Inside These Walls

by Rebecca Coleman

  Mona purses her mouth a bit and pauses from scribbling down her notes. “But your mother wasn’t the one to allegedly commit the crime.”

  “No, but one’s mother is still one’s mother. It’s the nature of being a daughter—to try to protect her from suffering.”

  “Well, I don’t have any control over what charges they bring against her. I’m your advocate, not Penelope’s. What I’ll do is get in touch with the Attorney General’s office and let them know you’re willing to offer substantial assistance in exchange for a sentence reduction. They’ll follow through on the tips, and if they find evidence and make an arrest, you’ll probably get a deal.”

  “But that isn’t for sure?”

  “Nothing is for sure, and it’s too bad she didn’t give you much concrete information—the location of the gun, for example. But I’ll talk to people. I’ll make the case that a significant sentence reduction is appropriate.”

  Given my past experiences with judges, that isn’t very reassuring. “All right. How long will it take?”

  “A couple of months, if all goes well. In the meantime, they’ve already decided to put you in Medical Segregation because of your injuries. Were it not for that, I’d encourage you to go back in and see if she reveals more, but you won’t have that chance now.”

  I nod and, through my nose, breathe out a slow breath. That’s the end of my job at the Braille workshop, creating the drawings Shirley depends on me to do. No more Sunday mornings at Mass, crocheting classes and library visits, meals in the chow hall, time in the sun. No more afternoons spent with Clementine on my lap, if she’s even survived this ordeal. But it could be worse. It could be the Hole.

  “Could they put me with Janny, at least?” I ask.

  “I don’t think so, Clara, but I’ll see what I can do.”

  * * *

  The sign above the prison wing reads Medical Segregation Unit, and the mere sight of those words is enough to make my stomach clench. It hasn’t changed at all in the twenty-some years since I’ve been here. The walls are the same shade of maize, the smell still that of roach powder and urine, and the high ceiling and open staircases offer the same acoustic qualities that cause the shouts and screams of the mentally ill to echo from one wall to its opposite one. It’s just past the clinic, and though the nurse is kind to me—guiding my ungainly steps with the crutches, offering soothing encouragement—I still feel nauseated as I make my way down the hall. This will be my home for the next two months or more, and if Penelope lied to me or the investigation hits a dead end, my next housing options are even worse.

  I’m led to a cell at the far end, which will probably be quieter. All my things are already here, thrown haphazardly into cardboard boxes. There is a single bed against the wall, no bunk.

  “You can’t bunk me with Janny Hernandez?” I ask, my disappointment compounding. “My lawyer was supposed to ask about it.”

  “She did, but we don’t have any bunked cells available. We’ll try to make arrangements for you to visit her. She asks about you often.”

  “She does?”

  The nurse nods just before the C.O. shuts the door with a sonorous clang. The cell doors are different here—solid, with a small window and a slot for food, rather than the bars of D-Block where I lived before. That means my built-in ballet barre is gone now, but that hardly matters. My ankle was fractured and one of the bones in my calf broken in the attack, so I’m not sure if I’ll ever go on pointe again. I try not to think about that very much.

  I write to Forrest on the day I arrive, but three weeks pass before he receives my letter telling him about the fight and my new location. I receive a hasty reply from him the day before he visits, and when I’m brought down to the windowed visiting booths, moving slowly on my crutches, his expression looks as abject and broken as the words of his letter made him sound.

  He picks up the phone at the same moment I do. “What are we doing here?” he asks, gesturing to indicate the smelly, green-painted room. “What happened to Scrabble and that beautiful waterfall?”

  I try to work up a smile. “No in-person visits for inmates in Med Seg. Some of us are contagious, so they act as though everybody is. Sorry. I appreciate that you came.”

  “Well, how long are you going to be there?”

  “It’s going to be a while.” I meet his eyes through the smudged glass and implore him to listen closely, though our words crackle with static across the weak phone connection. “Forrest,” I say. “They might reduce my sentence. There’s a chance.”

  His forehead creases hard with a sudden frown. “I thought you got life without parole.”

