by Peter Wright
The other girl lays down three kings. “I’m Chris.”
“And you kind of know Betty,” Heather says. “Everyone, this is Kayla.”
Linda picks a card from the deck. She and her sister speak in near unison. “Hi, Kayla.”
“I’m sticking with Oakmont until I change my mind to say otherwise,” Betty says. “What’re they dishing out down there today?”
“Fish,” Heather says.
“Blah.” Betty sticks out her tongue and turns back to the window. “Doubt it’s even real fish anyway.”
“Nurse Amy!” Chris says.
The nurse enters. She hands Kayla the pail with its soap and toothbrush and washrag. Kayla’s name printed on the side in black marker, another girl’s name scribbled out. She sets the folded sheets and blankets on the bed, but before she turns, Linda embraces her. A hug, a wordless history. Linda steps back, a squeeze of the nurse’s hand before returning to her card game.
The nurse speaks to Kayla. “The others will help you out. Just follow their lead. They’re a good bunch.”
Betty keeps her attention on the window. “I’m not rolling out the welcome mat for anyone.”
The nurse touches Kayla’s shoulder. “Betty will warm up.”
“All I got to say is Oakmont better not be a chatty one. I can’t stand another running mouth in my life.”
Kayla follows the nurse to the door. Her tone soft so the others won’t hear. “The letter? If I write it, you’ll help me send it off?”
A sigh, the exhaustion of a long shift. A hand on Kayla’s shoulder. “Sure. But get yourself settled first. There’s a whole new routine to get used to.”
Heather takes one end of the sheet and Kayla grabs the other. They each give a snap, the sheet pulled over the corners and tucked in. Betty at the window. “Oakmont’s probably used to having her maid do that.”
Chris looks up from her cards. “Is Oakmont really nice?”
Kayla circles the bed, the sheet tucked beneath the mattress and the cot’s net of metal springs. “It was.”
“They got toilets made of gold and . . .” Betty’s voice trails. “Hold up. Hold up.” She waves, and the others join her at the window. “Here we go, ladies.”
Kayla the last to reach the window. A view of the building’s back. The macadam moat. The street and houses beyond the fence. A guard swings back the fence’s double gates. A black pickup rolls in, a splash through the macadam’s puddles. The guard relocks the gate. The pickup jerks a series of tight turns, its reverse siren chirping. The guard waves until the truck’s bumper nears the loading dock directly below the pod’s window. The girls press their foreheads against the glass. The driver steps out. A young man, a baseball cap and scruffy goatee. He pulls back the bed’s tarp and reaches into a box. A handshake exchange, the cigarette carton slipped beneath the guard’s coat.
Betty smiles. “You’d better be coming through for us, Zacky.”
“He said he’d bring some pens this time,” Linda says. “I hope he does. And paper.”
“He’d better be bringing more than that.” Betty turns. Kayla at the window’s far end. “What’re you looking at, Oakmont?”
Kayla considers her, then turns her gaze back outside.
“You’d better not be a talker.” Betty rests her cheek against the window, her neck craning.
“I’m less a talker than you seem to be.”
“Yeah, well I got a right to talk, Oakmont. I’ve been here longer than all of you.”
The driver carries a pair of stacked boxes into the cafeteria’s rear entrance. “My name’s Kayla.”
“Kayla? Ha!” Betty shakes her head. “I’ll bet half the princesses in Oakmont are named Kayla.”
“I think Kayla’s a pretty name,” Chris says.
“Living with you and your sister is like living with fucking Chip and Dale,” Betty says.
Chris smiles. “She calls us Chip and Dale sometimes.”
A buzz from the intercom. The girls pull back from the window. “Fish,” Betty says. “Dried out, foul-ass fish.” Heather and the sisters line up at the door. Betty stands on a chair then climbs onto the desk. She raises herself onto her tiptoes. With a stretch and reach, she pushes aside a ceiling tile. “How am I looking?”
Heather at the door. “You’re good.”
Betty gropes in the black space then returns the tile. She climbs down and tosses a half dozen cigarettes on Kayla’s bunk. She smiles. “New girl’s got to stash our loosies for a spell until we see what’s what.”
Heather snaps her fingers. “That mean’s Panda Bear’s coming to round us up,” Betty says. “You’d better hide those cigs or else you’ll have some explaining to do.”
