The Degenerates

by J. Albert Mann

  Every door the group approached needed to be unlocked and was then locked again behind them. And there were a lot of doors.

  It was brighter upstairs, with real sunshine streaming in through the windows, which raised London’s spirits even more. The bits of blue sky she could see made her itch to be out there, running. Even the air, still fragrant with piss and shit, was at least tinged with vinegar, like they’d attempted to clean.

  The line of girls and women turned down yet another hallway. The next door opened up onto a large room, and before they were allowed in, the attendant at the head of the line called out, “Enter and take a seat on the bench.”

  London smelled the room ten paces before she saw it. Her stomach rolled, and her heart beat fast. Fear. It was an uncomfortable sensation that she despised, and she coughed it back, along with the vomit rising into her throat. She straightened herself up, daring whatever was in that room to come at her.

  Women. Women were in the room. Women everywhere. Lying on the floor. Naked. Clothed. Rocking. Wandering. Humming. Dancing. Moaning. All around her. Like a slow, shuffling nightmare. Through the fog of it, London heard the attendant bark at the line of them to sit, and she slid onto the bench, her knees buckling under her. She leaned back and tried to breathe, the stench pressing in on her, thick, warm, and horrible.

  The room was large and open, with windows to match its size. But the morning light seemed to stop at the glass, as if it weren’t strong enough to penetrate this place. Benches lined the room like at a railway station. The attendants began handing out buckets and rags, and the women from the tiny rooms began to work, scooping up the shit, wiping up the piss, from the floors, the benches. London felt her heart start up as the attendant came closer. It wasn’t shit scooping that scared her but staying in this room… all day. She couldn’t stay in this room.

  There were only three of them left on the benches. The attendant said something and motioned for them to follow. London didn’t know what the woman had said. She just knew that somehow she was getting the chance to leave this place, and she rose to her feet, tripping on the heels of the girl ahead of her.

  Several unlocked and relocked doors later, they were in a large shower, much like the one London had used an hour earlier. She and the other two girls were told to stand on one side, and each was handed a hose. Somewhere, someone turned the hoses on, and London had to grab hers with both hands to keep it from whipping away as the water burst from it. The girl to her right laughed at London’s surprise, and London almost turned the hose on her… but the idea of being returned to that room stopped her.

  A door opened, and in stumbled women, naked women. One, two, three—up to six. They lined up against the back wall of the shower, hunched and moaning from exposure. The girl who had laughed took aim and squirted the women closest to her in their torsos. The women shrieked and turned away, making for the door, trying to protect themselves from the cold, hard water. They had to know before they reached the door that it would be locked. Everything was locked here. There was no way out.

  “Let’s go,” snapped the attendant, who took a seat on an old wooden chair in the corner of the shower room.

  The girl to London’s left aimed her hose at the women nearest her. London noticed how she started at the women’s feet, slowly allowing them to get used to the water before she raised it higher. London glanced at her. A white girl with dark red hair, most likely Irish, most likely Southie. London followed her lead, hosing the women from the feet up.

  The women cried and curled into protective stances, except for one. She just stood. She didn’t move or turn or flinch, the cold water making dents in her skin wherever it hit.

  “This is shitty of us,” London growled.

  The girl from Southie glanced over at her. “Shitty world.”

  “How long you in for?” London asked.

  Now the girl took a long look at London.

  “What?” London asked.

  “You mean, in therapeutic confinement?” she asked.

  “No, in this place. This… hospital, or whatever it is?”

  “The Fernald School,” the girl said. “I’m here for life. Just like you. Just like all of us.”

  “For life?”

  “Segregation of the unfit,” the girl said, and shrugged. “You have been deemed unfit. This isn’t prison. There is no parole. You just live here now, like me… like them.” She motioned with her chin to the women in front of them.

  Receiving bad news was not a new experience for London. Her entire life was a series of people giving her bad news. “Your father is dead.” “Your mother is dead.” “The orphanage is full.” “The foster family doesn’t want you.” “The gas has been shut off.” “There is no food.” No, there had never been any shortage of bad news. Still, this little nugget lodged itself up underneath her rib cage while she took it in, making her breathing shallow—like she’d been punched in the stomach. Probably she was out of practice since living with the old lady, along with the other thing.

  “And my baby?”

  London had never said it out loud before. Her baby. She couldn’t imagine it yet, what it actually meant—having a child. Though it was becoming harder to ignore. Because any bad news she received, it also received.

  The girl didn’t look at her then.

  More bad news.

  “You been diagnosed an imbecile or a moron, right?” she asked.

  London didn’t answer. She had this strange urge to add the words “high-grade” to the word, like the nurse had done. But she wouldn’t use their words to make herself sound better.

  “I’m a moron,” the girl said, choking out a laugh. She looked over at London then, and London saw that it had hurt her to say the word. “They say it’s hereditary. What we have. That means we will always have it.”

  “And my baby? What happens to it?”

  “It stays too,” whispered the girl. “Forever.”

  The attendant clapped her hands hard. The girl knew the signal and sprayed the women right in their heads, the clapping being some sort of sign to wash the women’s hair. The women hunched and twisted, shrieking anew. One of them shit, dark and long, onto the shower floor.

