Katherine Dunn: Attic

The black iron Paisley cuts the snow. A fleur-de-lis in tortured iron twists the white sky. Not for us. For them. For those outside. Even here on the thirteenth floor the outside windows tell a grillwork lie of frozen womb and seed forms. Perhaps for the ex-President’s daughter who sometimes takes a helicopter ride.

Inside the iron is rarefied, alloyed to deal with the alien heat of our presence. Steel — but more natural, allowed to flow in its own nonorganic forms, pure tubes and plates without the strain of assuming mock-living shapes.

Between us and those cold, shaped façades are the freezing bars and the glass — supercooled liquid. All the steel is painted at the advice of some penologist with a psychology degree. A cool pink. A deceptive pink, to make us think we are remembering the hot pinks and livid reds of the outside while chilling even those memories, embalming the mind’s body in the deactivated fluids of the past.

We move slowly like marsh grasses in the tide. Rooted, vegetative, bending in the currents, now this way, now that, without resistance. But there is an undercurrent, a more basic rhythm, overpowered but still living. The flooded grass remembers the wind. There are moments when we strike back. If we are vegetables we are also cannibals.

Soon the gates will open and we will be free to move into the bull pen or stay in the cells as we please. In my cell only Blendina is awake besides me. Her cards move slowly and the other cells are silent.

Kathy, the key-girl, will be first into the bull pen when the gates roll. The other cells are crowded — one girl for each bunk — eight girls in each eight-by-twelve-foot space. The key-cell has only Kathy, because she is key-girl. She is key-girl because she has been here the longest. Except when we go down to the kitchen for meals she doesn’t have to wear the green uniform. She wears Levi’s and a man’s tee shirt.

She was the first person I saw when I came here. The matron came to get me from the car. She led me through corridors and doors until I had no idea how to get back. There were more doors and the elevator and finally we came here, C tank. A lot of women crowded around the door but I couldn’t see their faces. The only face I could see was Kathy’s. She led me into the key-cell.

The key-cell is also number one. The “1” is over the door but no one calls it that. There are curtains in the key-cell that hide the bars and close the gate even when it is open during the day. When she took me inside she closed all the curtains. She told me to take off my clothes. I was ashamed because I needed a bath very badly. My clothes were dirty too, from wearing them for days and sleeping in them. When I hesitated she hit my face. Not really hard and then she’s so much smaller than me, but she was looking at me hard and I was so ashamed. I looked at the floor and took off my clothes. I could feel the tears running down my face but I couldn’t say anything. When the skirt came off she saw the thigh-links. She stepped close and put her hand on the part where they had rubbed the skin off. I looked down at her head. I could smell the tonic in her short pale hair. She stopped touching me and smelled her hand. Her eyes smiled at me over the hand.

I remember praying walking fast on a grass broken sidewalk saying oh dear god oh dear god oh dear god over and over oh dear god let her say yes oh dear god so I could go to the movies and she said yes but I missed the final show in the Davy Crockett series with the Alamo and all the times with just oh dear god oh dear god and the rest unsaid because after all it was pretty silly but what do you pray for except what you want.

On the lawn in the summer with the hot clouds thick and near and the light came white and bright — quite away from the sun — the light exploding in the clouds and god was long gone but I fell down on my knees knowing it was an angel and oh dear god oh dear god all over again until I noticed it was a searchlight from the used-car lot on the boulevard but I would again oh dear god oh dear god it would just take more now — but I would be a Christian or anything if I could oh dear god.

On the old couch with the heat turned up all the way surrounded by balloon bread and bologna and mustard and mayonnaise — by milk and Butterfingers and fudge from Van Dyne’s and a stolen Genet in his thickness — in his ripening to rot — reading the perfect prose aloud in the dim room and wanting to go to him — silent with my head shaved and bathe him and feed him and follow him — to reach down with the surplus machete and hack off my foot and I bleeding — it bleeding — eat it — and then a hand — and then to reach in with all the remaining fingers and pull out my eye — to feel myself hideous and plunge unabashed into evil — not for the art — for the evil — I lying deep in it — stretching in it — committed to its purity and the doorbell rings and I plunge up electric to shock them whoever — to devour them and it opens to nuns in black flapping in the doorway.

Turned me off right away but it was a mistake — they wanted the people downstairs.

At the mission in the storefront where the gypsies used to live before the health department — the reformed prostitute and the reformed laundry worker with tambourines and accordions in the company of the saints and the folding chairs in ragged rows with an aisle from the glass door with the bell and the old bums their wine-thin bodies sprawled in the back and the reverend who does not and never did — any of those things — you can tell and his slopeassed wife with the tiny purse who plays the old piano behind his music stand pulpit — the reverend and all the women up on the platform — the Mays and Bettys and Pearls who love god for him — to get close to the pale with his jacket long over his flat fly and the reverend is exhorting with his long hands folded yes Jeezusah! and the ugly women are playing their guitars and accordions and the gray wife is banging on the piano with a tight mouth — the women are singing yes Jeezusah! and the old man in the fifth row with the newspapers in his shoes is standing up and leaning on the back of the chair in front of him and the green bottle stands carefully between his shoes and he raises his fist yes Jeezusah and his wine cracked voice rolls on unstopping with the ah sound as he inhales I’ve been a sinner yes Jeezusah I’ve seen this world yes I used to go to the dances yes Jeezusah and the taverns yes and the roller skating rinks yes and I tell you this world is a garbage can yes and it’s full of garbage yes yes — and the green bottles in back tip up against the light and the bare bulbs in the ceiling glow through green glass and the sleepers fart and rumble in the folding chairs yes and the reverend exhorts the ceiling and the reformed laundry worker beats her guitar with one hand and hikes up her six petticoats with the other and nobody pays any attention to anybody else and afterwards there’s coffee and day old donuts and a bed if you testify and they call everybody brother and sister and I always listen because you never know when you might be saved yes.

I can go to the competitor — the food’s better and you sit down to eat but Salvation Army sermons are always longer and it’s all shame food — all hate food and heavy.

I’ll bed with Cotton Mather if it’s comfy — see how cozy here with his ass to my belly and Mrs. M. behind me warm — his soft and scudgy name thick on my tongue and whether to or not like when I’m little in bed with my brother and his arm so round and smooth on the pillow I want to bite — to really bite like meat and take a big chunk and if I don’t it’s only because of the hassle and the hits and noise and always that — to bite — not to eat, but to bite —and in lecture hall he is talking not yet an old man and he says the word womb because he is a philosopher and I wonder almost idly how it would be to bite into his lips when they were together like that so smooth on my tongue and to bite through into his tongue thick and soft and feel it jerking and the hot spurts in my mouth and maybe I would open my lips just a little and the warm would run down outside on my chin and if I smiled in the mirror all the red would be thick between my teeth and the teeth would be pale through the red and all that stops me truly is what he would be doing while I was doing that and I hate to have to think of him but it climbs in and prevents me because of the hits and the noise.