Topping From Below (38 page)

“I like seeing you in my bed when I wake up in the morning,” he says, and I know he means it. He snuggles against my body, his own still warm from the hot shower. “And I like having you here in the evening,” he adds. He holds me close, and I lean against him, still drinking my coffee, still trying to wake up, waiting for the caffeine to kick in. I look at the alarm clock on the nightstand, and see that it’s barely six. Through the bay window, in the early-morning light, we watch blackbirds flitting from the fence to the lawn. Rameau, lying peacefully on the patio, ignores them.

M. rubs my head gently. He says, “Don’t you think it’s time you told me the rest of your story? I’d like to hear it.”

I sigh, not sure I feel like talking. I get up, put on one of M.’s bathrobes, then walk over to the bay window. I finger the drapes, the fabric loosely latticed and coarse in my hands. Outside, the sky is getting lighter.

Still looking out the window, 1 say, “When I was twenty-one I had a tubal ligation; it’s a sterilization for women. I had to go to San Francisco for the operation. I couldn’t find a doctor in Davis or Sacramento who would do it. They said I was too young, that I would change my mind when I got older, that I would want children someday. Finally, I found a doctor in San Francisco. He had good intentions, but all the other doctors were right: twenty-one is too young to make that kind of a decision, one that would affect me for the rest of my life. I told a few of my friends about it. I was very glib. ‘I don’t need children to be fulfilled.’ ‘Kids are just an ego trip, parents trying to produce little creations of themselves.’ ‘I’m a woman, a feminist, not a baby-maker’—as if the two were incompatible. The truth was, I was deathly afraid of getting pregnant again.”

I laugh uneasily, still fingering the drapery fabric. “It was so unnecessary, the sterilization. I wasn’t even having sex—that was during my five-year period of celibacy—plus, I was taking birth control pills. I was one well-protected young lady: no sex, on birth control pills, and still I had the tubal ligation.”

Dropping the fabric abruptly, I walk away from the window, then sit in the blue armchair in the corner of the room, crossing my legs. “When I was twenty-one, it seemed logical,” I continue. “I couldn’t get pregnant again, I couldn’t go through that another time—at any cost. So I had the tubal, not even knowing why, not really. I just wanted to forget about the abortion, about the baby, about everything that happened.” Nervously, I play with the arm of the chair, running my right hand up and down the length of it. “But the past has a way of catching up with you. You can try to deny it, pretend it didn’t happen, but it’s there, always there, waiting to resurface. Years later, I kept asking myself, Why did I get sterilized when there was no possibility of conception? I was on pills, I was celibate, there was absolutely no need for a tubal ligation. Then the answer started to come to me: I destroyed a life, so I took away my capacity to ever create life again; I’d never give birth. It was a form of punishment.”

I realize now that I had wanted to finish this story for M. I’d been silent for almost twenty years, and saying the words out loud to another person, while difficult, has been cathartic. I needed to talk about this; I should’ve done it years ago. Only now do I understand that you can’t avoid the past; it churns inside you, making itself known in the oddest and most painful ways, until you recognize and acknowledge its presence. Why did it take me so long to learn this?

Silence covers the room like a velvet pall over a coffin. I think of the children I’ll never have; the grandchildren who’ll never amuse me as I age; no one, ever, to perpetuate the Tibbs lineage. Is the punishment justified? Finally, and for the first time, I can say no. A long, slow sigh, audible, escapes my lips. Relief. I feel relief, although I’m not sure why. Nothing has changed except my perception. Perhaps that will be enough.

I go back to the bed and lie down. M. puts his arms around me but doesn’t say anything, just rubs my back and shoulders tenderly. We are quiet for a while. I begin to feel sleepy again and reach for the coffee mug.

Finally, M. says, “Why don’t you move in?”

Instantly, I am wide awake, as if I’m on my sixth cup of coffee. “Move in?” I repeat, gripping the mug tighter.

He gets up and begins putting on his clothes. “Just think about it,” he says. “You know how I feel about you, and you’re here most of the time anyway.” He finishes dressing and bends down to kiss me. “And unless I’m way off the mark, I believe you’re beginning to care for me also.” Before I have a chance to reply, he says, “I have a breakfast meeting before my first class, and if I don’t leave now, I’ll be late. We’ll talk about it later,” and he walks out the room, leaving me confounded.

