“My bunk is the top one,” I tell her. I’d wished for years that I could move back down to the bottom, where I slept for a long time prior to Janny, but in the past day I’ve grudgingly conceded that I need to keep the top one. Her level of guilt in her father’s shooting is still an open question, and so no matter how guileless she looks to the naked eye, I must remember that the top bunk makes it harder for her to kill me in my sleep.
“That’s fine,” she says as the guard unshackles her. “I like the bottom.”
Two other guards set down her possessions on the floor. Penelope has quite a few possessions for someone who has only been here for a couple of days. I see books, a television, a CD player with a tall stack of CDs, two pairs of sneakers, a plastic basket overflowing with personal care items. Someone must be lavishing money on her canteen account. She leaves the boxes on the floor and sits uneasily on the stool by the desk. In a moment the guards retreat, and I extend a hand. “I’m Clara.”
“Penelope.” In person the resemblance to Audrey Hepburn still bears out, though her dark hair is loose and wavy, and her posture and way of moving are more adolescent than ladylike.
“Did they tell you anything about me?” I ask.
She shakes her head, which is probably a lie. “Well, the bottom shelf is yours, and I’ve cleaned out some other nooks and crannies for you. I hope you’re neat. My last cellmate was blind, so I’m used to things being tidy for her sake.”
“I can be neat.” She curls her shoulders inward and wraps her arms around her waist. “I saw the movie about you.”
“Did you? I haven’t seen it.”
An eyebrow arches. “Really?”
“I was incarcerated when it came out. I’ve seen still photos from it over the years, and the trailer. Do I look anything like Katie Rayburn?”
“Kind of.”
“Well, that’s flattering. I understand I shot Mimi Choi in that movie.”
Penelope nods. She evaluates my expression. “Didn’t you, in real life?” she asks.
“No. Chris Brooks did.”
She frowns. “That’s not cool, then, that they pinned it on you.”
“Well, welcome to my life.”
It’s yard time, and in the past few minutes the cellblock has gone quiet, but I’m being kept in today because of this transition. Penelope looks out through the bars at the empty corridor, then reaches into her box of snacks and pulls out a pack of cigarettes. “Want one?”
They are contraband, and she obviously knows it. When I meet her eye she offers an apologetic shrug. “Don’t tell, all right? It’s not like I have any choice but to quit, anyway.”
“True,” I say. “All right, then. I’ll help you along.”
She lights hers and passes me the lighter. After my conviction I smoked for years, drawn to the habit by boredom and the desire to look like less of a goody two-shoes, following my rough start. Everyone did back then, before they changed the laws even for the guards. But I had quit long before that—more than a decade ago, after coming to the epiphany that being locked up was no excuse for setting lower standards for myself than I would have on the outside. I’d never go back to it as a habit, but the indulgence is a pleasant one. Penelope eases back on the stool and smiles shyly at me. We’re breaking a rule together, and she likes that.
“Have they assigned you a job yet?” I ask her.
“Yeah, in the laundry.” She grimaces. “I start tomorrow. I must have made someone mad to get that assignment.”
“No, it’s a common one. I did it for a while when I was new.”
“Did you? Where do you work now?”
“In the Braille workshop. We create textbooks for the blind. There’s a whole training program for it. Depending on what level you want to get to, it can take several years.”
She taps ash into the toilet and grimaces. “I hope I won’t be here long enough for something like that. Hey, is it okay with you if we put up a sheet around this toilet, like a curtain? Because I really hate that part.”
“We’re not allowed.”
She looks skeptical. “They overlook stuff like that, right? I’m sure the guards don’t really want to watch people taking a crap. They’d probably appreciate it.”
“The guards don’t care. They watch people crap all day.”
Her expression is one of arch displeasure. She drags on her cigarette. She looks up at the wall above my desk, where I’ve tacked a pastel drawing of mine—a copy of a Degas painting of a ballet class, called Dance. “I used to take ballet,” she says.
“Me, too.”
“I quit once I got old enough that they didn’t let you wear a tutu to class anymore.”
“I danced from four to thirteen. It was my whole life when I was a child. I still practice now, fairly often, when I can get the right music for it.”
Amusement glosses over her face. “In here? Really?” I nod. “How do you do ballet in a cell?” she asks
“The same way you do everything else in a cell. You don’t let the environment convince you that you can’t. You live inside your head.”
She acknowledges that with a respectful nod and fidgets with her cigarette. I flick ash outside the bars. The gesture feels deliciously powerful. The evidence is right there that I’ve broken a rule, but I defy them to write me up for it. What are they going to do, send me to the Hole? They aren’t going to leave this confused little girl all alone while I sweat it out in solitary confinement, even though the idea of quiet and isolation doesn’t sound too bad to me right now. The thought of getting to know this new person makes me weary. I’ve always felt daunted by the complex dance of social relationships, and the events of the past few months have taxed my skills to their limit.
“Did you draw that yourself?” she asks. I nod. “You’re a good artist.”
“Thanks. Ricky was, too.”
“So that part was real, huh?”
“Yes, that part was real,” I say, and I smile.
“My favorite part of the movie was when they had sex in the car.”
I blurt a laugh. “Did we have sex in a car? I don’t remember that.”
She looks nervous at my reaction, but flicks ash into the toilet again and nods. “Coked-up sex. They snorted it at a club and then did it in the parking lot. It was pretty hot.”
“Well, I did use cocaine with him a few times, but all in the first year we were together. I understand that’s not as fashionable now as it was then. And we certainly never had sex in a car. What if the police had caught us? My mother would have killed me.”
She giggles. “But did you have coked-up sex—that’s the real question.”
I lower myself down to sit on the floor. “Oh, probably. They don’t make movies out of couples who only play mini-golf and go out for sushi, do they?”
Penelope looks much more relaxed now. She has a smile that lights her face, with teeth so white I imagine they must be bleached. “Sounds like you’ve got some good stories,” she says. “I can’t wait to hear them all.”
I shrug. As cellmates go it’s an unexpectedly strong start, but I’ll get to know her in my own time, not hers. I have plenty of that to spare.
Just as I am leaving Mass, the hallway intercom crackles and they call the numbers of those with visitors. I hear mine, and it’s a surprise—I had thought Annemarie would be too busy to come this week. But when I arrive in the visiting room she’s already there, stepping forward with a warm smile. “The patio is open,” she says. “We should get some sun.”
Outside the picnic tables are all taken up with women visiting with their young children, each child sitting on the lap of whoever is taking care of him or her during the incarceration, looking at their mothers with wary eyes and responding halfheartedly to attempts at patty-cake. Annemarie and I walk out to the edge of the concrete pad, where the shade of the awning is no longer good for much against the relentless desert sun. “I got your wedding invitation,” I say. “Thank you very much.”