Of course he said this every night, and so by now no one paid any attention. Else still giggled a little from time to time and once in awhile Irene would sigh. Freddy liked it when people took notice. He thought he'd made a hit. Tonight Irene sighed more loudly than usual and Freddy turned to her and smiled.
"I'm going to leave my estate to Irene," Freddy said and Else giggled loudly. She knew that Freddy did not own Bingham.
The fish plates were taken away and the meat and potatoes served. Everyone was given a full plate at Bingham. Duffino ate very little, however. She had grown much thinner since she got here and hardly noticed her food at all. This was not considered a good sign.
"Eat your food, Duffino," Irene always said. "Be a good girl. To waste food is a sin. We all have enough sins. We don't need any extra."
Naturally I liked to hear that. Duffino heard, but did not listen. No one, of course, expected her to respond. Except Else that is. She was always hurt when Duffino did not reply.
"Why doesn't she answer?" Else said to Irene.
"Who knows why, baby?" Irene shrugged her shoulders. "Who knows anything up here in the mountains? I thought when I came here somebody would tell me why I lost my three babies all in one night. But up in these mountains there are no answers."
"I'm sorry, Irene," Else offered.
"I know you are baby," Irene said, and ruffled Else's hair.
"You are sorry and I am sorry, but still we don't know why."
William looked at Irene staunchly. He was considered the healthiest at our table. Duffino was considered the worst off, and me it seemed I would be here for eternity. After all, I had no home.
"Why are you looking at me like that for, Billy?" Irene said to William. He had a funny way of looking at people. His eyes opened wide and he tilted his head as if that would bring things into focus.
When Billy came to Bingham he believed that he had arrived from another solar system and that his landing was not perfect.
That was why he sniped down three people.
"Come on, Billy," Irene prodded him, "straighten your head up. You want to get out of here, don't you?"
"Do I ever."
The patients here taught one another what could be done and what was crazy. The ones who had been in longer taught the newer ones as best they could.
"I am trying to align with the horizon when I tilt my head," he answered suddenly. "When my system came in for a mixed landing, I was off angle. Remember?"
"You're having sweet dreams," Irene said.
"I want to be in perfect focus before I say what I have to," he went on, his voice rising and starting to tremble. It didn't take much to set him off.
"Leave Irene alone," Freddy interjected, agitated by the discussion. "She doesn't have to hear that kind of talk. I'm leaving her all my money, aren't I?"
"What do you mean you don't know why your babies died, Irene?" Billy continued, ignoring Freddy and staring at her boldly. "There was a fire in your house and they were burnt in it,
weren't they? Those simple facts have been established."
Irene flinched for all to see. The table grew silent. Rumor was that William was a fine lawyer before he broke down.
Irene trembled and tried to push her chair out from
the table. William, reached out his hand to keep her there.
"I mean, William," she had a hard time talking. "I don't know why the fire came."
William tilted his head sharply in the opposite direction. He stared out of the window.
"That's easy," he said. "Your cigarette fell on the carpet. It was lit and you did not notice. Others had different ideas."
"But I'm trying to say I don't know why the cigarette fell."
"It was an accident," he pronounced. If he were on the bench he would have struck the gavel.
Irene raised her palms to her face. "The question is why didn't I notice?" she wailed. "Why?"
"Accident," he yelled back, "accident," opening his mouth wide and showing three, small, rotting teeth.
I never listened to phrases like "accident," or "random occurrence". To me they were meaningless. I was deeply convinced of each inmate's responsibility for all of the fires, births, deaths and suffering he had been surrounded with. Each one had to realize that.
Desert came, interrupting the commotion. Tonight it was coffee and pudding with whipped cream and raisins. Irene and William both reached for their plates at the same moment. Duffino was a close second. She loved puddings and ate hers quickly.
"That's a good girl," Irene said.
Duffino just kept eating.
"She didn't answer you again," Else commented.
"She blames me," Irene answered.
"For what?"
"For everything, honey. For everything lousy that ever
happened to her. It's all Irene's fault. Because of Irene."
Dr. Whitney soon rose and rang his cowbell to announce that dinner was over. Nobody was allowed to leave the room before he rang the closing bell.
"All right," he said. "Dinner is over. Have a pleasant evening."
From all over the dining room there came the scraping of chairs being pushed away from the tables, as the inmates rose slowly and left, walking in a single row, into the evening.
The evening managed to bring us together as no other technique could. As the darkness enclosed the buildings we drew together in the main sitting room.Some looked at TV, others played card games. A bingo game went on in the corner, and some inmates wrote letters home. Some read magazines, others sat occupied with their cases. One or two tried to make friends.
Chapter Nine
During the first weeks of free hours, Duffino and I sat together on the fieldstone fence and looked off into the horizon. I sat besides her, the model of patience, waiting for this vigil to end. As I waited, it also occurred to me that she didn't care at all about me. She didn't know what my crime was, how long I'd been punished, or if I'd been completely to blame. There was a deep selfishness at the heart of her suffering. On some days I thought, suffer all you want.
