Life Is Short and Then You Die

by Kelley Armstrong

  “Warden Creighton, ma’am. Rats’ve been a problem in the rest of the penitentiary for a while but they’re spreading into the Female Department. This room backs onto your kitchens. Prime spot for vermin.”

  She hesitates. Presses her lips together. “Make it quick, MacDonald.”

  He doesn’t. He sidles along the wall, eyeing up each of us in a leisurely fashion. I’m sure if Matron weren’t here, he’d be doing more than that.

  When he nears me, he stops, pivots. My shoulders tighten. This is nothing new. I’m not pretty, but I’m the youngest female inmate by a few years, and that’s enough for swine like this.

  And then, suddenly, Corrigan shifts. Not a lot, but I catch it from the corner of my eye: shoulders stiff, chin raised. She’s glaring at the rat-catcher with a look that ought to bayonet him, but instead, the bastard looks pleased.

  “MacDonald.” Matron Palmer’s voice is frosty.

  He checks the room in a desultory fashion, stroking the cudgel as he prowls. “No luck last night, ma’am,” he says, and even his voice is oily. “Might have to lay out poison tomorrow.”

  There’s a collective sigh of relief when the door closes behind him. Work resumes. Corrigan reverts to her statue posture, eyes down. But I caught her moment of—what, exactly? Hatred? Fear? Disgust? Any which way, it’s the first evidence I’ve seen that she’s a real person.

  A few minutes later, Miller starts humming in her lilting voice and glances at Matron for a reaction. We’re meant to work in silence, but some matrons don’t mind singing so long as it’s hymns. I don’t often like Miller’s voice: She’s hungry for admiration, so she adds too many frills and swoops, can’t resist showing off. But when Miller begins, a few others—Johns, Washington, and Goderre, usually—join in. That’s what happens today. Within a few breaths, through some unspoken accord, they shift into “Awake, My Soul,” and suddenly my shoulders soften. With just their voices, they’re clearing the tainted air.

  I allow my hands to go still only for a few moments. This is mostly a place for suffering, for scoldings, for harsh silence at best. So it’s all the stranger that, at times like this, a reluctant kind of harmony rises between the women when they sing. It’s not just their voices swelling and merging, but a temporary softness between the people themselves.

  They’re an unlikely choir by any standard: Miller, with her simpering airs and her grand delusions for when she’s released. Johns, hunched and sour-faced, except when she sings. Washington, who scratches her arms until deep red grooves stripe her skin. Goderre, who speaks English only under duress, unless it’s in song.

  So many accents, complexions, races: It’s a surprise when you first arrive. Washington is the only Black inmate in the Female Department now, but there are plenty of French and Indigenous and mixed-race women here. Far more than you see on the streets outside, as they’re the first to be suspected and accused, the likeliest to be arrested and jailed. They array themselves into clubs, whispering in their own languages. The Irish keep to themselves, while the rest of us sort ourselves by crime, the sisterhood of prostitutes distinguishing themselves from thieves like me. But there’s a brittle sort of alliance, too. There are only so many of us, living and working in close quarters. We can’t afford to go to war.

  There are others. Wabuck ought to be in an asylum; she shreds her bedding and eats soap. Bollard screams and bites if anybody comes near her, smashing her head against the steel bars of her cell until it bleeds. It takes a special narrowing of the vision to survive here. To avoid thinking about the world outside, the future, the past. To expand the present until it’s all you know.

  I glance at Corrigan across the stagnant pond of the washtub. Even with her gaze cast down, I can see tension in the line of her jaw, the claws of her fingers. And I think perhaps I understand.

  Each time the women sing, I tell myself this is the last time. So far, I’ve been wrong. Sometimes, like today, I’m glad to be mistaken. But mostly, the sweetness of the music makes me queasy and furious. Tenderness, and memory, and yearning: Those soft feelings aren’t for the likes of me. All they do is make my daily life—lye soap, chilblains, constant scrutiny—more punitive. It’s all I can bear, as it is. I don’t know how long I can keep going.

