Afterburn (10 page)

"All right now," sighed the nursing administrator, signaling the moment of removal. Shannelle crushed her son against herself, then looked up, eyes full. "You know I'll just
die
in here," she moaned. "I can't, I can't." But her baby was gently lifted from her and placed in the arms of the waiting relative.

Don't look anymore, Christina told herself. She pushed her mop along the floor, over the exact edges of linoleum she'd traveled the day prior. The weeks and months were eating at her, going slower, not faster. What at first had been unendurable she had learned to suffer, and what had seemed inconsequential now stood as intolerable. Years were dragging by at the rate of decades, it seemed; time was killing her as it killed all the women there, making them sag and sicken, fatten and wrinkle, taking their hope and children and teeth. She had three years before the parole board would hear her case. Four down, three to go. Of course, seven years represented only the minimum sentence for conspiracy to possess stolen property. The maximum was twenty-five. If you misbehaved, they added time—simple as that, and nearly every other prisoner who reached the minimum sentence returned to prison with a tale of the parole board's injustice. So you tried to build a behavior record, you tried to be agreeable and silent. Yes, she thought bitterly, here I am, so agreeable, so silent. The word, in fact, was
powerless
—she'd been so
powerless
for four years now, had tried to live by the endless fucking rules, and it hadn't worked. She was not repentant. She was not rehabilitated. She was not "corrected." How absurd that she'd ended up in prison. Sure, if she could go back in time, she wouldn't ever repeat the idiotic behavior that had landed her there. She should have quit before the very last job, told Tony Verducci and Rick that she was done with them, and everything would have been different. Yet knowing this was no consolation now, today. She had to do something, had to find out something about herself. She was willing to suffer the punishment. Maybe she wanted the punishment. She wanted
something
.

A urine test cup, in fact. She wanted one of the small, crushable paper cups that the maternity unit used, sealed on the inside so that no fluid seeped out. She needed this cup; she'd been thinking about this cup for two weeks now. If she actually used it as she planned, then she assumed some retribution from the guards would come her way. They punched you out in the showers, or tore up your room on a search, which in her case meant that they'd be eager to confiscate or otherwise ruin her books, the only thing of value to her in her cell. Well, fuck them, and fuck that. The more important question was whether she might be delaying her own parole, if the thing went bad, and as she evaluated the odds, she had to conclude that, yes, she was running a risk. Yet that question remained far-off, theoretical. The problem with Mazy was here and now. Besides, Christina
had
been good, had avoided fights and taken all the classes she could, and used the library, pathetic and remedial as it was, and generally put up with everyone and their attitudes and their mind games, yet here was Mazy threatened with a couple of months in the SHU by Soft T. For nothing. No, not for nothing. Mazy wouldn't give the guard what he wanted. Mazy had three children who hadn't seen their mother in four months, and if she went into the segregated housing unit before they were due to visit in a few days—well, they all would suffer, and who knew what crazy stuff Mazy might try. She'd attempted suicide once years ago, but Christina was less worried about that than she was that Mazy would go into the SHU and then come out crazy or zombied—in which case she'd start to accumulate violations and go back into the SHU for real reasons, and maybe for a long time.

But Christina couldn't let that happen. They had an understanding, she and Mazy. She was stronger than Mazy, at least on the outside. But when they lay together, Christina's head on Mazy's dark fallen breasts, their delta of stretchmarks strangely beautiful, she felt peaceful. She could rest there, in the smell of talcum powder under Mazy's armpits and between her legs. Mazy understood. Rest now, baby. Mazy was too good for the place, too good for almost anywhere, which was why she'd been hurt so many times. She wished only to love and be loved, even once confessing to Christina that she wished she could heal babies and children by laying her hands upon them. That she couldn't was a genuine sorrow to her.

In the hallway Christina passed Kathy Boudin, the Vietnam-era revolutionary who with others had robbed a Brink's armored truck in 1981. Boudin, a distinguished-looking older woman now, still organized, still agitated, but for the inmates with AIDS. Some sympathizers had tried to break her out of Bedford Hills years back, rolling a truck up to the chain-link fence. But most of the women were in for crimes far less exotic, drug charges or assault. A good percentage were in for murder—almost always of their boyfriends or husbands. Sometimes their children. You never asked directly what people had done, yet word got around. Many of the nine hundred women there knew one another from the city, and the population included sets of sisters and cousins, and, amazingly enough, even one of grandmother, daughter, and granddaughter.