Betty and the sisters look at her. Betty still smiling but not the sisters. Heather snaps her fingers twice. “Better hustle, Oakmont,” Betty says.
The cigarettes’ paper smooth against her palm, a loose cradling. Outside, a man barks orders. The voices of the girls from the adjoining pods. Kayla slides her hand into her scrub’s pocket. Then the touch of her necklace.
Three quick snaps of Heather’s fingers. Kayla looks around. She’s only seen this room as a collection of its most basic elements—its windows and beds, desks and chairs—now, a mouse’s vision. A hiding place, a crevice beneath the obvious. The guard’s voice just outside the door. Kayla picks up her pillow and slides the cigarettes deep into the case.
“They’d better not get crushed,” Betty says.
A face at the doorway. The bald guard with the thin beard, the one from her break-room dreams, the smooth-headed silhouette against the soda-machine light. A stain on his green scrub, blood perhaps, faded. He surveys the room before his gaze settles on Kayla. “What’s the hold up, ladies?”
Betty in the lead as they file out. “I don’t think the new girl’s a real quick learner.”
The girls lean against the corridor’s opposite wall. Betty in front of Kayla, Heather behind. The guard marches up then down, counting as he goes. The alcohol scent of his aftershave wafts over Kayla. He reaches the line’s front and waves. “Let’s roll, reds.”
Kayla turns to Heather. “Panda Bear?”
Betty’s voice low. A slowing step, the distance increased between her and the guard. “Because one day he drives up and there’s this big-ass panda bear in his passenger seat. He bought it for his girl, but she didn’t want it.”
“Not long after that, she didn’t want him,” Heather says.
Betty turns back when they reach the stairwell landing. “Can you blame the sister?”
“So he drove around with it in his car,” Heather says. “For like a month.”
Linda pokes her head over Heather’s shoulder. “It was kind of creepy.”
“But not as creepy as him and his skinny-ass beard,” Betty says.
They claim one of the cafeteria’s round tables. Another guard, this one with a wide belly and greasy blond hair, at the entrance. The women in their hairnets clear the serving trays. The door in the cafeteria’s rear opens and closes as the pickup driver stacks boxes outside the supply closet. He pauses, a tip of his cap for Betty.
She smiles and speaks softly. “Thataboy, Zacky.” Her fork flakes a white-gray sliver from her fish. “You like eating, Oakmont? Because there’s some things to learn here. One is there’s never seconds for the red lunch. Good news is usually no one wants seconds of this shit.”
“It’s bad, but it’s not super-duper bad,” Chris says.
Linda lifts her fork. “It’s been worse.”
“Shut up, both of you. Jesus.” Betty points her fork at Kayla. “But sometimes they have sheet cake or sweet rolls. Somehow they manage not to fuck them up too much.”
“That’s when there’s any left for us,” Heather says.
“Don’t get me started.” Betty turns to Heather. “You done cleaning up down here?”
Heather nods.
“So you’ll take care of the closet tomorrow.”
“Yep.�
�
“Keep an eye on Oakmont here. Don’t want anyone messing up the routine.”
Kayla brings another forkful to her mouth. The fish dry and cold and bland. The other girls’ conversation littered with codes and established truths. Kayla’s plan—shut up and listen, their words more pieces of the puzzle. She washes down the fish with a sip of water. Food and observation—these will be her weapons. She’ll keep her eyes open. She’ll learn. She’ll ignore the wilderness all around and focus on the path. She’ll fit in where she can, make herself invisible when she can’t, fight when she has to. She’ll walk the hallways and stairwells until her map burns vivid as neon. Fish, stews, stale bread, sweet rolls, a bed to sleep in and a roof above—she’ll accept the machine’s offerings and bide her time. Her focus in the moment. Her destiny waiting, a reunion beyond the fence’s razor wire.
“Alright, reds.” Panda Bear claps his hands. “Let’s move out.”
Trays in hand, the girls line up at the dishwashing station’s window. The clatter from the window, the warmth and wet steam. Kayla behind Betty. The other guard by the tray drop. A slim cord snakes from beneath his collar, earbuds tucked beneath his greasy hair, his boot tapping. Each girl pauses before him, an inspection and a nod before he waves them on.
