Джойс Оутс - Prison Noir

“What?” barked the warden. “Speak up!”

“It’s my cellie,” said Al.

Amused expressions passed between the guards.

Al continued: “I was gonna ask you to move him to another cell, but I changed my mind.” A bet was a bet, he thought bitterly.

The warden looked at him without focusing, as if dealing with a math problem rather than a human being. “I don’t have time for this shit.” He grabbed Al by the shoulder and spun him to face the empty cell. Shoving the old man forward, he rasped, “There’s no one here but you!”

But Al knew differently.

The door slammed and Al collapsed on his bunk while Martin lay reclined on the other bunk, idly snapping the cards from hand to hand, fanning and fluttering with precision. He gathered the cards into a stack and held out the deck to Al.

“Shuffle?”

California Institution for Women (Corona, California)

I saw an angel imprisoned in marble,

I carved until she was cut free.

— A loose translation of something

Michelangelo Buonarroti may have said

Frankie lay on her top bunk listening to the boundaries of her world, the dream murmurs of her cellmates in the last hours of the night. Someone hollerin down the hall. The stomp and rattle of the changing of the guard. She wiggled her toes loose from the thin blankets, feeling the morning cold. Fuckers never put on enough heat in the winter, but in the summer the top bunk was a hundred twenty.

She grumbled. Didn’t like all of her cellies, but she could deal with them. After a while inside people got slotted into categories: safe, ignore, avoid, and just-plain-nuts. Sometimes they became jailhouse friends, some maybe real friends. Never know until you got out. Everything shifted around.

She tried to set the shape of the day — like one of her sculptures, curving, smooth, and simple, or even one of her infamous hidden-compartment stashes — but jagged edges kept intruding. She was hitting the streets in less than a week. Lotta people out there she didn’t like — obviously, given the conditions that put her into her present situation, there were a lotta people she couldn’t deal with so good out there. She had been trying to figure out what she’d do outside, without much success. Running all the stupid scenarios through her mind: People Out There Were Generally Fuckheads.

She sat up, she was a fuckhead her own self. Not a clue. Jeez.

Inside, survival wasn’t difficult, she could shut down any hostility with her clever words — if not, well, she was taller than most, stronger than most. She grinned, she was more evil-crazy than most of them. Had some backup. Had a decent rep. Worked for her.

All that would be gone when she hit the bricks. She had a couple notebooks full of designs for sculptures she couldn’t do inside. She clenched her fist, felt her bicep. Meh. So she’d start with the easy shit, knock off some scary creatures. Yeah. Fangs and claws always seemed to sell. Might work out.

Or not. Most likely not.

The lights came on, the doors popped open up and down the halls. New day. Her nerves were jangled. Same day as yesterday only there were all of a sudden less tomorrows.

Besides making metal sculptures again, what would she do for money? Score a job in a drugstore maybe? Heh.

Into the dark fucking freezing cold, lips going dry, she muttered about ripped edges and hollow centers. Her kitchen crew didn’t seem to mind, even when they couldn’t quite understand what she was saying. Politics. Religion. Art. “The outer reaches of criminal endeavors. Where no man dares to go. Shape the world the way I want it? What a loada crap.”

“What you goin on about now?” Jaykey was a large Pomo woman with a big voice. She teased Frankie, “Ya know it ain’t even light out?”

“We should be in bed! But nooo, we got places to go. Things to do.”

“More trouble for you ta get yourself into, angel mine.”

Smiling, “There’s that. Yeah.”

Their feet crunched across the dead frozen grass until Charlene spoke, tiny voice, tiny girl, hesitating, “You hear bout Rodeo’s diagnosis?”

They stopped. Their breath made little clouds.

“Cancer?”

“She gonna die?”

The guard grumbled at them, “Move it, ladeez. Move it along here.”

Their feet stumbled forward.

Diagnosis. Never a good thing inside. On the other hand, doctors on the street, for people like her, weren’t so good either. But these prison ones — these were a whole nother buncha sadists. Frankie squared her shoulders, the kitchen lights were just up ahead. She said, “Nobody gets out alive.”

Charlene shivered, moved closer to Jaykey. She was in on a murder beef — killed her pimp, oh yes — getting out in months now rather than years. Fragile, timid, how the hell she ever killed him no one knew. But kill the bastard, oh yes she did.

Everyone had edges that would suddenly just cut open. Cut wide open.

And then, what? Flying free? Flying free?

Frankie said, “Fuck all. Come in onna three-year beef for dope and it’s a life sentence now.” She spit, watching it freeze on the side of the path. “No justice in this world.” Head down, silent, plowing forward through her day. Through her life. Six days. Maybe less. Depending.

The hours shuddered forward in ritual motions, the diagnosis filtering through the air: Was it TB? Or AIDS? Lung cancer? The standard prison killer roundelay. Circle dance of the dead. Frankie thought it would be nice to smoke a cigarette, watch the glowing tip, the smoke curl up. Up and away. One day she’d learn to blow smoke rings, have a pipe with Gandalf, show him how it’s done where she come from. Wherever that was, where she came from.

The kitchen shift ended with some poor broad up against the wall. A block of cheese? A missing spoon? The day was built on broken trivialities. Stupid fuckers smashed their heads against the walls. Every fuckin day it was something. Frankie returned to her cot, thinking, thinking, but to no real purpose, just mind beeps puddling up in the swamp.

She wanted to hit someone.

Curled up, face to the cement wall, fists pushed tight into her stomach. Her cellies came and went, rattling chatting swearing, incantations to push the day away. Frankie groaned. No one paid her any attention.

After deciding she wouldn’t leave the damn cell until they told her to rollemup and move out, Frankie got off the bunk anyway, splashed water on her face, tottered into the common room. Couple serious card games, yapping TV, three knitting women staring at nothing, and in the corner some kinda maybe dance steps. Whee. Nonstop Good Times.

Two people looked up to greet her, saw the sleep-grump lines etched in her cheeks, nodded, and looked away. Frankie circled the small room trailing her fingers along the wall. Counted her steps. Maybe the place shrunk. Maybe her steps were longer. Size and shape were relative things in jail — and why not? Something had to shift and change. Certainly wasn’t the people. Exact same ones were posted in their specific positions. God help a girl if she sat in someone else’s spot. Frankie kept circling, feeling the room slither around her, tightening. Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Monday. Would they come for her Monday morning? Or make her sweat through till Tuesday?

Or shove her out Sunday, push her heathen ass out on the day of their Lord?

She joined the dancers, her long body shifting through the steps with graceful curves. But she couldn’t lose herself in it. Couldn’t find herself in it either. Lost in a jailhouse limbo. She jerked to a stop. “We need more space. More air. Hey, let’s put all the stupid furniture outside and get something happening.”