Jeanette was nearby, pacing the short A Wing corridor. She was now, it seemed, the head trustee. She was also the only trustee, but Jeanette had paid attention during the career counseling sessions about post-prison life—when composing your resume it was incumbent upon you to make the most of your achievements and to let the person who was doing the hiring decide what was and was not significant. The title was hers.
While the four remaining officers walked B and C wings and kept an eye on the prison’s perimeter, Dr. Norcross had asked if she would mind keeping an eye on the other two inmates whenever he had to step out.
“Sure,” said Jeanette. “I’m not busy. Seems like furniture shop got canceled.”
It was good to have work; it kept her mind occupied.
She shuffled forward. In front of her, the triple-plated, wire-gridded window in the west wall showed a gray morning. There was standing water on the running track and the fields looked marshy.
“I never liked video games,” Jeanette said. It had taken her awhile to construct her response to Evie. She had been awake for ninety-six hours.
“More proof of your excellent character, my dear,” Evie said.
Angel, in the neighboring cell, now entered the discussion. “Excellent character? Jeanette? Shee-yit. She kilt her fuckin husband, you know. Stabbed him. Didn’t even use a knife, like a normal person would. Done it with a screwdriver, ain’t that right, Jeanette?” Rapper Angel was gone; Redneck Angel was back. Jeanette figured she was too tired to make rhymes. That was good. On balance, Redneck Angel was less annoying and more (Jeanette struggled for the word) . . . more authentic.
“I do know that, Angel. And I give her credit for it.”
“Wish she’d let me kill you,” Angel said. “I think I’d get to your juggler with my teeth. I think I would.” She made a humming noise. “Know I would.”
“Would you like to have a turn with the phone, Angel? Jeanette, if I give you the phone through the tray slot, will you give it to Angel?” Evie’s tone was conciliatory.
There was talk that the beautiful woman in the soft cell was either a sorceress or a demon. Moths had poured from her mouth; Jeanette had seen them. Whatever Evie was, it seemed that she wasn’t immune to Angel’s taunts.
“I bet I could make you swallow that phone,” Angel said.
“Bet you couldn’t,” said Evie.
“Could.”
Jeanette stopped at the window in the wall, placed her hand against the glass, and let herself lean there. She didn’t want to fantasize about sleep, and couldn’t stop fantasizing about it.
Of course there were prisons even in sleep; Jeanette had on many occasions waited to be let out of a dream cell, as bored as all the times she waited in her actual life to be let out of her actual cell. But sleep was also a beach, and the waves cleaned it up every night, all the footprints and bonfires and sand castles and beer cans and scraps of trash; those cleansing waves washed most every trace into the depths. Sleep was also Bobby. He had met her in a forest that had grown over the ruins of the bad old world and everything was better.
Would Ree be in her sleep, her dreams? Damian was in there, so why not Ree? Or was the sleep that came with the cocoons dreamless?
Jeanette remembered, some days, waking up feeling so young and strong and healthy. “I’m ready to whip my weight in wildcats!” she sometimes told Bobby when he was just little. She couldn’t imagine feeling that way now, or ever again.
When he was a newborn, Bobby had given her some hard nights. “What do you want?” she would ask him. He just cried and cried. She imagined that he hadn’t actually known what he wanted, but hoped maybe his mother might, and fix it for him. That was the hurtful part of motherhood, not being able to fix what you couldn’t understand.
Jeanette wondered if she even could sleep now. What if she had broken her sleep-bone? Sleep-muscle? Sleep-tendon? Her eyes felt terribly dry. Her tongue felt like it was too big. Why didn’t she give in?
Simple. Because she didn’t want to.
She had given in to Damian and she had given in to drugs and her life had gone exactly the way everyone said it would go. She wasn’t giving in to this. This wasn’t going how they expected it to go.
She counted to sixty, got lost in the forties, returned to one and the second time made it up to a hundred. She shoots, she scores. Let’s go to the videotape! What was that guy’s name, the let’s-go-to-the-videotape guy? Dr. Norcross would remember.
Jeanette was facing the east wall, where the metal door of the shower gave on the delousing area. She walked toward the door, right-left, right-left. A man crouched on the floor, pinching buds into a cigarette paper. Behind her, Angel was explaining to Evie how she’d peel off her skin, how she’d dig out her eyes, fry them up with some ramps and eat them, ramps’d flavor up any rotten morsel. And on from there, more bibble-babble, tone and accent, angry-angry-angry, country-country-country. At this point, unless Jeanette really focused, conversation—pretty much anything anyone said—was low volume radiogab. She kept expecting to hear an 800 number.
“You know, Angel, I don’t think I will be sharing my Boom Town video game with you, after all,” Evie said, and Jeanette went right-left, right-left, locking on the differently colored notices on the bulletin board by the Kwell dispenser, the words too bleary to read but knowing that they were lists of church services, AA meetings, crafts classes, and reminders of rules. On one piece of paper, a girl elf was dancing over the words I’M ON GOOD REPORT! Jeanette shuffled to a stop and flashed a look at the spot where the man had been squatting. There was no one.
“Hello? Hey! Where’d you go?”
“Jeanette? Are you all right?”
“Uh-huh.” Jeanette glanced back at Evie’s cell door. The strange woman stood at the bars. She wore a melancholy expression, a well-of-course expression, like you did when you had a hope that you knew wasn’t too realistic, and sure enough, life did what life did with unrealistic hopes. It was the face babies made after a cat scratched them and right before they cried.
“I just thought I—saw someone.”
“You’re beginning to hallucinate. That’s what happens when you don’t sleep. You should go to sleep, Jeanette. It’ll be safer for you if you’re asleep when the men come.”
Jeanette shook her head. “I don’t want to die.”
“You won’t. You’ll sleep, and then you’ll wake up somewhere else.” Evie’s face lit. “And you’ll be free.”
When it came to Evie, Jeanette couldn’t think straight. She seemed crazy, but not crazy like anyone else Jeanette had met in Dooling Correctional. Some insane people were so close to blowing up you could almost hear them tick. Angel was like that. Evie seemed like something else, and not just because of the moths; Evie seemed inspired.
“What do you know about free?”
“I know everything about free,” said Evie. “Shall I give you an example?”