Walking the Dog (23 page)

“Hop, squeeze-bitch. Dontcha love it?” I admired the energy of a girl who was so thin and sick. But I knew she was manic, and I lived in fear of her setting the place on fire during a “vision” or tantrum.

“Marcella, how did you get us into C? Neither of us earned it.”

“
Ah
,” she replied. “I made a deal with the doctors. I said, ‘I gain five pounds and keep them on, and you let me outta here. I gain ten? You put me in C with my-painter-protector-husband.”

“You gained ten pounds for this?” I was flattered and appalled.

“Ate ice cream, rice pudding, cheese grits, mac and cheese—no problem. I love all the food. It's just a sacrilege to eat it.”

She pulled out packages of Ex-Lax and danced around where there was space in our country-western whorehouse.

“I
also
copped this,” she said, and shook a full box of kitchen matches like maracas.

I felt like Alice through the Looking Glass living with a wired black queen.

POOKIE IN CRISIS

Hubbs called me on my cheap cell.

“You got two queens in hysterics. Get your ass to West Chelsea Vet when you finish with Socks. But don't cut his time off—y'hear?”

I ran west, caught a cab, and dashed into West Chelsea Vet. Ralph and Evan were seated together holding each other's hands. Ralph was openly sobbing, and Evan was biting his lower lip so hard I was afraid it would bleed. I hadn't talked to them much since I'd botched our dinner, but Pookie remained a regular rambunctious client who jumped like a circus entertainer and chewed on precious antiques. We'd been making progress, however, by putting tiny sprinkles of red pepper on the most valuable furniture, and I'd become strong enough to catch her midair when she jumped and swung me around in a circle. She loved it while it was happening but became extremely disoriented and dizzy when I lowered her to the floor. She'd lurch around like Buster Keaton and sometimes vomit, but it was cutting her back on her antics. Evan put together delicious care packages for me and fed me foods whose names I was glad I didn't know, but these delicate clients had become sensitive enough to refrain from asking me to stay for even a glass of wine.

Evan patted Ralph on the shoulder.

“Carleen's here, darling. Carleen's here.”

I cornered one of the vet assistants and asked her about Pookie.

“Pookie's in surgery. She swallowed one of those glass paperweights and it's stuck in her intestine. You know, one of those things you shake and they make snow. Ralph said it's over one hundred years old. So Pookie's what, collecting antiques?”

“How bad is it?” I asked.

“Dr. Fabor's the best,” she reassured me. “But if it breaks through the intestine or gets stuck in her bowels . . . I thought poodles were supposed to be smart.”

“I don't know, maybe she thought it was an egg,” Ralph sobbed. “I have over twenty of them. This has never happened before.”

“You know Pookie's made for trouble,” I told them. “She just had to find a new way to torture you.”

I only had a half hour until it was time for my next client, but I knew I couldn't leave these two desperate men. I didn't know what to do about Pookie. She was just such a bad girl. That was her virtue. Ecstatic, sweet, yet satanic disobedience. I called my next client, a banker with a Spinone, and told him I had an emergency and might not make it. He said he was on a conference call and asked me what the hell he was supposed to do. I guaranteed I'd get there. He told me that if Pano (his dog) went on his new floors, he'd call my boss and have me fired. I was sweating when he slammed down the phone. I hoped Pano would pee on the new floor—have diarrhea even. Luckily he had been my last client before my dinner break, but I stayed with Ralph and Evan through my dinner break and my two night appointments. I rushed to get substitutes to fill in
for me. Finally, an exhausted Dr. Fabor walked into the waiting room holding a beautiful, clean glass Cartier egg with a miniature town and snow inside it. I rushed up to him. Ralph and Evan were too terrified to move.

“Did she make it in one piece?” I asked.

“Barely,” he replied. “What kind of dog eats a glass egg? I opened her up and got it out with a spoon and a spatula. But we decided not to boil the glass egg to disinfect since that would destroy it. Pookie's intestines are sewed up and she'll be in pain and weak. Unless she gets infected, she'll be okay.”

I told Ralph and Evan to keep Pookie at the hospital for at least a week or she'd roll in something or steal something and hurt herself.

“No, no, I'll sit by her day and night and watch her every move,” Evan said.

“I'll store all the small objects in appropriate containers so she can't get at them. Let us take her. We'll hire a private nurse to watch over her.”

Dr. Fabor raised his eyebrows at me. He shrugged.

