Inside These Walls (8 page)
I sit on my metal stool, lay out a sheet of lined paper and my best homemade mechanical pencil, and I begin to write.
Dear Ms. Shepard,
Thank you very much for the death certificates. They are quite helpful. I look forward to any additional information you can provide, and hope we can be equitable in offering each other help with our various projects.
First, I would like to offer a bit of background on myself. I was born in San Jose and lived on Magellan Avenue until I was ten years old. My father, who was older than my mother by twelve years, had the foresight to take out a good life insurance policy at the time of my birth, and so my mother was able to stay in our modest house after his death and preserve some stability in my life. That was a blessing. Her job at the travel agency provided for my basic needs, and she lived frugally so that she could afford to support my interest in the arts. I took classes in ballet as well as watercolor painting and botanical drawing—really, whatever she could find on offer. My interest in the visual arts was bottomless, and she was proud of my early talent. The only thing I ever remember being denied was a kitten, because she said pets were too costly to support. All of that changed when she remarried and we moved to my stepfather’s house in Almaden Valley, when suddenly my fortunes improved economically and plummeted in every other way, but where your questions are concerned that is neither here nor there.
You asked whether my romantic relationship with Ricky changed after I returned to California from my art college in 1981. I can tell this question is based upon testimony given by Forrest Hayes and my stepbrother Clinton Brand during the trial, and I would caution you not to presume that information is accurate. Remember that Forrest was testifying against me in exchange for a plea bargain that allowed him a suspended sentence. In addition to that, Forrest was a minor acquaintance of mine and Ricky’s, not a friend, no matter what he told the chief prosecutor. As for Clinton, he knew far less about my personal life than he seems to believe he did. His inventions and fantasies were usually in my favor, but that doesn’t mean they were truthful.
Ricky and I met through CCD classes at Our Lady of Mercy, a Catholic church in San Jose, and were classmates during high school, although he was in a different academic track than I, so our interaction was casual. I did not date him at that time; in fact, I did not date anyone. It was only after I returned from art school in Wisconsin that he and I had any romantic involvement. I encountered him while he was working at Spectrum Supply, a small art supply shop on Meridian Avenue, and I came in to buy pastels. It was one of those situations where one has been away for a long time, returns and feels bewildered at how many people have left, and is glad to see a familiar face. As you know, his employment at that store ended acrimoniously when the owner accused him of stealing from the register, which, in fairness, he was probably doing. Ricky had a bit of a Robin Hood complex and he justified it with the idea that, as an artist, he didn’t need to abide by the same rules as everyone else.
My stepbrother’s testimony was inaccurate not only about the span of my romantic involvement with Ricky, but also in his claims that Ricky was abusive to me. Ricky did not—contrary to what Clinton said—physically harass and threaten me. My lawyers let those statements go uncontested during the trial, because the idea that I was some sort of a battered girlfriend was theoretically to my advantage. But if you are writing a biography of Ricky—and since there’s no hope of my sentence being changed at this late date—I would like to clear his name on this point. Ricky was boisterous and sometimes scrappy, but to women he was always gentle. I think Clinton had a different impression of him because of an event that occurred not very long after Ricky and I began dating, when Ricky punched him in the face three times, broke his nose and loosened two of his front teeth. That doesn’t, however, mean Ricky had a history of violent behavior. It means Ricky had a history of seeking vigilante justice.
Please don’t infer, though, that I believe his murder of Jeff Owen or his robbery of the Circle K on West Julian Street were somehow justified. Those were a different matter from what happened between him and Clinton, but it did affect Clinton’s perception of him.
Well, our cellblock is being called to dinner, but I wanted to be sure I wrote a reply to you expediently and expressed my gratitude for the papers you sent. I will be in further contact shortly.
Sincerely and truthfully,
Clara Mattingly
I’m working on a Braille transcription of a science textbook when word arrives that D-Block is locked down for a contraband search. This doesn’t worry me, because it happens fairly often and Janny and I don’t keep forbidden things in our cell. Periodically it turns out that some of my possessions have been declared contraband in the time after I acquired them, but it’s just another of the things over which I have no control.
When I’m returned to my cell I’m irritated by the disarray, and clearly I’m not the only one. My neighbor—the one with the secret cellphone—is muttering an endless string of curses, and Janny is tentatively feeling around on her shelves with that lost, baleful look on her face.
“I’ve got it, Janny,” I tell her. “Just sit down and relax. I’ll put everything back where it belongs.”
“They moved the bag with my Rolaids.”
“Yeah.” I pluck her quilted cosmetic bag from the top bunk, where it’s been tossed along with the spilled Jenga game and her Braille practice folder. “Here you go.”
