by Quinn, Fiona
Crouched on my heels, my chest heaving after the tirade, I tried to rebalance both body and mind. “Open Sesame,” I muttered with my head against the cold metal. But unlike Ali Baba, I was all out of magic.
Standing, I peeked out the door’s window, trying to see what was in the corridor. I had a small visual field, and it was empty. It was empty when I came in, too. Bleak, and eerily silent.
I used the bathroom, washed my hands and face, made the bed, and then I was out of things to do. Terror seeped from my gut out through my pores. I could smell the fear on my skin and on my breath. How do people survive like this? Sitting on the shelf, I rolled myself into fetal position. For a long time, I couldn’t move. Couldn’t think. I was inanimate, falling asleep crunched up like wadded paper. Like discarded waste.
As I woke and stretched my stiffened limbs, my mind drifted to Master Wang. He was the only person I knew who had been imprisoned. When I was a teen, he told me stories about the time he was held as a political prisoner in China. In an attempt to re-educate him, Master Wang had been put in a box too small for him to straighten his legs, or even sit up straight. The guards would leave him there for as many as twelve days at a time. When they finally dragged Master Wang out, he was crippled for weeks. He spent years in that prison before someone helped him escape.
Years? Holy shit. Will I be here for years? I don’t think I can do this. Yeah right, like you have a choice? I scoffed. Furious. Volcanic. How did I let myself get into this mess? I paced and kicked at the wall, trying to burn off the rage.
Finally, reason edged around my anger, poking a nervous head out into the fray to whisper, “Castigation is probably the wrong direction.” I plopped down. Okay. I had to be focused and proactive. Taking in a deep breath, I looked around the all but empty cell. My mind remained an unrelenting blank. I had no idea what to do. Prison never came up as part of my training, even on Spyder’s computer programs. I guessed he thought he prepared me better than this, and I should never have ended up in Maria’s clutches. Shame glazed over me. If only I had listened to Striker and my team, and not been so damned hard-headed.
Stop!
How did Master Wang survive? I willed myself to recall his words. Sitting very still, I pushed my mind back in time and place to listen again to his stories. Perhaps he had given me a resource, a roadmap. His tales about imprisonment were rare. He hated remembering, and only offered up his memories as object lessons.
Master Wang told me that he had kept his sanity in two ways. First, he had a schedule of things to do during the day, and second, he varied the schedule so his mind didn’t numb. And he stuck to his program. I could do that.
I also knew that he credited his martial arts training for keeping his mind and body prepared for his escape. “Your mind is your best friend or your worst enemy.” That refrain constituted a ubiquitous part of my daily Kung Fu lessons right along with the kicks and punches. I could see how that would be true. My mind wanted me to be claustrophobic and panicky, but how would that serve me?
Singing filtered under my door. “Ave Maria.” Church bells chimed four o’clock at a distance, barely audible. From the little port-hole in my door, I couldn’t see who was in the hall, but I heard the chutes squeaking open on rusty hinges, swoosh, clanging shut.
A young woman — late teens? Early twenties? — shifted into my view. She moved bird-like on a slight frame. Her raven hair coiled in a tight bun at the nape of her neck. Perspiration dotted her forehead and stained her blouse. She pushed a cart in front of her, picking up a tray from underneath, plopping a spoon from one bucket, a scoop from another.
When she approached my door, I peered at her through the window. Her eyes were obsidian and feverish, too big for her face. The dark circles ringing her eyes made her look haunted — from ill health? No sleep? I wondered if she might be a prisoner, too. She shoved a tray in to me, and I caught her eye. I said “Gracias” with a heavy American accent. She startled and moved quickly to the next door. Squeak. Swoosh. Clang.
Sitting on the shelf, I balanced my tray on my knee. The food looked unhealthy and gray like the cinderblocks that surrounded me. I looked over at the open window, where I found my only source of color, then swirled my spoon in the food. Anxiety and revulsion took my appetite. My stomach hurt badly
The memory of a story I read as a young girl bubbled up. A Polish woman in Auschwitz had dug up worms for breakfast every morning and ate the bugs that nested on the barracks walls in order to survive. Even though I was worried that the food would make things even worse for my cramping intestines, I choked down the mess. The rice was sticky, cold, and tasteless, and so were the beans, but at least it wasn’t worms and bugs.
