One day when we came back from dinner they were carrying Marge out on a stretcher. Her face was thick and blue. The matron said she had slipped in the shower and broken her arm and collarbone. She hadn’t come to dinner that day because she wanted to lose weight.
Kathy never took any part in those fights. She just sat around paying no attention like the rest. When I first came here she had a regular girl. After that girl was sent up to the federal pen Kathy would ask one or two of the other girls to spend a night with her in the key-cell.
Once when I was feeling bad she came and sat on my bunk and put her arm around me. She kissed me. It’s funny, for a minute I didn’t think of any difference between her and a man. Maybe because she didn’t see any difference. But she never asked me.
Some other new girls came in and the fights switched to them. Then I just sat around paying no attention and glad to be let alone.
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She said carnal about me with the switch in her hand and I was lying on the floor with linoleum in my hands blue with old flowers spreading like on an old lady and it meant dirt and it was dirt and I had always known when Gretel was going to be eaten and I lay on the doll’s table and was Gretel and the witch came with the plastic knife from the tea set and where to start carving—I knew where she would and it should hurt but I knew it would feel good and the witch’s hand was my hand with the plastic knife and it always took so long to get to school though I could see the flag from the porch and I truly did not stop on the way but was always moving and in the same direction but everybody passed me on the way and it was always so interesting the pebbles and leaves and water in the gutter and how the tree grew and I know still there was something but maybe after all not a unicorn and if every step took so long could I—would I help it and the teacher was angry when I came in though I had been moving all the time and the little boy with the long white hair sitting with his little arms and his little legs in the little chair but he was only in nursery school and too young for a kindergartner like me and I felt guilty but I loved him and when I went to the bathroom only to pee I was always moving and never stopped like they said and it only took so long because it was all so interesting but they said and once they took me to church and she pinned the red skirt on me but at the church I had to pee and forgot about how skirts lift up—there were so many people and the music and all alone in the booth I forgot how skirts lift up and unpinned it to pull it down and when I got home it wasn’t pinned the same way and she said I had let them do things to me and at school on the slide there was a bolt at the top where when you sat down your pantie leg got hooked on it and when you pushed off whee with your legs brown in front of you and the white fuzz on your legs like the embroidery on the cuff of your socks and when you pushed off even though you put your hand in your lap so your skirt wouldn’t fly up the bolt hung on and the panties tore and the first time I didn’t even notice but when I got home the panties were torn and she asked me if the big boys had been doing something to me and I said no and the next day it happened again on the slide and I noticed when that slide was colder going down and I said it was the slide and her mouth got thin and hard and she said does that happen to the other little girls and I said I don’t know and the next day it happened again and she went to the school and made the teacher look at the slide and they couldn’t see any bolt sticking up and when I looked I couldn’t see any bolt sticking up and all the other little girls went down the slide and it didn’t happen and I went down the slide and it didn’t happen and I didn’t go to that school any more.
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When he came it started—one night I woke up and it was dark and I looked for her and she wasn’t there and I went down the stairs afraid and the girl with the yellow hair who lived in the basement was reading and the light was on her hair and I got down on my knees and my pajamas got muddy and looked at her through the window reading and she read to me until my mother came home with him and later I stayed with the girl with the yellow hair and after a while he came in and picked me up and kissed me and his face hurt my face and he smelled of beer sour and I put my hand on his face and pushed away and she said this is your new daddy. I hated him and told her sometimes that I saw him go into the tavern with another woman and she believed me and they would yell and he would look at me and I could see he was afraid and I called him George and would not say daddy. He went away on a boat and it was the old way again except that I had to sleep in her bed in the pale green room where the light came in the morning but I still couldn’t get up because she was asleep hot next to me and her heavy smell like when you first take a bath made me sick in the bright room and I opened the window and looked out and saw far down in the black mud my other red sandal where I had thrown it and she never found it.
I had to sleep with her and one day the bed was wet and I thought I had done it but she said her water broke and went away and I went to stay at Mrs. Rice’s where I slept alone in a bed with tall white bars and there was a big boy who sat beside me at the table and picked up one end of my corn on the cob between two of his fingers and spread butter steaming with the knife on all its sides and put salt and pepper and gave it to me hot and dripping and I had never had that before and loved him and there were holes in the floor and when you stood on the grates in the morning when it was still dark the wind came up onto you hot. After a while he came to take me away home again and I cried and didn’t want to go but he gave me candy and I sat beside him in the car and when we got home he said there was a surprise and it was a radio and the Lone Ranger was just coming on but there was no baby after all and she saw I had been crying and made me stand up in the washtub where I took a bath and she looked between my legs and screamed and said he had done something to me and ever after that she said he had done something to me but I don’t remember him doing anything to me. But always until I went away from her she would call me sometimes—call my name from wherever she was to wherever I was and I could hear in the way she called my name that she was going to say that and ask me if he had been doing it or maybe she would say I wanted it. Once after we moved the new house was still a mess and she was angry and went to take a bath and he told me to come and help him set up beds in the living room to help her and my little brother was there and we all put up the beds and made them and wanted to please her and when she came out she looked so hard and said are you through? to me in that sneer that meant through doing that with him.
