Thinking Straight
Page 6
Nod.
“Good. Now, if I think we need to meet at other times, I’ll let you know, either by finding you, as I did this morning, or by leaving you a note in your mailbox in the front office. And if you need to speak with me in between our scheduled sessions, you may leave a note in my mailbox. Now, do you have any questions that you need answered right away? If so, you may write them down.” She was still holding the pen.
I had questions, all right. Like why would they give a gay transgressor—that would be me—a gay roommate? But I just shook my head.
She smiled hugely. “Taylor, everyone here loves you and wants your life to be a glory to God. Sometimes residents find this hard to believe in the beginning, but in time I’m sure you’ll come to feel that love coming from everyone, and you’ll love them as well. And that’s where the glory starts.” Another few smiling seconds and then she pushed her chair back. I stood as well.
“Do you know where your first assignment is?” I nodded. “Good.” It seemed to me she said “Good” an awful lot. “Then just take this slip of paper and give it to the laundry supervisor. He’ll know you’ve been with me and you won’t be marked down.” She handed me a small bit of paper with something scrawled on it, probably her signature. One final “God bless you, Taylor,” and I was free. Of her, anyway. And on my way to the next room in this prison.
I walked into the laundry room with my little piece of paper clearly visible and waited to be noticed. The place was warm, and there was a loud thrumming noise from huge industrial fans set high in the walls sucking air out. I stood there a minute, and then this black guy with a bald head—maybe twenty years old—saw me. He was talking with a repairman, and he held up his hand, like he wanted me to just wait here. Fine. I looked around the room.
The door from the hall opened onto a kind of upper level, with an office off to one side, and five steps down was the rest of the laundry room. Washing machines—all white—were all on one side of the lower section, and the white dryers on the other, and there were all these white wire carts that must be how the wet stuff gets to the dryers. I’d been in a public laundry a couple of times, and they had baskets like these, but usually they were all scattered around, like people just left them someplace when they were done with them. But not here. Any carts that weren’t in use or waiting patiently next to a machine were pushed together like grocery carts at the front of the store. Very neat, very orderly.
The dryer area had lots of long, white tables, and some kids were using them to hold things they were folding. Boys were doing sheets and towels toward the back, and at the front tables girls were folding clothes. Lots and lots of clothes.
I felt like I needed to giggle. Not wanted to; needed to. And I almost did. With all the white, including the white linoleum floor, the place seemed positively antiseptic. The kids all looked like so many little robots, all dressed in similar clothes, all with similar haircuts, all moving in this regular, automated motion. No one looked up, and no one talked. Some of them had yellow stickers on their shoulders. Like me. Antiseptic white everywhere, like a sterile toilet seat, with the occasional yellow spot of piss.
“You must be Taylor.”
The voice startled me, and maybe saved me from giggling, which probably would not have been a good idea. I turned toward the guy, the black guy who’d seen me come in, and opened my mouth, and he held up a hand. I nodded.
He took the paper from my hand. “I’m Sean. Come with me and I’ll show you the ropes.” He jerked his head sideways and led the way down to the lower level, while I, following behind, watched his ass. I couldn’t help it. The guy was gorgeously built, muscles showing through his clothes as he moved.
He showed me the ropes, all right. Not that he needed to. I was put to work folding towels, which were—can you guess?—all white. Sean told me that after lunch I’d be learning how to run the washers. In my head I told him, Can’t wait.
So I stood there on the white floor in front of the white table folding white towels, looking down at my work like all the other kids, except when I cheated and looked around. Not that it did me much good; what was there to see? Pretty soon, after spending some time contemplating how weird it was that a black kid with an Irish name was supervisor over this blindingly white environment, I began to zone out from boredom. I kept my mind occupied by humming one of the tunes Will and I like—the usual stuff about being in love, with a few references to, um, the physically enjoyable aspects, without getting too terribly explicit. But it also talks about touching souls. I could barely hear myself, though; the place was humming itself, what with all the machinery. I was thinking, just before the bell rang for lunch, that if I could do mindless stuff like this and keep my own thoughts, I might just make it through without incident.
At lunchtime, the quiet and coolness outside the laundry room were a bit of a shock.
Charles was watching for me, standing just outside the dining hall entrance. Was this normal behavior, I wondered? Not that there was much I could do about it. I couldn’t complain even if I wanted to. But to tell the truth, I was actually kind of glad to see him. Since I couldn’t talk to anyone, I couldn’t make any connection with the other kids in the laundry room. And there were so many of us with yellow stickers that anyone who wasn’t in SafeZone probably didn’t talk out of—I dunno, maybe courtesy? Or maybe they’d been told not to talk at all so they wouldn’t accidentally speak to one of us? Anyway, it was a relief to be with someone who had even the vaguest idea of who I was.
This time Charles took no chances about having troublemakers sit with us. He steered us to a table with two guys already seated, and after he said grace for us, he introduced me to Hank and Sheldon. Sheldon had a yellow tag like mine, and when Charles introduced us and we nodded obligingly, he said that Sheldon was Hank’s new roommate. So we were a matched set, though Hank seemed almost as humorless as Charles, so no one who could talk made any cracks about bookends.
