Later that day during a session of Domestic Training, which just meant changing the diapers of the low-grades, Alice had crouched behind one of the beds and read.
Brother is a laborer. Home fair to inferior. Parents both dead. A hasty examination shows that Alice has no scholastic ability. She is burdened with a defective foot, and there are suspicions of constitutional inferiority. Alice is a child troubled by unhappy thoughts who seems to have a great capacity for sorrow. She can remember vividly all that happens in her day, recalling these scenes with great exactness. Had she been normal, one feels she might have been clever. She is also rather good-looking if one does not hunt for appearances of intelligence. Alice will develop but little further. Belongs at about the middle-grade to high-grade moron.
The special training we can offer Alice will no doubt be of great benefit to her, but no training can supply the mental fiber that is lacking, and whatever improvement may result, the expense and the trouble are thrown away if the child, later on, is tossed out into the world without being able to protect and care for herself. Therefore, protection, shelter, and care of Alice must be lifelong and permanent.
Flipping the paper over gave Alice the measurements of the circumference of her head, the length of her arms, her legs, her fingers. They’d measured everything, even the crushed toes on her right foot. The paper had her weight… her eye color… her bust size… the shade of her teeth…. Alice ripped it to shreds. Tiny, tiny shreds. Shreds that she plucked from the floor and stuffed into the old diaper from an inmate she hadn’t yet washed. She tried not to count the shreds, but it was as if she had to. She counted each and every one, wrapped that number she would never forget inside the diaper, and tossed it into the dark water of the soaking bucket.
Now, with Alice lying on her cot, the morning whistle blew.
Alice kept her eyes closed. She wouldn’t be the first person the morning attendant, Miss Sweeney, saw when she noticed that the window was open and the girl was missing. Alice waited until she heard the gasps, the commotion, and then she stretched and slowly opened her eyes.
Maxine was looking straight ahead, her features loose and relaxed. Alice did the same. Rose was still asleep. Alice could see the tip of her stick poking out from under the covers. Maxine had forgotten it in the midst of all the screaming Miss Sweeney was doing as she called out over and over again to the matron on the first floor. It would be blamed on Miss Sweeney, this elopement. Part of her job as night attendant was to bed-check every hour. Alice was a few feet away, but the girl’s bed looked quite cold. She hadn’t slipped out a half hour earlier.
Alice cleared her throat. Maxine’s hand moved to Rose’s stick and hovered over it, waiting. As soon as Miss Sweeney ran from the room, Maxine dropped to her knees between the cots, plucked the stick from the covers, and slipped it into the heating vent. Then she gently roused Rose, who woke up smiling, until she heard the screaming, at which time she clutched at Maxine.
“Out of bed!” the matron shouted. “All of you. Out of bed. Now!”
The girls sprang from their cots. They understood the drill. This was certainly not the first elopement at the school, and it wouldn’t be the last. They’d all spend the morning sitting the benches for sure.
Alice had never thought of running. So many had. Some had made it. More had not. But it wasn’t the statistics that kept Alice from ever considering it. She had no place to go and no money to go with. Every inmate knew you needed clams and a sandbar—money and an address. Without these two things, a runner got caught, dragged back, and thrown into the cages.
The girls shivered at the ends of their beds. The window that the girl with the wild hair had escaped through had not been closed, and the cold morning chill that had left a wet film on the glass now made its way through their threadbare sleeping clothes. Dottie made the mistake of picking up her blanket and wrapping it around herself. The matron swiftly had Dottie’s ear between her fingers and was pulling her out of the room.
“The rest of you. Get dressed. You’ll be spending the day on the benches.”
No one so much as twitched their lips into a frown, let alone groaned, but Alice could feel every heart in the room falling. It would be ten long hours of sitting still. Alice finally risked a glance over at Maxine. Their eyes met. The benches inevitably meant more bad things would be happening today.
* * *
They sat the benches in the day room until half past six, at which time they were herded first into the toilet room to take care of their business and next into the dining room, where they were given just enough time to gulp down their breakfast. Then it was back to the benches of the day room… with almost four hours to sit before lunch.
With the girls lined up, feet on the floor, eyes straight ahead, backs against the hard wood, the minutes did not move quickly. To make sure everyone knew this, a large clock with the loudest ticking Alice had ever heard had been placed over the entry to the room, so even if you couldn’t see it from your position on the bench, you could hear it, slowly ticking each second of every minute.
You didn’t get to choose your position on the bench like you did for the hour they normally spent in this room each afternoon. Instead you were placed on it, except for Maxine and Rose, Helen and Sarah, and Edwina and Neddie. If you were in charge of a low-grade, you always had to be next to her. Although as soon as Miss Sweeney turned her back, the girls silently moved to the places where they wanted to be and the people they wanted to be next to. When the attendant returned, she never noticed the difference. They were all “girls” and were all “lined up on benches,” which is how she’d left them. Girls. Inmates. Idiots. Imbeciles. Morons. Undesirable. Feebleminded. All interchangeable. All degenerates.