After a few weeks like this had gone by it seemed clear to me that it was high time to break the deadlock between us. I brought along something that could turn everything around. I carried the package under my arm, wrapped in an old, purple sweater, that Dorothea had knit for me years ago. It was easy to smuggle the package past Frieda. It just looked like a sweater curled up under my arm. I chuckled as I ran along.
That day I decided to take Duffino to the edge of the enclosure that marked off Bingham's grounds.
"Today I'm taking you somewhere else, Duffino," I said to her. "You'll like it better there."
She neither agreed nor declined.
"You'll feel freer, grow bigger. Come on." I motioned for her to come with me.
To my surprise, she offered no objection. She seemed ready to follow me anywhere and I lead her straight to the enclosure's edge.
Here the rocks did not outline a path. The grass grew helter-skelter, mixed with weeds, bushes, and wild dandelions. Even if you wore pants, the bramble scratched your legs as you walked through it. A scraggly fence in the distance, made of barbed wire, demarcated the area. It was patrolled night and day, a guard walking back and forth, on a dirt road that went for half a mile
along it. Most inmates didn't come this far. It wasn't forbidden, but it wasn't quite condoned either.
Today it was especially hard getting through the ragged branches.
"Just wade through, fast," I said.
Duffino did it easily, like a young gazelle.
I pushed through more slowly, tripping, and then falling to the ground. As I fell I scratched my elbow on a ragged branch. My elbow trickled red blood that I licked as I pushed up, and trudged on.
Duffino, reached over to help me. She tried to steady me with her hands. At moments like this, I had the feeling she had always been beside me, that she and I would be strung together forever by the beads of time.
Duffino looked a
round furtively.
"We're allowed to be here," I soothed her. "Ramon patrols it. He comes by every ten minutes, or so. Follow me."
I took her right up to the barbed wire fence. I stuck my fat fingers through the wires. The cold metal felt good. She looked at me worriedly.
"Nothing to look worried about," I said. "This fence and I are friends. I know it intimately. It's gonna curl up one day and let me out of here."
The air was chilled and smelled of pines. I breathed deeply. Enormous trees had grown here for centuries. Clusters of clouds floated above the branches. It seemed to be a place where all could be well.
"This is where I came to when I made a run for it, three years ago," I said.
She looked at me.
"It's all right. It didn't work. I wasn't ready. I thought I was, though. Thought I knew every last move of the guards on patrol. Ready or not, here I come, I said, and slid down the hill two minutes before midnight. It was a rainy night and mud covered me from head to toe. I got as far as this fence, and then, in the moonlight, saw the top of a guard's head. He was walking right by me. He wasn't supposed to be there, but he was! Damn. Last minute changes. I held my breath, ducked under the leaves, and waited like a dead animal, until he passed. Then, in the dark, I clawed my way back up the hill, to the door in the basement I'd slipped out of. I got to my room, and no one knew I'd be gone. They were all sleeping like babies. What a laugh.
"This time, when I go for it, there won't be any mistakes. I've watched too carefully. Waited too long."
Duffino listened intensely.
"It'll make it much easier for us both if you start talking now. I've got the diaries anyway. One way or another, the story's gonna break. If you talk they'll let you go. Then you can tell them it was me who helped you. They'll have to let me out with you! For a little while, anyway."
I was excited, breathing fast. Flawless logic. There was no way she could refute it. But I could see Duffino couldn't care less about getting out. She enjoyed punishing herself for whatever had happened. It made her feel powerful - punishing herself worse than they ever could.
I knew she had no inkling of what was in store. Her Insulin treatments hadn't even started. If only she would listen to me, she could avoid it all. She didn't know how dangerous this place could be. Who knows what other treatments they would resort to, if she didn't respond?
She realized none of this though, and maintained her stony silence. Being here like this with her made me lonely. It made me remember the old, stone walls of the convent. They closed around me wherever I went.
I thought of the stained glass windows inside the convent, with the portraits of Mother Mary, St. Francis, and Christ, carved
on the glass in all different colors. These windows were the pride of the convent. Sister Margaret, the main nun, used to tell us to meditate on them whenever we could.
I meditated on the window with Mother Mary, that hung in the little alcove across from where we said morning prayers. Soft, pink light flowed through that window all day long. I liked it the better than all the others. Mother Mary seemed to lean towards me as I whispered my prayers to her. I knew she heard all I said. She had her own way of answering, though. She wanted me to learn to be patient, to wait humbly.But there was only so much waiting I could do.
An old, low, tree stump, weathered by the seasons, sat a few steps away from where we stood. I went over to it and plopped down.
Duffino followed, and sat down deliberately. She seemed calm, but she couldn't fool me. We both knew change was at hand.
"Time is passing," I said. "It isn't returning either. We could go on like this for years."
I knew she was listening by the way she held her taut head high, by the way the trees around us suddenly waved in an unexpected gust of wind.
I unwrapped the sweater from around the package. It was one of her shoe boxes, bulging with papers.
"Here they are, Duffino. I'm going to read every word of your story to you!"
She tried to grab the box from me.
