Walking the Dog (12 page)

13. Miko asked what the point was of building fast motorcycles if there wasn't any reason to run them. I suggested races, but for some reason neither he nor I was interested in that. (This is important.)

14. When I started painting again in college, I only painted motorcycles and very strange people riding on them. I also met your father Leonard Salin during that time, and he and I played on jungle gyms he was constructing for an architecture class. I want to tell you straight out that he had nothing to do with anything illegal. That's what made him so boring to me. But Leonard, as you probably know by now, could be a lot of fun. He took me to trapeze school and helped me shape goofy zombies out of Play-Doh. I liked how much he was in love with me. Together we built a wild playground of unexpected shapes and won a large fellowship.

MY TESTIMONY FOR PONY

The splashing of the Hudson against the boat had begun to annoy me. The motion made me slightly sick. Or maybe it was the memories. The alarm went off on my watch. It was time to take Pookie home. Evan was a stickler about time. I was frustrated and agitated. I hated what I'd written for Pony's list. I didn't want to brag about all that shoplifting, but I was following her rules. What a bad influence! But I relished a good shoplift the way people picked a good-looking table for blackjack. It was the sleight of a hand, of close-up touching, grabbing, and then hiding. I probably would've done it even now if it wasn't for my terror of getting caught and violating even one grain of my parole. I reexamined my testimony for Pony. Why had I gone on and on about the motorcycles? I was furious with myself. I was avoiding exactly what she'd requested. The details of the crimes. And what was I supposed to reveal about her straight-laced father? What did she know about him? I felt completely blocked. Perhaps I wasn't ready. I couldn't face it. I contemplated taking out the cigarette lighter that was a gift from one of my sisters at Clayton and setting the notebook on fire. A minor act of arson might relieve the pressure in my brain. But Mr. Jiminy Cricket on my shoulder told me Uncle Walt wanted me to be a good girl. Otherwise I'd be back in the solitary-confinement castle with Mr. Ratshit and Ms. Clogged Toilet Drain. I kept the list in one piece and took off with bouncing, twirling Pookie. I tried running with her once more, but the hour of sitting in the boat had stiffened my joints and pain slowed me down. Nothing was right. Nothing was really progressing. I was in a tornado of self-pity. But I dropped the poodle off exactly on time. I'd learned punctuality and discipline at Clayton. Twelve years in that prison gave me tools for living in a civilized society where you did the right thing because of threats, not choice. But those lessons had taken forever, and I was very wobbly about it all on my way back into the real world. When a mood hit I got the urge to rob a bodega or smash some gallery or boutique so I could get my rush. Time and again I had to remind myself that they might not send me back to Clayton. I could end up at another Powell. And, in that case, I might as well shoot myself in the head.

I knew I should go to an NA meeting, but I called Tina and Jeremy instead and shyly asked if I could get a “Doorbell Fix.” I rarely, if almost never, asked anyone for anything, but Doorbell was my shaman, my healer, and Tina and Jeremy were always so busy with their thriving, computer-driven business that they were grateful if their sweet monster of a dog got extra attention. It was an easy walk. Doorbell and I both took advantage of being slow and big. When I was with Doorbell my motivation for staying clean was this mastiff, who clearly had a god's soul inside him (if there was any god). He seemed to understand that I needed to take him into those neighborhoods where peril and hatred abounded. I had to have a touch of familiarity. I wasn't ready yet for the other world. Then we'd walk out of the inferno and I'd find a patch in Prospect or Battery or Central Park and we'd lie down and I'd lean my head on the soft folds of his massive neck and weep.

THE EARLY YEARS OF CLAYTON

My first weeks at Clayton were spent in the prison hospital. I was still injured and ill. The huge change in my life also induced repeated incidents of post-traumatic stress. I went bonkers quite a bit. I didn't want to eat or sleep. I refused to speak. I lunged at anyone who made a sudden move at me. The other occupants in my ward either told me to shut up or cheered me on. Some of them were there for illnesses like pneumonia, the flu, or AIDS. There were several who had bad injuries from knife fights or knockouts from batons. They, like me, were in restraints. They were women of all ages, and although the ward was clean I could smell a very old inmate a few beds down who was dying. In my mind's dark state, I was sure that would be me.

