Page 102 of The Reformatory

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A crooked Sunday tie. A wide grin. An unbruised face. When Gloria first saw Robbie, she only let herself notice everything right with him, the things she’d prayed for since his confinement. He was alive. He was healthy. He wasn’t babbling with fright. He was sweaty but he was clean. His cheeks might be fatter than the last time she’d seen him. She pinched his cheek and rubbed his knotted hair and laughed as she hugged him and swung him from side to side.

But when Robbie winced while Miz Lottie circled her palm across his back, Gloria noticed Robbie’s sleep-starved eyes, his stiff shoulders, and… something else. He avoided her eyes.

“What happened to your back?” Gloria said. She wanted to scream and throw chairs. Had the Negro guard reading a magazine with his chair tilted halfway over in the doorway been the one who hurt Robbie? If so, she wished she could knock his chair over with her mind.

“Nothing.” Robbie pulled away from Miz Lottie and sat on a wobbly chair at the wooden table meant for small children.

The visiting area was a playroom with cartoon murals on the wall and board games with torn covers stacked on the back shelf. Another colored woman was visiting her weeping son on the opposite side, and he had climbed into her lap despite the petite chair. So far, his mother just kept saying, “It’s all right. God will get us through.” The boy looked only nine or ten.

Robbie wasn’t weeping on the outside, but he was just as miserable.

“Brought you some of your favorite food,” Miz Lottie said cheerfully, and he watched while she unwrapped her foil, which was leaking on the tabletop. “A turkey wing, greens, macaroni and cheese, corn bread. And that hunk of sweet potato pie like I promised! Didn’t have to make most of it myself, the way folks brought food plates yesterday.” Gloria gave her a worried glance, but Miz Lottie didn’t say why people were bringing plates—because of the cabin burning down. Because of the Klan. Most of them didn’t have money to give, so they brought food instead. Like a repast.

“It’s Thanksgiving?” Without a smile, Robert sounded mocking.

“It sho’ is for us, Robbie. We’re so glad to see you.”

Miz Lottie had to be instructed to leave the fork and butter knife she’d brought at the desk, so Robbie clawed into the food with his fingers. For a long time, he concentrated on eating. Gloria itched to correct him about crumbs and juice he should wipe away with the crumpled napkin Miz Lottie offered him, but the intensity of his hunger kept her quiet. She and Miz Lottie looked at each other with the same mind: Let him eat in peace. Let him enjoy something.

Already, Robbie was a different boy. The deputy and the judge and the warden had stolen away the brother she knew. Even if he’d been the same boy, the life he’d known was burned to the ground. What would she give to curl in Mama’s lap? But she would not cry, although her insides were rending and the sobbing boy across the room captured the exact sound of her pain. She would not cry. Robbie was the prisoner, not her. She would walk free after their visit even if a part of her would still be locked inside with him.

“They feed you in here?” Miz Lottie said.

Robbie nodded, still filling his mouth by the handful. “Not good food. Not like this.”

Gloria and Miz Lottie laughed too brightly to create a sound other than crying and the sad pattering of rain against the window.

“At least he’s got his appetite,” Miz Lottie said.

“They let me work in the kitchen. Well…” Then he stopped, not wanting to tell.

“What, Robbie?” Gloria said, leaning closer.

“I had to pull weeds in the cornfield two days. But then I got back in the kitchen.”

Gloria felt rage again, remembering the boys she’d seen loaded on trucks as labor, but she made herself smile. He knew where the cornfield was. Good. That would make it easier to help him understand the plan Uncle June had worked out with her.

“What do you know about a kitchen?” Gloria said, making small talk. “You’re not back there cooking, are you? No wonder you’re so hungry.” Robbie had sometimes helped Mama stir flapjack batter so he could lick the bowl, but he was a stranger in the kitchen.

There! A small smile peeked from the corner of Robbie’s mouth. “Nah. Just dishes.”

But it wasn’t just dishes. Every word Robbie spoke rang with deliberate silences. Gloria couldn’t contain her question anymore: “They beat you, Robbie?”

He looked up, startled. She saw him want to lie, but that was the thing about her and Robbie: he could lie to Mama and Papa to keep out of trouble, but not to her. Maybe it was because she so often knew things without being told, so why lie?

Robbie nodded. Under the table, Miz Lottie squeezed Gloria’s hand so tightly that it hurt. “Bad?” Gloria said.

Robbie shrugged. He didn’t want to say how bad with Miz Lottie there. “Where? Your back?”

Robbie nodded again. “It’s not just me,” he said. “Lots of boys get beat.”

Gloria stood up so quickly that her knees banged against the tiny table. After a glance at the doorway where the guard still sat tilting back on a chair, she went to Robbie and lifted up the back of his shirt. At first she didn’t see any evidence of a beating, so she lifted higher—revealing crisscrossing patterns of at least a dozen lash marks. The blood had dried, but thin scars remained. The grooves seemed shallow, so maybe they would heal. Maybe he would not carry the marks the rest of his life. If not for last night’s meeting with June and the Bible in Miz Lottie’s lap, Gloria might have stormed to the husky Negro man guarding the door and said things she would regret. Instead, she took a breath to make her hand stop trembling as she touched her brother’s skin.

Miz Lottie looked to Gloria’s face for her reaction, but she would not lean over to look at Robbie’s back. She didn’t want to see. Gloria lowered Robbie’s shirt with care.

“Why’d they beat you?” Gloria said.