Maggie pulled herself up and looked out the window. The birds had gathered at a feeder in the yard below. Beyond the yard, a wire fence bordered on a cornfield. Snow lay thick in the furrows; broken, blackened cornstalks rose up among the snow like scratches on a page. A rooster crowed in the distance. It was a dim winter dawn, gray as gunmetal. Beyond the cornfield, another field, and beyond that, a house or two with the wood smoke rising from the chimneys. Beyond that, the morning mist obscured her view.
The loudspeaker barked again. I got to go, Maggie thought, I’ll be late and they’ll be writing me up.
* * *
IT WAS breakfast after all. Maggie was late and the kitchen staff were happy to tell her so. But they didn’t write her up, so she kept her curses under her breath, gulped down her breakfast, and headed off to group.
In group, Maggie sat silent for as long as she could. The little vixen was not happy about it and she said so.
“You mean, you’ve got nothing at all to say?”
Maggie shrugged.
Her little, blond roommate didn’t have anything to say either. Even less, for she would not even talk outside of group. In fact, Maggie had yet to hear her say a waking word. But the vixen said nothing to the girl. She was just picking on Maggie and it was wrong and Maggie would have told her so, but she knew better. She thought, They’re just waiting for me to say something so they’ll have an excuse to kick me out.
“Nothing at all?”
Say something and get kicked out for it. Say nothing and get kicked out for it—it was that powerless shit again.
“I seem to recall you had a lot to say when they dropped you off and you had a lot to say when they checked you in and you had a lot to say when they caught you smoking in the back hall, but you can’t find anything to say now?”
“I’ll say this . . .” Maggie spoke the first thought that came to mind and hoped that might get the vixen off her back. “I’ll tell you this,” she said. “I never did trust nobody with a clipboard.”
Which was a mistake. The vixen didn’t seem bothered in the least that Maggie didn’t trust her. She wanted to know why and who did she know with a clipboard in the past and what did a clipboard represent to her and Maggie thought, What the fuck have I got myself into now?
From there on, it was a tangle. So far as she could recall, Maggie had never in her life had a thought about a person with a clipboard. But she couldn’t unsay it now she had said it. And in moments, she was in a briar patch of invented insults and injuries. It was bankers evicting and auctioneers selling off all the family treasure and teachers swatting and preachers who were hypocrites and a store clerk who tried to feel her up when she was just thirteen.
It wore her out, after so little sleep, to invent so many lies at once and, before ten minutes were out, Maggie felt like her head would split. She had never had trouble coming up with lies before, but the vixen was relentless. She stuck her little fox of a nose into every little nook of every lie she told.
“So,” the vixen said. “You don’t trust me because I carry a clipboard and you’ve had all these negative experiences with people who carry clipboards.”
Maggie nodded. There wasn’t a word of truth to it, but she nodded.
“So maybe this will help.” The vixen took her notes from under the clip, gripped the clipboard by one corner, and flung it like a Frisbee. It banked off the wall and fell into the trashcan.
Maggie thought, This girl’s a freak.
“Now, I don’t have a clipboard. So tell me something.”
“Tell you what?”
“Tell me what’s the real problem.”
“I already told you.”
“Because I don’t believe a bit of this clipboard bullshit.”
“I thought you wasn’t supposed to cuss.”
“I’m not supposed to throw away a perfectly good clipboard either. But let’s talk about you.”
The blond girl’s mousetrap eyes moved from one to another.
“You ain’t talking to her like that,” Maggie said. “She ain’t said a word in two days and you ain’t picking on her.”
“Because right now we’re focusing on you.”
“You can focus on my ass.”
“We might do that later. Right now, we’re focused on your ability to tell the truth.”
The blond girl pulled her feet up on her chair, tucked her knees under her chin, and stared at the floor. Maggie was sorry she had tried to drag the girl into it, sorry she had spoken at all. She suddenly grew desperately tired. Her arms were heavy as bricks. “My God,” she muttered. “I want to get out of here so fucking bad.”
“Because you feel you’re being picked on.”
Maggie looked hard at the vixen to see if she could catch any hint of mockery in her face and decided she did not like her either way. “No,” she said. “Because this whole place sucks, including you, you little four-eyed bitch.”
“Thank you.”
“Thank you for what?” Maggie was certain she was fucked for sure now.
“Thank you for saying something real.”
“If real is what you’re looking for, then fuck you again.”
“Because everything you’ve said before has been a lie.”
“So fuck you ten times more.”
“And now we get to see the real you.”
“And the real me says fuck you till you’re cross-eyed.”
“Thank you for sharing,” the vixen said. “I think we’ve made some progress.”
Maggie would have told her to stick some progress up her skinny ass. But the loudspeaker announced something in asthmatic French and everyone stood for the end of group.
Maggie stood with the rest and held hands with the rest and mumbled the prayer along with the rest, but she swayed with exhaustion and her mind was muddled and confused and she silently cursed the vixen and the blond girl for it.
