In the Slammer With Carol Smith (3 page)

Nobody brought food that looked like it came from a home. It would have saved money for her to raid her own shelves, but she too purchased on the way. Mungo never slept on his bed; it was his hallmark, his bike. As his self-assurance wore off, usually with the last of his water ration, his sporty get-up and otter mustache wilted also, making for an uncertainty whether he was the hunter or the animal hunted. She suspected that like her, he too had a pad. Nothing in his talk ever indicated so. Nor was it ever noted aloud by any there that Mungo, like Carol herself, and above all like Alphonse, was in fact a regular. Or at least a ‘faithful’, a word once dropped by Alphonse himself, to mark someone long gone, who had again turned up. In the eyes of all the Cat Club was committed to serve the drifter, occasional or serial, which each of them still was. Or had once been. If she could understand the balances here, she would maybe better understand her own, but that was not why she came.

Whenever anyone new came, one of the others stayed with him or her for the night, ministering to whatever needs. Sometimes a regular slept over but never steadily. Now and again one disappeared, forever, far as the Club knew. There were crises, violences, but, in the phrase of one of the occasional, a woman who called herself Mavorneen, ‘Those always valve out. Like a bath-tub don’t run over.’ Many of the names here were elaborately self-pointing; you call yourself Mavorneen surely because you want to hear people calling you that. Ordinaries like Carol were happy just to be—’ as she once said, when pressured, ‘—echoed enough.’

Preferences could be loud here, and mostly abided by, if remembered, but it was easier to forget, rather than rebuff. Forgetting was natural here. The past wasn’t forbidden altogether, but habitually ignored. Little blurts gave you inklings of a person. Now and then somebody let loose with a wild riff.

‘On medical know-how, you people could run a health column,’ a transvestite said, after a lively general discussion as to whether he should soak his swollen high-heeled foot or bind it, and at which clinic he would be best served. Hard drugs were not barred; nothing was. But most exaggerated conduct, not finding much of that at the Cat Club, eased itself out. Medications, on the other hand, were rife; comparisons could be made as at a bazaar, and even swaps. While it was okay to exhort against medical aids, including the psychological, to proselyte for those was frowned on. No one here would ever remind her to take her pill, although once she and Mavorneen, shrugging at each other, had gulped theirs at the same time. Though never repeating that. Sex happened. People went upstairs for it, to the least shaky parts of the condemned house.

Little was repeated here, individually. Instead there was a flow.

‘It’s a halfway house,’ she said to Alphonse.’ ‘Only—only not to get to the other side.’

Rumor persisted that he had started the place after his girlfriend O.D.’d. Nobody could corroborate. ‘Not everybody’s a sex nut,’ Mungo said. ‘Though I fathered two children myself.’ After that blurt he had not been seen again.

‘It’s my ace-in-the-hole,’ Alphonse himself said. ‘Case I get thrown out of the Y.’

Everybody there laughed. When she was a kid, the Young Men’s Christian Association was the norm. Or the Young Women’s, in college, for those who were too square. Now, whether or not it was the norm again, it wasn’t for those here.

‘He could almost qualify, Arturo could,’ a girl said. A dancer who did ruffly steps while she was talking to you, she Hispanicized all names. ‘Lucky he drinks.’

Everybody fed the cat. It was the only one who had rules, in the form of a calendar you checked once you’d done it, over which was scrawled DON’T FORGET THE WATER BOWL. All this was done behind a screen that separated the front window from what had been the store proper, in which there was also a narrow stall with a rear toilet better than the basement one, and a sink. Alphonse bought the cat food, anyone who could contributing, and whoever volunteered did the cat’s box. The cat didn’t seem to care who took care of it. Sometimes it prowled the vandalized upper house, where a window was left open for it. There was no light in the store window, but by night the cat was there, paws folded, eyes slitted, under the street lamp. Daytimes, children tapped to it, through the pane.

Now and then Carol too disappeared from the Club, if only so that she could drift back. Once, after such an interval, Alphonse said on her return, ‘You have good manners,’ so there was no need to explain. On very hot nights she might go to one of the docks on the lower river, a family one, not the gay one where she might be unwelcome. By day she might stay in the pad, cleaning herself, keeping up her Lopez connection. To Angel, who wanted to know where she went, she said—after a gap meant to show she was making things up: ‘Turkey country. I have a brother there.’ He asked if he could come along. After which she answered: ‘Not on the bike.’ Kids understand the future; it propped up the now. They didn’t really believe in it.

