“Sure,” I say, although I know several of the other inmates are watching these displays of camaraderie between us, and they don’t like them. “Deal me in.”
She slides onto the floor and begins dealing cards for both of us, her legs splayed wide with a cheerleader’s gymnastic ease. “I’m really sorry that happened to you,” she says. “Maybe you can forgive yourself a little easier since you know the guy you killed was bad.”
No, I think, but maybe, just maybe, I can find a way to forgive Clinton. There’s no excuse for what he did, but if I wish for the justice system, the Catholic Church and the Choi family to take pity on me in my weakness and confusion and unreconciled anger, I must be prepared to ask the same thing of myself. Whether or not Clinton wants my forgiveness doesn’t matter—it’s a way out of the mire of the past, for me. It’s a thought so absorbing that it takes an hour or more before I realize Penelope has given me the other key to my freedom.
Chapter Thirteen
“Singer, Clark and Joseph,” Mona’s receptionist says. Her voice is muffled by the ancient wall phone into which I’m speaking. I wait out the automated recording from the prison, then say, “This is Clara Mattingly. Is Mona in?”
“No, she’s at a conference this week.”
I sigh heavily and press my forehead against the cool cinderblock wall. “This week? Is there any way I can reach her?”
“If it’s an emergency, I can pass along a message.”
“Yes, please. She’s waiting on some information from me, and—please let her know I have it. Tell her, regarding what we talked about last time, I have a very important update for her.”
“All right, Ms. Mattingly. I’ll be sure she gets that.”
I say a somber goodbye and hang the phone on its cradle. I had to wait a long time for the phones, and now yard time has begun. As I step out beyond the patio, the afternoon heat is overwhelming. The sun feels as though it is ten feet away, and as I walk around the perimeter of the fence I can feel the round beam of it pounding against the back of my head. Over in the cemetery the few old marble headstones glitter beneath the light, chips of mica shining like shards of glass. I’m thirsty, and my thin jumpsuit blouse sticks to the whole length of my back. Even the chatter of the other inmates sounds sharp, the harsh clipped syllables of their speech rising up into aggressive laughter, then falling only to surge again.
As I round the corner I hear Clementine meowing from beneath a picnic table. I give her a little wave, and she starts toward me, then stops abruptly. She starts once again, then crouches down. It’s strange. I change course to walk over to her and reach down to see what’s wrong. Her foot is caught in a short length of yarn tied to the base of the table. Only once I lean down to free her do I realize it’s a snare.
And it’s too late. I hear them surrounding me, the sudden quiet created by the wall their bodies form, and then the strike. A fist against the back of my skull, smashing my forehead into the bench. The pain is shocking but bearable, but then there’s a boot planted hard in my side, and I crash into the metal bar that connects table to bench. By instinct I grit my teeth and make no sound beyond that of the air being knocked out of me. I try to curl into a ball beneath the table, but one of them—there’s noise now, shouting, and plenty of it—holds me in place with a jerk to my ankle just as I pull away. Fire sears up my calf to my knee, and now I scream. A foot rams into my gut, another against my shoulder. Their catcalls and cheers for one another swarm around my ears like bees. I curl, I try, I bring my crossed arms up over my head and face, and then it stops all at once. The C.O.’s are shouting, the wall disappears, the fireball sun bears down on me once again. There are hands on me, so many, that as my consciousness dims and fades I imagine they’re butterflies landing on my body, so gentle, so light.
I don’t notice the ride away from the prison this time. I’m aware of it, but mostly of the sound. The siren is rising and falling in endless waves, and since it’s not on television it won’t turn off after a few seconds. Hands keep touching me—lighting onto my skin, not always comfortably, and then fluttering away. Someone says, “Should we cuff her?” and another voice says, “Are you serious? Look at her,” and the first one says, “You know who she is, right?” Through it all I breathe lightly, but there’s a mask on my face that makes me feel like I’m suffocating.
It feels like hours before they finish tending to me, jostling me, and things fall quiet. When I awaken I’m in a hospital room, cool and spacious, with enormous windows that show the night sky. I gasp at the sight of it—so enormous, so frighteningly dark—and I hear a stirring at my door.
“You awake?”
There are no shackles on my ankles or wrists, so I’m afraid to move. I don’t want anyone to think I’m trying to escape. I’m not in much pain; rather, I’m floating, as if there is a body with pain in it but Clara is hovering just above its reach. A corrections officer appears in my view, a tall black man with a broad chest and narrow waist. His gaze is hard and dour at first, but then softens to a half-smile as I offer a few fingers’ worth of a wave.
“Is my cat okay?” I ask.
He lets out a laugh. “Your cat? You don’t have a cat.”
“The mouser. The one they call Frankfurter.”
“Oh. I don’t know.” He rests his hands on the leather cases that dot his belt. “How you doing?”
“I don’t know. This is strange.”
“Been a long time since you been out.” He says it as a statement, and it’s true enough. I nod. “Listen, you’re under twenty-four hour guard. You try to step one foot out this door, it’s not going to end well. You got it?”
“I got it. I’m not going anywhere.”
He nods toward the foot of the bed. “Yeah, not that you’d get too far, but I’m just warning you.”
I follow his gaze. For the first time I notice my right leg is in a cast that begins just below the knee. “What happened there?” I ask.
“You got to ask the doctor that.”
I struggle to sit up. There’s an IV needle in my hand, surrounded by a mitten of tape and connected to a bag and an assortment of tubes. When I move I feel the sore place near my shoulder, and another on the back of my head. I run my tongue along my teeth. They’re all still there.
“Listen,” I say. “I want to talk to my lawyer. As soon as possible. Can I get permission to make a call to her?”
“I was told to tell you she’ll be in during visiting hours tomorrow.”
I let out a sigh of relief. “All right. Can I get up and…and go to the bathroom?”
“Whatever you like. Just don’t try to come near that door.”
He saunters back over to it and half-turns away from me. I loop my IV tubes around the bars of the bed and hoist myself to stand. Everything hurts, but I can balance all right, so long as I hold onto things. Taking care not to set any weight down on the plaster of my cast, I hop to the window, where a ledge juts out to form a long table-like surface. The window runs nearly the full length of the wall, and the night sky is nothing less than dazzling. A crescent moon hangs high above the dark palm trees, and around it the glittering stars hold their tiny light, each steadfast in its place. It fills my entire field of vision and makes me feel lightheaded. It’s so dark, so enormous, that it feels as though at any moment it will suck me out into its immensity. It had not even occurred to me, prior to this moment, that I have not seen a night sky in twenty-five years. I remember the sky above the beach that night with Ricky, and I remember it was beautiful, but not that it looked like this.