Walking the Dog (10 page)

“Yes, you do,” I replied lightly. “I'm sure you lie to a number of the young yarmulkes waiting in line to make you their bride.”

Her eyes flicked with surprise.

She turned so red I thought she'd faint. But she also smirked, then shrugged.

“What is this? The CIA?” she asked.

“You just don't have to be so Jewish and pedantic around me,” I replied. “We've covered the brilliant religious student scenes of this story. We know Judaism is for some reason awesome. Go tell Pony whatever you want, leaving out the savagely beaten part, and tell her I'll think about it. A list of my crimes could get into someone's hands and wreck this rather fragile parole.”

“I think we're in tune,” said Elisheva. “You know, you're not so different from other women. Your life could start now.”

“Save me the
Grey's Anatomy
or that one with Sally Fields and her dull, useless family. Goodbye, Elisheva.”

She blushed again. “Please, she's your daughter.”

I turned my neck so I didn't have to watch her pained exit. I didn't appreciate the complications she'd just presented me. I was too deeply tired to sort through this new information, these new challenges.

I rushed to get to the duplex in Tribeca to pick up Curly, Larry, and Moe, the toothpicks with fur. I could never be late. Mrs. Arthur, who was at least fifteen years younger than me, was very strict about time. She felt it was “a matter of respect.” I once read the letter tucked away in Larry's collar from her that Mr. Arthur's “constant last-minute arrivals proved, without question, that he didn't love who she was or what she stood for.” I wanted to show her I loved her tips, so I always came early.

For some reason the Yorkies were delirious to see me. It was almost impossible to get them hooked up because they were jumping and punk dancing all around me. “Order in the court,” I shouted at them. I could see that my tone scared Mrs. Arthur. She'd had a lot of facework done and had only three expressions, but this was not one I'd seen. Right now she was stuck in a skeletal smile.

Curly, Larry, and Moe quieted down. They knew they'd taken it too far, and I hooked them up and headed for the door.

“Please, in the future try not to raise your voice,” Mrs. Arthur said primly. “I believe in positive-reinforcement training.”

Oh, please, I couldn't lose this job. Couldn't lose it. Couldn't lose it.

“I'm
so
sorry if I scared you, ma'am,” I said. “It's kind of a joke the four of us have when they go bonkers.”

“Yes, well, they do tend to go
bonkers
,” she twitched. “Maybe if I raised my voice a bit, several aspects of my life would resolve themselves.” She let out a dramatic sigh.

White girl problems.

I walked the usual route through Tribeca to get them to Mr. Arthur's apartment on Hudson Street, where they would spend the next forty-eight hours, exactly, until it was time to return them to Stretch Face. I was conjuring up Pony's list in my mind. I knew I could probably lie or censor, but that wouldn't be a good beginning. I decided to list all the crimes, leave out my promiscuity, go light on the drugs, and really play down the violence, especially toward the end. I could see a good reason to not fulfill her request. What if her Talmudic righteous lifestyle was a phase and she turned brat punk on me? Then she might admire what I had done and try to imitate the Terrartists. God no. I didn't want that. On the other hand, this list was a step toward real communication, though I wasn't sure if I cared enough anymore. I was in my plaster of paris personage, and the most important concern was not to let the hard veneer chip or soften. Or to want it to. This legal way of holding myself together was new.

God, I missed drugs.

I missed the high, but the various substances and chemical recipes even more. I missed the frantic business, the bargains, the enterprise, the danger, and the relief when a delivery happened as planned. My brain was still finding how to think in the “real” world. Not every mood was a buyout or a payoff. Acting for the sake of getting through the day itself was new. Plus I was still on the edge of illness. I would be weak for a long time. Caution and patience. Those were the watchwords of my recovery. I didn't think that smoking or snorting would get me back to jail, but the habit could increase at an alarming rate. It was my need to do wrong. I wasn't proud of myself. I was fighting off the need for thrills. I pretended I was meditation itself. A thing of blankness. A white square. God, it was hard.

LARRY, MOE, CURLY, AND DAVID

Out on the street, I sensed someone was following me. In prison you get used to eyes all over your body. I didn't speed up or slow down. I walked until I got to the corner of Varick and Walker and stopped dead, executing a perfect turn without touching. If I struck a stranger, my life would be over.

“What the fuck do you want?” I shouted. Curly, Larry, and Moe went berserk and ran in circles on their leashes. They tangled me and my stalker together and yipped until my eardrums vibrated.

“Whoa,” the person said. He was very tall. “Let's not do
Charlie's Angels
. I don't even jog.”

