The Year She Disappeared

by Ann Harleman

  “I with your friends, we have great concern for your health, Nan.”

  “I’m fine. Really. You shouldn’t—”

  “Your heart. Is danger. Can fail at any minute.”

  “Val—”

  “You must listen!” The little table shuddered with the motion of his leg. He cast a glance in the direction of Safety Pin’s back. “Walking. Walking is good for you.”

  Ah. I see where we’re going.

  “But you must also visit doctor. Luckily, is excellent prison doctor. Very helpful.”

  Nan remembered the tall, thin figure bent over the woman from D Wing. Val cast another glance at Safety Pin. Her grizzled head was all the way out the window, like a large Airedale enjoying a car ride. A tiny white square, smaller than a penny, appeared from under the cuff of Val’s shirt. He slid his hand, palm down, across the table to Nan, waited for her hand to meet it. They clasped and released. The note was in her fist.

  Val looked at her impatiently. Open! he mouthed.

  Nan pried the paper apart. It was slightly damp. It said, in Mel’s square dark printing:

  Pretend to get sick tomorrow night. Ask for doctor. Go to hospital. Wait.

  An escape. They’ve planned an escape. So this was what Jenny Root had meant.

  A hand squeezed the stone in her chest: a wringing pain. My heart? No. It’s only fear. A gust from the open window, carrying the smell of Safety Pin’s cigarette, touched her cheek. With a great effort, Nan closed her fingers around the note.

  Val said, “Fourth of July is Monday. Already today the city is, how you say it, is empty. Empty,” he repeated, his eyes on Nan’s.

  Keys chimed at Safety Pin’s belt as she turned to glance at her prisoner, then turned back to the July morning.

  Val raised a hand to his lips and made chewing motions. When Nan, not understanding, continued to sit still, he reached across the table and pried the note from her fingers and put it in his mouth. Nan remembered the photograph of his grandfather. Val knew about prison.

  He chewed, swallowed. The card table stilled. He said in a low voice, “You will do, nyet? Telephone me tomorrow morning. Say only, Yes, okay. It must happen tomorrow.”

  Don’t let the fucker get away with it, Jenny Root had said. Nan hesitated, remembering Alex’s face in the narrow beam from her flashlight, her imperious voice. This time, hide her better.

  “Two minutes!” Safety Pin said in a bored voice.

  Val slid a pack of Camels across the table toward Nan. Dramatically, he murmured, “Tomorrow! Telephone, then wait. A distraction occurs.”

  No.

  “Nan! Things belong to the people who want them most. Nado umet’ khotet’. One must know how to want.”

  I’m too tired. Too old.

  Excuses she could not make out loud, because of the presence of Safety Pin. And arguments Val could not make—except for one.

  “Jane,” he said. The black eyes burned.

  I’m afraid.

  “Janechka.”

  Safety Pin turned around and came up to the table. She picked up the pack of Camels and put it in her breast pocket. “Time’s up.”

  “K chortu!”

  |

  “This is her at three weeks … here she is at three months … eight months …”

  Nan admired Donna Jean’s daughter’s passage through the stages of babyhood: Mister Magoo, Winston Churchill, Henry VIII. She was red-haired, like her mother, and feisty-looking.

  “And my boys, Anthony and David, he’s the baby there, on Cheryl’s lap.”

  “Ain’t they sweet, those shorties? God!” said Marjorie, who was looking over Nan’s shoulder. Donna Jean gave her a quick poke, for profanity.

  Nan was in the midst of murmured admiration when Donna Jean handed her a newspaper clipping. “This is her, last year.” The headline said, 12-YEAR-OLD SAVES SIBLINGS; beneath the self-conscious school photo, the caption read: “Cheryl Naomi Miller’s father perished when he piped car exhaust into his West Warwick living room last night.”

  Marjorie pushed her own photographs into Nan’s other hand. “This here’s my Aretha.” A fierce young woman squinting into the sun, her Afro a nimbus around her head. “And her girl, LaShon. My granddaughter.” About Jane’s age, with cornrowed hair and a face the color of new pennies, in a T-shirt that said, HAPPY TO BE NAPPY.

  “Luis.” Maria displayed her photographs. “He has eight years. And la niña, Annunciata.”