I lie in bed for a while, contemplating his proposal, the absurdity of it. It’s true, my feelings for him are changing, developing, growing. I’ve confided in M. as I’ve never done with anyone else, and the sexual games we play—his domination, my submission—enthrall me. He’s exciting, intelligent, and a little bit dangerous—a combination I crave. But … from murder suspect to live-in companion? I don’t think so.

I put all these thoughts aside. I have more pressing business this morning: to meet the man who supposedly killed Cheryl Mansfield.

Mark Kirn is a death-row inmate at San Quentin. When I received clearance to visit him, the prison officials sent me a visitor information handbook telling me how to dress. I couldn’t wear anything blue or dark green, no denim, no sweatpants, nothing with a bare midriff, no short skirts, no cleavage, no strapless, backless, or low-cut dresses. So I’m dressed conservatively as I drive to the Bay Area, a plain white skirt down to my knees and a short-sleeved, peach-colored blouse.

I take the toll bridge into San Rafael, then turn onto the road leading up to the prison. It curves around the San Pablo Bay, and soon I begin to wonder if I’m lost. Quaint Victorian homes, all old and very small, some of them run-down, line both sides of the road. Interspersed between the homes are coastal scrub, some scraggly wildflowers, a small patch of a garden here and there. The land slopes down to a rocky coast, and over the bay I can see the San Francisco skyline. The view is picturesque, like something on a postcard—not a likely spot for a prison.

I keep driving. Around a bend in the road I see a large building made of stone, granite I think, old and with a pale yellowish tinge, surrounded by a high concrete wall: San Quentin.

Following the instructions they sent me, I hike up a hill to a long, narrow building where visitors are processed. Inside, I’m overwhelmed by the sounds of screaming babies. The room is dreary, with concrete floors and wooden benches along unpainted walls, and filled with people—a few men, but mostly women and children. I stand in the back of the line and wait. In front of me, a squat blond-haired woman has a sick child slung over her shoulder as if he were a heavy bag of flour. He’s whining, squirming around, his nose dripping steadily. He lifts his hand and wipes his nose, then sticks a plump thumb into his mouth, staring at me with big brown eyes.

The line inches forward. At the other end of the room, at irregular intervals, a door is buzzed open and one person is allowed to exit. Most of the women are carrying transparent plastic bags—cheap cosmetic bags—hlled with items they’re allowed to bring inside the prison: three keys, photo identification, handkerchief or tissue, comb or brush, twenty dollars with no bill larger than a five. No food, no paper or pencils or pens, no tape recorders.

Finally, after about an hour, it’s my turn to be buzzed through the door. I walk in and see a guard behind a counter. He’s an older man, in his fifties, white hair and dull eyes, wearing a dark forest-green uniform with patches on the sleeves. His name, E. Cullen, is stitched in black on the right breast pocket. I lay my ID, car key, and twenty dollars on the counter. E. Cullen doesn’t say anything. He looks bored and he stares at me blandly, with little interest. He visually inspects my clothes, checks my ID against the approved visitors list, then hands me a yellow pass. I pick up my belongings and go through a metal detector. I think this is the end, but the process has only begun.

I walk out of the building and onto the prison grounds. A very long sidewalk leads up to the prison, a massive structure so old it looks sallow and jaundiced. San Quentin was built in 1852, and it has the appearance of an ancient castle, a fortress, with projecting turrets and crenellated rooftops and, in the stone walls, arched lancet windows. A gun tower in the shape of an obelisk, with armed guards, stands apart from the prison. Beyond that, I see the bay, beautifully blue on this clear afternoon.

The sidewalk seems to go on forever, which I suppose is fitting since I’m crossing from one world to another, from the land of the free to the underworld of the condemned. A few low-level security inmates dressed in blue are pulling weeds on a grassy slope.

Finally, I see another gate, with a guard booth adjacent. More processing—sign-up sheets, another metal detector to pass through, another bored guard dressed in green. I show him my visitor pass and he stamps the back of my hand. The imprint is blurred and I can’t read it, an iridescent yellowish-green stamp similar to the ones I’ve received when out dancing at a club. I turn left and walk along the prison wall. Prisoners are exercising on the inside yard, and they sound like they’re in the army, grunting in unison, doing calisthenics. In front of me, there are a row of unmarked doors without handles. I stand in front of the third door. It’s electronically controlled, with a large panel of glass—or perhaps Plexiglas—so thick and scratched I can barely see inside. When the guard sees me, the door slides open. I walk into a small antechamber, show him my ID and pass, then step out into a metal cage. The glass door slides shut behind me. The cage is the size of a small elevator, with cast-iron black bars, and for a moment I feel as if I’m the prisoner. I hear a click as the door is electronically unlocked. I push open the gate, and finally I’m in the visiting room.

