Katherine Dunn - Attic

One day when we came back from dinner they were carrying Marge out on a stretcher. Her face was thick and blue. The matron said she had slipped in the shower and broken her arm and collarbone. She hadn’t come to dinner that day because she wanted to lose weight.

Kathy never took any part in those fights. She just sat around paying no attention like the rest. When I first came here she had a regular girl. After that girl was sent up to the federal pen Kathy would ask one or two of the other girls to spend a night with her in the key-cell.

Once when I was feeling bad she came and sat on my bunk and put her arm around me. She kissed me. It’s funny, for a minute I didn’t think of any difference between her and a man. Maybe because she didn’t see any difference. But she never asked me.

Some other new girls came in and the fights switched to them. Then I just sat around paying no attention and glad to be let alone.

She said carnal about me with the switch in her hand and I was lying on the floor with linoleum in my hands blue with old flowers spreading like on an old lady and it meant dirt and it was dirt and I had always known when Gretel was going to be eaten and I lay on the doll’s table and was Gretel and the witch came with the plastic knife from the tea set and where to start carving — I knew where she would and it should hurt but I knew it would feel good and the witch’s hand was my hand with the plastic knife and it always took so long to get to school though I could see the flag from the porch and I truly did not stop on the way but was always moving and in the same direction but everybody passed me on the way and it was always so interesting the pebbles and leaves and water in the gutter and how the tree grew and I know still there was something but maybe after all not a unicorn and if every step took so long could I — would I help it and the teacher was angry when I came in though I had been moving all the time and the little boy with the long white hair sitting with his little arms and his little legs in the little chair but he was only in nursery school and too young for a kindergartner like me and I felt guilty but I loved him and when I went to the bathroom only to pee I was always moving and never stopped like they said and it only took so long because it was all so interesting but they said and once they took me to church and she pinned the red skirt on me but at the church I had to pee and forgot about how skirts lift up — there were so many people and the music and all alone in the booth I forgot how skirts lift up and unpinned it to pull it down and when I got home it wasn’t pinned the same way and she said I had let them do things to me and at school on the slide there was a bolt at the top where when you sat down your pantie leg got hooked on it and when you pushed off whee with your legs brown in front of you and the white fuzz on your legs like the embroidery on the cuff of your socks and when you pushed off even though you put your hand in your lap so your skirt wouldn’t fly up the bolt hung on and the panties tore and the first time I didn’t even notice but when I got home the panties were torn and she asked me if the big boys had been doing something to me and I said no and the next day it happened again on the slide and I noticed when that slide was colder going down and I said it was the slide and her mouth got thin and hard and she said does that happen to the other little girls and I said I don’t know and the next day it happened again and she went to the school and made the teacher look at the slide and they couldn’t see any bolt sticking up and when I looked I couldn’t see any bolt sticking up and all the other little girls went down the slide and it didn’t happen and I went down the slide and it didn’t happen and I didn’t go to that school any more.

When he came it started — one night I woke up and it was dark and I looked for her and she wasn’t there and I went down the stairs afraid and the girl with the yellow hair who lived in the basement was reading and the light was on her hair and I got down on my knees and my pajamas got muddy and looked at her through the window reading and she read to me until my mother came home with him and later I stayed with the girl with the yellow hair and after a while he came in and picked me up and kissed me and his face hurt my face and he smelled of beer sour and I put my hand on his face and pushed away and she said this is your new daddy. I hated him and told her sometimes that I saw him go into the tavern with another woman and she believed me and they would yell and he would look at me and I could see he was afraid and I called him George and would not say daddy. He went away on a boat and it was the old way again except that I had to sleep in her bed in the pale green room where the light came in the morning but I still couldn’t get up because she was asleep hot next to me and her heavy smell like when you first take a bath made me sick in the bright room and I opened the window and looked out and saw far down in the black mud my other red sandal where I had thrown it and she never found it.

I had to sleep with her and one day the bed was wet and I thought I had done it but she said her water broke and went away and I went to stay at Mrs. Rice’s where I slept alone in a bed with tall white bars and there was a big boy who sat beside me at the table and picked up one end of my corn on the cob between two of his fingers and spread butter steaming with the knife on all its sides and put salt and pepper and gave it to me hot and dripping and I had never had that before and loved him and there were holes in the floor and when you stood on the grates in the morning when it was still dark the wind came up onto you hot. After a while he came to take me away home again and I cried and didn’t want to go but he gave me candy and I sat beside him in the car and when we got home he said there was a surprise and it was a radio and the Lone Ranger was just coming on but there was no baby after all and she saw I had been crying and made me stand up in the washtub where I took a bath and she looked between my legs and screamed and said he had done something to me and ever after that she said he had done something to me but I don’t remember him doing anything to me. But always until I went away from her she would call me sometimes — call my name from wherever she was to wherever I was and I could hear in the way she called my name that she was going to say that and ask me if he had been doing it or maybe she would say I wanted it. Once after we moved the new house was still a mess and she was angry and went to take a bath and he told me to come and help him set up beds in the living room to help her and my little brother was there and we all put up the beds and made them and wanted to please her and when she came out she looked so hard and said are you through? to me in that sneer that meant through doing that with him.

He never spoke to me and I never spoke to him because we both knew if he did or I did she would think and when I set the table I would not lean against it on the side he sat on or touch the chair he used and always held his plate and fork and spoon in two fingers and only for a second to slide them into place so she would not think I held them too long and was fondling them because they were his and I would not hang out his clothes to dry and I would not iron his clothes or fold his underwear in case she might think I did it because I liked him so she thought I hated him and it pleased her. Once he wanted to be nice, he was trying to be nice and she was angry he brought her flowers yellow and a dress as brown as chocolate soft it was — and he brought a little bowl so clear with water and a little goldfish in it swimming so beautiful and I held it carefully in my hands looking at it and she was yelling and she threw the flowers down and stamped on them and tore the dress in her hands and threw it at him and she was yelling at him and she looked at me hard and I looked at her and then I looked at the fish swimming swimming in the clean glass bowl and he was looking at me quiet, waiting and I opened my hands and the bowl fell onto the concrete floor and my legs got wet and there in the glass and the water running thin over the concrete the orange fish was flapping and gasping no bigger than my finger you could see through its tail so thin and he said “You could still save it if you wanted to” and I looked at my mother looking hard at me and I put my foot in the hard shoe on the fish and stepped down and smeared the fish over the concrete and then I stood back and he bent down and picked up the pieces of glass and went to dump them while my mother yelled at him.