Rebecca Coleman: Inside These Walls

I look to the guards, who stand on each side of the booths, hands folded at the front of their gray-and-black uniforms. Neither looks as if they are about to end this visit, as they sometimes do when emotions reach a fever pitch. I look at the girl again and feel myself swallow hard, by reflex, as if forcing down a stone.

“That date looks a bit familiar,” I say. “What did you say your name was?”

“Annemarie. It’s Annemarie Leska.”

It’s like a roaring noise tearing upward through time, from the end that was always an end to a beginning that was never a beginning. What was torn from me has always been gone, the relief of a particular torment and nothing more. But a name, a name—she has a name. She can never again be a nothing, never again an end. What was sundered and undone shall be made whole . But that is not true, because I know I will be torn by this, not only once anymore, but again and again without amnesty.

Annemarie leaves with the information she wanted. A summary of everything I can remember about my family’s medical history and the few details I can recall from my pregnancy with her. I’ve told her about my father’s early heart attack, my mother’s cancer, but it’s been so long since I dredged up any of that and my mind feels foggy about anything beyond those stark facts. And as for my pregnancy, there’s very little there, in the cubby of my memory where that time should be. I suppose it was the stress of the arrest, the incarceration, and all of the court business that caused me not to even realize for the first four months or so. And not long after the end of all that, there came the trial, so that was looming over me even then.

After the hour’s visit I am led back to the Braille workshop. The print of Guernica is still on the light box, topped with my onionskin overlay. I sit on the stool and begin sketching again, continuing my outline of the woman on the far right whose arms are thrown toward the sky. As I draw I add in my little symbols about depth and texture, a code nobody else can read.

What about my father’s side? Do you know anything about them?

I’ll have to try to remember all that. I’ll work on it.

Her eyes squinted up, as if anticipating a blow. Was it Ricky Rowan?

No, no, no. Your father was a wonderful person, generous and very kind.

I trace the small window high above the woman in the painting, the sharp angles of the flames leaping above and below her. I begin on the head of the spirit-woman drifting in through the window, her arm and hand holding the lamp, and I stop. I stop.

“I’m not feeling well,” I say. I turn to the C.O. by the door and repeat myself. “I’m not feeling well.”

“You need to go to the clinic?”

No . “I think I just need to rest.”

“You’re either sick or you’re not sick.”

I turn back to the light box. I deepen some of my lines, then return to the arm, the lamp, the spirit woman with her mouth agape. I shape the doorways, boxes inside of boxes, each a fresh sharp angle.

She said, absolutely for sure, that it was you. I didn’t believe her at first .

But she believed her in the end, and so she came.

Clara Mattingly?

I push it all away. I can do this. I’ve been doing it for a long time, and can keep it up a little longer. I hunch my shoulders above the light box and focus on nothing but the lines of the great wounded war horse at the center, its dark nostrils and dagger tongue stretching forward in an endless scream.

In the hour in my cell between yard time and dinner, while Janny is at Narcotics Anonymous and I would normally be dancing, I sit on my floor and tear through the boxes of documents and papers stored beneath the bed. I’m seeking any slip, any shred of connection to the young woman who met my eyes and uttered that phrase. You’re my mother . And there is nothing—not a photograph, not a medical record, certainly not a diary entry. I hoist the thick dot-matrix printout of trial transcripts from the bottom of the cardboard box and sit back against the cold cinderblock wall. The pages are held together by a rusting butterfly clip, and I flip through them, recognizing the testimony of Forrest Hayes—Ricky’s supposed friend, who was with us that memorable weekend.

Q: And after Mr. Rowan opened the cash register, where was Ms. Mattingly?

A: Still in the side room, like, near the doorway, to watch over the family. They were still all sitting on the floor in front of the big sink. She had her back to me, but she kept turning her head back and forth to look at Ricky. We were all real nervous by then, except Ricky and maybe Chris.

Q: And Ms. Mattingly was armed.

A: Yeah, she had the gun. After Ricky got the register key he told her to hold it.

Q: Did she resist that, or seem uneasy about it?

A: They sort of squabbled over it for a second, but then she took it.

Q: And after he took all the money out of the register, then what happened?

A: Then Ricky called out to her, “Take ’em out, Kira.”

Q: Kira or Clara?

A: I heard Kira. But he called her that a lot, because of The Dark Crystal , and how the Kira in the movie—the girl Gelfling—had the power to call the animals and all that. And Clara could catch all those stray cats. When he left her notes at the house he’d sign them ’Jen,’ after the boy Gelfling. But I guess he could have said either one.

Q: And what happened after he called out?

A: Clara fired the gun once, and one of the women hostages, I don’t know which one, she screamed. Then Ricky said ’I love you’ to her—to Clara—and Chris came rushing over from down the aisle behind her and yanked the gun out of her hand. Next thing I knew, he was firing into the room where the family was—bam, bam, bam, bam. Just fired like crazy.

Q: But they were sitting on the floor, correct? So did you see them get shot?

A: No, but I sure saw them after.

I let the sheaf of papers flop closed and press both hands against my eyes. The pressure in my throat, behind my nose, is immense. Even after all these years I can easily picture Forrest with his double armful of Fig Newtons packages and Pepsi bottles, his green-eyed gaze darting between Ricky and the door, Ricky and the door. The fuzz on his jaw was as soft as cat fur. He’d thought this was a normal little robbery. He had no idea what he was getting into with Ricky. The rest of us didn’t have that excuse.

I set that packet of papers back in the box, but I catch a glimpse of the first page of the next packet—the defense testimony—and pick it up. My stepbrother’s is first.

Q: So the night before the convenience store robbery, she was home? Was that unusual?

A: No, she never stayed out overnight. Her mom—my stepmother—would have been really upset if she had. She was a strict Catholic.

Q: And the younger Ms. Mattingly, the defendant, did she share her mother’s faith?

A: Definitely. She was always really devout. Never missed Mass. She met Ricky in confirmation class, which I guess is kind of ironic. But he was always a troublemaker, and she wasn’t like that. She was a good girl.

The buzzer sounds for dinner. I pile all my paperwork into the boxes and blot my eyes with toilet paper. They’re still tender underneath along the fading bruises from the fight in the chow hall. Maybe that will disguise the redness of fighting back these tears, which would be helpful. Never look weak. It’s the most important thing.

My lawyer, Mona Singer, has aged so noticeably since I last saw her that it’s difficult to control the surprise on my face as I shake her hand. “Clara,” she says. “I was surprised to hear from you.” Her voice comes out older, too. All the smoking is catching up with her.