In the Slammer With Carol Smith by Hortense Calisher Read Free Book Online

become.—You’ve such a good environmentalist record; you even marched—they said.—But over-night stands are not allowed here.
    ‘This is my third pass,’ Margaret said. ‘I’m not mental; I got a wrong gene. But my folks, they won’t take me for good. There’s a guy at Valatie, he would. A guard. I made a communion dress for his son’s kid. When he retires, he’ll sign me out, he might even marry me. If they say okay.’
    ‘I know an ashram would take you.’ Women kitchen-slaves. Long days of fostered male calm, lean brown rice. Not to eat at all makes the head sing. Top slaves get to wash the Swami’s feet, and maybe sing with him. ‘But I wouldn’t recommend.’
    Talking at cross-purposes is the safest. Even on the ward, we all know how to dream the past. And to forget the future. To be on the run is the best of all.
    ‘Finished, hon’? You don’t want your crusts, I’ll take.’ Margaret’s voice is dulcet, like the kids in my grade school classes, who were always willing to nibble the leavings of the thick sandwiches our hired-girl had forgot to trim—since bits of crab or ham or turkey adhered to them. Mothers urge a child to eat the crusts. Maiden aunts teach it not to. When I catch myself at that I am still shamed.
    ‘What you suppose they’re doing down there?’ Margaret whispers. ‘I got to pee. I’ll go use the one here.’
    ‘None of them work, up here. The plumbing is cut off.’ And the basins gone.
    ‘Okay. I’ll hold off.’ Her compliance is so humble. Her smile so sweet.
    I feel like an attendant. They’re not nurses. There’s not enough distance between the patient and them. The world is full of them. ‘Go if you have to, Margaret.’
    She too likes the sound of her name.
    ‘Nah. But Jeez, it’s hot up here.’
    Framed in the window, she sits rubbing those breasts. I kneel at the other window, chin on the sill. Doze off and I could be in the hospital common-room, among such silent figures as hers. Or weaving ones: right foot, left foot, blotted here and there in the medicinal dusk. Time for my pill now, but I am dozing. What’s going on down on the floors below doesn’t count—not in hospital. The ward you’re on is your diagnosis. A cure goes floor-by-floor, down, down—until you’re out. Or the years can pass, up, up, into forever. At the end of the long corridor leading to the locked wards, two attendants—they travel in pairs there,—are closing the door on a yell.
    I wake.
    Margaret’s screaming—‘I can’t stand them. Get it away.’ Braced in the window, she has drawn her feet up on the arm of the easy chair.
    The cat is in the rafters. Crouched. Above eye level, they double in size. Tawny, it stalks toward her, transfixed by her screams.
    ‘Don’t lean, Margaret; don’t lean—’ I am screaming too.
    But she already has. The cat springs to the empty sill.

W HEN I GET near the pad it’s a dawn fresh with leaves, like the city can still come up with when it wants to. Cooling toward summer’s end, and so early even the garbage looks innocent. Orange peels and other natural throwaways, instead of filth. In this part of town no police-car has come yet for a body, tacking a notice on the boarded-up front door—not up here yet, not today.
    When I sneaked down the stairs, how long after I don’t know, it was still dark. As I sat in the empty house, white day seeped in from the storefront. It became light enough to see Margaret’s stash in a corner. One blanket-heap looks like another to most people; they wouldn’t know it was hers. A black blouse she traveled in hung on the wash line. Alphonse’s extra tee-shirt was gone from there, but down at the end was his flannel shirt, hung waiting for winter; he must’ve forgotten it when he was cleared out—or not had time. Would he be back for the shirt? Should I take it, on the chance I would see him again? Would I ever? I couldn’t decide. Be too neat, and you might suffer the consequences.
    When the