Inside These Walls

by Rebecca Coleman

  “Clara, don’t do that.”

  I raise an eyebrow. I don’t know what’s going on here, but something in her manner looks tense. Pensive. This isn’t a health-and-welfare check, I can see that much.

  “I happened to be in the building to meet with one of my other clients,” she begins, “and it was mentioned to me that Penelope Robbins has been placed in a cell with you. Are you at all familiar with her case?”

  “Of course. I’ve been following the news.”

  “Good. Then you must know she’s been charged with obstruction of justice, and you probably know the theory that she hired a hit man against her father, the Congressman.”

  “Yes, but I don’t think she did that.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Comments she’s made. She’s too concerned about his health to have put him there on purpose.”

  She murmurs thoughtfully. “So she’s opening up to you, is she?”

  I grimace. “Not if I can help it. The last thing I want to do is get tangled up in her legal business. I have enough problems of my own at the moment.”

  “Actually, Clara, I think it’s the first thing you want.”

  My gaze turns puzzled, and Mona’s expression shifts to the woman-to-woman look I saw her use so many times before the jury. “The State of California really wants to solve this,” she says quietly. “If it so happens that she confides any details to you, then you’d do well to pass them along to me immediately.”

  I feel my posture straightening, my shoulders squaring. Twenty-five-year-old Clara would have nodded adamantly at this suggestion, but the Clara of today recoils from it in disgust. “To snitch, you mean,” I say to her. “On my own cellmate. I would never.”

  “Don’t speak so soon. If she confesses, of her own free will, it would come at great benefit to you. Now, if I were you, I wouldn’t directly try to lead her—”

  I line up my words like bricks on wall. “I am not going to be a snitch.”

  Mona sighs. “Oh, Clara,” she says wearily. “You really are a lifer now, aren’t you?”

  The words set off a twinge in my heart, but I don’t say a word.

  “Just a few weeks ago, you were asking me about a new trial,” she reminds me. “Because you had extenuating circumstances, you said. I have no idea what you were talking about, but you seemed quite interested in getting the hell out of here. And I can’t say I blame you. Would you care to share what those circumstances were?”

  I swallow hard. I never speak of these things aloud. In a shaky voice I say, “I was raped by my stepbrother. For years. Father George knew about it, and he did nothing. And I could never understand why, because I trusted him, and my mother trusted him, and yet he did nothing.”

  Her eyebrows knit together sympathetically. “This is the same stepbrother who testified for you during your trial?”

  “Yes. It was all so sick and awful, and I didn’t want to destroy my mother by letting her find out about it. I figured it wouldn’t matter anyway since I had confessed. I knew it was possible it could make my sentence lighter, but that was a gamble, and for sure they’d ask me dozens of humiliating questions in front of the whole world. I couldn’t take the thought of having to defend myself, or my mother having to defend herself if all that got into the papers. I’d rather be in prison.”

  “Questions like what?”

  “Like why I let it go on for so long. How it could be rape when he usually used protection. I mean, this was Clinton Brand. All the girls wanted him. He was always sleeping with someone. And at the time, back in 1984—” I feel my expression darken. “Did you ever see that movie, Sixteen Candles? It was so big that summer. The whole idiotic film is about having sex with girls who are drunk and passed out, taking their underwear as a trophy, coercing them to sleep with you—everyone thought it was all so funny. Such wonderful comedy. That’s what it was like back then. If the jury had been asked to weigh what had happened between me and Clinton, they would have high-fived Clinton on the way out of the courtroom and sent me to the electric chair.”

  Her mouth shifts into a wry scowl. “I wish you had told me, just the same. I might have been able to do something with it. But, Clara, listen to me now—and listen hard. You’ve already served nearly twenty-five years, which is well beyond the mandatory minimum. Given your disciplinary record, combined with the substantial evidence of your rehabilitation—if you produce information that can solve this case, I could submit a convincing argument for a change to your sentence. A significant change.”

  My eyes narrow. “What kind of significant change?”