David was wearing a pink-and-brown Hawaiian shirt and beige Persian pants. His bald head was lost in sunlight. I couldn't see his face.

“No,” I ordered him. “No.”

“Come on, Essie, what's with you?”

I shoved him, but he was two hundred pounds of solid weight.

“Go away,” I said.

“Stop the Frances Farmer routine. Eventually you have to see me,” David said. “I miss you.”

“No!” I shouted. I'd become a raging toddler. Curly, Larry,
and Moe were yelping and growling at David. They looked ridiculous in their bows and braids and pigtails, in their T-shirts, going at him like Dobermans. I yanked at them and they flew into the air.

“Order in the court!” I yelled. They piped down immediately. I realized how absurd it all looked. I almost laughed. “Please,” I said to David. “My name is Carleen now. I have a job, which as ridiculous as it seems has really strict rules. I've only been out seven or eight months and I'm trying to build back a life, whatever the crap that means. I'm not who I was. I'm not who I am.”

“We could have tea,” David said helplessly. “Sit in sullen silence. You could come to my studio in Dumbo and crouch in a corner and snarl. I don't care.”

“I absolutely can't be late,” I hissed at him. “You're making me late.” I began to run toward Hudson, practically dragging the little dogs after me. “Fuck,” I said. I leaned down to pick them up.

David put his large, long arms around me. “Essie. Carleen. Whoever you are. I want this beautiful monster back in my life.” I pushed him off. I started to run again. I knew he always wore flip-flops, so he'd be helpless. Halfway down the block the extraordinary pain in my legs lightened to a bearable ache. I was going faster, and actually enjoying the speed. When I got to the condo at Hudson I didn't look behind me. My legs hurt. I gently let the terriers down and went for the key to the condo. Before I did, I remembered the note tucked in Larry's collar and couldn't resist. I took it out and read:

You motherfucker. The sink backed up and I had to call the plumber. I'm not paying for it myself. You owe me $123.56. I've changed my checking account number so you can't
direct deposit it. Send a check in the mail.
Today.
I'll see you in therapy.

I wondered why he couldn't just hand her the check in therapy. White people problems. And I was one of the afflicted white people. I tucked the note back in and opened the door. Mr. Arthur was sitting at his kitchen table reading
The New Yorker
. He was a pudgy man, balding, with rimless spectacles and thin lips. He wore a vest, a half-unbuttoned white shirt, and striped pajama bottoms. He stood up instantly when we walked in.

“My babies are here,” he said in a high voice. “My babies, my boodoos, my
biddle biddles
.” Curly, Larry, and Moe went into their terrier insanity routine, jumping on him, kissing him. He lay down flat and they crawled all over him.

“Treats, treats. Treats, treats,” he squeaked and tossed them tiny kibble bones from a jar. I liked him much better than I liked Mrs. Arthur, and wondered why he didn't just divorce her.

“Oh, hello, Carleen,” he said. He slicked down his hair with his hands. “I'm home today. Have a touch of a bug or something. My body aches, my throat feels like it has speckles. You ever have that?”

“Yeah,” I said. “It's probably just a cold coming on.”

“Probably the stress. Such stress right now. I hope it's not leukemia or something. It couldn't be AIDS. I'm HIV negative. But my head is pounding. I have a tendency toward migraines. Tumors run in my family, too. I could barely get out of bed this morning.”

“I could come by and do a five o'clock walk,” I offered.

“Oh, never,” he said. “Never, never, never,” he said to the dogs. “They're my only sanity. It looks like the partners are downsizing the law firm and I may be one of the first to go.
They say I just haven't been carrying my weight. It's hard getting corporate clients these days. I'm not going to be able to support two homes. Really bad timing if I lose my health insurance and have lymphoma or lupus. It's the speckles on the throat and tongue, and I have some hives on the bottom of my feet. Did you ever hear of that?”

“Probably just the flu,” I said. “Sleep. You'll be fine.”

“Brunhilde the witch doesn't know I'm losing my job. She's going to kill me, Carleen. Stab me with her sterling-silver, engraved, wedding-gift steak knives.”

Mr. Arthur tried to cough, but there was nothing there. He unraveled the note.

“Hmm, the sink got plugged,” Mr. Arthur mumbled, and then tried to cough again. He leaned over his dogs.

“Who are my pooches? Who are my babies? Who are Daddy's
dadadas
?”

“I've got to go to my next job,” I said.

“So have you ever had these speckles in the throat?”

“Not personally.”