Alice snuck a peek at Maxine. She didn’t want to catch the girl’s attention because if Maxxie was quietly dreaming, which she looked to be, it was best to let her stay in her head, and not remind her of the hours and hours they had left to sit.
Rose sat between them tapping her thigh lightly with her pointer finger. Tap, tap, tap, tap. One, two, three, four. It was a sequence Alice was familiar with. Rose did it all the time. She tapped things four times before she ate them. If she brushed up against you by accident, she’d quickly tap you there three more times in the same manner. It was just part of Rose. Alice had seen her do it when she was distressed, but she’d also seen Rose tap Maxine’s heart four times in moments of joy. She seemed especially nervous today, but then again, sitting the benches made them all nervous.
What did Rose’s file say? Did they know about the tapping? Alice was sure they did. They seemed to know about everything… everything but maybe where that black-haired girl was.
Someone touched Alice’s shoulder.
Maxine.
She had reached over the top of her sister, and then swiftly removed her hand when Alice turned toward her. But Alice could still feel the lingering warmth near her neck where Maxine’s fingers had been.
There had once been a time when Alice would have suffered from that touch for days. Now she allowed it to sink deep inside her like a soothing balm. Not that Alice allowed either reaction to escape, so when Maxine smiled at her, silencing the incessant ticking of the clock and relieving the deep ache of Alice’s spine against wood, Alice only blinked back.
* * *
Following lunch and periodic excusing, Mrs. Ragno replaced Miss Sweeney, and since Ragno wasn’t in trouble for allowing an elopement and was more interested in hearing the gossip from the other staff about what had happened the night before than in a bunch of girls sitting on benches, the girls began to exchange a few whispers. They were careful not to take advantage. Well, maybe Neddie did, but Ragno was slightly used to Neddie’s voice, which helped to shield their whispers.
“Do you think she made it?” Maxine asked.
“If not this time,” Alice said, “next time.”
Alice was sure of it. That girl had a hard look in her eyes. She would make it. Alice had hoped it all m
orning. She always hoped that anyone who ran made it. It meant the institution was wrong. The doctors were wrong. The nurses and matron and attendants were wrong. And the girl with wild black hair was out there. Not in here… under the protection, shelter, and care of a state school established for idiots, imbeciles, and morons.
Lifelong. And permanent.
London’s entire body was shaking with cold, except for her feet, which she couldn’t feel. She’d run for about three hours straight. Mostly through the woods. Not feeling her feet as she’d tumbled over rocks and waded knee deep through slippery wet leaves had been a good thing. But now, curled up under her dirty hospital blanket in the back of someone’s toolshed, her frozen feet had begun to ache like a bastard.
It was early afternoon. She’d heard activity in the house that belonged to the toolshed, but no voices. London hadn’t gotten up to investigate. She lay on the dirt floor only partially hidden behind a stack of broken wooden boxes, shovels dangling overhead. It smelled nice, though, the dirt. Clean. The air, too. She’d never been out in the woods like this, like last night, surrounded by so many trees. Except for the freezing-cold part of the experience, she had enjoyed herself, and she looked forward to being out there again. As soon as it got dark.
By tonight they’d feel less sure about where she could be and would begin searching a wider area. They might even have given up by then. Although, tonight she’d have to figure out where the hell she was.
She lay her head back down on her arm and listened to the cooing and scratching of chickens in the yard. God, her feet ached, and she had to piss harder than a rainstorm. She rolled to her side and tried to think about something other than feet and pissing.
She thought about Rose. How that kid could smile.
She knew she’d put Rose and the others in a jam by running. They were being punished for it right now, she was sure. It was how those places worked—how they always worked. Putting the bitch with the bangs in trouble warmed London’s heart. Putting Rose in trouble didn’t. She hoped that little trinket could keep from spilling about the window.
London sighed. Worrying about that girl made the pee feel like it was pressing against her teeth. She couldn’t wait anymore.
Crawling unsteadily to her knees, London slowly returned her feet to life. The shed didn’t have a window, but it wasn’t built tightly, as the cold air streaming in all last night could attest to. Choosing an especially large crack between the planks, she peered out into the yard. Her view was about a ten-foot expanse, which included the back door of the house.
There was no one.
After standing back and taking in a few breaths, she slowly pushed the shed door open. There was the lightest of squeaks, but nothing that the warble of the chickens didn’t drown out. London now had a total view of the gray clapboard house, the overgrown lawn, the sagging, empty laundry line, and the ripped curtains hanging in the dirty windows. The only things moving were the chickens.
She swooped out the door and closed it ever so quietly, then sped around the side of the shed until she was completely behind it. Wasting no time, she squatted and was in absolute heaven while she gazed out over an empty cornfield. But then someone sneezed.
She stood, back against the shed.
There was a loud squeak of hinges and then the slam of the shed door.
“Goddamn it,” someone whispered. Another loud squeak as the door opened again, and this time stayed open.
London didn’t move. She listened to the man bumping about inside. But then, silence. She craned her neck, trying to hear what was happening.
Nothing. Nothing was happening. This wasn’t good.
Footsteps left the shed and headed for the house.
Shit.
London darted around the shed to the next corner and caught sight of an old man hurrying toward his back door. He was carrying her blanket.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
Without another thought, she bolted for the field. And in less than thirty seconds tripped over a broken stalk of corn, and hit the wet dirt hard. Back up, she was running again. Knees jutting up high into the air so that she’d avoid another fall. Her chest heaved, and her breath rasped loudly in her ears. Had he seen her? Was he chasing her right now? She kept running. Everything a blur. The sun. The sky. The stalks. The brown, muddy earth. She ran for the tree line, which never seemed to grow any closer.
A shot rang out.
London dropped to the ground and lay there. Her heart pounded against the dried cornstalks.
She wasn’t shot. It had been a warning.
Slowly she turned her head and looked back. There he was, standing on his back porch, shotgun in his hands, her blanket thrown over his shoulder. She judged the space between them to be more than a hundred yards, his age to be at least seventy, and the tree line close enough anyway. He couldn’t do it.
Up she leaped.
He shot again, but this time London didn’t fall to the ground. She kept on running. She made the tree line and disappeared into the shadows.
About twenty yards in she stopped to think and catch her breath. The man didn’t have many neighbors, and she hadn’t seen an auto. It would take him a while to raise an alarm, but London knew the first thing he would do was describe how she’d taken off into these woods.
She had to go back. She had to head out in the opposite direction.
London turned toward the tree line she’d just about killed herself to reach. She approached it slowly. She could make out the house and the back steps but didn’t see him. He was most likely on his way to report her. The field was long and wide. She’d have to walk along its edges to bypass the house. She couldn’t risk walking out in the open. He might still be there, shotgun ready.
She started to her right, but her eyesight did a funny thing, mixing up the sky and the ground so that she had to reach out and steady herself on a tree. Her vision cleared, but her heart beat heavily, and she was forced to sit on a fallen branch.
It was hunger. That was it. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten. She looked up at the house and frowned.
Could she do it?
London was no stranger to stealing. Food, mostly. Sometimes clothes when she needed them. She wondered if that old man lived alone.
London crept back toward the house, keeping watch for any movement. She saw none. The old coot must have taken off to bring in a posse. London drew closer, the thought of food and water driving her through the trees like a lion stalking prey.
She reached the line of trees closest to the house. There were at least twenty yards of open land between herself and the back door. Had he locked it? Her stomach growled. If so, she’d just have to break the window.
Stepping out into the open was a little harder than she’d thought it would be. She hesitated for a good ten seconds, but there was no way around it, and out she darted. If he was in the house, her ham was smoked.
The door was unlocked!
She couldn’t believe her luck. It opened into a kitchen, messy but thankfully empty of an old geezer with a gun. London filled a dirty cup with water from the faucet and gulped it so fast, she got the hiccups. There was a pot of cannellini beans sitting on the stove, not her favorite, but she shoveled them into her mouth with her hand, not bothering to look for a spoon. She choked down the beans as she searched the room for more food.
There was a small piece of stale bread on the table. She rolled it up into her sleeve for later and drank down another cup of water. It was time to get the hell out of there.
London opened the back door, and there he was. Waiting. A single thought ran through her mind as the butt of his shotgun smacked her in the forehead.
People are crap.
Maxine could see a sliver of the front gate through the window in the wall to her right from where she sat on the bench. She was, of course, checking out every car, truck, or wagon that pulled through. From years of watching inmates run, she knew that if the girl was going to be caught, it would most li
kely be today. But she was also imagining that the wide iron gate was the entrance to her home—a large estate, somewhere far out from the city. An estate with grand gardens and fireplaces so massive, they took up entire walls. And dogs. There would be dogs, three of them. No, four. Four large dogs that slept with her in a giant bed every single night.
Motion caught her eye.
A maintenance truck rumbled through her sliver. Not a police vehicle.
She relaxed.
It wasn’t that Maxine rooted for the runners; more than anything, she wished they wouldn’t do it in the first place because she hated the aftermath. Watching them dragged back, dirty, often bloody, and always wild with hunger and fear, only to be tossed into Twenty-Two. Days later they would emerge, as gray and flat as the dingy sheets that Alice sent through the gas mangle one after another in the laundry building every afternoon during Manual Training.
And they always seemed to be dragged back.
Making it out obviously took more than “clams and a sandbar,” as the girls liked to say. It also took someone who cared about you. So when that truck or wagon pulled up, and the eloper was ripped from it, the world made its pronouncement. No one cared. And somehow, no one always wore the face of Maxine’s mother standing in a dirty alley in Somerville.
Maxine shivered and glanced at Alice’s profile without moving. They were not allowed to move. As heavily as the elopers who failed weighed on Maxine, she knew that Alice took their failure much, much harder.
Alice had never tried to run—at least, not in the four years that Maxine had been at the state school. Alice never even spoke of it. Whether this was because she never thought about it or because she understood that Maxine couldn’t run, Maxine didn’t know. But she hoped that Alice never thought about running, because it would mean leaving her.
The Degenerates Page 4