Channeling Mark Twain

by Carol Muske-Dukes

  “You went to Orientation—right, sweetheart?”

  I nodded. I had actually enjoyed the orientation classes—particularly when the lecturer had held up a thick copy of Great Expectations as a prime example of contraband. The title’s irony, given the setting, made me smile, then laugh out loud as the lecturer opened the book with a flourish, revealing its hollow interior occupied by a .45 automatic.

  The lecturer had frowned at me. “Actual recovered contraband,” he noted in a hushed, triumphant tone.

  C.O. Janowitz spoke to me now in a similar tone.

  “I’m a stickler,” he said. “Too much trouble walkin’ through here on two legs. Everybody sleepin’ at the switch, but I’m not sleepin’, I’m a stickler. You bring in bubble gum and cute shit they can make weapons out of—you take the rap for what happens. You follow me, sweetheart?”

  I said I followed him. He reminded me again that he was a stickler.

  After he let me go and I’d walked outside through the rear exit to the shuttle stop for the institution vans, I checked my bag. The Stickler had removed all the contraband items except for the copies of On the Barricade. Its threats against the fascist establishment, its maps and strategies, its pages praising the triumph of the Revolution, hadn’t qualified as dangerous to anyone at all.

  Just inside the entrance to the Women’s House, I waved to the C.O. in the glassed-in control room. She pressed the button that buzzed the moving wall. It opened and I stepped into the between-chamber as the wall slowly shut behind me. Posted over the checkpoint window was a large sign: NO FIREARMS BEYOND THIS POINT. I held my ID card up to the glass, and the C.O., a bored-looking woman with an institution-approved tamed-down Afro, nodded at me and pressed another button. The inner door very slowly slid open. I stepped through and was Inside.

  Inside it was Friday night, just like outside. But Friday night—just like every other night Inside—was a whole other universe. Inside it was hot, very hot—eighty, eighty-five—a temperature that laid sticky palms on the body, slowed it down, drew sweat. Security Inside knew that the sluggish body (and its hazy overheated brain) would follow orders. The shrieking plane vibrations that shook the foundation every four minutes or so were nearly drowned out by New York City’s black radio station blasting over all the speakers, its sheer volume a kind of sedative: “Papa was a rolling stone, wherever he laid his hat was his home…” This could have been Friday night at a youth center, roller rink, or church basement—but this was Friday night in prison. Despite the heat and the echoing mindless pumped-up baying of radio deejays, the screams and laughter echoing up and down the halls reverberated with the boundless defeated energy of the caged.

  The prison was L-shaped, and I stood just at the angle of the L. On my left was the Watch Commander’s office, where the master console was housed: the institution’s brain. Inside the glassed-in office was a huge lit-up panel with rows of red eyes that blinked every time a door opened within the walls. The commander sat with her assistants at the console, talking by phone to the officers on the floors or intoning P.A. announcements. At the beginning and end of each eight-hour shift, the prison population count had to be verified. Tonight the count had been off. C.O.s were just getting off from the earlier shift—they hurried past me, shouting to one another, loosening their jackets and white blouses. I knew that when the count could not be confirmed there was immediate lockdown. No one, C.O. or civilian, was allowed to leave the institution until The Count was retallied for an all clear, and now the all clear had just sounded, half an hour late.

  Around the corner from the Watch Commander were the superintendent’s and deputy superintendent’s offices. In front of me were client/lawyer interview cubicles and cubicles used as confessionals. I turned around and noticed C.O. Aliganth bustling up the hall on my right. C.O. Aliganth was a tall skinny Olive-Oylish figure, her conked hair bunched into a furious French twist and her large mouth moving lickety-split as she conversed with herself. Unlike the other C.O.s, she maintained no distance at all with civilians like me. She had been assigned to guard the poetry workshop, much to her chagrin. She’d told me earlier in the week that attention to the “ladies’ poetry society” was, from her point of view, a waste of valuable personnel. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but she was shaking a finger at me as she approached.

  I glanced down the hall to the first set of electronic gates, where inmates swayed and finger-popped near the gate stations. The C.O.s were tipping back now on their stools, pulling out their shirttails and shooting the breeze with their charges. There were inmates in threes and fours, line dancing. There were a couple of “penguins,” inmates snowed out on Thorazine or chloral hydrate (the other heavily administered “diagnostic”), waddling, nodding to no one in particular. Marvin Gaye sang on about the grapevine.

