Walking the Dog (22 page)

A LETTER FROM BATYA SHULAMIT

Dear Carleen Kepper née Ester Rosenthal,

Thank you for maintaining your side of the deal. I hope you saw that I kept mine. I will give you my impressions. I don't know what blue jeans and a matching jacket means, but I think you were trying to dress neatly, and I appreciate your effort. I hope you are in good health. I perhaps was too dressed up, but I was in my favorite color—maroon. Actually, my favorite color is purple, but I thought a purple dress would look stupid, so I chose maroon. Here are three things about myself:

1) I ride horses.

2) I write poetry.

3) I loathe the smell of brussels sprouts.

Please write back no more than three things about yourself, and do not suggest meeting in person because in my brain that is utterly impossible.

Oh, and I like your hair, but it scares me.

Shalom,

Batya Shulamit

The letter had come by mail and not through Elisheva, so I wondered if she was out of the picture. I hoped not. She was the closest thing to a friend I had. Of course, I didn't know if I should absolutely trust her either, given what David had told me. She could've been an agent of Leonard's keeping the information between me and Pony somewhat fluid while reporting on my activities to the FBI. The Russian poet Osip Mandelstam wrote a teeth-gritting, funny poem about Stalin. Mandelstam was a neurotic, nervous, but beloved man. His friends said of him that “most people are paranoid and have no reason to be. Osip, however, is right. The God of Artist Executions is watching him.”

I could no longer trust my roommate, Seña, because I often smelled liquor on her breath and she had two demerits already for breaking curfew. I sensed she was hanging out with her pimp again, and drugs were not too far down the road. He would get her kicked out of the halfway house and back on the street again. As for me, I was enjoying the role of goody-goody, but I was beginning to get the urge to confront my parole officer for being a lying, two-faced Polack. I was sure he knew things he wasn't telling me.

As far as Batya Shulamit went, I decided to wait two weeks before I wrote a return letter. I didn't want to seem too anxious and, also, I didn't feel particularly anxious. I didn't have any wish to seek David out, and I doubted I'd ever paint again. As usual I had to force emotions to the surface like the geysers at Yellowstone. If I didn't work at it I'd function at a perpetual float, a blimp with no energy or direction. Then the eruptions would occur. Violent attacks of loss and self-hatred that resulted in punching myself and pulling my hair. I had to attach specific feelings to the free hours of my day or I'd get out of control. Dogs were the only things that focused me, so
in spite of illness and exhaustion, I took every job. I covered for everyone. Lucinda accused me of taking amphetamines. I offered to take a blood test. But would she? There was a feeling in the office like the dark air before a downpour. Hubb mostly slept.

Dear Batya Shulamit,

              
I will tell you six things about myself because, although I am no longer a criminal, I don't always follow rules. I have had to follow very strict unjust disciplines for years. It was dangerous to break them. So I hope you won't get indignant if my list is somewhat mediocre.

              
1) I love dogs.

2) I'm slightly pigeon-toed.

3) I read comic books.

4) I am horrendous at math.

5) Tugboats soothe me.

6) Garbage of any kind makes me want to throw up.

              
Your hair is a golden-amber waterfall. I wonder if you know it is not just one color. So far I have counted seven shades of blond, red, and brown in it.

Be healthy,

Carleen Kepper née Ester Rosenthal

POSTPARTUM

After they gave Pony to Leonard Salin, I had, I guess, a breakdown. I was reassigned to the Mental Disorder Ward. Curses and death wishes spun in my head. The ward was a psychotic washing machine. Hate caused a bitter taste in my mouth, and I had to brush my teeth six or seven times a day. I was terrified of being given electroshock treatment again so I spent most days lying under my bed.

Then an East Indian psychiatrist whose name I couldn't pronounce said something to me like:

“Ms. Kepper, you are having mild postpartum depression. I will be prescribing medications to go with your other medications and we will see if we can lift you up.”

“I think I need surgery, doctor,” I said to him.

“But whatever for?” he asked.

“I have terrible butterflies in my stomach. They flutter all day long.”

“Well, we must have you x-rayed for that,” he said, and I couldn't tell if he was serious or not. “How would it happen that you would swallow caterpillars? Please do not be eating insects. You will become very ill.”

I pulled myself together.

“I'm anxious, you asshole,” I said. “It was a joke.”

The doctor retreated.

There was no room at Clayton for two separate wards, so they mixed the criminally insane with the bipolar, the schizophrenic, and the women just stressed out or depressed. Bad cooking. Horrific color combinations. Certain death. One of my acquaintances had shot and killed eight of her coworkers the day after she was fired.