“Oh, my heartburn.”
She sits on her bed and pops a tablet as I read over the handwritten inventory the C.O.s have thoughtfully left on my desk. The dozen sticks of graphite I’ve coaxed out of golf pencils have been seized as “weapon-making materials,” and my twelve music cassettes are gone now, too, under the general heading of “Disallowed.”
That
is unexpected. I scramble to the shoebox and, finding it empty, rush back and wrap my hands around the bars of my cell. “Officer Kerns!” I shout.
She stalks over slowly. I hold up the inventory sheet and, with more distress in my voice than I mean to convey, ask her, “What was the problem with my tapes?”
“Not allowed anymore, unless they’re for a legal purpose with signed permission from your lawyer.”
“But I’ve had them since I came in. They’re more than twenty-five years old.”
She shrugs. “It’s the rules. The tape inside them’s a problem. They want you to have CDs now.”
“But I don’t have a CD player. Are
all
cassettes forbidden? Can’t we just have one or two? I just want my mix tape. Just that one. It’s important to me.”
She laughs, flashing a neat row of gleaming white teeth. “A mix tape, huh. Now
there’s
setting the Wayback Machine. They sell CD players at the canteen.”
I press my forehead against the bars in exasperation. “Yes, but if I buy one of those, I still won’t have the right tape.”
“CD.”
I close my eyes.
“Rules and Regs,” she says, and meanders past me. “That’s how it is.”
I turn and slide my back down the bars until I’m sitting on the floor, then crumple the inventory into a ball and toss it into my trash can.
“What’s the matter, Clara?” Janny asks, her voice fluttery, sensing dark things in my sudden silence. “What’s on the tape? You don’t hardly never listen to tapes anyhow.”
“A lot of songs I like. And Ricky saying ‘goddamn it.’”
She blurts a laugh. “Is that something special?”
“He gave it to me for Valentine’s Day. He picked out all the songs because they meant something, and we brought that tape with us on a road trip once. He wrote my nickname on it.” I sigh and let my gaze drift up to the ceiling, feeling the cold press of the bars against the back of my head. “Never mind.”
“Never mind for sure. You hate that man. You shoulda got rid of it right from the beginning. Hey, you think I want to hear Javier’s voice?” She scoffs at the notion, pulling her mouth into the disparaging scowl that conjures the dagger-eyed Janny Hernandez I remember from before her fight. “Like I’d ever want to hear that bastard cuss at me again. It ain’t healthy to want that. Maybe you ought to go to the Healthy Relationships class.”
“He wasn’t cussing at me. He was cussing because he got up to stop the record he was taping from and tripped over something.” I close my eyes. “But you’re right. It’s good that it’s gone. I don’t need to go back to that place.”
“No, you don’t,” she says emphatically. “Nosiree, you don’t.”
But I want to, just for a little while. When I was young I thought things were so difficult, with the strain of not knowing whether Ricky would grow up before my patience wore out, my fears about my mother’s health, my own hard secrets. I felt so frustrated, so bleak in my heart, and on the night everything came to a thin sharp point on which my whole future would turn, those obstacles looked like the sum of my life. Right now I want to sit for a moment in that younger Clara’s presence, look upon her in pity and wonder, and also in anger—that frail, foolish girl who gave up everything.
* * *
My deadline for the art book is creeping up on me, and the work is not going well. I can’t focus on
Guernica
right now. After I complete it, the only artwork left for me to draw is Robert Smithson’s
Spiral Jetty,
which will be easy. But the Picasso mural seems to grow more complex and confusing each time I sit down with it, and my lines are all wrong. When I close my eyes and touch it as a blind person would, it feels like a jumble of random images with no cohesion, no context.
I order ten new golf pencils and set them to soak in a Gatorade bottle filled with water. They left me my mechanical pencil, at least—they didn’t notice the lead is loose inside it—and I spend my evenings working on
Intérieur,
first completing the sketch and the planning, then starting on the embossed version using a fresh sheet of paper. It’s very difficult and frustrating, because the paper available to me in my cell is not thick and cottony like what we have in the Braille workshop, but just thin, slick, ordinary stuff. I dampen a washcloth and pat the paper lightly with it first, letting it rest for a while, before gently running my emptied pencil along the underside to create the lines. Yet I can already tell this will just be a prototype. The results will be messy, and I desperately need better materials.
“I’ll help you,” Janny assures me as I scrub her hair in the shower one evening. “I’ll feel it and tell you when it’s right. You’ll do great. The ones you made of my kids, those are my treasures.”
Every year, while Janny’s kids were in school, I created tactile drawings of the school portraits her sister sent. “At least they let me have the high-quality paper for those,” I mutter.
