Rebecca Coleman - Inside These Walls

My grip tightens against the edge of the desk. An ache settles into my gut. As I gaze at Janny, her expression shifts into one of naked grief, as though between us it is only she who understands what I have lost.

All of a sudden I realize it is July. I count the months on my fingers, once, then again, and I know I have it right. It’s the month of Annemarie’s birth. I don’t know the day, and I panic at the realization that it might have passed.

At my desk, in my cell, I sketch out a one-month calendar and plant the dates on it in pencil, trying to figure out when exactly it was. I remember being awakened from sleep by distant booms that sent a shock of fear down my spine, and sitting up in bed to listen, terrified of a riot or an escape that would cause us all to be punished. “Happy Fourth of July,” somebody had shouted, and only then did I realize the noises were fireworks in the nearby town. I was still pregnant then—of that I am sure. I went to trial on August fifth, and at that point my pregnancy was over, but I was still bleeding. It’s easy to recall watching Forrest testify against me as I sat meekly beside my lawyer at our table, feeling like my body was an hourglass shedding the last remnants of those terrible days. But I don’t remember the precise date.

I take out a sheet of plain paper and fold it in two. On one half, with it turned on its side the long way, I try to draw the sea. I sketch the curve of the shore, the foam of a wave reaching up the sand, the swoop of the Ferris wheel and Giant Dipper coaster in the distance. I draw the quarter moon and the summer constellations hanging above the ocean—Ursa Major, Leo and Virgo—though I know, to her, they will likely be no more than dots signifying the night sky. I blow gently on the image to shoo away the loose graphite, being careful not to smudge the blacks and grays.

Here is what I don’t draw: the humid car. The figures on the beach, one upside-down, one with her toes sinking deep into the sand. The faraway screams from the coaster, the bursts of wind that whipped at skirts and hair, the taste of salt on the lips, the bright smudged starlight between the lines of Leo that meant galaxies and galaxies and galaxies.

In the end, it’s very simple. It’s only a drawing of the beach.

Happy birthday, Annemarie, I write inside. I’m afraid to sign Love . I’m afraid to sign a name or a word, worried that each might mean too much or too little. May a thousand wishes come true for you, I write instead. I fold it into an envelope—it doesn’t fit quite right—and set it upright where my desk meets the wall. I run my smallest finger beneath my eye and then sweep it across my bottom lip like balm. It offers a peaceful feeling, this small return to the scene I’ve drawn, the taste of the sea. She began there, whether or not she knows it. And I wish she did. I wish she knew that one small thing.

Out in the yard, the sun bakes the pale soil like pottery. All the green has died within the bounds of the tall fence. In the farmlands beyond it the irrigated crops still grow, and sometimes I stand there with my fingers laced into the chain link and stare out at it like a child in a television commercial watching someone crack open a bottle of Coca-Cola.

I unfold the napkin from my pocket and take out a section of hot dog. Clementine has been lingering in the shade most of the time, often in inaccessible places, where I might see her but not be able to reach. I begin walking around the perimeter of the wall, clicking my tongue.

A woman sitting in a group at one of the picnic tables begins calling, too. “Frankfurter! Frankfurter!” she calls. “Here, kitty kitty!”

I ignore her, blocking the sunlight with my hand so I can peek up at the ledges of the windows beneath the overhanging roof. The grease of the hot dog is soaking through the napkin as it warms in my hand.

“Look at her trying to catch that cat,” she says, loudly enough that I know it’s for me to hear, not just her friends. She’s a big woman, with a crew cut left longish on the bottom and tattoos on both her forearms. I know her name: Martha. “You looking for some pussy, old lady? I got it right here for you.”

Her friends laugh. A glance, ever so small, confirms what I suspected from the sound of the laughter. The long-haired girl, Amber Jones, is seated at that table. As long as I’ve been here, I’d have to be as dumb as a post not to decipher this relationship. Whether Martha is wooing the other girl or already owns her, I’m not sure, but either way the alliance is a clear and dangerous one. Alexandra, the girl I see at Mass each week, is there, too. Every Sunday she shakes my hand during the Sign of Peace, and on the other six days she clusters with the group of women who most like to taunt me. On the outside this would hurt me deeply, but I know, in here, that’s just the way it is. I turn my search for Clementine toward the section of the yard closer to where the officers hold their posts near the occasional blast of air-conditioning from the swinging doors. I feel Martha’s gaze following me.

But before I can walk too far, she’s up, she’s coming at me, and I know that even though I’m no match for her I can only stand my ground. The sun flashes behind her head, making one of her small mean eyes vanish in its piercing gleam. Her fist rises, and when I raise my hands to protect myself I feel a burning, hair-thin slash across my arm, an unzipping of my skin. I cry out and grab my wounded limb, my fingers coated in the sticky ooze of my blood, and turn my side toward her. She stabs me again, this time in my bicep—a jab that only feels like an afterthought, because the pain from the first cut is searing. Two officers are dragging her away now, another running toward me, pulling on a pair of blue latex gloves. It’s a stinging like a hundred bees. The blood between my fingers makes my arm feel as though it’s melting away beneath my hand. The officer sets her palm against my back and guides me toward the building, and I stumble the way she directs me amidst all the shouting, through a tunnel made out of sunlight and shadows and noise.

The nurse is ready with a pressure bandage when I arrive; they must have radioed her. “You again,” she says. “You need to stop getting into trouble.”

I slump into the chair, and she brushes away my gripping hand with one of her gloved ones. She pats the wound with gauze. Her appraising glance moves up and down my arm, and the wound is longer than I expected, a good six- or seven-inch gash. “She got you good,” the nurse says.

“Can you numb it first?”

She cocks an eyebrow. “Numb it?”

“Before you stitch it.”

Her laugh is low and rumbly. “I can’t stitch that .”

I feel a pang of dread. I debate whether I have the nerve to do it myself, if she’s willing to offer me the supplies.

“She definitely needs a transport,” the nurse says, catching the eye of the officer who brought me in.

“All right. Bandage her up. I don’t want any blood getting on me.”

I don’t understand. They can’t be taking me to a real hospital, not for this. But when two more guards walk into the clinic and shackle my ankles, I realize they really are. My arm is bandaged, my wrists cuffed—the nurse won’t allow them to be latched to a chain around my waist, saying my arm needs to be kept above the level of my heart—and within minutes I’m in the back of a van that is driving away.

It’s that easy.

We’re driving right past those irrigated fields. Through intersections with stoplights in cases that are black instead of the yellow I remember. Past gas stations filled with tiny, rounded cars and pumps with digital numbers. A burger place appears at the side of the road with a curl of smoke puffing up through its roof, and the van’s ventilation system catches the scent and filters it back to me. It smells like heaven, like youth and nights on the boardwalk and everything good. I gasp at the potency of it and choke back a small cry, force myself to swallow, then try to breathe it in again. The officer beside me looks at me strangely, but says nothing.