Doris Payne - Diamond Doris: The True Story of the World’s Most Notorious Jewel Thief

I STEPPED OUT OF THE LUKEWARM BATHWATER and felt the chill of a Cleveland spring morning. The radiator hissed to combat the cool air that seeped through the warped bathroom window. We aint gonna have to worry about that shit no more. It was dusk, but like a kid waiting for Christmas morning, I had been up getting myself ready for the day that I knew was going to change things for me and Mama, and for my brother Johnny and my kids.

I went back into my bedroom no bigger than a prison cell. There was one lonely star still in the sky fighting off the rising peach color that pushed the dark blue up and away. Ive been training a long time for this day. Bring on the sun. The radiator got to knocking. My babiesRonny eight and Rhonda threerolled over on their bed across from mine. I pulled the sheet up over their little brown legs. Yall aint gonna want for nothing in this life if I can help it. I imagined the rooms they would each have in some big ole house when I got the whopping diamond that I saw in Moms Harpers Bazaar magazine.

The linoleum on the floor was chilly to my feet but I didnt care. I had a big day ahead of me.

I sprinkled some cornstarch on my breasts, midriff, hips, and thighs, to make squeezing into my new longline bra and panty girdle easier. I slapped some on my underarms as wellI wasnt about to be hot and sweaty and perspiring today. I wrapped the opened longline bra around my torso under my breasts, with the closures in the front, sucked in, and fastened all the hooks, then twisted the bra front to back. I hunched my shoulders forward and slipped my arms through the straps, then pulled the bra up by the top and lifted it over my breasts and positioned them into the cups, pushing and adjusting until everything was in place.

Then I lay flat on my back on the bed and stepped one foot and then the other into the girdle, and wriggled it up my legs over my thighs and hips. I rolled over onto my side to stand. I yanked the girdle up and pulled the bra down to overlap, and with the help of the cornstarch, twisted and moved my body and the garments into a perfect fit.

Even after having two kids I was still slim. But now my breasts were high, my torso was long, my tummy was flat, my waist was snatched, my hips were rounded, and my thighs were trim. I had the hourglass figure I knew would get me the attention I wanted.

I sat on the edge of the bed and removed my new silk stockings from the box. I carefully gathered one stocking in my two hands to get to the base, lifted a leg, and pointed my foot. I eased the sheer hose up to my thigh and secured it with the garter snaps, then did the other leg. I stood to pull on the beige eyelet slip, stepping into satin elegance that turned me from an attendant girl at a nursing home to a Hollywood starlet preparing for her role.

I was transforming, and the linoleum now felt like a river of milk and honey beneath my feet.

My heart got to pounding in my chest as more light came into the window, casting reality on my day. Dont chickenshit now, Doris. I felt excited, like it was my high school graduation dayand nervous that I was gonna fall on my face before I got my diploma. This would be the biggest ring Id stolen, the thing to take me to the next level and get my family out of this raggedy duplex.

I laid the white blouse, green skirt, and matching suit jacket out on the bed. My nerves went away at the sight of Moms impeccable seamstress work. This was Saks Fifth Avenue. Yes, Im gonna look sophisticated in this shit. I grinned, and then quickly covered my mouth, told myself a lady smiles, she doesnt downright grin showing that shes from the West Virginia hills. This was the look I wantedelegant, cultured, like a movie star on a spring morning.

I went over to the little nail I had hammered into the wall, reached behind to my waist, hooked the zipper on the nail, and squatted down to zip up my skirt nice and snug around my petite frame. I tucked the blouse in and eased on the jacket, smoothing the suit set into place. I sat and slipped on my new black pumps, and then did a little prance to practice the walk that I knew could turn heads. I stopped at the mirror and posed, talked politely to myself, laughed charmingly, feigned a blush, and pretended to try on a ring. It was a routine that Id refined for acting the part of a monied woman. The most impressive part of my jewel thief costume was the wedding set.

The week before, my coworker Norma and I waltzed out of our Euclid Manor nursing home jobs on our lunch break and into the May Company department store posed as a sickly young rich white woman and her Black nurse. I walked out with a gold wedding band and a small engagement ring that I later sold at a pawnshop and used the cash to go to a different pawnshop and buy a more expensive gold wedding band with tiny inlaid diamonds and a diamond engagement ring. That new piece was a stunnera colorless, clear two-carat ring, exquisitely cut to throw rainbows even in the pale morning light. I raised my hand up to the window, angling my finger to admire its fire. Yes! It was the kind of ring I saw on the fingers of the Jewish women who came to the nursing home to visit their feeble parents. The kind of ring that would make any jeweler think I was a woman of class, not a woman on a mission to steal.

The sun made its way into the sky to wake up the Black women of Hough Avenue, an alarm that said, Tighten up your maids uniform or nursing home uniform and get on the back of the bus to go to work. Not me. That rising sun reminded me that the jewelry stores in Pittsburgh would be opening in a couple of hours. Woo, my nerves got to going again. Simmer down, I told myself. I went back to the bathroom and worked on my makeup in the dim light of the single bulb that hung over the sink.

I sat on the edge of the bathtub and tore the page out of Moms magazine. A white woman stretched her hand over a red crushed-velvet background and wore a rectangular diamond ring so big it made my mouth water.