“What are you making it for, if they don’t want it at work?”
“For the challenge. Because the painting speaks to me.” I work the shampoo through Janny’s curls, and she lets her head drop back to enjoy the scalp massage. “It’s based on a story about an orphan who is forced to marry one man, then has an affair with his friend. She and her lover murder her husband, but stage it to look like an accident. Then they get married—”
“You didn’t do nothing like that.”
“No, not the same crime, but that’s not the point. The two lovers share guilt. The painting shows them on their wedding night, in their bedroom, when—”
“Is it sexy?”
“
No,
it’s not sexy. Will you let me finish explaining?”
“Okay, okay,” she says, but before I can go on there’s a sudden commotion, a lot of screaming, and I’m jostled hard from behind, knocking both Janny and myself into the tiled wall. I grab for her but she goes down anyway, slipping and falling into the angled space where the wall meets the floor. It’s a fight between two of the Latina women, with a dozen others trying to pull them apart or else egg them on, and I kneel beneath the spray and throw out a protective arm to shield Janny from the chaos. Shouts echo off the tile, steam dissipates as the water shuts off, and the guards rush in, jerking the women by their bra straps—we all shower in our bras and underwear, for safety—and pulling them off each other by their hair. The woman who is first to be dragged away leaves a streak of blood on the wet yellow floor.
“Lockdown!”
yell the guards who are the last to arrive.
“Lockdown!”
I take my eye off the crowd and look at Janny. She is shivering and pale, crying silently, her right arm cradled in her left hand. My shout resonates off the tile like the tones of a bell. “I need help!”
Sergeant Schmidt appears, and a wave of relief passes through me. Janny knows this officer’s voice, and doesn’t fear her the way she does the men. She assesses Janny and calls on her radio for a medical attendant. “Get your towel and wait by the wall, Mattingly,” she instructs me.
“Can I go with her to the clinic? Her English isn’t very good when she gets upset, and she’s going to be scared.”
“Do you speak Spanish?”
“Not really, but I speak…I speak Janny.”
She throws me an edgy smile. “That’s not going to do it. It’s probably just a sprain, anyway. Line up, please.”
I reach for my towel. “Could you come by later and tell me how she’s doing?”
“Mattingly, don’t be high-maintenance right now.
Go
.”
“I want her,” Janny cries. Her voice is a squeak, and her face is streaked with tears. “I want her.”
But I don’t have a choice. I wrap myself in the towel and line up in the corridor. I want to stand and argue, but in situations of chaos and crisis my instinct is still to follow the directions from the loudest voice. Today I hate myself for that as much as I did the night they brought me in.
* * *
Dear Ms. Shepard,
As my cellblock is on lockdown, I am taking advantage of this time to answer the additional questions in your letter. I hope you received my first letter. Our mailroom here is unreliable and the content of our correspondence is often censored, so I am numbering my letters (that is the purpose of the
2
at the top of this one). That way you will know if any are missed.
I hope you understand that I have never before agreed to an interview. The fact that I am doing so now is extraordinary and speaks to the changing circumstances in which I find myself.
To pick up where I left off in my previous message, while I was away at art school in Wisconsin, my stepbrother Clinton married, moved to a nearby suburb, and had a child. This created an ideal situation for me upon my return, because with Clinton out of the way I felt comfortable setting out food for the stray cats I often saw wandering around our neighborhood. I had often done this when I was much younger, but then one of them gave birth to kittens underneath our porch and had created a little nesting area which she wouldn’t vacate. Clinton trapped the mother and then drowned each of her kittens in a bucket, and when I became hysterical at learning what he had done, he claimed the neighborhood had enough stray cats already and he was saving them from a life of misery. I was about twelve then—Clinton would have been sixteen—and after that I stopped feeding them out of fear for their safety. But once I came back from Wisconsin I managed to convince a local vet to spay and neuter the strays I brought in, free of charge, as a service to the community. So I began feeding the cats again, and once they became docile with me I’d take them in for their surgery, care for them while they recovered, and then release them. I didn’t have room in the house, after all, and my mother’s health was already beginning to decline.
It was then that I began visiting the art supply store almost weekly, because I had taken to creating charcoal drawings of the cats as they slept so sweetly in the beds I made for them while they healed. As I said in my previous letter, I knew Ricky Rowan from CCD classes and high school, and he had also worked at the Circle K where my friends and I often stopped for Slush Puppies after Junior Service Club meetings. I had always thought he was attractive, but I didn’t date. I know this sounds foolish now to an outsider, but through most of high school I genuinely believed I had a vocation, which is the Catholic term for believing I had been called by God to the celibate religious life. I gave that up when I decided to go to art school, but even during college I only went out on sporadic group dates, mainly because I felt terrified of that last hour of the date. According to my friends, nearly all dates followed a pattern. There was dinner or a movie, or both, and then the last hour was all physical, with the man always overeager and demanding. I had no stomach for that at all, so I avoided the whole enterprise.
