A map of the world, p.33
A Map of the World, page 33
She used to kneel on her mat with her hands clasped, and rocking up and down on her heels, she’d keen: “Jesse! Jesse! How could you do it? How could you do it to me?”
I had my own sorrows but hers were so noisy and continuous that her specific grief was contagious. I used to sit on the floor and hold her. I found myself crying easily for the babies, and for Debbie. At eighteen she should have felt that the possibilities for her future were before her in a stunning array. She probably would never again have much expectation or hope. I didn’t assure her that she wasn’t going to die for decades, that the present misery would probably change through the years and deepen, that the grief would always be with her, like some unwanted person holding her at her elbow, guiding her down paths she hadn’t planned to take. She never wondered why she didn’t love the babies, but given time she might ask herself who they had been and what they meant to her. I think she believed that they were still out by the freeway, somehow warm and taken care of, waiting for their shirts and diapers.
She never did heave up out of her own mire to ask after my particular brand of trouble. She assumed that I had been set down in jail for the sole purpose of listening, again and again, to the fairly consistent versions of the same sad story. We were all shut off from the world, but she was especially so because she couldn’t get beyond the horrifying details of that night; she couldn’t begin to be quiet and think about the nature of her own calamity. If there was one lesson she might have learned, it was that each of our stories was singular and so riddled with pain many of us became dull.
There were several others in our living unit who were in for at least three months. Dyshett had been charged with scratching a police officer while she was being booked for possession of cocaine. Sherry had been an accomplice in an armed robbery. Janet, a large white girl with curly blond hair that came down in front to the end of her nose, and a mouth that hung open, had charges too numerous to count. There were up to sixteen at any time, some in for an hour or two while their bond was being paid, some for a day or a week while they awaited their transfer or a hearing. When anyone new came in Dyshett, if she didn’t already know, bullied their charge from them and then she sang out into the day room, as if the felon were a beauty queen coming down the ramp, “Here she is, Debbie Clark, she do in her little tiny hepless twin girls under the viaduc’.” She often pointed out our cell to a newcomer. She’d say, “Don’t you get too close. The baby killers, they sleep in there.”
The first trouble took place not more than a few days after I began my stay. I tried very hard to think breezily of my term there as “a stay,” as if it were a nineteenth-century trip to the sanitarium up in the mountains, a little room from which I would emerge cured. We were eating lunch off of the yellow sculpted trays which were plate and tray in one. A slice of American cheese between two pieces of white bread, yellow applesauce, two flabby carrot sticks, and one chocolate chip cookie. Despite the fact that we had many of the major food groups, everything was of the same doughy texture. Dyshett came to the table wrapped up in her blanket and sat hunched over her tray. “What this shit?” she said. Without looking up, she said, “Did you know you was about to have them twins?”
When Debbie tried to whimper and eat at the same time there were often disastrous results. She choked regularly, even on soft foods, donuts and Jell-O, so that I, or later Sherry, would have to pound her on the back until the chunk went down.
“Hey, girl,” Dyshett said, reaching over and prodding Debbie on the chest with the flat of her hand. “I be talkin’ to you.” When she was frightened, Debbie’s bald eyes glazed over and she breathed through her mouth like a snorer.
“You such a fat girl. Was you so ass fat all the tahm you can’t tell what’s what? You thought them kicks was your stomach grumbling? You got so much flab in them juicy pink thaghs, in your sweet little ole stomach, pink as a pig. Ain’t she jus’ pink, Sherry? What you give to be fine and sweet and pink?”
For a small, thin person, Dyshett had a surprisingly deep laugh. She sang in the shower, couldn’t help it. We used to stop to listen, stunned by the beauty of her voice. She sang old Motown hits, songs that were on the charts long before she was born. We were determined to listen, determined not to let on that we knew she could charm us. I used to imagine that all of us shared the secret of Dyshett’s true power, possibly the one thing she herself didn’t know.
Sherry was six feet tall, with a large frizzy orange ponytail, and skin that was a deep, glistening black. She said to Debbie, “I bet your man thinks you one choice cut. He a fatso like you?”
“Oh, oh,” Dyshett moaned, “oh, my blubbery little ole elephant, you got such a sweet, greasy, tight pussy for a fat girl. What can I do to make you satisfy?”
I ate. It was difficult to concentrate on my sandwich in the midst of so much gaiety and mirth. I wished Debbie would finish her lunch and leave them to pick on someone else. Her head was bowed so low she was in danger of thunking over onto the table.
“You makin’ her cry, Dyshett,” Sherry said, when she’d recovered herself. “Poor baby, she ain’t ready to get took from her mama yet.” She reached over and pinched Debbie’s arm. “We your friends, honey bun. We here to teach you about all the big do-do that goes on in the world, so you be ready.”
“We want to know more about Mr. Dick, Your Man,” Dyshett said. “He handsome and strong? You always available?—like, ‘Over here, Mr. Dick. Yoo-hoo, right here,’ wavin’ your arms? He a nice white boy, goin’ off to some hot shit college? You get outta here, you come to Dyshett for a little somethin’ to ruin his career.”