  “I would petition for it to be reduced to time served. In similar cases, judges have been fairly agreeable. I think it could succeed.”

  I shake my head in confusion. Nothing she is saying makes any sense to me. “I don’t understand. Doesn’t ‘time served’ mean I’d be done? Because believe me, they’re not going to let me walk out those doors.”

  “They would if the court told them to.”

  “But I have life without parole.”

  “Now you do, Clara. But how do you think Forrest Hayes got his sentence reduced from ten years to one? ‘Substantial assistance,’ that’s how. You can call it snitching if you like, but outside these bars, they call it freedom.”

  I’m very quiet. I look down at the tile.

  “I advise you to try this,” Mona tells me softly. “And get the information quickly, before someone else does. Don’t say a word about it to anyone. Not to your daughter, not to a friend, not to a single soul. Just to me, the day you find it out, and I’ll have you moved immediately.”

  “Moved where?”

  “Administrative Segregation, pending a court order for your release.”

  I nod. That means the Hole—that desolate hell of never ending angry noise, stifling heat, and medieval restriction. No job. Showers twice a week. Food pushed through a slot in the door. And the boredom—the crushing, mind-scrambling boredom—that is the worst part of all. I can do prison day in and day out, but too much time in the Hole and I begin to lose my mind. Yet for a known snitch, there’s no other way. If the sentence reduction didn’t come through, I’d never be safe to return to General Population, not here. A transfer to a facility in a faraway state would probably be my single option.

  But the image of Annemarie’s face flashes to the forefront of my mind, the way she looked when she slapped her birth certificate against the glass. “I’ll do it,” I tell her.

  Chapter Twelve

  It takes me almost a week to work up the nerve to tack up the photo Forrest and I had taken together at his most recent visit. In it we’re standing in front of that mural of the waterfall, our arms behind each other’s backs in the way of friends, or perhaps a couple that have been married for a very long time. His smile is shy, a little abashed, which contrasts with the aging-rock-guitarist look he otherwise projects. My own smile is bigger, hopeful, boosted by the excitement of Scrabble wins and his company. My hair looks nice—loose and wavy. Standing beside Forrest, with my slight shoulders and slender neck, I look feminine. It’s not a word I normally think about in relation to myself. It exists only in contrast to men, and I never see myself beside a man who isn’t a guard or a priest. There are lots of women I see as masculine, but here that means aggressive or menacing. And Forrest isn’t menacing. He’s very comfortable to be around, with his quiet, protective air.

  I stick the picture to the wall beside my pastel drawing of the ballerina, and Penelope comes over to see. “Hey, that’s the guy from the visiting room. Your not-boyfriend.”

  I laugh. “Yes, that’s Forrest.”

  “He’s kind of cute. For an old guy.”

  “He is, isn’t he? His wife left him for someone on the internet.”

  Penelope nods knowingly. “Happens all the time.”

  “Does it? You see, when I got here, there was no internet. Your spouse would leave you for good old-fashioned reasons, like the cute lifeguard or your bes
t friend.”

  She snorts a laugh. “Don’t go there. Kevin hasn’t come to see me once since I got here. Every time I talk to him I say, listen, if you want to break up, just be straight with me about it. Tell me to my face—or at least, to my ear. And he keeps saying ‘no, we’re cool, we’re cool,’ but something tells me we’re not cool.”

  I grimace and take out a tube of toothpaste, squirting a quantity of it into my coffee mug. I’ve told Penelope I’ll teach her a classic prison craft—making a kind of clay out of toilet paper mixed with white toothpaste, and using it to build tiny dioramas or sculptures. Because it dries quickly it can only be made in small quantities, but it’s a good way to pass the time during the hour when others are at their AA meetings and anger management classes.

  “I read that your father was not a fan of Kevin,” I say.

