In the Slammer With Carol Smith (13 page)

In ten blocks or so, I can arrive at that Ukrainian Hall which is no longer in business, but can be sneaked into. Or if I crave more space and am willing to shake a leg for it, I can push on to the area just before you get to West Street. There, in that quarter of mostly vanished meat wholesalers, the old cornices offer good broad rain shield, and the laddered fire escapes a river view. At times a graveyard quiet may afflict, or the slightest smell of animal blood. Yet hit the area on a balmy night and it may be a ballroom for a drag queen frolic. They have lovely manners, even if you’re a woman.

Anyway, it’s a menu. And for free.

—Last time I saw Dr. Cee the medical board was to be sitting on ‘releases,’ mine among others. When I enter his office, on mental tiptoe though I stride, he raises his arms in hurrah. ‘It was iffy, yes. But they’re hoping to let you go.’

‘Every release is iffy,’ I say. ‘You never can be sure whether they think you’re sensible or they’re giving you up.’

‘Ah, Carol. You have a tongue. But I’ll miss it.’

So I spare him a mention of that third qualification for a release which can zap you the quickest: money. Something about the Hippocratic oath changes, when you are expected to pay for it.

‘And the ward will miss you.’

Often on a ward there’ll be a patient who becomes advocate for the others. On mine I’d become that. ‘Only because I hear too much,’ I told him. ‘I don’t unload somewhere, I’ll break.’

‘Just remember what I told you.’

‘You’ve told me so much.’

He looks hurt, so I say: ‘Tell me again.’

‘Carol, you do hear. You empathize.’ Schizoids don’t, or not that much, he repeats. They rebel, because they fear. They can be violent, or retreat. ‘And violently intelligent. But with people—they’re hard to unplug.’

I don’t go for all of that, I tell him. Not from what I’ve heard on the ward. ‘I think: sane or mad, or intermediate like I’ve been—everybody has spells of everything.’

They don’t like to hear the word ‘mad;’ they have so many more complicated words for it. So he just shakes his head. ‘You’ll find danger.’ He comes down hard on the ‘find.’ ‘So watch out for yourself, hah? And drop me a card now and then.’ He hands me a packet. ‘Don’t open it now. Only postcards.’ We shake. He grips me by the shoulders and almost hugs; it’s a lenient hospital. And I’ll remember what you’ve told me too, Carol. It’s a deal.’

I’d used to stare at the sky outside his window, while we talked. He never called me on it; he knew I was trying to get my colors back. But this last time he can’t resist asking what color the sky is that day. Actually it is the same gray I always see, like they say a dog does. But I say: ‘The sky outside a locked window is always criminally blue.’

I am still on my bench. In the walking world it takes no time at all for a bench to become one’s own, and this is rarely disputed among us, although in Central Park’s upper Babyland the nannies may glare. Meanwhile, the crowd in the theater has dispersed, easing out past me, chatting its judgments, in the furtive decibel that audiences do. They have their destinations, what is mine?

Perhaps I should send the hospital board, which was so reluctant to release me to nowhere, a list of my addresses since? Dozens of them, no doubt showing my own patterns on a mythical pedometer, from that arch under a bridge not Brooklyn’s, to the niche behind that construction hut on Roosevelt Drive. I am an architect’s reference book of ignored ruins, boarded-up row houses, forgotten monuments. But a bench is for the interval anybody might snatch; seated on it I’m a common profile. I never sleep on a bench.

Maybe I should go Mungo’s route? Seek the salvation of a church? Not to nestle inside or to take its communion, but to bed down against its wall, through which there would surely be some seepage of the good? But the trouble with churches, even those too poor to have garden borders, is that some volunteer sexton can always be found to sweep sternly clean all niches and porches, and of course lock the door. If they knew the biblical needs of those like me, perhaps they would not sweep.

… Once, when I was in the halfway house and coming back after curfew found the door locked, and unanswered as well, which they had warned me of, I had found such a church. In the mist from the harbor I could just see its steeple
—
not too grand. At its base, a rundown stone border, no hedge. But in the rear, dusty but not garbagy, just the cul-de-sac for my kind. Some past sojourner had even left a coned smut of ashes from a fire.

When I woke, a man with a round collar was bending over me. ‘Will you have coffee inside?’ he said, ‘or would you prefer it out here?’ My neck was stiff from resting on my backpack, but I could still stretch it. ‘The steeple is grander than I thought,’ I said, in apology. ‘It considers itself a cathedral,’ the priest said, smiling. ‘With accommodation for all.’ I said I would come in for the coffee, but not stay. And what do you know—it was he who said ‘Thank you’.…

But this is another city. And I’m out of touch. Having a pad will do that to you. Or a hang-out—even one that had no membership.

What I’ll have to cope with now is that I do have my memory back. A headful, heavy with chartings and allusions. And with a need to see how things will turn out. I
remember.
How half of memory is the urge to tally destiny. However humble that girl back there was, she had a taste for dynamite. Wow.… Page Ms. Mickens. Ms. Bryna Mickens. I even remember your first name. On your bracelet, in gold. I had aliases once, a whole charm-bracelet of them. Wind-chimes, that’s all they were. Telling me of lands I hadn’t come from. And when it was time to blow.

Hello, Mickens. I’m Carol Smith.

I am still lounging there, as a stage door allows, and smiling at how I handled that, when this freak emerges. Blushy red-powdered cheeks, eye pencil, tufts of papery grass and flower buds in the hair. A gray running-suit.

‘Go
on—
’ I say. In the genteel voice of Dedham, yes. I mustn’t be ready yet for what-the-fuck. ‘It’s Wall.’

It grins. Underneath is Martyn. ‘What d’ya know. Stage-door Jane. Am I to take this as a compliment?’

I blush. In depression one doesn’t; there’s not much empathy even for oneself. ‘I left before you came on. It all came back to me.’

‘Yeah, it does affect people that way. A good play.’ He scratches his neck, picking a plastic flower from it. ‘But backstage, the sinks are jammed. All two of them. No dressing rooms. Half the production is from the Warsaw underground. They’re not on to union rules.’

Neither am I yet. I’m not in the union I was. I’ve lost the street-savvy. I’m not able to slouch off. I never could snarl, though sometimes I could confront. And he’s looking at me that easy way, hands on hips. ‘I had a kind of revelation, I guess. I mean—recovery.’ Trippy tongue, Carol. But yes, that’s what you had.

‘Jesus. Didn’t know it was that good a play.’ Bending over, he pulls a long, floaty clump from his head. Waves it at a cop just then passing us at the curb. The cop waves back.

‘That the cop on the beat?’

‘One of them. Why?’

To laugh like I am. To laugh, any old way. At seeing a cop wave friendly-like to a painted man pulling out his hair. ‘I’m just seeing the advantages of art.’

He flips me a salute. I watch while he cleans the blacking from his face. He’ll get any remark I throw off. And easy does it; he seems to have no guardedness, no need of that. How are these people made? And he gives off like sex doesn’t have to be involved; I don’t have to think of that.

Like with most persons now you have to identify your gender at the outset—even if you’ve never had a doubt about it. Indicating what satisfactions you pursue. And whether or not you would pursue those with the man or woman or gay you’re talking to. Even on the ward, that shadow play went on, if only verbally. Until, down the drug-clotted hours, we lost all the structure of our lives except the ego we were burdened with.

I have to stand still in all this clarity. And what do you know?—I can.

He has picked off the last greenery from his head. ‘Should’ve had a wig. But they couldn’t spend.’

‘You can stand in the street with daisies sticking onto your scalp and not mind?’ I say. ‘That’s because you’re not a freak inside.’

‘My country doesn’t think so.’ He slaps his forehead. ‘What time is it?’ His wristwatch is blurred with scratches; it has been places. ‘Past four. Gotta get a paper. News I expect. No news-stand around here.’ I can see he doesn’t want to leave me here. ‘Want to walk along?’

Does he guess I’m a walker? Wouldn’t put it past him. ‘Okay.’

He points us north. It’s Deadsville down here: boarded-up shops not even broken into. Sunday, but no church anywhere. And not a soul but us.

As we head off I’m wondering what kind of news he’s waiting for.

‘Home,’ he says, as if I’d asked aloud. ‘I’ve got a mother, a half-brother down there.’

‘I rallied once for South Africa. Anti-apartheid, I mean.’ The scent of packed bodies washes over me like a vinaigrette. Left of me, back there, a man’s upflung arm. On the dais a sea of heads sway, as a speaker snarls a quote in what must be Afrikaans. Right of me, a woman protrudes her tongue.

‘Boston. Yes, that helped,’ he says.

‘How—? Ah, you’ve caught my accent.’

We slog on.

‘My mother’s been anti all her long life. My brother, a police chief, a rabid separatist. But, dammit all if they haven’t become allies, now that we’re legally free of the old scourge. Neither of them willing to concede that we are.’