Debbie was under the impression, short-lived to be sure, that crying was a kind of defense. The more Dyshett talked the harder she cried.
“You!” Sherry said, turning to me. “How come you don’t stick up for your sistah? Here we teasin’ her to kingdom come and you jus’ sit there like she ain’t no relation. What’s matter w’chyou?”
Dyshett only glanced at me, muttering “pervert,” and then she leaned down under so she could see Debbie’s face. So softly she said, “Or is it your daddy did it to you? Hmmmm? Your daddy visit you in the night?”
Debbie’s mouth opened to its astonishing limit by degrees. It took her several seconds to understand what Dyshett was saying. “No!” she cried at last, in horror.
“Whoa, we thought it was a whale comin’ up out of the ocean there for a minute,” Dyshett said, sniggering.
“You awake now, girl, that’s for sure!” Sherry bellowed.
At night, when I couldn’t sleep, I’d try to think of all of us in some larger context, in allegorical terms. It was Howard who taught me to look at a patch of ground, a terrible day, the befuddled irrigation rig, our Holy Roller neighbor, as something more than just the sum of its parts, so that a thing at once is curiously both diminished and enlarged. Dyshett had so many qualities it was hard to pin her down; she was Joy and Beauty, Rage and Cruelty. I finally settled on Nature. The rest came readily: Lynelle was Wisdom. Sherry proved to be Compassion. Janet was Stupidity. Debbie was Shame.
“Your mama know your daddy visit in the night?” Dyshett asked. She was still leaning forward over the table so that the applesauce, which seemed to effortlessly issue forth from Debbie’s mouth in a single clot, went right into Dyshett’s eye. Sherry was so astounded she laughed. It took Dyshett a moment to register the enormity of Debbie’s reflex action. She blinked, putting her fingertips to the substance dripping down her cheek. Debbie herself looked right and left, unsure that she’d done what she was afraid she’d done, hoping that she dreamed it, that she could slip away. She let out a high-pitched whine as she cowered, sinking down and down into her stomach. Dyshett licked her lips slowly, luxuriously, as the grainy yellow sauce came toward her mouth. She stuck her tongue out, trying to reach her cheek. She made a smacking sound. Only when Debbie glanced up, wondering if, by any chance, the worst had passed, did Dyshett dive on the table; she slid across it on her stomach, upsetting our trays and our milk cartons. “YOU MOTHERFUCKING FAT ASS WHITE PIECE OF RATSHIT, YOU—” She struck Debbie and pulled her along onto the floor.
“My boyfriend, he’s black like you,” I heard Debbie scream from under Dyshett. Sherry grabbed my shoulder, “What she say?”
“I didn’t hear,” I replied, certain that the news of Jesse O’Leary’s racial composition was not going to provide the sudden spark of camaraderie and affection Debbie hoped for, that Dyshett wasn’t going to make peace because they liked the same sort of man. I slipped to the window of our pod and beat on it, so that the guards, a hall and a window away in their control room, who were standing with their backs to me, might come and rescue my white sister. Two of them came running in a flat-footed vertical way that didn’t gather much speed. By the time they opened the door another girl, Rita, was on the pile, all of them grunting and clawing. The fight was broken up and the girls were handcuffed and taken off to solitary confinement. Debbie’s nose was bleeding and we were given surgical gloves and towels and told to wipe up her trail.
Sherry turned to me as we swabbed the floor. “How much time we got without Dyshett?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“That’s how much time we got to breathe easy. Any time without that girl is easy time.”
We were more like rats, than hamsters, to tell the truth. Sometimes I don’t think it would have much mattered who we were; we would have fought in the end because we, unlike the cows, did not have comfort stalls. At 6 A.M. the cell doors were opened and the lights were turned up in the day room. The guard, from her panel of switches in the control room, also turned on the television to the channel of her choice. We never knew if we were going to wake up to the CBS morning news, or “To Life! Yoga with Priscilla,” or “Woody Woodpecker.” There was always noise and sickness, and always light, so that it was impossible to sleep deeply. We stumbled about as if we were perpetually hung over. Because the jail had not been remodeled to accommodate the multitudes of unoccupied and dangerous citizens of Racine county, we did not have double bunks. I slept on my mat, which was on top of a cement block, and Debbie had her mat on the floor of our cell. When there were more people than cells they slapped down mats out in the day room.
I tried at first to find some sort of routine so I wouldn’t so easily lose track of time. It seemed of the utmost importance to mark time, to keep my place so I’d know where I was when, like a shade, I came back to the world. I did sit-ups on my mat first thing every morning. There was no outside courtyard for fresh air, no exercise room, no place except the day room to run in small circles. I read after breakfast and wrote letters after lunch, like a scholar might. I read the books I’d brought along with me. I had thought in those moments while the officer stood by in our living room that I’d need books I loved, books to keep my mind alive, books to let me escape and not think, books I’d always wanted to read. I had handed my full bag to the police that Tuesday morning when they came to the farm, imagining the quiescence and time before me like a wide road that narrows and narrows until it is nothing but a dot forever going into the distance.
