Inside These Walls (14 page)

Then it was a rainy afternoon, and his parents were away for the whole weekend, and we were trying again. His bed was a twin pressed against the wall. On the opposite wall, the roof sloped to leave a low ceiling; in between, his two big bedroom windows looked out over his family’s wooded backyard. The lamp was off, but he had opened the shades to let in the late-afternoon light, and when he rose up on his knees to run his hands down my body the shifting clouds threw a palette of shadows across his chest, all different shades of gray. His hair had grown a bit too long and was falling into his eyes. He looked thoughtful. “You should get on top this time,” he said, and I laughed nervously. “I mean it,” he went on. “That way you can control everything. You won’t have to worry that I’ll force myself on you.”

“I know you wouldn’t,” I said, a reply so quick it almost overlapped his. “But I can’t do that. I don’t know what to do.”

“I’ll show you.” His hands were soft and so relaxing, their steady sweep and pressure lulling my mind into a trancelike state. He was so patient. I knew he was already sick and tired of having Clinton as the ghostly third party in his bed, and we had only barely begun to wrestle with that demon. For him to accommodate me I’d needed to give him an encyclopedic understanding of the abuse, and as humiliating as I found that, he was a tender custodian of my secrets. What he was suggesting now, at least, was something I had never done before. “I love it,” he said, for once conjuring his own past instead of mine. “I’d do it like that every time if I could.”

He nudged me over and lay on his back, then held my hips as I moved my legs astride his body. Very gradually, I lowered myself onto him. The way the rain struck the windows reminded me of the ballet studio when I was a girl, and the sound and sight of it calmed me. When he was fully inside me he closed his eyes and let out a slow sigh through his teeth; his hands, always gentle, swirled on my thighs. The bliss I saw in his face wasn’t scary or threatening; it was a beautiful sight, and he was a beautiful man.
Now he is my lover,
I thought,
and Clinton is the past. I’ve moved on
. Of course that was simplistic, and I knew it even at that moment, but the meaning rang true. Clinton’s stranglehold over me had at last been broken by this. He was no longer the only man who had claimed me; not the only man who would find pleasure in my body; he hadn’t savaged my mind, or my body, or my reputation so thoroughly that I would never recover. Ricky opened his eyes and met my gaze. “Don’t cry,” he said. “Does it hurt?”

I shook my head.

He laid his hands on my hips, began to rock me gently against him. “Let’s try to make it feel good. Go slow. Take your time.”

“Oh. I don’t need that. You can just—do what feels good for you.”

He grinned and shook his head. “It doesn’t work like that.”

That’s the way he always was. I am surprised to find the memories still so potent, so true, when more than twenty years have passed since I last dared to call them forth at all. It is such an aching pain to remember him that way and realize that even on that afternoon, his life was in its twilight, he was already an old man, only five years left and the days slipping away like playing cards falling from a deck. He would shoot a man, he would father a child, he would twist his linen into a noose on the hot water pipe and end it all by stepping off his desk. In all of it he would take me with him. I had known, for a certain truth, that our love story was the only one my meager life had been afforded. But as I drift off to sleep on the memory of Forrest’s hand against my cheek, I wonder. Over his bleached bones, over the resilient spiral of his DNA that I see in the eyes of our daughter, could a second life blow in?

Minutes before yard time, Officer Parker stops at my cell and calls me to the bars. “You’re getting a new cellmate tomorrow,” he says. “Want to guess who it is?”

“But there are only two bunks.”

“Yes. They found a spot for Hernandez in Med Seg. You want to know who’s moving in?”

“What? No!” I wrap my hands around the bars and hear the panicked dismay in my voice, though begging has never done me any good, not once. “She doesn’t want to be in Med Seg. She hates it there. I take good care of her, much better than they do. One little incident and—I mean, I’ve been doing it for
eight years
.”

