Inside These Walls
Page 25
And then one day, at my cell door, it’s Mona. She’s smiling. The door swings open with a creak, and she steps in carrying a plastic shopping bag and a manila envelope. She holds up the paperwork and says, “Congratulations.”
The C.O. brings boxes, but I don’t have much to pack. I put in my court transcripts and pointe shoes, my radio and rosary, a few books and drawings, all my art supplies. There are the gifts from Annemarie, of course, and the prettiest string of prayer flags. But beyond that, I have lived almost all these years as if time consists only of one day lived over and over, and I have saved very little. None of Emory Pugh’s gentle, friendly letters remain. Not one extra Magnificat, and certainly not a single photo of the past twenty-five years.
Well, there is one. The picture of me with Forrest in front of the mural is already tucked into one of my soft-edged novels. Looking at it filled me with too much fear and longing, and so I put it away.
On my final night I lie awake in bed, my arms behind my head, and listen to the catcalls and door-banging of the other inmates. I run my tongue along my flattened canines and remember my very worst days here. The deaths of the people I loved most, the loss of the small girl who should have mattered more to me than anyone. I think of the best days with Janny, and the joy of the work I will miss so much. Above all I linger on the sublime moments, when despite everything I felt at peace—in the chapel now and then, or out in the sunshine with Clementine on my lap, or when I got lost in my dance music so thoroughly that, for a few minutes, I truly and absolutely had escaped.
I remember the sight of the enormous night sky through my hospital window and wonder how I will bear the world. I promise myself I won’t let fear or bitterness stand in the way of my becoming, at last, what I might have been. And finally, I promise God that I won’t go a single day without remembering why I was here all this time, and putting forth enough kindness to pay a few pennies on my incalculable debt. Because I know I don’t deserve this twist of fate. I deserve nothing, and the fact that I will receive the gift anyway makes me understand, in its crushing entirety, the meaning of mercy.
* * *
I sign my name on the paperwork the C.O. sets before me and slide it back across the counter to her. She looks it over, and as I wait I reach back and scratch just below the nape of my neck. Mona brought me a new outfit for my release, something she thought would be pretty and comfortable. I’m wearing jeans that fit strangely low on my hips and seem tight at the seat, and a white eyelet top with fluttery sleeves and little padded buttons down the front. The air-conditioning is hiked up so high in the Intake room that goose bumps have broken out on my arms. “I know it’s a little young,” Mona said as I held up the shirt between pinched fingers, “but you’ve got the figure for it, so why not. And it’s a bit bridal-looking, isn’t it? That seems appropriate for a fresh start, don’t you think?”
The C.O. nods and disappears into a back room, then reappears with a clear plastic bag labeled PROPERTY. “Here you go,” she says.
“What’s this?”
“Your stuff.”
I peer down into the bag. In it is a pair of jeans and a belt with a silver buckle, a white cardigan sweater, and a faded pink T-shirt with a logo on the chest that reads Spectrum Supply. There’s also a pair of white flats. It’s the outfit I was wearing when I got arrested. I find a small envelope deep within the bag, open its flap, and shake its contents into my hand. Into my palm slip a pair of gold hoop earrings and a thin gold necklace with a pendant Ricky gave me for our first Valentine’s Day—a heart with a diamond chip at its center.
“Sign here to confirm that’s everything and you received all your property,” the officer says.
“I have no idea if that’s everything. I’m astonished you keep this stuff for so long.” I sign where she’s drawn an X. “I wonder if any of it still fits.”
“Even if it does, you probably don’t want to go around wearing it,” she says dryly. “Look like you arrived in a time machine.”
“Like in Back to the Future,” the officer at the next desk says, but I haven’t seen that movie.
I loop the bag around my wrist and reach down to pick up the cat carrier Mona brought for me. It took fifteen minutes to coax Clementine out of a cubby near a gutter this morning. She hadn’t seen me in so long, and I was wearing the wrong clothes. Now she thumps around in the small gray box offering a periodic, dissatisfied meow, and one of the C.O.s is sneezing.
