The last to speak was the frowning man in the dark-tinted glasses who’d been staring at Vivianne as if lost in a dream. He hadn’t been paying attention, it seemed, for another inmate had to prompt him to reply in a stumbling voice: “Why I’m h-here . . . here . . . why I am here, is because . . . This is where . . .”
His words trailed off, eerily. There was an awkward silence in the room.
There came “Preach” to the rescue asking the instructors why’d they come here?
“Man, you got to tell us, too! It’s your turn.”
Cal answered first, reiterating his initial introduction and adding that he was a “social-eco-activist” who’d lived most of his life in the vicinity of the Hudson Valley and who hoped one day to “travel extensively in the Far East.”
Vivianne saw the men looking at her, expectantly. Until now she’d felt obscured by Cal Healy; she’d felt protected by him, despite his inexperience and awkwardness. She heard herself say, smiling, or with an attempt at a smile, “Today is my fiftieth wedding anniversary. My husband has been dead for two years—so anywhere I am, on this day, is like any other.”
The room was utterly silent. Vivianne’s co-instructor stared at her. What had she said? The words had glided from her, like liquid. The men regarded her with grave and astonished expressions. Even the frowning man at the back of the room. Quickly Vivianne said, “Please don’t misunderstand. There is nowhere else I would rather be, that I can be, right now. And so—I am here, in my first volunteer class at Hudson. With you.”
Her face beat with blood. What had she said!
She’d meant to be casual and entertaining. She’d meant to be the opposite of self-pitying, self-revealing. She’d meant just to explain why—but it had come out wrong.
For the first time, she saw herself as more than ridiculous—she saw herself as arrogant, indifferent to her husband’s memory. She was making her way in the world as if he had not died—as if he had not lived.
The horror of her selfishness washed over her, like dirty water.
She’d been counseled You must move on. You must live your own life.
It was a lie, she’d wanted to believe. A selfish lie. And she knew this.
And the men staring at her knew this.
The remainder of the class passed quickly.
Quickly and jarringly like a boat in a choppy river, that is not quite entirely out of control.
Vivianne was distracted by a roaring in her ears. Though Vivianne addressed the class, explaining the assignment to them; giving them some background to James Baldwin—“By consensus, one of the very best American essay-writers of the twentieth century.”
She hoped that the African-American men in the class would admire Baldwin, and wouldn’t find his elegantly structured prose difficult. She hoped they wouldn’t think that she and Cal Healy were being patronizing, to pass out this essay, on a passionately black subject, to the class.
She hoped that the others wouldn’t resent the assignment, with its racial subject.
There was a brief discussion, involving just a few inmates. The men who’d been speaking at first continued and others, at the margins of the seating, looked on in silence; not unfriendly, Vivianne thought, only just not inclined to speak.
Or maybe the mood of the class had shifted. Maybe, when Vivianne misspoke. Her face was still warm with blood and pulses rang hot in her ears.
What did you say! Oh what did you say! To strangers.
Somehow, the subject of ghosts came up.
Vivianne had no idea why. It had been originally planned by the instructors that their students would write fifteen-minute impromptus in each class, to habituate them in writing spontaneously and easily; volunteers would read their impromptus aloud. But somehow it happened, they’d begun to run out of time. Cal Healy had talked too long about topics for term papers later in the course and Vivianne hadn’t been watching the time, and would not have wanted to interrupt him, if she had.
How quickly the subject of ghosts emerged! Soon it was clear that the men believed in ghosts; even a drawling pigtailed man who looked like a drug dealer in a Hollywood film believed. Vehemently he said, “If you passed by the north-gate unit”—(this was what Vivianne thought he’d said, but she wasn’t altogether sure)—“you’d believe, too.”
This must have been the old death row, Vivianne thought.
“You mean actual ghosts? Like—of the dead?”
Cal spoke with an air of mild incredulity as if he weren’t certain whether the inmates were joking.