“Nobody’s blaming you, Mattingly. She’s vulnerable already because of her disabilities. She’s supposed to be in Med Seg anyway, but it’s been overcrowded and she was doing fine with you. But between her injury in the showers and her other health conditions, she needed to be moved back. It’s a liability to keep her in General Population.”

I press my forehead against the bars in exasperation. “Why is everything about liability? For God’s sake, her family is all Guatemalan immigrants. They’re not going to drag you into court.”

“Her children are American citizens,” he corrects me, his voice taking on a note of chastisement, “and in any case, so are you. If your medically unstable cellmate clubs you with her cast, don’t think Miss Mona Singer won’t slap us with a lawsuit before your goose egg even goes down.”

I sigh heavily.

“So somebody will be by this afternoon to collect her stuff, and tomorrow you get a new cellie. Heard of Penelope Robbins?”

Now I close my eyes. “Oh, God.”

“Sounds like a yes.”

“Isn’t she supposed to stay in Intake for a few weeks?”

He shrugs. “It’s four to a cell there right now, and her lawyer requested better security. We can put her in the Hole, or we can stick her with you, since you’ve got a vacancy and a good discipline record. So, lucky you.”

He taps the bars with finality and begins to leave. “Wait,” I say, and he stops. In a low voice I tell him, “The only reason the Latinas leave me alone is because I’ve been taking care of Janny. Before she moved in, it was open season on me. You know what’s going to happen to me if you take her away? Like I haven’t had enough problems the past month, getting my arm slashed open and everything else.”

“Don’t worry. We’ll go the extra mile to keep you safe.”

“How?”

He smiles in a way that’s meant to be reassuring, but offers no real reply. In a frustrated tone I continue. “Can I at least visit Janny? Read to her, work with her on her Braille, things like that? She’s going to be miserable. I know this doesn’t make sense to you, but she needs me.”

“I’ll check into it.”

He walks away, and I turn to look over the landscape of my cell. The lowest shelf is precisely ordered with all of Janny’s familiar things: her quilted bag, Jenga game, Braille folder, our current romance novel, her jar of Vaseline. She likes a packet and a half of hot cocoa in each cup, and they won’t know that. She will ask for Vanart shampoo and be angry when they tell her only Gizeh is available. Everything will feel wrong, everything disordered, and her tenuous sense of control will vanish. I want to cry for her, and the pulse of it catches in my throat, but I force the tears not to come. In just moments they’ll sound the buzzer for yard time, and I can’t go out there with a tear-blotched face.
You know how to do this, Clara,
I scold myself, and force my flat face on like an ill-fitting mask.

* * *

The heat in the yard makes the air shimmer like a mirage, casting the chain link in a haze that gives it the delicate glint of silver filigree. When Clementine comes trotting up to me I crouch down and feed her a saltine cracker from the package I’ve saved. Ever since my trip to the hospital it’s been harder to tolerate the food here. Every single time I step into the chow hall, with its smells of overcooked peppers and cheap meat and dirty dishwater, I remember the scent drifting from the In-N-Out Burger and every cell of my body craves that flavor like a drug.

I pick up Clementine and walk around the yard with her, letting the sun’s rays warm my scalp. I push away my thoughts of Janny and find them quickly replaced with thoughts of Forrest. I remember, vaguely, that he was a telephone lineman long ago, working in the cherry-pickers that lift workers to the top of the poles. Did he mention what he does now? I don’t think so, but the whole visit was so overwhelming that I can’t be sure. Clementine nestles in my arms, lifting her head and closing her eyes as I stroke her neck. Not for the first time, my gaze wanders to the top of the fence, with its whorls and twists of razor wire. Nobody ever gets out that way, but it doesn’t stop us from resting an analytical gaze upon it every now and then.

I’ve never seriously considered a prison break. The closest I’ve come was when my mother died and I was denied my request to attend her funeral. Then, I was angry, and all sorts of possibilities marched through my mind, most involving self-injury serious enough to be taken to the hospital. In the end I had to face the fact that, even if I managed to escape, they would know just where to find me, and I would only succeed in disrupting the funeral of the person I loved most dearly. So I opted for the suicide attempt instead.

