5
From María Paz’s Manuscript
You had a distinct smell, Mr. Rose. I tried to get close to you, not to touch you, I wouldn’t have dared, but to smell you. You’re a good person, so you put on this face as if everything was normal. But you were so tense that an alarm zone formed all around you. I think there would have been sparks if any of us inmates had as much as grazed you. You seemed electrified, sir, at least at the beginning. During those first classes you were so tense you were almost trembling under your Lacoste shirts. It was understandable. It could happen to anyone who goes unprotected into that den of thieves. But we’re not all dangerous here; I want to make that clear. That’s only a small minority. There are some scoundrels, why deny it, bad women who would strike their own mothers. And I’m not talking figuratively. There was this inmate named Melissa who was serving life for killing her old lady by smashing her on the head with a toaster, she toasted her, she toasted her own mother. How much more evil can you get than that? So I don’t blame you for half shitting your pants while you were here, don’t think I don’t understand. I’m the first one to watch my back so I don’t get jumped. Anyway, I was drawn to the fact that you smelled like the outside world. The guards also come and go, they do it every day, but they don’t carry with them that whiff of fresh air. They’re as permeated with confinement as we are. For when it comes down to it, they too are prisoners, or almost, or worse than prisoners, ours at least is by force but theirs is of their own choosing. Your smell, Mr. Rose, brought me news of things so far out of my reach that I had begun to believe they did not even exist, that I was making them up, that they only lived in my longing for them. There are no windows in this restricted area to which I have been confined for a week, not one window. But in 12-GPU, where I was before and where I hope to return soon, there is a window that looks outside. You see, there are numerous windows in the compound, but they all face the inner yards. This is the only one that faces the street. High up on the wall, near the bathrooms, like an eye peering out on the world, or a little ship heading out onto it. Small, the window, nothing really much, and almost shuttered with bars. But you can get up on a bench so you’re at eye level with it and look out to the street, a portion only, in the distance, nothing special. There are no passersby, and not even a tree or a street sign, just a stretch of asphalt and the portion of a wall. Imagine a black-and-white photograph, one of those ones taken by mistake, where nothing or no one is in the frame. That’s all you can see; still, there is always an inmate up on the bench looking out, the eyes escaping to that place known as the outside world, the mind fleeing toward a son, a mother, a house, whatever it may be, any pleasant thing from her past life, like a garden, say, a plant that was watered every day and that has by now withered. Or a lover, there are many in here fingering themselves thinking of some guy on the other side. For even the lowliest among us has left something behind, something that is waiting for her and that glimmers in the glass of that window in 12-GPU near the bathroom. There’s always an inmate upon the bench, and five or six others in line waiting their turn. If one of them gets impatient, she screams at the one standing on the bench, “Get down, you bitch, you think that window is yours?” But the others immediately shut her up. They respect that moment and you have to know how to wait for it calmly, to be able to look out and breathe a little. Watching that stretch of road, I ask myself, Is that America? Or I should say I ask Bolivia, the deceased, because lately I have taken to chatting with her. What do you think, Mother, you know better, is it just a dream after all? Or is America really in here?
