Everyone worked. The pay was $1.40 a day.
You might mow lawns, or shovel snow, or work in the kitchen, or the laundry. You might work in the commissary or the library. You might pick up trash from the roadsides.
Weekends? Work your job. Visitors 1:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. Saturdays. Sunday church services if you liked that sort of thing.
Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat until you’re nothing but repeat, no self, no return, no hope.
The revulsion: the smells of women who at times couldn’t afford deodorant or toothpaste, and awful coffee, and women’s bodies and the bones and sags and rolls of fat, the varicose veins and dirty nails, the missing teeth, the tattoos, the farts (the louder, the more amusing), and the phlegmy throats and coughs, the raucous laughs, the loud voices. There was the exhibitionist, all four hundred pounds of her, who flashed the officers and mooned the other women and bared her enormous, thick brush of pubic hair whenever the urge took her. The bathrooms. The stains in the bowls. The unflushed toilets. The mould on the walls. The leftover spittle in the sinks. The food: unending unidentifiable stews that smelled only charnel, with bits of what was probably bone that crunched between her teeth before she gagged. Realizing Diane was masturbating just across that narrow room.
Fear came from screams in the night and a tray thrown and sudden, horrible threats, and officers barrelling in with nightsticks and dragging women away to lockup, their orange jumpsuits torn, revealing white and brown and black skin, sometimes smeared with blood. Did this happen often? No. Did it have to? No. The threat was always there. Fear came from not knowing what was expected of her and if she could trust anyone. She had learned not to trust Marilla, for example, because Marilla went from sullen silence to fury in no time at all and it was impossible to tell what would set her off.
“Do you want some?” asked Angela one day, while making herself a cup of microwaved tea. “Hell, no,” said Marilla. She had then followed Angela into the showers, pushed her up against the wall and said, “You fucking think I need your charity tea, Princeton? Fuck you.” She shoved her hard enough to bang Angela’s head on the wall and then left as though nothing had happened. Fear came from the officer who sometimes stood just a little too close, smirking. Diane said there wasn’t much fear of sexual assault these days, but a couple of years ago it had been “every fucking night and half the days.” Then an investigation and people went to jail, one officer for sixteen years. Could it start up again? Angela didn’t know. Not knowing was also a kind of fear.
Who could sleep in this place, on this hard, cold bunk? Diane could, and she snored like a dying rhino. So, exhaustion. Like bags of bricks strapped to Angela’s legs, to her back, to her arms.
The days passed, though, as days will, dripping from the limb of a life, and it was a miracle the things a person could grow accustomed to, could endure.
ANGELA’S FIRST MEETING with Sister Brigid was on a Tuesday morning, two and a half months into her sentence. She was in the shower room, swabbing the floor when the officer called her. She rang out the mop in the aluminum bucket and leaned the mop against the wall.
Sister Brigid, tiny and trim and tidy in grey flannel slacks, white running shoes, a raspberry-coloured sweater, a badge and a whistle (in case of inclement prisoners) around her neck on a lanyard. Her blue eyes shone clear and bright behind wire-rimmed glasses. Her hair was white as baby powder. She carried a Bible.
The nun reached out her hand. “Angela? Hello? I’m Brigid. So glad you asked to see me. I’ve heard such lovely things about you from Eileen. She thinks the world of you, you know.”
Angela considered that Sister Brigid might be exaggerating just a bit. “She’s great.”
“Okay, let’s see.” Brigid looked around the room. “Are you okay talking here?” There were roughly eighty women in Bravo Unit, but most were at programs or jobs and only three women sat at a table playing cards. “Or do we need somewhere more private?”
Sister Brigid was brisk, and so very neat. Angela realized how little time she might have with her, and still wasn’t sure what she wanted. Best not to waste it. “I’m good. Do you want tea? I can make us tea?”
“No, that’s fine. Let’s just talk.”
Brigid ushered her to a table as far away from the officer and the other women as possible.
“I brought you this. Don’t know if you have one.” She grinned. “Or want one.”
Angela picked it up, held it in both hands, looking at the gold lettering on the cover.
“I don’t think I’ve ever really read the Bible.”
“Well, you’ll have time for that now, if you like. And there’s a Bible study group.”
“Okay.”
“So, how are you getting along?”
“How much do you know about me?”
“Eileen’s been candid, not only about the cause of your incarceration, but also about what you’ve done for George Clarence.”
Angela’s hands smelled of bleach. She looked at the cracked skin and ragged nails. Only two months, and this is what she had become? Ragged-haired, a bathroom-cleaning skeleton whose son despised her, whom no man would ever love again, who had ruined every chance she had, all that great, great privilege. “Well, that’s great,” she said.
“Is it? You don’t look like it’s great.”
“I wish I were dead.”
Sister Brigid leaned forward, elbows on the table. She was so short she might as well have put her chin on the table. “And yet you’re not, and because I’m hopelessly Catholic, might I suggest there is some use for you in the world yet, that God has not abandoned you?”
Although she were ashamed of it, Angela couldn’t deny the spark of defiance that crackled under her ribs, talking to this woman who would go home at the end of the day. “What if I’ve abandoned God?”
Sister Brigid chuckled. “You think God cares about that? As my mother used to say, ‘pish.’ God is a whole lot bigger, Horatio, than is dreamt of in your philosophy. And I don’t use that quote with everyone, you understand, but I know you’ll get it, right?” She poked Angela in the shoulder. “I know you do.”
Who was this woman?
“Listen, Angela,” she continued, “I’m not going to sugar-coat this. There’s a rough road ahead and living with a bunch of other women isn’t easy — as a nun, I can tell you that. I remember, years ago, when I was sitting on a balcony talking to my spiritual director and complaining mightily about someone, and my spiritual director looked at me and said, ‘You don’t think on some other balcony somewhere someone’s complaining about you?’ Bit of a reality check, I can tell you.
“Now, here’s yours, Angela. You got time in this place. Not as much as a lot of women, and you haven’t done anything nearly as bad as some of these women, and you’re going to get out eventually, which some of these women aren’t. And you’ve got a chance at a real life after this, a real, you’ll pardon the expression, ‘resurrection,’ which some of these women don’t. Bottom line? If you blow it, then, that’s on you, not on God. Despair, Angela, is boring.”
Angela’s back straightened, in a way she hadn’t known it could straighten before she came to prison, if she admitted it. It was a kind of anger and defiance and challenge all at once. “You’re a bit different than Sister Eileen, aren’t you?”
Sister Brigid grinned. “Hell, yes. I’m here to tell you that you’ve got work to do, my friend, and it’s about forgiveness. It’s about forgiving yourself and getting that lovely little ego out of the way and letting the light shine on through.”
“Easy as that?” Angela was not sure whether she wanted to walk away or turn her battered and fragile soul over to the care of this woman, who was so damn sure.
With a laugh, Sister Brigid said, “Not in any way. But you want to walk that road, I’m here with you, and so is Eileen, but you already know that.”
“And my son?”
“Hey, miracles take time. Give it a chance.”
The clarity in Sister Brigid’s fac
e came close to seducing her. “Pretty sure of yourself.”
“I’m sure of God.”
And it started like that.
Intermission
What is there to be said about the endless days and weeks and months and years of prison life?
What about outside those razor-wire-topped walls?
Time passes, as time does. There is one season … spring-green, and then another … furnace-hot … and another, full of colour and wind, and another … when the snow softens and silences the land and then melts into memory. And they repeat, as patterns do. And people do terrible things, and people have terrible things done to them. Some die. Some go to hospital. Some go to jail. And people do marvellous things. They catch babies dropped from burning buildings. They discover new stars. Lives are shattered and lives are repaired. Hearts are broken and hearts are mended. Couples divorce. Couples marry. Children are born. Wars begin. Wars end. Times of famine and plenty.
Philip remarries. He marries Ginny, a woman from the golf club, also divorced. They wed in the clubhouse and Connor is the best man. Deedee is the matron of honor. Connor is dating Deedee’s daughter, Harper, and everyone hopes they’ll marry one day.
Carston has a new love. Actually, he has two, and the women have yet to find out about each other, but when they do for a while they will all three be together, but that won’t last and Carston will find himself alone while the women will go off and hike the glaciers of Iceland together.
Sister Brigid and Sister Ruth go to the prisons every day and hold the hearts of the men and the women as high above the turbulent waves of life as they can. And the men and the women have endured terrible things and done terrible things, and will learn, not because prison is a good place for them, but in spite of it, that they still matter. And Sister Caroline goes to the school and teaches young people about literature, because that is her vocation, and she believes, rightly, as it happens, that at least two of these children will go on and write great literature of their own. And Sister Anne retires from teaching. She lives in Camden and teaches English to newcomers at the Sisters of Saint Joseph Neighborhood Centre. And Sister Eileen still goes to the Pantry every day and she feeds those who have nothing, and there are more and more of them every day because the government does not wish to, or cannot, care for them — the poor who will always be with us. And so, as the seasons spiral, this net of nuns and others like them minister in a vast web to those who are the dear neighbours.
Wheels and wheels and wheels, and so they turn.
Angela
Three years, four months, two weeks, and three days later. Angela sat on the metal stool at the JPay kiosk. The light in the hallway was harsh. There wasn’t a single skin tone it flattered and Julie, who was next in line, looked much the way Angela knew she, too, must look: washed out, hard furrows around her mouth, blotchy. She remembered paying a fortune for creams promising velvet skin, Ayurvedic oils, and Korean serums. A lifetime ago. Some of the women wore makeup. She had a cell of her own now, but her last bunky, Chelsea, has used a lipstick so purple her mouth reminded Angela of a grape popsicle. Angela couldn’t be bothered. In fact, she didn’t want to be attractive. The less attention one garnered here, the better.
Angela nodded at Julie, who nodded back and chewed her index fingernail, spitting what she pulled off onto the floor. Angela hardly noticed it.
She had fifteen minutes to read her messages and dash off quick responses. First, notification of money into her account from her lawyer. Good. She needed tampons and toothpaste and was desperate for some chocolate biscuits, if the commissary had any. She needed tuna, too, and some crackers and peanut butter. She had learned ways of eating as little of the prison food as possible. A note from Sister Eileen, saying she’d seen Connor. And a note from Connor! Joy, joy! Connor still refused to come and visit her, but after talking to Sister Eileen on a number of occasions, he did write, not frequently, but he wrote. It was something.
Hey, Mom. Not much new. New semester starting. Doing okay. Don’t hate my roommate. Lots of work, though, so got to run to the library. Take care of yourself. Connor.
She wrote back. Told him she loved him. Told him she was proud of him. Told him she was okay. Any harder conversations? No, no one was ready for that. Sister Eileen and Sister Brigid both told her to take it slow. She was trying.
What was this? G. Clarence. Sudden vertigo.
“Fuck. Oh, fuck!” She glanced over at Julie, but she didn’t notice and if she had she wouldn’t even care. One learned to keep out of other people’s troubles in prison. Julie was talking to Mercedes, a tiny young woman with her hair in box braids. Something about their kids. “My mom don’t think they need no vaccines,” said Mercedes and shrugged. “Yeah, I say, let ’em get all the chicken pox and measles and shit while they’re with her, not me.” The women laughed.
Angela turned back to the screen and read.
Dear Ms. Morrison, I think you will recognize my name. Sister Eileen gave me the address to find you. She and me have been talking and she suggested I write to you to say thank you for making sure Darlene and me are taken care of. So that’s what I’m doing. I’m not going to say it wasn’t awful what you did but I guess I don’t have to tell you that. You’re paying for it and you are making amends so that says something. It has been hard for me. I will tell you. But I should also tell you that I forgive you for what you did. You should not have been driving drunk and you know it but it was you leaving me there that was the hard thing. I had a lot of trouble with that. You can thank Sister Eileen for it, I guess, but I have come round to forgiving you, if for no other reason than I got tired of being so mad at you and that was hard when you are paying my rent and food and stuff for Darlene, right? Joke. So there, I said it. I don’t know if you want to write back or if I want you to. But you can if you want. There it is. God bless. George Clarence.