Wisps of thoughts flutter through my mind, but I brush all of them away. At least in here Annemarie can visit me. On the outside I could never contact her, and if she’s anything like I was at that age, she would turn me in if I tried.

When I get back to my cell, to be locked in for an hour until dinnertime, I find the mail delivery waiting for me. Emory Pugh’s latest letter is on the top of the stack—I feel a wave of distaste upon seeing my name in his handwriting—There’s a new statement from my canteen account, as well as a thick, gleaming white envelope. This one I open right away, and tug out an engraved card printed on paper that feels more like stiffened cloth. A smaller card flutters to the floor, followed by a scrap of onionskin. I hold the strange item up in front of me.

I set the card on my desk and watch the rest of the words blur on the page. It’s all so neat and formal, so authoritative and assured. The Leskas’ daughter is getting married. She is joining the Dawsons, uniting these two families in a happy rite of passage. I can imagine the celebration, the clinking of glasses and claps on the back, the dance with her father.

It doesn’t say any of the other true things. That she was born a Rowan. For a few days, before they scrubbed my name from the paperwork, I suppose she was Baby Girl Mattingly. I picture the home of Ricky’s parents, with its full bookshelves and Oriental rug, the bottles of wine on the rack, the tinted daguerrotype of great-grandparents on the wall at the top of the stairs. A perfectly respectable middle-class home, the refuge of two hardworking people. We had all failed in such spectacular style, that their grandchild had been passed from one set of hands to another, finally entrusted to a family who could meet the minimum standards set by the state.

Annemarie Rowan,
I try in my mind. But she never would have been that. By the time the egg that would become her emerged within my body, Ricky was already a doomed man. And I wouldn’t have named her Annemarie. I don’t know what I would have called her, though, because I never considered the question.

* * *

Saturday arrives, and by the time confession rolls around Penelope Robbins still hasn’t made her appearance. It’s just as well. Despite my voyeuristic curiosity about her crime, I’m not in any hurry to meet her. I step into Father Soriano’s office with a confident stride, sitting down in my usual chair and crossing my legs almost casually, as if in a moment someone will pour us coffee. We go through the normal call-and-response. He doesn’t bat an eye at my rather spectacular count of self-gratification episodes, nor at my confessions of vindictive thoughts and mild dishonesty. These sins are the buttered toast and orange juice of prison life, served up daily as part of the bland square meal of existence. We lie and we resent and we accept whatever small and furtive relief we can offer ourselves against the monolith of the state’s authority. I’m sure I bore him.

I don’t confess the kiss with Forrest. There’s no sin in an unmarried woman kissing an unmarried man. Every day I row back to that memory, drag my fingertips through the water where I left it, but every day it slips deeper and deeper beneath the surface. Soon its electric thrill will be gone, and I’ll probably feel disgusted with myself then.

“Is there anything else?” he asks.

“Well, yes.” I swing my foot in a slow circle as I consider how to phrase it. My white canvas sneaker, an off-brand version of the Keds I used to wear every summer, is a blindingly clean spot above the nicotine-yellow linoleum. “I’m beginning to hate prison.”

He offers an indulgent smile. “I’ve yet to meet an inmate who says she likes it.”

“I’d gotten to a point where I didn’t really mind anymore, though. Did you know they moved Janny out of my cell? Taking care of her was the one rewarding thing about being here, and it was
very
rewarding. It’s good to be needed. But now that’s gone.” I pause, let my gaze drift to the ceiling’s pocked acoustic tile. “And now that my daughter comes to visit, I find I can’t stand being in here. She’s getting married and I can’t go. It makes me very angry.”

