The Mars Room(78)

“Eva died last year. I had been collecting your letters and was planning on giving them to her but could not locate her. I thought you should know that you can stop attempting to reach her.”

Sometimes I imagined that Hauser would write me. He’d ask to be put on my visiting list. Now that he wasn’t working at Stanville, the fraternization rules wouldn’t apply. He’d be out there in the free world and ready to start something up. Even though I wasn’t remotely attracted to him, we’d get married and have conjugal visits with Jackson. Hauser was earnest and gentle. He would have made a good father. I had no way to get in touch with him to tell him so, and the joke had been on me, even as I thought I was using and manipulating him.



* * *



One night, I had two dreams about water. In the first one, I was with Hauser. At least I think it was Hauser. It was a placeholder man who was connected to me, obligated to me somehow. There was a rainstorm and we watched as the LA River rose. It went over the concrete banks. Hauser dove in to swim, but without having noticed the swift speed of the water. It carried him downstream. I wondered if he could swim strongly enough to grab a tree branch or root, hold on to something and pull himself out. I went to a store. I told the clerk that my friend had gone into the water. She said, “The river is rushing ninety-one miles an hour.” I felt that Hauser was dead or hurtling toward death. I woke up.

When I fell back asleep I had a different dream. I was driving an old car. The clutch was rough and the brakes jerky and the gas slightly delayed, the steering clumsy, but I was familiar with the car and knew how to handle it to make it respond. Something was happening up ahead. I stopped and got out. There was a man threatening to kill himself. There was a young woman trying to talk him down. Then the three of us were walking together along a sea wall or embankment. It was Ocean Beach. Huge waves swelled and fell, as if the water were at an incline, not level. It was steep water. The man started going out onto the embankment. The young woman was suddenly me. The man looked at me, who was not me, but the responding person to him in the dream, he looked at this me and began to go out into the water. I said, No, don’t. As I said it, I realized that he was luring me into the water, by suggesting he would end his life he was luring me to end mine. I woke up and worried that Jackson was thirsty and that there wasn’t a cup of water next to his bed, but then I realized I was in my lower bunk in room fourteen of unit 510 of C yard.



* * *



Sammy was released. She said she was nervous and didn’t want to go. I felt her excitement, underneath what she claimed. The reentry program was on skid row and she was worried. “Hang around the barbershop long enough,” she said, “and you’ll end up with a haircut.”

She gave me her piggy-printed eye mask and some other stuff. Promised she’d write me. We hugged goodbye.



* * *



People say your time hits you in waves. Mine was hitting me. I could see no way to accept this as life, to live it to the end.

I was depressed and sleeping a lot. One Sunday, I missed breakfast and the first unlock. At lunch I went out to the yard to find Conan.

Laura Lipp and her yard crew were sweeping dirt. It was a sunny day and the yard was packed. There were probably two thousand women out there.

I pushed through the turnstile and when it squeaked open it was like everyone had owls’ heads, on swivel. I didn’t know what was wrong but the tension was thick.

I walked past the basketball courts, looking for Conan. There was a game happening, girls on the sidelines picnicking with canteen spreads.

“Here she comes!” someone screamed.

I thought the screamer meant me and I panicked. People came running toward the main entrance from all over the yard. The players on the court stopped their game. The ball rolled into the basket but no one was under to claim it. It bounced on its lonesome across an empty court. Everyone was running toward the turnstiles.

Serenity Smith passed through. She had come on the yard alone. Walking tall, and proud, a beautiful black woman with long and graceful arms.

Laura Lipp and her gardening gang moved toward her with shovels and rakes in their hands. I heard a shriek. It was the Norse, running toward Serenity. Conan, Reebok, and their crew ran to attack the Norse and the gardeners. People were coming from all directions.

The first person on Serenity was the Norse. The Norse grabbed her and tried to pull her down. Serenity fought back. Conan pushed the Norse down and started monkey stomping her. Every bit of anger that had ever been in Conan came out of the sole of his boot, which connected over and over to the head and face of the Norse. The Norse’s head started to leak.

Serenity was running to escape Laura Lipp and her horde. Laura Lipp hit Serenity across the back with the flat side of her shovel, knocking her down. Laura fell on Serenity and was scratching her face. That is how some women fight. They can’t help it, it’s instinct. Serenity got up, pushed Laura against a spider table, and started punching her. Alarms sounded, the deafening zonk-zonk-zonk that means GO PRONE.

The other gardeners were tugging on Serenity as Serenity punched Laura. Garbage cans were hurled at them. The alarms kept sounding. Everyone fought.

Teardrop got hold of a shovel and was beating Serenity with it like you might beat a rug to get the dust out of it. Slow, heavy thuds, one after the other. Serenity screamed. The alarms zonk-zonked. I had the thought that maybe the cops were letting this happen. Letting Serenity be hurt or even killed.