What softened me toward Ricky, though, was that he was very gregarious and friendly. When I came into the store he always asked to see my drawings, and he appreciated my skill. Through asking me questions about the cats I drew, he learned of my work with the strays and openly admired it. Who doesn’t enjoy being admired? When he asked me out to dinner I couldn’t help but say yes. Respect was something I was unaccustomed to from men, and it was very disarming and appealing, the way he seemed to think so highly of me.
As to that first date, I don’t remember where we ate—I think I was too nervous to pay much attention to the food—only that we went to the beach afterward, at Santa Cruz. It was a spontaneous idea Ricky had, and although I agreed, I was full of anxiety because I was trying very hard to control that final hour and ensure I made it home untouched. He was an artist, as well. In high school he had painted a mural in a hallway and created a ceramic model of our school crest, which may still be on display in the entrance for all I know. So on the drive to the beach I began talking to him about a trip my mother and I took to Spiral Jetty, the earthwork Robert Smithson created in the Great Salt Lake at some point during my childhood. When I was around ten—four years after my father died and not long after she began dating Garrison Brand, my future stepfather—my mother took me on a trip to Bountiful, Utah to visit her sister. I think she wanted to spend some time with my aunt and ask her advice before things got too serious with Garrison.
But while we were there, she and I drove down to Salt Lake City and visited the Jetty, which was new then. We walked out onto the black rocks and followed them to the center, and it reminded me of the garden labyrinth behind Our Lady of Mercy, except made out of rock and silt instead of white gravel, and surrounded by reddish water instead of neatly trimmed hedges. At the time I thought it was a little strange and anticlimactic, and I wondered why anyone would build this rough, rocky pathway into a lake and say it was art. But the sky above it, I remember, was enormous, and shaded an otherworldly blue. I described every aspect of it to Ricky. There in his car, driving toward the beach, I almost felt like a hostage—as if I had to be sure to endear myself to him and make him feel a connection with me so he wouldn’t hurt me when I was vulnerable. He hadn’t done anything to make me feel that way, but it began to happen inside me naturally, I suppose as a type of learned response.
So I kept talking to Ricky about the Spiral Jetty and how it was like an ancient petroglyph recreated in modern times, and how Smithson had reversed the spiral to symbolize eternity. I talked about how hard I had to squint in the intense sunlight, because the desert sky was big and clear and the rays from the sun felt absolutely direct, and the way the wind whipped at my mother’s silky scarf so that it rippled like a flag. I was painting this picture for him, I suppose, so that he would be imagining me as a ten-year-old child with her mother, and when we arrived at the beach he wouldn’t have the heart to do anything unseemly to me.
But when I stopped to take a breath, he said, “It’s covered now.” I asked, “What’s covered?” and he said, “Spiral Jetty. The water level rose, and it’s been covered for a decade now. The whole thing’s underwater, like Atlantis.”
I stopped talking then. I had no idea this childhood landmark of mine had vanished, and I felt bewildered and sort of sad to realize it. Ricky looked over at me—he was still driving then—and I guess he saw the look on my face, because he said, “Hey, it’s still there, though. Eventually there’ll be a drought again and it’ll be visible, like before. I think that was part of the artist’s point.”
“When do you think that will be?” I asked.
“I don’t know. But everything goes in cycles, right? And probably when it turns up again it’ll be all covered in salt from the lake, like those crystals you can grow in a jar.”
I was trying to picture all of Spiral Jetty under the water, preserved and silent, like a shipwreck. And while I was doing that, Ricky pulled into a parking space and I felt anxious all over again because I had been off my guard as far as setting up some kind of advance protection from what he might do. But it turned out he was very much a gentleman for things like that. He didn’t touch me unless he was certain I wanted him to. Ricky could be very intuitive and empathetic, which you may not realize. I think that’s why he was so good with my cats, and why he could unapologetically and without hesitation attack my stepbrother at the front door of my home. Yet his strong feelings could be too much for him at times, and sometimes he would get overwhelmed and shut it all down, like a shopkeeper dropping the metal grate across his storefront at the end of a day. That way of his could feel bewildering, but it never occurred to me how insidious it would become. When he liberated himself from compassion he was a very dangerous kind of free.
Well, my pencil lead has run down to a stub, and my new mechanical pencils aren’t ready yet. I will write again when the wood has softened.
Yours truthfully,
Clara Mattingly