He seems unsure of how to respond. Several priests ago I had confessed the sins that led to my pregnancy—it was very obvious by that point, and I cried, repented, was consoled and forgiven. But I haven’t mentioned it to any clergyperson since, because there has been no reason to. I’m sure the mention of my daughter catches him quite by surprise, but I don’t care. No doubt he’s heard stranger things.

“The best course is always to seek solace in the Lord,” he tells me. “Confess your burdens to him, and you’ll find them lifted.”

“That’s a pat answer, isn’t it?” He raises both of his bushy eyebrows and looks affronted, but I continue unfazed. “I told you what my stepbrother did to me. You know, I confessed my burdens about that to a priest every week for years, and neither he nor God ever intervened on my behalf. I keep showing up because I believe the church is larger than the sins of one man, and by that I mean Father George. It isn’t fair to blame
him
anymore, I know. I should have left it to God and not let my anger take over my conscience. That’s my own responsibility, and I know it. But I wouldn’t be here today if it hadn’t been for Clinton training me to hollow myself out and do what I was told. And it eats at me now that I’m in here and he’s out there living his la-de-dah life. If I had explained all of that in court, they might have had mercy on me and not put me away for life. But I didn’t, only so I could spare my mother the trauma of feeling that she’d failed me, and she’s been dead for almost twenty years now. I’m not sure who the hell I’m protecting anymore.”

He folds his hands in front of him and offers a show of mulling it over. “Sometimes, when we’re young, we make choices that we need to live with for a lifetime. And it’s regrettable—I can see that. But the challenge is learning to grow and flourish within the constraints. And you do that well, Ms. Mattingly.”

“Of course I do.” I lift my chin and stare at him, my lips pressed together hard as if working in tandem to suppress the next thought that my brain is churning into words. “But coping well is not necessarily anything to celebrate. You can learn to love a captor. To find excitement in the drama of a bad relationship. I used to enjoy it sometimes when my stepbrother raped me. Is that ‘flourishing,’ or is that demented?”

His eyebrows go up again, and this time they stay there. He bounces his templed hands against his mouth, pondering. “I’m sure you don’t mean that,” he demurs.

“I do mean it.” I can hear my voice winding tight. “For a while there, after it sank in that he was going to force me do it no matter what, I stopped fighting. He tried to force me to feel some kind of pleasure, I suppose because it made him feel more powerful, and sometimes it worked. You have no idea the guilt that comes along with that. How long it takes to unlearn.” I don’t shift my gaze, even though he’s looking uneasier by the moment. “It isn’t just me. What he did is something abusers do all the time. I used to ask Ricky to hurt me, because I only understood pleasure as an antidote to pain. He never would, of course. He wasn’t like that. I had to retrain all my nerves. But even now, I think about it sometimes, by myself. I try not to, but if I do?” I snap my fingers. “I’m done. Like
that
.”

He sits up straighter and folds his hands on the table. “All right. Thank you for your confession. Are you ready for your penance now?”

“That’s all right. It makes me uncomfortable, too.”

“One rosary,” he says. “Spend time in prayer. It’ll take your mind off what bothers you.”

* * *

Penelope Robbins arrives just before yard time. I hear the crackle of radio static and the clink of her ankle shackles as she and the guards make their way down the cellblock, and then she stands on the other side of the bars in her new blue jumpsuit, wearing a self-consciously hard expression belied by the bewilderment in her gaze. From the other cells inmates are shouting her name, making lewd suggestions and mocking her with faux-upscale invitations to tea and tennis. She’s trying to look unimpressed, and it’s pitiable how transparent her efforts are. Inside she’s screaming.

“My bunk is the top one,” I tell her. I’d wished for years that I could move back down to the bottom, where I slept for a long time prior to Janny, but in the past day I’ve grudgingly conceded that I need to keep the top one. Her level of guilt in her father’s shooting is still an open question, and so no matter how guileless she looks to the naked eye, I must remember that the top bunk makes it harder for her to kill me in my sleep.