The Magpie's Return

by Peter Wright

  “Good,” Heather says.

  The guards corral the reds after rec. A meeting in the cafeteria and the assigning of new, temporary chores, tasks assumed as the whites work on a project for the Deacon, banners and posters completed in the secrecy of their upstairs wing. Grumbles from some, but Kayla enjoys her chores’ mindlessness. Their invitations to daydream. The opportunity to move, to investigate. Panda Bear calls her name and Heather’s. “You two are with me.”

  They sweep the white and center stairwells. When they’re done, he leads them to the cafeteria’s alcove and opens the staff-only staircase. A trudge up, these stairs steeper, narrower. No security cameras, no dividing line. No windows, a single light on each landing. Rising echoes. The second floor and here, finally, the stairs continue, a climb to a locked door.

  Panda Bear sits on the top stair. He plugs in his earbuds. His cheeks milky blue in the shine of his cupped phone. His thumbs tap, the girls left to sweep, a spiraling return to the cafeteria’s alcove. Heather’s words softer than the whisk of their brooms. Kayla listens, and her map expands beyond the physical. The history of Betty and Zach, the school’s delivery driver a friend of Betty’s cousin, the two men petty players in the black market. Heather speaks of the whites’ ambush of Linda, a reprisal for a coughing fit during Donna’s Sunday service solo. Linda held down; her hair smeared with rubber cement. The redheads one of the school’s first occupants, Philadelphia girls, their parents vaporized. Donna’s mother a suicide during the Shut-In’s long winter, her father a cop—maybe crooked, maybe not—gunned down in their driveway. On the first-floor landing, Heather pulls up her T-shirt’s cuff and explains her tattoo—an outline of a dove, smaller than a quarter, the beak pointing up if she raised her hand. The work done with smuggled ink, Betty and the sisters huddled close as Carolyn worked the needle. The others planned to get their tattoos the next night but then Carolyn’s removal, the ink discovered in her footlocker along with cigarettes and a toothbrush handle melted and filed to point.

  “She never told us about the shiv.” Heather returns to sweeping. “But I guess she felt she needed it.”

  Morning convocation. The Deacon at his podium. Rapture in his voice. The sanctity of work and the gift of new beginnings. A describing of the love that pours from God’s outstretched arms, the invitation to a woman’s glorious role in the new society. The return to tradition. To family. To holiness. His believer’s flush, his hands raised. He asks the girls to stand and pray. The whites adopt his pose, their arms lifted, palms up. Some of the younger reds do the same, but in the back, Kayla and Heather and the sisters stand still. Their hands clasped before them. The sisters with their heads bowed. Heather’s gaze fixed on the Deacon, her expression today blank and cool.

  “Hear us, Lord.” The Deacon louder now, his voice rumbling through the auditorium’s wide spaces. “Hear the prayers of your humble servants.”

  Betty returns ten minutes before lights out. Old John her escort. Old John usually on the night shift, silver beard and weathered face. A thermos of spiked coffee. A heavy right leg, his boot heel worn. A crook in his hip and a sigh when he settles behind the guard’s desk that separates the red wing from the white. Kayla hears them first—Betty’s laugh then Old John’s. Kayla sets down the magazine she’s borrowed from the common area. Some of the pages torn, none of them stiff. “The whites get them first,” Linda explained.

  Betty pauses in the doorway. An arcing wave. “Howdy, campers.”

  The sisters run forward. Their card game abandoned; hugs that knock Betty back a step. She turns to the guard. “You on all night, John?”

  “Yep.”

  Betty smiles. “I feel safer, then.”

  “Lights out soon, ladies.” He shuffles out. The scrape of his heel, the keychain’s jangle. He turns. “I’m sure you’ll want to catch up some, but keep it hush-hush, OK?”

  Betty holds a finger to her lips. “Hush-hush, A-OK.”

  The door shuts. A hug from Heather then again from Linda and Chris. Betty silent, her eyes shut for each embrace, a slap for Heather’s back. Betty nods at Kayla. “How’s old Oakmont working out?”

  “She’s really good at math,” Linda says.

  Then Chris: “Mr. James says she knows more than him. Like a lot more.”

  Betty sits on her cot, and her palm smooths the blanket. “I’ll bet old Mr. James missed me, at least in his own tight-ass way.”

