Attic

by Katherine Dunn

  He was just a puppy furry and slept on the bed and one night it was so cold I put him under with me and when I touched myself there he started to lick there too—his tiny tongue so fast—and after that I would put him between my legs and put his head there and he would lick—until one night there was blood there and first he licked and then he bit me there his teeth like needles in the raw part and I threw him across the room and felt and found the blood and thought he had done it—I held the mirror there and saw the tooth marks and the blood coming from somewhere else and he lying still with his head bent under in the corner—I put him in the garbage can and said he hadn’t come back when I let him out that night—we all walked up and down the streets whistling and calling and I cried when we couldn’t find him and didn’t tell about the blood until the next time it came.

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  She is one of the three ugliest women I ever met. She weighed four hundred pounds at least and her teeth were gaping black and tiny tight against the gum and she tied her greasy hair back so her small head sat high up and far away on the six-foot lump of her and the creases of fat at the back of her head rolled straight into the hump on her back with no neck her bottom chin folded under the roll over her collarbones. Her eyes ugh how small. Like a sow she was but without a sow’s egotism. She knew how ugly she was. She was stupid and shy and wrung her hands and cried if anyone spoke harshly to her they kept telling her about getting her teeth fixed she was dirty and stuttered and when we went through Salt Lake City she looked at the Tabernacle all the time and said that’s Joe Smith no nails it’s gold and they wouldn’t stop the car so she cried.

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  Sometimes at night after supper the TV goes on. It sits all day on a platform hung from the bull pen bars but nobody pays any attention to it. Somebody just walks up and turns it on I guess we could watch it anytime but nobody ever does except after supper. Mostly cops and robbers and cowboys. Once there was a cowboy story with old-time nuns trucking around saving heathens and one was very young and brave named Sister Blendina and before that she had just been Blendina but after that everybody called her Sister Blendina to each other. No one ever called her anything to her face because no one ever spoke to her or about her in 4 cell. I don’t watch TV. I can’t follow the stories. I can’t concentrate. I see it for a few minutes and then think of something else or fall asleep. Kathy watches it a lot and hits it just right when it needs tuning or fiddles with the antennae.

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  The lawyer is back. He sits across from me with a little brown table between us. It’s exciting to come out of the tank and sit with a man. The lawyer has a shining suit lizard green flashing blue and violet. He is heavy and comes far out in front of himself so even if our bellies touched his head would be far away. His shoes are dark as mirrors and rings on his fat fingers that don’t even need to bend any more and his dark cigar. He wants to know about money and I sign some things and agree to everything and he says I should have had my glasses all along.

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  Someone once jumped from the roof here—thirteen stories she fell and spread thin—why do you never hear of them hitting anyone on the sidewalk—I wouldn’t jump to the ground but to the water from the bridge—the bridge is the reason for jumping—going fishing under the warehouses on the Willamette the concrete pipe juts out of the earth and into the water half submerged and the sewage runs out thick and raw and beneath it the carp are feeding—go walking down there through the city streets at dawn with scum fresh dripping down my pants leg smelling like something burned and nothing stirring but the bums on Burnside turning in their doorways—barefoot along the railroad tracks with my hair flipping back and a can of corn in my pocket—stop at the Chink shop for chitlins and then down to the pipe to sit on the end with the water all around and the Crown Flour Mills over me chumming for carp for no reason except the river is lavender pale in the mornings and the fish come up swollen and fat and I scrape them and the gold catches beneath my fingernails—sit long into the day there with the string from my hands running between my big toe and the second toe and then wet and chumming into the water and the hook shining through yellow kernels of corn or pale brown chitlin or sometimes naked hook and I chewing at the bait with my hands wet and cold and my feet pale from when the tugs go by with barges and the wash sloshes almost over the top of the pipe and wets me to the knees—the fish hang heavy on the hook and come up not fighting—their yellow eyes blank and the gills sagging and I hit them once each hard with the butt of the knife over the eyes and the blood comes thin from behind the eyes and they lie beside me still and shining in the lavender—and then I gut them and throw it into the water at the end of the pipe and double my string through their gills and tie them at my empty belt loop and walk back through the busy streets and the people looking and I swinging along pretending to be a wolf and imagining how I look and up to the Ross Island—to the bridge to cross over and stop in the middle and sit for a long time looking down into the water and cut the carp golden and stiffening from the belt loop and swing them on the string all together far out over the water and let go watching them turning in the air till they hit and the splash is always so tiny—so far away—I feel disappointed and climb down and go home to sleep for a long time.