“Man, yes! They be actual ghosts. Like—dead folks.”
The men were nodding vigorously. Clearly this was no joke.
“There is ghosts! Ain’t no sligh’est doubt, there is ghosts.”
“Preach” spoke definitively. There was nothing deferential about the man now, he knew what he knew and no white civilians could dissuade him.
Heedless, Cal tried to argue. In the way that one might argue in a university setting, speaking of “superstition”—the need for “evidence”—“proof.” The men listened to him resentfully.
Vivianne wanted to touch Cal’s wrist lightly—Enough! You’ve made your point.
Cal was forgetting one of the cardinal rules of volunteer prison-work: you didn’t speak ironically or sarcastically to the inmates, even when their ideas were untenable; you were to respect their ideas, and to speak carefully to them.
Outside the prison, you could speak dismissively of ghosts; in the prison, evidently, you had better take ghosts seriously. Vivianne understood.
“Ma’am? What d’you say?”
One of the young black men—Junot? Evander?—was addressing Vivianne. In his voice there was both deference—for an older, white-woman teacher—and a subtle air of intimidation.
Vivianne said, with a strange little smile, “On the subject of ‘ghosts’—through the millennia—thousands of years—all the evidence is not yet in . . .”
Her voice trailed off weakly but this was a shrewd answer.
Vivianne was wishing that Cal would curtail the discussion, which was lively but aimless, threatening to veer out of control. Hadn’t they intended to do something with the class? To have the men begin to read the Baldwin essay, aloud? Even as Vivianne remembered this, she was forgetting it; Cal seemed to have forgotten entirely.
At the back of the room, the scowling man in dark glasses. Or maybe he wasn’t scowling, maybe Vivianne was misreading him.
And cheery Conor O’Hagan with his dented-looking bald head, his bleary eyes in which a sort of malicious merriment shone. He waved his surprisingly sinewy arm to be called upon, as in a classroom, but spoke loudly interrupting others; Vivianne saw a lurid flamey-red tattoo on his right forearm.
These are criminals, you must not forget. These men have hurt others. You must not ever forget.
Of the fourteen men in the class eleven were “lifers”—their sentences were indeterminate, depending upon their behavior in the prison. Vivianne gathered from what she’d been told that the average prisoner at Hudson Fork was classified as a “violent felon” though it wasn’t likely that inmates in the education program were among these.
The older black man, for instance—“Preach.” And Diego with his courtly way of speaking. And—was it Floyd?—a boyish-looking black man with a scarred face and a friendly smile . . . Vivianne felt a surge of something like affection for these strangers, as she’d often felt for her night-school adults decades ago when she’d been a new, young teacher, younger than most of her students.
The warning was: you do not ask inmates about their personal lives, and particularly you do not ask inmates about the crimes for which they were convicted, and you do not ask inmates about their prison sentences.
Vivianne thought But why would I ask? The fact of our lives is—we are here.
Then, it ended.
With rude abruptness, ended.
At 4:18 P.M. there was a sharp rap at the door.
The same burly
guard stood in the doorway.
“This class has to end now. Men return to your cell-blocks.”
A cruel sort of pleasure in this announcement. As if to say This bullshit is over. Get the fuck back where you belong.
“But—why? Class is almost over.”
Cal spoke more pleadingly than defiantly. Vivianne was relieved, her co-instructor was intimidated by the guard.
No reason was given. The guard repeated his command and the men stood and prepared to leave. There was no murmuring, and there was no opposition. In the guard’s presence—(and you could see another guard out on the ramp)—the men were stiff, wary.
Talking of ghosts had stirred the air. Their talk had animated both inmates and instructors. But in an instant, that was ended.
“Well! We’ll say good-bye, then—until next week.”
“Yes, good-bye—until next week.”
“If you have any questions about the assignment . . .”
Vivianne spoke in her quick warm friendly voice, that rarely failed to put others at ease. But the men were captives who’d been given orders they could not disobey, most of them scarcely glanced at her now, or at Cal standing disconsolate and abashed at the front of the room.
