An automobile caught Maxine’s eye. It wasn’t a police wagon, and she flicked her eyes forward, spotting Alice watching her face. Since Alice was closer to the window, making it impossible for her to see the gate or the driveway without completely turning her head, she’d been using Maxine’s expression to determine if the girl had been found.
Before Maxine could go back to deciding on the names of her four dogs, another auto slid through the gate. This time it was a police wagon.
Maxine stiffened, keeping her eyes trained forward, trying not to alert Alice. Maybe it was someone else being brought in for the first time. Maybe there’d been a fight in one of the Back Wards and the police were needed. Maybe… Maxine’s mind spun, dreaming up a host of reasons why that wagon would enter through the gate, other than the one she knew to be true. It was the girl. And not being able to change this hard fact, she let go of the maybes, allowing Alice to see it. She could never lie to Alice. Or at least, almost never.
Alice saw. So did Rose.
“If not this time, next time,” Rose whispered, echoing Alice’s own words back at her.
Maxine pushed her thigh against her sister’s. Rose always knew the right thing to say. Always. Even on that awful day when their mother had sent them away, and Maxine—sobbing so hard that she could barely speak—had tried to tell Rose she’d get them home. She’d fix it. Rose had simply said, “I believe you,” stopping the ache faster than if her little sister had been able to massage Maxine’s heart in her small, warm hands.
Maxine didn’t expect Alice to respond to Rose, and she didn’t. The first thing any one of them learned inside the institution was to hold on to yourself tightly because someone was always watching, and writing it down, creating a slippery path with no way to regain your footing. First they said you were nervous. Then they noted how you seemed agitated. If this upset you, they scribbled more—you were wild, unmanageable even. A menace.
It was enough to turn anyone into a headbanger, one of the little ones who banged their foreheads against the floor over and over again, tenderizing their tiny brains. The action made perfect sense to Maxine. What made no sense at all was a doctor who, when watching these tiny creatures attempting to feel something inside a place that forbade it, had casually told a visitor, “Idiots of the lowest grade seem to have no feelings at all.”
The girl hadn’t made it, but Alice wouldn’t bang her head over it. She would only blink.
It made Maxine want to reach out and touch her, really touch her… to place her whole palm against Alice’s cheek and feel the light brushing of Alice’s lashes against her fingers. Maybe even whisper into her ear that it would be okay. Because sometimes Maxine actually believed this—that eventually, just as she’d told Rose, she’d think up a way of fixing it. But Maxine did not reach out. Could not. This connection, it was impossible. Although, she often wondered what made it so—the strict rules of this place, or Alice?
There was now a ripple circulating around the day room. Everyone was discovering the news. With so many voices peppering the air, Ragno stepped in from the hallway.
“Quiet!”
The girls immediately shut their mouths.
Ragno had been around for many years, first as Miss Delgorio, and then as Mrs. Ragno, after she’d married one of the mathematics teachers. But under either name, she was serious trouble if her eye fell on you. Of course, anyone at the institution could be trouble for the girls—from the superintendent on down to the men who cut the grass. Maxine had once seen a girl toss a rock at a maintenance man in frustration and be carted off overnight to Twenty-Two, while an hour later when an inmate walking the circles had jumped another inmate and bitten her ear clean off, the biter had only been sent to sit on the very benches they now sat on until dinner.
Feeling their fear, the looming shape of the attendant entered the room like she was drawn to it. Every spine straightened against the bench… but Neddie’s.
Edwina, who never spoke, signaled to Neddie to pay attention, and Ragno pounced.
“Stop! Stop that home signing. Now!”
Edwina was not allowed to use any hand signals that hadn’t been taught by the school. It was a strict rule—all the rules at the institution were strict, and there was nothing Ragno loved more than strictly enforcing them—and she continued to berate Edwina, the torrent of ugly words coming fast. Edwina cringed, burying her hand in her skirt, and Rose squirmed against Maxine.
Maxine again pressed her thigh up against her sister’s, knowing that any movement might catch the attendant’s eye, and whatever horror was in store for Edwina might become theirs, so she had to stop Rose from crumbling.
Ragno drew in a breath, and Maxine hoped it was over. It wasn’t.
“Speak!” Ragno howled into Edwina’s clenched face.
Rose placed her hand on her heart and began to tap. Four times. Four times. Four times.
“There’s nothing wrong with you. Absolutely nothing wrong with you!”
The woman was having a second wind. “Do you hear me, girl?”
No one ever used their names here. You were either “girl,” if they were angry with you, or “dear,” if they weren’t.
“If it was up to me, I’d throw you in the back with the others. You don’t belong out here. I’d toss you—”
Maxine stopped listening as she felt warmth seeping along her thigh and, after another moment, wetting her entire underside. She quickly scooted as close to her sister as she could, caring less about movement and more about containing the situation. But a heartbeat later Dottie, who sat on the other side of Rose, leaped from the bench, the edge of her skirt soaked through, and Rose’s sobs were quickly eclipsed by the tirade of furious yet gleeful cries from Ragno.
