Something Like Hope (4 page)

I wouldn’t pay any attention to Cyrus if it weren’t for his interest in the pair of geese out on the pond. Every day when we walk across the grounds for meals, he makes us stop to look at the birds.

“They’re Canada geese,” he told us once. The birds are enormous and loud. Nothing like the pigeons and plain
old ducks I used to see before I arrived at the Center. Cyrus just stares at the geese and forgets about his job. This is dangerous, since he’s supposed to be watching us to make sure we don’t break the line and run away.

Just as some of the girls start getting edgy (no doubt thinking about running), Cyrus calls us over and says, “Hey, girls, you see them geese?”

Tyreena, big, black, and bold as hell, puts one hand on her hip and says, “Yeah, so what? What’s the big deal about a couple of gooses? Man, it’s cold out here and you gonna stop and ax us about some dang birds?”

The way Tyreena tells it, she is locked up for infidelity. That means she caught her boyfriend cheating and taught him a lesson by cutting the girl’s face up with a utility knife. If you ask her about it, she’ll say, “My box cutter taught her stank ass not to be pokin’ her titties where they don’t belong.” Nice. But believe it or not, in her world, Tyreena was playing by the rules. Seeing another girl edge in on your action is more than enough reason to go after her with a knife. I’m not saying I’d handle the problem that way, but plenty of girls would.

Cyrus breaks his gaze from the pond and returns to earth. His voice stiffens. “Fall in line, then, girls. Walk!” He’s all business for the next few minutes, and he looks like his feelings are hurt. Then, just before we go inside to lunch, he stops the line and says, “Tyreena, those geese are mating pairs. They mate for life. They’re here to nest and raise their young. I want to tell y’all this because some of
y’all might be here long enough to see their babies get born, if the foxes and coyotes don’t get ’em first. It might be fun to watch and it could make the time go faster.”

As we enter the cafeteria, most of the girls roll their eyes or suck their teeth in disgust at the idea of some backward hillbilly cracker fuck trying to engage us hardened city kids in some nature goose freak show. Tyreena, never one to let another have the last word, says, “What you mean they mating pairs and they mate for life? What you mean,
Cyrus?”
Tyreena exaggerates every sound in his name to make fun of it, challenge him, and question his credibility. Tyreena is no one to mess with. She’s not very bright, but she can be tough as hell both with words and with fists.

It interests me to watch Cyrus handle himself in this small drama. The whole cafeteria is quiet with suspense. This bumpkin has been challenged, and no one, not even the other guards, is going to help him out.
Sink or swim, Cyrus
.

Finally he says, “It means they’re faithful to one another for the rest of their lives. It means that if one dies, the other will be alone until
it
dies.” The silence continues. I can tell what everyone is thinking.
For life? Really? That’s incredible. Unimaginable!
Because no one is faithful. Not parents, teachers, guards, boyfriends, or girlfriends. No one. What’s it feel like to know that someone in your life is that faithful? Is that what real love is?

I want to pull Cyrus aside and ask him these questions.
Maybe he knows. Maybe this stupid-looking guy learned all this from hunting and fishing and watching geese. Maybe he knows something that no one else does.

But the other girls don’t seem to be thinking these things. They just look at Tyreena as if to ask, “Well, ain’t you got nothing more to say? You gonna let the cracker have the last word?”

When she talks, Tyreena is indignant. “You mean to tell me that man goose gonna stay by hisself if his woman goose dies? I don’t believe that. You believe that, Kiki?”

Kiki does not. Kiki and Tyreena are girlfriends, meaning they are gay (at least when they’re in lockup). Kiki is good-natured, gullible, and likable. She’s very pretty, too. In the Center, she’s considered a good catch.

Cyrus closes the argument by adding, “It’s true. I didn’t make that up. Check with your life science teacher if you don’t believe me.” Cyrus seems to miss the real point of the argument. It has little to do with the truth of what he said.

Kiki, always one to help out, says, “Well,
I
ain’t never met no man like that. Cyrus, maybe you should be teaching this nature shit, I mean stuff, to some boys. So they know how to treat us right!”

This draws laughter from everybody and ends the drama, but not before my impression of the geese changes completely. To be honest, I’d never really noticed them before. Sure, they’re in the pond every day, paddling around with their big webbed feet. But who gives a shit about some stupid birds, right?

Then I think about my parents, and Tyreena’s and Kiki’s, too. Our moms just knew our dads casually and they decided to fuck each other, have babies, then go their separate ways. Or maybe our dads cheated, drank, smoked crack, beat our moms up, went to jail, got out, and died of liver disease or from getting shot. That’s probably closer to the truth. More than half of the girls at the Center don’t even know their fathers. At most they have a name, a worn-out old picture, or an address of a prison somewhere.

