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MOTHER
WOMEN’S HOUSE OF DETENTION IS A PEST-HOLE
GRAPE MRS. CARILLON
    “Grape Mrs. Carillon?” Joel exclaimed. “What is that supposed to mean?”
    The girl with the red beads stared at the poster. on which she had just lettered “Mrs. Carillon.” “I guess this sign was left over from the grape workers’ boycott,” she said sheepishly. “I didn’t notice. . .”
    “Well, no time to change it now. Everybody ready?”
    The protest march was about to begin.
    Grape Mrs. Carillon!
    Tina rode on Harry’s shoulders, Tony on Joel’s, as the march proceeded single-file up Eighth Street. Joel started to chant, “Free Mrs. Carillon,” and the others joined in. Two long-haired girls joined the line; then a bearded man in sandals; then five young men with shaven heads and long saffron robes who beat a rhythmic step with cymbals, castanets, and bongo drum.
    Tony chanted along with his new friends, but Tina was too nervous to do anything but bite her nails. If the protest march didn’t work, she, too, would have to spend the weekend in a pest-hole.
    “Harry?” she asked in a choked-up voice, “What’s a pest-hole?”
    “Just what it sounds like. That jail is filthy with pests: cockroaches, bedbugs, rats.”
    Tina sorted out the filthy pests in her mind. She knew all about cockroaches, everybody in New York did. You stepped on them or hit them with a shoe, and sometimes you squashed one, and sometimes it would escape. She could handle those bugs, as long as there weren’t too many. Just in case, she would buy a can of roach powder before she made her confession. But what about the bedbugs?
    “Have you ever seen a bedbug, Harry?”
    “Can’t say that I have. Bedbugs are shy creatures; they only come out at night when it is dark and everyone is asleep.”
    “Shy creatures” didn’t sound too horrible. But rats! It was the miserable rats that scared her to death. Tina shivered at the thought.
    “Harry, did the grape workers win?”
    “Yep, they sure did.”
    Tina breathed a sigh of relief. If Harry and his friends could help the grape workers, they could certainly help Mrs. Carillon.
    “Harry, how long did it take for the grape workers to win?”
    “Five years.”
    Tina started to shiver again.

    “Free Mrs. Carillon! Free Mrs. Carillon!”
    The chanting grew louder as the protesters neared the prison, but not loud enough to drown out a whining voice from the sidelines.
    “Would you look at that! Did you ever see anything so disgusting? I’d like to stick them all in a bathtub and cut their hair.”
    Tony turned toward the shrill voice and saw two overdressed, overstuffed women shaking their heads at the straggly marchers.
    “And just take a look at that filthy language,” the voice continued. “‘Grape Mrs. Carillon’ it says. There should be a law.”
    “What does ‘grape’ mean?” her companion asked.
    “You can well imagine what such filth means. It’s obscene, that’s what it is, foul and obscene.”
    Tony wondered how anybody could be so mean. Couldn’t that silly woman see that his friends were trying to free his mother from jail, or didn’t she care?
    “Indecent!” she shrieked. “You all belong in jail!”
    That was more than Tony could stand.
    “Grape Mrs. Carillon!” he shouted. He turned and stared into the hateful woman’s shocked face. “AND GRAPE YOU!”
    Tina was still worrying about the rats, but Tony felt much better.
    A Familiar Arm
    “Free Mrs. Carillon!” the thirty members of the Ad Hoc Committee to Free the Orphans’ Mother shouted from the triangular traffic island facing the prison.
    Tina and Tony, high on their friends’ shoulders, peered over the picket signs at the massive brick fortress, The Women’s House of Detention, the “pest-hole,” that towered over the quaint neighborhood of small shops.
    “Free Mrs. Carillon! Free Mrs. Carillon!”
    The rhythmic chant grew louder and louder. It soared over the noise of the traffic, up to the top of the