The summer went, like a picture she was in.

G
OLD TOOK VACATION
all of August, like she always did. Time out for me, else I might have told her about the Cat Club, which I must not do; that would be joining up with her, over the long-term case that is me. Last time she comes, end of July, I am there of course, though I had spent the night before on the street. I do that the day before she comes; it keeps me limber against her influence. Summers though, the pad itself has a pull. Carmen gave me a window-blind that grades the sun down to lemony. ‘I only have one window,’ I grudged at her, but she has such courtesy you find yourself saying thanks. Lopez could fix the jammed window in the back, that opened on the air-shaft—she said. ‘Only put a security grill, so nobody can come down from the roof.’ So, since her husband don’t work Wednesday, that has been done and afterwards she is introducing me to the tea called mate; she is not Puerto Rican like him but South American.

She has brought the black gourds you drink it from, and the metal straws. The gourds have metal bases. I look closer—‘Silver.’—and she nods; the Club has made me talk more. The gourds were a wedding present from her six aunts when she married Lopez after Angel came. She is wearing her hair very high these days, in a basket of curls which her face is too strong for, and has bought a couple of housedresses in too small a size; Lopez has a woman in the bar downstairs.

‘I had aunts,’ I tell her. ‘They had a house full of games.’ Telling her is only dropping it down a slot, like you do the lapel clip-on the museums give you on entry; when you leave it vanishes, but you’ve paid. I could almost say where the house was; the location would mean nothing to her. It was like an old nag of a horse, that house, its bones poking up like haunches from the lawn, and had a real horse to match, so old that we never got to ride, but there was a game of parcheesi always set up and ready for us in the window-bay.

The mate is bitter, which I like. Sipping, I see the iron cage Lopez has put over the air-shaft window in the back half-room, which is now a tiny cell. ‘Looks like I keep a gorilla here.’ Angel, who is oiling the bike he now comes to see every day after school, and nagging his mother for money to buy an ice-cream stick with, says, ‘Would the gorilla be touched by God?’ Carmen, mouthing him to hush, says ‘Get out of here, Angel. Go ask your father for the ice-cream money. You know where.’

We both stare at her. She doesn’t like him to go in the bar.

He runs up again to say, ‘Carol’s lady is sitting on the stoop.’

‘Hah, she don’t know we have bells now,’ Carmen says. Lopez fixed the old wires. She is still building him up, for me to hear. ‘We go now. Come, Angel.’

‘No, stay. You never met the SW.’

So she is still there, in her high-collared, no-sleeve starchy pink when Gold walks in. Out of breath, and the way the summer city can do to people—creased and lowdown from what they usually are. But also more faded on her own. I want to build her up. ‘Carmen, this is my social worker; she knows about the roach campaign. Gold—you met Angel; he’s her boy. This is Carmen; she—.’ Knows about the medicine in the fridge, though I have never said. I see I don’t have to say any of it. They both know their place in my life.

‘You give her some mate,’ Carmen says. ‘I bring another cup.’

Gold knows what mate is but has never had it. ‘Not too addictive. Like coffee. And other kind substances.’ She makes a face. But when Carmen comes back she accepts the tea, extra-polite lady-style—like she’s accepting it.

‘Carmen’s six aunts gave her these cups,’ I say. ‘For her wedding. They are gourds really. What you call them, Carmen?’

‘Calabash.’

We sip. The straws are silver all the way. ‘Those aunts—’ I say ‘—were they all on one side?’

‘Two my father sister, four my mother.’

I hold my breath. ‘Mine were both adopted. The diddly two of them.’ What’s ‘diddly?’ A word you use when you don’t say more. But I have mentioned the house, almost.

Gold’s eyes are wide, her mouth too. She knows that history, which we never discuss.

‘Say where—’ I say to her. ‘I want to. But I can’t.’

‘In Dedham, Mass.’ Then she covers up, by sucking the straw.

Angel bursts in, his father behind him. Lopez has brought up ice-cream bars for Carmen and me. And for ‘the lady.’ ‘We are having mate,’ Carmen says, haughty. ‘Angel, go put those in the freezer.’ She smiles at me. ‘I save for us.’

It’s different when you introduce a man. ‘He fixed the wires,’ I say. ‘From now on, Gold, you can use the bell.’ I see he is disappointed in Gold.