  I only know that I don’t have a choice.

  * * *

  Tuesday’s the second washday, when we launder the guards’ uniforms. It’s miserable work: The clothes are heavier and dirtier, our hands still raw from yesterday. The filthiest items—collars, cuffs, shit-streaked drawers—have been soaking since last night, but they’re still nasty enough to persuade you that we’re guarded by pigs standing on their hind legs.

  The choir is somber and silent today, no hymns to help us along. Logs hiss in the fire.

  When the rat-catcher reappears, there’s a collective bristling. Matron Palmer watches his progress through the room with a flinty expression, and none of us turn our backs. Still, he’s undiscouraged. He saunters for a good while before, quite suddenly, lunging at the corner with a roar. A moment later, he turns and flourishes a limp rat as if to say, What a clever boy am I! Matron, looking pale, rushes from the room.

  The rat-catcher preens and makes another circuit of the laundry, and this time he walks close by all the women, near enough to brush against our skirts. As he approaches, I move to the far side of the washtub, putting the gray, lye-smelling liquid between us. He smirks as though I’ve confessed a secret, then fastens his greedy eyes on Corrigan. She holds his gaze, body unmoving. He draws nearer, nearer, and we’re all watching them now. My eyes dart toward the door: Where the devil is Matron?

  MacDonald stops and leers openly. “Fancy meeting up again. Did you miss me?” So that’s what Corrigan was thinking about yesterday.

  Her expression doesn’t waver as she spits directly into his face. The gob of saliva lands on his cheek, trickles down. There’s a long moment of silence. My whole body tightens, ready to scream, to fight, to run for help.

  MacDonald slowly wipes his cheek with his left hand. Then, holding Corrigan’s gaze, he licks his fingers with a grin. “Always a pleasure.”

  The door creaks open and Matron Palmer returns, pale eyes bloodshot, curled bangs in disarray. There’s a general exhalation, air pressure dropping. MacDonald steps back, leaves at a saunter.

  Corrigan’s face is as blank as ever.

  * * *

  Wednesday morning.

  “Sewing,” says Matron Palmer, as though she is letting us in on a precious secret, “is your path to a better life, Corrigan.” Washington and Goderre, who are outside Matron’s sight line, roll their eyes. “Here, in this place, you are privileged to be taught dressmaking, tailoring, and knitting to a very high standard. After you leave this place”—it’s always this place to Matron; never prison or jail—“you will be able to earn your bread like an honest woman. You need never lower yourself to crime again!” She beams and looks around, as though expecting applause. I steel myself for what’s coming next.

  “Take Pierce, here, for example,” says Matron. “She came to us six years ago, an untrained girl. Would you believe that she made the gown on her back?” She gestures to my blue-and-white-striped cotton uniform. “The apron that protects her dress?” She plucks at the garment as she names it, a utilitarian black-and-white-checked affair. “Even the stockings she wears?” I half-expect her to reach down and seize my leg for display.

  “Show us the menstrual cloth you’re wearing, Piercey,” simpers Rochon.

  “I’m sure it’s exquisite,” trills Washington, and she captures Matron’s lilt so perfectly that I’m forced to turn a snort into a cough.

  Matron ignores the byplay, she’s so enthused. “When Pierce arrived at this place, she couldn’t even thread a needle.” She always glosses over the fact that I was a child of nine, with no one to teach me. “But within a few years, she was sewing flannel petticoats, children’s rompers, and even the Warden’s fine lawn nightshirts and nightcaps.” She beams straig
ht at me, and her approval is so warm it makes me blink with surprise. Matron Palmer really does believe what she’s saying.

  We might, too, if we were permitted to own such things as fine lawn nightgowns. Or, better yet, warm woolen dresses, such as Matron wears. For now, Goderre mimes vomiting.

  We settle in to work. Corrigan does know how to thread a needle, and she receives a pile of coarse washcloths to hem. