A Map of the World - Jane Hamilton [154]
It was Sherry who told me what I took to be true stories about Dyshett, about her being passed from foster home to foster home because her mother was a heroin addict, about how Dyshett had been abused by relatives, sent to the Audi home as a teenager, sent to a group home, waived into adult court, booted out into the world. “I keep tellin’ her,” Sherry said, “I say, ‘You be one maaaad Sistah,’ and she jus’ look at me, real proud, tossin’ them braids. She give me that superior look—you know the one—she say, ‘Don’t no one mess wid Dyshett. Don’t no one ever mess wid me.’ ”
Every day I waited. On Sundays I waited for the afternoon visit with Howard. I waited always for Rafferty to either save me or send me to my doom, and I waited, hour by hour, for the impending explosion. I thought of Job and how what he feared most came upon him. I had never thought to be afraid of any of the things that happened to us during that summer. Through my life I had trembled before the prospect of numerous dangers and potential disasters. Never before last year had I even vaguely considered the misfortunes that sometimes seemed to be of biblical proportions and at other times seemed like the sort of thing that could easily happen to anyone, as ordinary and expected as a leaky pipe or a stalled car. There was no sound in the large institutional electric clock in our pod, but I watched it occasionally, sure that I could hear the ancient ticktock, ticktock, the useless noise of time passing. I often felt like an old woman at the end of my life, sitting on a strange bed in a nursing home. I used to close my eyes and think of the beauty of Emma’s long, smooth limbs. I think when I am old I will dream of the pond more than anything else. In my sleep I used to see the sun shining down through the warm green water, shining on Emma’s creamy, wrinkled hands and feet as she paddled in her inner tube. Even in sleep I couldn’t consider such a scene for long before the waves came up, dark skies, forty-foot breakers, gray bodies drifting like sacks to shore, their gauzy souls sailing up over the water, up and up.
I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to tell anyone much about the day that started as every one of the others had started, with the lights coming on and the click of our cell locks, the bright chat of the television. Although I had managed to keep my distance from Dyshett, staying in my cell and watching where I tread, I was sure I was not afraid of her. I remember Howard asking me in the visiting room once if I would let strangers into the yard, if I would stand by while they pummeled the girls. “No,” I had said, “of course not.” He was implying that I was doing just that, by lamely sitting in my cell. I didn’t know how to tell him that I hadn’t lost the instinct to survive and yet at the same time I didn’t feel much need for self-preservation, that somehow there was a distinction between the two.
That nameless day I sat up on my mat and began my exercises. Despite my efforts I had lost both weight and strength. After fifteen sit-ups that left me exhausted, and a few idle stretches, I rolled over and began pawing through my books, trying to determine my appetite. There was nothing exceptional about the morning. Janet, the hulking white girl, had joined us the week before. “You,” she used to boom across the room, “what ch’you—” She rarely had to say more because the offender abruptly dropped whatever she was doing and scuttled away. Janet, like so many of the others, had already spent half her life in juvenile detention centers or prison. That morning she and Dyshett were playing cards at one of the tables, shouting at each other when their luck turned. Debbie sat on the floor eating Doritos and watching television. Sherry slept. I read Franny & Zooey, and then I brushed my teeth for a long time, thinking about the Buddhists, trying to enter the moment, entering the pleasure