  Aliganth landed, swinging her big silver ring of keys and calling: “You close up on breakin’ my balls, Mattox.”

  I looked around. I hadn’t been aware that she had balls, but then you could never be sure at the Women’s House. There was, for example, a person of mysterious gender who chose this moment to appear before us, pushing a mop, rolling his/her pail on wheels in front of the lawyers’ cubicles. “Gene/Jean Keeley. She called Jean for her female inclinings, Gene for the other,” snorted Aliganth. I remembered her case suddenly from the files in Social Services. Gene/Jean was a woman who was becoming, operation by operation, a man. So far she had not acquired completely convincing manhood—which was why s/he had been housed in the women’s prison—yet s/he was given work duty in the open areas of the facility, where his/her actions could be closely observed. Given her thick hairy legs, bad tattoos, bright red crew cut, goatee, and unreliably baritone voice—and given the intense level of testosterone providing her with a big new libido (the reason she’d propositioned an undercover cop and landed here)—s/he bore watching. She leered at me now and Aliganth reared back and shouted at her.

  “Captain told you she want that floor shine enough see your ugly-ass face in it!”

  Gene/Jean smirked and when Aliganth turned back to me, held the mop handle between her knees and waved it lewdly back and forth, winking at me. When Aliganth whirled around, she was back at work.

  Aliganth glared at me. She liked me, I thought, and I liked her too, but there were the inflexible demands of our setting.

  “What can I say here? Not a damn thing. They give you a classroom right next to the Dep’s office. And I got to sit there waitin’ on you all night. And you breeze in here late.”

  “Sorry I’m late—everyone’s late tonight,” I said, and smiled at her. “And you don’t have to stay here the whole time with the class. Really.”

  “Right,” she nodded, shaking her keys. “That’s right. You know best, Miss Ann.”

  The “Miss Ann” part was barely audible, but I heard it, as I’d heard it before.

  “It’s so damn hot in here,” I complained, but she ignored me.

  Before she unlocked the classroom, Aliganth helped me phone up to the floors from the Watch Commander’s office, making sure each floor C.O. would announce the class. Then the Watch Commander cut into the music and made it a general bulletin. I watched Gene/Jean through the glass—she looked up as the voice floated out over the thick air. “Ladies: poetry class tonight. If you’re serious, ask for a signed pass and come down directly to the Dep, no stops on the way.” Gene/Jean leaned against the mop, stroking her goatee, ruminating.

  The first two students arrived together. Aliganth stood just inside the door of the classroom like an enraged butler, her hand held out for the handwritten passes that the women carried, muttering the women’s names to herself as they arrived.

  The first was a pale frightened-looking young woman with light brown braids carrying a large plastic Bible Studies prayerbook. On its cover was a glossy three-quarter profile of Jesus Christ, his melancholy eyes upturned as if drawn by the magnetic force of the Halloween-orange halo floating above his brow. On his neck Jesus wore a
n adhesive-backed name tag: DARLENE DENISKY. Accompanying Darlene was a pixie-faced, golden-brown young woman with a dancer’s body and the sly cheerful look of a hooker.

  I got up from my chair at the metal table in the center of the room.

  “I’m Holly Mattox,” I said. “Pleased to meet you.”

  They nodded solemnly and the pale girl introduced herself, then ducked her head and mumbled something. The other woman winked at me.

  “Sheree Mason,” she said.

  They sat down at the table as two more women stood in the doorway.

  “Ladies, sit yourselves down. No shufflin’ around in here, you follow?” Aliganth shook her head at me.

  The women chose chairs at the table. One looked like an extremely thin Liza Minnelli; her dyed hair fell to her shoulders in a dark brown shag and she wore bright red lipstick and thick mascara. Beside her was a Puerto Rican woman, pretty and sturdy, her hair pulled back primly in a bun. They sat down next to one another, repeating their names.

  “Roxanne Lattner,” said Liza Minnelli.

  “Never Delgado,” said her companion, then smiled at me sweetly, apologetically. “I was born Flor de Navidad Delgado,” she said, “but I am now Never.”