Only Diego lingered for a quick question addressed to Vivianne—a strange question—“Ma’am? Did you know James Baldwin like—in person?”
“Why, n-no . . .”
“You wasn’t his, like, teacher? I guess?”
Rudely the guard snapped his fingers at Diego, as you’d snap fingers at a dog, to hurry him along. Vivianne saw the look of hurt and chagrin in the man’s eyes. She said, smiling, as if to soften his disappointment:
“No. I wasn’t James Baldwin’s teacher.”
This would make an amusing anecdote to tell her friends, who’d tried to dissuade her from prison teaching.
The men left. The guards followed close in their wake. Cal was cursing after them—“God damn fuckers. You see the looks in their smug fucking faces!”
Vivianne was grateful that one of the guards had been a black man—her co-instructor couldn’t rant about racism, at least.
Cal and Vivianne were putting things back in the cardboard box when they both realized, seeing the class roster, that they’d forgotten to have the men sign out.
The men had signed in—there were fourteen printed names and beside each a signature. But in the sign-out column there were only blanks.
Cal said: “God damn! God damn cocksucker.”
Vivianne, too, was dismayed. She could not comprehend how they’d forgotten the roster—a second time—except that the class had ended so abruptly. And why hadn’t the guard asked them about the roster? As he’d asked them, at the start of class?
Then, Vivianne saw that the little blue plastic pencil sharpener seemed to be missing.
Panicked, Vivianne looked for it on the floor beneath the instructors’ desk.
Trying to remember who’d used it last—which of the inmates had signaled for permission to come to the table and taken up the little blue plastic cube to sharpen his pencil, like a dutiful child. And when Ms. Greary wasn’t looking, he’d slipped it in his pocket. Was that what had happened?
“Do you think he was serious? There might be a lockdown? Because the men didn’t sign out? Oh, Christ.”
Cal was slamming supplies into the cardboard box. His face was contorted as if he were about to cry. Vivianne tried to console him—really, she didn’t think the prison could be locked-down for such a trifle—the guards had seen the prisoners leave the classroom, surely they’d checked their names against their own list. It had to be that the guard meant to harass the instructors—Vivianne was sure. At the same time she remembered that common sense did not apply in prison.
More seriously, the little pencil sharpener seemed to be missing.
Certainly there had to be a razor-sharp piece of metal inside it, however small.
Vivianne hesitated to tell Cal about this second blunder. She would take responsibility for it herself—she’d promised to watch over the little plastic cube and somehow she had failed. How stupid! Unlike Cal who was cursing the guards, Vivianne could only curse herself.
Cal didn’t seem to be noticing how Vivianne was searching for something in the classroom, stooping to look beneath the tables, and the inmates’ chairs. He had no sense of her desperation, even as she was determined to disguise it.
“He could have said something, the son of a bitch! Fucking prick! He was hoping the roster hadn’t been signed, that was why he broke up the class when he did. God damn.”
Vivianne knelt, groping beneath a table. Nothing here but tiny clumps of dirt from the inmates’ sneakers. Her face was pounding now with blood, she had never felt so despairing. Her life had become yet more ridiculous, in the very effort to be of help.
Then, without a word to Vivianne, as if he’d forgotten her entirely, Cal slammed out of the classroom carrying the roster. He was oblivious of the fact that he wasn’t supposed to step outside the classroom alone, and he wasn’t supposed to leave his co-instructor alone.
Vivianne called: “Cal? W-Wait . . .”
She might have run after him. But—the pencil sharpener!
She felt a chill panic, alone in the room.
This room that, a few minutes before, had seemed so lively—so filled with life.
But the men had been ordered to their cell-blocks: she couldn’t possibly be in danger.
(Presumably, all the men in the prison? Or—just the men in a particular cell-block?)
