Katherine Dunn - Attic

She took to reading the Bible and decided she had a right to take revenge on the guy if the police wouldn’t do it for her. She started carrying a pistol in her purse. A year after the rape she went to a concert. She saw him there with another girl. He looked at her and then said something laughing to his date, Patsy didn’t know what. Patsy took out her pistol and shot him in the belly.

So she was here. I think she was out on bail for a while because she told me about her stepmother locking her in the bedroom and not letting her out at all so she had to pee in a jar. I never heard of bail for attempted murder. She said the guy didn’t die.

We talked a lot after that first night. I was as greedy for talk as she was. I couldn’t bring myself to say much to anybody else but her. I guess it was because she was weaker in the head than me.

We’d have big theological discussions. She’d quote Old Testament Eye-for-an-eye stuff to prove she had a right to kill the guy and I’d spout New Testament Revenge-is-mine and Thou-shalt-nots to prove she didn’t. I knew quite a bit of stuff because I was a renowned agnostic in high school and people were always trying to save me. I’d go to their picnics and wienie roasts and soak it all up. Besides that I used debate techniques. Whenever I ran out of real quotes I’d make some up. She never knew the difference. She was always reading her Bible but she only read the parts that were on her side. I outargued her every time. Any debate coach would say so, but she was never convinced.

I don’t know why I bothered arguing. I really agreed with her and wished the bastard had died.

It was to convince Patsy that I started copying the Bible on the wall. I did it over her bunk with this same pencil. I started on the New Testament because she already reeked of the Old. I’d work at it all day, arguing with her all the time and underlining parts I wanted her to pay special attention to. It was the only way she’d let me look at her Bible and it was the only thing around to read. I still don’t know how she got by with bringing it in. When they took her away they took the Bible too.

I got up to the seventh book of Acts before the mess. The last thing I wrote was: “…Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and come into the land which I shall shew thee.”

It was just before Christmas when Patsy came in and there was a commotion going on all the time in the tank. Rose was making cards to send to her friends. She fancies herself an artist and tells big stories about how she had her own studio to work in when she was in the state house. All she had to work with was a ball-point and some cheap writing paper so I shouldn’t have judged her so hard but I always considered myself pretty good at sketching and her stuff didn’t compare to mine. I guess it was that professional jealousy that started the scene. She decided she was going to send a card to the Sheriff. The whole tank was supposed to sign it.

Everybody was laughing and feeling Christmasy. The shoplifters were wishing they were out on the streets to take advantage of the crowds. Rose told how she used to use a plastic pregnancy to shoplift with. I was sitting on my bunk thinking and listening. Patsy was reading her Bible on her bunk. Then Joyce, one of the girls from 3 cell, came in to get the card to the Sheriff signed. She was hopping around sprightly and cheerful and said “Hurry up Turdhead” when she handed it to me. I remembered how she was in for bad checks like me only she’d written a lot of them for dresses and record players and had lots of money in the commissary fund for candy and cigarettes and stationery and junk and she was eighteen like me and already had a long record and her husband was rich and her ma screwed the judge that was going to try her so she was going to get off light.

Then I started thinking about the Sheriff. I’d seen him in the kitchen a couple of times and he was fat and ugly and went marching around feeling very happy with himself with a gun hanging on his fat ass and that chalked message on the menu board — I looked at all the names written in blue ball-point under that emaciated ball-point Santa Claus face and I didn’t want to sign. Right then nothing could have made me sign. I handed the card back to Joyce. She said “Sign it!” I don’t want to. She shrugged and turned to Patsy who was crouching in a corner of her bunk looking wild. “I don’t want to sign it either. How do I know you’re not going to use my signature to do something bad to me?” Joyce looked disgusted and stomped out. She told the girls in the bull pen that we wouldn’t sign. Rose came in and wanted to know whether we thought her Christmas card wasn’t good enough for us to sign. That was a good piece of it on my part but I didn’t feel like talking. I rolled over to the wall. Patsy started her thing again but Rose got furious and screamed “You know better!” at her. That was the last thing Patsy needed. She was already scared to death of everybody but me. She started bawling. Rose roared out.

I could hear them talking in the bull pen about how if we didn’t want to associate ourselves with the tank then we couldn’t have the tank’s privileges: no TV, no free laundry, no commissary, no going to the kitchen for meals and on and on like that. They were deliberately talking so we couldn’t help but hear them. Rose went on about how she just wanted to do something nice and the Sheriff had been awful good to us and this place was like a country club compared to some jails she’d been in.

I was lying with my face to the wall on the rough blanket of my bunk getting mad. With every word I heard I got madder. I couldn’t say just why, maybe because I’d been in 4 cell so long. I jumped up and went to the gate, I leaned out into the bull pen and yelled: If that’s the way you’re going to be about a goddamned Christmas card you can shove it up your ass! Jean was standing near me. She swung once with her right hand — hard. I felt the whole left side of my face go numb with the whack of her fist. My nose started bleeding. I stood staring at her with my blood running over my mouth and down the uniform. I turned around without saying any more and went in to my bunk. Patsy heard the whack and saw the blood. She sat rocking back and forth on her bunk moaning. Her eyes were rolling pale, she mumbled “Them Lesbians, them Lesbians!” I felt a little tired and very calm as though I had cried for a long time. Sister Blendina was playing solitaire. They never even asked her to sign.

The next day my nose was very swollen and kind of purple across the bridge and under my eyes. Patsy looked at me lying on my bunk when she woke. She turned away and started moaning into her pillow.

It wasn’t the first time I’d broken my nose and I wasn’t worried. When the gates rolled I dressed and lay back down. The other 4 cell girls looked as they passed me. They went out quickly without saying anything. After a while Kathy came in and looked at me. She kind of grinned and said “Fell down in the shower, eh?” I smiled at her. She went away. A few minutes later Jean came in and sat on the bunk beside me. That’s a great right you’ve got there, ever do any boxing? “Well kid, I’m sorry, I’ve got an awful temper and I know you hurt Rose’s feelings.” I thought of how she looked when she talked about Pudge. Jean, it wasn’t your fault, I deserved it and I would never tell on you. I wanted to reassure her. I wanted to be nice. She stiffened as though I’d barfed on her. Her face was horrible. “Bitch…Bitch…if you ever say that…never say you won’t squeal on me!” She went out and didn’t speak to me again.

Mrs. Eliot saw me at breakfast and clucked over me and said she’d been after the Sheriff for the longest time to put rubber matting in the showers but he just laughed at her.