Baby and Diamond

This precious nugget of advice was given to me by an older woman in expensive clothes and garish makeup, chalky white face set off by orange red lipstick and crooked eye liner. She was one of the first people I met on my first visit to the state facility, where, about five years later, a woman would die, strangled. She minced around in gold strapped sandals and explained that her sister placed her there to get rid of her, that it was all a terrible mistake. Remember Bette Davis in "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane"?

She was just one of many women I met, some young and some old, but all with a story. The saddest were those whose grown children humored them until they squandered their money, which caught Jr’s attention very quickly. One such lady was from the Spring Hill section of Mobile. Think old money, old society. She had children and grandchildren but her family still called her Baby. She would act clueless, but I would catch sparks of intelligence in her face. She said she had been a nurse, but didn’t work, just took care of her mother. But she knew about medications and dosages. Which is probably why she checked her medicine.

It didn’t take long to catch her, since she wasn’t in practice and was pretty obvious about it. So they would make her open her mouth and she would twist it around until they gave up in frustration and made her sit by the nurses station for twenty minutes. Then the doctor ordered it liquid. She would agree to take it, then ask to speak to the doctor about it, then explain that she really needed to speak to her lawyer about taking it. The nurse would listen, bored, knowing exactly where this was going.

Paging the doctor. Two mental health workers, large men, one on each side, would lead her to her room, practically lifting her feet off the floor, followed by the same bored nurse, gloves and syringe, and then a few minutes later they would all emerge, with Baby explaining how this was just a mistake, smile on her face. And then a look of hatred when they turned their backs.

She acted stupid in group, vapid, but then she talked to me and I realized there was a whole side of her that most people were not seeing. It occurred to me that she might be the type of person who would slip arsenic into your coffee and offer you cream or sugar, with a smile.

She loved to socialize when she ate, and coupled with her broken teeth, she was always the last to finish. In fact, we would wait impatiently, wishing she would stop talking and just eat.

This was in the Poundstone facility, before they moved it to Mt. Vernon, and the one side of the dining room was plate glass overlooking the smoking area for the other unit. While we waited, we would watch Diamond.

The other men called him Colonel because he barked out orders to every one of them, but he called himself Diamond, since, as he explained, diamonds are a girl’s friend. The only one of us actually enamored with him was a large girl who spoke with a slow, rolling voice and was known tell the nurses "I’m not crazy, just retarded." She wanted a baby terribly, and wanted the father to be Diamond terribly.

I’m sure Diamond had a very common, very ordinary name, but I never heard it. He wore a costume designed himself of close fitting black clothes, self made cut outs over some kind of bright red shirt. He rigged a belt as a kind of holster and carried a piece made from an old hair dryer minus the cord and wrapped with black electrical tape.

While Baby took delicate bites of rubbery gelatin, Diamond would begin his show. First he would start to walk with a bow legged swagger, trigger hand hovering over his gun. Then he would leap upon his horse and ride it around the yard, eyes squinting against the wicked sun and clouds of dust. We felt dusty with him. Then swirling the lasso over his head, we could hear it whipping through the air, and over the head of a heifer which he promptly hog-tied after jumping from his horse and wrapping the end of the lasso around the saddle horn.

The finale. The showdown. He glared at his opponent, spit onto the ground, then took his paces, whirling around, the hair dryer gun a blur, firing off into the holly at the end of the yard. Sometimes he won, in which case he would swagger over to the dead body and step on its back with a booted foot.

Other times we would watch as the momentum of the bullet tore back his shoulder, his crumpled fall to the ground, agony on his face and gun falling from his hand. For some reason I liked these better. Maybe it was because I got to see the death of the loser acted out. I like to think it was because he had obviously worked on this scene for a long time, longer that the winner scene, and I think he was more proud of it.

I never saw him again after I left, nor did I see Baby after she went up forty-two, but then again I do not often see the same people twice. I would like to think that Baby kept her money from her children, that Diamond found work in a play somewhere, or television show. I know it isn’t so, but I like to think that.

I’ll just keep that to my self. Kind of like those little voices.

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