The Mars Room(30)

“Let’s start with something simple.” He read the first question on the math worksheet. “Four plus three equals (a) eight, (b) seven, (c) none of the above.”

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

“Is that (a) eight, (b) seven, or (c) none of the above? It sometimes helps to use your fingers, if you need to count it out.”

“It’s seven,” I said. “I think we can move to something more challenging.”

He flipped pages. “All right, how about a word problem. If there are five children and two mothers and one cousin going to the movies, how many tickets do they need? (a) seven, (b) eight, (c) none of the above.”

“What movie are they going to?”

“That’s the wonderful thing about math, it doesn’t matter. You can count without knowing the details.”

“It’s hard for me to imagine these people without seeing who they are, and knowing what movie they’re going to.”

He nodded, like my response was reasonable, not at all a problem.

“Maybe we got a little ahead of ourselves. How about we make up a question,” he said. “Or rather, we take the question, and simplify it.”

This guy had the patience of a genuine idiot.

“There are three adults and five children: How many tickets do they need?”

There was no sarcasm in his voice. G. Hauser was so determined to work with whoever he thought I was that I could not play along.

“If the theater lets kids in free, how can I know how many tickets they need? And, depending on what kind of people they are, what theater this is—are they ghetto, or are they squares like you? Because maybe they let in one of the adults, like that cousin, through an emergency side door, after they pay for two tickets.”

I saw the plush stained carpet of the multiplex out by the Oakland airport, the one where a cousin would push in through the emergency exit instead of pay. It’s probably gone, like all the other theaters I used to know. The Strand on Market, where as kids Eva and I drank Ripple wine with grown-ups. The Serra, in Daly City, which showed Rocky Horror. The Surf, out by the beach, where I went with my mother when I was young for a movie starring the actress I’m named after. The movie kept showing the same car accident in slowed segments. I guess I asked too many questions, because finally my mother yanked me from my seat and said we were leaving. I had ruined the film for her.

“They’re squares,” G. Hauser said. “Like me.”

“The kids all have to have tickets?”

He nodded.

“The answer is eight.”

“Excellent,” he said.

“You just congratulated a twenty-nine-year-old woman for adding three plus five.”

“I have to start somewhere.”

“What makes you think I can’t count?”

“There are women here with innumeracy. Who have trouble adding sums. I can give you a GED practice test, and if you’re confident you’ll pass, I’ll schedule you to take it.”

“I don’t need a GED,” I said. “I’m here because I was called out here.”

“You might think you don’t need a degree, but in the future, when you are facing your release, you’ll be glad to have it.”

“I’m not getting out,” I said.

He went into a calm and semi-robotic spiel about people who don’t have release dates and the numerous long-termer programs for which I’d be eligible with a GED. I didn’t explain that I was a high school graduate. I said I’d think about it and was taken back to the cell.



* * *



Jimmy Darling used to do math with Jackson, for fun. It started with a lesson about the history of counting, at the picnic table on the ranch in Valencia. Jimmy drew a circle on a piece of paper. “This is a stable where the man keeps his animals,” Jimmy said. He drew three circles for the animals. “What kind of animals?” Jackson asked. I guess we both liked to know the irrelevant information. “Sheep, how about,” Jimmy said. “The farmer has three sheep, and they each have names: Sally, Tim, and Joe. Every morning the farmer lets the sheep out to graze. In the evening, he herds them back into the pen. Since there are only three, he can easily go over the short list of their names and confirm that Sally, Tim, and Joe are all safely back in their enclosure for the night, where they won’t be eaten by wolves.

“But let’s say the farmer has ten sheep, instead of three. If he names each one, he has to remember ten names when they return. He has to recognize ten sheep. Each name goes with a specific sheep. If Sally is the pregnant sheep, then he can recognize her broad belly and check her name off when she returns from grazing. But let’s say the farmer has thirty sheep. Too many to name, right? So he gets a basket of rocks, exactly enough so that he has one rock for each sheep. He takes a rock out of the basket for every animal that leaves the enclosure in the morning. As each one returns in the evening, he puts a rock in the basket. When all the rocks have been moved back into the basket, he knows that all of his sheep are safely home. The sheep don’t need names anymore. The farmer just has to know how many there are.” He explained to Jackson that numbers started with counting and counting started with names. It was like prison, from a name to a number. Except my number was more like a name than the rock that went with the animal, because the rock could go with any animal, and my number went only with me. Although we had count every day. Count was a total count for the number of people in prison, and not by inmate numbers. So we were both: animals that did not graze, and individuals who could not be confused.