  “Never do this! Never do that!” threw in Roxanne. She folded her hands in supplication, turned, and mock-bowed before her sweet-smiling friend. “And do what her Ladyship tells you or she will never watch your back again!”

  “She be Never, and I Baby Ain’t!” Sheree Mason cried suddenly, waving her hand in the air to get my attention. She pushed back her chair and stood up proudly, as if she were about to recite something.

  “After the dirty deed, one hunnert per-cent say to me: ‘Baby Ain’t Nobody Better!’”

  She fanned the air in circles with both hands wide, like a Holy Roller testifying to the Power, then waggled her rear end and cackled with enormous pleasure, openmouthed, the way a child laughs. Her laugh was contagious and seemed to perk everyone up a little, except for Darlene and C.O. Aliganth.

  Gene/Jean sidled in without the mop, striking a manly pose in the doorway, flexing her biceps—and began introducing herself. Aliganth stopped her cold.

  “Everybody here know your ass. Show me your pass or you out.”

  Grinning, Gene/Jean pulled a crumpled piece of paper from her sleeve. Curly red hair peeked out of her blouse top.

  “Cap gave me time off. I finished up the floors pretty good.”

  Aliganth frowned at the pass, then pointed to a chair.

  “Sit down. You look sideways at a fly, you out the door.”

  Gene/Jean dropped clumsily into a chair next to Roxanne as Aliganth turned away to greet newcomers in the hall. Gene/Jean leaned in close to Roxanne and leered at her.

  “You got some hot pussy for me?”

  “You so much as breathe one of your stinking breaths on me and I’ll chop off whatever it is you’re calling a dick today,” said Roxanne with formidable Long Island aplomb. She shook out her shag cut and peered at her nails.

  Gene/Jean jumped up, hands fluttering, her voice suddenly female.

  “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I really am. I can’t believe I said that.”

  Roxanne rolled her eyes and moved away. Sheree, a.k.a. Baby Ain’t, winked at me again.

  “Jean on the rag.”

  “Praise Jesus,” mumbled Darlene.

  There was commotion outside, and more women entered. One of them I recognized from newspaper photographs. Her name was Akilah Malik, formerly LeeAnne Kohler, one of the leaders of the Black Freedom Front. I’d read the headlines: she had felony charges, including one involving her role in the shoot-out murder of a New Jersey state trooper, a charge to which (it was reported in the press) she intended to plead not guilty. She was quite beautiful, with high cheekbones and fierce light eyes. I knew she’d given birth in prison and that her baby had been taken away. She carried herself like a gift, with a fuck-with-me-if-you-dare dignity—even Aliganth had backed away from her. She stood outside the door, looking off into the distance, jangling her keys.

  There were two others behind Akilah Malik, and I asked them all to introduce themselves.

  Akilah sat down carefully, far away from Gene/Jean.

  “Akilah Malik. My slave name was LeeAnne Kohler.”

  The two other women waited in the doorway. I looked at them expectantly.

  “I’m Billie Dee Boyd,” one of them said. She looked a little crazy to me. Her hair was standing up, uncombed and wild, and one of her eyes rolled around like a marble. When she smiled, I noticed that she was missing a few teeth, yet somehow her expression was endearing.

  “I’m Polly Lyle Clement. I come from the river,” said a wiry girl. She was a light bisque color with stringy platinum hair and bad teeth (she flashed a shaky smile) and the odd masked expression and pigeon-toed walk of inmates overmedicated with Thorazine. Her left cheek looked smudged. Perhaps, I thought, it was scar tissue from a burn. I had a swift, unmistakable sense of her fragility—strange because I also sensed her strength. She bowed stiffly, formally, in my direction, and sat down.

  “And here now we got Sallie Keller,” announced Aliganth.

  I nearly gasped as Sallie came in. She stood staring at me and I tried to meet her gaze, but her eyes occupied two different levels on her face. Her face looked like a cubist baseball—or a hot dog split open on a grill. Her mouth was smiling and she carried a piece of cardboard on which she’d printed in big letters with bright red marker: SALLIE KELLER! WORLD’S GREATEST POET!

  I asked her to sit down. I wanted to ask her what had happened to her face, but I was afraid. Aliganth shot me another inscrutable look.