I quickly pulled it away.
"These papers are mine," my voice was quite shrill.
She made a strange, guttural sound.
"You're listening! You have no choice. Your own story's gonna make you well.
Duffino ground both elbows into her knees, put her face in her hands, and crouched over.
"We don't have time. This could go on forever. Winter's coming. The birds are leaving. Look, they're flying south."
She lifted her head and looked.
"It's harder here without them. Believe me."
I took a deep, icy breath, and began reading the words she had written long ago.
It was three years ago that I met Miguel.
Duffino scratched her fingers over her face. That didn't daunt me at all. Then she tried to pull herself off the tree stump, but I caught her tiny wrist with my hand.
"You're not going anywhere. If you run back up, I'll tell them I have these. The truth will be out."
Like a trapped animal, she eyed the papers, scheming how to snatch them away.
"You can't destroy them. I've made copies. Your story's mine."
Her wrist felt like ice in my hand.
"I'm not trying to hurt you. I want you to recover. Sit here and listen. That's all you have to do."
She bit her lip harder and harder until a trickle of red blood dripped down onto her chin. I held the papers high, and started reading.
"When I first saw Miguel, he had straight black hair and high cheekbones. I was sitting three seats behind him in an American history class, in Junior High, in Brooklyn, in the toughest section in town. They took me out of Catholic school and put me here. Because of concentration. I couldn't listen to the nuns. The nuns weren't good to us. There was too much cruelty in their eyes. I was sent to Catholic school by my mother. I went there in the morning and came home at night.
"At least you had a mother, Duffino! At least you had a place called home."
I looked over. She was listening raptly to every word.
"What do you know about cruelty?" I said. "Me, I knew about cruelty."
She looked over and really took me in, swallowed my whole life up in a second. Then she flashed a bittersweet smile at me, both wise and vindictive.
At least it was honest. Not like Dorothea, with her crazy, wan smiles, that hid worlds of subterfuge beneath them. I liked honesty. I needed it. It was absolute medicine for my soul.
Spurred on by Duffino, I continued reading;
"The school was over crowded. There were five floors of rooms. Fifty of us were stacked into each classroom, squeezed tightly behind the desks, sweating and growing new pubic hair. The tired teachers droned out their lessons. In the johns and along the hallways, kids gathered, smoked cigarettes and had sex with each other when no one was looking. The truants down in the yard never came up the steel stairways or reported into school at all. They gave it to each other and smoked dope!
"I was fifteen years old and enormously tall, with long arms and legs, and short black hair. Cut too short. My mother made me. She was so religious she grabbed me by the collar and cut off my hair. Real short. Ugly. To her it was beautiful, being ugly. Good girls were the ugly ones. 'I'm cutting your hair off for your own good,' she told me. 'So you'll remember who you are.'"
"'Who am I, ma,?' I asked her.
"'Chaste, and pure,' she said everyday. 'A good Catholic girl is always pure.'
"I'm sorry Duffino," I said and stopped reading.
She said nothing. Only pointed to the papers, for me to go on.
"Good Catholic girls could never be beautiful. Not the way I wanted to be. It was punishment. They needed to give me punishment, in the name of The Holy One."
Her papers fell limply in my lap, as I gazed at the immovable mountains around us. Now I knew why she and I had to be friends. How many times had I begged the Holy One to tell me, is it punishment you want for your children on earth?
Duffino stood up. S
he looked taller to me.
"Sit down and listen a little while longer."
She sat back down.
I continued reading.
"They took me out of Catholic School. The nuns didn't like me. I stared at them funny. I wouldn't do what they wanted. They called my mother in many times and told her there was something wrong with her daughter. She had a mind of her own. My mother disagreed with them. My daughter is perfect, graceful, obedient she said over and over. But privately, she grabbed my neck and cut my hair very short. Finally, she and my father took me out of Catholic school and sent me to Junior High."
"She shouldn't have done that," I said out loud, and continued reading.
"From the first minute I got to school, I knew everything was a lie. I did not listen to the squat, little teachers. I did not listen to anyone. I searched for order, and gazed wildly above the other heads.
"I first met Miguel in the end of November, before the first snowfall but after the brown leaves had been stacked away. It was a time in my life of extraordinary bleakness. The streets were bleak too, and now and again there would burst through a cold and bitter rain. The school was strange to me also. The kids were different from Catholic school. There were good kids and wild ones. The mothers and fathers said, 'Stay away from the wild ones who smoke marijuana down in the yard. They'll end up in reform school. If you get friendly with them, you'll end up there too. Get friendly with the good ones.'
"Miguel was one of the wild ones. He came up out of the yard one morning to hear what the teachers had to say. The moment I saw him, I couldn't look away. He was big, with broad shoulders, and dark, olive skin. Across his neck was a deep, purple scar. I watched his eyes, watching the teacher, listening to her every word. How come he came up here? What did he want?
"One day the teacher asked a routine question: 'What were the causes of the American Revolution?' The minute she asked it, she turned right to me.
'Are you listening to me, Duffino? Are you paying attention to what I'm saying?'
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