The Degenerates

by J. Albert Mann

  Ragno clapped.

  The girls reacted, marching toward the door. Mary pulled out a bundle of toilet paper that had been hidden up her sleeve, and quickly wiped the blood from London’s face as best she could.

  “Oh, you little scavenger,” Bessie hissed over her shoulder. “You’re gonna pay for hiding that paper.”

  London went for her, but Rose was again in her way.

  “Please,” Rose whispered. “Tomorrow’s Christmas.”

  London stopped. But Maxine could tell it was taking everything the girl had to hold herself back. Maxine had never been more thankful for her little sister than she was right then. A brawl during periodic excusing would definitely excuse them all from the Christmas celebration. Maxine couldn’t even imagine it.

  Maxine and Alice waited until most of the girls had filed from the toilets, so that they might file out directly ahead of Rose and London. Maxine could hear London’s breath coming hard and fast behind her. She willed the girl to calm down. The clothing room was even closer quarters than the toilets, and if London stormed into it, things would return to ugly.

  Rose continued to whisper to London. Maxine couldn’t make out exactly what she was saying, but tiny snips of it were coming her way. Something about a plan, and one night—and the disconcerting sound of Rose’s pleading voice. But then Maxine heard it, the word “nickels.” And she remembered Rose saying it a few minutes before, in the middle of the terrible scene. She had nickels. What nickels?

  The clothing room was silent as the girls changed. This was normal with Ragno on duty, and therefore Ragno was unaware of the tension as the girls pulled their arms out of dresses and yanked nightclothes over their heads. Maxine stood close to Rose, trying to catch her eye, trying to understand what was happening. She felt as unsteady as London had looked after being socked by Bessie. She couldn’t find the right places inside her head for any of the words or actions that were going on with her little sister. Rose… whom she’d slept next to every night of her life, whose air she’d been sharing since before she could remember, who felt like part of her own body… now felt distant, though she stood an inch away.

  Maxine could also feel Alice, undressing on the other side of her, understanding this strange moment. Kneeling down to remove her boots, Maxine tried to catch Alice’s eye, but Alice refused to look back, concentrating on her own laces.

  The jumpy excitement that had been racing through Maxine’s body a half hour before was replaced by heavy dread. What was happening? How had it all gone from Maxine happily practicing on the sinks—something she’d been doing every night for a month—to her clunkily changing into her nightclothes next to Alice and Rose and not knowing them at all? Why did Rose have money? Why wouldn’t Alice look at her?

  A series of claps had them filing out of the room, down the hall, and entering their dormitory bedroom. Maxine walked without feeling her feet, or the floor…. It was as if she were walking directly into a dream. A bad dream.

  The girls climbed onto their cots. Maxine didn’t attempt to communicate with Rose, because she was now sure she was in some sort of nightmare, and you could never do what you wanted in a nightmare. Numb, her mind spinning, Maxine couldn’t feel the parts of her body that were touching Rose.

  Ragno stood at the door as she always did, finger on the light switch, waiting, as usual, to signal to the girls lined up on their beds that she was in control, and would shut it off at her leisure, not theirs.

  Maxine didn’t want it to go off. She didn’t want to be plunged further into darkness. For the first time in her life, she didn’t want Ragno to step from the room. But then she got her wish.

  “Mrs. Ragno,” came a voice, one not often heard, especially not ringing out for all to hear.

  “Yes, Ellen?” Ragno said, removing her hand from the switch. Even this woman could tell that if Ellen was speaking out, something interesting was about to happen.

  No one moved. Maxine stopped breathing altogether.

  “I’m sorry I have to report this,” Ellen said, not sounding sorry in the least. Maxine could see the girl sitting up on her cot. “But it seems that Rose has stolen money.”

  Maxine flew from her cot. “That’s a lie!” she screeched.

  Ragno clapped her hands three times, which did nothing to shut Maxine up.

