Рейчел Кушнер - The Mars Room

That Sunday night, Button would not shut up about the documentary film. Everyone was going to know her story.

“I should not even be in this place,” she said.

“What makes you so special?” I’d had enough of her.

“I was fourteen when my crime got committed. The brain is not fully developed at that age.”

Probably it was true, about a kid’s brain. Everything here is about choices, decisions, as if people are making them when they commit a crime. A fourteen-year-old is not making choices. She’s in the prison of the present tense. When I was that young, I could not imagine anything beyond that day, the next. But Button still pissed me off, separating herself from the rest of us like that.

There was a prisoner named Lindy Belsen who had been convicted as a juvenile and had her sentence commuted by the governor. She was famous at Stanville. A team of volunteer lawyers had gathered around her. They built up her case as a story of human trafficking. She’d shot her pimp in a motel room. He’d groomed her for prostitution from the age of twelve. It was a sad story, and maybe she deserved to go free, but the way her lawyers positioned her as an undisputed innocent was difficult for the rest of us. Lindy Belsen was an ideal face for free-world activists who wanted a model prisoner to fight for. She was pretty, and spoke like an educated person. But most important, she could be depicted, convincingly, as a victim, not a perpetrator. A lot of people in the prison resented Lindy Belsen, because what did her story, the story her lawyers told, say about the rest of us? Few were happy for her when she left.

They mainlined Serenity Smith to general population. They put her on B yard, but close custody. In a regular unit, but confined, with seven other close custody prisoners, unable to come and go from their room. Eventually they would lift her confinement, move her to a regular room. Conan and his transgender counseling group were committed to protecting Serenity. They had meetings about it. They were on her side. Other people were making weapons to fight them. Conan and his group planned to surround Serenity, a butch security force, to keep her safe from Teardrop and all the other dangerous people who wanted to hurt her.

Sammy said a prison riot was an awful thing. There had been one at CIW, north against south. It was a meat grinder, she said.

To prevent organized violence on the yard, the cops wouldn’t say when they were lifting Serenity’s close custody.

It wasn’t my issue. Life went back to normal. After Hauser left, our continuing education options were healing groups that met in the gym: Self-Esteem. Anger Management. Transitional Living (only for women with release dates), and Relationships 101. There were budget cuts and other changes. Woodshop was no longer available for level fours, like me. I started working in the cafeteria, where cops put their hands on me as I slopped Mortimer portions. The kitchen supervisor wore a big button that said DON’T EVEN TRY IT. Don’t even think of attempting to manipulate me with your sob stories and needs. That was how a lot of the staff was. Those who were open didn’t want to help us. They wanted to make cash for smuggling contraband.

I got a letter from Eva’s father. I’d written about ten letters to his address to try to locate Eva and this was the first news back, after five years in prison.

“Eva died last year. I had been collecting your letters and was planning on giving them to her but could not locate her. I thought you should know that you can stop attempting to reach her.”

Sometimes I imagined that Hauser would write me. He’d ask to be put on my visiting list. Now that he wasn’t working at Stanville, the fraternization rules wouldn’t apply. He’d be out there in the free world and ready to start something up. Even though I wasn’t remotely attracted to him, we’d get married and have conjugal visits with Jackson. Hauser was earnest and gentle. He would have made a good father. I had no way to get in touch with him to tell him so, and the joke had been on me, even as I thought I was using and manipulating him.

One night, I had two dreams about water. In the first one, I was with Hauser. At least I think it was Hauser. It was a placeholder man who was connected to me, obligated to me somehow. There was a rainstorm and we watched as the LA River rose. It went over the concrete banks. Hauser dove in to swim, but without having noticed the swift speed of the water. It carried him downstream. I wondered if he could swim strongly enough to grab a tree branch or root, hold on to something and pull himself out. I went to a store. I told the clerk that my friend had gone into the water. She said, “The river is rushing ninety-one miles an hour.” I felt that Hauser was dead or hurtling toward death. I woke up.

When I fell back asleep I had a different dream. I was driving an old car. The clutch was rough and the brakes jerky and the gas slightly delayed, the steering clumsy, but I was familiar with the car and knew how to handle it to make it respond. Something was happening up ahead. I stopped and got out. There was a man threatening to kill himself. There was a young woman trying to talk him down. Then the three of us were walking together along a sea wall or embankment. It was Ocean Beach. Huge waves swelled and fell, as if the water were at an incline, not level. It was steep water. The man started going out onto the embankment. The young woman was suddenly me. The man looked at me, who was not me, but the responding person to him in the dream, he looked at this me and began to go out into the water. I said, No, don’t. As I said it, I realized that he was luring me into the water, by suggesting he would end his life he was luring me to end mine. I woke up and worried that Jackson was thirsty and that there wasn’t a cup of water next to his bed, but then I realized I was in my lower bunk in room fourteen of unit 510 of C yard.

Sammy was released. She said she was nervous and didn’t want to go. I felt her excitement, underneath what she claimed. The reentry program was on skid row and she was worried. “Hang around the barbershop long enough,” she said, “and you’ll end up with a haircut.”

She gave me her piggy-printed eye mask and some other stuff. Promised she’d write me. We hugged goodbye.

People say your time hits you in waves. Mine was hitting me. I could see no way to accept this as life, to live it to the end.

I was depressed and sleeping a lot. One Sunday, I missed breakfast and the first unlock. At lunch I went out to the yard to find Conan.

Laura Lipp and her yard crew were sweeping dirt. It was a sunny day and the yard was packed. There were probably two thousand women out there.

I pushed through the turnstile and when it squeaked open it was like everyone had owls’ heads, on swivel. I didn’t know what was wrong but the tension was thick.

I walked past the basketball courts, looking for Conan. There was a game happening, girls on the sidelines picnicking with canteen spreads.

“Here she comes!” someone screamed.

I thought the screamer meant me and I panicked. People came running toward the main entrance from all over the yard. The players on the court stopped their game. The ball rolled into the basket but no one was under to claim it. It bounced on its lonesome across an empty court. Everyone was running toward the turnstiles.

Serenity Smith passed through. She had come on the yard alone. Walking tall, and proud, a beautiful black woman with long and graceful arms.

Laura Lipp and her gardening gang moved toward her with shovels and rakes in their hands. I heard a shriek. It was the Norse, running toward Serenity. Conan, Reebok, and their crew ran to attack the Norse and the gardeners. People were coming from all directions.