Black Dahlia & White Rose: Stories

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Of course, they’d been young. Newly married, and young.

  Often Vivianne had had to drag and shove desks around, before her students arrived; she didn’t so much mind doing this now, as a way of working off nervous tension.

  There were seven tables in the classroom, each accommodating six students. At the front of the room there was a smaller table, for instructors. A portable blackboard—that is a “white-board.” And on the floor, a podium.

  On the wall beside the door, a clock with prominent numerals and hands. The time was 1:24 P.M.

  “Your students will start arriving in a few minutes. Don’t forget to have each one sign the class roster at the start of class and at the end—they can just initial their signature, at the end.”

  One of McKeon’s assistants came into the classroom carrying an awkwardly large cardboard box of supplies: yellow tablets for the students, white note cards, pencils, a copy of the class roster for the instructor and a copy for the students to sign. There was photocopied material to be passed out at the first class meeting—(material that had had to be cleared by the prison authorities, two weeks before)—and there was a small blue plastic cube, set by the assistant in a prominent position on the instructor’s table.

  McKeon pointed at the little blue cube: “This is crucial, Cal—Vivianne. Be sure you don’t let this out of your sight and that you return it in the box, to the office, at the end of the class.”

  “Why? What is it?”

  “A pencil sharpener.”

  “A pencil sharpener!”

  The little blue cube contained a sharp piece of metal, like a razor that could be used as a weapon, McKeon explained.

  “Your classroom supply-box will be inventoried. Make sure this pencil sharpener is in it.”

  Cal laughed, as if he’d never heard anything so ridiculous.

  “Our students aren’t going to cut one another’s throats! These are serious students, enrolled in the degree program. I remember from last spring—they’re decent guys. The last thing they’re going to do is fuck up getting out of here.”

  “They might not cut anyone’s throat themselves,” McKeon said, “but they might sell the sharpener to someone else. That’s why we have to take precautions.”

  Still, Cal seemed skeptical. Vivianne thought the precaution made perfect sense.

  “I’ll keep my eye on it, Mr. McKeon! Thank you for the warning.”

  At last, at 1:40 P.M., the first students began to arrive.

  Explaining there’d been a slow-down at the checkpoint—some problem with the guards’ break.

  One by one, the inmate-students entered the classroom. A figure passing by the window on the ramp—in the doorway, a stranger—as Vivianne felt again that quick absurd thrill of anticipation, or hope.

  And the immediate rebuke He isn’t here. Can’t be here. What are you thinking!

  Her heart beat painfully. A fine scrim of sweat broke out beneath her arms. Her black woolen clothing—a short, trim jacket, fitted trousers—was too warm suddenly.

  Her black cashmere-wool coat she’d neatly draped over the back of a nearby chair.

  She’d brought no handbag with her, no wallet. You could enter the prison with only a photo I.D., pens and papers, car keys, a handful of tissues stuffed in a pocket. Other possessions had to be left behind in a locked car trunk.

  As the inmates entered the classroom they came first to the instructors’ table where Cal and Vivianne were standing, to introduce themselves, and shake hands.

  This was a surprise! In all of Vivianne’s experience no students had behaved in this formal way. Not even graduate students arriving for a seminar.

  There was Hardy, and there was Athol. There were Junot, Claydon, Evander, Floyd. There was an older man, an African-American with a creased dark face whom others called “Preach”—there was a limping older white man with a cane, in his sixties at least, with a soiled-looking skin, dented hairless head and an incongruously cheery expression who greeted Cal Healy with a firm handshake and Vivianne with a courtly smile and a mock-bow: “Ma’am, howdy!” His name was Conor O’Hagan which rolled off his tongue like an Irish stage name.

  There was Darl. There was Matthias. There was Yusef.

  It was something of a shock—a pleasurable shock—to feel her thin hand gripped warmly in the hand of a stranger.

  Do not hug inmates or engage in other intimate forms of physical contact. A brief handshake is permitted.