‘Free?’ I find I have no gesture for it. ‘Free? Since when?’

On his face, wiped clean now, I see the years I have lost.

‘Not soon enough.’ He takes my hand, swinging it. ‘You been in stir, eh. So was I once, when I was young. But nothing could be kept from us. We had the drums.’

He has dropped my hand. But we are still walking. ‘I was young. But I wasn’t in that long.’

We walk on.

‘I took you for maybe color-blind,’ he says. ‘Or trying to be.’

‘Shouldn’t we be?’ I toss out. ‘Like a church?’

‘When the whole world is. Not until.’

‘My two aunts brought me up white. Best they could do.’

‘Which side were they?’

‘Side?’ I say. A patch of rouge still on his nose twitches. I see he’s amused. ‘Oh, they were white all right. It was a wartime thing. So was I.’

‘Orphan, eh. They adopt you?’

‘Oh no. One of them was my mother. They just never told which.’

The big surprise about a memory returned is how it wants to pour. As if that itself is the blessing. Else how could I be smiling? Of course part of that is having a person to tell it to, natural. ‘They kept us apart from both sides. So people wouldn’t do it to them first.’

He stops us on the curb. Passes his hands near to my cheeks, one to a side. But doesn’t touch. Like a magician? Or a dermatologist? Or as a man might do if you are his first of your kind. ‘Be any way you want, Carol. You deserve it.’

I can’t quite believe this, but it’s balm to hear. ‘You get that much charge out of being what you are?’

He winces. ‘Only way to go on being it.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Deserved.’ He rubs his face. His palm comes off pink. He grins. ‘But it’s a real relief sometimes, being a Wall.’

And there, way down the block, is a news-stand. The street we’re coming to is a main artery, four-lane and buzzing double-time, like an old movie. Not the kind for me. When we get there I better leave, but not without telling him what I should. We are walking slower anyway.

‘When you’re on a mental ward, Martyn, there is no news. None that affects you. That’s when I lost the habit. And when you get out—that’s the big news.’ I sneak a look. No change in that blunt profile. ‘Alphonse tell you about me?’

‘Nope.’ He turns his full face to me. ‘You’re telling me yourself.’

So I am. So I am. ‘Want to know what I was in for?’

He shrugs. ‘This is now.’

So it is. ‘Thanks.’

All of a sudden I would like to make him laugh. ‘Back in the slammer where I was first, there was more variety, at least on the women’s side. The hookers took a real interest in “Family Court,” that program. But the real draw were the serial killers. The general opinion was that women don’t get an equal chance at it.’

He laughs all right. What I haven’t counted on is that so do I.

At the stand I say: ‘I’ll buy one too. It’ll be a start.’

‘It’ll be a weight. The Sundays always are.’

‘I can use it, wherever I bed down.’

He lets that pass.

But what do you know, the Paki in charge of the stand shakes his head.

‘No more
Times?’
Martyn asks. The Paki, an older man, signals No, turning his back. He and a younger man start closing up the stand.

‘Hey, wait—’ I say. ‘They’re not sold out. They’ve just already tied up the leftovers for pickup, and don’t want to bother to untie. I’ve often seen the trucks coming by.’ And sure enough, near the curb back of the stand are the bundled papers.

When Martyn points, they shrug.

‘Bet you—’ Martyn says to me. Leaning close to the older man, he says something in what must be their language. The older gives the younger a look. The younger goes to untie, pulling out one copy. When Martyn pays up with a fiver they have to unearth the money box. All without a word. They begin again to close up.

‘What did you say to them?’ I whisper.

When he grins, his eyes close halfway. ‘It wasn’t from the Koran.’

When you can whisper with a person it expands you. ‘News-stands used to be places where you could ask direction. Or even be greeted, if you were a daily customer. There was one like that in the barrio, my old neighborhood.’ Where the bar owner bought the Spanish paper every afternoon, below my window. ‘But these people, they never talk, never smile. Yet they own nearly all the kiosks.’

‘They’re separated from their country. They don’t yet think of this one as theirs.’

The sun is behind Martyn’s profile, raised like a person who doesn’t whisper but will accept one.

I manage a voice. ‘Maybe they’ve had amnesia too.’

He knows what I’m telling him. When he answers, it’s to the bundle of newsprint under his arm. ‘Morning rehearsals are a bitch. Screw up the whole day, fuck it.… Join me in a spot of tea?’