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  Marty is the key-girl in B tank. She is very tall, maybe six feet three. She has a short brown D.A. and never bothers to wear a uniform but always dungarees and a man’s blue work shirt with the first button open and the sleeves rolled up to the elbow. Her face is horrible. One eye is an inch higher than the other and there are long narrow white scars that pucker at the edges across her cheek from her hair—across the eye and onto the cheek—all the way from the left corner of the mouth to the top of her nose so there is a notch in her upper lip and in her left nostril. Kathy is like a boy trying to act like a man. Marty is like a very hard man. But men never look that hard.

  Maybe she is thirty or forty or fifty. No breasts show. Her shoulders are broad and no hips show in how low the dungarees hang like my big brother working in the fields with no shirt on.

  She came out with her girl to go down to breakfast with us. Her hand on her girl’s shoulder gentle and owning and the girl had soft glowing hair red as morning and a modest pretty body and I saw her in Keokuk in a car coat and leather handbag with bags of groceries and two grade-school children in a station wagon. She looked softly about her and up gentle into Marty’s one at a time eyes. At the table Kathy and Marty talked and Kathy looked at the girl and nodded respectfully to Marty. The girl ate little bits of food that Marty put on her plate. Once in the morning I saw Kathy and Marty talking together with each one’s outside foot propped in the bars—leaning an elbow on a knee a hand in a pocket heads down smoking gravely talking like two men over a job of work. They hitch at their pants when they sit down and don’t know they have asses.

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  People come and go from 4 cell, drunks for the night, federal cases in transit to a federal pen, waiting for a hearing they’re gone in a week. I don’t pay much attention. There are a few brief romances. I watch and they go away. Young girls, women in their twenties, thirties, or middle aged women. No old women. Rose says if you go this route you die young or in prison. They say it draws you back. Once you’ve been here you’ll come back. Not me I say and they laugh.

  The long balloon is only half blown up and the thin part sticks out from the end and I look and flick it with my finger and it thrums and I put the tip of my finger on the tip of the thin nozzle and push straight in with the balloon turning itself inside out around my finger and push all the way into the fat part of the balloon and now all around my finger there is a hole instead of something sticking out and I think how my hole is like that and I take the finger out and the air pressure pushes the long thing out after me and there is no more hole and I take a very deep breath and hold it pushing with it down into myself and nothing happens and the school bus rattles around me and I look out at the weeds black and thin curling over th
e snow like the hair on a man’s leg though no man I know and I always wanted to be a male homosexual.

  Maybe with women if they put the two holes together like kissing it would make them hungry like kissing but then there would be nothing or only something to put in Kathy is so competent she could make it work but it must not be the same or they would not be so gentle with each other—they are not afraid of each other.

  I am afraid of them all—I hate them all—because they are disgusting—because they are not me—and yet look like me—how could I know how dangerous I am without knowing the danger in those things that look like me?

  The tubes run out of her stomach below the navel and empty into cellophane bags hanging there—her gums flap—her eyes stare—the hairs on her chin and above her lips are stiff and gray—in the morning we take her from the bed like a sack on sticks and prop her in the chair—I hold the flat spoon carefully so it does not cut her gums—when I put yellow mush into her mouth the bag on the right fills slowly with yellow—If I put red mush into her mouth the bag fills red—I unclip the bags when they’re full and put on new ones—I carry the full bags away from me with two fingers each holding them closed—the chair seat is covered with sponge and there is a hole in the middle—we take her out in the afternoon and put her on the bed—we take away the open-backed gown and wash her all over gently except between the legs where the thing hangs out—it caved in and fell through the hole—turning itself inside out and hangs there raw like a bubble of blood—we search through the wrinkles for her vague belly button and swab around the tubes and rub her with lotion and put ribbons in her hair and she lies staring—mouth open—once in a while her left thumb moves—the man comes in on Saturdays and sits looking at her—he twists the skin on his hands and looks down at the spots that grow larger and darker on his rippling skin.

