From the Chrysalis (15 page)

Glancing at the quilted robe lying across the foot of her narrow bed, she considered her options. Maybe she could. No, she couldn’t. Not for anyone.
She wasn’t about to traipse all over the cool green campus dressed in her night clothes. Who did they think she was,
wee Willie Winkie
?
The trip to Alumni Hall and the unaccustomed dance had almost worn her out. She opened her mouth to say something pithy and dismissive, but nothing came out. Better to play dead. She was going to have to write off her dorm mates anyway, especially after today’s dinner time conversation about their daddies’ jobs. Besides, she was supposed to be making a fresh start.

Her old friend Linda would have known better. She had been good at reading people and infiltrating the little Italian and Ukrainian cliques in their concrete school yard. She would have figured out that saying, “Oh, my father’s a garbage collector,” was apt to embarrass people. Embarrass them for her
.
People didn’t enjoy being embarrassed. She should have considered their feelings at least. Better to have announced that her father was an undertaker, a pimp, a postal worker or a minister to these cool, private school educated blonds.

She would have to be more careful when she met her new roommate. The housemother said Janice was from a farm near Guelph, but what did that mean? She probably hailed from a five hundred acre tobacco farm with a huge swimming pool and a crew of swarthy migrant workers who lusted after the farmer’s bikini clad daughter in the summer time.

The Committee in the hallway was undeterred. Confident of their prey, they continued hammering on her door. She
had
to be in there. C’mon. Where else would she go? Liza’s lungs ached from holding her breath, but she was committed to silence now. Maybe they’d forget her if she kept real still. Yeah, better a sound sleeper than a poor sport.
 

“C’mon, Liza,” one girl coaxed, trying the personal approach.
She remembers my name
, Liza thought as her doorknob rattled. Her fists clenched and her toes curled, but her body sagged with relief when she realized they didn’t have a key. If they had, they would have been through the door by now, pulling the covers from her cowering body and tossing a robe into her face. She just had to keep the mad dogs at bay for a few minutes longer. But what if the housemother were trussed and gagged in some broom closet? She quite liked the housemother, a plain-faced grad student who could recognize all the residents from the wallet-sized photos they’d submitted with their applications. No. On second thought, she was probably a co-conspirator who had handed over skeleton hall keys to her rebel charges. “Do as you please, girls. Enjoy your good clean fun.”

Her lungs started to ache, but eventually the girlish voices of the Committee faded down the hall. It was some time before she dared take a good, deep breath. The intruders pounded on another recruit’s door down the hall and went through the same routine, this time with more success. Surprised out of sleep or just eager to please, the new target opened her door almost immediately.
What a bunch of silly cows.
 

Liza collapsed back on her foam pillow, too excited to go back to sleep. But she had to sleep. How would she survive here if she didn’t? What if she didn’t understand her courses? Her worries ran on and on, a stream of concerns washing away yet more precious sleep. What if she lost her scholarship and wasted all the blood money Gran had promised to pay until she was back in Ontario long enough to qualify for a student loan?

Stealthily, although stealth was no longer required, she got out of bed, went to a tall dresser and unlocked her assigned drawer.
Genie in a bottle,
she thought, enjoying the scent of the new wood. Everything about Liza lived inside: her Canadian birth certificate, Social Insurance number, and an Irish passport, but there was also a small cardboard child’s jewellery box. When she unlocked the box with a minuscule key, a plastic ballerina twirled in time to
Edelweiss.

Reassured at seeing an amber prescription bottle of pearly pills and Dace’s letters inside the pink, satin-lined box, she locked both the music box and the drawer and lay back in bed. After angling the gooseneck lamp properly, she continued reading
Wuthering Heights
,
a considerable feat now that Dace loomed larger than Heathcliff in her thoughts. For years she had read almost nothing except Byronic literature. The tragic, doomed heroes and heroines practically leapt off the pages at her. She read the same books over and over, always hoping the characters’ lives would somehow be made right. In theory, anything was possible in their fictional lives. People lived forever.
 

“Cathy!” Heathcliff hollered, and Cathy rose from the grave.
 

“Dace!” Liza hollered, and Dace walked out of jail.
 

Liza read so much she had even started to write her own novel, in the same vein. The manuscript, a single chapter, was stored safely under her mattress, right beside where Tony’s picture had been.
 

It was just before 1:00 a.m. She read until her eyes ached, then she daydreamed, thinking of the good things in her life. She was back home in Canada, she was in university, and she had made a friend: Mel. Plus he was cute. And Dace was getting out soon, repentant, redeemed and magnificently reformed. When the book slipped from her hands at about 3:00 a.m., it was because the residence was finally quiet and she believed in a wonderful tomorrow.
 

Dace was getting out.
In her fantasy, the Parole Board was impressed.

Chapter 10

Rumblings

In the now defunct Maitland Penitentiary, there was no mess hall. Inmates ate meals in their cells. They also spent two hours most evenings in the Recreation Hall and provision was made for a half hour exercise period for each inmate each day. It was obvious from a review of this schedule that the time an inmate spent locked in his cell varied from 16 to 18 hours a day.
 

[Commission of Inquiry into Maitland Penitentiary Riot,

April, 1972.]

