The Degenerates

by J. Albert Mann

  Alice had known about the money and the dress.

  Maxine’s terrible screeching, the attendants piling on top of her, the strength of the girl’s emotion as they shoved her into the straitjacket. All that hate, spewing from her like vomit. It had been directed at Alice. London saw it clearly now. Maxine didn’t blame London. Maxine blamed Alice.

  London twisted onto her side in the dirt. She’d long ago given up being surprised at the shitty ways in which life often worked out. Wondering why was a loser’s game she never played. She reached for her book and then had to laugh. Like Rose’s stick was for Rose, the book had become something of a comfort to London. She had finished the book twice. She would have read it again. And again. It was about a man who was wronged by his friends and sent to prison for life, and when in prison he makes a new friend, then breaks out, finds a treasure, and exacts slow and painful revenge on those who wronged him. A happy story. Even though it had the old lady’s name on it, Thelma would have said it was a piece of crap. Because there never is any escape. Definitely never a treasure. But… there can be revenge.

  London went over the last few weeks in her mind… singing in the choir, reading her book to Rose, sleeping in a warm bed. Could she have stayed? Could she have lived there?

  She thought again of the old lady and her opinions.

  No. London wanted to go home, because that dump on Bennington, it was where she belonged. She and her baby.

  Her baby.

  London had seen enough squawkers to last her a lifetime, but her very own? She couldn’t imagine it. Although, a kind of warmth was beginning to settle in next to the fear.

  The old woman would take her. Both of them. She had to.

  London unwrapped herself and stood up, stamping her feet to wake them. It was still raining. She checked the road in both directions to be sure she was alone, and then wandered about the broken-down building, opening the drawers of a dusty workbench, poking into corners, and rummaging through crates. Nothing. Or at least nothing useful. There were chains, old ropes, splintered barrels, a cart without its wheels, and then… hanging on a hook and looking very much like a ripped curtain… a pair of work overalls.

  London yanked them down, shaking out any bugs and dust. They were big, and as dirty as hell, but they were clothes. She kicked off her boots and pulled on the overalls. The legs of the pants were much longer than hers, and she needed to stuff the ends into the boots. The extra fabric allowed the boots to fit more snugly and warmed her feet at the same time. She still looked like a runaway, but at least she wasn’t in nightclothes anymore.

  London used the rest of the time before it became dark to turn over every board in the place so as not to miss out on a shirt or coat, but finding nothing else, she got on her way.

  The gloomy day had passed into a dark evening, and it was a long night of walking. By the time the sun was hinting at rising, she was entering Cambridge, her blisters screaming, and she found herself gloriously surrounded by an awakening city. She was no longer a runaway but a regular ragamuffin walking among the growing crowd.

  London walked through Cambridge, over the Harvard Bridge, and into Boston in a dreamlike state. She could hear her boots clunking and scraping along, yet they sounded far-off and detached from her. She arrived at the Court Street station in the same circumstances in which she’d traveled the entire trip—penniless, and so found a doorway stoop in an alley, to rest and think. She slept on and off for the rest of the day with the comforting hubbub of automobiles and people streaming up and down Tremont Street. Slipping onto a streetcar without paying would be best accomplished in a crowd, so London needed to wait until the end of the business day.

  No one took notice of her. It was busy, and people had things to do. With late afternoon coming on, she spit onto the corner of the filthy blanket she’d been carrying for two days and cleaned her face, and then tossed it away, braided her hair, and headed for the station in her nightclothes and overalls.

  The platform was crawling with people. She dropped her head, and when the streetcar pulled in, wiggled expertly between the exiting and entering crowds, slipping onto the car. She’d never paid for a streetcar in her life, and today was no different.

  The dull lighting inside the East Boston Tunnel was strangely soothing, and London nodded off while standing on her feet. It only took a few minutes to travel beneath the harbor, but when the car pulled out of the tunnel, it was dark, and London was greeted by the gaslights of Maverick Square. She clutched the nearest hanging strap, at the sight of so much familiarity. She was just a few blocks away now. Jumping out of the institution’s window, the cold nights on the road, the long walk through the city of Cambridge, the day spent in and out of sleep in the alley, even Rose and Alice and Maxine… it rushed away, and she leaped from the car while it was still moving.

  Chelsea Street was crowded, and cold. Her feet might know exactly where they were headed, but they still complained about taking her there. Finally Bennington Street came into sight, and London began to run.

  Turning the corner, she ran on, half tripping while she focused on the window slowly coming into view. Was it open? Was she there? What horrible profanity would the old lady shower down on London when she caught sight of her? Not that it mattered. Any old horrible thing would do.

  London ran faster. But then she slowed. The window wasn’t open, and no light shone through. London stumbled to the front door and shoved it open. She started up the sticky stairs two at a time, her breath in her ears and her blood pumping against her skull.

  She tried the door. It was locked. She pounded… already knowing. Now she attacked it, smacking at the wood with her fists so hard that she could hear the wood splitting.

  Off in the distance, behind another wall, a threatening voice rang out.

  London stopped and slid to the floor. The old lady was gone. Thelma Dumas was gone.

  * * *

  London had no idea how long she sat there. Finally she rose to her feet and headed down the stairs. On the middle landing she spotted a large hunk of the umbrella stand, most likely kicked into the shadowy corners of the stairwell on the day she was taken. She picked it up.

  Dirty and cold, she walked out into the street. When she passed over Chelsea, she realized for the first time where she was heading. To Flannery’s butcher shop.

  To Alby.

  He couldn’t help her. He wouldn’t help her. She didn’t hate him for this. At least not right now. She remembered how he’d thought she was funny. How he’d laughed at the things London would say. In a good way. But she always knew Alby was limited inside—a sensitive white boy who might allow himself to fall for a dirty dago girl from the streets, but he didn’t have follow-through. She just really had nowhere else to go.

  The shop was closed, the windows dark and empty. Each night, Alby and his brother removed the dried and netted beef, ham, and coppa that hung in the window, and placed it in cold storage. Better not to entice hungry vagrants. Not that London was hungry. She wasn’t. She wasn’t anything, really, besides cold.

  Around her were the sounds of East Boston: dishes, voices, automobiles, even the belligerent honking of a tugboat echoing not far off in the navy yard. She stood and listened while she watched her glowing reflection in the butcher shop’s window. Then, after raising her arm in the air, she whipped the umbrella stand shard through the glass.

  The hole was bigger than she’d imagined the fist-size lump of clay could make. Interestingly, the hole wasn’t round but more like the shape of a star. A pretty star. She looked around for something else to throw. After loosening a cobble from the street, she picked it up and whipped it through the glass.

  Another star.

  Digging out as many cobbles as she could, she pummeled the shop window until there was nothing left of it. Only then did she notice the small crowd gathering around her. Some on the street. Others hanging from their windows. Everyone staring.

  Exhausted, she dropped down onto the curb amid the brok
en glass and waited for the police wagon.

  Rose woke with the whistle. Alone on her cot, memory stung her belly. Maxine was gone. This was the second terrible morning that Rose was forced to wake to this realization. It felt like someone had piled rocks on her. Lots and lots of rocks. Making it hard to breathe.

  She let some tears slip out, though Alice had told her she was not allowed to cry anymore, crying time was over. The key turned in the door, and Rose quickly stuffed her stick under the mattress alongside the bar of the bed, its new hiding place next to the book. She climbed from the cot, forgetting to wipe her eyes and nose… and Alice saw she’d been crying.

  “Rose.”

  Alice was scared. Alice was so scared.

  Rose immediately wiped her snot and tears on her sleeve and began to make up her cot. The only thing that made Alice better was if Rose tried to do exactly what Alice had whispered to her the morning before. So many words coming out of Alice. Like water from a faucet flooding into her ear.