  “Liar!” she screamed at the top of her lungs, over and over, with all the pent-up uncertainty that had been building since the sinks. She felt Rose’s arms pulling at her, trying to stop her. But it was useless. Maxine shrieked and shrieked until Ragno slapped her across the face.

  The matron now rushed in, along with two women attendants from the other sleeping rooms on the floor. None of the girls moved from their cots, and even Rose shrank back onto hers at the sight of so much authority.

  “What is the meaning of this?” asked the matron calmly.

  “The Mongoloid stole money,” Ellen said, pointing at Rose. “It’s probably in the grate with her stick.”

  “Stick?” the matron said, confused. Ragno was already at the grate, yanking it open.

  “I did it,” said Maxine desperately. “I stole the money.”

  “No!” Rose moaned. “No, no, no.” She rolled into a ball on her cot, hiding her face.

  “There’s also a dress in here,” Ragno said from where she knelt on the floor.

  “I stole that, too. I stole the dress. And the money. I was going to elope. I had a plan. To use the nickels, all the nickels,” rambled Maxine, trying to employ as many of the words she’d heard Rose whisper. “It was me. I hate this place. I hate this place, and I hate all of you.”

  Rose began to sob, but Maxine couldn’t stop herself. Not now. All the hopelessness she’d tried to shove aside for all the years she’d been here opened up and swallowed her. “Do you hear me? I hate you! I hate you! I hate you all!”

  She didn’t look at Alice. But she knew Alice understood, which made the pain even worse. It was like Maxine had lost her sister and the love of her life and her chance to play the piano and sing, and her mother.

  Her mother was never going to come. Her mother was never going to forgive her.

  They dragged Maxine across the room, along with the dress and the money. She bit and tore and dashed herself furiously against the women who held her, not knowing up from down or their bodies from her own. They threw her to the floor. Her cheekbone—still throbbing from Ragno’s hard slap—was driven into the wood planks while they shoved her arms through the cloth of the jacket, and her shoulders strained awkwardly as they bound her. After flipping her around, they tied her ankles. Her only freedom was her voice, until that was gagged. The last thing Maxine saw as she was dragged from the room was Alice.

  Reaching to the floor to retrieve Rose’s stick.

  London lay on her cot staring up at the peeling plaster ceiling, waiting for Bessie and Ellen to jump her. She was more than ready.

  The thought had occurred to her to jump them first, and that thought had included a lot of pummeling and blood. Especially as she’d lain listening to Rose’s sobbing, which was just now finally beginning to subside. Bessie would be easy. London had known so many Bessies. But that ghost bitch was another matter. London had come across pure evil in her life only a few times. Working it over did nothing. You needed to stay the hell out of its way. And now London had put both Maxine and Rose directly in its path. She needed to leave. Tonight.

  As the hours passed, London began to realize that those two soft potatoes weren’t coming. A move on her tonight was more Bessie’s style. Someone like Ellen would have bigger plans. So now London lay awake waiting for the right time to flee.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the cot next to her. It was empty. Rose had climbed in with Alice and was now wrapped around the girl, clutching her stick. Though London told herself she didn’t care that Rose had chosen to be comforted by Alice over her, she did. This is the reason why you don’t make any goddamn friends, she told herself.

  The i
mage of the old lady sitting at her window floated before London’s eyes. She was the only one who understood that the world was a place filled with two kinds of people, crappy people and crappier people. At the moment, London felt she fit more in the latter pile, which soothed her dark heart just fine.

  She needed to move her mind to more pressing matters. Like the fact that she now had no money and no clothes. And that she’d have to jump the fifteen feet to the ground, since the steam was definitely coming through the pipe tonight. The thought of jumping pleased her. She’d never been afraid of heights and was actually in the mood to drop hard to the ground.

  At least this time she knew which way to run. Thanks to Rose. Rose’s friend Miss Barrett had helped Rose find her way to the airport on the map. She had only been able to remember the first road. Trapelo. Rose said that to find Trapelo the lady had moved her finger past the gymnasium on the map, and then past the administration building. Once on Trapelo Road, Rose said, the lady had moved her finger down, which meant London needed to make a right. After this, Rose said, the lady’s finger had gotten lost in all the roads, and even the lady had had trouble, and they’d given up and just admired the airplanes.