At the five o’clock chime, the same raven-haired woman came back to collect the trays. I stood at the door.
“Give me the tray,” she said in Spanish.
“No hablo espanol,” I said in my best bad accent.
She held up a tray, and pointed to me.
I smiled with an “Oh, oh!” sound. As I pushed the tray through, I held it for a second, making her look at me again. “Catholic,” I said showing her my crucifix.
She nodded and made the sign of the cross. Success? Could I make friends with this woman? I needed information. I needed to know where I was. Not that it would help me escape – but it was really frustrating my brain not knowing where my feet touched the planet. It made me feel… obscure.
A bath, that was what I’d do next. The water from the single spigot only came out as cold. It was tricky to twist the handle to the on-position and wash one handed. I took off the clothes that I had worn for three days now. Hanging up my jeans on the window ledge so they could air, I rinsed my shirt, bra, and panties and hung them to dry. I dressed in my hoodie and scrambled under the covers in a tight ball.
It was time to make a plan for my day. Maybe it wouldn’t be long until I was free, again. Perhaps one of the welcoming-band of guards downstairs called Iniquus wanting a reward, and soon my team would come, bribe money would cross palms, and I’d be heading home. But until then, I needed a plan.
My thoughts alighted on my Kitchen Grandmothers. My grandmothers didn’t just teach me cooking skills; they taught me about their ways of doing and being. The families were very much alike and yet very different. The continuity and change of my Kitchen Grandmother habits could be useful in following Master Wang’s example for surviving imprisonment. I gripped the edge of my shelf with anxious fingers.
Each day I was here, I could make that day about a Kitchen Grandmother. Thursday I could try to think in Italian all day, and on Friday think in Spanish all day. I could sing their songs, say their prayers…yes, this would be good. This would make each day different.
Things probably ran on some kind of a schedule here. As soon as I knew more about what a day entailed, I would work that in. So far I had a four o’clock meal delivery and a five o’clock tray collection. Hmmn. Language, prayers…what else would take time?
Well, I could separate the day into hours since I had the church bells, and I could give myself a specified task to do in each hour: meditate, exercise, martial arts. Eating would take up some time. Stories. I could tell myself about books that I’ve read, or make some up — write books in my mind. I walked to the door and tried to see down the hall. I wondered if they would give me writing materials? Or reading materials? Yeah but I would have to give reading materials back. They would be in Spanish, and no one could know that I understood Spanish.
What else? I laid on the straw pallet; it was prickly and unpalatable. I giggled manically at my play on words. And so it starts; I was going to lose my freaking mind in here. I wasn’t made to fly solo. I shook my head at myself in disgust.
Okay, I read about a guy once who was a prisoner of war, and every day of the ten years that he was imprisoned, he played eighteen holes of golf in his mind. When he was released, the first thing he wanted to do was to hit the links. After not swinging a club for a decade, he actually improve
d his handicap. Now, I don’t know how to play golf, but I’m sure there’s something in there that I can use. I have to figure out something that I can practice…
Had I been home, I’d be with Striker right now. If this was Sunday, then it was Valentine’s Day. I had anticipated having a roller-coaster of a day. Valentine’s Day last year Angel had proposed, and I had accepted him. Thinking about Angel made me feel empty and sad. I knew that Striker had planned something special for me today; he had said as much the last time I talked to him. I had made some plans for him too — I certainly hadn’t planned on this.
Oh my God, I felt so sick. Terrible cramps had me pulling my knees to my chest. My mind went to the pilot’s water bottle. Then it went to words like cholera and dysentery.
Coiled up on my hard wooden shelf that first night, I dreamt of an African priestess. It was this woman’s commanding mind that had reached out over the ocean to me and asked for my help to protect Striker’s family. She had sparse gray hair, braided tightly against her head, and held in a shell-studded bun on the very top. Her face was deeply wrinkled. She looked fragile and light, as if her bones had given up their solidity. When she smiled, her mouth was dotted with a few remaining teeth. She was beautiful and majestic as she walked with me through the village.