My bad behavior calmed down because no one engaged with me and the doctor didn't flinch when I tried to punch him. Several nurses had to talk to me while taking my blood pressure and temperature. I was treated like a wild animal they were absolutely certain they'd tame. My early months were filled with nightmares of Miko, Powell, Fits, forests with lynched convicts hanging off trees, canvases on fire, rapes by prehistoric creatures, nuns in a cabal putting up stakes for burning Jews, dead dogs, my breasts turning into guns, sharing dark holes of solitary confinement, watching gang members
bleed to death, me drowning in their blood, being forced to jump off cliffs, voices and faces condemning me, being tangled in crippling wire sculptures, suffocating under a pile of guns, my father stabbing himself with one of my brushes, my mother turning her back. My sleep forced every fear out of me. It made me frozen and terrorized in my waking hours. When I woke, terror transposed into rage, and I felt as if I were capable of ripping my sheets and strangling the nurses. Smashing my bed against the wall and demolishing the drywall. I could've probably killed someone with the sheer strength that came from my anger at my life. I also fell victim to many seizures where I'd shake and pound the floor. When I came to, I thought of Fits and exploded into an emotional maelstrom. In the beginning I was given strong shots that just knocked me out—little by little the strength of the drugs lessened and my horrors were muted, foggy. The ever-present guard was removed from my bedside and replaced by rotating officers who covered the whole unit, not just me. The lessening of constant scrutiny took some pressure off me, and when I began to sit and then walk I wasn't overcome with paranoia. My uneven steps began to grow stronger. They told me I could start physical therapy again as soon as I started to behave.

A tall, reedy woman with whitish-red hair pulled up a chair next to my bed. She introduced herself as Sister Jean. She was a gruff old nun and told me, “If you'd get this vow of silence over, we could get going a lot faster.” She said she used to hate it when she was in the convent because it prevented her from cursing out the Mother Superior and the upright phonies. The spiritual hypocrites always said that God was going to punish her for her lack of complete devotion. She wondered how they knew the extent of her devotion. “Did they have a meter?” The asshole nuns, she said, also talked a lot about God keeping accounts. She didn't think that there was an accounting firm
called God & Son. Jesus didn't punish, she told me. Human beings who were liars did so in his name. And God, by the way, was too busy to be an accountant. Sister Jean gave the impression that Clayton was certainly different from Powell, but I didn't trust what might be hope in myself. And I smelled a bit of a con artist in her tough-lady, unholy-holy routine. This Jean could be softening me up for any sort of scam. But one day she told me to “cut the shit.” That I was suffering from PTSD and it was scary and disorienting, but I wasn't helping things one bit with my “Marcel Marceau routine.” I liked that. Several days later a nurse brought me dinner and I said thank you. I didn't even know I'd said it. It just slipped out. She didn't make a big deal out of it at the time, but the next day Sister Jean said, “I hear you have manners.”

“I'm not a monster when I'm not treated like one,” I replied.

“That's true of most of us,” she said. “Even the real monsters, and you certainly are not one of those.”

“What's going to happen to me?” I asked, though I barely had a voice from lack of practice.

“We're going to keep you here for a while longer,” Sister Jean explained. “Just to make sure you've thoroughly abandoned the Mike Tyson imitation you were enjoying when you first arrived. You haven't tried to knock anybody out for quite a while, and that's much more manageable. Then you will be released and forced to go through the formal admissions policy to Clayton: paperwork, uniform, etc. You will meet with the warden and most likely be assigned to the maximum-security unit until we can put you into your program toward personal and spiritual rehabilitation.”

Sister Jean must've seen my eyes cloud over. She leaned toward me—brave woman—but I had no desire to push against my restraints.

“This isn't Powell, Carleen,” she said with the first note of
sympathy I'd heard in her voice. “God knows it's a far fall from heaven, but it's not Powell.”