  “Yes. I can’t tell you the details, and it isn’t for sure, but my lawyer is trying to get them to reduce it to time served. It would be...something similar to your deal.”

  He holds me with a long look. For a few moments he says nothing. “Wouldn’t that mean you’ll get out?”

  “It would.” At his puzzled expression I give a short, embarrassed laugh. “I don’t know where I’d go. It’s like Mars out there now.”

  “Oh, I’d help you. You know I would.”

  “I can’t even think about it too much. I’d lose my mind if I get my hopes up. I keep thinking, would they give me the rest of my canteen money? Everything seems so expensive now. When I see car commercials on TV, the cars cost as much as my parents’ house did.”

  “Don’t worry about that. Clara. Could that really happen? Because I’d be there for you every step of the way. I have plenty of room at my place. I mean, I owe you.” His laugh is rueful. “I owe you.”

  “You don’t owe me anything at all.”

  “Okay, fine. I want to help. I told my daughters about you.”

  I smile and perk up. “You did? What did they say?”

  He shakes his head, but he’s smiling too. “They think I’m crazy no matter what I do. That’s never going to change.”

  “I don’t want them to hate me.”

  “Because you’re a felon? They’d have to hate us both.” He leans in on his elbows, pressing close to the window. “Maybe God’ll work a miracle. I’ll pray for it.”

  “Pray for one with my daughter, while you’re at it. She’s not speaking to me anymore.”

  “She’ll come around.”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “You’ll see. If you get out.” He nods, then lifts the corner of his mouth in an understanding smile. “She came to you looking for a sense of peace about her background. That’s never a straight road. She’ll be back.”

  “Maybe you’re right. Thank you.”

  “It’s probably heartbreaking in the meantime. It always is, when people leave.”

  I nod ardently. It’s the truest thing I know, and he knows it too. He holds up his hand and presses it against the glass. I lift mine and fit it against his from the other side. And then, before I even realize it’s going to happen, I begin to cry. It starts with a shaking in my chest, then rises, and before I can control it I’m sobbing and sobbing, my face streaked and overheated, my breath coming in choking gasps. I have to hang up the phone, and the C.O. catches sight of me and comes over to remove me. They don’t allow scenes like this, and I can’t blame them. I don’t even look over my shoulder as they hustle me away.

  * * *

  I’ve been in my new cell for just over a week when a Saturday brings me my one permitted houseguest—Father Soriano has come to take my confession and offer me the Eucharist in these new surroundings. The C.O. opens the bars to let him in, and the priest looks around the small cell with a pitying gaze. “I’d like to ask what you did to get in here,” he begins, “but maybe that will be part of your confession.”

  “Not mine, but maybe somebody else’s. I got attacked in the yard. Apparently some of the others felt my cellmate was starting to like me too much.”

  He nods. With one finger he flicks the edge of a new piece of my décor—strips of toilet paper hung wherever I can attach them, each square torn mos
t of the way apart but not entirely, to form a long banner of squares. On each bit of the thick, industrial paper I have drawn, in pencil, a Buddha or an ohm symbol, a lotus flower, or a wheel. They have allowed me my pastels, and so each image is smudged with careful strokes of color dampened just a bit with my saliva to create a watercolor effect. These are prayer flags, which I saw on a television show on PBS while I was in the hospital. The idea is that as they flap in the breeze, they carry prayers to the heavens, and the paper does indeed flap lightly when the air-conditioning vents come on. Each of my fingertips is a different shade of pink, blue, pale green or yellow, and the dyes are impervious to soap thus far.

  “Very nice,” he says. “Festive.”

  “I’m praying for the Chois. They were Buddhists.”

  He takes a seat on my little stool. “I see. Well, how are you feeling? How’s your leg?”