Maxine bowed her head under the weight of Ragno’s rage, clasping Rose’s hand in utter defeat while Rose broke down into shuddering howls as the two girls sat together in the steam of Rose’s piss.
Ragno raised her hands and smacked them together three loud and distinctive times. A call for silence. The sound of the three claps was so ingrained in the girls that even Rose stopped sobbing and allowed the release of only a few snuffling sounds mixed with high-pitched sorrowful squeaks that she couldn’t control. Ragno stood over the girls like a statue, triumphant.
“It is time for periodic excusing and bed,” she announced. “Everyone may line up but you two.” Her eyes fell on Maxine and Rose, not that there was anyone in the room who didn’t know exactly who she meant.
The girls lined up against the wall, no one looking back at the two left on the bench. Not even Alice. Especially not Alice. But Ragno wasn’t done.
“The two of you will sit in that piss until it’s cold. And if you move at all while I take these girls to do their business like humans, you shall sit in that piss all night long.”
The woman glared at them, waiting for a reaction. Maxine gave her none. This seemed to rally Rose, and only the smallest snuffling escaped her. The show of strength was too much for Ragno, who walked straight for the girls and clapped again—one, two, three times—an inch from their noses. Maxine couldn’t help thinking how the claps were very much a “home sign,” because this was their home. The word “home” might bring up visions of warmth and familiarity, but in its essence it really was just a word to describe the place where you lived. This was Maxine’s home. It was Rose’s home. It was Alice’s home.
Rose collapsed onto Maxine, broken. And Ragno, satisfied, turned and led the line of girls out of the day room.
She would be back soon, and so Rose would need to stop soon, but not now.
“Did you finish peeing, Rose?” Maxine asked gently. “If you didn’t, you can now. While she’s gone. It’s all right. It’s just piss, Rose.”
Maxine rubbed Rose’s back like you would a child vomiting into a basin, and Rose sobbed more softly, holding on to Maxine while she released the rest of her bladder. Maxine did the same, knowing Ragno would come for them after periodic excusing, and therefor
e their only choice was to urinate here or in their cots. Better here, where their dresses might soak it up. Dresses they would soon change out of.
After Rose finished, she sat up, and Maxine picked the driest corner of her skirt and wiped her sister’s face.
Rose balked at the gesture. “I don’t want piss on me,” she complained.
It was a ridiculous statement, and the two girls couldn’t stop from breaking out in smiles. Rose even let out a short giggle. And then they became quiet.
Maxine’s eyes flicked back to the window and the long sweeping driveway to the gate, which no longer conjured up images of country houses with tremendous hearths and a bed full of dogs. It had been a good twenty minutes since the police wagon had driven through it. If the police had been stopping at the dormitory, they would have been here by now. The girl would not be sleeping here tonight. Could home also be a small, cold, bed-less prison cell in the Back Ward? If so, then the girl was on her way home.
Maxine set her eyes on the wall across from her—as she was supposed to do, as Rose was doing—and thought about her previous home, the one sitting nine miles east from where she and her sister sat in cold piss on a hard bench. She did not have the realization that this home hadn’t been very much different from the one she now occupied. Hard and cold. Instead Maxine did the thing she was absolutely best at doing: she drifted off into a dream—of visiting day at the institution, an event that happened but once a month, with the next one coming up soon. It might be the day when her mother showed up. The day she finally came for them. The day she forgave Maxine.
The day Maxine and Rose went home.
London’s head throbbed where the gun butt had smacked her. The pain hadn’t been helped by her head slapping the metal floor as the driver of the police wagon had sought out every bump in the road on the way back to the institution.
The wagon’s brakes squeaked the vehicle to a stop. The back doors swung open. This time the cops didn’t wait to see if she’d climb out on her own—not that she would have. They reached in and dragged her out by her feet. London let them. She would fight when she had to; wasting energy now was useless.
The sun was setting. How long had she been knocked out for?
They walked her roughly into the building. Not the same one she’d been brought to the day before but a bigger one, much bigger. She stumbled along between the two cops, finding it difficult to walk when she was cuffed. They were met by a nurse and two women attendants. London sized up the women, and quickly determined that this was not the time to make a run for it if the cops uncuffed her.
The cops had gone as far as they would. One of them signed a sheet of paper the nurse held in her hand, and the other removed London’s cuffs and shoved her at the attendants, needing one last show of power to prove his dominance. London stumbled into the women’s arms, but the cop’s sentiment was lost on her as she focused her attention on her present surroundings.
Leaving the nurse at the door, the two women led London down a series of hallways. This building was darker and dirtier than the one she’d been in the night before with the girls. It also smelled worse. London had lived in enough tenements to be overly familiar with the stench. Piss and shit. The walls were yellowing, many of the bulbs were out in the hallway lamps, and although there was no actual garbage strewn in their path like inside the tenements, the floor was both gritty and sticky at the same time. The group passed rooms that looked uninhabitable, but from the coughs, moans, and shuffling sounds emanating from them, it was clear that they had occupants.