  She’d told Rose to feel her feelings. But only on the inside. Never on the outside. She explained that Rose was like a walnut. Her feelings were the soft, tasty meat nestled inside her. They had just enough room in there to move around but not enough that they could become jostled or bruised. It was dark and warm and safe in there for the feelings. A place where the feelings were kept fresh and alive. Her body, Alice told her, was the wrinkly shell. Hard. Sealed at the seams. It kept the meat safe. Rose had to be like the walnut.

  Rose didn’t really understand, but she tried. She tried to be like a walnut. For Alice. And for Maxine. Rose collected all the tears she wanted to cry every time she remembered Maxxie saying she’d stolen the money. Every time she pictured her sister tied up on the floor, screaming. Every time she turned her head to find Maxine, and she wasn’t there. They filled up Rose’s stomach, those tears, and when she couldn’t hold them inside her wrinkly shell anymore, she threw them up into the toilet, into the dirty laundry pile, anywhere that no one would notice.

  During periodic excusing that first morning, she didn’t play in the water but sat on the toilets for the whole thirty minutes, sometimes peeing, sometimes pooping, and sometimes staring off into what Maxine called “a hole in the world.” It was exactly where Rose felt she now lived, in a hole in the world.

  Alice made Rose wash her face, hands, and teeth. Alice helped her into her boots, tied her laces, buttoned her dress. Told her she was being an excellent walnut. And to keep going. Alice said they just needed to keep going. The school was a good place for keeping going. The whistles blew, the hands clapped, and Rose pissed and dressed and walked and ate and worked and slept. She kept going.

  It was raining as they headed out to the circles. Not much. More like the sky was spitting, and not like it was crying as hard as Rose had that first day during periodic excusing, when Alice had shaken her. Reminding her, stern and mean-like, about the keeping going and how walnuts didn’t cry.

  As Rose walked the circle, the sky spitting down on her, she felt the heaviness of the rocks lift just a little. Rose walked and walked as the sun struggled to rise behind a giant wall of gray clouds. She walked curve after curve, bend after bend, and remembered her friend.

  London.

  Gone forever.

  It had been two nights now, and she hadn’t been caught. She’d done it. Even without Rose’s nickels or the stolen dress. She’d made it.

  Alice said that two nights didn’t mean she wouldn’t be caught, but two nights did mean she wasn’t likely to be caught. That meant London had likely made it. Christmas Day. It had been a good plan. A plan Rose had helped with. No one went looking. They were busy singing and eating. Busy celebrating the birth of a baby… like the one London had told Rose she was going to have.

  Rose walked the circles in the rain and thought about London. She thought about the baby. Coming in the springtime. She didn’t think about Maxine or the cages. Not while she walked the circles. She thought about Maxine every other place, but the circles she gave to London. Because London had loved them.

  “Rose,” she’d said one afternoon while they’d walked. “How can you not like this?”

  London loved how the paths started at no place and ended at no place. They just went on and on. “Round,” London had said, “like the sun and the moon and the earth.”

  “What about the stars?” Rose had asked her. “Stars aren’t round. And they’re much prettier than the sun. You can’t even look at the sun.”

  “The shine around a star is a little bit round,” London had argued.

  They’d decided they had both been right. Stars were prettier than the sun, and though they weren’t round like the paths, they did shine in a circle.

  Later that day, back at afternoon circles, Rose smiled up at the rain still falling from the sky. Soon there’d be stars. Soon Maxine would come home. Soon London would have a tiny baby. So many happy things to look forward to on a gray and lonely day. Alice was right. Keep going. Keep walking. And walking and walking and walking.

  The rain fell. And Rose shivered. It was cold. Her head felt cold on the inside, behind her forehead. She stumbled on the path.

  Alice steadied her from behind.

  “Do you see the stars, London?”

  “Rose?”

  Rose laughed. Alice wasn’t London. She didn’t know why she’d said that. It was her head, feeling like it ached. Her throat, too. It hurt when she swallowed her mouth water. It had hurt when she’d woken up this morning.

