Walking the Dog (25 page)

“Cash or charge?”

“Personal check?” I asked. I wasn't allowed a credit card yet. I signaled Doorbell to retreat into his bored, lying-down “stay” position and dropped the antique mezuzah into my jeans pocket. What a rush I felt—and then a terrible crash that I was still connected to that style of stimulation. So close to suicide, Sister Jean.

I pulled a wrinkled blank check from another pocket and filled it out. The woman wrapped Pony's gift in tissue paper with “mazel tov” splattered in primary colors all over it and placed it in a jewelry box.

We shook hands and I left the store. It would be a long time before she'd figure out the mezuzah was missing. The piece was definitely valuable.

“You're an accessory to a crime,” I told Doorbell. He wagged his long sloppy tail. I bought a silver chain down the block and put the mezuzah around my neck. I hadn't ever worn a freshly
stolen item in the open. But it made me feel close to Elisheva and Batya Shulamit. Not necessarily to Beth or Pony.

The next time we met, Elisheva was calmer as we sat on a bench overlooking the Hudson. I was beginning to recognize seasons again and, if I had to take a guess, I would say it was early spring, though I wasn't sure. Calendars meant nothing to me. I was an alien. I lived in my own time zones created to survive at Clayton.

“I'm sorry I was so hyper the last time I saw you,” Elisheva blushed. She bit her thumbnail.

“Sorry is a word that hardly ever needs to be said to me,” I replied. “It's meaningless. In so many different ways. Empty. You don't have to deal with the past with me.”

She was relieved and confused simultaneously. I had that effect on her, two to three reactions at the same time.

“She'll have to tell Leonard that the gift is from you, Elisheva. She'll have to learn to lie. You're rewarding her for conquering a difficult passage that she was struggling to get through,” I explained.

“That's feasible,” Elisheva said. “I've given her gifts many times.”

“But does she lie well?”

“I don't know. She's never had to lie to me. But she's handled this whole communication with you as a deadpan poker player. Can I see what you got her?”

I pulled out the package.

“For God's sake, take that nauseous mazel tov wrapping paper off. She's too cool for that. Just give her the bag.”

Elisheva took great pleasure in unwrapping the tissue paper. When she opened the box she looked at the necklace for a long
time before saying anything. I was afraid I'd missed the point completely.

“This is perfect,” she said finally. Her voice was raspy as if she was going to cry. “I mean, I'd never wear it, but for Batya Shulamit it's a combination of really cool, religious, and not gushy, which would scare her away.” Elisheva practically hugged herself.

“Oh, what a mitzvah I've done.” I thought of the smashed pony in my drawer and the stolen mezuzah on my neck and decided that Hashem had an unpredictable sense of humor.

“You're wearing a mezuzah!” she practically shrieked.

“I was fascinated by the structure, Elisheva, not the belief behind it.”

“Can I see it?”

I quickly unhooked it rather than have her touch my neck. She held it reverently in her palm.

“This is truly spiritual,” she mumbled quietly. “It's very old and was crafted with great love. It will protect you well.”

“Do you want it?” I asked her.

“Oh, no!” Elisheva handed it back to me. “It's yours. It has your spirit all over it.”

“I don't go with any of that spiritual shit.” I shook my head.

Elisheva laughed. “Do you have a note to go with our little girl's charm?”

I did.

Dear Batya Shulamit,

              
If I were working by the river then I would most likely be a slave. I would have no food or housing for a floating baby. So I have to admit to you I'd think twice before saving it. But I believe strongly that innocent creatures of
any kind should not be mistreated or put in danger. It's not their fault, and they're helpless. So yes, I would fish the baby out of the water, but I would immediately pass it on to another woman. Perhaps to a slave higher up on the ladder, or a slave who believed her love could save the child. I would not be strong enough to keep it after hours and hours of labor and bear the anxiety of getting caught. I hope you like the charm.

        
Sincerely,

Carleen Kepper née Ester Rosenthal

After Elisheva left with my package, I went to the nearby CVS and bought hospital gloves, a package of white envelopes, and stamps. I returned to my room at the halfway house, put on the gloves, wiped off the mezuzah for fingerprints, and wrapped it safely in newspaper. I left the gloves on and put the mezuzah in an envelope and inserted the folded envelope into another envelope. I looked up the address to the Judaica store and wrote it on the envelope using letters that looked nothing like my handwriting. I put many, many stamps on the envelope to cover how much the mezuzah might weigh. And then my heart sped up, and I knew I had to get to a mailbox very quickly. I practically ran down the street until I found one. I dropped the envelope in the mailbox and opened and closed the little door on top so many times I was like a locked-up obsessive compulsive. I figured it would arrive in a couple days, and until then I'd feel uncomfortable in my stomach and anxious. I recognized that I'd been unusually jittery lately and I had a hole in my center like a Henry Moore statue.