It’s not what I expected. This looks like a student union hall at a racially mixed college. There are vending machines—candy, burgers, chicken, french fries, coffee, sodas—and a microwave oven, and rows of tables and chairs in the middle of the room. Close to seventy or eighty people, visitors and inmates, crowd the room, and the noise is loud and chaotic—crying babies, whining toddlers, men and women talking loudly to make themselves heard.

The glassed-in guard booth is to my right and it takes up almost one side of the room. It’s built high, and I have to reach up to slide my ID and visitor pass through the slot in the window. The guard, a sharp-faced man with short bristly hair, also in a forest-green uniform, tells me to sit. All the chairs are blue vinyl with metal trim, and they’re linked together with other chairs to form a straight row. I find two empty chairs in the corner and wait.

I glance around the room. All the inmates are wearing light blue workshirts and blue jeans. My attention is drawn to the walls, which are painted with colorful murals. I’m sitting next to a plump Hispanic girl, and she gives me a nudge.

“Those were done by the inmates. Pretty good, huh?” The girl has a young-sounding voice, breathy, with no trace of an accent.

One of the murals is an outdoor scene, Yosemite perhaps, with a huge granite dome and a waterfall. The other mural has more of a mythical quality, depicting a buxom, toga-clad woman sitting in front of a winged horse, Pegasus, the symbol of poetic inspiration. I wonder if the inmate who painted this also knew that Pegasus was later captured by Zeus and treated as a pack animal, to fetch his thunderbolts. Probably not. He was most likely more concerned with the buxom lady. Yosemite and Pegasus. Nature and mythology—the murals seem incongruous in this setting.

“Yes,” I say. “They’re nice.” I look at my watch, then shift around in the hard chair. A couple walks across the room, holding hands, two shiny-faced toddlers trailing after them. Another couple, at a table near the candy machine, kiss and grope each other as if they were on a secluded, romantic picnic in the park. Men in blue are bouncing babies on their laps, laughing with their wives or girlfriends. They look like normal, ordinary men. I have to remind myself that every man in this room has murdered one or more people. This is the death-row visitors’ room, and all the men dressed in blue are killers. Two tables down, I see a black woman with corn-rowed hair giving her boyfriend a hand job, her fist deep in his pants, pumping up and down. I lean forward and read the sign on the wall above her head: HANDS MUST BE VISIBLE AT ALL TIMES.

I sit back in the chair. A red-headed woman in black pants walks by, wearing a religious collar under a blue and pink Hawaiian shirt. She must have at least a dozen holes pierced in her ear, filled with silver studs and hoops and shiny, dangling jewelry.

“That’s Reverend Betsy,” the girl next to me says. “She comes to visit the men that don’t have regular visitors. She’s nice, not like the others.” She points over to a table where an inmate is listening to a man reading from a Bible. I look around and notice there is a lot of Bible reading in the room.

“They come in all the time,” she says. “The Christian people, doing good service. The inmates like them because they buy them cheeseburgers, but then they have to listen to them talk about Jesus and the Bible.” She shrugs. “It’s okay, I guess. At least they get cheeseburgers.”

Fifteen or twenty minutes have gone by. I watch as inmates, one at a time, enter the room through a metal door. Each time the door slams shut, it makes a loud, clanging noise. They give their names to the guard behind the glass window, then find their visitors.

“There’s my husband,” the Hispanic girl says, and she gets up to leave. She walks over to a sweet-faced boy who looks barely older than she. They hug, then go immediately to the vending machines, walking hand in hand like two teenagers in a mall—only this boy isn’t a teenager and, despite his appearance, not innocent at all.

The metal door clangs shut again. I watch as an inmate gives his name to the guard behind the glass booth, then asks him a question. The guard points his finger at me. Turning around, the prisoner looks where the guard is pointing, then walks toward me stiffly, looking nervous, as if he doesn’t belong here. He’s tall and slight, with narrow slits for eyes and thin lips that are clamped tightly shut. This must be Mark Kirn. He’s a middle-aged man with a bald spot on the top of his head, and if he was dressed in a suit and tie, he would look like a businessman instead of an inmate.