“It has been many years now since the time of great weeping. Did your man ever tell you our story?”
“No, Grandmother,” I replied, as we came to a large, flat rock by the muddy river.
“Come and sit. We are living through a very dark time, a very dangerous time. But we are now finding some peace. Not very long ago, four years I think, the guerrilla soldiers ran through the jungles. They came to our village and made us leave our huts. The guerrillas lived in our homes and ate our food — used our women, young and old. They wanted our men to leave the fields, and come with them to fight. Our men said no, they did not believe in this warring. This angered the guerrillas, and they killed our men - all of them. Our husbands, our fathers, our babies. They only left the women. Each night they slept with us, and they beat us. We became pregnant with their children.”
I was laying on the rock curled up like a small child with my head in her lap. I had decided to call her Grandmother Sibyl after a Sudanese story I had read as a child. She stroked my hair. And in this image I was perfectly clean, wearing a pristine white dress, barefooted.
“One night, a man with white skin came to my hut and spoke with me. He was called Gavin Rheas, and he dressed in war clothes with a big gun by his side. He asked me why the women were wailing so loudly, where were our men? I told him about our kin and our treatment, and about Namou, who had just died giving birth to a guerrilla’s baby girl. The baby girl survived, and we named her Bitter. Gavin Rheas said that his sister had just given birth to a baby girl named Cammy. He said that he would stay and help. I remember laughing. He was a big man, but with so many guerrillas what could he do?”
I stretched and turned so I could watch Grandmother’s face, hungry to hear about Striker-the-hero. My hero.
“I was wrong to doubt him,” she said. “By morning, all of the guerrillas who slept in our village had their throats slit. He loaded the bodies onto one of their trucks and drove them far away, leaving their corpses in the jungle to be food for the animals and to rot.
“We were afraid for the time when the second patrol returned. We believed that the guerrillas would kill us all when they discovered their friends missing. Gavin Rheas said no, that we were under his protection.
“The guerrilla patrol came back to our village drunk. They wanted to lay with women and go to sleep. Again, that night, Gavin came. Again he loaded up the bodies in the trucks and drove them away. And there were no more guerillas. We told him Gavin Rheas was not a good name for a man such as he. He needed a war name. We called him ‘The Striker,’ like a deadly bush viper.”
Oh. Now I knew how he got his call name. Why wouldn’t he tell me this story before?
“We are safe here until another band of men finds us. We honor Striker, and our release from enslavement, by remembering him every night in our prayers for protection against evil.”
A leopard scream in the distance made me jump. I pulled myself up to look Grandmother Sibyl in the eye, suddenly afraid. “Why did you tell me this story?” I whispered.
“So you would know that you are loved by a worthy man. A man who searches for you.” She reached out and brushed my hair from my face and caught my chin in her fingers; her gaze held mine, making sure I focused on her. “You know, as things are written now, he cannot find you, my child. You will have to find your way to him, one way or another.”
My heart faltered. I bowed my head to hide my tears. “Yes, Grandmother, I guess I know that – But still, I had hoped.” I lay back down and tried to assimilate this news about being on my own. My lungs wouldn’t fill, my cells begged then screamed for relief. Grandmother Sibyl blew lightly over my face, and I gasped the air in.
“You have much power. Are you forgetting your power? You may still help him to help you. If you sit on a rock you will have no food. You must hunt, and you will find something to fill your belly.”
“Yes, Grandmother.” And suddenly I remembered. “I helped the girl, Anyushka.”
“You were brave. Do you know what gift you received for this?”
“No. I understood you were there watching as I walked back through the Veil. I paid attention like you said I should, but I didn’t recognize the gift.”
“It will come to you, child. Striker calls you his woman.”
“Yes. I am his. I love him.”
“Without doubt. And so our prayers will be for you as well…”
Thirty-Two
I woke up feeling peaceful, connected, and cared for. My dream was tangible; I could still feel Grandmother Sybil’s fingers in my hair. So, Striker wouldn’t find me. I suspected that already. How could he? Grandmother told me I was powerful. What powers would she be talking about?