The attendants never spoke—to her or to each other. She respected them for being good at their jobs, but at the same time understood that it was a bad sign. People good at their jobs when their job was to guard you was not good news. She’d have to wait at least until their shift was over and hope for less attentive, and weaker, guards. She knew it wouldn’t take long. In London’s fourteen years, she’d learned a few things, and one of them was that not many people were good at their jobs.
She’d also been locked up before. Plenty of times. And that was surely where these two were hauling her, somewhere to be locked up.
Her stomach growled, and she wondered if the bread was still rolled up in her sleeve. The smell of the hallway didn’t bother her stomach in the least. Nothing much ever did. The morning in the gutter, yes, but that had been another matter altogether. A matter London ignored in this moment.
She thought about what she had seen so far. A front door with a nurse’s station, where it looked like an attendant also might be posted. Large windows, unfortunately with bars. Many open rooms, perhaps with windows, and perhaps with bars. The building itself had at least two floors above the one she was on, and a basement, which she was being dragged down to. She hated basements.
The stairs seemed centered in the building, and once down them, the attendants yanked her to the right. More rooms, but these doors were all closed with no light shining out from under them. Maybe offices?
London’s head throbbed. She’d been unconscious when they’d thrown her into the truck. Jesus, Mary, and Henry, that old turd could have gone a little easier with the shotgun.
One of the attendants began to dig around in her uniform pocket for keys. London supposed she was close to where she’d be dumped for the night.
“I’m hungry.” She might as well give it a try.
“You missed dinner,” was the response from the one with the keys.
Well, that sucks, London thought, hoping again that she still had that bread. She thought about pleading the pregnancy thing, but something stopped her. She was never queasy about using circumstances to get what she wanted. Surprised by her own hesitation, she lashed out at the women.
“Ass lickers!”
No response. Not even a jerk of their arms. For the first time, London figured she might be in real trouble. What was this place? Who were these women? She’d been dragged around by someone her whole life, but as she was realizing right now, they’d all been men doing the dragging. There was something disconcerting about being dragged by women. They were more impenetrable.
The key attendant opened the door. A thick door. A door that she locked behind them. They were now in another hallway, identical to the last—long, and lined with doors—except the smell was hotter and more intense, and the hall ended in a wall. They were at the far end of the building. The only way out was back through that locked door or through a possible window in this hall.
The lighting was still dingy and dark, but it was, unfortunately, light enough to see inside the rooms as she was yanked past. Each door had a large barred window without glass. Each room held a human form and no window. London’s plan had been to break out tonight. That would not be happening.
The trio stopped in front of a door. One attendant released London’s arm for the first time and fumbled for the key to the room. For a moment London thought about ripping away from the other attendant, grabbing the keys, and making a run for it. But the keychain held about fifty keys, and though London had tried to watch which one the attendant had chosen at the last door, there had been no way to tell.
She tried again for the second-best thing after freedom—food. This time using what she had.
“Really, no food? I’m fucking pregnant.” She immediately regretted the cuss.
The attendant unlocked the door, and London was shoved in. She hated being shoved, even if she knew she had brought this one on herself.
The door was locked behind her.
She used her new bodily freedom to race back to the barred window and shout at the retreating women.
“Whoresacks!” It wasn’t truly a cuss, but in any case, she didn’t regret it.
Once she heard the attendants leave, she let go of the bars and turned to inspect her cage. It wasn’t much. A room, about six by eight with a mattress. No sheets. No blankets. And London was sure the mattress was filled with piss. She bent down, picked it up with two fingers, and violently flipped it. This side did
n’t look or smell any better, but the physical act was something.
She went back to her door and checked out everything she could see through the barred window. The corner of a door across the hall. The cement blocks of the hallway. A piece of plaster ceiling showing the yellow stain of water damage. Not much.
The bread! Reaching down, London discovered her first bit of luck since that old mug had smacked her in the head with his gun. Pulling the bread out, she plopped onto the disgusting mattress. At least it was softer than the pissed-on floor. And she nibbled at the bread like a mouse to make it last.
Dinner at the table and two chairs on Bennington Street came to mind. The old lady was most likely about to sit down to dinner. Was it canned peas tonight? Chicken broth and bread? Remembering the salty taste of chicken broth made London ache. The stale bread could use a dip or two into that broth. She’d never tell the Missus that. How much she missed her broth.
As London licked the last crumbs from her fingers, the lights snapped out and she was plunged into a darkness so complete that she couldn’t see her own hand in front of her face, not that she tried. What she did do was pull up her dirty nightclothes to use against the potent smell of the mattress, and stretch out onto it.
Because when someone locks you into a dark room, you sleep.
Rose watched the nurse lay out the instruments on the steel table: the press-on-your-tongue wood, the cold listen-to-your-heart necklace, the measuring tape. She usually enjoyed helping the nurse check her over each month—answering questions, opening her mouth really wide—but today she was too busy thinking about the girl with the dark eyes.
Rose didn’t tell Maxine she’d helped the girl run. She’d wanted to tell her sister, and Alice, too, because Rose was proud that she knew about the window, proud that the girl had gotten out with her help. She loved to help. But Rose had held on to her secret, afraid that if she let it escape, the tingling feeling inside her would whoosh out right along with it.
The Degenerates Page 5