Faithful for life. I can’t decide if it’s beautiful or ridiculous. In any event, the cafeteria fills with voices, conversations, and the sounds of all of us making it through the day, guards and kids alike. For every conflict that ends peacefully, there are ten violent ones. Every day two or three girls hit the floor for some reason or other. Maybe it’s for blurting something out, cursing, or refusing to sit down. But it can also be for nothing. Maybe a guard is having a shitty day or just got a drunk driving ticket. She might take it out on you until you slip and mutter something under your breath. Or maybe you just roll your eyes and she sees it and says, “Shut up! You talkin’ back? Stand against that wall!” Then you’re fucked. Inevitably, she’ll hook your arms behind your back and hip-toss you onto your face. Eyes get blackened, chins split open, and cheeks burned from rubbing on the floor. “One more word out of you, Shavonne, and you’ll hit that floor. Is that what you want?”

No, Ms. Choi. I don’t want to hit the floor.

       
I
overhear Ms. Choi talking to another guard. “You know that big fat man, Delpopolo? The psychologist?”

“Yeah. So?”

“Well, I heard his wife left him for this guy she met on the Internet. Came home one day with papers from a lawyer and said she’s leaving. Took their little girl with her too.”

“Damn. That’s cold. Where’d you hear that?”

“Corrine in personnel. But don’t tell nobody.”

It made me mad to hear these women gossiping about Mr. D like he was a sucker or something. Maybe his wife was a real bitch and there was nothing he could do about it, but all I could think of was that pathetic coffee mug on his desk.
World’s Greatest Dad
. The only thing left of his life with his family. You know what the worst part is? I’ll bet he
is
the world’s greatest dad. I’ll bet he used to play with his daughter and have tea parties and read her fairy
tales and call her princess. I’ll bet he used to take her out to restaurants, just the two of them, and let her order anything on the menu, even waffles and ice cream or onion rings and a chocolate milk shake. I can see the two of them sitting on the same side of the booth at Denny’s, leaning up against each other playing tic-tac-toe on napkins with those little crayons they give you. He probably let her win and then looked proud at how clever she was.

I wonder if I’ll ever get to do those things with my daughter. It seems so far away. Like it’s impossible, or like it’s something that only other people could do. Someone like me, but not me—a girl who’s older, prettier, and certainly a better person. No secrets inside of her. Nothing dark and dangerous that can break through the surface and destroy everything.

       
T
oday I watch the geese out my bedroom window. I tell Cinda everything I’ve learned about them from Cyrus. She’s fascinated and sits cross-legged on her bed, rocking excitedly. She asks lots of questions, only a few of which I’m able to answer. Which is the female? How long will she nest? How many eggs? How will she eat? I point to the male, which circles slowly in the pond. We watch for over half an hour and see him catch two little fish, which he brings over to his mate.

It’s exciting and yet painful at the same time. These two Canada geese outside our window have what we all want. They’re free to take off at any time
and
they have each other. I don’t think Cinda processes it on this level, though. She keeps saying they’re beautiful, and that they need to be looked over and protected. “Nothing’s gonna happen to them, Shavonne—you won’t let anything happen to them, will you?”

I’m telling you, she’s close to the edge. In an instant, she becomes totally obsessed. It’s my mistake for showing her, but who knew she’d get so crazy over the damn things? I had to tell her because I’m just so bored and lonely and miserable. It’s normal for girls our age to talk about what happens during the day, right?

We stay up late, talking about how much we’d like to fly away to a new place. Cinda says she wants to go to Key West and live in a pink bungalow and get a job styling hair. She says there are lots of gay men in Key West and that’s good because they’re fun and she feels safe around them. Her bungalow will be decorated with mermaids and unicorns and faux fur. Pink and purple everywhere. Glow-in-the-dark constellation stickers for the bedroom ceiling so she can lie awake at night with her friends and stargaze.

Cinda says she’ll always have friends around because she can’t stand to be alone. She will have guest rooms and pull-out couches and an old-fashioned record player with lots of vinyl from the eighties and nineties. It really sounds like fun, and I tell her I’ll come visit her, even though that’s more of a fantasy than the pink bungalow in Key West. Of all the kids in the Center, I know that Cinda and I are the least likely to leave and make it on our own.

Then it’s my turn. And because it’s just Cinda and it’s two o’clock in the morning, I tell her my fly-away fantasy, the one I started in room confinement. In it, I’m twenty-five years old and I live in a big city where nobody knows me except the people I work with. I’ve got business suits and really nice shoes. And even though I’m just a secretary,
I’m good at my job. People treat me nicely and sometimes ask me for help.

My apartment is small but beautiful. It is clean. It is orderly. There’s matching furniture, thick soft carpets, and a big television I can watch from a giant canopy bed with a real down comforter on it. The kitchen is filled with nice things too: matching dishes, shiny pots and pans with real copper bottoms, even spices. I have the spices organized alphabetically in cute little bottles. I can cook whatever I want whenever I want. And the best part is that, at the end of each week, I go to the mall and use some of my paycheck for dinner and a movie as a reward for being normal. That’s it. That’s all I really want.

Cinda says it’s a good fantasy, and I realize it’s the first time in weeks somebody has said something nice to me. I think I will sleep well tonight.