He never spoke to me and I never spoke to him because we both knew if he did or I did she would think and when I set the table I would not lean against it on the side he sat on or touch the chair he used and always held his plate and fork and spoon in two fingers and only for a second to slide them into place so she would not think I held them too long and was fondling them because they were his and I would not hang out his clothes to dry and I would not iron his clothes or fold his underwear in case she might think I did it because I liked him so she thought I hated him and it pleased her. Once he wanted to be nice, he was trying to be nice and she was angry he brought her flowers yellow and a dress as brown as chocolate soft it was—and he brought a little bowl so clear with water and a little goldfish in it swimming so beautiful and I held it carefully in my hands looking at it and she was yelling and she threw the flowers down and stamped on them and tore the dress in her hands and threw it at him and she was yelling at him and she looked at me hard and I looked at her and then I looked at the fish swimming swimming in the clean glass bowl and he was looking at me quiet, waiting and I opened my hands and the bowl fell onto the concrete floor and my legs got wet and there in the glass and the water running thin over the concrete the orange fish was flapping and gasping no bigger than my finger you could see through its tail so thin and he said “You could still save it if you wanted to” and I looked at my mother looking hard at me and I put my foot in the hard shoe on the fish and stepped down and smeared the fish over the concrete and then I stood back and he bent down and picked up the pieces o
f glass and went to dump them while my mother yelled at him.
She wondered why I never asked questions about that and once when I was taking a bath in the washtub on the kitchen floor—the old gray corrugated tin washtub that she bent over with the scrub board and poured hot water into from the big kettle and if you sat in it too long you came out with red dents in your bottom like sitting too long on the pot—it was raining almost dark and there was no one else home and she tried to explain about how babies are made and all that and I couldn’t think how to make her stop talking about it so I looked very hard at the yellow plastic duck how round and hard and smooth it floated between my knees with its black painted eye so cocky bobbing and her hands red and burned from the hot water and the knuckles raw where she scrubbed over my dungarees.
She always tucked me in with my arms outside so I wouldn’t play with myself and it was not in the room with the blue airplanes on the wall but I think the same house as the slide thing one night I was lying in bed awake feeling my nose and thinking about turkeys I remember thinking about turkeys and suddenly the crack of light where the door wasn’t quite shut got very wide and I put my hands up to my eyes and she bent over me and picked me up by the arm and took me downstairs and made me lie down on the couch and spread my legs and she looked at me very closely there and said you’ve been playing with yourself again haven’t you and I didn’t say anything because I usually didn’t say anything it feels so tired when that happens and somehow you almost don’t care and you draw back further and further into some quiet place and watch and she said show me show me how you do it and I just lay there and she got angry and she said if a bitch dog did that they’d have to kill her and the next morning at breakfast she said she would send me to an institution if I did that any more and I couldn’t help it I started to cry and my big brother came in and said what’s the matter and she smiled and said Sexy here was monkeying with herself again last night and my brother took a piece of bread and went out. I always called him Brother—he would roll down the stairs grunting and groaning and calling my name and then lie very still sprawled at the bottom and I would come running down saying Brother! Brother! oh poor Brother! and crying I thought he was dead I took his poor head in my lap and touched him all over and cried he lay so still with his eyes closed and I couldn’t move him and then he opened his eyes and smiled at me all his golden freckles folding in his eyes and said do you love me Trinka? and I so happy he was alive said oh yes Brother and kissed his wrinkles near the eyes and he jumped up and said well then I’m O.K. Holy Cow I didn’t mean to make you cry and then he’d carry me out to the swing and let me watch him eat a raw lemon and maybe let me watch him carve the little totem poles in the kindling. He says when he was little she used to beat him all the time—she says no never but I believe him because Nicky who is younger than me remembers and I remember when she would go wild with the broom or the plunger and chase us all over the room under tables and beds screaming and poking and slashing and she says no never.
