Рейчел Кушнер - The Mars Room

Before lunch, Laura Lipp drilled her own hand with the drill press and was sent to the infirmary. That was it for her in woodshop. The Norse said it was her punishment for marrying a beaner. The Norse had been in prison so long she didn’t know that particular slur had gone out of style, was no longer used, and this made me unexpectedly sad for her.

I don’t know if it was right or wrong, but Jimmy Darling and I had shared the habit of sometimes feeling sorry for bigots.

Like the lonely woman tending an empty bar, whom we met while driving around Valencia, where Jimmy taught. The challenge of finding anything notable in that strip mall hell was something we both enjoyed. One night we passed a trailer park in Santa Clarita with a shabby sign that said ADULT LIVING. Man, Jimmy said. The things you can look forward to. We speculated that maybe they had glass shower stalls in those trailers. Waterbeds. It was a place for adults. Adults only. We found a tavern on an abandoned county road that was itself almost abandoned. The bartender said she was in the process of buying the place, but didn’t want a Mexican clientele.

“Mexicans’ll stab you first thing, minute you turn around,” she said. She asked us how we thought she might bring in more white people.

“Offer sandwiches,” Jimmy said.

“Damn, that’s a good idea.”

She and Jimmy brainstormed about her deli. “Pickles,” Jimmy said. “Potato chips.” She didn’t know he wasn’t serious. He was and he wasn’t serious.

On the wall above us in the woodshop were brochures with pictures of the furniture proudly manufactured by inmates at Stanville prison industries woodworking facility.

This is what we made:

Judges’ benches. Jury box seating. Courtroom gates. Witness stands. Lecterns. Judges’ gavels. Paneling for judges’ quarters. Wooden courtroom cages for in-custody defendants. Wood frames for the state seal that goes in the judges’ chambers, and judges’ seats, which then went to upholstery, next door.

Not among the state merchandise we built, someone, some time, had crafted a child’s desk, like you see in schools, with a hinge so the top can open, to store supplies inside. It had a small matching chair. The desk and chair were at the entrance to the woodshop. “That little desk makes me sad,” Conan said. I trained myself not to look at it.

When thoughts moved in about my mother, dead, really and truly dead, I reminded myself that Jackson was not dead. She was, but he wasn’t. I confined myself to this very small form of relief.

On weekends, Sammy and I went out to main yard. The sight of thousands all dressed alike is really striking the first time you see it.

People clustered, catching up and hanging out, playing basketball or handball. Girls brought out guitars and strummed for small audiences (no gathering in groups larger than five). Some huddled and did drugs. Others had love affairs in the port-a-potties, or out in the open, with lookouts—pinners—watching for cops.

It was summer, and the hot wind rippled our loose clothing, which ranged from the palest blue, to navy, to the granite-speckle of denim—our fake jeans. The denim is not fake. The jeans part is. They are pants sewn crudely of denim, with an elastic waistband and a single lopsided, too-small pocket, and they are not jeans as I think of the term.

Sammy and I walked the track. We passed the 213 girls, who all waved to her. Main yard has area codes, just like the state.

Signs everywhere said NO RUNNING EXCEPT ON TRACK.

If you ran anywhere else they could shoot you.

“Who got her the wire cutters?”

“Who are you talking about?”

“Angel Marie Janicki.”

“Man, was she fine,” Sammy said. “She was the best-looking girl at Stanville.”

“Where did she get the wire cutters?”

“Free-world staff. Some guy. He was under the influence. I’m telling you, she was beautiful.”

Orders issued from the PA, clear and tight and loud.

“You by the bathrooms. I can see you smoking. Put that out right now.”

“Lozano, you’re out of bounds.”

A truck circled the perimeter of the prison, on a dirt road between the electrified fence and the outer, final fence.

“Copley, you left your dentures by the handball courts.” Audible laughter from the other guards near the microphone. “Copley, heh heh, come to the watch office to pick up your teeth.”

When it was hot, the guards mostly stayed in the air-conditioned watch office and observed us through binoculars. They did that when it was cold also. The yard is massive, and they are lazy.

“Which blind spot did she use?”

“Behind the gym. That’s why we have lockdowns now. There’s before Angel Marie Janicki and there’s after.”

“They can’t see the fence behind the gym?”

“Not from Tower One. But they don’t need to now. They have the electric fence.”

It took the perimeter truck at least ten minutes to circle the grounds. Maybe eleven.

How the guards know whose dentures: the inmate number is printed on the side, in the artificial gums.

We passed whale beach, just as the guards started breaking up their sunbathing party.

“Whale beach, no slingshots. Whale beach I said no slingshots. Everybody up and dressed.”

It’s not nice to say whale beach but that’s what it’s called, an area beyond the walking track where women grease up and fry. Slingshots are homemade undershirts. You were not supposed to bare flesh on main yard, but people did anyhow, slathered in cook oil or the fake butter they used in central kitchen, a brand called I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter! or, as Conan called it, I Can’t Fucking Believe This Shit’s Not Butter.

No one runs on the track, since this was women’s prison and we were not training to kill. No one except Conan, who jogged past me and Sammy.

“I just slaughtered ten thousand gnats with my open mouth!”

He turned around, running backward, facing us.

“Try closing your mouth,” Sammy said. “You won’t have that problem.”

A female cop hurried past. “No sitting on the tables!” she yelled. It was also illegal to sit under them, which was the only way to get shade on the yard. Only regulation sitting was allowed.

Conan regarded the cop angrily marching past. He nodded approval.

“Boy, was she a different lay.”

At Stanville you can assume it’s a lie if the person volunteers it. It’s also a lie if the person says it in answer to a question. Conan’s tales were as tall as Tower One and Tower Two, where armed Fudds tracked us and ate pork rinds.

“She says to me, don’t just use your tongue, I want you to hum into me, like I’m a kazoo. That’s what she said. Like I’m a kazoo .”

The landscaping crew was working along the edges of the track with spray bottles of Roundup. Their job was to keep the yard one seamless expanse of dirt. “We keep it real tidy,” said Laura Lipp, who was now on yard crew. A top layer of bare dirt lifted and blew around, from valley gusts, as a new cop named Garcia came toward us.

All new staff are marks for prisoners and cops alike, but there was something particularly vulnerable about Garcia; he seemed lost out there on main yard, which is three yards, B, C, and D: three thousand women with six Fudds.

Fudd is short for Elmer Fudd. It was Conan who had started that.

“Hey, Fuddrucker,” he called to Garcia, who halted, and looked to be trying to decide whether to pretend he had not heard Conan, or to deal with Conan as a problem.

“But what is Fuddruckers?” Conan said to no one in particular, his usual audience.