You may ask yourself if I thought about escaping. Yes, I did. These days, it is the only question that matters. But it bounces back; I can’t complete the thought before it turns on itself. It’s trapped inside my head, booming and echoing off the walls of my skull but futile. There’s no way to escape from Manninpox, that’s the truth. As much as I turn it over in my head, I can’t figure it out. Although, sure, I imagine it, my cells and neurons scheme, plotting somehow and some way they can make it real. It’s a given that I won’t be able to escape in body, that is, whole, with my eyes, my hair, my bones, my flesh. The only part of me that can leave is my blood, which runs free and can be found again some place far off. And there it goes, there goes the trail of my blood, dripping, slipping, draining, drop by drop searching for the light of day, finding little holes in which to seep, slipping between the rocks, passing through bars and cracks, filtering through walls, sliding past the feet of guards, without excusing itself or drawing attention, not setting off the alarms. This is the only way I can return to the world of the free. A thin stream of blood crossing the field, I run softly on the highways and traverse the woods until I reach the home for special-needs adolescents where Violeta is. From a distance, I see her seated under those ancient trees that soothe her mind, and I watch her, looking at her while she’s looking within. Then I approach her to ask for forgiveness. It’s all my fault. Violeta, I’m going to come for you, little sis. I’m going to take you with me; from now on, we will be together forever. No one or anything will disrupt our plans; I swear by Bolivia that I will keep my promise if you forgive me. I will keep it. I will survive only to keep that promise to her. I tell her that, and that she has to wait for me a little while longer, to have patience while I pass through the place planted with crosses and covered in snow where my mother rests, pretty mamacita. I tell her as well. I’ve come to ask forgiveness for what? I don’t know. Because I haven’t done anything to you, Mami. I’m innocent of what I have been accused. But you know how the mind works. The sense of guilt can be strong even if one is not guilty. So I’ve come to ask for your forgiveness and leave you roses and that’s it, I suppose, because in the end, with you being dead and all, there’s not much you can contribute at the moment. So what can I expect from you? Or maybe, this is funny, I’ll scratch on your gravestone, “Mother, I don’t deserve you, but I need you.” That’s the phrase that Margarita has tattooed on her arm, a Peruvian inmate who is as sentimental as you were, and everyone here mocks her for it. And then I run, a trail of blood now a little more lively, a little lighter, until I get to my house to open the windows to let the sun and air in, and I stay awhile looking at my things, my high-school diploma, the letters from Cami and Pati, pictures of when we were girls, my white crocheted cushions, my bedroom decorated in mint green, my farmed pearls, the box of Swiss chocolates my friends at work just gave me. And I ask my dog Hero to forgive me, that above all, to forgive me, because I’m not sure if he survived after I abandoned him. I ask him who fed him after I left. Come here, little doggy, I’ll never leave again, I assure him, scratching his belly. He believes me and peacefully goes to sleep on my bed. That’s what I’d do out there, Mr. Rose, when they let me go, if they let me go one day, or when I escape: I will take Violeta and Hero, and the three of us will live our day-to-day life, the good life, that is. That’s what I’d do, the same as ever. Because here inside, it is those normal things, the most routine ones, that kill you with nostalgia. But it won’t be easy. When I get out of here it will not be easy at all to deal with the world. The men who broke into my apartment destroyed everything. Everything they touched, they soiled. They pissed on the mattress and the sofa, put my things in black plastic bags, and handled them as if they were removing dead bodies. They ripped up the carpet, pulled down the curtains, and tore open the upholstery, broke bottles, emptied boxes, and broke apart my house and left the door open as if it were a bar, so anyone could just go in. But I don’t remember much of that, and if I don’t remember it, it’s because it didn’t happen. I like to imagine that my house is waiting for me as it always was when I left in the mornings, the bed made, everything in its place, clothes ironed, the floors mopped, the rug vacuumed, the bathroom impeccable, and the first thing I’ll do when I get back—well, the second thing, after taking care of Hero—is to make myself a hearty breakfast to soothe the hunger that has built up. Fresh-squeezed orange juice, café con leche,
pancakes, Aunt Jemima syrup, and fruit, a lot of fruit, strawberries and peaches and apples and papaya and mango and cherimoya, and also some perico scrambled eggs Colombian-style, with diced tomatoes and green onions, and a bagel with cream cheese, and also toast with butter and peanut butter. And a big glass of Diet Coke with a lot of ice. All that? Yes, all that. I’m going to put all that on a tray with one of the embroidered linings that I inherited from Bolivia, and I’m going to have breakfast in bed, no hassle, in my pajamas watching reruns of Friends. And another thing. When I get out of here, will I go looking for Greg? Sleepy Joe? Would I like to see them again? Good questions. But to tell you the truth, I think the answer is no. Neither of them. I don’t even think about reuniting with Greg or with Joe. I barely remember them, perhaps because I blame them for a lot of things. My memory has become whimsical, Mr. Rose, it keeps what is clear and discards what is blurry, it sticks to the past and rejects the present, and seemingly, it liberates itself from what it finds intolerable or incomprehensible. Maybe it would be best to leave Greg and Sleepy Joe where they are, swallowed by oblivion. The entire current of my thoughts, or almost all of it, flows toward Violeta; she takes up all of my memories, the past and what is to come. I have a debt with her. You understand? With Violeta. A huge, crushing debt. I have to take her out of that home for autistic adolescents where I left her against her will. I have to get out of Manninpox to fulfill my promise to her. You’ll see, Mr. Rose, all this is not impossible, my escape plan, I mean. I have started to execute it as we speak. Becoming a stream of blood is already happening.