  “She’s doing OK,” Heather says. “Helped sneak up our stuff.”

  Betty grins. “Oakmont’s joined the panty brigade.” She offers a fist, and Kayla’s knuckles meet hers. “Bet none of your crew back home can say that.”

  The lights flicker. Old John’s voice from the hallway. “Lights out, ladies! Lights out!”

  “He’s on all night.” Betty raises an invisible bottle to her lips.

  Another flicker, the last warning, and within a minute, darkness. The girls settle into their cots. Goodnight. Goodnight. Kayla pulls up her blanket. The ceiling with its fields of white and black and gray, a horizon like the water’s surface seen from far below. The machine’s hum lifts from the floorboards and into her cot’s frame. A mechanical heartbeat that knits itself into hers.

  Another rhythm—the carousel that turns behind her shut her eyes. A lifetime that comes and goes, random and buzzing. The spin of memories, the gift and curse of being unable to forget. The scratch of her mother’s pen, the scent of her steeping tea. Her father’s boots stepping across mud and scrap wood. A gnarled ball dropped from Chestnut’s mouth. Then the scenes that fall like boulders, the carousel stopped and Kayla pinned beneath their weight. The catch of panties on a tooth. The blackened soles of her mother’s feet. The reflection of light from her father’s broken glasses.

  Heather slips past Kayla’s bed. Silent and barefoot, a glance into the hallway and the door pulled shut. A hushed click. “Clear,” she whispers.

  Betty stands atop the desk and rises into the courtyard’s angled light. She pushes aside the ceiling tile and retrieves the cigarette pack and pint bottle. The sisters each take a side of the wide window, a whispered count. The wood’s budge and sigh and the sudden push of cool air. Heather wedges a rolled-up towel beneath the door and joins the sisters as they settle onto the floor beneath the window. Betty, a cigarette between her lips, leans against the sill. A lighter’s spark, a new illumination for her face. A deep inhale, a savoring before she blows a plume through the window’s metal grate. “Shit, Oakmont, you need an invitation?”

  Kayla sits at the semicircle’s end. Her shoulder rests against the cold radiator. The city’s stirrings through the opened window—a truck’s honk, the rattle of the riverside train. Betty savors another puff and balances the cigarette on the sill. Heather takes her place, her skin the color of bone in the slanting light. A drag and the cigarette’s tip glows across her cheeks.

  Betty sifts through the items arranged on the floor. “This is it, huh?”

  “We got some hand lotion,” Linda whispers. “And lip balm. They smell good.”

  “But no magazines,” Chris says. “And no gum.”

  “No pens,” Linda says.

  Heather takes another puff. The smoke blown out but yet some swirls inside. “Second time our box has been light.”

  Chris next at the window. Delicate inhales, a stifled cough. “The whites have gum. Lots of it, I think.” She hands the cigarette to Linda. “They chew it right in front of the guards. Even in front of the Deacon. Don’t know how they don’t see it.”

  “Fuck if they don’t see it,” Betty says. “I need to talk to my cousin. Although I’m sure as shit not paying Zach the way Donna is.”

  Linda flicks ash onto her palm and blows it out the window. She rests the cigarette on the sill and returns to the floor. “You really think she does that?”

  “That choirgirl act is as old as time itself,” Betty says. She turns to Kayla. “Well Oakmont, you going to partake?” Betty raises her hand, a haughty gesture. “Or do you req
uire a cigarette holder like your girl Cruella?”

  Kayla stands. A gray ribbon from the cigarette’s tip weaves the window’s mesh. She pinches the cigarette’s end and brings the filter to her mouth. She’s always been repulsed by the habit. The knots she passed outside movie theaters, the skating rink’s tough boys. Missy and the Wolf Pack girls. She inhales. The ashy taste in her mouth, the expanse of her lungs. A moment of dizziness. Her lips brush the metal grate and she exhales. The plume captured in the light then gone. In any other circumstances, she would have declined. Tonight, she takes another drag. The scratch and heat the bread of this communion. A connection to this place and these girls and their shared lot. Another exhale. In the distance, the bays of abandoned dogs.

  She hands the cigarette to Betty. A brush of fingers, Betty sucking a final draw then a careful grinding of the tip against the windowsill, the snuffed cigarette returned to the pack. She takes her place in the floor’s semicircle. The pint’s cap snaps with her twist. The dark flavored with the whiskey’s sharp scent. “Thanks for waiting for me, ladies,” Betty says.

