A Map of the World - Jane Hamilton [160]
Afterward it was dismaying, that jail life should just continue. Sometimes I felt as if I’d been on a rocky, slightly dangerous flight. I should have felt relief, maybe a little bravado, laughing off how rough it was, how much worse it might have been. I had apparently won something in the process, and yet the days went on, time went forward in its indefatigable way, as it had before. Although for a while afterward the girls occasionally argued over the finer points of the mystery beating, they seemed to believe that Dyshett was responsible for my bruise and my bandage. Sherry privately assured me that neither Dyshett nor Janet had ever touched me. I wanted to believe her version, because in her absurd and compelling story I was delivered from Dyshett’s blow by my own failing body, a body that seemed at once weak and wise, knowing to give way at an opportune moment. I was sure that Howard and Rafferty, too, would find it implausible. I had bumped my head hard on the metal table and passed out, and then I fell to the floor and banged it again on the cement. Howard might find certain aspects of the narrative perfectly in character, in particular, the fact that I couldn’t bump my head without inciting a race riot.
For the most part the others gave me a wide berth, as if I were someone unpredictable, saintly or loony, they weren’t sure which. I didn’t show myself much, didn’t let on that curled up on my bed under my blue blanket I was nursing my wounds. When Dyshett returned to the pod I was dimly aware that she was subdued, and that the old order had crumbled. Janet was packed off somewhere else, four of last week’s inmates had moved on, and with a new lot Sherry came into her own, ordering Debbie to get a Band-Aid if anyone so much as had a hangnail. She was matronly, firm, her generosity expanding by the day in her self-appointed role. She gave Dyshett Valiums from a stash she had hidden in a sock, and advised her to behave during her sessions with the public defender. She seemed to take it upon herself, for the good of the group, to occupy Dyshett by playing endless games of rummy. If Dyshett were out at a meeting or asleep, Sherry would visit me as if she were a minister making her rounds. It was more fellowship, certainly, than the Reverend Joseph Nabor from Prairie Center had been able to muster on my account. Sherry routinely saved half of her sandwich from lunch and brought me candy bars from the vending machine. “You got to keep up your strength,” she’d say. “You look like somethin’ plucked with that new hairdo, so the least we got to do is fatten you up.”
I mentioned at one of those bedside chats that although I was sleeping through the daytime drama I was well aware that she was now the undisputed leader.
“Jus’ wait till we get a new warrior in here,” she said, shaking her head and laughing. “Jus’ wait till Dyshett perk up a little. She depressed about her life right now, and she droopy from my medicine cabinet, you know, a little a this, some a that, to calm her down. Once she get back in gear we can kiss the peace good-bye.”
“What’s the matter with her?” I asked.
“She lookin’ at five years for scratching that cop,” Sherry said. “That ain’t cheerful news. And you, layin’ in here all day. I think that sort of spook her. She watchin’ you for signs of life. You some big mystery to her, she don’t know if she be afraid, or how much she hate you, or what. It some big mystery, and she don’t like no mystery. That old man she kilt in Chicago, he dead, and now she can brag about him. But you, you still layin’ here, and she don’t know if she should brag and strut. She want to, but I think she afraid a you, she afraid you planning to voodoo her again. She one jumpy