  “My leg is all right,” I say, but I dodge the larger question. In terms of isolation Med Seg is only a half-step above the Hole, and the past ten days have been a grueling trial. The lights never go off, the noise never quiets down, and yet the interaction with other inmates is virtually nonexistent. It’s the strange feeling of being suspended in a single endless moment, a skipping record that plays the same line of a song over and over. I begin to sleep a lot, using my cardigan sweater as a shield against the relentless fluorescent light; and in the hazy twilight just before sleep and at awakening, I come to understand exactly why Ricky felt the way he did on the day he killed himself. When his cousin Dan came to visit me years and years ago, suicide note in hand, he’d mentioned that Ricky had been in the Hole. Only now does it occur to me that he’d probably been in protective custody for months, perhaps the entire time. Ricky couldn’t even go an entire shift at the Circle K without getting jerked around by jocks two years younger than himself. I can only imagine what the showers must have been like at Chowchilla.

  The priest waits a brief interval for me to expand on my answer, but I say nothing more. He lifts his eyebrows and asks his question. “Are you ready to begin your confession?”

  “I have nothing.”

  He smiles thinly. “Let’s go over an examination of conscience and determine whether that’s true.”

  “Let me propose an idea to you, instead.”

  He rests his hand on his thigh and looks at me curiously.

  “I want to see my stepbrother. He’s done things to me that I can only forgive if I have clearer information. I know what you’re going to say—that I should forgive him simply on principle, to be Christlike. But unfortunately, I’m not Christ.”

  The priest offers a spontaneous, indulgent smile. “None of us are, Clara. Go on.”

  “I want you to reach out to him and get him to come here and talk to me. I don’t mean in those silly little visitation booths, either. I mean face to face.”

  He gestures to the walls of the cell. “That’s never allowed in Medical Segregation.”

  “But it’s allowed in the chapel, if you’re present. You could arrange that. He still lives in San Jose, as far as I know. I can give you the address, and maybe you can find a phone number based on that.”

  His gaze shifts to the side, and I can tell he’s pondering the idea.

  “Just listen,” I say, losing the strident voice he seems to dislike so much, and finding a softer tone instead. “It doesn’t have to go well. I don’t need him to be sorry, or to find a reason to excuse any of the things he did to me. I just want to look at his face and see how much time has passed. I want to see how old my wounds are. And I want to hear and see that at some point in his life, he was somehow vulnerable too. Because I can’t forgive a monster, but for my own peace of heart, I can forgive a human being. I need to see that he is one.”

  At last he nods. “Well, I’ll try, Clara. The decision is up to him, but I’ll reach out, at least. That much I can do for you.”

  * * *

  I am lying on my narrow bed, attempting a bit of makeshift physical therapy, when NPR breaks to the news and announces the arrest of a Travis Goodman in connection with the Robbins shooting. I sit up so quickly that I feel lightheaded and hurriedly turn up the volume. Public records indicate that Goodman, of Charlestown, is the registered owner of a handgun of the type used in the shooting. More details are expected at a press conference later today.

  Mona comes by a few hours later, guiding me into the small office at the end of the row of cells, her high cheekbones carved into vivid relief by her smile. “So you’ve heard the exciting news,” she says. “I’ve been calling the Attorney General’s office all day, hounding them. They’re doing the forensics tests tomorrow, and I’m hoping to press them for an answer as soon as that’s completed.”

  “Is all of this based just off what I told you?”

  “Yes and no. Goodman wasn’t even considered as a suspect before—why would he be?—but the information you gave them sent them looking at surveillance footage of gas stations and fast-food places in the area, and they spotted him. He also fits the description given by a witness who was collecting used golf balls in the woods around the time of the shooting. Your information is helping them fit it all together. This is very good, Clara. You should feel optimistic.”

  I nod, but it’s become exhausting to carry around such dizzying hope, especially in here. For someone like Mona, it’s easy to carry around hopes and then discard them if they prove useless; there’s always another one to be found soon enough, common as pennies on the sidewalk.

  She reaches across the table and pats my hand, offering a bright smile. “Not everyone’s rooting for your release, you know,” she says in a teasing tone. “I spoke to Shirley on the way here, and she’s beside herself. Says the transcription work is stacked up to the ceiling and nobody else can get these drawings right of plants or cow eyeballs or whatever they’re doing at the moment. Shall we pull your petition for Shirley’s sake?”