  There was a lone, slight-bodied Asian boy with a shaved head and a squinting smile, or grimace; unobtrusively he slipped into the room, taking his place at the far left against a wall, not coming first to the instructors’ table to introduce himself. (Vivianne deduced from the class roster that his name had to be Quogh Nu which was—Vietnamese?) The most flamboyant students were a tall spidery-limbed Dominican with shoulder-length dreadlocks—this was Ramirez—and a heavyset Hispanic with a battered handsome face, mournful eyes and an affable manner—Diego.

  Vivianne saw that the men didn’t segregate themselves in the classroom according to race but it was clear that they were sitting as far from one another as they could.

  Cal Healy suggested that the men “come a little closer”—“to make it easier to communicate”—and the men laughed as if he’d said something funny.

  Diego, who was sitting in the first row, explained that, in his cell, if he leaned his back against the wall and stretched out his legs—“like this, see, man?”—he could press the soles of his feet against the wall.

  Meaning, their cells were so small, and these were double cells—naturally the men wanted as much space around them as they could get, when they were out of their cells.

  Cal caught on, belatedly. A blush rose into his face. The men laughed, not unkindly.

  “Oh yeah—right. I get it. Sit where you want to, sure. The important thing is . . .”

  The class began, somewhat awkwardly. Cal seemed to be confused—looking through papers in a manila folder, searching for the class roster which had been removed from the cardboard box and set on the table. Vivianne located it for Cal, but when he took it from her he’d become distracted by something he was telling the students, and set it down absentmindedly without asking the men to sign it.

  Vivianne saw a figure passing by the front windows of the classroom, outside. She felt an immediate visceral response—a small kick of the heart.

  Telling herself You must stop. This is absurd. He will not . . . this is not . . .

  She understood: it was the logic of dreams. In a dream you have no comprehension of time, or plausibility; anything, all things, can happen in a dream. And you have no volition, you can’t save yourself from the folly of hopeless wishes.

  Without a warning knock the door was pushed inward. A burly guard in a khaki-colored uniform stood in the doorway. At first he said nothing, but seemed, by the quick-darting action of his eyes, to be counting the inmates.

  This wasn’t one of the friendly guards, clearly. The man scarcely glanced at Cal who was smiling awkwardly at him and he ignored Vivianne entirely. He asked for the sign-in roster which he wanted to check and when Cal was forced to stammer apologetically that he hadn’t “gotten around yet” to having the roster signed, the guard told Cal to pass the roster around the room and he’d wait.

  In silence the roster was passed around the room and the men signed their names.

  You could feel the tension, the hostility in the air. Where a moment before there’d been an air of affability, anticipation.

  It was inevitable, inmates hated guards. Guards hated—or distrusted—inmates. In this unnatural setting, individuals yet behaved naturally.

  Volunteer instructors were inclined to take the side of their students, against the guards. But Vivianne understood how the guards—this guard, surely—resented prisoners receiving special treatment from civilians.

  The program offered college-level courses, like English 101.

  Vivianne had seen, in front of the priso
n gate, in a patch of tended ground in which there was a flagpole with a weatherworn American flag at half-mast, a monument to the guards who’d “given their lives in the line of duty”—about twenty names, since 1928.

  She’d asked, why is the flag at half-mast? Had someone died?

  But no one in Vivianne’s little group knew. Not even Mick McKeon knew. And no one wanted to ask the grim-faced guard awaiting them at the first checkpoint.

  It took several minutes for the guard to check the inmates in the classroom against the class roster and a printed list in his hand and when at last he returned the roster to Cal it was with an expression of scarcely disguised contempt; he told Cal to “be sure not to forget” to have the inmates sign out at the end of class.

  “If there’s a fuckup, there could be a lockdown. No one would get out of here for hours.”

  Still the guard addressed Cal, ignoring Vivianne. She saw the hot quick blood in her young co-instructor’s face and she said with a bright smile, “We will, officer! Thank you.”