“Oh, Carleen, I meant to tell you. There was an article in
The New Yorker
a few months ago about how many more police dogs there are in the city right now. You know, sniffing and guarding and lunging. It's fascinating. I'm sure you can bring it up on your computer.”

“Thanks, Mr. Arthur,” I said. I didn't want to tell him I didn't own a computer.

My next dog was a perfectly normal boxer whose name was Socks. White markings decorated his feet, thus the name. White markings cover a bunch of dogs' feet, and a lot of them are named Socks. I wonder if you put them all in a playground and called out, “Come, Socks!” what it would look like. Probably beautiful, like a herd of antelope in the Serengeti. Or a military
formation marching forward, like at Clayton when they'd order us in our gray jumpsuits to “Line up!” We could have as many as eight lineups a day—running from wherever we were and whatever we were doing so they could count us. They were forever counting us. And like a mob of dogs with white paws named Socks, we came when we were called.

THE LAST DAYS OF POWELL

Three or four years into my apprenticeship with Fits came the catastrophe that transported me to the next chapter of this “No, I am not lying” story. We were in lineup and the guards kept us for longer than usual. Then, in one of the rows far down from me, voices exploded in fast talk, shouts, and laughter. The guards ran down to the scene and used their sticks to bat away what seemed like a crowd of witches bent over giant stinking cauldrons.

“Yo' wife is havin' an exorcism,” a con shouted at me. I ran to where the commotion was. Fits was on the floor writhing and kicking. Her mouth foamed and I knew I had to get to her tongue. I didn't remember why, but I knew it was the tongue. The women parted when I arrived, as is the unspoken custom, and I told a bunch of them to hold her down. It must've taken ten women. I had paintbrushes in my pocket and I pulled one out. Somehow I pried Fits's mouth open and stuck the paintbrush in her mouth. She bit through it. I shoved in two more and then reached in and grabbed her tongue to keep her from swallowing it. She was choking and her yellow-white skin had taken on a tinge of blue. I cleared out the mucus and spit from her throat and she began to cough hoarsely.

She was breathing clearly again. She'd also shit herself. The
guards took the women back to their cells. By now the nurse was there and she seemed utterly disgusted. Fits was sound asleep and filling the halls with a loud, unhealthy snore. “Clean her up,” ordered the nurse, “and I'll have the guards take her to the infirmary.” I did as I was told. I felt a rush—not of pity but of a sickening sadness. I think it was sadness. I experienced it while watching National Geographic or Discovery when they showed footage of a lethal animal being humiliated or conquered. Inside my head I saw a rhino falling to its knees.

I was asleep that night when I felt her in the room. She preferred waking me up to interrupting my work. “Get out,” she said to my cellmate. “Go take a shower.”

My tiny, silent shadow took off without hesitation.

“Don't sit up,” Fits said. “Keep lying down. Far away from me.” I was afraid as usual, but not repulsed by what I'd had to wipe up that afternoon. “I just have a question.”

“Fine,” I said into my pillow.

There was a silence.

“Did I urinate and defecate on myself this afternoon?”

“Yes,” I said. “It was a bad seizure.”

“And who cleaned it up?”

“I did.” I was tense, waiting for a blow or for her to yank my head back by my hair.

“Did the others see?” Fits asked.

“Some.” I'd never lie to her.

“Did they laugh?”

“Some,” I repeated.

“And the others?”

“They were being dragged back to their cells.”

“I'm having a problem figuring out whose eye to throw this lye in,” she said calmly. “Not yours.”

“Fits,” I said.

“Yes.”

“If I may . . . ” My heart was pounding.

“Speak,” she said.

“I don't understand the logic of the lye,” I uttered softly.

Silence again.

“To wipe out what they've seen,” she replied.

“They'll still remember.”

“This will teach them not to laugh.”

“There's no telling what the warden will do to you if you blind a bunch of basically innocent women.” I clenched my teeth. “It would be stupid to give up your freedom here. You'll be in solitary for life.”

“I'll have restored my dignity,” she proclaimed.

“You haven't lost it,” I told her.

“How do you know? You're property. Not human. My slave. Powell doesn't make your rules. I do.”

“That's the first time I've ever heard you lie,” I said. I was in one of my carefree suicidal highs. Taunting my mother. “I know you feel humiliated.”

Fits sat down at the foot of my bed and the whole bunk practically tipped over. She caught it with her massive shoulders and swore something under her breath in a language I'd never heard before. She managed to settle in and sat on the edge of the cot hunched over like a caricature of a prehistoric man.

