Bodily Harm (40 page)

Rennie can’t remember what people are supposed to think about. She tries to remember what she herself used to think about, but she can’t. There’s the past, the present, the future: none of them will do. The present is both unpleasant and unreal; thinking about the future only makes her impatient, as if she’s in a plane circling and circling an airport, circling and not landing. Everyone gripping the arms of the seat, trying not to imagine the crash. She’s tired of this fear, which goes on and on, no end to it. She wants an end.

She wants to remember someone she’s loved, she want to remember loving someone. It’s hard to do. She tries to conjure up a body, Jake’s body, as she has before, but she can hardly remember what he looks like. How does she know he ever existed? There’s no proof. Acts of the body, of love, what’s left? A change, a result, a trace, hand through the sea at night, phosphorescence.

Of Paul, only the too-blue eyes remain. They don’t talk about Paul much; nothing has been heard, according to Lora, nothing has been said on the radio. He’s disappeared, which could mean anything. Rennie does not want to think about the noises behind her in the harbour, the machine-gun fire, the explosion. She doesn’t want to think of Paul as dead. That would rule out the possibility of rescue. She would rather know nothing. Possibly she is the last person he touched. Possibly he is the last person who will ever touch her. The last man.

She switches to a yoga class she once went to with Jocasta.
Feel the energy of the universe. Now relax. Start with the feet. Tell your feet, Feet, relax. Now send your mind into your ankles. Tell your ankles, Ankles, relax
. Go with the flow.

She thinks about Daniel, Daniel eating his breakfast while listening to the news, which he doesn’t really seem to hear, since his knowledge of world affairs is more or less nil, Daniel caught in rush hour, Daniel getting his feet wet because he didn’t listen to the weather forecast. Daniel in surgery, a body spread before him, his hands poised for incision. Daniel leaning across his desk, holding the hand of a blonde woman whose breasts he has recently cut off. Who wants to cure, who wants to help, who wants everything to be fine. You’re alive, he says to her, with kindness and duplicity, compelling as a hypnotist. You’re very lucky. Tears stream silently down her face.

Daniel moves through the day enclosed in a glass bubble like an astronaut on the moon, like a rare plant in a hothouse: a fluke. Inside the bubble his life is possible. Normal. Outside, what would become of him? Without food or air. Ordinary human decency, a mutation, a freak. Right now she’s on the outside looking in.

From here it’s hard to believe that Daniel really exists: surely the world cannot contain both places. He’s a mirage, a necessary illusion, a talisman she fingers, over and over, to keep herself sane.

Once she would have thought about her illness: her scar, her disability, her nibbled flesh, the little teethmarks on her. Now this seems of minor interest, even to her. The main thing is that nothing has happened to her yet, nobody has done anything to her, she is unharmed. She may be dying, true, but if so she’s doing it slowly, relatively speaking. Other people are doing it faster: at night there are screams.

Rennie opens her eyes. Nothing in here has changed. Directly above her, up on the high ceiling, some wasps are building a nest. They fly in through the grating, up to the nest, out through the grating again. Jack Spaniards, Lora calls them. In memory of what war?

Pretend you’re really here, she thinks. Now: what would you do?

It’s another morning, time has a shape even here. When the guards come, they have names, Sammy and Morton, and she knows now which name belongs to which, Morton’s the pink one, Rennie stays in the background. She still has difficulty understanding what’s being said, so she lets Lora deal with it. They have a hairbrush now, though not a comb; which is better than nothing. Rennie would like a nail file, but she knows better than to ask, it’s too much like a weapon. Lora doesn’t need one, her nails are bitten down to the quicks anyway.

“Try for some chewing gum,” Rennie says to Lora. Where there are cigarettes there must be gum. It will give the illusion of toothpaste; her mouth feels as if it’s rotting. Lora goes out with the bucket.

She’s gone longer than usual, and Rennie begins to worry. At the back of her mind is the fear that Lora won’t be able to restrain herself, her temper, that she’ll do something or say something that
will tip the balance, put them both in jeopardy. She herself, she feels, would have more control.

But when Lora comes back she’s the same, there are no cuts or bruises, nothing has been done to her. She sets the empty pail on the ground and squats over it. Rennie knows that smell, the smell of bloodheat, seaweed, fishegg. Lora wipes with a corner of her skirt, stands up.

“I got your chewing gum,” she says. “Next time I’ll try for some toilet paper.”

Rennie is disgusted. She thinks Lora should have more self-respect. “No thanks,” she says coldly.

Lora looks at her for a moment. “What the shit’s eating you?” she says.

“You’re worth more than a package of gum,” Rennie says. How many of them, she wants to ask, one or both? One at a time, or both? Lying down or standing up? It isn’t decent.