* * *
AT LUNCH, she tried to call her husband. Sometimes the jailer would let him talk. But not today—the prick—and she cursed him seven times sideways until he hung up and she thought, now he’ll take it out on Gary, which was one more worry to hang around her head.
By midafternoon, Maggie was delirious from lack of sleep. The coffee was weak-ass decaf and they wouldn’t let her take a nap. They piss-tested her before supper and Maggie was sure they thought she was high on Oxys again.
If only she was. If only she could have just one sweet little Oxy. Just one would lift her out of this insanity, if only for a little while. If she could, she would, if she could without getting caught. But she was not about to face that judge again.
So she struggled through the rest of her groups and doodled through the art therapy and dozed over her evening meal and tried to follow the story of the AA speaker. She sat when she was supposed to sit and she stood when she was supposed to stand. She read what she was supposed to read and mumbled through the prayers like the rest. For there was no way she would let herself get kicked out of the program and face all that prison time. One day at a time, she thought. One fucking day at a time.
But please, God, not such another day as this.
* * *
AT BREAK, Maggie went back to her room for a cigarette and her jacket. And there was the girl. She was kneeling on Maggie’s bed and looking out the window.
“What’s up, babe?”
Startled, the girl turned. She got up from the bed and crossed the room to her own.
“It’s okay, honey. You want to look out the window, look out.”
The girl stared out of her mousetrap eyes, but said nothing.
“It’s okay,” Maggie said. “Just look.” Maggie knelt on the bed beside her and looked to see what the girl might have seen. “I don’t see nothing,” she said. “Nothing but snow, but you’re welcome to look.”
The girl still said nothing, but she crossed the room and joined Maggie at the window.
“Like I say, there ain’t nothing out there but . . .”
The girl touched Maggie on the shoulder and put a finger to her lips. She looked out the window and seemed to search each corner, each cap of snow on each fence post. She finished her search, then backed off the bed, and turned to go.
“I wish I knew what you was looking for.”
“I watch for those men.”
I’ll be damned, Maggie thought. She can talk. Her accent was still some sort of foreign. Maggie could not tell what kind of foreign it was, but it was surely not Ohio.
“What men?”
The girl stared at Maggie for a long time before she answered. “I will tell you,” she said. “But not now.”
“But who . . . ?”
“The men. If they come for me, I will kill myself.”
“But . . .”
“I am dead woman either way.”
“Who . . .”
She raised her hand to cut off Maggie’s question. “Pliz,” she said. “Don’t tell no one.”
The loudspeaker coughed out a call to evening meal. The girl touched her finger to her lips again and slipped out of the room.
* * *
MAGGIE TOLD no one. It was not her nature to tell. The girl resumed her silence through the evening meal, chores, and evening group. She was silent through the AA speakers. She did not so much as look Maggie’s way.
Finally, after evening meeting, they were alone in their room.
The girl was in her nightgown and stood in her bare feet near the door. She was ready to switch off the light when Maggie asked, “Why do you talk all night long in your sleep but you won’t say a word all day?” Maggie did not expect an answer, but she asked anyway.
The mousetrap eyes grew even wider. “Whot did I say?”
“You said a lot, babe.”
“Whot did I say?”
“You said, ‘no’ and ‘please’ over and over, but the rest all sounded foreign.”
“Did I say anyone’s name?”
“It all sounded foreign to me.”
“A name, did I say anyone’s name?”
“How would I know a name in foreign?”
The girl sank down into her bed. She looked across the room to the window and shook her head. “I am dead woman,” she said to the window.
“You don’t look dead to me. And you sure don’t sound dead at night.”
The girl shook her head. “Tomorrow, next day—who knows?—they come for me.” Then she rolled over in her bed and faced the wall and pulled the blanket up to her ears.
In minutes, she was asleep. Maggie could tell because she started again to gasp, hold her breath, and release. But in a few minutes more, she was breathing soft as a kitten.
If the girl shouted in the night again, Maggie did not know it, for she was drowned in her own sleep and her dreams were burdened with curses.
* * *
MAGGIE WOKE in the morning, miserable and alert.
The girl was already up, tidying her bed, folding down the corners neat as that envelope.
“How are you this morning, Dead Woman?”
“Is not a joke,” the girl said. She pulled her sheets tight with a snap, then raised herself to look at Maggie with her unreadable eyes.
“Is not a joke,” she said. “Pliz do not laugh.” She narrowed her eyes. “Do not laugh,” she said.
* * *
HER NAME was Marina. And she came from some unpronounceable country where they convince the young girls they’re headed to America for jobs as nurses or secretaries and they trap them into prostitution. They rape them and they pump them full of drugs and they put them to work as prostitutes.
“Slave,” she said. “I was slave. Even now I am not free, but there I was slave.”
Even when the police raided the place where they worked her, she had not been freed. The men got away; the police charged her with prostitution and a judge sent her to this place.
“The men ran. But they will be back to find me.”
“You sure? You don’t think they’ve maybe learned their lesson?”
“You do not know them. They learn no lessons. They want me back. I tried to run. But they brought me back.”