Betty turns. “And this one here’s Mr. Heavy Metal.” They reach the line’s front. Betty sets her tray on the window’s tiled ledge. She hands over her plate and cup then holds up her fork and knife and spoon. The guard nods and Betty tosses the silverware into the sudsy bin. The utensils rattle, and when Betty steps behind the guard, she raises her hands. A pair of devil horns, her tongue out. “Heavy metal, baby.”
Kayla’s first night in the pod. Lights out, the other girls talking. Kayla listens. Her map growing. The cigarettes returned, yet the tobacco scent lingers on her pillow. Betty’s tone quieter. A story about her uncle’s house, backyard horseshoes, lightning bugs kept in a jar then released in a sparkling fountain. The sisters impossible to distinguish in the dark, their voices like competing halves of an echo. Heather’s bunk next to Kayla’s. Heather with the least to say, but when she speaks, the others listen.
Silence, the beginning of drift. A reunion with the machine’s stripped pulse. The courtyard lights angle up. The ceiling above Kayla dark, but just beyond, a watery shine. She wonders if she’ll sleep. The thrum of her heart. The bad electricity in her head, the projector waiting to sputter to life. A floorboard squeaks, a scrape of metal on wood. Kayla turns to see Linda pushing her bunk until it rests against her sister’s.
A whisper: “Goodnight, Kayla.”
“Night, Heather.”
Betty’s raspy voice: “Don’t you two ever shut up?”
The sisters, curled in their adjoining beds, laugh.
Kayla slides the necklace from her pocket. She turns, holding herself still as she secures the clasp behind her neck. She lies back, her palm resting over the cross, her eyes open. She grows accustomed to the dark, and the ceiling’s black and white blend into a field of ash. She fights the urge to rock by clenching and releasing her muscles. Arms, legs, chest—the rigidness of seizures, the release of death. She falls inward; her body pushed back, the squeak of grinding molars, pain in her jaw. The demand comes in waves. Minutes apart, then longer. She’s forgotten the feel of hours—these days of running and hiding—but reason tells her a few have passed. Around her, the machine’s purr, the murmur of sleeping breath. She drifts. A surrender, if not to sleep then at least to a floating pool. Her body offered to the ether, to the ceiling’s lake of gray.
She wakes to music on the loudspeaker. The pool in which she’d been drifting evaporates, a delivery from the hallway outside her father’s office. Light spilled from the diorama, a shine on floor tile that held like glue to her bare feet. The otter’s glassy eyes upon her, and it rose onto its hind legs and spoke even though its mouth didn’t move. This is my home, Kayla . . .
Linda pushes her bunk back. Heather slides into her flip-flops and drapes a towel over her shoulder. The music soft at first, then louder, a tune Slater played often on his patio. “My America, I’ll fight for you. Holy America, I’ll bleed for you.” Betty still in bed, and when the song swells into its chorus, she pulls her pillow over her face and screams. Kayla follows the others’ lead and gathers her towel and pail.
“Morning, Kayla,” Linda says. “Morning,” her sister adds.
Betty shuffles past. Her eyes slits. “You’d better not be a morning person like Chip and Dale here, Oakmont. Talkers and morning people can all go to hell.”
Linda plays with her cropped bangs. “Didn’t you sleep well, Betty?”
“Shut up, Linda. Jesus.”
The bathroom down the hall. “Oldest pod goes first,” Heather says. “That’s us.” The bathroom tiled in yellow and white. A drain at the center of the floor’s gentle slope. A series of stalls along one wall. Opposite, six sinks, and above, a wall-length mirror. The girls line up at the sinks, Kayla taking the empty spot between Heather and Betty.
Kayla’s fingers beneath the spigot. A waiting for warmth that doesn’t come. The splash of tepid water, a tiny bar of soap. Her eyes covered as she rubs the towel over her cheeks. She slings the towel over her shoulder and is met by the staring reflections of Heather and Betty and the sisters.
“What?” Kayla asks.
Betty reaches out. Her wet hand against Kayla’s throat, a lifting of the cross. Her tone quiet. “Shit, Oakmont. You can’t wear that around.”
Kayla fumbles with the clasp. “I forgot—”
“You need to hide it,” Heather says. “At least during the day. They’ll take it.”
Kayla slides the necklace into her pocket. Panda Bear’s gruff call from the hallway: “Let’s hustle, pod one. Pod two, get those beds made.”
