Katherine Dunn - Attic

Dorothy McInrick and I went down to the infirmary. She’s a nice little dumpling who’s always afraid someone won’t like her. She’ll make a little joke and we’ll all chuckle and then she’ll look around with huge eyes and say “Are you mad at me?” She even says that to me as though she really cares what I think of her. The others don’t give a damn what they say or do in front of me. I feel sorry for Dorothy. I heard Rose talking once about how she and Dorothy were upstate in the federal pen together a few years ago and Dorothy had been very pretty then with a doll face and a nice figure. It was the jails that made her the way she is now. She’d lost all her teeth and the state wouldn’t give her plates so she had to gum her food. There is never enough time to eat so she could never get it down properly. She had indigestion all the time. Dorothy’s mouth sank in over her gums and her belly and butt were very round. The eyes were always looking out over everything. She took good care of her hair. It was long and shining auburn and hung far down her back in corkscrew curls.

The doctor set my nose with a white A-shaped bandage. The point on my forehead, a leg on each cheek and the crossbar over the bridge of my nose. I felt very symbolic about that and thought about Dogsbody. When he was done with my nose he just flipped the sheet the other way and gave me a vaginal. As I was getting dressed the nurse came in for a blood sample. She sank the needle into my arm almost without looking. I was embarrassed when the vein collapsed. She shook her head and went off carrying a little tube of my blood.

I heard Kathy tell the others about a young fag she knew who had been sent up for the first time. She said he was smart. When he got onto the block he yelled for the key-man. When the guy showed himself the flit jumped into his arms and said “Take care of me big daddy, I’m in for five years!”

After that Christmas card scene Patsy hung on to me all the time. She’d almost follow me into the shower except she would never take off her girdles so she never took showers. I saw them when she undressed at night. Seven of them, black, white, pink, sweat gray, seven girdles. You couldn’t tell what she was shaped like for the lumps. I made fun of her and asked if they weren’t hot and how’d we really know she was a girl and she smelled awful never bathing and just pulling them open a little to pee. I’d grown used to the thigh-links by that time though I dressed under the covers to keep people from seeing them.

It was arithmetic and he sat in front of me and his hair was as soft and fine as fur and his skin so golden smooth with the pale hairs all growing in one direction on his arms and his clean body so close and I leaned over to look at his funny drawings and felt it come up inside me so strong whirling to put my arms around him and hold him close to me — I could barely see and how hungry to touch him almost bent me over and all the people and what he would be doing while I was doing that and I fell back shaking in the seat and lay silent and sick on the desk until the bell rang.

I used Patsy. Her parents never came to see her but they left lots of money for her in the commissary. She didn’t smoke and probably would never have gotten anything but I made her order candy. I’d steal it from her and give it to the other girls so they’d like me. They still didn’t so I’d go back and eat it myself. I tried to get her to order stamps and paper so I could write letters but she wouldn’t. She probably believed the mails were sinful. She always ordered matches even though she didn’t smoke. She’d go around with a book of matches in her hand all the time and sometimes she’d watch one burn. I could never figure out what she did with so many of them. She was always ordering more matches but I seldom saw her using the ones she had. Then one day I looked under her bunk and there were thousands of burnt-out matches. There were whole books that had been fired all at once. I knew she must be lighting them at night while we were asleep. Still I didn’t think much of it till later.

The night it happened I was playing checkers with one of the new girls after the gates had closed. The lights were still on but most of the girls were asleep. Patsy had moved into the upper bunk across from my lower. She was lying under the covers with her eyes open playing with her matchbook. The new girl and I were carrying on the speculative dialogue of a checker game: “Now let’s see, if I move here you’ll jump me there and there and if I move there you’ll jump here.” We were talking quietly so as not to wake people. In the middle of one of my moves Patsy’s voice came whining “I hear you whispering. You can’t fool me.” We looked up. What are you talking about? “I hear you whispering about jumping up here and attacking me.” Don’t be stupid Patsy. We’re just talking about the checker game! We went back to it indignantly. I should have seen it in her eyes then but I was tired of noticing things about her. Some time had passed and we were absorbed in our game again when I remember hearing Patsy mutter that she was going to “Burn out all this evil.” I paid no more attention, she was always talking to herself. I admit I heard the matches striking but in a place where most people smoke constantly a lighted match is nothing odd. As it was, neither of us looked up again until we heard the flames hissing.

She had dropped her burning matches on the blankets of the bunk next to her and the bunk below her and onto her own bunk. The other bunks were smoking and small flames licked through the sheets around the girls sleeping there. On Patsy’s bunk the flames were coming through the sheets and her shoe-blacked hair was smoking. I yelled something, not a word but loud, and jumped at her. She was trying to light another match. I grabbed her arms and tried to pull her off the bunk but she was wild and strong. She kicked and scratched screaming “GOD! GOD! GOD!” I saw bodies rolling around me beating at the flames and heard yelling back and forth between the cells. Questions and the shouted answer “FIRE!” Then, ducking to avoid Patsy’s feet I saw Blendina lay a burning card upon a black queen. The flames were hungry around her and she reached for a black jack. I was mad then and I hit Patsy as hard as I could in the throat. I pulled her off the bunk and she lay on the floor choking with her hair smoking and her girdles browning at the edges. I saw the red of the smoldering elastic burning at her waist and I kicked her as I turned to slap at the flames that were eating her bedding. They were too much for us to handle and the metal bunks were too hot to touch. The girls flopped on the nonburning bunks and drummed at the walls with their feet. The drumming had already started in the other three cells and it moved through the whole floor like an earthquake. With the gates locked in these metal cells we could fry or suffocate unless someone came quickly. I knelt in front of Sister Blendina and slapped at the small fires that had started in her cards. She went on laying them down in their fastidious order even though the blanket was pouring out thick white smoke and their faces were black and curling. She looked at me as I took a burning card from her hand. Fire was falling into her hair from the bunk above. The walls were thundering around us from the kicking feet. She looked at me with her eyes and her face. Her ancient face and her newborn eyes unchanging. I bowed over the cards and cried.

The gates rolled and the chemical spray killed the room. I got up. Blendina went on laying out her black cards on the bunk between her legs. Glad-Ass stood at the open gate with the empty fire extinguisher in her hand. Patsy was clawing at her. “They were going to rape me with a Tootsie Roll!” Glad-Ass said “Who?” Patsy turned, gaping, and pointed at me.