” his nephew asked him.

“A girl like what?”

The nephew blinked in embarrassment at his uncle’s amusement. “There was something about that girl—” He stopped in confusion.

“Now don’t go romanticizing a common whore,” said the judge sternly. “That’s all the girl is, a common whore.”

“But how did she get that way, that’s what I want know. How did she get that way?”

“They’re born that way,” the judge told him. “It’s simple as that. They’re born that way, and nothing can change them.” He heaved to his feet. “Now, let’s get some lunch,” he said. “I’m starving.”