  It should be a simple question, an easy laugh, but I feel too numb to answer. “I really miss my cat,” I tell her.

  Her face shifts into an expression of puzzlement. “Your cat?”

  “Yes, I haven’t seen her in over a month. Nobody can even tell me if she’s okay. Can you check for me?”

  Now she smiles patiently. “What’s the cat’s name?”

  “They call her Frankfurter, but I call her Clementine. She’s orange and she hangs around the yard. If you could just ask about her, I’d really appreciate it.”

  “Yes. Well, I’ll do that.”

  She gathers her things and shakes my hand. I’m led back to my cell, where a lunch is waiting for me: two thin slices of turkeyon wheat bread with a packet of mayonnaise, an apple, and a Styrofoam container of mashed potatoes made from instant flakes. A stack of the day’s mail sits beside it. For the first time in quite a while there’s an envelope from Karen Shepard. I suppose she’s realized I’ve run out of things to say, and perhaps wants to try to jog my memory one last time.

  Her letter slips out into my hand, and when I unfold it two photographs fall out. I utter a little cry and pick them up, stacked one behind the other so I can take them in one at a time. In the first, Ricky is giving me a piggyback ride in the front yard of his parents’ house. I’ve got my arms tight against his chest, and I’m laughing, looking as though I fear he’ll drop me at any moment. Ricky’s expression is one of comic tension—a suggestion that what I fear is a distinct possibility. His hair is longer than I remember, and just behind us, on the porch steps, Forrest sits with a bemused expression and a cigarette between his fingers. I’ve never seen this photo before. I don’t remember the day, or the feeling.—I remember nothing about this moment, and can only guess that the picture-taker must have been a friend. Liz, perhaps? I don’t remember her ever holding a camera. I can’t guess who. But the image makes me catch my breath.

  The second photograph causes my knees to weaken, and I grab the side of the tiny desk and sink down onto the stool. It’s my mother. Behind her is a wide blue sky, a
nd a yellow silk scarf, printed with pink cherry blossoms, flutters at her neck. Her hair, styled into a Mary Tyler Moore flip but loosened by the wind, frames a face that looks tired but beautiful. She isn’t smiling, but looks as though she’s about to say something to the photographer. Behind her are the piled stones and stretches of water that I easily recognize. She’s standing on Spiral Jetty.

  I’m too stunned to make a sound. I know I have seen this picture before, but very long ago, and I had forgotten it ever existed.

  For a long time I look at the portraits—first one, and then the other, back and forth. Then at last I pick up Karen’s letter and begin to read.

  Dear Ms. Mattingly,

  Thank you so much for all the assistance you have provided to me in the creation of this book. Your help has been invaluable, and I suspect you know that, but it bears repeating. I know you do not typically speak with reporters and it is deeply significant to me that you entrusted me with your story. I will be certain to send you a copy once it is published, and credit you in the acknowledgments.

  In the course of my research I have turned up two photographs I wanted to share with you. One you will recognize as a candid shot of you and Ricky, taken in March of 1984 by Gail Matthews, whom I contacted regarding the project. She was briefly the girlfriend of Forrest Hayes, and while she had basically nothing to offer in terms of insight (a fact which she acknowledged), she did send me this photo she took one afternoon.

  The second is a picture of your mother. In the interest of full disclosure, I must tell you I contacted Clinton Brand for his take on the story. He was, after all, a witness for the prosecution in Ricky’s trial. I completely understand that you will probably not be pleased with this and I apologize if it upsets you. I hope you understand it is a journalist’s job to draw information from many sources, without regard to personal opinion. He provided several family photos, this being the only one I believe you would like. This is a copy, but on the back of the original was written simply, in pencil, “Mom.”

  Neither of these photographs will be used in the book, which is the main reason I am sending them to you now. Copies will be held on file, but I didn’t want to deny you the opportunity to see them. Thank you once again, tremendously much.