  It didn’t matter. All London needed was that first road. That first direction. This was the way out… the way home. The roads where the lady’s finger had gotten lost were obviously in Boston.

  After a while Rose stopped whimpering and fell asleep. London could hear her wheezing breaths, cut short by high-pitched hiccups left over from her crying. Alice was also asleep, although London could tell she had lain awake a long time.

  Still… she waited. She wasn’t taking off until the darkest part of the night, right before the edges of the world began to brighten. She’d found people slept soundest closest to the time when they needed to wake. When she finally crept out of her cot, she could just make out the dark forms of all the sleeping bodies.

  She stared over at Ellen, half expecting to see the girl’s sinister-assed eyes staring back at her. But she was asleep. London watched her body rise and fall with each breath. The idea crossed her mind to walk over to the cot and smother the bitch to death. But London absolutely knew she wouldn’t. If she was going to kill Ellen, she wanted that molly wide awake for it.

  London looked down at the book in her hand, and then over at Rose. Before she could change her mind, she slipped the book under Rose’s pillow. A gift, she guessed. Or maybe an apology. She didn’t know. She’d never offered either one before. Then she tucked her blanket under her arm and made for the window.

  It opened easily, and she tossed out the blanket, climbed out onto the stone ledge, closed the window as best she could so that the cold air wouldn’t wake anyone earlier than the whistle, and jumped.

  The fall wasn’t nothing. She smacked the cold ground hard and rolled onto her back, her legs zinging from the impact. But the blood was pumping, hot and fast through her body, and she sprang up, retrieved her blanket, and took off across the lawn, keeping to the trees.

  After creeping past both the gymnasium and the towering administrative building, she dashed into the dark like a rabbit, and quickly came upon the first road that wasn’t part of the school, where she turned “down,” just as Rose had said.

  Striking out, she stuck to the woods a few feet off the road to keep from meeting any early morning risers. They’d know exactly where she’d come from, being shoeless, wearing nightclothes, and being covered in a blanket. She wasn’t cold, not even her feet. Not yet. The excitement of being out alone in the night kept her warm. But she’d need shoes and clothes soon. First, though, she needed a place to hide, the closer to the institution the better, because they’d be looking for her farther out. Not in such a tight circle surrounding the grounds. She was going to be smarter this time. Take her time. Think.

  London picked her way through the woods alongside what had to be Trapelo Road. There were a few farmhouses, but she hurried past them. She wasn’t doing that again. It was almost dawn. If she had to, she would retreat into the woods and cover herself with leaves for the day, although she sure hoped she wouldn’t have to. Except for her feet, she was pretty clean. If she was lucky enough to find clothes and shoes, and braided up her hair, she might actually be able to walk along the street during the day. But once she spent a night under a pile of leaves, it would be harder to look like any other girl on an errand for her mother.

  Coming over a hill, she caught sight of a small neighborhood. It was farther off her road than she would have liked, and in the wrong direction, but London didn’t have a choice. She turned toward it, and after a minute began to run, needing to beat the lightening winter sky.

  She arrived at the collection of brick and wooden structures. She spotted an empty-looking three-story brick building and headed for it.

  She broke through the back fence easily and entered a yard full of tall grass growing up through the slats of old crates. She tried the back door, then the basement window. Locked. Using the corner of her blanket to wipe off a small circle of dirt, she peeked in. She couldn’t see much, but she could tell no one was moving about inside. She grabbed the largest empty crate she could find and dragged it over to the window. After looking up at the building, and then around at the houses on either side, she wrapped her hand inside her blanket and punched in the window by the lock, opened it, and climbed inside, pulling the empty crate in front of the hole she’d just made.