The girls gather their things. “Where’d you get that?” Betty asks.
“It’s my mom’s.”
Chris by Kayla’s side as they file into the hallway. “It’s pretty.”
“It is,” Linda adds.
The girls back in their pod. Betty silent as Kayla folds the necklace into a blanket and tucks it into the bottom of her footlocker. Kayla makes her bed and slides into her maroon top. The girls file into the main hallway. Kayla glances down the line and guesses the youngest are six or seven. Babies, their voices high, yet she wonders what hauntings they carry. Betty at the line’s front, her shoulders slumped against the wall, head back and eyes closed. Chris behind her then Linda, her hands knotting a loose braid into her sister’s hair. Kayla next and Heather behind her.
Panda Bear at the line’s end. The fluorescent lights shine on his shaved head. The jangle of his keys as he makes his count. He stops at the line’s front. “OK, ladies, let’s move.”
A single line. Betty setting the pace, shuffling steps and a hummed tune. Kayla looks down the hallway that connects the red and white wings. At the hall’s center, a guard at a desk. The dividing sawhorses. Opposite the desk, a central stairwell, and she wonders if these are the stairs that lead to the third floor.
They exit the red stairwell and line up outside the cafeteria’s double doors. Betty resumes her wall-leaning pose. Panda Bear marches by, another silent count. On the other side of the doors’ glass, the girls in white drop off their trays and form a line of their own. Heavy Metal chews a roll and laughs with one of the cafeteria ladies. The girls in white file past, his silverware-checking duties overlooked. He wipes icing from his mouth. He reaches the line’s front and opens the door. The whites march past, and in Kayla, the awareness of stares and whispers. A blond girl with pimpled cheeks flashes a scissor-cutting gesture as she nears Linda.
“Anyone ugly as you shouldn’t be drawing attention,” Betty snaps. Chris and Linda rub their temples with raised middle fingers.
“Hey, hey.” Panda Bear at the line’s end, a straddling of the taped line. “Let’s keep it civil up there, Betty.”
Near the line’s end, the blond girl Kayla saw on the steps.
Behind her, the hulking redheads. The blond stops in front of Kayla, a glint in her eye. She steps across the line and strokes Kayla’s cheek. “She’s a cute little thing, isn’t she?”
Betty’s hand a flash. A smack of flesh, the blond girl’s fingers batted away. The blond’s fists jerk up, then Betty’s. Heavy Metal hustles between them and pushes Betty against the wall. A smile from the blond girl before she moves on.
Betty squirms as Panda Bear latches onto her arm and rousts her across the threshold. “Why’re you grabbing me when they’re the ones getting all touchy?”
“Just shut up and eat.” Panda Bear releases her with a shove. “Too early for you and your attitude.”
Betty adjusts her scrub top, her tone lower. The girls at the serving line’s head. “Wish I knew if he was more ignorant or stupid. That way I’d know what to hate the most about his ass.”
Heather takes a tray and hands one to Kayla. “He sure isn’t colorblind.”
The women in hairnets scoop out powdered eggs. The serving trays behind the glass less than half full, the steam no longer rising from the wells. Each girl given a sausage slab. “Cold eggs,” Betty says. “The breakfast of champions.”
The girls claim their table. Kayla’s toast crumbles beneath her butter knife. “Forget it, Oakmont,” Betty says. “Cold eggs, cold toast.” She shoves a forkful into her mouth. “Just shut down those taste buds and swallow.” She waves the fork in Kayla’s direction. “You’ve got to stick up for yourself, sister. Can’t let a white step to you without setting her back on her heels. Can’t let them cross that line. Especially that bitch Donna.”
“Donna’s kind of their leader,” Chris says.
“And Betty’s right.” Linda ducks a bit and whispers. “She’s a real bitch. And the redheads are mean. Super mean.”
“Don’t forget stupid.” Betty takes a bite of sausage. “Lord knows there’s enough stupid to go around.”
Heather smiles. “They don’t smell so hot either.”
“Amen,” Betty says.
The cafeteria workers break down the line. The trays lifted from their wells. One of the women hums along with the piped-in music. A post Shut-In song, callings to Jesus and America. Betty finishes her milk. “Only thing worse than the food is their goddamn tunes.”