  “Animals,” whispered the attendant.

  London turned and sprayed the attendant directly in the face. She sprayed her for a solid two minutes before she was jumped from behind and dragged from the shower room.

  For five days London scooped shit into a bucket in the Back Ward.

  Alice stood on the choir dais next to Maxine. Choir practice was almost always a restful hour—for all of them—as taking direction and working in a group came easily to those whose entire lives depended on these skills. Although, this morning even the peaceful tones of “O Holy Night” being gently sung on repeat didn’t seem to be settling her.

  A few days before, she had watched Rose hide the dress deeply in the heating grate behind her stick. Alice had wondered if she should tell Maxine but had decided not to—because tomorrow was visiting day, a bad day for Maxine. The monthly cycle leading to visiting day was like their menses, the heaviest flow being the day before, the day of, and the day after. The day before was when Maxine’s hope that her family would arrive was dying… yet mercilessly not dead. The day of was the death of this hope. A day spent surrounded by the happy chatting families of others roaming the campus, their arms loaded with presents and packages. The day after—dark silence, before Maxine could rekindle her dream… which she always did.

  Also, everyone was entitled to her own secrets. Alice had hers. Why shouldn’t Rose have a few? Alice did wonder what she wanted with the dress, but not for very long. Most likely, Rose just wanted to steal.

  Except for Alice and Mary, all the girls stole all the time, and not because they cared about Miss Sweeney’s red scarf or the pen in the nurse’s station—they didn’t, and often Alice noticed that the girls ended up tossing whatever it was they’d stolen, into a bush along the path to the gymnasium or into one of
the cafeteria trash bins. It was what they did here… steal, scribble, slap, smash. All of it helped to break the endless routine of the whistles, the circles, the periodic excusing, the clapping to stand and dress and undress, the poking and prodding of thermometers and needles and measuring tapes, the charting of their every move while being on display for visitor after visitor after visitor, and the endless hours of feeding bedsheets into the hungry jaws of the mangle machine.

  But when Alice went into the grate to retrieve Rose’s stick for her and discovered the neatly stacked nickels and pennies hidden even farther back in the duct, she was concerned.

  Stealing was fine. And Rose was good at it. Alice had watched her liberate plenty of rolls at dinner—that girl loved her bread—and Alice had always been impressed with Rose’s abilities. She was thoughtful about the person who was standing nearby, quick and decisive in the moment, and even faster at throwing everyone off balance with her toothy smile. Alice was confident that Rose wouldn’t get caught. But stockpiling money and clothes, that was different. Rose’s strange thefts seemed to highlight the uneasy feeling Alice had been having lately that things were changing.

  For Alice, there was always the worry of their ages. Every day she and Maxine crept closer to their fifteenth birthdays, Maxine’s in September, her own sometime in October. In less than a year, they would both graduate from the girls’ dormitory to the women’s dormitory… only two hundred yards across the institution’s grounds, but an entirely new world. Having been given every lowly job that existed inside these buildings, Alice had seen most of this world, and there was cause for concern. The first being Rose.

  Even if the school ignored the fact that Rose was a year younger than Maxine and allowed her to come with them, the three of them could still be separated inside the large women’s building, where though they might be in one another’s sights, they might spend little, if any, time together. Worse, one of them might be sent out to a farm. Mostly it was the men who were sent out to the farm cottages miles away, to grow food for the inmates here at the institution, but women sometimes went too, and they never returned.

  Living on a farm didn’t scare Alice, but living without Maxine did.

  Alice loved Maxine. She loved all Maxine’s dreaming… about living in mansions, being a famous singer, seeing the ocean, even her excruciating visiting-day dreams where she was sure her mother was coming. She loved how excited Maxine became when they had liver for dinner. She loved the way Maxine was able to smile through so many things. Her grin, just like Rose’s, seemed to open up her entire face. She loved Maxine’s crooked teeth, especially the one in the front with the chip out of it. She loved how hard it was for her to get out of bed in the morning, and how her hair always had a knot in the back of it, and her goofy laugh that sounded like a small dog barking. She loved her lips. She loved her smell. Alice loved all of her… in the very way she wasn’t supposed to. This was Alice’s secret.

  Alice felt no shame in loving Maxine. None. Though unashamed of her love, she was afraid of it—that someone might find out, or, worse, Maxine might find out. The first would send Alice to the Back Ward forever, and the second, well, Alice didn’t want to think about it. Too many things could go wrong. Things she had no protection against. Fortunately, the first lesson Alice had learned at Fernald was that though the girls might be constantly observed, no one ever saw anything. Alice’s secret was safe. Locked away deep inside where no one could ever get to it. Not any of the doctors, nurses, teachers, attendants, and visitors who crawled over the institution like ants, watching them, always watching them. They could stare at Alice every minute of the day until she took her last breath, but they’d never catch a whiff of her most precious possession, her only possession.

  But they could take Maxine away. They could send her to a farm. Or worse, they could lock her up for all her dreaming… deep inside the massive brick building where the girl with the wild look in her eyes was spending her days. Where every girl who’d ever tried to run was put to work. The Back Ward.