  It was definitely warmer. And dusty. Filled with old milk bottles and tools that London didn’t recognize. She investigated the entire floor, looked out all the windows she was able to reach, and tried the door. It was locked.

  She quietly collected a few boxes of bottles and built a small wall in front of the window she’d broken, to protect herself if someone walked in the door while she slept, and then she settled down. She was asleep in a matter of seconds.

  When she woke, she peered out the tiny smudge of window she’d cleaned earlier in the morning and guessed it was mid-afternoon. She felt rested, like she’d slept for a while, although a little stiff, and her feet were cold.

  It was quiet. Eerily quiet. She figured she was in some sort of small factory or store and wondered where everyone was. But then she remembered. It was Christmas. She almost laughed out loud. No one would be looking for her, or at least no one would be looking for her very hard.

  Christmas.

  She couldn’t stop herself from thinking of Rose and her biscuits.

  She stood up to dispel the memory, flapping her arms and legs about to warm up. She walked about for a bit, found a nice corner to pee in, and then wrapped back up in her blanket and dozed off again. Tonight she’d be back on the road. But for now she’d stay right where she was.

  * * *

  As soon as it grew dark, London opened her window and crept back out into the tiny yard. Picking her way over the clumps of grass and old crates, she looked through the slats of the fence into the yards on either side of her, seeking food, clothes, shoes. She wasn’t hopeful, and for good reason. There was nothing.

  She could use the blanket as a coat, or as shoes… not both. She chose the coat, and then squeezed out of the fence the way she’d come in.

  London knew she could do without food for a few days, but she needed shoes and clothes to keep going. She didn’t want to take the risk of wandering about in this neighborhood, but she had no choice. Also, anything she stole might be reported, and then they’d have an idea of where she was, so it was better to steal here than along Trapelo Road, where they’d know her direction.

  Keeping close to the buildings, she made her way to the street. No one was out. But she could hear the clinking of glass, talking, and laughter inside some of the houses as she snuck past. Christmas dinner. Her stomach growled. She might not need food, but she certainly would have liked it. She pictured Rose sitting in the dining hall among the lights and tinsel. She hoped Rose was eating. She didn’t picture Maxine.

  London spotted a house with no lights on. C
arefully she circled the house, checking out every window she could reach, and listening. There was no sound.

  Hunched as low as possible, she crawled up the stairs onto the back porch. And there, sitting by the door, was a pair of old boots! She snatched them up and took off.

  London walked the rest of the night, her feet flopping about inside the boots, the blanket wrapped tightly around her. The houses were clustering more thickly now, and London looked about for hanging laundry, but of course no one left laundry out overnight. As she passed one house, she heard faint singing, and stopped to listen. The “Fa la la la las” of Maxine’s song were unmistakable. She hurried on.

  How long would they keep Maxine in the cages? London tried not to imagine her, bucket in hand, cleaning the shit from the floor in the Back Ward. Instead she hoped Maxine had passed a quiet day in “therapeutic solitude.”

  London’s feet began to drag. She needed another place to hide soon, and to sleep. Spotting an abandoned-looking shed standing all on its own close to the road, London crept inside through a large hole in the bricks. It wasn’t the safest place to hide out the day, but she was exhausted. Again she fell asleep without one thought crossing her mind.

  She was woken up well before the sun rose, by a pounding rainstorm.

  After stretching, peeing, and then curling back up in her corner, she slept another hour or so, but then couldn’t sleep anymore. London lay sprawled in the dirt listening to the rain. She was cold and hungry, and worse, she missed Rose. For the first time, she wondered if she should have run.

  But if she’d stayed, Rose might never have spoken to her again. She was sure Maxine never would. London was sure Maxine had already figured out that Rose had stolen the money and the dress for London—and was sure Maxine believed that London had put Rose up to it.

  As the rain battered the roof of the shed, London relived the horrible scene. The scuffle at the sinks. Bessie’s punishing kiss between the eyes. That evil bitch calling out from her cot. And then London remembered Alice sitting bolt upright in her bed.