The officer presses a rubber stamp against my paperwork, sets it onto a scanner, and watches as the image slowly appears on her computer screen. “All right,” she says at last. “That’s it. You can go.”
“Out that door?”
“That’s the one.”
“Hope you enjoyed your stay at the El Centro Intercontinental Suites,” says the other officer at the desk, and I laugh. That alone is something to marvel at.
She presses a button and the double doors pull open. I feel the blast of heated desert air from outside, and there, at the curb where I saw Penelope jostled from the Corrections truck and into the building, sits a black pickup truck. Forrest is leaning against it, hands in his pockets, bouncing one foot impatiently. At the sight of the open doors he reaches in through the open passenger-side window and pulls out a white paper bag with the In-N-Out Burger logo on the front. He shakes it a little, as if he needs to entice me to step outside.
I smile at the officer. “Thank you,” I say. I take a deep breath and step out into the sunlight, where already I can feel my body shaking off the chill of the building, welcoming the warmth of the outside air.
Author’s Note and Acknowledgments:
This story began its life as a secret side project—a sort of basement science lab in which I could run a little storytelling experiment. My previous novels, The Kingdom of Childhood and Heaven Should Fall, each took readers on a journey from the United States to Germany or Afghanistan, into the minds and memories of many different characters. What would happen, I wondered, if I took one woman, set her down in a single, beige-walled building, and locked the doors? Could I even tell her story, or did I need a bigger canvas and shinier paint on which to tell any story at all?
Clara Mattingly is not meant to represent the average prisoner, although I doubt the reality of an “average prisoner” exists at all. With her physical circumstances I worked to be reasonably accurate, although I took creative license in some areas, such as the common rules of visitation. In the portrayal of her experience of abuse and rape, however, I took care to tell a story that reflects reality for many survivors like her. When Clara speaks to some aspect of her experience that is particularly unsettling, rest assured that I added no detail without bountiful research and firsthand accounts from those who have been there.
I am deeply thankful to the many friends, colleagues, and readers who helped bring this story to publication. To my agent Stephany Evans and my editor Nicole Brebner, as well as Susan Swinwood and the entire team at MIRA, thank you so much for your support and expert advice. Fellow writers Amanda Miller, Barbara Claypole White, Anne Hite, Allison Leotta, Kathleen McCleary, and Jassy Mackenzie have offered invaluable critiques and support, along with Mollie Weiner, Laura Wilcott, Hillary Myers, Elizabeth Gardner, Jalin Sopkowicz, Kathy Gaertner, Laura Carns, Ilene Hellman, Kimberly Algeri-Wong, Christine Barakat, and Stephanie Roden, to whom this book is dedicated. I’m grateful to author Johnny Shaw for introducing me to the Imperial Valley and all its creative possibilities. To create these characters, particularly Ricky, I would have been at a loss without the inspiration of Matt Holland and Jamie Casey, to whom the T-shirt slogan “Careful, or you’ll end up in my novel,” is no longer quite as funny. Many thanks to both of you.
Finally, I would like to thank family—my husband and children, my mother and fellow writer Randi Anderson, and my extended family with Leslie and Tony While. And last but not at all least, I would like to thank the Feminist Mormon Housewives for creating a sisterhood of support for women, including s
exual abuse victims and women estranged from their families. All of you make the world a better place.
“[An] enthralling read…recommended for fans of Jodi Picoult’s realistic, ethics-driven novels.”
—Library Journal, starred review for The Kingdom of Childhood
If you loved Inside These Walls, be sure to catch The Kingdom of Childhood and Heaven Should Fall by acclaimed author Rebecca Coleman.
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Rebecca Coleman is the critically acclaimed author of Heaven Should Fall and The Kingdom of Childhood, which was a semifinalist in Amazon’s Breakthrough Novel competition. A native New Yorker, Rebecca now lives and works near Washington, D.C. Visit her website, www.RebeccaColeman.net.
eISBN: 978-1-4592-3907-4
INSIDE THESE WALLS
Copyright © 2014 by Rebecca Coleman
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