Maggie’s heart ached for the girl. “I don’t know what to say, babe.”
“Say nothing. You can say nothing to a dead woman.”
* * *
THE NEXT morning, the girl pointed out the window. “Look,” she said. She said it foreign, like Luke. “Luke,” she pointed.
Maggie looked with her. “I don’t see nothing,” she said.
“Luke, there,” she said. “By the fence.”
Maggie saw only the fence line and the snow and the black stalks of corn.
“Footprints,” she said. She said it like boot prints.
“It’s probably a farmer,” Maggie said. “Checking his fence line.”
“Is no farmer.”
“Where do you see these prints?”
“There,” she pointed. “Luke,” she said. “The footprints stop there. Across from these window. They stop there. They stand there. And they watch.”
Maggie looked, but she could not see what the girl saw in the snow. She saw the yard and the birdseed frittered over the snow. She saw the fence and the field beyond the fence. “I still think it’s just a farmer.”
“Is the farmer of souls.”
“How is the farmer of souls gonna find you here?”
“They know.”
“And how they gonna get you out of here?”
“I dunno. I just want to die.” She balled up her fists, bowed her head, and began to pound her temples. “I just want to go somewhere and die.”
“Honey, don’t say that.”
“What can I say? I have no way to live.”
“You can live, babe. I’ve lived through some shit, you can too.”
The girl looked at Maggie with her unreadable look that may have been sly or it may have been despairing. “I have to run,” she said.
“Where you gonna go?”
“I dunno. I dunno. But if I stay here I am dead woman.” She began to grab the ranked soldiers at the top of her dresser and throw them into a backpack.
“Tell the staff. They won’t let them past the desk.”
She laughed a dead woman’s laugh. “Front desk will not stop them.”
“Well, the front desk will sure enough try to stop you if you try to leave.”
“I go out back.”
“And set off the alarm. Think about it.”
The girl set down the backpack and sank onto her bed. “I am dead woman.”
“Not yet. Let’s think.”
“I cannot think.”
“A plan,” Maggie said. “What you need is a plan.”
The girl brooded while Maggie thought.
“I don’t reckon it would help to call the sheriff.”
The girl smirked. “The police tell them go away, they go away. But they come back. I tell you I am dead woman.”
Maggie looked at the little plastic sandals the girl was wearing. “You got better shoes than that?”
“These are the shoes they give a dead woman.”
“You’re sure enough dead if you try to walk through the snow in those things.” Her jacket was even worse, a little thin thing made for style but no good for keeping a body warm.
They agreed that the girl would take Maggie’s coat and shoes. It was a good coat—her old man’s denim coat with a quilted lining. And they were good shoes—high-top work shoes. Maggie could pretend the girl stole them. Maggie could create a diversion and the girl would slip out of a first-floor window and walk across the hills to the next little town where there was a homeless shelter. It had started to snow again. That would make it harder going, but it would cover up her tracks. From there, who knew? The girl would have to figure it out from there.
It worked. Maggie picked an argument with the second shift staff. She got rowdy enough to get everyone’s attention, settled it just short of getting herself written up, then a little later, raised a seco
nd ruckus over the little blond bitch who stole her shoes and coat.
* * *
MAGGIE THOUGHT that, without the girl’s nightmare racket, she would sleep easy. Instead, she fretted, tossed, and worried about the girl. She could not help thinking about what might happen. Would they track her down? Would she freeze to death out there in the snow?
Finally, she thought, Hell with this. I need a smoke. She tossed back the covers, got out of bed, and got a lighter and a cigarette. The monitor at the desk was looking at bikini models in a magazine and never looked up when she asked. He pointed toward the door and nodded.
The prissy shoes the girl had left behind hurt her feet and they were little slim things so that the cold of the snow went right up through the soles. I need to make this quick, she thought. She pulled the girl’s thin jacket close around her and lit up. The smoke felt good, the last thing she had to feel good about.
She shivered through her cigarette. She smoked it down to the filter tip and made ready to flip it over the fence and into the field. She launched it and watched the arc of it over the barbwire fence to where it died in the snow with a hiss.
She knocked on the door to get back in and waited for the monitor. And waited. And muttered and cursed the cold and the silly shoes the girl had left her and the habit of cigarette smoking and the entire race of monitors.
A car came down the road. She heard the engine growl out of the curve and she saw the headlights cross the hedges. Then as it passed, she saw the blood-red taillights brighten as it pulled to a stop about a hundred yards down the cornfield and far from the lights of the farmhouses.
The monitor finally came padding down the hall and opened the door. “Come on in, Maggie,” he said.
“Hold on,” she said.
“It’s too damn cold to hold on.”
“Hold on. Just a minute.”
There were voices now.
“What are you doing out here?”
“I’m looking at this car.”
“It’s too damn cold to look at a car.”
“Hold on.” Maggie strained to hear the voices. “Just a minute,” she said.
“Maggie, I got to do rounds.”
“Do your rounds,” she said. “Come back for me later.”
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