“We're hysterical queens,” Ralph said. “Evan, let's go home and disinfect her room and the bathroom and the kitchen.” He sniffed and his posture regained its dignity. “When may we see her?”

“She's still sleeping,” Dr. Fabor said. “Why don't you drop by this time tomorrow. I have to keep her sedated so she doesn't tear her stitches.”

Evan and Ralph went home shaken but resolute. Dr. Fabor let me peek in on the patient. There was a large bandage covering her whole belly and she was attached to various tubes.

“Pooks, you're an idiot,” I whispered, and headed out for my next job.

Hubb called my cell. He sounded high.

“Who the fuck said you could put in subs and babysit with those faggots?”

“It was a mess here, Hubb, and they pay above our highest rates.”

“You better make sure they pay for every penny of that extra hand-holding shit,” he snarled. “And Carleen, I decide
when
to call subs and I decide
who
subs. You don't own this place, you hear me, bitch?”

“They were hysterical. I'd have called you but there was too much drama going on.”

“Just remember what I said, Carleen. No private deals with my clients or you're on your ass. I want to see the cash from this extra two-hour thumb-sucking.”

“Got it, Hubb.”

He'd never see it.

SAM

Sam rarely came to visit me. I had the usual mixed feelings about her. She was nearly ten years my elder. She was an intellectual and supposed feminist. She created programs for Clayton that clearly helped the women. I'd given her programs two million dollars. We had a commonality that few other prisoners shared, and yet she treated me exactly like I was the lowest rank in her system. In her system, As represented rich, two-faced, lazy, criminal goody-goodies; Bs were newbies who deserved some training; Cs were either stupid or purposely clueless; Ds were on the hunt for personal injury; Es were excellent effort.

Sometimes it seemed like she used this system to purposely mock me. She made me take an English class that was clearly for women who were illiterate. I spent hours xeroxing legal papers that came through every day having to do with appeals, legal technicalities, and reports from prison associations. She forced me to attend humiliating activities like chapel choir and math class, where everyone sat around like zombies and no one listened to the terrified, inadequate instructor. But at least she realized that if she'd sent me to art therapy or arts and crafts, I'd have gone after her despite the consequences. Even so, there were times I refused to work. There was no reason for my strikes. More often than not if someone reprimanded
me I froze deeper. The con who was head of the library kicked me one day, and I went after her with my whole self. When I'd knocked her out, I tried to rip up as many books as I could in the library. A small array of guards and inmates had to beat me down and I got thrown into solitary for three weeks.

When I was let out, Sam was waiting for me.

“Fuck you,” I mumbled. I was too tired to fight her.

“Shhh,” I heard her say. “Calm down. Walk with me.”

We went to a nearby place called Big Lawn where advanced convicts were allowed to play soccer one hour a week. We sat on the lawn side by side, and she didn't say anything for an annoyingly long amount of time. Then she sighed.

“If I'd treated you like an equal from the start I'd have lost years and years of work. The women would've seen me as favoring a rich white murderer over thieves or mules of darker colors. But I don't take any joy in watching you be pushed around the way you are”—I didn't believe her, not for a second—“and it's not the trip I thought it'd be to have you do all those shitty, worthless classes. I have to do it though.”

She was a liar, like a boss from hell.

Sam went on with her bullshit, “Politically speaking, this place is a feudal system. It's a corrupt hellhole with a centrist, middle-aged board of directors trying to manipulate the federal system so they get to keep their profits. I do what I feel is in the realm of the possible. I try to prevent the usual schisms that the white right-wing powers set up and use to tear apart the population. I try to get the women educated for their own self-esteem and future. I try to prevent the injured and sick from dying when they don't have to. I try to keep even the lifers from giving up hope. You show them, with the possibility of success they work harder. In all honesty, I do fail, but once in a while . . . ” She smiled at this. “And then there are those who
would assassinate me. Who are you, Carleen Kepper? I can't figure out what you want for yourself.”

“I have nothing to say about it.”

“Why?” Sam asked.

“Because I'm permanently lost,” I replied. “I can't get out of Daedalus's maze. I just turn corners and follow lines without trying to get anywhere.”

“That's very selfish,” Sam was impatient. This heart-to-heart wasn't going the way she expected.

“Artists are selfish.”

“Art is a luxury, isn't it?” Sam sang the old leftist song. “When there's poverty and torture and famine . . . ”

“Just stop,” I blurted out. “Order me around, but don't lay your humiliation shit on me. You compromise every one of your left-wing congresswoman's do-goods every time you have some poor shell-shocked lowlife clean a toilet.”

“That's not me,” she said quietly.

“Really? I thought you were the president of the United States.”

“I could get you put in solitary for how you're talking to me,” Sam threatened. “But I came here because once you get strong after solitary, there are jobs for you. The birth center looks like an ASPCA building from the outside. Drab yellow walls surrounded by a filthy fence. It looks like we keep sick animals inside, and this depresses and scares our pregnant convicts. Furthermore, I think it adds to the resistance and hostility we get from the women when they are scheduled for examinations or counseling.”

“Space defines intention,” I repeated from some drunken discussion I'd had with David Sessions years ago.

“Yeah, like a cell for two crowded with five. Corrupt action defies good intentions. I started just like you. I was from the
white upper class. Back then,
we
were at fault for everything. I got beaten up every day. I purposely acted out so they'd put me in solitary. But I told myself that the stuff I was experiencing, those women had endured every day of their lives, and I made it political not personal. Gradually, they accepted me. It helped that my old man was a Black Panther. Though not much. Most of the women here have such screwed relationships with men, but they go back to them when they get out of here.

“Look, Carleen, we want you to paint a mural around the whole birth center. I want every inch of those walls covered with positive images of women. I don't care if it's Amazons or pilots or Harriet Tubman or fictional explorers. I want landscapes, too. From all over the world, so the women can dream of other places. Of getting out of here. Of taking their kids to mysterious hideouts. You get what I'm saying.”

“I get that the birth center is enormous. It's at least a three-year project if I work every day. Hours every day. Seven days a week.”

“Where else do you have to go?” Sam sneered.

I was raging inside. I thought of Fits and the last time I was imprisoned by art.

“Why don't you make it one of those team projects?” I suggested. “Get twenty or thirty women to do it all at once. They'll learn about art and working together.”

“Your sudden political generosity is transparent, Carleen,” Sam replied. “It's the project the board has chosen for you alone.”

“I'm not Michelangelo. I won't live to finish it.”

Sam was not sympathetic. “You'll pace yourself. Abigail Woods is cutting down that forest over there and planting a vegetable garden to feed two hundred prisoners. You're
so
not victimized.”

“But this isn't liberal or advanced.” I was shaking. “It's its own form of slavery. It's torture.”

Sam got up and brushed off her jeans. Honors and double honors convicts were allowed to wear their own clothes.

“I'm not going to do it,” I protested quietly. “Put me in solitary.”

“You don't want that,” Sam warned me. “You just got out. Solitary is extremely dangerous to your mental state. You don't want to start all over again, do you?”

“I won't be your slave. I won't build your pyramids. Put me in solitary.”

Sam spoke into her radio and two guards came and led me toward the bleakest building of all. Sam walked off without looking behind her.

Back in solitary, I experienced flashbacks and hallucinations. Fits was in the room with me. There were empty notebooks tossed about the cold floor. “Fill them all tonight,” she demanded. “Fill them with real art because I'll know the difference. This time if you fail I'll cut off all your fingerprints. You won't exist, Carleen Kepper. I'll poke out your eyes and lead your nameless self from darkness to darkness. You better get painting. Fill those books.
Fill every inch
.” I didn't have any paint. I used my raw, bloody fingers to draw on the cement floor of my cell. When I finally got out, I learned that most of the women gossiped and said I was trying to avoid work. Some thought I was possessed and stayed far away from me. It got to the point where one morning before dawn I broke open most of my fingernails and painted my face with blood.

I ended up in the psychiatric wing of the hospital with my hands and forearms bandaged to my elbows. But the humiliation of my return to the ward was more painful than any self-mutilation. Also, I saw my “wife” Marcella. She'd set fire
to our cell when I hadn't come home. Only her feet seemed burned and she was swinging around on crutches. “Aren't we the pair?” she said. “Whitney Houston and Kurt Cobain have twins.”

“Why did you do that?” I snapped at her.

“You were gone, my heart was broken, and I knew I'd never trust a living soul again.”

I could barely look at my sweet arsonist. My protector. Now I could see burns on her from head to toe. I wondered if this place was any better than Powell. The whole prison system was fucked. We were radioactive trash hidden from civilization so they didn't get diseases from us. Eventually, we'd spread all over.

“They say I'm to die if I keep these kinds of games up,” Marcella said very dramatically. “If I must do so, let it be on my own terms. Find me some matches, my husband, so I can blow up my oxygen tank.”

“Why don't you stop it, Marcella?” I asked. “With you I think it's a choice. You could have me back and see the sky.”

“I can see the sky from the windows,” she noted. “I can see the barbed wire, too. I think the barbed wire is prettier. More like the sculptures they do at Soho fashion shows.”

“You'll never do another fashion show if you don't save yourself.”

“I am now starving myself in the name of the children of Sudan,” Marcella said. “Only I don't know where Sudan is. Actually, Carleen, you know I'm not starving myself. God's semen is filling me up more and more.”

“Oh, don't give me that shit.” I shook my head. She giggled and kissed me on the lips. Her breath was rancid.

“I need you,” I said. “I want us to have a home.”

Marcella giggled and sat on my lap. “I want pet gerbils.”

It took only five days for my hands and arms to heal to the point where I could be released from the hospital. It took considerably longer to be let out of the psychiatric ward. I spent those days with Marcella, watching as her breathing became more and more labored. After a while she couldn't walk around carrying her glucose transfusion on its pole so I sat by her bed. I don't know what they were feeding her intravenously, but it didn't seem to be doing much good. Her beautiful face seemed to sink into itself, her eyes surrounded by black circles, her thick lips dry and cracked. She refused to swallow even water, so I wet her lips regularly with Q-tips and gauze. Her gums bled. Her eyes turned yellow. I'd never seen anyone die so slowly before. I wanted to shake her and blow life back into her.

“I'll let you set a fire if you'll just start eating,” I begged her. “I'll find some really valuable, beautiful, glossy book and we'll watch it go up in flames. I'll paint a masterpiece and you can dip it in glowing coals whenever you get a jones for fire.”

She laughed with a wheeze. “You'd do that?”

“I'm your husband,” I smiled. She smelled of dried blood and dung.

“The psychiatrists said all this is about my daddy doing me as a child, but half the women here got diddled by some man and they're fat. I am just permanently unhungry.”

“Don't you want to live?” I asked her.

“On some other planet where the food comes out of silver tubes and balloons and you have to try to catch it with your tongue.”

“What's wrong with earth food?”

“I told you, darling. It blocks the passageways for the gods to send their beams to me, which contain their prophecies.”

She slept more as the days went on. I had nothing to say to the other patients, who were shouting and carrying on like they were in a cheap, abusive zoo.

Eventually, they took a layer of bandages off, and I could feel the scabs and stitches on my fingers, hands, and wrists. It hurt like hell to move, but I was in some desert, in the Serengeti or the Sahara, and the pain was both excruciating and very far away.

Soon after, Sister Jean visited me.

“Long time no see, Sis,” I said, mocking a high five.

“You've been worthless to me,” she replied. I laughed. I liked that.

“The doctors say that none of the damage is any worse than what was inflicted on you at Powell. A few tiny broken bones. They're healing along with the abrasions and cuts.”

“I'll go back to solitary,” I replied.

Sister Jean leaned forward. Her expression was fed up, but for the first time kind of real. Even so, her “realness” seemed fake.

“Listen to me. Listen to me very carefully. Here is why I think you refuse to settle in at Clayton. Not because it insults your aesthetic, which it does. Not because you are in psychic agony, which you are. And not because you're afraid you'll disappear into the crowd, even though you might. The reason you won't take to these orders and rhythms is because it will open up a wide space that will cause you to confront the extraordinary amount of time you have as a convict. Years. You will finally have to admit to yourself that you're going to be in this prison for life. That might mean many, many years, Carleen. You can't tolerate the idea that you may have to live in a routine that goes on and on. You'll do the menial tasks that you do, live your life as it finds its rhythm, and most likely die on the
grounds. The more violent interruptions you make, the less inevitable this time seems. These are distractions and minisuicides. You're trying to live in squares like a comic book. Small stories in a giant book. Sectional time. But after a while even that won't work. Time is not your friend. It holds you down. It mocks you. However you choose to spend your time here, Carleen, you will be doing it for most of your life and not out of choice. You have to give yourself over to this horrifying isolated reality. You will give up. You are here for the rest of your life. Time is going to pass no matter how hard you try to stop it. You are a true prisoner. In every aspect of your life.”