Now Christina pushed the mop toward the maternity unit's kitchen, where Dora was washing out plastic nursing bottles.

"Okay, I'm here," Christina called softly. "You get it?"

Dora, a heavyset woman of fifty, looked up. "No, Miss Metzger locked the closet."

"I'll get it, then."

"Oh, honey, I don't want you to do this," Dora whispered. She was in for the rest of her life for dropping a television on her sleeping husband's head and then setting fire to him. She'd seen dozens of younger women thrash and scream and hurt themselves through their time in the prison.

"Everybody think you going be sorry you do this," warned Dora. "They catch you doing this, that's a Tier 3 offense. They throw you in the SHU, where nobody can check
up
on you, girl. How you going read them books you like? How you going get some sleep and exercise, they throw you in there?"

"He's going to put Mazy in the SHU," Christina said.

"Can't be sure of that."

"Yes, I can. He's threatened her over and over, and he knows her kids are coming. He's putting pressure on her. She's got her whole family coming this Saturday."

"I know." Dora nodded. "But it's too dangerous."

"Call Miss Metzger for me."

"Oh, I don't think—"

"Just do it, Dora."

The heavy woman shuffled down the hallway, and Christina stood next to the door of the supply closet, which was large enough to hold the maternity unit's stock of disposable diapers, stacked in jumbo packs to the ceiling, as well as shelves of pacifiers, boxes of ointment for diaper rash, battery-powered breast pumps, and other necessities, including, she knew, the urine test cups.

"Christina?" came a peevish voice down the hall, followed by an officious jangling of keys—Miss Metzger, the assistant nursing administrator, a stickish woman of forty in red curls who, as far as Christina was concerned, spent too much time with her clipboard and not enough time practicing how babies got made. "Dora says there's a problem with the closet."

"I noticed earlier that you need more diapers," Christina said.

"Mmmn, I don't
think
so," Miss Metzger answered with friendly condescension, confident of her tastefully lurid makeup, her third-rate nursing degree, and her ability to choose sensible shoes. "We just got them in a few days ago." She put a territorial hand on the doorknob.

This babe looks likes she's been trying to have sex with her lipstick, Christina thought. "I'll show you, okay?"

"Maybe you should finish the hall."

"I will, but let me show you."

Miss Metzger opened the closet door and stood back. Christina had been in the closet dozens of times and quickly studied the diaper supply, noting the two sizes of diapers and counting the packages.

"It looks good to me," Miss Metzger said.

Christina sighed. "We have eight babies in the ward now, after Nushawn is gone?"

"Yes."

"And I heard two are coming Thursday?"

Miss Metzger nodded. "Yes, that's right."

"You have twenty-seven days until the next diaper delivery?"

"Well, I don't—Let's see." Miss Metzger pulled out a pocket calendar scrawled with reminders and appointments. "Yes, it's twenty-seven days. So"—she swept her hand at the immense wall of diapers—"I think we really do have enough, don't you?"

"No, Miss Metzger, I really don't."

"Why?"

"Well, the babies each use about seven diapers a day," Christina began, stepping into the closet, the urine test cups on a shelf near her head. "It averages out to that. Seven diapers a day multiplied by twenty-seven is one hundred and eighty-nine diapers
per baby
until the next shipment comes. So, for the eight babies, it's one thousand, five hundred and twelve to last them the whole twenty-seven days."

Christina paused. She knew her math was right; it always was.

Miss Metzger nodded importantly. "Okay, I understand."

"But two more babies arrive in two days, and even assuming that they arrive with a few diapers each, you'll need twenty-four days times seven, times two, which is three hundred and thirty-six diapers. Fifteen-twelve plus three-sixteen is eighteen-forty-eight. The jumbo packages of newborn size you have in there have thirty-two diapers in each. To cover your requirements, you need fifty-eight packs of the newborn size. I count only fifty-four."

Miss Metzger stared dully at the wall of diapers.