Lunch conversation went from how great it had been to have Kelley—whoever she was—open up at Prayer Meeting last night about her sexual escapades with any boy or man she could get and how Jesus had led her to safety, to anticipation of the dinner on Friday. Hank, it seemed, had not convinced any girl to “accompany” him, as they kept phrasing it, so I was thinking that he wouldn’t be going. And, for that matter, that I wouldn’t. But at some point Charles turned to Sheldon and me and explained that although Danielle would accompany him, everyone would go. He talked about it being a great time for Fellowshipping. Made me wonder why anyone would care about having a “companion.” I mean, if you wanted to go someplace with a date, wouldn’t you want a little quality time alone together? It made no sense to me. But I was new here. And, I reminded myself, Charles was gay—he had to be. So how much quality time would he want with a date named Danielle, anyway?
Sean pulled me aside as soon as I got back to the laundry room, and we went into the office just inside the entrance. He closed the door.
“Taylor, I need to coach you about something. This morning at the folding table, you were humming. Is that correct? Nod if it is.”
Good thing he said to nod; I was about to say, Sure, so what? And then, How the hell did you know that, anyway?
“And the song you were humming had FI lyrics. Do you remember what that is? From the Booklet?”
I had to think about that one. I wasn’t quite sure what the FIs were all about, anyway. Former Images—what did that mean? I must have looked puzzled, ’cause Sean opened a drawer and pulled out a Bible. He flipped through to find the spot he wanted and read.
“Ephesians, chapter four, verse twenty: ‘But you did not learn Christ that way; if indeed you heard him, and were taught in him, even as truth is in Jesus: that you put away, as concerning your former way of life, the old man, that grows corrupt after the lusts of deceit; and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new man, who in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of truth.’”
I should have nodded, I suppose. He’d made it clear enough what he’d meant. But instead I had to be a wise ass. I went over to the desk, found a pen and pad, and wrote, “I hear what you say.”
Sean’s teeth ground together. “Don’t make this harder for both of us, Taylor. If you resist, it means I’ll have to report you, and I don’t want to do that. I hate doing that, do you understand?” He actually looked like he meant it. “Now, please, nod to let me know you’ll stop. Please.”
He looked almost desperate. I nodded. But then I wrote again. “How the—could they hear me in there?”
Sean obviously didn’t know how to answer that one, so I scratched it out and wrote, “Who told you?”
Sean’s eyes closed just for a second. “I can’t tell you that. Now, come on. Let’s go to the washers so I can show you how to use them.”
So I had three hours before my “quiet time” to think about what had just happened. Someone who recognized that tune had ratted on me to Sean, who seemed like he didn’t want to be the disciplinarian. Someone who must have been close enough to me to hear what I almost couldn’t hear, myself, and close long enough to figure out what I was humming. I tried hard to conjure up the faces of the two guys who had been nearest me, but all I could remember was that one of them was short and had really black hair.
At break, around two thirty, we went in single file through a door in the back of the room that led out to an enclosed yard. There was a green roof over part of the yard, fiberglass I think, the kind with white swirly strings. Some of the kids who weren’t wearing yellow tags talked to each other, but I was looking for Shorty. I mean, the short guy with the black hair. I felt like I wanted to punch his lights out, but when I saw him, I realized how pathetic that would have been. First, I wasn’t sure it was him who’d ratted. Second, he was a pipsqueak. So instead I decided to find out more about him. I needed to believe that not everyone in this place was a rat, which meant that it would be really helpful to me if I knew which ones were which.
Slowly I made my way over to where he was kind of huddled into a corner, watching everyone else. I stood near him, which wasn’t hard, since no one else did—not a good sign for him; it could mean everyone knows he’s a rat and hates him. Then I started humming. Very quietly I began the tune from the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” which has at least seventeen different sets of alternative lyrics, ranging from silly to scatological. I watched Shorty out of the corner of my eye for any signs at all. If he hadn’t ratted, he’d look puzzled. If he had, he’d look either guilty or defensive or both.
At first I wasn’t sure he could even hear me, ’cause I couldn’t catch a sign that anything had registered at all. So I started humming a little louder, in my head hearing lines like “We’ve wandered down the halls writing cuss words on the walls,” and “Shot ’em up to heaven with an AK47.”
Suddenly his hand flew up to cover his mouth, and this confused me enough that I looked right at him. He was laughing. Laughing! Like he was thinking in his head some of the raunchier lyrics and couldn’t stop himself singing along silently. Well, this didn’t seem like the reaction of someone who had just ratted on me for humming, so I grinned at him. He dropped his hand and grinned back.
Even though he didn’t have a yellow sticker I couldn’t talk to him because of mine, so I wandered away again before anyone wondered what was going on. I lost sight of him after that, until he wandered out toward the other end of the yard.