  When she’d been a girl Vivianne had only to enter an unfamiliar place to feel that something special might happen, someone special might appear—and her life would be changed. She’d stepped into new settings with an air of romantic expectation—and some anxiety—and one day it happened, she met someone, someone special, and her life was changed.

  And so, now that he had departed from her life, she’d become susceptible again to the old yearning, though decades had passed and she was so much older: yet, so strangely, the same person still, the same eager naïve hopeful girl.

  So badly wanting to be of help.

  Her husband had often spoken of volunteering for such work—when he retired, when he had more time.

  Having more time—this is a curious concept!

  Now, there was time. Vast, choppy, slate-colored and with no perceptible beginning, or end—the direction of its current, like the Hudson River in certain weathers, indeterminate.

  Repeatedly they’d been warned: you will not be allowed to wear blue into the prison.

  For blue was the prisoners’ color, exclusively.

  Guards wore khaki-colored uniforms. Prisoners, blue.

  In fact, blue over white. And their prison-issue sneakers were white.

  Prison attire as a form of correction, punishment. A way of taking from the prisoner his identity, and making him ridiculous.

  P R I S O N E R in stark white letters on the backs of the inmates’ (blue) shirts.

  On the right legs of their (blue) pants stark white vertical letters

  P

  R

  I

  S

  O

  N

  E

  R.

  At the waist of the (blue) pants, stark white initials N Y S D C R—NEW YORK STATE DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTION AND REHABILITATION.

  Civilians could not be allowed to wear blue or any combination of colors like stripes that might be confused with blue by sentries in the watch towers for, if there was a “disturbance” in the yard—a sudden melee—(how often did this happen, the uneasy volunteers wondered)—sentries would command inmates to throw themselves on the ground and individuals who failed to obey, and remained standing, would be in danger of being shot down.

  A civilian wearing blue would be in danger of being shot.

  At the orientation meeting one of the volunteers identified herself as a “nurse by training” who was already co-teaching in the maximum-security prison at Auburn, but wanted to expand her time “inside” by volunteering here, too. With a small glow of pride the woman told the group that she’d been volunteering for prison work for thirty years.

  She had a bulldog face, plain, squinting, somber. Her dark hair was short and wiry. She wore jeans and a denim jacket and hiking boots.

  Not long afterward, the instructor brought up again the subject of “familiarity”—“over-familiarity”—with inmates. She warned of becoming “emotionally dependent” upon prison work: “If you discover that the emotional center of your life is in the prison, and your visits are the highlight of your week, you might want to reconsider your volunteer work, and cut back a bit.”

  These remarks seemed to make no impression on the woman who’d identified herself as a nurse. Vivianne felt a stir of embarrassment for her.

  She thought That would never happen to me.

  Her husband had expressed the intention to volunteer in prison education, when he retired. But why prison, Vivianne didn’t know. And which prison. She must have asked him. She would not have asked him more than once.

  He’d had a way—so subtle, for he was a subtle man—of discouraging Vivianne’s curiosity when it seemed to him misplaced or intrusive, without saying anything specific, often without saying anything at all, only just frowning, glancing away—signifying Excuse me but this is private. I’d prefer not to discuss this though I love you and respect you and my reluctance to answer is not a rebuke.

  She’d sometimes taken it as a rebuke, of course. But she had never doubted that he’d loved her.

  She was introduced by her young co-instructor as “Vivianne Greary—a renowned university professor and scholar” and himself as an “aspiring social-eco-activist.” In the course they would be reading “exemplary expository” essays and writing essays themselves. There was no textbook—photocopied material would be passed out at each class meeting, to be read for the next week’s meeting. Both Cal and Vivianne spoke—she saw the men’s eyes glide onto her, with a kind of affable interest; not sexual, not aggressive. She was sure of this.