In the jail I was often so tired I’d fall asleep mid-sentence and then wake up feeling drugged and wrenched. I read the Laura Ingalls Wilder books again, for solace, for the company of old friends. When the good dog Jack was left behind, across the swelling Missouri River, I threw myself under my blanket and sobbed. I knew I was crying out of proportion to the dog’s bad fortune and ill treatment and yet I couldn’t stop. The tears kept coming even as I beat my fists on my mat. I was still hitting the mat when I realized I was asking a question: It had nothing to do with the dog, not at all. It was Howard; it was about Howard. Why hadn’t he come after me at Lizzy’s funeral? I hadn’t ever wondered before, and I had to sit up with the asking. Why hadn’t he tripped through the crowds and tried to help me? It had seemed, in the aftermath of the funeral, noble of him to remain and cover for my inexcusable blunder. It was a difficult job, a terrible position to be in, but he had risen to the occasion admirably. I had mortified Howard. I was far too much for him, like a daily dose of strong medicine that makes a person sputter and gag. He had had to stand in line at church, shamed, while everyone stared at him. How like him to take the blows without batting an eyelash. But if he had come after me—if he had caught up with me, and if we had climbed into the woods and lain in the dry earth together, disregarding the community that was set to pillory us; if he had been able to apologize for the thousands of times he had unthinkingly belittled me, made me feel that he knew best, that I was just off center, just enough to the left to be—and he never would have said, but he had thought it—unreliable: How different the summer would have been! He had thought I was one way when we first met, and I had gone and surprised him by being someone altogether different. He had luck on his side, however, because by the merest chance I turned out to be exactly what he wanted, someone who would show him his own strength and honor that strength. I was increasingly sure, as I sat and clutched my pillow, that the rest of our lives would have been transformed if we’d held each other and wept, if he’d been able to make some sort of offering, some token, a chink from his armor, a word, a shoring up. He was so methodical and even-tempered and in his shadow anyone would have been erratic and moody. There was nothing for me to do in his presence but sit and yap at the moon, go mad periodically, run around with a sock in my mouth, jump on him, naughty, knowing better, but feeling it was worth it if I could once or twice actually lick his face. He had been betraying me all those years, in small insidious ways, leeching from me what was my strength.
“Do you think I should call him?” I didn’t have to look to know it was Debbie, back from her self-esteem class. She was oblivious to the fact that I was under my blanket. “Officer Stephans says we have to take responsibility for our actions. Does that mean I should call him instead of waiting? Jesse said he didn’t want to hear from me again, but if I don’t call I’m not taking responsibility for my own feelings.”
“It means you’re alone,” I said without moving. “It means you go on without Jesse.” It was the harshest thing I’d say to her.
“Oh God,” she cried. “Don’t. Don’t tell me that.”
“It just means that it can’t be different,” I said. “It means that until you’re forgiven the trouble is yours. It means you have to hope for exact justice, which is probably the most merciful.”
“Stop,” she moaned. “Don’t talk to me!”
I hardly knew what I had said, or if it was true. I was confused and enlivened with the kind of pure rage Emma showered upon us on a daily basis. Howard could never have come after me at the funeral; it wasn’t in his constitution. He had had to make excuses for me ever since we’d met, and standing in line, representing the family, was no different from any other day. He seemed never to have forgiven me for myself; he had led me to believe that I was unforgivable, that there was no hope for change. I had thought all along that it wasn’t in his nature to judge, and yet in his silence he was judging continuously, always standing back with his arms folded, looking askance. It was so convenient to be quiet, to let others fill in what they wanted about you while you stood mum. I was sprawled upon our life, gibbering like a monkey, spilling myself out like oil from a troublesome bottle that doesn’t have the right lid.
I did one hundred sit-ups and stretched my limbs on my bed, stood and touched my toes, did forty jumping jacks, jumped up and down, did an abbreviated version of a Rumanian dance I’d held on to through the years, and lay down. I suddenly felt weak with too much inactivity and self-pity and the aftershock of hatred. I remembered Howard cutting a rope that was wound around a tree, setting the strange dog free. He had made us climb a cherry tree first, in case the dog was rabid or fierce. I had loved that in him, that instinctual man-force, protecting us, taking the fire. I wondered how he was faring, what measures he was taking to feel that he was still protecting what was out of his range.
The television was on all day and into the night, and it was by osmosis that I partook of endless reruns of “Cheers,” the “Bob Newhart Show,” “M*A*S*H,” “Dobie Gillis” and “Star Trek.” The one happy constant in my life, however, was the “Oprah” show at three o’clock every weekday afternoon. Lynelle, a twenty-two-year-old hooker, used to say, “Oprah, she the fairy godmother, don’t take crap from nobody.” Although I have trouble now, remembering the sequence of my jail highlights, Lynelle must have come in during the fourth or fifth week of my stay. Ordinarily she lived on the streets of Chicago or very occasionally in the county hospital where she was treated for AIDS-related symptoms. She had somehow landed in Racine, in the company of a brother, or a pimp, who’d been up to no good and dragged her down along with him. “You real lucky to be in a place as fine as this,” she said of our jail, which had been built about ten years before. “You come to Chicago, they don’t give you no clothes to wear.”
