Katherine Dunn - Attic

When there are crowds on the street I am afraid — they are such a distraction — they are so exciting — and have to hold onto myself very tight for fear I’ll turn around and find I’ve heaved a brick through a window or pulled somebody’s hair or clubbed someone to death without noticing — once I kicked an old lady not thinking because she looked at me disapproving dirty hippie I could see it and caught her in her unsuspecting righteous knee as she passed with the toe of my big-nosed sneaker — she dropped all her packages and when I noticed what I’d done I ran away horrified and bragged about it later as though I’d meant it.

We took everything out of 4 cell. All the mattresses and bedding, the uniforms, the light bulb. We left only the pink steel walls and bunks and the vague white porcelain toilet gurgling at the back. We locked Patsy all alone there in the dark in 4 cell. All the girls from 4 cell moved into 3 cell. Two cell already was partially doubled up. There were fifteen of us in the one cell. Blendina was the only one who had a bunk alone. I don’t know how she got there. When I straightened up from arranging mattresses, she was there in 3 cell in the same position playing solitaire.

Most of the girls slept two in a bunk. I and three others slept on the floor beneath the lowers.

We all hated Patsy. We were there in 3 cell for five crowded days. Each day we hated her more. We couldn’t understand what the trouble with the authorities was. They said Patsy was nuts and didn’t belong here. We agreed and wanted to know why they didn’t get her out of here so we could have our cell back. They said they couldn’t put her into isolation because isolation was punishment and you can’t punish someone for being nuts. They couldn’t get the nuthouse guards to come and take her until a lot of papers were signed and other hoorah gone through. So Patsy stayed in 4 cell alone.

I was finally in 3 cell and was doing everything I could to make sure I’d be asked to stay. During the day I threw paper cups full of water through the bars at Patsy. At night I pretended to hear her masturbating in the next cell.

On the fifth day when we came back from dinner I went down to 4 cell for a look at her. She was on her knees at the back of the cell with her head in the toilet. Her Bible lay beside her. Her arms lay out on either side of the bowl. Hey! come look at this! She’s drinking out of the toilet! The other girls came and looked. Kathy shouted “Patsy! Patsy! Are you all right?” Then I realized there was something strange about the way she was just leaning into the bowl like that. Kathy ran for a matron. It was Glad-Ass again. She unlocked the gate and went in.

I went in to the bull pen john and puked. By the time I came out they had taken her away and 4 cell was more or less back to normal with Blendina in her own bunk playing solitaire with a new deck. I went into 3 cell to find my bedding and straighten it out. It was gone. Somebody had dumped it on my old bunk in 4 cell.

Sometimes at night when the gates are closed and the lights are first off, Kathy sings. “If I had the wings of an angel, over these prison walls I would fly.” I heard somewhere that on the outside she is a drummer with a country western band. She sings like a man — deep and graveled from somewhere deep between her legs.

When the toilet in 3 cell goes bad the plumber comes with his male-smelling khakis and his heavy shoes to sit on a rear bunk and smoke while Kathy fixes it. She with her sleeves rolled up over pale long arms as hard as a boy’s and she with square hands pulling at long open-mouthed wrenches and long stiff spirals of wire — they talk outside of us over the white bowl considering its secret coldly familiar — like the abortionist or the carver of jack-o’-lanterns — we stand outside waiting — quiet — amazed at their skill — frightened as the pieces show themselves.

It’s been months now. The winter is old and was just beginning when I came here. The snow is gray now even as it falls. There is more light. Even the nights are no longer totally black. Strange things happen in the cells these nights. There seem to be things moving behind the bars. I am positive now that Blendina goes on playing in the dark. I can hear her cards as I lie not sleeping. I dream strangely when I do sleep. Last night I saw all the dykes in a big public john like at the bus terminal. They were dressed as priests and were holding mass. They each went into a booth to wait for some woman to come to confession. I came in dressed as a novice nun. I went into Kathy’s booth. She blessed me and said that she had watched me sleeping in my coffin and seen me masturbating on my crucifix. I cried and repented and she took pity on me and absolved me.

It must have been two weeks before Christmas. A couple of well dressed Jaycee types came into the cell with two large cardboard boxes. Kathy talked to them and they treated her very respectfully. She and the girls from 3 cell spent that whole day stuffing envelopes and addressing them for Christmas seals. They didn’t ask me to help but I saw one of the cards drop on the floor. It had a little crippled kid on it. He was leaning on crutches and had eyes like Dorothy’s. At the top of the card was the one white word GIVE.

No one talks about it. No one says anything about what happened in the cells last night. The way the tanks are set up all the sounds from any point on the floor are carried throughout the floor by the steel of the walls and bunks. A sustained sound at a certain pitch sets up a harmonic that moves in waves returning and going out again. Last night somewhere in the tanks someone started moaning at just that pitch. It echoed through the floor until we couldn’t tell where it had started. A low steady note of unceasing pain. Others joined in, all on the same pitch and more and more people until all of C tank was moaning — was breathing out that one note. I listened and realized that the moan came from my throat too. At first I was sure the moan had sprung from B tank but I could feel the sound waves pouring back through the steel from D tank, and from far-off A tank.

Somehow I couldn’t be sure that this moaning hadn’t come first from my own throat. It was a steady thing, not dependent on a single breath but flowing from us all without volition. I began to cry. All around me the women were crying, tears falling and sobs beating through the walls and the walls ached with our tears and the men moaned on and the walls, the steel plates between us, magnified the sound till the stone of the building shook with the sounds of men and women weeping. The windows rattled and the walls shook with the weight of the sound but no matron came to throw lights on us — no one moved in the bunks. We all lay as though dead and weeping.

After a long time the sound died out, but so gradually that you never noticed its stopping. Even now with the white light casting metallic shadows through the bars I can feel it. Still, nobody talks about it.

That night I heard them in D tank. My bunk hangs on the last wall of C tank. On the other side, that wall holds D tank bunks. On this night there must have been a new boy. I don’t know whether D tank is colored or white. I heard a grunt and then my bunk jumped as something heavy fell on the bunk next to me with the wall of quarter-inch steel between. I could hear the voices through the wall. “How’s that gag? Man don’t let it slip. Let’s see his ass— Wow! Goddamn, he’s never been fucked! Let me on him! Hold him tight boys I’m gonna ride him hard!” My bunk shook and rattled as though I were bouncing on it. “Give it to him — give it — ram him — oh Sparky, you never did me that way! — get the hell off there and let somebody else have a turn.” It went on for a long time. I lay touching the wall, trying to reach through the steel. I heard the other girls breathing slowly. It seems to me that Blendina’s cards were still slapping on one another even here in the darkness. After a long time they left him. I heard him crying quietly next to me. His voice was warm and low even in the crying. I thought he must be very young.