“There is an address I will give you,” Fits said. “It is of my aunt, Ms. Rue Franzheldt in Ohio. This is news to you, but after I'm finished with your books, I wrap each one in plastic and send it to her. She doesn't open them. She brought me up and trusts me. She puts the books in specially treated boxes so the pages will not yellow or fray. If and when you get out
of prison you may go and retrieve your work. My aunt has a picture of you and will identify your face.”

I was exhausted. Perhaps Fits's seizure had caused momentary dementia.

“I'll be much older, Fits,” I sighed. “I'm not getting out.”

She ignored me. “She also has your fingerprints and DNA.”

“Very CIA,” I said.

“You joke. But you will not be so flip always. And you will want your books back.”

I stayed silent. The idea seemed ludicrous to me. Fits's small button eyes were shining like the living dead in the horror film they showed at Powell every month or so for recreation.

“Now I will lock you in the laundry room and chain you up so that no one will mistakenly blame you for my act of cleansing.”

She pulled my collar and dragged me. I kicked and screamed as would be expected, but the guards barely looked up. This all felt preordained. Like an oracle in a Greek myth. I was giddy. I wanted to say, “Hey Fits, after all this time and hundreds of books, did you like any of it? Did you have any favorites? Did it matter? Is art a reason to live? Does art define life? Bee bob a do dad a la lalala life goes on!”

She threw me in my studio and double locked all the doors to the laundry. She chained me over and over to an iron pole. My back felt crushed with pain. I could barely move. “Fits,” I tried, “In a week no one will care.”

“You know nothing about convict time,” she said gently. “Certain events go down like in Homer.” She walked out the door toward the rows and rows of cells. I never saw her again.

Stories in prisons can be brutally true or they can be beyond true, crossing a character or speech into myth. When you're
part of the prison culture, belief can be fatal. You go along with stories to stay sane, to share oxygen, to avoid the deterioration that comes with loneliness.

I've never heard the same version of what happened twice. I only heard much later that she threw industrial-strength lye in the faces of ten to fifteen women before the guards brought in an officer to shoot her down. Some stories put the number up to thirty, and that ten of them are blind now. Some lost their lips and noses. Other versions say that she only got to seven women before the gangs brought out the hidden shanks and knives. The details of her scarred skin, bleeding eyeballs, hair that hissed and disappeared, seemed to be essential to every version. The gunshot bullet in Fits's head was a minor detail. The story usually ends with a mob of women stomping on her, punching and pulling her until she was completely crushed and mutilated. Garbage.

But they weren't finished, and this I know for a fact. About fifteen of them got the keys to the laundry room, ripped the doors open, and came after me. It's proof of Fits's skewed thinking that she thought her legacy would keep me safe. The survivors, the ones who witnessed their partners and loved ones burned and mutilated, unchained and beat me nearly to death. My only luck was that they didn't pour acid on me and that the bone fragments inside my body didn't pierce my lungs or heart. But the enraged mob took turns and carefully and viciously acted out their vengeance one by one, and caused a myriad of internal injuries. They set all my paints and a half-finished book on fire and left me to die in the smoke and flames. At least I think that's what happened. What I remember is the doors opening and prehistoric, primal animals stampeding toward me. Their faces were like the kind of masks they make for those new zombie movies, dripping and
ugly, teeth sharp as knives and eyes of coal. Arms that were metallic and bodies made of construction buildings. That's what I remember. That's all I've ever remembered.

I woke up in a dingy hospital weeks later covered with gauze and plaster. I was attached to chains and pulleys like a tortured acrobat. A blue tube was stuck down my throat and breathed for me. I remember asking if I was paralyzed, and some nurse shrugged and said she didn't know what I was saying. I was in excruciating pain and they were not generous with morphine. I think I remember the warden (whom I'd only seen at assemblies) and a woman in a purple sweater dress with glasses halfway down her nose seated beside me. Her face was Christian, stern, and unfriendly. The warden leaned forward and he stank of cigars and Old Spice. I remember a collage of words—
seedy
and
gangland
and
New Jersey private detective
and
Italian fascist
and
Latin assassins
—singing chaos in musical comedy–style in my head. I knew things about this warden. Everyone did. The rumors came to life in my head. Didn't he sell drugs and rifles? Didn't he blackmail the guards who brought in shipments of drugs and rape the newbies of his choice? Didn't he pay off the Royals with booze, drugs, and cigarettes, and offer free family visits to coerce the other inmates into order? Where did I get that from? I thought I heard him say, “We can't have our most famous patient battered by a bunch of sick hooligans.” I laughed at the word
hooligans
. I choked. I tried to spit at the hypocritical tyrant. The woman leaned over me and tried to look me in the eye. I wanted morphine, not earnest glances of truth.