  Sallie turned her strange stare on the other women, twisting her head to the left, then to the right, like a barn owl.

  “Every flatback here know my face,” she said. “So quit starin’ up. Nothin’ goin’ to change nothin’.”

  She strutted over to the last free chair and sat down, folded her WORLD’S GREATEST POET sign, and propped it up like an official place card at a diplomatic dinner. Then she nodded at me as if she were giving me the signal to begin. I took a deep breath. I folded my hands, which were shaking a little, in front of me.

  “Welcome to you all,” I said. “I’m Holly Mattox. I guess we will get to know one another better over the next few class meetings. I’d like to ask each of you to write a poem for me—a poem of your own, in your own words. But unfortunately, the notebooks and pens I brought with me for you to use were confiscated at Reception.”

  There was a knowing groan.

  “Still. I’m wondering if C.O. Aliganth—to whom we are so indebted for guard duty tonight—I’m wondering if C.O. Aliganth would mind borrowing some pencils and paper from the Watch Commander’s office for us. C.O. Aliganth?”

  Aliganth looked at me with a kind of startled regard—I’d one-upped her so early in the evening: she had to respect it. She mumbled something about Miss Ann and who-in-charge-here, but after a quick slap to Gene/Jean’s chairback, she wandered off down the hall, shaking her head and bitching to herself halfheartedly.

  When she was gone, I pulled out the On the Barricade from my bag and quickly passed them around.

  “Some political reading matter,” I said, “sent to you by friends on the outside.”

  They looked skeptical.

  “Praise Jesus,” whispered Darlene, then scribbled something on a tiny piece of paper, folded it, and pushed it across the table to me. I opened it. It read PLEASE CALL MY KIDS—HERE IS THE #. I nodded at her and put the note in my pocket.

  Someone asked if the paper had personal ads.

  “I think so,” I said. “But there’s also a book review section.”

  “How about them horo-scopes?” asked Baby Ain’t, and I shook my head.

  No one seemed particularly impressed by On the Barricade. Baby Ain’t glanced quickly through it, then used her copy to fan herself. Only Akilah nodded as she scanned a few pages. Sallie Keller stared at me disconc
ertingly. It hurt me to look at her.

  “If you wouldn’t mind,” I said, “if you could put the newspapers away somewhere before the C.O. gets back—that would be good.”

  Instantly the papers vanished into blouses, socks—into who knew.

  Then Aliganth was at the door with a handful of Rainbow tablets and some chewed-up pencil stubs.

  “Thank you, Officer,” I said.

  “You way too cute, Mattox,” she snapped, and threw the tablets and pencils on the table.

  I waited for a few seconds, then faced the women again. They’d opened the tablets and chosen pencils. Gene/Jean was drawing what appeared to be a humorous portrait of C.O. Aliganth. Before Aliganth noticed, I held up my hand for silence.

  “Does anyone,” I called out, “have any idea what a sonnet is?”

  Later that night, on the bus back to Manhattan, I thought about what a sonnet was. Fourteen lines, ten syllables per line, iambic pentameter, rhyme schemes a-b-a-b or a-b-b-a: Shakespearean, Petrarchan, Spenserian. I thought about my mother in the kitchen, some long-ago suppertime, turning from the stove, where she was stirring a beef stew to death and steaming the life out of a green vegetable. “Do you know what a sonnet is?” she asked. Her glance was riveting, bright blue and full of apprehension, as if my answer would forever influence her opinion of me—perhaps force her to disown me. I swallowed hard and tried to remember my sixth-grade English lessons: I saw the word “sonnet” printed out like a subtitle, the way I always saw words typed out and running beneath the sounds of spoken language. “Sonnet” appeared, then more words, unraveling like a ribbon: “‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’” I opened my mouth, then looked at her face and stopped.

  She narrowed her eyes and took an audible breath just as two of my brothers came roaring into the kitchen, shooting suction-tipped darts at each other from plastic guns. One dart-sucker adhered to a cheek, another to a forehead, another smacked the kitchen wall and stuck in place, vibrating. I watched her consciousness divide before us: she seemed to increase in size, drawing the poem and maternal admonition out of the same omnipotent address: