Black Dahlia & White Rose: Stories (29 page)

In silence the roster was passed around the room and the men signed their names.

You could feel the tension, the hostility in the air. Where a moment before there’d been an air of affability, anticipation.

It was inevitable, inmates hated guards. Guards hated—or distrusted—inmates. In this unnatural setting, individuals yet behaved naturally.

Volunteer instructors were inclined to take the side of their students, against the guards. But Vivianne understood how the guards—this guard, surely—resented prisoners receiving special treatment from civilians.

The program offered college-level courses, like English 101.

Vivianne had seen, in front of the prison gate, in a patch of tended ground in which there was a flagpole with a weatherworn American flag at half-mast, a monument to the guards who’d “given their lives in the line of duty”—about twenty names, since 1928.

She’d asked, why is the flag at half-mast? Had someone died?

But no one in Vivianne’s little group knew. Not even Mick McKeon knew. And no one wanted to ask the grim-faced guard awaiting them at the first checkpoint.

It took several minutes for the guard to check the inmates in the classroom against the class roster and a printed list in his hand and when at last he returned the roster to Cal it was with an expression of scarcely disguised contempt; he told Cal to “be sure not to forget” to have the inmates sign out at the end of class.

“If there’s a fuckup, there could be a lockdown. No one would get out of here for hours.”

Still the guard addressed Cal, ignoring Vivianne. She saw the hot quick blood in her young co-instructor’s face and she said with a bright smile, “We will, officer! Thank you.”

W
hen she’d been a girl Vivianne had only to enter an unfamiliar place to feel that something special might happen, someone special might appear—and her life would be changed. She’d stepped into new settings with an air of romantic expectation—and some anxiety—and one day it happened, she met someone, someone special, and her life was changed.

And so, now that he had departed from her life, she’d become susceptible again to the old yearning, though decades had passed and she was so much older: yet, so strangely, the same person still, the same eager naïve hopeful girl.

So badly wanting to be
of help.

Her husband had often spoken of volunteering for such work—when he retired, when he had more time.

Having
more time
—this is a curious concept!

Now, there was
time
. Vast, choppy, slate-colored and with no perceptible beginning, or end—the direction of its current, like the Hudson River in certain weathers, indeterminate.

R
epeatedly they’d been warned: you will not be allowed to wear blue into the prison.

For blue was the prisoners’ color, exclusively.

Guards wore khaki-colored uniforms. Prisoners, blue.

In fact, blue over white. And their prison-issue sneakers were white.

Prison attire as a form of correction, punishment. A way of taking from the prisoner his identity, and making him ridiculous.

P R I S O N E R in stark white letters on the backs of the inmates’ (blue) shirts.

On the right legs of their (blue) pants stark white vertical letters

P

R

I

S

O

N

E

R.

At the waist of the (blue) pants, stark white initials N Y S D C R—NEW YORK STATE DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTION AND REHABILITATION.

Civilians could not be allowed to wear blue or any combination of colors like stripes that might be confused with blue by sentries in the watch towers for, if there was a “disturbance” in the yard—a sudden melee—(how often did this happen, the uneasy volunteers wondered)—sentries would command inmates to throw themselves on the ground and individuals who failed to obey, and remained standing, would be in danger of being shot down.

A civilian wearing blue would be in danger of being shot.

At the orientation meeting one of the volunteers identified herself as a “nurse by training” who was already co-teaching in the maximum-security prison at Auburn, but wanted to expand her time “inside” by volunteering here, too. With a small glow of pride the woman told the group that she’d been volunteering for prison work for thirty years.

She had a bulldog face, plain, squinting, somber. Her dark hair was short and wiry. She wore jeans and a denim jacket and hiking boots.

Not long afterward, the instructor brought up again the subject of “familiarity”—“over-familiarity”—with inmates. She warned of becoming “emotionally dependent” upon prison work: “If you discover that the emotional center of your life is in the prison, and your visits are the highlight of your week, you might want to reconsider your volunteer work, and cut back a bit.”

These remarks seemed to make no impression on the woman who’d identified herself as a nurse. Vivianne felt a stir of embarrassment for her.

She thought
That would never happen to me.

Her husband had expressed the intention to volunteer in prison education, when he retired. But why prison, Vivianne didn’t know. And which prison. She must have asked him. She would not have asked him more than once.

He’d had a way—so subtle, for he was a subtle man—of discouraging Vivianne’s curiosity when it seemed to him misplaced or intrusive, without saying anything specific, often without saying anything at all, only just frowning, glancing away—signifying
Excuse me but this is private. I’d prefer not to discuss this though I love you and respect you and my reluctance to answer is not a rebuke.

She’d sometimes taken it as a rebuke, of course. But she had never doubted that he’d loved her.

S
he was introduced by her young co-instructor as “Vivianne Greary—a renowned university professor and scholar” and himself as an “aspiring social-eco-activist.” In the course they would be reading “exemplary expository” essays and writing essays themselves. There was no textbook—photocopied material would be passed out at each class meeting, to be read for the next week’s meeting. Both Cal and Vivianne spoke—she saw the men’s eyes glide onto her, with a kind of affable interest; not sexual, not aggressive. She was sure of this.

The mood of the inmates was
eager.
At least, those men who were seated near the front of the room, who lifted their hands to speak, who’d had experience in previous courses.

Not all had been in the program before, but almost all. The young Asian-looking man at the back of the room, gazing with a sober impassive face at the instructors, seemed out of place, even disoriented. And one of the older white men, also at the back of the room, but nowhere near the young Asian, was frowning and sucking at his lips in a way that would have been distracting if he’d been sitting nearer.

What was this inmate’s name?—Vivianne had a vague recollection of a strange, cumbersome name—
Ardwick.

She would check the name roster, unobtrusively.

The man might have been in his early sixties. He had a blunt shaved head, a face that looked as if it had partly melted away. And much of his face was obscured by dark-tinted glasses. His short-sleeved blue shirt was loose-fitting as if it were the shirt of a much larger man and the sleeves of his white T-shirt straggled over his hands. Something in the way he stared at the instructors—at
her
—made Vivianne uneasy though you would not have guessed by Vivianne’s classroom manner which was smiling and pleasant, upbeat.

Yet, she kept looking at the man at the back of the room—
Ardwick?—Oldwick?
His first name, too, was unusual—
Elias? Ezra?

She thought
He has shrunk. This is not the self he remembers and so he is baffled, he may be angry.

Yet, the class was going well. The men took notes on yellow prison-issue tablets. Cal wrote on the blackboard. The men were diligent as students of another era. Already one of the younger black men had lifted his hand for permission to come forward to use the pencil sharpener.

“ ’Scuse me, ma’am?”—then, “Thank you, ma’am!”—as if Vivianne had dominance over the little blue plastic object.

Vivianne was reminded of her old, lost life as a university instructor—before she’d earned a Ph.D., before she’d acquired a reputation, and tenure.

Night-school classes were like boat-crossings on rough rivers—you just hung on, you rowed your heart out, you
made it across
. And what pleasure in that kind of teaching, that had little to do with the refinements of university teaching of advanced classes, scholarly research. The prison situation was not very different from night school, Vivianne thought. You did not expect brilliant students, you would be pleasantly surprised always by a few students who worked hard, did good work, became your friends . . .

She’d photocopied a section from James Baldwin’s “Notes of a Native Son” to pass to the students. The assignment was to read it carefully and respond in five hundred to one thousand words which they would read aloud at the next class meeting—“But only if you feel comfortable with reading aloud.” Vivianne had seen looks of dismay in several faces.

She suggested to Cal that maybe the men might volunteer to read the Baldwin essay aloud, just to make sure they understood it, and then they could ask questions if they had any; Cal seemed to agree, this was a great idea, then recalled suddenly that he’d forgotten to ask the students to introduce themselves, to say why they were taking the course and what they hoped to get out of it, which was suggested as first-class procedure, and so—maybe they’d better do that, first.

“Then, we can read from the essay. OK?”

Cal Healy was an inexperienced instructor, that was the problem. And the prison-situation seemed to have made him anxious. Vivianne would have liked to touch Cal’s wrist, to calm him: to ask him to speak less rapidly, and maybe less; to allow the students to talk more. She would have liked to seize his hand to reassure him, as an older teacher, as an older woman—but of course she couldn’t embarrass the young man in front of their students.

One by one, the men gave their names. Why they were taking the course, what they hoped to get out of it.

With a broad smile Conor O’Hagan said he was taking the course because he was going to be paroled in four months—“And I’d have to pay for it, outside.”

Ramirez said he was taking the course because he never learned nothing much in high school—“They just pass you along, man.”

Diego said he was taking the course because he wanted to “improve” his mind—“If you can
write,
man—you can
think
.”

Others echoed Diego, and others said that they were taking the course because it was a requirement in the degree program. The Asian boy Quogh Hu at the back of the room spoke reluctantly at first and then in a rapid, heavily accented English which Vivianne couldn’t understand; very likely, Cal couldn’t understand either. But both said, “Good! Good.”

The last to speak was the frowning man in the dark-tinted glasses who’d been staring at Vivianne as if lost in a dream. He hadn’t been paying attention, it seemed, for another inmate had to prompt him to reply in a stumbling voice: “Why I’m h-here . . . here . . . why I am
here
, is because . . . This is where . . .”

His words trailed off, eerily. There was an awkward silence in the room.

There came “Preach” to the rescue asking the instructors why’d they come here?

“Man, you got to tell us, too! It’s your turn.”

Cal answered first, reiterating his initial introduction and adding that he was a “social-eco-activist” who’d lived most of his life in the vicinity of the Hudson Valley and who hoped one day to “travel extensively in the Far East.”

Vivianne saw the men looking at her, expectantly. Until now she’d felt obscured by Cal Healy; she’d felt protected by him, despite his inexperience and awkwardness. She heard herself say, smiling, or with an attempt at a smile, “Today is my fiftieth wedding anniversary. My husband has been dead for two years—so anywhere I am, on this day, is like any other.”

The room was utterly silent. Vivianne’s co-instructor stared at her. What had she said? The words had glided from her, like liquid. The men regarded her with grave and astonished expressions. Even the frowning man at the back of the room. Quickly Vivianne said, “Please don’t misunderstand. There is nowhere else I would rather be, that I can be, right now. And so—I am here, in my first volunteer class at Hudson. With you.”

Her face beat with blood. What had she said!

She’d meant to be casual and entertaining. She’d meant to be the opposite of self-pitying, self-revealing. She’d meant just to explain
why
—but it had come out wrong.

For the first time, she saw herself as more than ridiculous—she saw herself as arrogant, indifferent to her husband’s memory. She was making her way in the world as if he had not died—as if he had not lived.

The horror of her selfishness washed over her, like dirty water.

She’d been counseled
You must move on. You must live your own life.

It was a lie, she’d wanted to believe. A selfish lie. And she knew this.

And the men staring at her knew this.

T
he remainder of the class passed quickly.

Quickly and jarringly like a boat in a choppy river, that is not quite entirely out of control.

Vivianne was distracted by a roaring in her ears. Though Vivianne addressed the class, explaining the assignment to them; giving them some background to James Baldwin—“By consensus, one of the very best American essay-writers of the twentieth century.”

She hoped that the African-American men in the class would admire Baldwin, and wouldn’t find his elegantly structured prose difficult. She hoped they wouldn’t think that she and Cal Healy were being patronizing, to pass out this essay, on a passionately black subject, to the class.

She hoped that the others wouldn’t resent the assignment, with its racial subject.