  Ellen’s photo was mutely extended. Expecting yet another cherub, Nan pushed her glasses back up the sweaty bridge of her nose (it was a hot, hot night) and looked down. Her breath caught. The photograph showed a gravestone, in color, lavishly bedecked with roses, peonies, daisies, a tiny American flag, a plastic figure of E.T. ERIC, the stone said, 1995-1997. LOVE FOREVER.

  Nan looked up. Ellen’s face in the lamplight, half hidden by her tangled hair, asked for nothing; but her arms tightened around her Raggedy Ann doll, which tonight wore a long white christening dress, its embroidered hem gray with dirt. Maria moved over and put an arm around her.

  An expectant silence descended. Humid night air coated Nan’s skin like someone else’s sweat. In the quiet she could hear, far down the corridor, doors being slammed one by one. It was nearly lights-out. Then she realized: they were waiting for her photographs, for pictures of Alex, of Jane, loved to limpness, offered proudly. Nan had none, and said so.

  Their shocked surprise was instantly, tactfully, annealed by chatter.

  “My sister, she takes Anthony to counseling. He’s like, No way you’re gettin’ inside my head. I tell him, go. I messed up big-time. I don’t want my kids to.”

  “Can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.”

  “I tell him, This is devil music. This rap stuff.”

  “I worry about LaShon. I think, is niggeritis kickin’ in?”

  “Con permiso?” Maria removed Nan’s glasses, hooked them behind her own ears. “Shit! Where is everybody?”

  Laughter.

  “My Lord does not strike points off, even if I sin. I tell Anthony this poem: Woman or man, we are all in God’s hand.”

  The door to the room next to theirs slammed. Maria slid off the bunk and rolled underneath it. Their door opened. The little freckled CO counted heads, bawled “’Night!” and slammed the door.

  When the conversation rekindled, in whispers, it was about Kids’ Day—tomorrow, Sunday—in tones of suppressed excitement, as if they were the children, looking forward to a party. Nan closed her eyes against the light from the guard towers outside. The threat of tears made her squeeze them tight. She must not think of Jane. Jane was safe; that was enough.

  There was a series of soft movements from the bunk opposite. Nan opened her eyes. Ellen’s figure appeared by her bed. She crouched there in silence for a moment; then Nan’s blanket was drawn back and something was tucked in alongside her, against her ribs. As Ellen climbed back up to her own bed, Nan’s hand met the limp, gritty lace of Raggedy Ann’s christening gown.

  |

  If one cannot be happy, one can at least be brave. (Dorothea)

  The unlived life is not worth examining. (Walker)

  You’ve never really loved anyone, have you? (Alex)

  But why should courage not be finite, just like anything else? Nan thought. Standing up to Judge Wright had taken all she had. Jane was safe—she, Nan, had made her safe—and that was all she cared about. All she could do. She was finished.

  |

  The communal bathroom, with its showerless tubs (for fear, it had been explained to Nan at some point, of inmates hanging themselves) and doorless toilets, smelled equally of Pine-Sol and pee. Sunday morning: the sound of church bells came faintly through the high windows. In a rare moment of aloneness, Nan stood before the tin mirror over the sinks. Her beige sweatshirt lay crumpled in the basin; her bra clung around her waist. She was examining her breasts for lumps, the monthly ritual, as if such things still mattered. Her nipples puckered tight as jujubes
. It was always cold in here. The cinder-block walls exuded a constant chill, like the walls of Italian cathedrals.

  The door opened. A cloud of mixed hairs scuttled along the cement floor. Marjorie came and stood at the sink next to Nan’s and began washing her hands.

  “What’s the story, morning glory?”

  Nan didn’t bother to cover herself. How swift the progression had been: the relinquishing first of outrage, then of shame, then of modesty itself. Nan thought of her modeling days, of Mel’s careful distinction between naked and nude. How long ago that seemed. How innocent. Her reflection in the mirror smiled bleakly, eyes like Teflon. She noted, indifferently, that she looked like hell, and remembered how, at fifteen, sixteen, Alex had been envious of her mother’s beauty. It didn’t get you anything, Nan had tried to explain. More guys, yes. More tickets; but the ride was the same. No one changed for you.

  “Get a move on, girl!”

  Nan jumped. She’d been so engrossed in memory that she’d forgotten anyone was there.

