Walking the Dog (17 page)

A VISITOR

After fifteen years in prison, the last eight at Clayton, I was told I was under orders to see a visitor. Up until then I'd been refused mail, phone calls, or communication of any kind. This was fine because I wouldn't have listened to or read it if I did. It was my prerogative as to whether or not I wanted to communicate with the outside world. I certainly wasn't making any effort in that regard.

I was surprised because I found myself in foot and hand shackles being led to Sister Jean's office. I'd only ever been there for counseling after a week in solitary or aggressive, strange behavior on my part. So, maybe ten or twelve times.

Sister Jean sat back in her overstuffed chair (she refused a desk) and signaled to the guards to unlock my restraints. Her office was colorful and comforting if you were ever in any shape to notice it. She didn't have gross metal crucifixes on the wall with Jesus draped like a zombie over the cross. All her crosses were gifts from Central and South America and Africa, where I imagined she'd served as a Maryknoll missionary. One of the inmates had made a table for her out of plaster of paris and bottle caps. I liked touching it as if I were blind. The texture was the closest thing to art in Clayton. For equality's sake
she had a clay menorah, a wooden mezuzah given to her by some crazed Orthodox prisoner, several Indian gods such as Krishna, Shiva and Ganesh, as well as a big fat Buddha, and a tiny altar with carved candles and saints for the Latin girls who believed in Santeria. There was a prayer rug on the floor as well. There were photographs of indigenous people from all around the world. Clearly poor. Persecuted. Fighting for their rights and freedom.

Sister Jean sat in her chair concentrating on embroidering a piece of silk cloth. She raised her eyes and gave me a smile loaded with things to come.

“It's lovely to have you for something other than your usual bullshit,” she said.

I shrugged. “I guess.”

“You have a visitor we are going to leave you alone with. Given who he is, we trust you won't hurt him, but we've given him a Taser just in case. We're allowing him to visit on an off day because he isn't often in the US. It's my personal opinion, but a few hours with him may help ground you or help your sense of reality, which keeps switching on and off like a light-bulb in an interrogation room. I've allotted you cottage Sally 3 (cottages were named after inmates who'd died). You may do whatever you want—stare, have sex, argue, get reacquainted—but you may not hit him, nor he you. Guards will be posted outside.” Sister Jean stood up.

“You may come in, Mr. Salin.”

Leonard entered the room. He was a grown man now. Probably in his midthirties. Premature gray streaked his black curly hair. His glasses were rimless so his gray eyes were more exposed. His skin looked tan and he must've been going to the gym, because even though he was as thin as ever he didn't
appear too fragile or weak. He burst into tears the moment he laid eyes on me. He sobbed quietly and Sister Jean patted him rather unsympathetically on his bony shoulder.

“He's here to divorce me,” I stated plainly.

“Essie,” he sobbed.

“Why didn't he just do it by phone or send a letter from a lawyer?”

“Leonard flew here from Israel to speak to you one-on-one, Carleen. I thought since he was your husband—
is
your husband—you both deserved to try to clear the mess that remained of your marriage.”

“Israel? Have you joined a kibbutz?” I was snide.

Leonard laughed through his nose. Snot dripped to his chin. Sister Jean gave him a Kleenex. He was hiccuping slightly.

“No, I've been commissioned to build a playground around Jewish themes.”

My laugh was a snort. I was conversing as if this were my best friend, my boyfriend, my lover, my husband . . . and it had been I didn't know how many years.

“So you make huge menorahs for jungle gyms and Jewish stars that go back and forth like seesaws and jungles with huge mezuzahs as trees?”

“Carleen, calm down,” Sister Jean said in a quiet voice. “You're hyper.” The tone of her voice shut me right up.

“Why did you come here now, Leonard?” I tried to keep my words in proper sentences that idiots and hypocrites could understand.

“Because they finally let me,” Leonard sniffed. “I've been trying for three years.”

“Bullshit, you weren't even around during my trial.” I tried to keep what I thought was a level tone. Then I jumped him, knocked him over, and pulled at his thick, curly Jewish Afro.
Sister Jean grabbed my hair and practically yanked my head off my neck. Not your usual nun.