She wants to notice only me. ‘I know Carol for three years now,’ she says to him, almost with an accent. Though she scores me, for talking slum.

‘Carol teach me to talk,’ Carmen says. She brings Lopez a mate. In the wedding picture his chest sticks out like an apache’s; now he is just a greaser with a beer waistline. But he still likes his women slick.

‘Yes—you have conversation now,’ Gold says to me. ‘And I must go.’ She digs in her bag.

‘Come on, Angel,’ Lopez says. They leave. Carmen is listening for whether the two of them go all the way downstairs to the bar again. We hear their home door open and close, one flight down. ‘No, stay—’ I tell Carmen, who is making like to follow them. She needs to be away from Lopez. So she half stays, washing the cups. I am watching Gold, who is still digging.

‘I hate that bag,’ I say. Because of what it has in it.

‘So do I—,’ she says. ‘But I must carry it.’

I used to think it had all our case-records in it, and that mine must be what made it so heavy, but no, she said, ‘those stay at the office; we don’t take them into the field.’ Which is what they call visiting the ‘clients’—‘going into the field.’ ‘Sounds like you’re picking flowers,’ I said. I wouldn’t say that now, the bag is so worn. Three years of me, and all her other cases. Rent vouchers, for those who aren’t able to deal on their own moneywise, blanket coupons, and the food stamps I wouldn’t accept. And the prescriptions.

Usually those are clipped neat; today they are loose in the bag. She hands me mine. ‘The substitute, Ms. Mickens, will bring you the next. Watch your step with her. She’s new.’

I will, I know what that means. Rules. Meanwhile Gold is wanting to say goodbye to Carmen who is bent over the sink, but her ears are sticking through those curls. I am not sure how to balance the two of them.

‘I had a medal like that once,’ Gold says to her.

On a chain always around Carmen’s neck, I don’t know for which saint. But I know what the tiny leather doll hanging next to it is for. The Lopez’s are more tropical than they are Catholic.

‘You did, Gold? I didn’t know you were Catholic.’

‘I was. Gold wasn’t. And the little charm? What’s that for?’

What’s come over her? A good SW doesn’t ask. And a client’s friend—in the record I am the ‘client’—comes under that.

‘You say, Carol. My English no good.’ But Carmen’s teeth shine. Against her, Carol looks musty, older, though their children are the same ages. Carmen will get plumper, but she’ll stay hard-colored.

‘It’s to keep the bull in the barn.’

‘Hmm. I should have had one of those dolls.’

‘I give you, missus. I get more.’

‘Thanks. Too late to shut the barn door.… Well, Carol,
hasta la vista.
Keep well.’

‘Have a good vacation.’ Her gray is showing. ‘Get blonder.’ I feel generous. ‘And remember me to the kids.’

‘Their father has them.’ She is looking at me like at a person. Like I am one. ‘I’m going in retreat. Up Hudson. I’ll send you a card, hair freak.’

She never told me anything personal before. I don’t even know her maiden name. ‘In retreat? Don’t do that. I had a college friend did that. She came out a nun.’

‘Oh, Carol. Know something? You’re great.’ She shoulders the bag. ‘And I have to—get the year in repair. I have to.’ She is gone.

‘So what means “re-pair”?’

How can I say? It’s what I’m in. ‘Have to get you a dictionary, Carmen. So you can pick these things up on your own.’

‘Also you.’ She squeezes the dishrag, draping it carefully over the sink’s edge; there’s no hook for it. ‘That lady, I think she is no more good for you.’ She drops a Spanish phrase I don’t catch.

‘What’s that mean?’

A shrug, a headshake, a smile; she’s not going to say.
‘¡Cuidado!’
she shrieks suddenly, stamping her tiny foot.

‘What, what?’ I know already.

‘A roach.’

‘D
OES BEING WELL
scare you, Ms. Westmount?’

August twenty-fifth. Mickens and me. For the third time.

She’s the same as she was the first time, fresh-crowned with her SW degree ‘from Brandeis,’ cool as her vinyl rain-cape, stiff as her brand-new jogging shoes—and hell-bent on not being anybody’s substitute.

That first time, she found Lopez’s gimpy bell-system pronto—which was more than the firemen could when the second-floor-rear’s oven exploded. And she was up the four flights to me before you could say crackerjack; she has never sat on a stoop.

I was scattering the bicarb-borax when she banged on the door, and in answer to my ‘Who is it?’ yells back like they’re calling out the troops: ‘The visitor!’