It’s as if I unplugged something and I’ve begun to empty. As if because I could not escape past the walls, I’ve begun to escape from myself. But don’t think I’m attracted to the idea of dying. I’ve tried to stop the hemorrhaging with compresses, drugs, spells, yoga, prayers, and even cotton balls coated in arnica and ginger. All for nothing. I started with this whole drama right after I arrived in Manninpox, in the dining room during lunch. They had assigned me a permanent spot at one of the tables, which are long, for eight or ten prisoners with adjoining benches. That day I finished eating, picked up my tray, and headed for one of the corners, where we have to turn them in before the bell rings, and as I was doing this I noticed that the others opened a path before me. They had already warned me that one of the most dangerous moments in here is when you are walking with both of your hands busy carrying the tray, which is when they can jump you. If somebody wants to fuck you, that’s when they can do it, stab you in the side and disappear into the mayhem that ensues. I don’t know if they ever told you, but Piporro (do you remember Piporro, who came to your workshop a couple of times?), she was carrying her tray, and they pierced her with the long sharpened handle of a plastic spoon. Nothing like that was happening to me. I panicked because of the opposite, when I noticed that everyone was moving aside to let me pass. I felt as if they were watching me with disgust and thought they were going to hit me. That’s the sensation I had. In jail, intuitions like that come all of a sudden, like getting sucker-punched. The certainty of danger is physical, the warning from the body, not the mind. I was always aware of the eyes of the others, terrified to be looked upon with hatred or to be looked at too much. I needed to know how they were looking at me to know what to expect. But the longer you’re here, the more you come to understand that the eyes are less important than the hands. What you must never grow careless about are the hands of others, because that’s how aggression is expressed. Keep a close eye on anyone with her hands behind her or in her pockets. The real danger is always in the hands.
I didn’t know that yet, and I hadn’t made friends who would defend me. I hadn’t formed alliances or joined any of the gangs, and my sisterhood with Mandra X had not yet begun, meaning I was alone and left to my own devices.
They had already warned me about her, Mandra X. “She’s the leader of those who spill milk,” they told me. I imagined a million things. Spill milk? It sounded sexual, but something a man would say. Later, I was able to see it with my own eyes. Fucking around, they’d spill cartons of milk on the floor of the dining room. Las Nolis: that’s what Mandra’s girls are called. They’re her clan, her buddies—the sect of the chosen. You would go get some food and there were puddles of milk everywhere, the tables, the benches, the trays. At first, I thought they did it just to fuck with people, but later I found out it was their way of demanding from those in charge that they replace the regular milk with lactose-free milk. Because of the farts, you know? Here, it’s two, three, or even four to a cell. Many of the inmates are lactose intolerant, and if they drink it, their stomach swells, and then come the torpedoes. Can you imagine what it’s like to spend a night locked up in a room eight by nine feet with three old broads farting away? A gas chamber, sorry, bad joke. They also said that Mandra X was a dyke, and that if she liked someone, she got her by hook or by crook. That’s what they said. I wasn’t sure. I had seen her, and she was a huge woman; in Manninpox, whoever commits to working out and is disciplined about it can become a bull without leaving her cell, with a daily routine of push-ups, pull-ups, sit-ups, and crunches. That was Mandra X, so muscular you would swear she had a pair of hanging balls. And she was weird, very weird. Weirder than a checkered dog. They also told me that she was the leader of the resistance inside. That she was a warrior, or what they call warrior in here, an inmate who’s not afraid of skirmishes. The one who goes to the authorities with demands when the prisoners get worked up about something. I had heard all this, but until that moment I had only run into her in the hallway when she had jumped on me for asking too many questions. They also said that her gang, Las Nolis, made blood pacts, that they had their own mythology and rituals, and even engaged in sacrificial practices. That’s what they said about her and her group, and I didn’t like it, although it seemed to have its benefits, given that I was vulnerable here, and I needed to associate with someone. Because here, if you’re alone you pay for it, and you can be forced to do some pretty ugly things, such as become somebody’s woman. Or a maid. “From now on you are mine,” one of the butch women would tell you, and if you don’t respond by pulling her eyes out you become her sexual slave. Or some cacique comes and says, “You, just so you know, from now on you are my servant.” Either you smash her teeth in, or you’ll be doing her laundry, making her bed, giving her money, finding her cigarettes, cleaning her cell, writing letters for her sons and boyfriends. They even make you cut their toenails and give them manicures. Or also to go down on them, which here they call cunni. That’s almost always the fate of the unaffiliated. But I still avoided Mandra X and her Nolis, so they wouldn’t rape me or force me to participate in their satanic rituals. As if there were other options to consider, such as the Children of Christ, who take a drug called angel dust and walk around having visions of Christ. Anyway, they were a black sisterhood and would never accept me. There were also the Netas, all Puerto Rican, the Sisters of Jarimat UI for the Muslims, and the Wontan Clan, the least likely to take me because they were white extremists.