“We're going to transfer you to a facility more suitable to your temperament and the level of your crime,” she said. “The handling of all this has been reprehensible.”

“Absolutely,” the warden nervously agreed.

I giggled. It felt like every nerve in my bones was attached to an electric circuit and I'd just set it off.

“God,” I moaned. “Oh God.”

There was some commotion, a hypodermic in my hip, and a quick rush of the soothing warmth. A mother's liquid hand.

“Women have been working on your behalf this entire time. Don't you know that?” the purple lady said. “It took something this catastrophic to allow access to you and the conditions of your imprisonment. A woman's federal committee has been set up to investigate Powell.” So the purple Christian lady turned out to be on my side.

“And we will cooperate fully,” the warden said, too quickly. He had tickets somewhere soon. The woman leaned far forward into my face.

She whispered, “Your sisters are behind you.”

Oh no, I thought to myself. A feminist. I passed out.

I stayed in one hospital or another for close to six months. I think I kept lapsing in and out of comas. Then they pulled the blue tube out and loaded me into a helicopter and transferred me to a military facility. They'd decided it looked good to transport me to a facility that was equipped to treat the extent of my injuries in the most effective ways. I thought the helicopter was a freight train and I was a bum in the thirties drunkenly traveling everywhere and nowhere. Then I thought it was a cattle car and I was locked in a crowded, stinking train to Auschwitz. I think I tried to warn the EMTs about the gas chambers that awaited us. My pain was so intense that it affected my temperature and heartbeat. One doctor put together a combination of drugs that was as interesting as the shrooms I'd ingested hungrily and the crack and meth that took the place of my meals and became a large part of my destruction in college. Wrapped
up like a mummy or burn victim, I hallucinated constantly, and my moods skyrocketed and then fell out from under me. Much of the time I didn't know who I was. I was a creature who lay absolutely still and watched the movies in my head. When I regained motion in my arms I tried to strangle myself. Ridiculous. Not because I was depressed. I was bored.

The nurses in the first hospital had encountered me writhing, filthy with paint and covered with my own feces. I must've seemed like a mad animal. I couldn't speak so they had no sense of my personality. Also, despite my broken bones, I was put in restraints and under twenty-four-hour guard. During that extremely fuzzy period when I was close to dying, no one but medical staff was allowed near me. My parents were contacted, but they'd long ago publicly disowned me. The daughter they'd once had wasn't a terrorist or a murderer. Too sick to register any kind of loneliness, I regained my ability to think. I didn't understand why I was being kept in such isolation.

Later I realized they were playing out some phony investigation as to whether I'd conspired with Fits to attack those women. Stories were going around that could get the federal government investigated or sued. No one could prove any kind of theory that I was a conspirator. The warden had his own story. He claimed that Fits had been out to get the Royals and me, and he'd had to use physical force to stop the growing riot. Pepper spray, Tasers, and clubs were used to break up the gang warfare. Afterward, there wasn't enough staff to help all the injured, and four women died. It was all lies and sadism. Misogynous. Powell and its hospital were put under investigation, and, if I lived, I'd be the perfect type to testify. So, various government agencies took over my medical treatment, which kept changing. Some higher authority wanted me to live. The prison system desperately wanted me to die. I had too many
doctors, a complicated diagnosis, medicines that fogged me out or caused geysers of rage in my head. The ambivalent attempts to heal me almost resulted in death several times.

Even as bones and surgeries began to heal, I'd suffered brain damage and had to have rigorous physical and neurological therapy to relearn to function, just so I could live in another maximum security prison. That prospect didn't motivate me. I took on the affect of a near-catatonic survivor walking through an eternal Hiroshima. At the military hospital, the physical therapists were much more enthusiastic about vets and fallen athletes than an ex-terrorist convict. Elite army officials and politicians showed up now and then for photo ops with the vets. That's when the nurses avoided me and the phys-ed workers administered subtle pinches on my blisters, as well as yanks on my hair, and covered up their shoves and kicks. The guards assigned to me intensified their disapproval of my anti-American actions and they put on a show of extreme dedication. I was the changeling. I lived in a ward of medieval torture: Pulls. Pushes. Stretches. Crunches. Lifts. Drops. Weights. Walkers. Treadmills. The worst was when I had to grab solid metal balls with my hands and squeeze. I conjured up Clint Eastwood in my imagination, gritted my teeth, and vowed to quietly return and kill my torturers after I was released.