  “She was always a good woman” he says. “Forty years we was married and I never once knew she was pissin.”

  When I get out of here it won’t matter. I’ll go back and kill her.

  And the students—kill them all—walk into the dining hall with a machine gun and spray into their faces—stop them all dead in the laughing with their war stories about Wittgenstein—stop all the noise with one great burst of noise and they all lying bleeding—crawling at the carpet with trays and tables spilled everywhere their young hopeful blood running useless like mine because they are not me but pretend to be—because they do speak English—because if I could talk with anyone it would be them—but least of all them—and then they will come and take me away and there will be no more noise and I will listen to nothing in a place in the hills where you can see for a long way—the apple tree stands gnawed by the tent worms—covered with sweeping nets of silk gauze and they crawling by the millions yellow and black eat the tree and drop to the ground to die crawling to other trees—it is no one worm or no particular series of worms but the millions and millions of no particular worms singing in the trees and boring in the walls and pale on the sidewalk when it rains and fat and white in the meat and gray in the flour and round and red on my legs and arms and belly and eating all eating and I the worm eating and I’m tired tired and will lie down here beneath the worms and the worms and the grass and my own self eat me in my sleep and shit me out to nothing.

  The days are all alike. Only Sunday bells ring and people shout in the bull pen all day. It’s really Sunday and can’t be argued. I tell time by Sundays. Not counting, only saying, it’s Sunday again. That’s the only time anything is different with all the fights and squalls and intrigues and romances. They all run together until they seem to be constant though they’re not. I just want to sleep and lie still not thinking. I get hungry regularly and I piss before meals and shit before lights out and shower after breakfast. It’s too much to do. I would cut out everything but sleeping. I have never been so tired and my dreams are pleasant, or at least interesting. Only once in a while it’s bad and I wake up sick and scared and so sorry for me thinking I blew it I really blew it it’s all over the whole thing and I want to sleep and sleep.

  Marge comes to me apologetic and serious her large hands brushing what she says away—the urgent asking—if you get out of here for good tomorrow if they let you go will you do me a favor it would only take you a minute to call him and tell him that I’m still here and ask him why he hasn’t written or come to see me all this time and ask him how the baby is and couldn’t he bring her on visiting day she’ll be almost a year old she’ll forget me you could phone from a booth to this number it would only take a minute her lips are thick and dry she licks them and spits out the hair gone wild and yellow at her lips and looks at me clearly with bandages still around her chest and over her shoulder lumpy under the uniform and I say sure I’ll be glad to—and I’ll send you a card from Paris, France, ’cause that’s where I’m going ma’am and I want to thank you for helping me all your cards and letters promised and I leaning hard against the bars with my spine between the bars never intended never thought for a moment I would send them or would care or do your sucking little favor though it is you it sucks I will not let it suck me and though I say yes I will not and only say yes to quiet you sooner and avoid the hassle of refusing and do not care or think of it except sometimes in the dark cell with the sound of Blendina’s cards slapping in the darkness and the faces come without faces and slip pale around me like gulls and I am afraid like the bugs though I kill them they will meet me and maybe somehow though I cannot believe it and only feel it when I am afraid maybe I do owe them all something.

  I keep thinking in the cell—lying on the bunk where nothing from the outside touches me—I feel trapped in my own history—memory is such an aggressive thing—I have two lives—this still one in the cell where nothing changes and that other that eats at me—not what happened but what I can remember—there should be some point where it turns off—where you go on from there unaffected by what happened before—not forgetting—only not still living it—I can imagine such a thing—there is Blendina.

