Walking the Dog by Elizabeth Swados Read Free Book Online Page A

strawberry butter. But disasters can be fun. Sometimes they are amusing. I’m including a sketch of a horse flying through an open field. It represents your name in the abstract. Ask Leonard to explain it some time. It’s my dream of freedom. For me. For you. For all of us tied up in our bodies even a little. (It’s probably worth a fortune, this drawing. Sell it if you don’t want it and put the cash toward Smith or whatever those tight-asses have in mind for you.) That’s all for now, I’m scared to say.
    Carleen

THE HELL OF POWELL
    I learned just as much at Powell in Ohio than I did at the somewhat more “liberal” Clayton Correctional in upstate New York. When you’re basically an upper middle class white woman from the Upper West Side, no matter what you do you can’t fathom what continual physical violence, even the threat of it, can do to your senses. In every cell I was placed in the “sisters” tested me constantly. I didn’t fall into an easy category. I hadn’t murdered anyone directly one-on-one, but I was notorious for organizing a lighthearted event in which three people were shot dead. Two of them cops. So, was I a featherweight or ripe convict-leader material? The Royals (I liked to think of them as the Amazon Queens of the prison) made absolutely sure I got the initiation that was coming to me. These women at the top reminded me of the prints of judges seated at a table in their wavy pure white wigs that you see in Hogarth lithographs. (Look up Hogarth. He’s nasty.) The Royals of Powell were so pierced and tattooed you couldn’t tell them apart—aside from black, white, and Latina—and they were often stabbing each other as much as the “newbies,” as a new con is called for at least two years. The Royals were fifteen or so women who achieved their status either through time, black market prowess, or fighting ability. In some ways the hierarchy seemedarbitrary, but they ruled with unquestioned tyranny. Their initiations were ruthless and planned out with detail and expertise. A newbie was often the recipient of four or five beatings a day, was awakened with kicking and screaming every hour, was slowly starved or poisoned, and—this was mandatory—newbies were sent to solitary, escorted by the most corrupt guards. These guards at Powell were encouraged to rape newbies. Some got gifts for originality or cruelty. The only way to avoid initiations was to find an appropriate protector-husband-wife. This was a person who’d earned the respect or fear of the Royals by outdoing them in their own sadism and schemes.
    I had my share of abuse. When they found out I was a painter, they first made me draw. But then they burned my drawings and broke both my hands—all the fingers on my hand one-by-one, like the Pinochet soldiers did to the famous singer-guitarist Victor Jara during the Chilean coup d’état. It took weeks to heal, but I did excruciating exercises all the time to regain the nimbleness that would allow me to paint. This had some effect on the Royals, but not much. Punishments were doled out for any breaking of the Royals’ rules, and they made up their rules as they went along. Women got beaten for chewing gum without asking. Royals raped women with bottles and batons. It was worse begging for help from the hapless guards. Most guards reported to the Royals, and any fool who took the side of the newbies found herself like a blues song, “Broken and Bruised.” I tried to be cool. I knew not to complain, but it didn’t help much. Nonetheless, I held up. I’ve always had a wall-like resistance to anyone who abuses power. I wish I could say it was moral. But it seems instinctive—animal. So whatever the Royals laid on me, I took. And I came back. And took it again. This resilience had a twofold effect. A clique within the powerful dynasty began to puttogether an elaborate hit on me. But