  “Not really, no. My dad is the quiet type of racist—you know what I mean? If you’re a black guy he’ll shake your hand, act superficially respectful, pay lip service to all the civil rights stuff, but he does not want to see your face at the yacht club. Not unless you’re serving him his bourbon.” She shakes her head and eases down to sit on the floor. “But the media played that up too much. I bitched about it to everyone, so when they talked to reporters, of course that was the detail that made it into the stories. But it wasn’t like we’d been throwing vases at each other because he wanted me to break up with Kevin. What we fought about was Sherry.”

  I sprinkle torn pieces of toilet paper into the mug. “Sherry? Your father’s girlfriend, right?”

  “Yeah. She would take my clothes, Clara. If I was staying at Kevin’s she would raid my closet and leave my stuff around, all smelling like her trashy perfume. And I had a bottle of peach vodka on my dresser, and she took it. When I confronted her about it, she said I’m too young to drink anyway. Can you believe that?”

  “She sounds like a real piece of work.”

  “Here, sit down. What are we doing, just ripping up toilet paper?”

  I sit beside her and stir the mixture with a plastic spoon as she sprinkles more paper into the mug. Then I set out two torn pieces of last week’s canteen boxes, and we both set to work building our sculptures. I lay the foundation for a tiny nativity scene.

  “I used to do this with Janny sometimes,” I tell her, “though it was complicated because Janny was blind. But she made an entire rosary by rolling beads and stringing them onto a thread from her sheets. And we used mint toothpaste, so it smelled very nice.”

  Penelope laughs. She’s rolling her clay into a long circle, like a child’s idea of a snake. “I should make one of those and send it to the nuns at my old school. Dear Sister Agatha, I made you a present. Love, Penelope.”

  “What did your brother think of her? Sherry, I mean.”

  She makes a noise from the back of her throat—a rude, choking laugh. “Steven likes her about as much as I do. If he pulls the plug on our dad, I’m sure he won’t waste any time telling her to pack up and leave. Have you seen her? Total trophy wife material. Nothing like our mom.”

  “How long have they been divorced?”

  “Since I was ten, so, almost ten years.” She has arranged the clay circle on her square of cardboard and is molding a tiny bird to sit inside it. “Do you think this clay will support itself well enough that I can build a birdcage? That would be kind of touching, wouldn’t it? Anyway, our mom lives in Massachusetts now. She’s remarried. I see her three or four times a year. Does yours ever come to visit you?”

  “My mother? She died a long time ago, while I was in here.”

  Penelope pushes her bottom lip out in a frown. “Aw, that’s sad. Were you close?”

  “Very.”

  “Did they let you go to her funeral, at least?”

  “No.”

  “Can I ask you a real question?” she says. She’s looking at me uncertainly, and I realize my last answers were abrupt. I pinch the clay into the shape of a Wise Man and try to ease my features into an expression less bitter.

  “Of course.”

  “If you’re so religious, why did you kill a priest?”

  I keep my eyes and mouth impassive as I finish the crown of the Wise Man. “I’ll answer that if you answer a question, too.”

  “Sure. But you go first.”

  “All right. I killed him because I was angry and upset at the way he had treated me, and I was too weak to show him mercy. I did the easiest thing, which was to lash out at him, instead of the difficult thing, which would have been to show him forgiveness. Resentment is like blood poisoning, you know. You let the wound fester because you think it will heal on its own with time, but by the time you see the red streaks coming from it, it’s too late. You’ve lost something.”

  She grimaces. “That’s...grisly.”

  “But that priest didn’t represent the whole church, any more than I represent every Catholic. He made mistakes. I made mistakes. We were both hypocrites. It would have made me even more of a hypocrite if I rejected the church the moment I was in its worst graces. That would be like when a child loses a race and then says she doesn’t care and didn’t want the medal anyway.”

  Now Penelope smiles. “Very true.”

  I set my Nativity scene down on the floor tile. “Your turn.”

  Her smile turns stiff, almost catlike. I can tell she thinks I’m going to ask her about her crimes, whatever they might be. As much as I’d love to, I don’t want her to think I’m too eager to know; it would be better for her to volunteer that information than to feel I’m prying it out of her. I’ve already seen that impulse in her, and just need to wait it out. So instead I ask, “Is it true what they say about black men?”