  Because Maxxie wasn’t there again.

  And London was far away. With the old lady who sat by the window and called everyone bad names. The lady London loved.

  * * *

  Now Rose did see stars. She was sure of it.

  “Maxine?”

  “No, baby, it’s me,” Alice said.

  She was taking Rose’s stick. Why was Alice taking her stick?

  “Rose,” Alice whispered. “You’re sick. Miss Sweeney went for the matron. I’ll keep your stick safe.”

  “With the book?”

  “With the book. When you’re well, Maxine and I will be here. Waiting for you.”

  Alice squeezed Rose’s fingers then, something Rose had seen Maxine do to Alice. Squeeze her fingers. Rose didn’t cry.

  Walnuts didn’t cry.

  London took the punches and the kicks. The cops beat it out of her, the pain. Right there on Decatur Street. In the gutter. Not far from where she’d thrown up. It felt like ages ago that she’d put Alby down with that kick on this same stretch of sidewalk.

  She knew he’d done it. Alby had told his father she was pregnant, and the cops had come for her. The hardworking and respectable Flannery family had removed the threat of the knocked-up dago bitch. They needn’t have worried. She would have never married Alby, that egg.

  The cops grew tired, sweaty, hungry. They tossed her into the back and locked her in. She heard them laughing, drinking. Smelled the cigarettes and the whiskey and the black peppery aroma of culatello as she bounced about in the back on the floor. She’d been here before. Twice before. And now they were taking her back.

  It had been her plan. Where else could she go?

  No clams and a sandbar.

  She would have Rose, and her baby. She’d ask Maxine to forgive her. She’d never done that before, said she was sorry. She’d never felt sorry—at least she didn’t think she had—though she’d done a hundred shitty things in her life.

  The truck hit a nasty pothole, and London’s head smacked the metal floor. She remembered the girl in the iron lung. Three months now. Three months the girl had been inside her metal lung. Three months since London realized she was pregnant. The girl lay locked away in some room somewhere, and soon London would be locked away as well. But she wouldn’t stay there forever. She vowed it, as the wagon rumbled and sputtered her closer and closer. She’d have the baby and figure it out. Figure it out for the both of them. Without the old lady.

  Screw that old lady.
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  But London didn’t feel it. The anger. She just felt the pain… and told herself it came from her broken nose, her bruised ribs, her aching head.

  They yanked her out and walked her in. There was the signing off on the paper, and the attendants—two different women this time—and the walk down the stairs, keys jangling. The smells hit London just as hard as they had the last time. There wasn’t any getting used to a stench that bad. Same doors to unlock, open, close, and lock. Same dim hallways. Same rooms to pass. Same moans. Although, this time the attendants carried her under each of her arms, gingerly, kindly. London figured she must really look like hell.

  Finally they led her into a cell. Laid her on the piss-soaked mattress. It was like an awful-smelling homecoming. They hovered in the doorway, watching her. She closed her eyes, hurting too much to care.

  A third woman entered. It was the attendant with the gray hair. The one who lived here like London lived here. She knelt on the floor, dipped a cloth into a washbasin, and brought it to London’s bloody face. London flinched, not from pain but from pleasure. The water was warm. The cloth was soft. The gray-haired woman washed London’s face. She cut off the overalls and the nightclothes, bloodied, from her nose maybe, or her teeth. London was sure one of those buzzers had knocked out a tooth or two.

  Then she dressed her. Fed her warm soup. Brushed her hair. Braided it. Covered her with a blanket. And left her to sleep.

  London slept, waking once in the night when she made the mistake of turning her face toward the mattress, the putrid smell yanking her awake. Pointing her nose back up at the ceiling, and breathing in through all the hurt, she tumbled back into the black of sleep.

  * * *

  Just as they had done the last time she’d been caged, they allowed her to sleep through the first day. Feeding her. But no more washbasins filled with warm water showed up. The second morning, when she heard breakfast on the way, she hoped to hell they’d pass her by. Let her be.