Katherine Dunn - Attic

A few days later the lawyer comes and I go out of the tank into a little room with him and sit on a chair with a back instead of a bench and the lawyer thinks I did it and I did it but I won’t say again and he wants to know who’ll pay and I look at him with the biggest saddest most innocent but he goes away and Dogsbody is quite quite dead and I don’t even care any more but just want to lie quietly on the rough brown blanket on my bunk in 4 cell.

Kathy is lonely. Linda is gone. She was tall and golden and hard young. They sat straddling the bench facing the same direction, Kathy behind — Linda’s buttocks pressed deep between her thighs. They cuddled and touched softly — gentle and ravenous. Linda sat in the key-cell with the red bulb on — her long legs reaching — long arms moving bonelessly. They talked in low tones after the lights were out. She left for two years in the federal pen — for helping her motorcycle boyfriend rob a bank — she cried — Kathy gulped and patted her awkwardly. Kathy sings now if I had the wings

Every day after lunch Dorothy writes to Mac. She and Kathy sit in the corner on the concrete with a pad and pencil — Dorothy on her knees, her belly round below her breasts — corkscrews hanging over her face whispering — Kathy with her knees up, toes pointed in, cracking her knuckles and licking the lead — I love you honey…I miss you more than anything…I’m fine and I hope you are and I hope you don’t have no more trouble with Lester…Please don’t be mad at me….

She prints her name at the bottom with Xs. Mac is Dorothy’s man — her common-law husband — McInrick. He is in D tank two inches away through the steel.

Today Dorothy went to court. She washed her hair and combed every corkscrew around her fingers and drew on eyebrows arching and then down beside her eyes to the outside cheekbone. She put on red lipstick but when she relaxes her mouth the lips cave in and it doesn’t show. Mrs. Eliot brought in the clothes she was arrested in. Striped wool slacks — brown and tan and dark orange running down over her belly — a brown sweater tucked in at the waist. Her breasts come all the way down to the waist of the pants — no one told her to leave the sweater waist out to cover it — loafers — from behind she looks like a small child with her broad flat butt and the long curls. She is excited about seeing Mac again even in court. She is afraid. Does she look all right? Jean combs her hair. Rose irons the slacks. Joyce loans her nail polish.

She has no coat. It is seven degrees Fahrenheit outside. The court is across the plaza in the building that matches this one. She may catch cold. The marshals come to take her. Everyone wants to touch her around the door the arms reaching toward her. They all nod and show their teeth and say good luck. When she is gone they sit silent on the bunks.

Marge tells how her man drinks — how she wrote checks for a stereo and a dining room set and a play-pen and winter clothes for the baby. She laughs at how easy it was. Her soft yellow hair flies into her mouth and she spits and picks at it laughing.

Suzie is twenty-six and looks sixteen — freckles, childishly crooked teeth — little girl hands and feet with high small breasts and tiny waist. Her hair is short and curly. Her man is in the state farm she went to see him behind the fence when she got back the welfare check hadn’t come she put the baby in the new blanket and walked along the street to where the mail stuck out of the door and took another welfare check. She spreads sweet smelling lotion on her legs from a round plastic squeeze bottle — rubbing carefully at the heels and knees. She likes the food here.

“All for that fuckin skunk coat — that old mother did it but I was on parole for that when Sherman got this job and we were roaring down the road with the bottles in back and me in that old skunk coat she claimed it was mink but it wasn’t worth twenty cents to the skunk they took it off and to her own daughter-in-law she put her own daughter-in-law in jail for a fuckin coat but I was out on parole and they never did find that coat that old motherfucker had a broom up her ass all her life Sherman always hated her. Before that out in California she tried to get me put away said I was insane all because I liked to wear men’s shorts instead of panties but I like men’s shorts you know they’re soft and they don’t bind. But we crossed the state line and Sherman blew a tire with all the bottles so they put him in Seagullville and got me on parole violation. My little boy’s deaf out in California he’s twelve now and smart! hmm! When I want to do something I just don’t take my pills that day then look out!”

She laughs with her hoarse blue voice from the delicate jaws the perfect teeth all the way back and the slim pink tongue. Her long lashes falling beside the aristocratic nose — Rose the beautiful — the terrible with her belly swelling above the shadowed knees — high arches in the stony leather puts a glass of milk next to Blendina’s bunk every night — sends ice cream bowls the whole length of the bull pen at Glad-Ass’s fat face and cuddles Joyce when she cries in her sleep.

“Motherfuckin Commie! I’m a good goddamned American.” Goldie pronounces everything in the front of her mouth. I hate her she’s ugly and long ponytail and bangs. I am in the bull pen john just squatting afraid somebody will come and she comes. “Hey little girl — you know we’re all ’sposed to shower every day cause with thirty girls in here we couldn’t live with the smell otherwise did you take a shower today? I ain’t seen ya.” While you were all at dinner I did. I didn’t, not today or yesterday but the day before. I won’t say it she’s ugly and stupid. “You sure you did? ’Cause when we was all sitting in the bull pen there was sure an awful smell coming from your end of the table and we know we all took showers regular!” What about that cheese they brought up — you left it open and I smelled that. “No it wasn’t no cheese I know an’ you just better make sure you shower regular ’cause we can tell.” Maybe they’re right. Two days and I sweat a lot — but on the pot! how could she while I was sitting on the pot with my pants down and the thigh-links grinding in me and my skirt pulled far down over my knees how could I argue — my face is hot — I’m not coming out. It’s almost time for the gates to roll. People will be coming back here. There are only two girls in the bull pen. They are sitting on the floor together — Joyce and Goldie — they look at me I walk by stiffly not looking — feel hot hate them hate them — Goldie is whispering, giggling…“It was the cheese after all!”

The anthill under the steps swarms in the summer so tiny they worry me even with glasses how to keep from stepping on them and tiptoe always on the concrete until that one perfect day when nothing happened and the hours slide backward into themselves in the afternoon a particular green in the young tree against that particular blue in the sky and only minutes later a perfect pink cloud in the sky still blue and that green and that pink against the same blue are never to be seen again though looked for on a thousand summer days and those colors in their light — in the innocence are all that is once seen and never seen again and the ants are swarming on the steps and in and out of the cracks in the sidewalk and thick and busy I stomp them and grind them — they screaming — I can see them screaming and somehow never worry about killing them again.

The men don’t go down to the kitchen to eat. The food comes up on wagons and the plates pass through a slot in the door. Trusties work in the kitchen — in the booking offices below — as janitors. When I came here from Independence we stood in line behind bars — there were people everywhere in dungarees and white tee shirts — in the pale green halls with buckets and mops like women’s hair and he was tall and black — his biceps had purple veins across the cut — he took my hand and I leaned to him but he shoved it flat fingered on the ink pad and rolled it on paper and turned away — no eyes no teeth.