  I don’t speak any more unless someone asks me something specifically. I say yes or no or I don’t remember if it’s too complicated. I don’t lie any more. I used to tell anyone who would listen that I was innocent and felt offended when they laughed. I told everyone I just sold the guy magazines and he gave me a bad check for them. Now I don’t say anything about it. For a while Joyce told me that her cousin Gary in Independence must have been the guy who did it and he was already up twice for paperhanging and I thought maybe I didn’t do it. Maybe he did it to me. But I remember how young and just married he worked in an auto upholstery shop he said his wife was a waitress their three rooms very clean with landlady furniture and a crease all down his chinos Redbook for your wife I said and Ladies’ Home Journal and maybe True for yourself. “Well, if you really think it won’t get me into any trouble…” No I’ll get the votes, you’ll get the magazines and it won’t cost you anything I was down on my knees beside his chair showing the cards they tell you always get down on your knees and look straight up into their faces so they can’t escape you. My hair was shining that morning all the way down my back and my hands white and long and perfume sprayed on my throat just before I knocked on his door and my eyes Egyptian with gold freckles and I so young and he only a year older and how lovely you’re just married I wish you every my stomach touches his knees as I reach for the order blank he blushes slow Mizoorah talking blushes down from the head instead of up to it. And I so happy I met my quota today out into the street sunny still and the long walk golden with leaves and the car waiting for me will I get my hundred-dollar-a-day pin? They are so proud for me. “Ya done good Kay, but you’ll have to cash that check because it’s made out to you instead of the company you can do it when we stop for lunch.” I ordered a peanut butter and banana sandwich and cocoa don’t like coffee we are all laughing and joking the driver goes to call Horace—Dean has been picked up for burglary how awful tsk tsk “You better go cash that check” I leave my raincoat
with the velvet belt and collar the silver buttons my mother gave it to me and only take my handbag along and showed my company card for I.D. and now I’ll go to sleep for ever and ever only I’m too tired.

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  It so happened that when the dragon first started coughing one little boy and one little girl had been down in her mother’s basement playing doctor. When all the shaking and burning had started the beams had fallen down and the walls had cracked and all the jars fell off the shelves and smashed but the little boy and girl were not hurt. For a long time they couldn’t get out through all the things that had fallen in front of the door so they didn’t get burned up with everyone else. After the dragon had been sleeping for a while they finally crawled out and looked around. They could barely recognize their little town all heaps and ashes and there was no one around anywhere. By this time they were very hungry so they held hands and walked along looking for something to eat. They walked over hills and through valleys until they could see the mountain where the dragon was sleeping. They had never seen him before and since he was the only living thing in sight and the sun was going down they climbed up the mountain and crawled into the dragon’s warm armpit and went to sleep. Now when the sun rose in the morning the dragon woke slowly and gently as was his custom. He lay still watching the sky and scratching himself gently in spots. When he scratched in his armpit he found the little boy and girl and picked them up carefully and set them on his stomach where he could see them. They sat up yawning and stretching and rubbing their eyes and looked at the dragon. The dragon looked around at all the black earth and then at the children. He said Hi! I’m the Goody Dragon. The little boy and girl said We’re hungry! The dragon said Oh just a minute—I can fix that—and he put them down beside him and got up. He turned around once or twice and then squatted down. He held his breath and closed his eyes and pushed down inside himself and then he stood up. There was a whole pile of little brown lumps about as big as your fist—the little boy and girl ran up and grabbed some and put them up to their faces—then the little girl shook hers out of her hand and made a horrible face—That’s not peanut clusters, that’s shit—and the little boy threw his away too and they both rubbed their hands in the dust disgusted. The dragon was very embarrassed and said Oh I’m terribly sorry—I don’t know how that could have happened. I’ll try again. He went a little ways away and thought for a moment and then he squatted down—he took a very deep breath and held it—he closed his eyes as tight as he could—he crossed all his fingers and all his toes and lifted his tail as high as it would go. He stayed that way until his face was quite white and the children were beginning to worry about him—then he staggered to his feet and looked behind him—the children ran to look—the little girl said It’s still shit. Then the little boy and girl crawled all over the dragon looking. There was snot in his nose—there was sweat under his arms—there was wax in his ears—there was mold in his belly button—there were tears in his eyes. It’s no use they said—There’s nothing good to eat. And they all sat down and looked at each other and the little boy and girl listened to their stomachs rumbling. At first big tears rolled out of the dragon’s eyes and then he sat very still thinking. After a long time he looked up and said What if there were never peanut clusters or whipped cream or caramel or any of the other good things? What do you mean? said the children. Well what if they were always what they are now and it was only because people believed that they were good to eat? The children looked at the dragon—then they thought for a minute—then they looked at each other and smiled. I think he’s right they said—I’m sure he’s right—he’s right—and they went straight over to the brown pile and started eating cheerfully. The dragon groaned with relief and the children ate until they thought they would pop and they all lived happily ever after.