  Alice had seen a large portion of the institution… except for the boys’ dormitories, where girls were never allowed. She’d seen the Sick Ward filled with a sadness as thick as Bessie’s arms, and she’d spent time inside the dreaded therapeutic chambers called “the cages.” But they were nothing compared to the Back Ward, where not a single visitor had ever stepped foot. It was a place much worse than the Sick Ward, where at least there was a way out, through either health or death. The Back Ward was a place where the body just continued to exist. Endlessly.

  The music stopped.

  “Alice? Was it you who hit that wrong note?”

  Miss Petruskavich stared up at her, and Alice tensed, though she could see it in the woman’s eyes that she was teasing. Miss Petruskavich loved to tease.

  “I was listening, Miss Pet,” Rose called out. “She hit every note.”

  “Thank you, Rose,” the woman said, putting her hands together like she was praying, and tipping her head to Rose. It was a gesture their music teacher did often. And it removed the woman’s eyes and attention from Alice.

  But Alice remained tense. Nice white people could be more dangerous than mean ones.

  Alice never sang, a fact that both Rose and the music teacher knew. She only mouthed the words, which she had forgotten to do today. Miss Pet, as they all called her, didn’t mind Alice’s partial participation. All Miss Pet ever asked was that the girls in her choir allow her to play and sing, and to share music with them. And, of course, that when they stood in front of the community, or visitors, or Dr. Greene—the balding superintendent of the school—they sing… or at least pretend to.

  Choir was well attended. Even Edwina was in choir.

  Now that November had arrived, choir practice happened two times a week instead of once a month, as Christmas was on its way. The institution accepted visitors year-round and allowed the community in on visiting days for small concerts and poetry readings, but Christmas was the most widely attended event. Alice couldn’t have cared less about Christmas, poetry, the community, or singing, but like all the girls, she enjoyed listening to Miss Pet pound her keys and belt her tunes. It was a place where no one ever caused trouble. Not even Bessie and Ellen.

  “Sopranos, please take over.”

  Alice could now stand without pretending to sing—she and Maxine were altos—and she immediately returned to worrying, but was interrupted by the opening of the chapel door.

  Everyone’s eyes but Miss Pet’s moved to the door. In walked the girl from the police wagon, followed by Mrs. Vetter, the head nurse, a small but substantial woman with short yellow hair and a sharp gaze.

  The first thing Alice noticed was that Rose had stopped singing. The second was that the girl was carrying a book. None of this made sense, and Alice liked for things to make sense.

  Miss Pet smiled at the visitors and continued leading the sopranos to the end of the piece, giving her guests time to make their way to the piano.

  Alice—along with every other member of the choir—kept her eyes on the girl as she traveled up the middle aisle. The girl was not limping. She didn’t hang her head. She didn’t look sick, or even any skinnier. All signs that she’d survived the seven days inside the cages better than most. She also kept herself behind the nurse by half a step. She was learning.

  As the two approached the group, the girl never looked up at the wooden choir dais, but Alice could tell she was seeing them all, taking the entire scene in through her skin. Alice didn’t need to look at her long to know that this one wasn’t nearly done fighting this place.

  A conversation ensued between the two women. It continued on for a bit; Miss Petruskavich was a lover of words just as much as a lover of music. The choir shifted and swayed, losing interest in the happenings down below.

  “She’s been gone a long time,” Rose whispered.

  “She survived fine,” Alice said.

  Maxine glanced her way. She was checking Alice out, trying
to peek inside her. Alice wouldn’t let her.

  * * *

  London sat with them at dinner. Rose invited her. This was the girl’s name. London. How odd to be named after a city somewhere far away. All Alice knew about the city of London was that it had a large building with a clock on its side. She’d seen a picture of it once. Her education was seriously lacking, even if she had been living at a “school” for the bulk of her life. Although she’d always been a willing student, her classes at the Fernald School consisted mostly of resoling shoes and mending clothes. She must have cobbled an army’s worth of boots and let down the hems of the skirts of every female inmate at Fernald, along with many hems for the children of the nurses and doctors, whose clothes somehow made it to the school’s worktables. The only one in the whole institution who could out-sew her was Helen.

  Alice understood how the world of Fernald worked, but she didn’t know much about the world outside anymore except that this girl somehow still smelled like it, a mixture of chilly spring air and gasoline.

  “Were you in the cages?” Rose asked.

  Rose obsessed over the cages because it was a place without Maxine. A place where you were alone.

  “They’re called therapeutic confinement chambers,” London said, never raising her head from her soup bowl.

  Alice exchanged a look with Maxine.

  “And besides the mattress smelling like piss, it wasn’t that bad. The food was the same as we’re eating now, and I got a lot of sleep.”

  Alice didn’t like anyone to intrude on Maxine and Rose and herself—it wasn’t part of the “keep your head down and do your work” way in which she lived—but she had to admit that this girl’s answer to Rose was kind, even if the girl had a roughness to her that scared Alice.

  “You gonna eat that?” London pointed at Maxine’s bread.

  Maxine slid the bread closer to herself.

  The girl with the city for a name ate on.