  The mood of the inmates was eager. At least, those men who were seated near the front of the room, who lifted their hands to speak, who’d had experience in previous courses.

  Not all had been in the program before, but almost all. The young Asian-looking man at the back of the room, gazing with a sober impassive face at the instructors, seemed out of place, even disoriented. And one of the older white men, also at the back of the room, but nowhere near the young Asian, was frowning and sucking at his lips in a way that would have been distracting if he’d been sitting nearer.

  What was this inmate’s name?—Vivianne had a vague recollection of a strange, cumbersome name—Ardwick.

  She would check the name roster, unobtrusively.

  The man might have been in his early sixties. He had a blunt shaved head, a face that looked as if it had partly melted away. And much of his face was obscured by dark-tinted glasses. His short-sleeved blue shirt was loose-fitting as if it were the shirt of a much larger man and the sleeves of his white T-shirt straggled over his hands. Something in the way he stared at the instructors—at her—made Vivianne uneasy though you would not have guessed by Vivianne’s classroom manner which was smiling and pleasant, upbeat.

  Yet, she kept looking at the man at the back of the room—Ardwick?—Oldwick? His first name, too, was unusual—Elias? Ezra?

  She thought He has shrunk. This is not the self he remembers and so he is baffled, he may be angry.

  Yet, the class was going well. The men took notes on yellow prison-issue tablets. Cal wrote on the blackboard. The men were diligent as students of another era. Already one of the younger black men had lifted his hand for permission to come forward to use the pencil sharpener.

  “ ’Scuse me, ma’am?”—then, “Thank you, ma’am!”—as if Vivianne had dominance over the little blue plastic object.

  Vivianne was reminded of her old, lost life as a university instructor—before she’d earned a Ph.D., before she’d acquired a reputation, and tenure.

  Night-school classes were like boat-crossings on rough rivers—you just hung on, you rowed your heart out, you made it across. And what pleasure in that kind of teaching, that had little to do with the refinements of university teaching of advanced classes, scholarly research. The prison situation was not very different from night school, Vivianne thought. You did not expect brilliant students, you would be pleasantly surprised always by a few students who worked hard,
did good work, became your friends . . .

  She’d photocopied a section from James Baldwin’s “Notes of a Native Son” to pass to the students. The assignment was to read it carefully and respond in five hundred to one thousand words which they would read aloud at the next class meeting—“But only if you feel comfortable with reading aloud.” Vivianne had seen looks of dismay in several faces.

  She suggested to Cal that maybe the men might volunteer to read the Baldwin essay aloud, just to make sure they understood it, and then they could ask questions if they had any; Cal seemed to agree, this was a great idea, then recalled suddenly that he’d forgotten to ask the students to introduce themselves, to say why they were taking the course and what they hoped to get out of it, which was suggested as first-class procedure, and so—maybe they’d better do that, first.

  “Then, we can read from the essay. OK?”

  Cal Healy was an inexperienced instructor, that was the problem. And the prison-situation seemed to have made him anxious. Vivianne would have liked to touch Cal’s wrist, to calm him: to ask him to speak less rapidly, and maybe less; to allow the students to talk more. She would have liked to seize his hand to reassure him, as an older teacher, as an older woman—but of course she couldn’t embarrass the young man in front of their students.

  One by one, the men gave their names. Why they were taking the course, what they hoped to get out of it.

  With a broad smile Conor O’Hagan said he was taking the course because he was going to be paroled in four months—“And I’d have to pay for it, outside.”

  Ramirez said he was taking the course because he never learned nothing much in high school—“They just pass you along, man.”

  Diego said he was taking the course because he wanted to “improve” his mind—“If you can write, man—you can think.”

  Others echoed Diego, and others said that they were taking the course because it was a requirement in the degree program. The Asian boy Quogh Hu at the back of the room spoke reluctantly at first and then in a rapid, heavily accented English which Vivianne couldn’t understand; very likely, Cal couldn’t understand either. But both said, “Good! Good.”