  Marjorie’s reflection frowned at her. “Don’t you know it’s Kids’ Day? Gotta look good for the shorties.” She began spitting on her fingers and twirling sections of her lively hair so that it stood out all around her head. Then, as Nan, leaning on the edge of the sink, said nothing, she added, “Listen! You gotta be strong with yourself. You givin’ up, girl. I can see it in your eyes. You been here what? A week? That’s about when it hits.”

  “I’m not,” Nan said.

  Marjorie wore a blue sleeveless shirt. She lifted her arms and shook them, regarding herself in the mirror, tapping the loose flesh that hung from her upper arms. “The Mobile Wads of Henry,” she said. “That’s what these things’re called.” She pulled a toothbrush out of her pants pocket and began scrubbing soapsuds into her cuticles. Without looking at Nan she said, “There’s a thing called Prisoner’s Malady. Where you get, you know, resigned. You get so you like bein’ locked up. You think, That’s what I deserve.”

  Feeling suddenly naked, Nan pulled her bra up, dived into her sweatshirt. Marjorie moved closer and put one arm across her shoulders. The smell of her armpit was aromatic, like onions—the smell, suddenly, of Nan’s mother, long ago, and the light pressure of Marjorie’s breast was maternal, too. Nan stood very still. A steep pain started up inside her.

  Someone came in, a woman called Lina, and squatted in the furthest toilet stall. Marjorie moved away, rinsing her hands, drying them on a wad of paper towels. She looked back at Nan, seemed about to speak, shook her head, and left.

  It’s out of my hands, Nan told her own reflection. Don’t you see that?

  Her mirrored eyes gazed back accusingly. Coward, her eyes said. Stingy. You’ll stay in this place for the rest of your life, to save Jane. But you won’t raise her?

  Nan shut her eyes. She stood by the sink with one arm tight across her rib cage, where the pain was, until the other woman left. Then she sat down on the cold tile floor and put her face in her hands, and her cupped palms filled with tears.

  |

  Never alone, Alex. Not for three minutes in a row. Remember what we used to say in Warsaw? Making fun of our poor neighbor, the widow Budzich. “Venn you haff a view, you are neffer alone.”

  Is Marjorie right? Something is happening to me. I don’t miss my privacy, or even want it. My so-called freedom, ditto.

  It’s out of my hands now. Now I can rest.

  |

  Kids’ Day.

  Through the open windows came the high voices of children, raucous as jays, an unaccustomed, amazing sound. Standing in the sitting area of C Wing—deserted, the TV silent for once—Nan looked out at the little yard beside Dix Building. Green grass, blue sky: God had gussied up the world (Donna Jean’s observation) for this day. They poured through an unbarred metal door, children of all sizes, stormed the snack table, fanned out across the grass. A flash of bright-blue denim. Nan’s heart kicked.

  Jane?

  Nan took a step back, rocked by pain, by longing. Turning, she saw only the empty corridor. Everyone was outside—turning back again, she saw a file of women in blue prison garb begin to enter the yard from a door opposite—at least, everyone who had children. Those who didn’t, or whose children would not come today, were hiding somewhere out of sight and sound of all this joy. Arms wrapped around herself, Nan began backing down the corridor. But she couldn’t seem to look away from the window. Aunts, grandmothers, fathers stood around the perimeter of cyclone fencing, its crown of barbed wire glinting in the sun. They slouched self-consciously, eyeing the guards, thrusting empty hands into pockets. Nan had seen the list of what visitors might bring into the prison on Kids’ Day: one wedding ring; one baby bottle (clear fluid); one diaper. Nothing more. This restriction struck her as a disorienting device. So lightly burdened, how could visitors feel like themselves? Impelled by some force she didn’t understand, Nan went downstairs and through the empty dining hall, out into the blue afternoon.

  The air held the smoky scent of clover. Bees circled Nan’s head, their interrogative sound not quite lost in the clamor of children’s voices. There were children of every size and many colors, from babies—she saw one, in the arms of a fiercely tattooed woman from B Wing, who couldn’t have been more than four weeks old—to wavering first-time walkers to teenagers, opaque-eyed and wrathful. All around her, mothers and children rushed toward each other with illumined faces. She’d forgotten that headlong joy. The small bright countenance that said, You! You, and no other. Jane used to greet her that way, back in Seattle, before they went into exile.