"But it's more complicated than that. Three of those babies are almost three months old. They're ready to start wearing size small in, say, two weeks. If the diapers are too tight, then it's—it's a
rash
of diaper rashes. So, for
those
babies, you need three babies times seven diapers daily times thirteen days, which is two hundred and seventy-three size small diapers. I see you have there eight packets of the smalls, which contain twenty-eight diapers each. Eight times twenty-eight is two hundred and twenty-four. So, if you bump those three babies up in two weeks, then you're forty-nine size small diapers short."

Miss Metzger stepped toward the wall of diapers, frowning to herself, and that was exactly when Christina pocketed one of the urine test cups.

"But if you order more size smalls, we can subtract the two hundred and seventy-three diapers from the original total requirement of eighteen forty-eight newborn size, which leaves fifteen seventy-five newborn. That number divided by thirty-two, the number in each packet, comes out to forty-nine-point-two size newborn packets. You have fifty-four. So, if you reorder size small, you'll definitely have enough size newborn."

"I see," said Miss Metzger uncertainly.

"But if you
don't
order more size small, then you'll be forced to use size newborn for
all
the babies
all
the time. And with the new babies coming, you'll run out. Let's see—you have fifty-four packets and you need fifty-eight. That's four times thirty-two, which is one twenty-eight. At ten babies—three of whom probably have diaper rash because their diapers are now too tight—times seven diapers a day"—Christina glanced at her watch, remembering the problem with Soft T—"seventy diapers every twenty-four hours . . . and you're one twenty-eight short . . . it's the early afternoon now, so you'll run out of diapers sometime in the morning of the twenty-sixth day. One day short before the truck comes."

"Oh."

"Of course, you
could
ration the diapers, Miss Metzger. But you'd have to get all the women to cooperate and agree not to use more than six a day, or, more precisely, thirteen in a two-day period. But if they count wrong, or cheat, or are too sleepy in the morning to remember how many times they changed the baby, then you could
still
end up with ten babies with no fresh diapers for twelve or fifteen hours twenty-seven days from now. It's close, either way. All this is assuming you don't get a kid or two with diarrhea. You could also ration the diapers so successfully that you run out of them at
exactly
the time the truck is due, but there's a problem there, too."

"There is?" asked Miss Metzger worriedly.

"Yes. I've noticed that the delivery truck arrives between ten in the morning and two in the afternoon, with no real pattern to—"

"So?" Miss Metzger interrupted.

"So let me continue."

"There's no need to be rude."

"My point exactly." Christina switched the mop to her other hand. "Now, it also happens that the truck will be delivering paper napkins in bulk, for the meal room, where they claim they feed us something they call
food
. The napkins are on a six-week delivery cycle, okay? I know because I've worked in the kitchen. The cycle corresponds to every third diaper delivery. Same provisioning company, same truck, same driver. Sometimes it's diapers, sometimes it's napkins, sometimes both. But the kitchen loading dock is closer to the main gate than we are, here in the nursery, and so that's the first stop. They load the truck that way, too—napkins at the back of the truck, first to unload. The driver of that truck is Puerto Rican and he likes to bullshit with Luis, the guy in the kitchen, about Cuban baseball players, what the best dance clubs in the city are, how
nasty
their girlfriends are—wait, are
you
nasty, Miss Metzger?"

"Nasty?" The woman's carefully drawn eyebrows lifted, suspicious of the question. "I suppose I am."

"Oh, Miss Metzger, so am
I
!" Christina cried. "Or I
used
to be. I used to be
very
nasty. And you know what?"

"Tell me, Christina, if you must," the nursing administrator sighed.

Christina bent closer. "I
liked
it, too." She straightened up. "Anyway, those he-men at the loading dock are, in our high-powered diaper supply analysis, enjoying the kind of
intellectual
discussion you get with guys who don't understand the
importance
of diapers, and so, on top of the twenty minutes of slow-motion unloading of kitchen napkins, Miss Metzger, you can add at least thirty minutes of
chinga las putas
and other learned observations, which, added up, is
fifty
minutes, minimum. So, if you, Miss Metzger,
you
, have rationed the diapers perfectly but now are sweating the last diaper or two on that day, the twenty-seventh day from
now
, and you are using an average of one diaper per baby every three hours when the babies are awake, then, with ten babies, that extra fifty minutes is, from a probability basis, going to require another three diapers. Three more tiny wet behinds while those guys sit on their thumbs."