“This is not the kind of housecleaning I meant,” she growled at me. She signaled the guards to relock my restraints.

“Sorry. Not very ladylike, Leonard,” I said. His skin had gone gray with terror.

Sister Jean spoke again as if the current events hadn't just happened. “Take them to Sally 3 and only interfere if one of them calls for help or you hear distinct sounds of violence.” She didn't look at me. “You go after him again—a week in solitary. Full restraints.”

Sister Jean's voice meant business. I saw that the guards were curious and amused. Word would be out that I was alone with a Jew boy in Sally 3. The lifeblood of Clayton was gossip, speculation, and judgment.

Sally 3 was a small wood cabin like ones along a river for camping or fishing trips. The windows were small and covered with mosquito netting. There was a grungy double bed that honors women got to use for conjugal visits. I was a long way from that in my faded-orange uniform and leg and arm shackles, but being alone with Leonard drilled a hole in my armor. A vague memory of tenderness leaked through. He'd known me before I was Carleen, when I was just Ester.

“My God, what have they done to you?” he asked when the guards locked us in.

“You don't know me. You barely did. You're in Israel, but I'm farther away than any country you could find on a map and now you're pretending to pity me.”

“Essie, please . . . Are you in pain?” Leonard continued.

“All the time, but in a way, not at all.”

“This place looks at best civilized.”

“It's a prison. I'm getting so worn out with useless talk,
Leonard. We're not at Elaine's. You've come to tell me you're divorcing me and your conscience will be clearer if you do it in person. ” He coughed.

“I'll try to get us annulled first. If not there'll be divorce proceedings. You'll just have to sign the papers. That's all.”

“You own nothing of mine. Not one canvas or paintbrush. And not one accidental drip on a canvas.”

“I don't want anything, Essie. That'll be perfectly clear . . . Can I hold you one last time?”

“I'm in chains, Leonard.”

“I'll work around them.”

He put his arms around my shoulders and his smooth face against my cheek. I would've killed him if it weren't for Sister Jean's instruction. The tenderness was odd though. He'd never been there for me while I was in prison. And now he was leaving me. I was a teen comic-book cover with my bright-yellow hair in a flip and a turquoise tear drawn just below my eye.

“Let's try to fuck,” I dared him.

He appeared to be slightly nauseated.

“I wash every day, Leonard. Being a killer doesn't mean you have crabs. Come on, one last time,” I pushed him further.

I lifted my shackled hands above my head. He hesitated for a moment but then unzipped my prison-issue pants suit. It was impossible to spread my legs because I was chained at the ankles, but I managed to bend at the knees. With twists and turns we found an angle to get him inside me.

“Careful of the zippers,” I said. “You might scrape yourself.”

He was involved in some Hollywood end-of-the-world philosophical last fuck. For him, huge skyscrapers were falling and we were saying goodbye and all humanity on earth was doomed. I felt very little except that it was nice to be twisted up and not for punishment. A long time ago, Leonard had been
really blah compared to Miko, but I was glad it wasn't Miko now. Miko was dead. And this had a sweetness some people called life.

When Leonard finished he began to weep again.

“Well, this is the weirdest S&M I've ever done,” I said.

He smiled and we did the complicated do-si-do of straightening out my chains and overalls. His suit looked freshly ironed and untouched.

We sat in confused silence.

“Leonard, after this,” I said. “Nothing.”

He nodded.

“Like
Star Trek
, let's beam out of each other's lives. Not even memories. Particles.”

“That's poetic.”

“I haven't being reading a lot lately,” I said. “And my memory is the back of a train yard. The tracks cross in fifty directions. Rarely do I end up where the thoughts are supposed to go.”

He reached for my hand, but I'd become a statue.

“Essie,” Leonard said. “I hope this nightmare ends. I hope you find creativity or peace in it.”

“Leonard,” I replied. “You're a hypocritical two-faced shit. Get the fuck out of here unless you want to use the Taser.”

His face went white with shock.

“And you know in every square of every crossword puzzle what words I'm not saying. You could fill them all in. Go.
Now
. I mean it.”

I'd morphed into a bitch because his kindness toward me had brought up all the years of need within me. I despised and mistrusted anyone who made me feel weak.