Angela quickly signed out, and, without a word, walked back as fast as she could to her cell and closed the door. She stood with her back against it and realized she was trembling from head to toe. Even with the T-shirt, jumpsuit, and sweatshirt on, she was freezing. True, it was always freezing in the prison in winter, just as it was always a furnace in the summer, but this was different. It was soul cold. It was bone-buried-in-ice cold. She feared if she began shaking, she would simply splinter into particles.
George Clarence’s face, as it had looked during What Happened, came back to her, as it often did. The eyes, the terror, the grief. The mouth, open in silent screaming. He hadn’t been in court, of course. He was still in the hospital. She’d only seen him in that single, frozen-in-amber moment. He had lived in her brain, frozen in exactly that second.
He forgave her.
He forgave her.
She had, she now realized, never considered that. Was this true? She pressed her fingers to her mouth and tried to think. When she had set up the trust, had she not hoped for forgiveness? God, no, she had not. She had set up the trust in the hopes the court would show her mercy, for her goodness, for her great good regret. It had never dawned on her that George Clarence would forgive her. She slid down the door until she sat on the icy floor and wrapped her arms around her legs, burying her head in her knees. George Clarence forgave her.
SISTER BRIGID FINISHED listening to what Angela had to say and smiled.
“How do you feel?”
“I don’t think I know.”
They were sitting in an empty classroom in the Hall, since Angela had requested a private meeting with Sister Brigid. The room was painted blue with the kind of metal tables that had chairs attached and made a terrible squealing sound if they scraped across the floor. Through the windows the grounds lay covered in snow, the boughs of the trees laden and drooping. The sky was a sharp, almost glassy blue. A group of women in the yard were having a snowball fight.
Angela took a deep breath and let it out. “I feel like I was waiting for it, but I wasn’t. Does that make sense.”
“Perfectly. I suspect
you’ve been waiting for some external sign that you might forgive yourself. Some sort of approval. If someone else can forgive you, then you are not unforgivable.”
Angela pondered this. She clasped her fingers and pressed her thumbs to her chin. It was slightly less cold in this room than in the cells. Her shoulders relaxed just a little. “Maybe.” Her voice was choked and her eyes stung. “Probably.”
“Are you going to write him back?”
“I’ve been thinking about that. I’d like to.”
“But?” Sister Brigid tucked her chin and looked at Angela over her glasses. “What’s stopping you?”
“I don’t want to impose.”
“He invited you to write, didn’t he?”
“Sort of. He didn’t sound sure.” Angela took the tissue Sister Brigid offered her and dried her eyes. She had learned over the months they’d been talking that the nun was always sympathetic, but not a big fan of tears. Angela suspected she thought they were usually pretty self-indulgent. Angela suspected she might be right.
“Well, you can understand that. He doesn’t actually know much about you except that you hit him with a car, left him in the street, and then made his life a hell of a lot better. You can understand the confusion.”
For a second, Angela bristled with her old tendency to feel insulted, but then remembering what she’d come to know about Sister Brigid and her often subversive sense of humor, she started to laugh.
THAT EVENING, just before seven, Angela sat in the common area of Bravo Unit, drinking tea and playing Crazy Eights with Janelle, Lynne, and Ellie. Other women were in their cells watching television or their JPay tablets (if they could afford them), gossiping and talking at other tables, a couple reading magazines. Angela had developed a friendship with Janelle, who was smart and witty and who liked to do crossword puzzles. She had an eighteen-year-old son studying economics at Penn State and they talked together about their sons often. Lynne, a freckled blond who looked like a skinny teenager, and who reminded Angela of Deedee, was new, doing five years, and was as nervous as Angela had been when she first arrived. Ellie, who came from up in the Ramapo Mountains, would be getting out soon. She was afraid of getting out. She’d been inside for fifteen years and although her sister said she could stay with her, their relationship was hardly good. She was a rough, motherly sort, all floury and soft in the middle.
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