Maitland Penitentiary, September 3, 1971:

There was nothing unusual about that evening.
Nothing at all. The new bull, Robert Saksun, didn’t count.
The prisoners were let out of the Recreation Hall in groups of ten and led back to their cells. It was Dace’s turn now, but Robert Saksun was too fat to walk beside him. The catwalk, built in the early 1800s, had been made for smaller men. Just as well. Dace hated the nasty familiarity of a “correctional officer” by his side.

He had been in the first shift tonight. Although he was missing
Kojak
, he didn’t care. Liza was coming tomorrow. She was worth ten dumb ass cop shows. What did she have to do on a Sunday in a student residence anyway? Go to church? Read a book? A smart girl like that, she could read on the bus.
 

From the recreation room it was a bit of a hike back to Cell Block B. They went up a flight of stairs, through another passage, then around. The catwalk jiggled under his feet. He had so much energy buzzing through him he felt like jumping.
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpy had a great fall,
he thought
.

For some reason, the new guy looked a little rattled. “What the fuck’s so funny, Dev? Or Deb, is it?” he demanded.

Dace didn’t answer right away. The tiers were filling up, so everybody in a two cell block radius could hear. The guard tried to read the stencilled numbers on Dace’s shirt, but the numbers had faded, so he poked him in the ribs with his shiny new billy stick instead.
 

“My name’s D’Arcy,” Dace said.
 

“Deverecs!” the guard laughed.
 

“D’Arcy James Devereux,” he said, as if it mattered.

Another guard and a prisoner squeezed by them. “Yeah, and that’s Robert Saksun,” he said.
 

“I asked you a question,” Saksun growled. “What’s so funny?”

You,
Dace thought. “Sorry,” he said, bowing a little and sweeping his hand backwards into his cell. “I think you’re mistaken,
sir.
Look at this place. You see anything funny here?”

“Listen up, and wipe that stupid, shit-eating grin off your face or I will,” Saksun blustered, his jowls shaking as he talked. “You look a little too happy for me. You guys are all the same. Give you an inch and you’ll take a mile.”

“Sure thing, Boss,” Dace said, shadow boxing into his cell.

Saksun wasn’t finished yet. His mouth worked for a minute before he said, “Uh, that girl who visited you the other day. Liza? Lisa? This guy, um, he’d like to meet her.” When he didn’t get an answer straight away he added, “Although I wonder about her. What’s a college cutie doing with a jailbird like you?”

Dace stared at him.
Go on,
something inside him said.
Pop the fucker on the nose.
Saksun reminded him of a gummy-faced pitbull. Saksun’s legs, short, stocky and dangling under his large belly, looked like pitbull legs.
Fuck you,
he thought.
 

“She’s family,” he said. “She’s got no choice.”

Saksun made a retching sound. “Your sister?” he shrieked to the prison population at large, “Now that ain’t right.”

“She’s his cousin, asshole!” somebody responded from a lower tier.

Saksun’s eyes darted from side to side, but he tried to hold his ground. “A cousin, eh? I hear she has quite a rack.” He rambled on until somehow he ended up against the railing, looking more surprised than scared.
 

“Hey, Dace, whatya doing there?” Dace’s cell neighbour, Grumpy, called. “You know, you gotta move more careful-like. You don’t want Biggie toppling over the side.”
 

 
Dace shrugged. “I just looked at him and he stumbled,” he said.

“Hey, fella, I’ll swear to that,” Grumpy agreed.

Dace looked at Saksun, who had managed to right his bulk and was shifting away from the railing. Head down, he locked the cell door and growled at Grumpy, “Mind your own business, you old fart,” before he fled down the hall.
 

“Hey, Debo,” Grumpy said. “You gotta be more careful if you expect to get out of here in three months.You letting that stupid fuck get on your nerves?”

“The only person getting on my nerves is you,” Dace grumbled.

Everybody was getting on his nerves, though. Guys had been talking about Liza all week. He’d ignored it at first. She was a pretty girl, and they were desperate men after all. But then the Padre had gotten in on the act.

The Padre was an old-fashioned man. A girl had her place.
That
girl could be a lifeline for some of these boys, just like she’s been for you,
he’d said, which would have been bad enough, but then he’d added:
Tell me something, are you having carnal thoughts?
Because your relationship
is consanguineous.
I think you know what that means.”

Oh, Dace knew what consanguinity meant. He just didn’t care. A good Catholic could always get around a little problem like that.
Are you sure?
he’d felt like saying,
Not even if I get a special dispensation? Or ask my Daddy for a nice, big, fat cheque?

Liza had been a little girl at the farm. She was his
cousin and a young girl, a person he wanted to protect. Now … Her strong, heart-shaped face came to mind. Somebody had already betrayed her. He could see it in her eyes. He wanted to slam the bastard’s face into the wall. A sweet-talking Irishman, no doubt. It didn’t matter to Dace what she’d done, but he’d get the guy who hurt her.

The past is the past
, he always said, even though his own past had a habit of creeping up whenever it damn well pleased. The less people knew the better, but stuff always got out. Revelations could be as random as a chance encounter with an old acquaintance or as connived as a journalistic exposé in his hometown newspaper, but they were never his choice. Maybe some guys enjoyed their notoriety, but not him.