This little encounter brightened my whole afternoon. For the first half-hour I hummed for all I was worth, going over the “Battle Hymn” again and again, loudly enough that I was sure to be heard over the other noise in the room, until Sean finally came over to me, looking like he was trying not to grin.
He said, “Okay Taylor, that’s enough. You’re driving everyone around you crazy, you know.” He squeezed my shoulder and said, really quietly, “You’ve made your point. Quit while you’re ahead.”
So I had to stop humming. Which meant I had to find some other way to occupy my mind, because otherwise I knew I was gonna be looking around trying to figure out who’d ratted on me. I looked around anyway, trying to identify something that would lead to other thoughts. And that happened in a way I really didn’t want it to.
What came to me was thinking about Mom. It was the laundry room itself that did it, actually. Like I said, the laundry room at home is where she usually goes when something awful has happened, like when Dad got arrested a few years ago for getting into a fight at this beer joint he goes to some Friday nights. He hadn’t started it; one of his buddies had. But when he tried to break it up, the thing escalated, and…well, he never was one to walk away from an injustice, as he saw it, or from a friend in need, as he probably would have seen it. So he got involved, and a whole bunch of them were hauled into jail for the night. Nothing came of it, but Mom spent quite a while in the laundry room that evening.
What hurt was that she’d freaked as much as Dad when I’d told them I was gay.
It had nearly made me crazy seeing Dad go over to Mom and put his hand on her shoulder, like he was making it them against me. ’Cause I don’t believe she saw it like that. And I don’t think she sees it like that now. I don’t know if it has anything to do with being gay, but I’ve always felt closer to her than to Dad. Well, I suppose some of the reasons I might not feel close to him are obvious. The gruff approach to everything, the temper, the heavy-handed attitude toward anything that smacks of gay or veers in any way from the literal Word of God. I mean, I believe in God. And I read the Bible. It’s just that…well, here comes Angela’s voice again. If you don’t have to make sense…And sometimes taking scripture literally just doesn’t make sense. But to Dad, that makes no difference.
Mom’s attitude toward everything is gentler. More reasonable. More…human, I guess. Sure, she’s devout, she believes. She’s saved. Maybe the difference is in the way they see God. Dad’s God is this big, powerful guy who throws down justice in the form of punishment when he’s disobeyed. The God Mom prays to is a loving God, a God who understands and forgives despite being just as strict about the rules. I like Mom’s God better. And I’ve always liked being with her more than with Dad, probably for the same reasons.
Interesting. Dad’s God acts like him, and Mom’s acts like her. And here I’d thought God was supposed to have created us in his image, not the other way around. B, WDIK? For that matter, what does anyone know?
I was feeling pretty sorry for myself by four, when Sean called all the kids with yellow stickers—about eight of us—together toward the front of the room. The way he spoke you could just hear the capital letters. “It’s Contemplation time for everyone in SafeZone. For many of you, this is your first Contemplation. If you have questions, please refer to your Booklet. It’s a good time to write your MI and a good time to pray or read your Bible. And remember to leave the door to your room open at all times. Dinner is at six. See you all tomorrow.”
So we all experienced for the second time that day the change from the warm, noisy room to the relative cool and near silence of the rest of the building. It felt like some kind of rite of passage, though what kind I couldn’t have said. It was part relief, part emptiness.
My room felt kind of like that, too. I knew I was supposed to leave the door open, but I shut it part way anyway, just to see if anyone would notice. I had to leave an MI at Mrs. Harnett’s office before dinner tonight, so I sat down at my desk to get that over with. What to write? “Struggles, thoughts, or temptations that have to do with sex, drugs,
violence, or disobedience…”
Well, I could say that I’d been reprimanded about humming a song—no words, but even so—that had FI lyrics in it. That was true enough. But what were they going to do with this stuff after I wrote it? If Mrs. Harnett asked me whether I understood why that was wrong, what would I say?
“Well, idiot, you can’t say anything, because you can’t speak.”
The sound of my own voice was kind of creepy. I hadn’t heard more than a word of it in—well, for some time. I looked up at the half-open door to see if there was anyone out there who might have heard me talking to myself, but it didn’t seem like it.
Anyway, I was wrong, because by the time we would sit down for another cozy little chat, Mrs. Harnett and I, it would be Thursday morning at ten and I’d be out of SafeZone. That is, unless I did something horrendous between now and then.
She’d said we’d review the MIs together. Something about my getting benefit from them, wasn’t it? Ha. Benefit. And she’d called me a Resident. I felt more like an Inmate.
I allowed myself a loud sigh—no words in that—and started to write. I figured it would be a little unbelievable if I didn’t write anything, and I’d get hell anyway. So I wrote about the bad words that had come into my head at various times since I’d been dumped off here. And I wrote that I’d been caught humming that tune. I also said that I’d tried to make up for it by switching to the “Battle Hymn” after Sean had yelled at me. And maybe it was a lie of omission, but I didn’t put down that I’d been imagining the alternate lyrics.