THE MURAL

It took me close to six years to finish the mural at Clayton. First I had to cover the whole building with a base. Art supplies were essential, but, in order to do anything, I had to write a ten-page document listing all the brushes, scrapers, types of paint, ladders, papers, and platforms I'd need. Everything I needed was locked up in a wooden toolshed with three thick locks on it. Only certain guards were allowed to have keys, and I was to meet one of them at first light so they'd open the shed and again at sunset so they could lock it up. If I changed my mind, needed new brushes or turpentine, or wanted to add a color, I had to submit my requests in writing. The materials cost a fortune. There was no way they'd get the money if not from my estate. But some of the inmates treated me differently. In fact, worse. “Take a look at the Jewish debutante building herself a playground.” Joseph Heller would've enjoyed the irony.

They brought me my meals in paper bags and gave me an hour for lunch. It was no better than working for Fits. Guards patrolled me regularly to see if I was painting. I was utterly uninspired, so I decided that during my lunch walk I'd cover as much territory on the grounds as I could. I'd memorize the faces of every woman I saw. My memory was good enough to hold on to the civilization of pain and struggle and even pride
that I saw in the eyes, jaws, and broken or straight noses. Laying down the base seemed to be work enough, but then I started with the faces. I began the mission at the top of the wall and worked down like window washers. The building was ten stories high. I used acrylic and oil for my faces and decided to go with realism because I hated murals that looked like outsider art, and if I was condemned to do this, I'd decided to commit suicide doing it. After a while I went totally manic. I didn't stop. I didn't eat. I'd work away all day and find I'd only covered one small corner. I worked in miniscule detail, and I attached the faces to every kind of activity imaginable from surfing to burying the dead. I painted African princesses, Texas society ladies, Amazons—all with the faces of the women of Clayton Correctional Facility.

I knew nothing of what was going on in the prison. I had no friends. Many women would wander by and look at what I was doing, but they gave me no comments. I was mad with loneliness. I'd just as well be in solitary. By the time I reached my room for break, the women were returning from dinner and ignored me. “You stink all the time,” they'd say. I rarely showered, and when I did, I couldn't get the layers of paint, turpentine, and sweat off my body.

Months went by. At least I thought so. If I finished a significant section I could be sure that night someone would come along and spray-paint the finished yard or two with FUCK YOU or STUPID CUNT or PAINT THIS. At first I tried to wipe the words and gang symbols off and paint the sections again, but then I began to like the mixture of my detailed, proud Carleen Diego Rivera Memorial pictures and the rage of the letters and secret signatures. I heard that the warden announced that whoever was carrying out the destruction of the work would be arrested, taken to court, and charged with
malicious mischief. They'd have the months added on to their sentence and would be dropped to the B newbie level. I told Warden Jen not to do it, that the swirls and scribbles added layers of passion to my stories. She obviously didn't listen. I saw a bunch of women being taken to court, and more than one of them gave me the finger. The loss of the graffiti brought me into feelings of deeper isolation.

The new rule didn't increase my popularity. Guards had to be posted by the birth building at night, and I was handcuffed to a guard wherever I went for protection. I liked the graffiti better than my own work. It had real rage and mischief. I was affected when one of the artists was caught, an eighteen-year-old gang member from Peekskill, NY, who'd killed a rival for an initiation test. I admired the guts it took to sneak in and attack my walls. And where'd she get the spray paint? When she was caught I heard that she said, “I'm ten times better than that bitch anyway.” It was hard not to agree with her. Art had lost its meaning for me. It wasn't any different than scraping difficult stains off dishes. Painting had become terribly painful. My hands swelled again. My knuckles were paws. I suffered from arthritis, stiffening bones and tendons. The fumes and chemicals from the paints produced headaches. The mural was absolutely a fitting punishment. An annihilation of who I'd been. I was self-mutilating the girl from New Hampshire who heard colors and rhymed circle and square. More months passed. More months. It burned to breathe and my whole face broke out in infected cysts from the chemicals.

My relationship to the birth center project was empty of thought or feeling. I was painting snapshots of whatever popped into my often feverish head. Except for the constant prevalence of the ever-growing number of inmate faces, the rest was free association and automatic, without any involvement.
Maybe in the long run some critic from the space age would view it as a great ruin with secrets to our culture, the way we look at cave drawings in dark magical caverns in France. Horses. That would be a good joke. Anthropologists would draw conclusions about the symbols of society from a half-brain-dead, crippled criminal who'd painted this very revealing classic so she could go from dorm B to C and have her own room.

Sam didn't drop by very often. Though she said she liked the “beauty” of the faces of the women of Clayton, she thought it was degrading that I had them involved in activities that had no relevance to their plight, the pain of their lives, or the society which had brought them so low. One day she called me off the ladder and stared silently for a pretentious amount of time, examining what must've been months of my labors.

“It's almost like you're making fun of us in some sections,” she said. “Degrading us by putting us in ridiculous scenarios.”

I didn't want to get punished so I made up some bullshit that I knew she'd relate to.

“You don't get it do you?” I asked her. “I'm showing dreams that have been stolen. I'm speaking out for possibility. There's plenty of history I've already done. A slave ship. A starving village. Can't you see the torture sections and the soldiers and the rapes? That's what you want. But without contrast—without showing the humanity of the women—how can we know the injustices of the punishments? Don't worry, you'll get more torture than you want, and besides, why can't I include cartoons and stupid jokes? Aren't the women allowed to laugh?” I spoke so passionately, I almost believed myself. I didn't know where this voice was coming from. A new neighbor at a cocktail party.

“I guess I believe you,” Sam replied. “Just don't make any
enemies with your jokes. You have no protection. Since you have to spend all your time here, this is the only way we know you.”

“I thought you were trying to get the women to work together,” I said. “You know, break up the gangs, the underground mafias, the territorial disputes . . . I thought that was one of your campaigns.”

“I wish the government really gave a shit,” Sam sighed. “The American prison system makes it almost impossible to form any positive programs. They'd rather make a maximum security facility than try to educate or teach bitches who are mostly victims.”

She was so smart but utterly humorless.

We were silent.

“Two girls just hanging around in purgatory having a swell time,” I said.

I thought I caught Sam almost smile.

“I don't understand why Jen Lee doesn't give you a day off,” she said.

“Because this is jail and she has her own logic. She probably thinks this is easy on me. No one believes artists really work.” I showed her my calloused, blistered hands and my face with scars over scars from the chemicals. “Stand on the ladder for hours a time,” I said. “You'll see how much fun it is.”

“White girl problems,” Sam said dismissively.

An anonymous year passed and at some undramatic point I noticed the building was finished. From the distance it looked like a crowd of over a thousand women heaped together for no coherent reason whatsoever. It was a town put together with the remnants of several bombings. It was a protest march for thousands of different issues. It was a mural of a ton of criminals
doing completely incoherent actions. By then I could barely feel the back of my neck or my arms. My legs held me up like wooden posts. I felt like I had lung cancer. But I marched into Jen Lee's office, ill and hating her, and laid a brush on her desk. She looked exactly the same. A squarish, small lady with short gray hair and thick glasses. But she'd definitely aged a few years. I wondered what power trip made her want to stay a warden. I pointed at the brush.

“I take it you've completed your task.”

“Yes, ma'am.” I said.

Jen Lee slapped me hard with the back of her hand. A school ring she was wearing made a cut on my cheek.

“You don't ever talk to your warden like that. Not ever. I thought you'd learned some boundaries. Some control.”

“Warden,” I said. “Every cell of my body knows its boundaries. I'm ill. I'm emptied, and the last years have been unrelenting hell. I have only talked to hecklers and guards, so I don't have words.” I didn't apologize. She obviously thought I had.

“That's more like it,” she said. “Let's go see the masterpiece.”

We walked slowly toward the birth building because of my difficulty breathing. Looking at the mural through her eyes, for the first time, was spectacular. It wasn't necessarily good art. But there was so much art that there was something for everyone. It was the criminal's Sistine Chapel. Six years of my life—every day, every hour.

“Carleen, this is spectacular,” Jen Lee gasped. “It's a true piece of art. The trustees will be satisfied that our prison is growing in sophistication. It's a shame you couldn't include every woman, but you did your job. It shows the local government what we can do to make female prisoners useful and creative. If we push our women, like we did with you, if we are unrelenting, maybe we can break through the innate negativity
brought on by racial strife and poverty. There's a religious thing about it that has no specific god, but there's the possibility of finding a personal god who can forgive anyone, from those souls headed toward death row to teenage drug smugglers.”

I wanted so badly to knock her out and claw her face off and sign my name in her blood. There wasn't an inch of anybody's god within a mile's distance of the mural. I didn't have a fucking clue what she was talking about. Truly not a fucking clue. I looked at the mural and I hallucinated it exploding and collapsing, poor half-naked women dying and holding their babies and children out to laughing cops. The wounds of the trapped women spilled a variety of colors. The smoke swirled like a tornado, and my stick thin Marcella was suddenly holding a fistful of sparklers, which she had just set on fire with an antique lighter. And then suddenly there was a beautiful explosion of light. I collapsed.

I knew the hospital so well. But this wasn't the mental ward. Many women were sleeping, and I had the distinct feeling they were dying. A doctor pulled my curtain open with a flourish as if a show was about to begin. He was wearing a surgeon's mask and glasses. His name was Peter Collins.

“You have Hepatitis C,” he said, “malnutrition, and a nice list of other viruses and injuries. But the medicines are doing their work, and in a few weeks we'll know if you're out of danger. You tried to kill yourself in slow motion. I'm sorry, but it's my vocation to bring you back.”

“Please don't,” I begged. “Be incompetent.”