  She blurts a laugh. “That’s your question? Seriously?”

  “I’ve always wondered.”

  Her eyes narrow with glee. I catch a little twitch at their far corners, a conspiratorial little glance. “In Kevin’s case it is,” she tells me. “He’s pretty big.”

  “Well, that’s good to know. Rumor confirmed.”

  “What about Ricky?” At my hesitation she says, “C’mon, he’s a celebrity. I’d love to know that kind of dirt.”

  “I don’t have enough experience to judge whether or not he was big. But he was good in bed.”

  She nods approvingly. “And that’s what matters, anyway.”

  “It sure does.”

  We both grin. She arranges another length of clay to form part of a cage above her bird, and she looks happy when it holds.

  * * *

  After dinner I find a package on the floor just inside my cell with a pink form taped to the top. Four times a year we’re allowed to receive special packages, but except for the one Annemarie sent me recently, I never get them. It’s open, of course. Penelope isn’t back yet, and I’m locked in alone. I glance over the form—Application for Special Exception: Personal Property, it reads, with scribbled text and check-off boxes. I pull back the cardboard flaps and immediately suck in my breath.

  It’s a pair of pointe shoes.

  They’re pale pink silk, their long pink ribbons spilling across the brown cardboard like soft candy. I can tell they’re not new, but I couldn’t care less. I pick up the envelope tucked in beside them and take out the card. Thinking of you, it reads in a winsome font, with a drawing of a mouse holding a very large daisy. I flip it open.

  Clara,

  After you told me you didn’t have ballet shoes I went looking in the closet. These were my daughter’s. Don’t know whether they will fit but when she was still dancing she was about your height. Hope you can use them.

  I enjoyed the visit. Even if I did let you win at Scrabble. To tell the truth I’ve been thinking about it a lot. I know it sounds corny, but I have you in my prayers. It took me a lot of years not to be haunted by my seven months and I don’t know how anybody survives twenty-five years. You are strong and I admire that.

  If these don’t fit, trace your foot on a piece of paper and send it to me so I can fi
gure out how to get you some better ones.

  —Forrest

  I set the card on the desk and pull off my sneakers and socks. Penelope is out at a meeting with her lawyer, and it’s such a relief not to have her present—I would feel the need to hold back my excitement if she were here, and I don’t know how I could. Seated on the desk stool, I hold up one of the pointe shoes—it feels stiff but slippery in my hand—and slide it onto my foot. It’s a half-size too big, and so I look around frantically until I see the stack of our blue toilet-cleaning gloves. Those will have to do. I roll two gloves into the toe box of each slipper and put them on my feet, lacing the ribbons up my calves and folding the legs of my jumpsuit pants at mid-thigh.

  I click on the radio. Afternoon Classics is over, so I turn on the oldies station. Olivia Newton-John is belting out Twist of Fate—a song from a movie I remember that Ricky and I disdained seeing. I walk to the bars, my gait awkward from the strange feeling of the shoes, and begin to limber up. Roll up into it, I think, and let the music’s bouncy rhythm feed my confidence. My ankles feel strong, my feet tough but flexible. Just go with the music. At the swell of the chorus I hold my breath, I hold it tight, and then curl my arches to the balls of my feet to—up!—the tips of my toes.

  I crack a smile that feels dazzling. My back is board-straight, my right arm curled before me in fourth position. I mince forward on my toes, then come down for the pure joy of rising up a second time, a third, a fourth. I feel like leaping across the room, spinning in fouette turns from one end to the other. My heart feels wide open, as if all the world is a never ending field to run through singing, and it holds not a single thing to fear. Without any effort my feet and body move to the radio music, sweeps of the leg and compact turns, elegant arms, and my toes, oh, my toes. They are strong enough to hold me, and the muscle and bone of my ankles stake my weight and balance as if they were made for this, as if they could do it all along.