She was right about maximum security. It was located in a separate building surrounded by its own high wire fence. My cell had no bars, only a heavy metal door with several locks. The room was entirely bare except for a cot, a bench for clothes, a sink, and a toilet. The walls were painted a strange, very light yellow. The floor was stone, and there was a tiny skylight high in the ceiling. There was no way to reach it no matter how you angled the bed, but at least complete darkness wasn't part of the punishment. Sometimes I was overcome with fantasies of either squeezing through that window to freedom or hanging from it to finish my confused existence. I still couldn't eat much because of the damage that had been done to my stomach, but the guards opened up the door all the way to bring me my meals and didn't slip them through the “doggie door.” They were under strict rules not to curse or mock me despite the fact I'd “killed two of their own.” But you could tell time was on hold until I regained my strength. Every meal was soft and mashed up as if I were a toddler and even included two bottles of Ensure. Most of it stayed down, and I didn't experience the same cramps I had been living with for months. That the bosses at Clayton were trying to get me healthy made me extremely anxious. I kept thinking of the witch in Hansel and Gretel. Fattening me up so they could eat me. The real madness came from the fact that in maximum security I was allowed to do nothing. Often I sat on my bed for a whole day and concentrated on the wall across from me.

Either because of the isolation or my unhealed brain, my time spent staring at the wall was like the vision quests of the Native Americans who would look at the “magical” clay and
stone walls and see the legends of their forefathers. I didn't connect with my great-great uncle Breslov in Lithuania, but I saw visions of my paintings. My brush strokes moved according to my moods. Rips in the canvas from when I'd stabbed an unsatisfactory painting in a crazed tantrum. I saw New Hampshire right before dusk and the engines of tractors and trucks. I saw the individual faces of my “posse.” I didn't know what had happened to any of them. My little collegiate posse and I were like a 1940s mob doing trivial crimes for fun. It was almost a thesis project. But then, when it oxidized into a poison, I got the whole rap. The fucking wusses said they were blackmailed or threatened. Face by face like a slide show of their mug shots. And I watched reruns of pranks and crimes. The bigger ones. The catastrophic event. I saw Leonard's face. And David Sessions. Miko rode by on a Kawasaki. I saw his thin muscular body, his hairless dark skin, and the henna patterns I painted on his back. Dreams and memories became confused. I didn't see my parents. I hadn't seen them since college. I saw an enormous poster on the wall where my mother publicly requested if she could legally “divorce me.” My parents pulled out their eyes. When I hallucinated them, their eyes were all white.

My wall was the biggest TV I'd ever seen, but I had no control over programs or channels. I also didn't learn anything about who I was or why I'd done what I'd done. I missed Leonard, but only fleeting commercials of him flashed by. I wanted to roll in paint. I wanted to feel grease on my hand. My life was going dry. My skin was cracking. I stayed very still. The only visuals and physical sensations that were real were my daily two-hour trips to physical therapy. Strangers in white outfits set me on thinly covered hardwood tables. The equipment wasn't state of the art, and the pain was so excruciating I became feral. They shackled me to bend and unbend my legs, to twist my
knees. They belted me down when I was to lift weights. They ordered me to walk on ramps and treadmills. A guard sat with a rifle pointed at me the entire time. I saw torturers dressed in white and variations of uniform shapes. It was the twilight zone. I contemplated refusing to move so they would beat me. I dreamed of running off so a guard would shoot me in the back, but then I remembered the crisp and somewhat dykey Sister Jean. I didn't have any reason to trust her, but I considered wanting to.

After weeks or months, more guards arrived. They shackled my wrists, but not my feet, and led me to a brick building that looked like a headmaster's cottage at a second-rate prep school. There was no sign on the metal door that was surrounded by light red bricks and some pitiful ivy.