He stood very straight and knocked on the door for the guards.

“My lawyer will send the appropriate papers,” he said.

I kept my thoughts to myself. They were too scrambled and paranoid, lost in voices. I watched him go. I sat on the bed and watched his body take on a proud but tentative posture. Essie the Jewish pygmy had shot him with her poison darts. Poison that lasts past the grave.

“Why now?” I asked him when he was far enough away. I knew he must be marrying another woman.

“You coming?” the other guard said to me. He had a smirk on his skinny face.

I stood up and slogged my way out of cabin Sally 3. “I think I'd like to go clean some toilets,” I said.

I was surprised that Sister Jean didn't call me in to find out how well the reunion had gone. I wasn't surprised when I began missing my periods, so I waited three months to tell them. They didn't do abortions at Clayton anyway. They had their secret grants from the Catholic Church to protect human embryos. And most of the women found an odd hope or redemption in creating an innocent life inside a corrupt, demonized body. The ones who hated it were the eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds who'd be giving the newborns over to their parents only to get out after three years and have someone clinging to them just when they'd need freedom. That was the beginning of child abuse right there.

Clayton had an “experimental” maternity program. It was run by Samantha, who'd been there thirty years for multiple murders. She was white and Jewish but the wife of a martyred Black Panther leader. The crime was ridiculous. One night, the Feds got a little jumpy and by mistake raided a birthday party for her man, also a drug dealer, but who wasn't doing anything at the time except blowing out candles on a cake. There were
so many radical suspects gathered in one house (it was a family enterprise) that, despite the fact the officers had no warrants, they broke into the party and discovered assault rifles, grenades, kilos of smack, and dynamite. There was “confusion,” and the Feds gunned down three unarmed men and a woman who'd been pulling out steak knives. I think at least eight innocent people were killed. The scandal was out of control. The Feds had to steal evidence to mask their outrageous fuckup. The survivors escaped to the streets, but they'd lost precious loved ones.

Samantha, the wife of the gunned-down leader and a hotshot in her own Weather Underground–type troupe, found a safe house and plotted revenge. She knew the odds, but she refused to be blackmailed into testifying against her family. She decided to leave her mark in the name of the imprisoned, the poor, and her beloved martyr. So, after a night of planning and reaching out to her Panther and Weather connections, she called Cousin Brucie, the sixties rock jock, and told him to warn the FBI that Jesus was on his way. Then she blew up the FBI headquarters with grenades, dynamite, and firebombs. She got four agents in the blast, but the agents who illegally started the birthday debacle never saw jail. Sam was the queen of the Black Panther radicals, and the FBI hunted her down. She and two comrades were in for four life sentences.

Sam, unlike me, was a real political animal. She wrote lengthy polemics to the outside and marches were organized in her name. She thought Clayton was a neo-Nazi rattrap, so she tried unsuccessfully to radicalize the prisoners. Even as a newbie she'd had ideas for programs to make Clayton more livable. Jen Lee showed up around that time and agreed to negotiate. Together they set out to transform punishment and torture into real rehabilitation. Sister Jean was assigned to
Clayton shortly afterward. She had endured a horrendous spell in El Salvador, and she brought all kinds of anger and rebellion that nuns aren't supposed to have. She and Sam were sisters of righteousness, and Clayton gave the appearance of introducing change. Despite their power, of course, rapes by the guards, initiation beatings, gang rites, and underground black-market drug traffic continued as in every major American prison. There were a lot of newsletters and speeches exposing the corruption. To Sam's credit, she did initiate useful programs. One of them was a birthing center so fewer newborns died upon delivery in filthy cells.

Sam and I had a strained, sarcastic relationship. If there was any mutual respect, we didn't show it. Like most inmates, many versions of stories about my life and incarceration had spread and been reinvented over the years. Sam thought I was an upper-class dilettante who'd done nothing for the world (which was true). She'd heard rumors that I was severely mentally ill and suffered from post-traumatic stress syndrome, so she avoided confronting me directly. I thought she was a diva who disguised her megalomania by pretending to be furious with capitalism. This was also true, but she got things done.