“How long?” I asked, as if there was a choice anywhere in sight.
“That depends on your progress.”
I wondered if Jim actually believed any of this. Hard to tell from the way he explained it. His voice cracked from over-use, but otherwise rolled out flat. I’d softened to him though because he seemed to be working just as hard not to look up my skirt as I was working to make it hard for him. This let me decide he wasn’t part of the larger thing.
So there was an informal hearing, a closed one. The judge gave me a chance to talk. “Do you have anything to say for yourself?” was how he put it. I decided I didn’t. The concerned citizen never appeared, though it seemed he’d also made the original complaint.
By four that afternoon I was being searched again, this time by a woman and more thoroughly. She gave me some different clothes to wear and then she locked me up by myself. Completely by myself. I figured I must’ve come with instructions.
I don’t know how long this went on. How many days I spent alone in that room. I’d given up counting. Had left that idea back in the holding cell. They brought me food, they came by and lit cigarettes. They took me to the bathroom, but I had to ask and then they stood there and watched.
The room was too small to pace but I found myself doing it anyway. I didn’t sleep really. I’d had an instant aversion to the mattress, which lay on the floor in one corner. I didn’t like that it didn’t have sheets, and it was that plasticky kind. But then maybe this made it harder to set on fire – something I’d already considered but hadn’t attempted because it seemed almost expected. Mostly I didn’t like that I couldn’t see well. The room was too dim, all day and all night, the only light coming from the hallway.
I knew the time of day by what was on the food tray. Went by this until I got to where I could only eat toast. Then I tried to remember which woman worked which shift. A nice one followed by two mean ones and then the nice one again.
I knew that the nice one, Gail, had the day shift. But soon I found it easier to think of her as working the midnight to morning one. Even wished hard that it was true because that would’ve given her more time with me. The woman who really worked that shift sure had plenty to spare.
They kept Gail busy but she still spent time with me. She’d come in and sit with me on that mattress. She’d talk to me. She’d light my cigarettes as if she was just being friendly instead of reminding me I couldn’t do it myself. Instead of getting me on my knees for it. And she never once forced me to eat. Coaxed me sometimes but she never tried to force me.
In this way it was good she worked days because it gave me two meals with her, and only dinner with the one who’d push, who’d get her arm around my neck and insist. These day-to-day things had begun running me.
Gail’s the one who brought Beth to me. Sometimes I think if Gail hadn’t I’d still be in that hole. You get to see pretty fast why people call it that. The darkness, and the way that makes the edges hard to make out.
Anyway, Gail brought Beth in there with me. And the first thing Beth did was put her arms around me. Even in that light I could see the look on her face.
I began to count again, to count days. And for five of them, including the first one, Beth came to that room. The sixth and seventh meant the weekend because she didn’t come and Gail didn’t come either. On Monday they both came again.
The day after that I went for my first walk. Beth took me. She actually took me outside. And I began to wonder where in my hell she’d come from because this small thing – taking me outside where I could breathe – seemed huge and important and nearly unreal and I couldn’t see where she found the strength for it.
I quickly found I didn’t have much strength. There were woods all around, the hilly kind. It seemed if you could run – if you were physically able, I mean, in a way I knew I wasn’t – you could get lost fast. I hadn’t seen any dogs or even guards but we hadn’t exactly gone anywhere near the gates.
This sort of thing passed through my mind; it didn’t really settle. If somewhere I was working on it, I didn’t know because Beth claimed all my attention. She held my arm while we walked. Helped me up the little slopes.
I’d slept some this week. Slept lying on that mattress instead of crouched down in the corner trying to fight it off. Instead of trying to keep awake in the furthest corner as if that could protect me from the midnight-to-morning woman and who she’d bring with her. Who she might let in while she sat by the door, keeping watch and no doubt collecting on me.
These last nights I’d stretched out and slept. And when they came, I let them because I found this way I could pretend to be sleeping and it’d go faster. It’d seem to, and I’d get hit less. And I’d be thinking how the next day I’d see her. Beth. I’d be thinking for the first time that I might not always be here.
Beth seemed to be thinking this too. Seemed to have assumed it right from the start. The fourth day we went out walking she stopped and sat down, propped herself against a log that was lying there.
Still slow on the uptake, and not used to doing things unless told to, I just stood there. Loomed over her, and I’m sure I looked pretty empty. She grabbed my hand. Pulled me down next to her and ran her fingers through my hair.
She laughed at me in a way I liked. In a way that was nice to me. She put her arm around my shoulders and I leaned against her. Left off trying to bolster myself, left this to her.
“How did you wind up in there?” she asked first. And still thinking small scale, I assumed she meant the room.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Practically the minute I got here, that’s where they put me.”
“But how did you get here?”
I thought she would know all this. I said, “You’re the one who works here. Don’t they tell you that stuff? Isn’t it all written down?”
I’d leaned away a little when I said this. I wanted enough distance so I could see her, get a look at her. If anything, she looked hurt.
“I don’t work here that way,” she said. “I’m not on the staff.”
This encouraged me some but not entirely. “But still you read that stuff, don’t you? And you’re here.”
“I don’t see patients. I’m just observing.”
I didn’t like this last word. Disliked it so much I tried to get up. But she pulled on me and as I said I wasn’t feeling so strong.
After I’d fallen back beside her, she said, “I don’t think you belong here, okay? I want to help you get out.”
I considered this carefully in my mind. But my body was on its own, celebrating already and so soon my mind wasn’t really working at all except at trying to control my insides.
“You mean that?”
She smiled and nodded, and I found myself holding on to her when up until now she’d been the only one making gestures.
I liked so much how this felt. She had on a down jacket and I pressed my face into her shoulder and her jacket puffed up around me. I was wearing Gail’s jacket, and the rest of my clothes were left-overs. Somebody’s jeans, a scrub shirt, a sweater Gail’d brought me when it began to get really cold.
I hadn’t seen my things since they took them off me that first day. I hadn’t thought about my own things until this minute. It was something about having my face pressed into Beth’s coat and knowing it belonged to her. It even smelled like her. This somehow was what started me crying.
I let myself for a while. Let myself for as long as I could because something in me needed to do this and knew it. Still, pretty soon I choked it off. And when I tried to get up this time, instead of pulling me down, Beth got up herself and then helped me.