I was led into a large room. The decor seemed to have been bought and designed by the Salvation Army. There must've been fifteen chairs, all different styles, for impromptu meetings. Couches. Love seats. Lamps of different shapes and brightness. The walls were covered with artwork obviously done by inmates over the years. I didn't judge it. There were diplomas and state certificates. Loads of files lay in straight lines on mismatching rugs, most likely also woven by convicts. I liked the chaos. It was like being inside an engine. Futuristic. There was an enormous desk that took up practically a quarter of the room. Papers and photographs were strewn on a thick, ugly mahogany table. There were four phones, plus a thick cell phone. Stuffed animals sat on the desk. They were not in good condition. The buffalo was missing its nose—a black button lay on the desk in front of it. The teddy bear had an ear torn off. Dogs? Grandchildren? I couldn't tell. The walls, unlike my present home, were all lined with stuffed bookshelves. The books looked like they had come originally from a second-hand
store. There was a framed piece of paper with rows and rows of extremely neat handwriting. The title read “Clayton Prisoners' Constitution.”

The unthreatening eccentricity of the place was offset by the presence of two guards in ranger hats and police uniforms. Guns in holsters rested on thin hips and bullets decorated their belts. They also carried mace, pepper spray, and heavy batons. I wasn't put off by this. I figured the warden met with convicted murderers every day (myself included)—she didn't shit around. I saw that Sister Jean was lodged in one of the ugly chairs with her feet up and tucked under her. I tried to suppress a feeling of pure hatred.

The warden was barely five feet tall and a bit chubby, but she wore a tight uniform so I could tell she was very strong. She didn't tell the guards to remove my shackles, but held out her hand.

“I'm Warden Jen Lee,” she said to me. Her voice was that of a heavy smoker, raspy and phlegmy. “But the women call me Jen if they choose.”

“I choose Warden Lee,” I said with attitude. I didn't take her hand. First name or not, she would probably Taser me as well as anyone.

“Sit down,” the warden ordered. “Sister Jean tells me you've made some progress.”

“I don't know what that means, Warden. I've been isolated for three weeks,” I said.

“Nine days, but one does lose track of time.” She sat down, nearly disappearing behind the desk.

She read from a folder. “You're less violent, your health's vastly improved, and you're not such a shit.”

I laughed out loud.

“Oh yes I am,” I said.

“Don't think so, Carleen. You're separating the present from the past,” Sister Jean said. “You're less of a paranoid freak and you define, to some extent, who is on your side.”

“How do you know?” I asked. “I've been in that chicken coop.”

“We have spies,” said the warden. She smiled, but it was grim. “Don't be mistaken. At this stage the team I've assigned to you knows what's important to know. This isn't
Mission: Impossible
, but Clayton has acquired sophisticated surveillance and every guard hands in a written report at the end of each day. If you spit in your soup, we know.”

Sister Jean pulled out a Parliament and lit it. “We've decided you're ready to join the general population to begin serving the federal government's official sentence. This is the hardest part, babe. No extremes. No madness. Just day after day.
Day after day
. We all find out who you are.”

I was practically dragged through the admitting procedure. I once again filled out reams of documents. I was checked for head lice, bedbugs, strep, crabs. Angry guards shoved three grayish-blue shirts at me with “Clayton,” my number, and my section on them. I was given underpants, drawstring pants, and hideously ugly sneakers somewhere between Keds and Converse. Their sickly green color made me think there'd been a mistake at some manufacturers and they donated the trash to Clayton.

I was basically thrown into a cell in the maximum-security building with three other women. It was a two-person cell. The women were black, and the thought of them ganging up on me and repeating Powell's racial dramas almost made me crack my nose against a bar so I could go back to the hospital. But these were lifers, older than I was, and one of them was being extradited to Kentucky the next day to go to some designated death-row habitation. She was asleep on one of the
three mattresses they'd arranged on the floor. She held a Bible like a stuffed bear. The other two women didn't seem particularly sympathetic to her and were already bored with me. They spoke only in monosyllables as they pointed out exactly where they'd decided to store my possessions and where I could sleep and sit. I said only yes and thank you. They didn't even tell me their names and only spoke to me when they wanted me to move to a corner of the cell or push ahead of me at the sink. I accepted my junior role without resistance, but it was weird that they never spoke to me. After the third one was taken away the next morning, they relaxed because there was more room. I had no choice but to listen to laughter, growls, gossip, non sequiturs about other women on the floor, letters and news from outside, opinions about movie stars, food, and the personalities of various guards, teachers, and doctors. I stayed safe by keeping my mouth shut and basically waiting on my roommates.