There were the usual Jesus Christs, fuck-me-fuck-mes, alien communicators, and even a woman who claimed they'd manufactured capsules and “think liquids” specifically to prepare her to be the first black leader of the Ku Klux Klan. There were two women who'd killed their kids. One who, like me, was being put together piece by piece, only she'd jumped in front of a subway doing her “teamwork with Eddie Murphy” in a cop movie. There was snake lady who had tattoos all over her body. She refused to keep her clothes on and hissed at everyone who came near her. There were more elderly women with dementia than I chose to count. Every week someone was being brought in for detox or to come off a hallucination that went wrong. There was a Whitney Houston (a junkie) and a Miriam Stubbs, though no one knew who Miriam Stubbs was. There was the person who never stopped walking to-and-fro and to-and-fro unless someone knocked her out. There was one woman who screamed at the top of her lungs in a tongue that she claimed was given to her by African gods. There were two former serial killers, both charming in an eerie way, both ready and eager to talk about their kills: how many, where, when, what methods, and so on. Most women, including me, were in restraints, and the clang of chains and the screech of metal beds being dragged across the floor was constant. There was a self-mutilator who was horrible to look at and had to be strapped into a collar because she bit herself whenever she could. There were
the women who crossed the line from normal murder, assault, and robbery to insane, and they were so drugged they lived like zombies. But if a drug wore off the whole ward was in danger.

One night I felt a weight on my mattress and immediately went into a defensive mode in case one of the real killers had gotten loose. But when I sat up, it was just a beautiful young woman, twenty-three or four, who was emaciated, impeccably groomed, and had wide, lustrous, happy eyes.

“Hi,” she said, “I'm Marcella Histrionics. I don't eat. It's out of habit. I was a famous fashion model in Germany, and so I had to be rail thin to maintain prominence in display fashion. I am not mad, really.”

“Why are you here then?” I asked.

“Well, I am in the Clayton Correctional Facility because I set fire to the warehouse of a designer whose clothes did not please me. I burned up his fall and winter line. I would've burned him to ashes too, but the firemen got him out. I also burned down a tent on Seventh Avenue during fashion week because I had not been invited to model in their particular show. And oh how I love fire. Don't you just love flames?”

“It depends where they're flaming,” I said. “Or who's flaming.”

“You don't belong here,” Marcella announced to me. “I heard them say you had a mood and thinking disorder that could be treated quite successfully with the right cocktail of mood stabilizers, antianxiety pills, and uppers. Actually, I'm thrilled for you. There's no cure for anorexia.” She looked at herself.

“Friendship,” I said cautiously. It seemed like a harmless enough reply. “You eat your friend's food off your friend's plate and then you're not eating your own food.”

“That's a somewhat false metaphor, and a little sneaky,” Marcella noted. “But I like the sentiment behind it.”

“I've had enough conversation,” I said. “The cameras are aimed on me and microphones are planted everywhere.”

“But I was going to tell you the story of my life,” Marcella explained. “Don't you want to know? I was adopted from Sudan by two guilty Jewish liberals. They sent me to a fine psychiatrist once I started setting fires to my toys. I actually stopped for a while and had a year or so in middle school of a fairly normal Sudanese Jewish life. But I was so exquisitely beautiful a famous manager saw me at Peace Arab/Israel, a special camp for refugees in Aspen, Colorado, and asked my parents if he could book me. My parents, of course, thought modeling was superficial and that it contributed to the consumer addiction in the USA. But I told them I wanted to send half of the money I earned to the Sudanese family from which they'd stolen me. What could they say to that? So I divided my time between schooling, modeling, and setting small baskets of trash on fire. I had to go back to the psychiatrist, but we all have had our problems to get through, no? Ford Models picked me up and I became a sort of minor superstar. I was in
Vogue
and
Elle
, which wasn't bad for sixteen. By then I'd stopped eating, set some neighborhood backyards on fire, as I explained before, and they dumped me in a delinquent home. Well this went on for two years, in and out, and finally I was out long enough to set fire to a bridal shop. I've always wanted to see bridal gowns go up like toupees. But then I literally began to suffer from heart failure. Hospital, hospital, hospital. I was sent here for arson.”

“Don't fires bore you after a while?” I asked.

“One would think so,” Marcella said. Tears came into her
enormous round eyes. “I certainly would like to get out of here and transfer to the B building. It's so crappy with all these murderers and their foul hygiene. Why are you here?”

“Oh, honey.” I let out a sigh.

“That's what I like about you.” Marcella smiled a radiant, batty, luminous smile for some invisible camera. “You're so modest. Models are so narcissistic. Talk, talk, talk: body, thighs, skin cycle, lashes, workout, yoga, bulimia, agent, no sex drive, and so on. You don't care about any of that, do you?”

“Not at the moment,” I replied.

“That's what I respect about you.” Marcella's smile widened. “You care about the deeper things. The profound things. The existential stuff. How do your thoughts go, specifically? Two at a time? In religious choirs? African drum ensembles?”

“I hate to disappoint you,” I answered her, “but I don't care about much.”

“Aw, that's just your heart being modest. I'm a sensitive, you know. And I have you psyched. You don't care about much because you are caring in
itself
. The fish-in-the-bowl syndrome.”

“If you're a sensitive then why don't your powers tell you to eat?”

“Because I have to keep my receptacles open for messages. They can't get clogged with food.” She paused. “I have a favor.”

“What is it?”

“When we get out of here and graduate to C building, will you be my husband-dyke-protector? We can protect each other's weaknesses.”

I shivered and suppressed what might have been a laugh.

“I don't do that shit, Marcella,” I said. “My brain isn't organized for trained defense.”

“But you have to strengthen yourself here and now,” Marcella
whispered. “You're not a newbie anymore. This is a couples and gang penitentiary. If you're not taken, you're free meat. And you being white, the Aryans will try to recruit you, and they are simply boring, with hate and uncombed hair. And if you and I were a couple, the bull dykes wouldn't fight over me because of my obvious beauty and we could avoid all kinds of mess in the cafeteria and rec room. One still has to be as sharp as a cat every minute, but it helps if you're married. We might survive.”

I thought about survival and Pony for a moment. Marcella was right in her slightly demented logic. The bartering at Clayton was subtler, but loyalty oaths and protective relationships were a strong part of the society.

After a while, and before they released me back to the general population, I was assigned to an advanced convict named Nora Lasheen. Her primary job was to explain the system and make sure that most of the inmates were assigned to appropriate ranks, cells, and workloads.

“You been here I don't know how long and you don't know shit, baby,” Nora said to me. “Whole time you been locked up in solitary, in the hospital having a baby, in the loony bin.” She genuinely laughed. “A real model prisoner. Maybe you'll last in the general population this time,” she said. “But I doubt it. I'd pray for you if I prayed, but I don't want to waste it.

“Clayton, if y'all let me explain, is run exactly like a military camp. You got your ranks and you got who's superior to you. You don't fuck with a superior or your rank gets dropped a number. You do your jobs, keep your hands clean, stay outta the underground, and you get promoted. Sometimes you get promoted and you don't know the fuck why. Sometimes you get demoted. It usually means someone's out for your ass, you
pissed someone off, or you broke a rule. There's a committee made up of honors convicts, administrators, Sister Jean, the warden, Sam, and highly regarded guards (they're the ones who can stab your back). They all decide on promotions or demotions. With a promotion comes a pinch of more permissions and a squeeze of more respect from the other inmates. Or jealousy—that can get you bad cuts on your skin. It's all about politics and power, right?

“You'll be starting in the B building with no privileges. The cells are overcrowded and there's fights on the hour. There's guards up the wazoo and they be mean. Meaner to you 'cause you're crazy and famous. It's your video game, Carleen Kepper—get yourself transferred outta there soon as can be. You need advice or whatnot, you can look around for me, but I won't be much help. I got where I am through bribery, getting my GED, and sleeping with one of the married administrator's ladies. Your path to redemption will be part sensible behavior and part quick feet.”

I moved into a cell made for two that held five women. They had corners staked out, and I took whatever space was left. They were a tight-knit gang—sisters of the Crips and I was the only white. They shoved me whenever possible and stole everything, even my toothbrush. I prayed that Marcella would be released from the loony bin. I was certain women were cautious of her because she was mad as a hatter and would set fire to the possessions of anyone who displeased her. But until that day, I had to use my experience to survive.

I started out making my roommates' cots every morning before they even ordered me. I washed our bathroom area, did their laundry, and changed their towels and washcloths weekly. I never spoke unless spoken to. I thought I was doing pretty well until one night, one of the women, Rashina, asked
me, “Don't you care about sex, white girl? You had your baby months ago. Ain't it time for the drive to be coming back?”

“I haven't thought about it,” I said quietly.

“I hadn't thought about it,
ma'am
,” Rashina said, and the others laughed.

“Ma'am,” I whispered.

“Which one of us you want to fuck?” Another woman, Celia, chimed in.

“None of you,” I answered honestly.

Mean smiles filled the room like a nest full of Cheshire Cats.

“Ma'ams, if I may explain,” I practically begged. “I came from Powell and they tore me up there. Then I went and had this baby after my husband raped me. The baby had to be pulled out with forceps and I bled for two days. Now I'm healed up, but I'm all scarred and sometimes the scars get infected and the medicine for the scars gives you this thing like herpes—not herpes, but worse. And I hurt all the time. So, worse than being raped, I could get my lover infected or sick and then I'd get the shit beat out of me and put back in the loony bin, and I don't want that.”

“Don't you come near any of us then,” Celia said, and I felt a special relief because I'd succeeded in talking myself out of the inevitable initiation. I dared to go a step further.

“Besides, my wife's in the loony bin,” I said. “And she'd give me hell if I cheated.”

“As if that matters—who?” Rashina asked.

“Marcella Histrionics,” I replied.

“She's plain nuts,” Celia shouted. “She's beauty itself when she ain't a twig. But she gonna burn us down.”

I was pleased by the reaction. It proved what I'd hoped for. I'd have good protection married to an arsonist. I just had to make sure she ate.

Marcella Histrionics was eventually released from the hospital. She was still rail thin, but she didn't look like a Tim Burton skeleton. We were moved into a C-level double, which she proceeded to decorate like a bordello in a Western movie. She pushed the beds together and designed a canopy out of extra sheets she'd taken from the hospital. She went to the hospital junkyard and found anything velvet or velveteen left over from other prison construction or deconstruction. She restored a child's rocking horse and made it our centerpiece. For a dining room table, she bribed one of the guards to give her two benches. The room was so crowded with her furnishings I didn't have room to walk.