  “We wouldn’t do it without you,” Chris says.

  Linda rubs her palms together. A child’s grin. “But now I can’t wait a second longer.”

  Betty holds the bottle. The pint a heart of captured light. “Just a swig. Not sure when we’ll get another.” She sips, the bottle eased from her lips and a deep inhale. She closes her eyes and smiles. “Now that, my sisters, is something to tell your grandma about.”

  Linda next. A grimace, the shudder of a rouge current. An identical reaction from her sister. Heather pauses before her sip, the opening held beneath her nose. She drinks. A lift in her chest and a long, steady exhale between pursed lips. A smile as she hands the bottle to Kayla.

  “Deacon says there’ll be a basketball tournament next week,” Chris says. “Did you hear that up there, Betty?”

  Linda chimes in. “Donna and the twins have been practicing outside.”

  “No, I didn’t hear,” Betty says. “And no, I don’t want to talk about the fucking Deacon tonight.” She sticks out her tongue. “We had ourselves a go-round in iso. The fucking creep had me hold his hand while we prayed, then when he was done, he gave me an extra day, the fucker.”

  “That hand-holding part is gross.” Chris says. “Eww.”

  “Like holding hands with a crocodile,” Betty says.

  Linda’s expression serious. “Crocodiles don’t have hands, do they? They’re more like paws or something.”

  “Shut up. Jesus,” Betty says. She nods to Kayla. “You holding that thing all night?”

  The glass cool against Kayla’s palm. She lifts the bottle, the scent cutting. A smell that lingered in the living room’s glasses last New Year’s morning. That other life’s final moments. All of it gone. She guides the bottle to her lips. The warmth on her tongue, her throat’s burn. The night’s second communion. A shared transgression. A claiming of independence. A shudder she can’t hide and tears in her eyes. A cough stifled with the back of her hand.

  Betty takes the bottle. “Look at our gal Oakmont. Getting down with us plain folks.”

  Linda hugs herself. “I’ll bet you’re good at basketball, Kayla.”

  Kayla blinks and catches her breath. She bunches back her hair and pulls it over her shoulder. Her hands stroke the length of her ponytail. A tug at her scalp and the memory of the braids her mother wove. “It’s not my sport, but I’m OK.”

  “You could play with Heather and Betty in the tournament,” Chris says. “Linda and I aren’t too good at sports.”

  “Ain’t that the truth.” Betty holds up the bottle. “What do you say, sisters? Is this a two-swig night?”

  Linda offers a soft clap. “Yes.”

  A few younger whites claimed the hallway outside the cafeteria. A long banner of crinkling paper, the smell of paint. The girls kneel, brushes in hand. One girl looks up, unsmiling and observant, as Panda Bear leads Heather and Kayla into the cafeteria. The ovens’ warmth, fish again. The radio’s patriotic tunes. The dishwasher’s humid current.

  They stop outside the supply closet. These past days of double-duty, the whites excused from all chores as they paint banners and rehearse songs. The Deacon smiled during morning convocation, a wink to the whites and the promise the reds would soon appreciate the fruits of their sisters’ labors. Panda Bear’s phone tucked against his shoulder as he fumbles through the supply closet. A woman’s shrill complaint. Panda Bear agitated, sighs and eye rolls. “No, no. That ain’t right!” The caged window on the loading dock door. Rain again, soft and steady, and Kayla pictures the earth’s patterns. The change of seasons, the cooler mornings and longer nights. The swirling clouds and their cleansings of water and wind, a picture from one of her father’s science books, and Kayla a child again on his lap. Their house full of books and music and light. The scent of Chestnut’s wet fur. Her mother’s pen hovering above the page as she searched for the right word. Her father kneeling in his garden. A thousand memories and a thousand on top of them, her own book and its pages of comfort and sorrow.

  Panda Bear hands each a broom and leads them into the back stairwell. Panda Bear’s scent sharper here. Cigarettes, cheap aftershave. The stairs navigated with a finger’s belt-loop tug of his sagging jeans. His lanyard’s glossy ID catches the light as he turns the second-floor landing, and his agitated voice echoes up the stairwell’s concrete throat. “Prove it then! Prove it!” He presses the phone against his chest and speaks to the girls. “You get up and start working your way down. I’ll be back.” He hurries off. His voice rising in his wake. “If I’m a goddamned liar then goddamn prove it already!”

  Kayla leans over the railing. The stairwell’s hollowed core. A corkscrewing perspective that takes her back to her yard’s oak. The weave of branches, the solid earth below. Panda Bear’s curses fade, and with the slam of the cafeteria alcove door, they disappear.

  “Poor girl,” Heather says.

  A final flight to the top landing. Kayla’s broom makes its first sweep. Heather’s hand on the door’s latch. She pulls and the door swings back. “Sometimes they don’t lock it if there’s no one in trouble.”

  Heather’s broom lies across the threshold, a bar to keep the door from closing. The space lit by the dreary spill through rows of small, dirty windows. The scrape of tiny claws across the hardwood, the mice Kayla’s heard as she lies in bed, the machine’s faintest notes. The roof’s angles, bare boards and beams. The rain’s patter just above their heads. The sour of mildew and stale air. A floor of wide planks, and Kayla imagines her footsteps’ echo in their empty pod below. Before her, four stripped cots. A sink. A toilet without a door. A few overhead lights. In the space above the wings’ connecting hallway, a wall of desks and chairs and cardboard boxes. Rusted sinks and broken toilets. Filing cabinets, their sides dented, their drawers scattered.

  Kayla and Heather stand by the windows near the cots. Below, a steeper perspective than the one Kayla’s used to, the building’s front, the entrance’s fenced chute, but beyond the razor wire, a wider scope. The tarpaper roofs of the neighborhood’s row homes. A church’s white steeple. The slope toward the river. The trees that have lost their leaves. The south end’s railroad bridge. The veins in Heather’s arms strain, Kayla helping until they raise a window. The wood warped but finally giving, and with the sash’s lift, a dislodging of paint flecks and a flight of roosting pigeons. No cages here, and the girls stick their heads outside, breathing in the cold and damp. Kayla closes her eyes, listening. The traffic’s drone. The thinned shouts of playing children.

  They shake the rain from their hair as they walk back to the door. “Have you been up here before?” Kayla asks.

  “Once.” Heather picks up her broom. The door eases shut, a kiss and a whisper. “Betty and I snuck up to see Carolyn. Nurse Amy let us come with her.”

  They start sweeping. A stirred haze in the light’s shine. “So no one knows where Carolyn is now?”


  “Not really. But there’re places worse than this. At least that’s what they tell us. I don’t believe much, but I do believe that.”

  They turn the first landing. Below, a door closes. Panda Bear with a soda can. “This is all you got done?” He pushes between them and sits on the step just outside the iso door. His thumbs tap across his phone’s screen. “Pick up the pace, ladies.”

  He remains there as the girls work their way down. A pleasant tightness in Kayla’s back and arms. She’s started doing planks again before bed. The others joining in, the girls counting, the sisters the first to crumple, then Betty. Heather and Kayla the last, their arms trembling, the others urging them on.

  On the first floor, they sweep up their piles and return the brooms to the supply closet. Kayla wipes her hands against her sweatpants as they exit the alcove. A sneeze from the stairwell dust. At the cafeteria’s other end, the Deacon directs the redheaded twins in the hanging of a long banner. The paper crinkles as they lift and pull the banner straight. The revealing of a declaration in large, white letters—PURITY.

  Kayla with the other reds, a single file into the auditorium. Another new girl at the line’s front, and upstairs, the maintenance crew’s busy cadence, hammers and saws and deep voices as they prepare a new pod in the wing’s last unused classroom. The new girl quiet, her eyes dull and downcast. Also new, a swirl of rumors, whispers in the hallways and cafeteria. Claims fueled by the flier Heather picked from the courtyard’s wind-blown trash. The brewing insurrection. Armed clashes and the bombing of government buildings. Pirate broadcasts and the promise that The Movement isn’t dead.

  The Deacon at his podium. A smile for each girl as she passes. “Good morning, Kayla.” Kayla usually studies her shuffling feet, but today she returns the Deacon’s gaze. His large hands grip the podium’s sides, a smile, but perhaps, Kayla thinks, an expression less joyous than normal. The rumors, cracks in his believer’s world. Kayla turns up the center aisle. The whites already seated. Betty kicks the foot Donna’s stuck into the aisle.