  Jane could be here right now, visiting me, Nan thought, if I gave her up. Then she remembered. If I gave her up, I wouldn’t be here. She thought of Gabe’s letter, Gabe’s face when they stood before the judge. He would never let Jane see her, not here, not anywhere. Not in a million years.

  In a far corner of the yard Donna Jean dropped to her knees and put her arms around three children at once. Her young daughter, graceful and grave, held a baby dressed in enough starched and ruffled splendor to compete with the Infant of Prague. Handed to Donna Jean, it extended its arms back toward its sister, hands swiveling like a safecracker’s. (Nan’s breath caught: Jane as a baby had made just that imperious gesture of desire.) Maria hugged her son, a small boy in shorts whose high voice carried over the tumultuous sounds in the yard. “Sí, la computer! Sí!” He broke away and began to run back and forth, trying to launch his bright-red kite into the windless sky. And there, across the green grass and coming toward Nan, was the Boy Father with Bug on his shoulders. He passed so near that their eyes met. His held no flicker of recognition.

  Have I changed that much?

  Marjorie came and stood in front of Nan, hand in hand with her granddaughter. “This here’s LaShon. Say how-do-you-do, LaShon.”

  The little girl mumbled something that sounded like “Honeydew.” She wore a yellow sundress and yellow socks whose lace-trimmed tops had worked their way down inside the heels of her black patent-leather shoes.

  They stood and talked—or rather, Marjorie talked. LaShon was five (not even a year older than Jane, Nan thought, with a pang). LaShon was the smartest kid in Head Start. LaShon loved words. “Just feed her a new word, like ‘apocalypse’ or ‘sandpiper’—and she happy.” LaShon. LaShon.

  All around Nan in the hot, bright air, children’s voices sang of what she was missing.

  “No, Mama, that’s a baby cup. I want a guy cup.”

  “When I get back to my house, I’m gonna be lonely for you, Mommy.”

  “Whadda they make in Pennsylvania? Give up? PENCILS!”

  Their mothers stood in sunlight or sat on the splintery benches under the lilac tree, and worshiped. They had learned the first lesson of prison: that deprivation put enough forever out of reach.

  Maria’s little boy, bare knees flashing, ran and ran, flinging his kite hopefully into the air. Beyond him stood Ellen with her back to the yard and her forehead pressed to the barbed-wire fencing, lookin
g out. Looking for the child who would never again come running toward her with light in his eyes. Nan winced, as if the sharp bright stars of wire were cutting into her own forehead. On the other side of the yard, she saw Deciolaria, her face buried in Bug’s shoulder, while the Boy Father tenderly brushed dirt off his son’s teddy bear.

  Like a flash, it hit her: even that child is better off than Jane. He’s with the people who want him most.

  Marjorie said, “Here comes the Dolphin. Five-minute warning,” and Warden Gordon, at the entrance to Dix Building, began ringing a big copper cowbell. “Say good-bye to Miz Mulholland, LaShon.”

  The little girl stretched her arms up. Nan dropped onto one knee, and LaShon’s arms went around her neck and squeezed. Ambushed by the smell of baby shampoo, Nan froze. She shut her eyes. How could Alex have relinquished this? And then, with a great wash of sadness: How could I?

  She’s better off without me, Alex had said, that night in the hospital. The saddest, most terrible thing a mother could say. Something—Nan only now realized this—that Alex had saved her, Nan, from having to say. Because Alex had turned to her. Alex had entrusted Jane to her. To her.

  The heart-slamming truth of this made Nan’s eyes snap open. Of their own will, her arms went around LaShon, enclosing the soft small bulk of her. The starched cotton of her sundress crackled in Nan’s grip. She buried her face in LaShon’s neck, breathed in the smells of baby shampoo, starch, sun-warmed skin. She hugged, kept hugging, couldn’t seem to let go. Harder; harder.

  Marjorie’s hand on Nan’s shoulder roused her. She let go and got slowly to her feet. LaShon was led away, loudly grieving, by her mother. Without saying a word, Marjorie hooked her arm through Nan’s, and they began to walk toward the prisoners’ door. They passed Lourdes, and Deciolaria, and Ellen, moving like an old woman with eyes cast down, and Donna Jean with her Bible under one arm. Marjorie’s unaccustomed silence, the weight of her hand on Nan’s wrist, reminded Nan of the way people walked away from a graveside, stately, stunned, exhausted. Relieved.