"They assigned me to office work. I told them I'd rather clean toilets than type their bureaucratic vomit. Oh, they don't much care for me. I'm on grounds crew. I sweep, pull weeds, though of course only inside the wire. I'm considered a poor security risk. Imagine. I won't tutor their illiterates, teach writing classes, or otherwise feed the machine. / will not serve." She stuck her nose in my hair, she was smelling me. "Your hair smells of bread. Clover and nutmeg. I want to remember you just like this, in that sadly hopeful pink dress, and those bridesmaid, promise-of-prom-night pumps. Your foster mother's, no doubt. Pink being the ultimate cliche."
I told her about Starr and Uncle Ray, the other kids, dirt bikes and paloverde and ironwood, the colors of the boulders in the wash, the mountain and the hawks. I told her about the sin virus. I loved the sound of her laughter.
"You must send me drawings," she said. "You always drew better than you wrote. I can't think of any other reason you haven't written."
I could write? "You never did."
"You haven't been getting my letters?" she said. And her smile was gone, her face deflated, masklike, like the women behind the fence. "Give me your address. I'll write you directly. And you write to me, don't go through your social worker. My mistake. Oh, we'll learn." And the vigor returned to her eyes. "We're smarter than they are, ma petite."
I didn't know my address, but she told me hers, had me repeat it over and over so I would remember. My mind rebelled against my mother's address. Ingrid Magnussen, Inmate W99235, California Institution for Women, Corona-Frontera.
"Wherever you go, write to me. Write at least once a week. Or send drawings, God knows the visual stimulation in this place leaves something to be desired. I especially want to see the ex-topless dancer and Uncle Ernie, the clumsy carpenter."
It hurt my feelings. Uncle Ray had been there when I needed him. She didn't even know him. "It's Ray, and he's nice."
"Oh," she said. "You stay away from Uncle Ray, especially if he's oh so nice."
But she was in here, and I was out there. I had a friend. She wasn't going to take him away from me.
"I think of you all the time," she said. "Especially at night. I imagine where you are. When the prison's still and everyone's asleep, I imagine I can see you. I try to contact you. Have you ever heard me calling, felt my presence in your room?" She stroked a strand of my hair between her fingers, stretched it to see how long it was against my arm. It came to my elbow.
I had felt her, I had. I'd heard her call. Astrid? Are you awake? "Late at night. You never could sleep."
She kissed the top of my head, right in the part. "Neither could you. Now, tell me more about yourself. I want to know everything about you."
It was a strange idea. She never wanted to know about me before. But the long days of sameness had led her back to me, to remembering she had a daughter tied up somewhere. The sun was starting to come out and the ground fog glowed like a paper lantern.
6
THE NEXT SUNDAY, I slept too late. If only I hadn't been dreaming about my mother. It was a sweet dream. We were in Aries, walking down the allee of dark cypress trees, past tombs and wildflowers. She had escaped from prison — she was pushing a lawnmower in front of the building and just walked away. Aries was deep shade and sunshine like honey, Roman ruins and our little pension. If I had not been hungry for that dream, for the sunflowers of Aries, I would have got up when the boys ran off into the wash.
But now I was sitting in the front seat of the Torino. Carolee groaned in the back, she had a hangover from doing drugs all night with her friends. Starr had caught her sleeping too. Amy Grant played on the radio, and Starr sang along, wearing her hair in a sort of messy French twist like Brigitte Bardot, and long dangling earrings. She looked like she was going to a cocktail lounge, and not to the Truth Assembly of Christ.
"I hate this," my foster sister said in my ear as we followed her mother into church. "I'd kill for some 'ludes."
The Assembly met in a concrete-block building with linoleum-tiled floors and a high frosted glass window instead of stained. A modern fruitwood cross loomed in front, and a woman with a puffy hairdo played the organ. We sat on white folding chairs, Carolee on my left, face dark with sullenness and headache, Starr on the aisle, glowing with excitement. Her skirt was so short I could see where the dark part of her pantyhose started.
The organ playing crescendoed and a man walked to the lectern wearing a dark suit and tie with shiny black shoes, like a businessman. I thought he would wear a graduation-type robe. His short, side-parted brown hair glistened like cellophane under the colored lights. Now Starr sat very straight, hoping he would notice her.
As he spoke, I was surprised that he had a sort of speech defect. He swallowed his /'s, so it came out "alyive" instead of "alive." "Though we were dead in our error, He made us alive together in Christ. By the Cross, we have been saved. He lifts us up to the life .. . everlasting." He raised his hands, lifting us. He was good. He knew when to build and when to let off, and when he got quiet, that's when he came in for the kill, with big shiny eyes and little flat nose, and a lipless mouth so wide he looked like a Muppet, like his whole head opened and closed when he talked. "Yes, we can live again, even when we are dying of ... the sin virus."
Carolee shifted, making her chair squeak on purpose. Starr flapped her hand, nudged me and pointed at the Reverend, as if there was anything else to look at.
Reverend Thomas started telling a story of a young man in the sixties, a good-hearted boy, who thought he could go his own way, as long as he didn't hurt anyone. "He met a guru who taught him to look for the truth within himself." The preacher paused and smiled, as if the idea of truth within yourself was absurd, ridiculous, the red light warning of doom. "You are the judge of what is true." He smiled again, and I began to see that he always paused to smile when he said something he disapproved of. He reminded me of someone who put your fingers in the door and smiled and talked to you while he was smashing them.
"Oh, he was by no means alone in his philosophy at the time," Reverend Thomas continued, his button eyes shining. "'Do your own thing, man,' was the wisdom of the day. If there was something you wanted, it was good, because you wanted it. There was no God, no dying. There was only your own pleasure." He smiled at the word "pleasure," as if pleasure was hideous, an abomination, and he felt pity for anyone who would be so weak as to value it. "And if anyone spoke of responsibility or consequences, they were held up to ridicule. 'Lighten up, man. Don't be square.'