Vivianne stood uncertainly. She would have followed Cal except—there was her coat on a chair behind the instructors’ table. She went to get her coat and kicked something and sent it skittering along the floor—the pencil sharpener?—but no, only a pencil.
She could have wept aloud. Though possibly, this was funny.
An amusing anecdote to tell her friends. Her husband . . .
Vivianne took up her coat which was made of soft black wool. Not knowing how to dress for the prison she’d worn black: a short black woolen jacket with little gold buttons, tapered black woolen trousers, black leather boots. And the black overcoat with deep pockets into which she’d thrust her leather gloves: one glove in each pocket.
Here was a small triumph: when Vivianne checked the coat pockets, there was a glove in each. She hadn’t lost her gloves, at least.
She’d given up looking for the blue plastic pencil sharpener. She left the classroom and stepped outside—the air was colder, the sky a scoured-looking gray. Next door was another classroom where a science course was being taught; she wondered if Cal had gone in that direction or if he’d headed back to the Education Office, along the wooden ramp.
She was angry with her co-instructor for leaving her—but of course he’d panicked also, he hadn’t been thinking clearly. She could hardly blame him, he’d felt under more pressure than Vivianne had felt. Yet neither Cal nor Vivianne seemed to have been thinking clearly for the past two hours. Entering Hudson Fork Correctional Facility for Men had seemed to effect a kind of shift in Vivianne’s brain as if a tiny knob had turned, and she’d lost her power of concentration.
She was staring at a row of men, three or four men, blue-clad, with stark white letters P R I S O N E R across their backs, on the other side of the wire-mesh fence. They were facing a wall—what were they doing at the wall?—and no guards in sight.
The men didn’t see Vivianne, yet. She felt a curious sense of elation, of intense relief, as if she’d already died, and had become invisible. She had crossed over to this desolate place, as to a region in Hades, not one of the spectacular fiery regions where savage punishments were exacted but one of the more ordinary regions where a smell of backed-up drains, the exhaustion of sleepless nights and headache-wracked days prevailed. This region of ghosts, of the damned who’d become ghosts, and it was no different from her ordinary, posthumous life.
One of the inmates on the other side of the fence turned, adjusting his pa
nts. Of course, he’d been at the urinal—Vivianne had totally forgotten the urinal, and the warning about not looking at men using it.
The inmate saw her. He was coarse-faced, with spiky red hair and a smudged white skin. He shouted at her, something ribald, jeering.
All of the men turned. All saw her.
They were furious, jeering. They were thrilled to see her—whoever she was: one of the civilian volunteers, looking lost.
Lost, and terrified.
Vivianne stammered an apology, backing away. Badly she wanted to hide her face, so ashamed.
The men were shouting after her. Blindly she turned away.
She had no idea where she was going. She knew that she should not return to the classroom—she’d be trapped inside. But she wasn’t supposed to walk alone to the Education Office and she wasn’t sure where it was.
She found herself in a cul-de-sac, at the end of the ramp. She must have stumbled in the wrong direction. But maybe there was a way out, here? She saw a door—but it was a classroom door, and the room inside was darkened.
She would have to flee in the other direction, to get to the Education Office—but if she did, she would have to pass by the men at the urinal, whose loud excited voices were terrible to hear.
“Ma’am! Howdy.”
She turned. She felt a touch on her shoulder. Another touch, a lover’s caress. A face loomed beside hers, pitying, with a look of sorrow, but revulsion too, disgust, for the woman had insulted his manhood with her condescension; with her ridiculous female vanity, that had taken root in grief; between his fingers the little razor was gripped tight, drawn against Vivianne’s throat, beneath her chin, a quick slash, the blink of an eye, the intake of a breath, mercy—for here was the angel of mercy, clad in blue.
They would discover Vivianne Greary missing, amid the confusion of an unexpected lockdown. They would discover Vivianne Greary fallen and lifeless on the wooden ramp behind the entrance to the Education Office, at the very end of the ramp, bled out.
Black Dahlia & White Rose: Stories Page 25