Lora is bewildered for an instant. Then she laughs. “Goddamn right I am,” she says. “Two packages. I got one for myself too.”

Rennie doesn’t say anything. Lora sits down and opens the gum. “Women like you make me sick,” she says. “Tightass. You wouldn’t put out to save your granny, would you?”

“Let’s not talk about it,” says Rennie. There’s no point. They’re in this room and it’s a small one and there’s no way out. All she can do is try to avoid a fight.

“Why in hell not?” says Lora, chewing. “What’s wrong with talking about it? What makes you think it’s any different from having some guy stick his finger in your ear?”

“It is,” says Rennie.

“Only sometimes,” says Lora.

Rennie turns her head away. She feels sick to her stomach. She doesn’t want to watch Lora’s grubby hands, her bitten fingers as
they strip open the pack of cigarettes, the cigarette between the drying lips, the corner of her mouth.

But Lora is crying, Rennie can’t believe it, convulsive sounds from her throat, her eyes clenched. “Fuck it,” she says. “They’ve got Prince in here. They won’t let me see him, they keep promising. What’m I supposed to do?”

Rennie is embarrassed. She looks down at her hands, which ought to contain comfort. Compassion. She ought to go over to Lora and put her arms around her and pat her on the back, but she can’t.

“I’m sorry,” she says.
Women like you
. She deserves it. It’s a pigeonhole, she’s in it, it fits.

Lora sniffles, stops now, wipes her nose on the back of her hand. Grudging, resentful, forgiving, a little. “How would you know?” she says.

Rennie doubles over, stumbles for the bucket, crouches. It’s sudden, she can feel the sweat dripping down her back, she’s dizzy, she hates pain. She’s been invaded, usurped, germs taking over, betrayal of the body.

She lies down on the floor, even though it’s wet. She closes her eyes, her head is the size of a watermelon, soft and pink, it’s swelling up, she’s going to burst open, she’s going to die, she needs water, even water tasting of chlorine, Great Lakes poisons, her sense of irony has deserted her, just when she needs it, any kind of water, an ice cube, sugar and fizz from a machine. What has she done, she’s not guilty, this is happening to her for no reason at all.

“You okay?” says Lora. She’s touching Rennie’s forehead, her fingertips leave dents. Her voice comes down from a great distance.

Rennie tries hard. “Make them get a doctor,” she manages to say.

“For that?” says Lora. “It’s only
turistas
. Montezuma’s Revenge, the tourists call it. Everyone gets it sooner or later. Take it from me, you’ll live.”

It’s night again. Someone is screaming, quite far away, if you tune it down it sounds like a party. Rennie tunes it down. She can sleep now in the light from the corridor, she goes to sleep quite peacefully, no one has done anything to her yet, she goes to sleep hugging herself. The screaming is worse when it stops.

Rennie is dreaming about the man with the rope, again, again. He is the only man who is with her now, he’s followed her, he was here all along, he was waiting for her. Sometimes she thinks it’s Jake, climbing in the window with a stocking over his face, for fun, as he once did; sometimes she thinks it’s Daniel, that’s why he has a knife. But it’s not either of them, it’s not Paul, it’s not anyone she’s ever seen before. The face keeps changing, eluding her, he might as well be invisible, she can’t see him, this is what is so terrifying, he isn’t really there, he’s only a shadow, anonymous, familiar, with silver eyes that twin and reflect her own.

Lora is shaking her, trying to wake her up. “For Christ’s sake,” says Lora. “You want every cop in the place down our necks?”

Rennie says she’s sorry.

It’s noon, Rennie can tell by the heat and the angle of the light, and then the rice arrives. How much she’s come to depend on it, that tin
plate. The day ends when it’s empty and another day of waiting begins, right then, with the scrape of the bones into the red bucket. Her life is shrinking right down to that one sound, a dull bell.

Outside in the courtyard there’s something going on; all of a sudden there are harsh voices, shouts, a shuffle and clank. Then there’s a scream. Lora gets up, her plate drops and spills. “Christ,” she says, “they’re shooting people.”

“No,” says Rennie. There haven’t been any shots.

“Come on,” says Lora. She bends, holds out her cupped hands.

“I don’t think we should look,” says Rennie. “They might see us.”

“Maybe it’s Prince,” says Lora.

Rennie places her tin plate carefully on the ground. Then she puts her foot in Lora’s hands, is lifted, clutches the bars.

There are people in the courtyard, five or six men in uniform, the two blues of the police, then another group, they seem to be tied together, arm to arm, they’re being pushed down, to their knees, among the dry weeds and snarls of wire, the police have sticks, cattle prods? The ones kneeling have long hair, long black hair standing out from their heads; at first Rennie thinks they’re women, then she sees they are naked from the waist up, they have no breasts.