You Are Free to Go. Sarah Yaw

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СКАЧАТЬ looks up and sees the officer in charge look out from his office, blurry-eyed and bored. The officer yells down for number forty-three to settle down, and Moses knows that the keeplock just got another two weeks in his cell without rec time or meals with the general population and that makes Moses’ day. He thinks people like that need to be shown their place. He thinks it’s his job to do it.

      The mailroom is empty. He looks around for her. Goes to the low wall and looks to the left into the intake room, as if she’s hiding in there. “Hello?” he calls, but she doesn’t answer. He looks at her station, packed up and tidy. Her grandmother’s compact is pushed off in a corner, set neatly on a stack of sticky notes. It is strange that she is not here. He quietly opens the door in the low wall and walks to her station. He’s never been there before. He’s never broken the rules. He picks up the compact. Turns it over in his hand like a nugget. He smells it. It’s sweet from the fake smells that cover up the real meaty smell of a woman. He pulls on the drawer where she keeps her letter opener, but it’s locked.

      He hears the lock on the door to her office and he quickly moves across the room and slips through the low door. He hovers over his sorting table, pretending to look for something. She walks in from the other room and looks a little caught off guard, though he always comes back at the end of his rounds. She smells like sweet smelling soap and there’s a red mark on her face where she was messing with a pimple. He imagines her hands damp and cold from running under the faucet after sitting on the toilet, wiping herself.

      There’s something different about today. It’s quiet. Lila is alone; there are no visitors here to gossip.

      “I’m done for the day,” he says and puts his satchel away under his sorting table.

      “OK,” she says in a quiet voice, as if she’s just discovered that they were alone for the first time without the company of tasks. “Where are your glasses?” she asks and Moses feels silly that he didn’t want to wear them on his rounds. He puts his hand on his breast pocket to put them on, but they’re gone.

      “They fell out,” he says innocently, but inside he boils, imagining the keeplock who nailed him stomping and crushing his spectacles with glee.

      “Where did you lose them? A block? I’ll call down there,” she says. She turns to use the phone. Moses likes watching her do this. Loves the concern he hears in her voice when she says, “Hi, Jack. Moses thinks he lost his glasses. Would you take a look and let me know if they’re there? He spent a year saving up for them and they’ve just arrived.” She turns to Moses who’s been staring at her back. “He’s going to look. Did you hear them fall? Wait…” She holds a finger up. “You do. Thank you.” Then she listens to the CO on the other end of the line, thanks him again and hangs up.

      “He said you were hurt today.”

      Moses sticks his hand in his pocket and touches her hair. “Just some angry keeplock. It was nothing.”

      “Is that where he got you?” she asks. “There’s a mark.”

      Moses puts his hand on his face and suddenly feels for himself, though he gets leveled running into someone or something just about every week. Seeing Lila’s reaction to the truth of this place makes him pity himself. He hangs his head. This is better than asking about her garden.

      She comes over to take a closer look and stands nearer to him than she normally does. She inspects the mark on his face and puts her cool fingers to it. He can smell the sweet smell of her hand soap. He can see the red blotch on her face where she was squeezing the pimple. He thinks he can detect the raw smell of her blood. He wants to touch her. “Do you want me to call the infirmary?” she asks.

      “No.” Moses pulls away.

      There are factors that determine whether or not he gets to go to work, like fights and assaults on the guards, and decisions among the guards to keep everyone on their toes by disrupting mail delivery for a few days so the men are reminded that they are no longer citizens, not in here. On these days, Moses isn’t called to work. A trip to the infirmary is a sure way to blow this out of proportion. Sometimes the biggest assaults go ignored and the smallest, like this, can cause disastrous interruptions. The decisions of the guards are random; it’s best to keep a low profile.

      “If you say so. It’s going to get blue.”

      “Did he say he has the glasses?”

      “Yes. He has them in the OIC office. You can go get them when you’re done here. Jenkin is the officer in charge. But I forgot the good news! Wilthauser will read your paper. The catch is you must have it ready for me to bring to him next Wednesday; it’s the last day of class. He’s going to read it when he grades the rest of the papers, and he’ll grade it based on the same criteria he uses for the rest of us. No special treatment.”

      Moses claps his hands together. “Hot dog!” he says. “That’s good news. Hot dog!”

      “I knew you’d be happy. Go get your glasses and get to work. Remember, you can’t just summarize. You have to prove why or how something happens in the story through analysis of literary devices or character development, so remember this while you’re reading. I’m doing a Freudian reading of the work,” she says proudly. “I’m glad for you, Moses. You’re a smart man. You deserve to feel like one.”

      Lila turns away and Moses sees a beautiful ringlet, a single strand of sun, clinging to the back of her fleece. He reaches forward and hooks his finger through it. As she walks, it unravels itself from the fleece and wraps itself tightly around his finger.

      “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Jenkin asks when Moses forgets who he is and barges into the office. Jenkin is sitting with his feet up on the desk, looking at the porno keeplock forty-three was reading before he clocked Moses. At first Moses thinks it was confiscated, but then he sees his glasses on the table dangerously close to the CO’s feet. “These yours?” Jenkin asks.

      He knows they’re his.

      The CO uncrosses his feet and uses one to gently slip the glasses to the floor. They land lens down under the tilted-up leg of Jenkin’s chair. “Go ahead. Get ‘em,” Jenkin says, pretending not to pay attention to Moses. Pretending to look at the porno. Moses bends down on one knee and reaches for them. “Mucha caliente puta, cuarenta y tres!” Jenkin yells to the keeplock. The keeplock yells something back fast and cackles. Moses reaches his hand to the glasses, but Jenkin lets the chair drop and Moses pulls his hand out of the way. Jenkin stops just shy of the glasses and leans back again, casually. Moses wants to take the leg of that chair and flip Jenkin over. But he doesn’t. He can do this. He can suffer the humiliation of this ignorant bastard for the thrill of proving himself to Lila, to a professor. He’s imagined the praise the professor will shower on his work. He’s imagined the lecture he’ll give to his students about the best paper in the class being written not by them, despite all their advantages, but by an unexpected talent discovered by Lila Hathaway. He thinks of this as he reaches for the glasses and Jenkin lets the leg drop. Moses gets his hand over the glasses in time and the leg grinds into the top of it. Jenkin bends over, “Don’t cause any trouble around here again,” and lets the chair up.

      Moses takes the glasses and puts them on. They are bent and loose. His knee is stiff from kneeling and he has to put his good hand on the floor to steady himself because the other hand feels like it might be dead.

      “Get the hell out of here,” Jenkin says, opening the magazine. Moses makes his way to the stairs outside of the OIC office where he waits for Jenkin to come and unlock the gate for him. Jenkin stays where he is. He sexy whistles real loud; forty-three СКАЧАТЬ