Nicky would always cry even before she hit him and I hated him for that and other things and once in the summer I would have killed him—he ran with his diapers almost touching the ground I silent behind him dragging the ax with its double face furrowing the dust—I pulling at all my arms and in all of my hands to bring the steel up on its long pale handle and let it fall once hard on him to quiet him to make him still and silent for once—she was cooking in the house out of earshot and I was nearly blind with killing him—with knowing what would happen if I could lift the ax high enough but then Brother was there and took the ax and hit me once hard across the head with his hand flat and took us each by the hand in to supper and I so shaking sick. I didn’t mind Nicky much after that.
When doorknobs were still high and people usually knees but no one was ready to carry me far—in the house in the project where George first came—there were children next door—girls—older—I would sit on the stoop next the coalbin where Brother hid with an apple jack-o’-lantern and they played in the dust between houses—I asked her how to get to know them and she said do this and leaned all her one side against the door jamb and bending her arm at the elbow and with the face of her hand up and all her fingers but her index finger curled up and her index finger pointing out with its soft belly up she crooked it—curled it back and straightened it and curled it back toward her again and her head was back against the door jamb and she looked out through almost closed eyes and then went away to make beds—I did that just like her to them and they came up and said Hiya stupid and tumbled me in the mud so I went in the coalbin with a match in the old apple jack-o’-lantern.
It was there she told me about hermaphrodites and I dreamed of them wonderful like cupids in the pictures round beautiful children all golden with wings flying over laurel hedges at night and I hiding down in the hedge and wanted so to be one but I read in the book they could “under no circumstances fertilize themselves” and lost interest.
—
Most of these girls are in here for prostitution or bad checks like me. Kathy’s got armed robbery and there are a couple of parole violators and shoplifters. There was one assault with intent to kill, that was Mad Patsy. Sister Blendina is the only murderer. There are a few, like Kathy, who are serving time here. The rest of us are waiting for trial. Blendina’s been here almost a year they say.
Rose is pregnant. Her husband Sherman is in Seagullville. His letters tell about golf courses, tennis courts, swimming pools—like a country club he says. That’s a federal pen.
Rose takes pills every day so she won’t lose her temper. When she feels like having a row she puts the pills down the toilet. We all tread easy around her though she’s so thin and tiny.
Sometimes I wake in the night and hear her cursing quietly in the next cell. She hates her belly. She has two deaf children. She is in for stealing her mother-in-law’s skunk coat and helping Sherman escape from some job or other. She says the only good thing about the kid is that they’ll let her out of here just before it’s born so they won’t have to pay for the delivery.
—
It has no name—that place—cunt is a man’s word or mine for another woman but not for my own—I have Jesus feet because of the matching scars on the arches—my hands are square and do with all the lines in the left palm starting at the thumb and all the lines in the right palm far away from the thumb—my stomach is Gertrude and my hair is Rachel and Ass and Pits and Tits and Laigs and the me inside in the small place behind the eyes is KZ-Babe but that place has no name—it has smells—Bumblebee for the fish when it’s wet and not washed—and Piss and Blood—all smells but no name—Annie calls hers Tweety—her Tweety is awful sore.
—
Glad-Ass is on duty today. There are three or four matrons but I only see two of them, Glad-Ass and Mrs. Eliot. Mrs. Eliot is a tall, dignified gray-haired lady who dresses nicely and speaks gently. Glad-Ass is a fat nigger. Her name is Gladys but we call her Glad-Ass to annoy her. We treat her badly because she’s a nigger. It wouldn’t be so rough except that she thinks we treat her bad because she’s a nigger. She’s always much nicer to B tank than to us but then they’re nicer to her. I’m from the north, Oregon, and I always thought Negroes were just like anybody else. Since I’ve been here though, I’ve wanted to insult them.
—
When it burns out it seems like there must be another hole—it feels further forward and very small but when I feel there is only the one hole all the lips and the ridges leading into the one hole—it gets wet all in there as though it just rushed from the one big hole and when I hold the little mirror there and spread the lips it is all so confusing and red and wrinkled like the wrinkles were all accidents from the loose skin pressed together by my legs and I can’t tell and the hole itself is so small looking and I can hardly tell unless I touch which is really the hole and not just deep wrinkles—the picture on the Tampax instructions isn’t clear and I do it all by feel anyway and when I clench the muscles inside even w
ith the mirror nothing shows but in class or when I’m listening to someone it must show in how steady my eyes are—how still my face is that I am concentrating somewhere inside flexing the muscles inside and learning how to tighten them separately from the asshole and how to push down and how to just close them without pushing so I can hold him there afterward and make him feel me even when he is small and soft and how to pull him back in with only those muscles when he is almost out and how nothing else moves but those muscles invisible and for so long I didn’t even know they were there until the first time it was good when it had not been before and I lay so surprised and felt those muscles tightening and opening like fists when you die.