I lay still on my shelf, counting off the chimes. Sudden cramps had me racing for my toilet. The cramps were sharper than yesterday’s. I was afraid to drink the water from my spigot, though I knew without it I would die very quickly.
Six o’clock, I heard the chutes opening and closing. An old woman, stooped and potato shaped, waddled to my door. She was too short to see into my window as she shoved a tray with a splat of gray, gelatinous oatmeal in to me. My stomach flip-flopped, and I worked hard to still my gag reflex.
If the schedule was like yesterday, I’d have an hour before my tray was collected. I’d try to take up the whole hour eating. I folded the pallet, and sat cross-legged on the shelf. I said a long prayer of thanksgiving, and started on my first nibble.
My mind went to Master Wang’s wife, Snow Bird, and my East Indian Kitchen Grandmother, Biji, who had taught me to eat meditatively, using every sense as I took small thoughtful bites of my food. They told me to listen for any sound, even if the sound was silence, and breathe deeply and gratefully. Each bite of food was a gift from the sun, which provided the energy for growth; the rain that provided the moisture; the earth that provided the stability and nutrients for the roots. When I ate, I was one with the universe: the sun, the rain, the soil. It was a beautiful sentiment, I thought ruefully, and gloriously true when I ate a ripe mango and felt the sweet, sticky juices drip from my chin. But not so much as I spooned the gray gloop into my mouth. Why didn’t they use salt? How could they possibly get oatmeal to be so slimy – like okra, or mucus, or garden slugs? I shuddered and forced another spoonful between my unwilling lips.
Today was probably Monday. Monday was Jada’s day. Jada, my Kitchen Grandmother from Turkey, was of the Muslim faith. So Mondays I had performed Salat, the ritual prayers, with her five times a day. That was good; it would break my day into segments. Time — stretching bleakly out in front of me — was so damned daunting. My enemy.
At noon, I waited expectantly for the rattle of the food cart and the sound of “Ave Maria.
” It never came. That was okay, I didn’t think my stomach could handle anymore distress.
I watched out the windows where the guards walked their dogs back and forth across the yard — beautiful German shepherds. I missed Beetle and Bella.
When the bells chimed two, a male guard came to my cell and unlocked my door. Holy hell, what now? I cowered into the corner, blinking at him.
He seemed confused, and then said in Spanish, “Why won’t you come with me? I’m going to take you to the yard for exercise.”
Oh, what a relief. Of course, I couldn’t let him see that I understood. “Ejercicio?” I repeated timidly.
The guard did a couple of jumping jacks. “Ejercicio.”
“Oh, gracias.” I walked toward him.
The exercise yard was a flat space with baked mud that cracked in jagged lines, sprinkled with a few determined weeds. I was glad to be outside, though, away from my four walls. I glanced around at the few women who were with me in the yard, and wondered who they were and if any of them spoke English.
The guard seemed to read my mind and pointed at them. “No,” he said, wagging an authoritative finger.
I wondered why. Was it for my protection? Theirs? I didn’t want to go back to my cell, so I turned my back on them obediently.
How could I best spend this time? I wanted to know the size and shape of the buildings, how many guards they posted, how many dogs… I wanted to discover everything I could discover that might help me in making my getaway. If I wasn’t going to be rescued, it was up to me to escape. I wondered why the hell I was here in the first place. What were they going to do with me? To me? I scuffed a foot into the dirt and felt fear climb my vertebrae.
The bells chimed three times, and I arrived back in my cell. I washed my hands and face and stared vacantly out my window until the bells rang out four o’clock. Sure enough, here came Ave Maria with dinner. Tonight she didn’t sing. Rice and beans, blah. I sat down on the shelf and ate meditatively. This time I tried to conjure up spices and aromas — garlic, and fresh cilantro, lime and salt. Dinner was much better in my imagination. After I sent my tray back through the chute, I did the ritual washing and chanted Asr, the third of the five daily prayers of Salat. I thought about Jada and her garden full of butterflies, and felt a moment of peace.