I grew to understand that Mandra X had real pull in this place and it would be a good idea to belong to her group. That’s why I’m part of the group, more or less. Don’t think I’m one of the zealots. In any case, she has become my protector and adviser, my sister, my “brotha,” and me, her “sweet kid,” her protectee. When it comes to matters of love, she’s imposing, jealous, randy, unfaithful, Don Juana-ish, fucked in the head, calculating; that is, she has all the defects of a man and more. But with her friends she’s solid as a rock. There is not a more dangerous lover or a sounder buddy. I’m not gonna tell you she’s my friend, she’s friends with no one, she’s up on her high horse, and no one can touch her. How should I put it? Mandra X is a fortress inside the prison, a place of refuge for her protectees, a horror for her enemies, a boyfriend to her mistresses, and a leader for her followers.
One time I told her I felt alone. It was naiveté on my part.
“Alone?�
�� she harangued me. “What the fuck do you mean you feel alone when you just joined the ranks of a huge part of the population of the United States, the ones behind bars, that is? So you’re alone, my depressive little fuck, my sad little cunt, my pillow biter? So snap out of it, bitch, because you are also part of a quarter of all the imprisoned people in the world, who are here in these United States.”
Now I know that you shouldn’t talk nonsense here, or be guided by sentimentalism. I have learned to report my days as bad and not so bad, sometimes more bad than others. Sometimes the hemorrhaging stops, it disappears completely for a week or so, as if a spigot in my veins has been closed. Then I feel as if my life comes back, I recover my energy, my joy, who would’ve have thought it, my joy in spite of everything. On those days, I try to recover, I feed myself well, I write pages and more pages, I even grow calmer thinking that at some point everything will become clear and I’m going to get out of here and go directly to Violeta. I give myself to this vision, dreaming that one day I’ll buy her a house with a garden for her, for Hero, and for me, who knows with what money, but who cares, money doesn’t exist in dreams. And Mandra X, who is Mandra X? Where does she come from? No one knows. She doesn’t utter a peep. She’s white but she speaks Spanish; she’s male but she has tits and a pussy; she’s a justice-seeker and a writer of legal writs and she knows everything there is to know about the law, but she mocks American justice, asserting it is the worst and most corrupt in the world. But she knows it inside out. Imagine decades locked up in here, studying the penal code, looking for a way around it, finding loopholes and resources. But all this knowledge is useless when it comes to her case, because she’s sentenced to life, and from that, no one, not even she, can save herself. She doesn’t allow questions to be asked about her and doesn’t gossip, yet she knows everything. She’s the living memory of this place. According to her, forgetfulness and ignorance are the worst two enemies of a prisoner. Look at my case, the most horrible things that happen to me are the ones I forget about the quickest. Since the night of my husband Greg’s birthday, I have lived through a chain of horrors, but there are blank spaces where the sequence of events should be, like you used to say, on display on its corresponding shelf. But not me, I hide pain and confusion when they’re still fresh in these nebulous zones. Mandra X won’t tolerate that one bit. She forces me to write about what has happened, to go over it, make it worth something, and learn from it. She stores away facts about you that your own memory has forgotten; then she gives them back to you, forcing you to confront them. That’s rare in here. Here, things are set up so that you grow apart from yourself, divide yourself in two, and mop both sides of the hallway at once.
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