A person could go crazy. People did.

She remembered things she thought she had forgotten. She muttered lines from The Tempest she’d memorized on the ship.

I was the man i’ the moon when time was.

You may deny me, but I’ll be your servant / Whether you will or no.

Hell is empty / And all the devils . . .

I wish mine eyes / Would, with themselves, shut up my thoughts.

Even the nursery rhymes she’d sung to Ruby, the ones that made her shudder: Ring a ring o’ roses . . .

Sometimes, on the way to assignment, or in their hammocks at night, the convict women sang a dirge that Hazel had considered maudlin. But now, in her dark cell, she sang it loudly, wallowing in self-pity:

I toil each day in grief and pain

And sleepless through the night remain

My constant toils are unrepaid

And wretched is the Convict Maid.

Oh could I but once more be free

I’d ne’er again a captive be

But I would seek some honest trade

And ne’er become a Convict Maid.

She ran her ragged fingernails down her arms. She didn’t even have the satisfaction of seeing the blood. She smelled it, though, and felt it slick on her skin. She thought, as she often did, about her mother pushing her out on the street to pick pockets. She thought of all the times her mother had sent her out to steal rum, or something she could trade for rum.

That final time she’d stolen for her mother: the silver spoon.

How could any mother do that to her child? Hazel’s anger was a hot coal burning a hole in the center of her chest. In the dark, in the cold, she stoked it, feeling its glow.

When the guard opened the door the next morning, she saw him flinch at the sight of her arms through the threadbare shawl. She looked down at the red crusted streaks, then gazed at him and smiled. Good. See my pain.

“You’re only hurtin’ yourself, lassie,” he said, shaking his head.

The first time her mother was too drunk to help a woman in labor, when Hazel was twelve, she knew what to do. She’d always been a quick learner. “Nothing gets past ye,” her mother said—not necessarily a compliment. It was true; once something was in her head, she didn’t forget. For years she’d accompanied her mother to the homes and hovels of women about to give birth, because if she didn’t, she’d be left at home alone. She’d paid close attention when her mother concocted pastes and potions, noting which herbs to crush with which liquids, how to make a salve or a tonic or a cure. Her mother allowed her to stay in the room, to fetch the water and grind the herbs. She grew to tell the cries apart and to anticipate the most welcome cry: that of the newborn.

Alone with that frantic pregnant woman, Hazel boiled rags and made her comfortable, showing her how to breathe and calming her fears. She told her when to push and when to stop. She lifted the slippery newborn onto its mother’s stomach and cut its umbilical cord, then taught the woman to nurse.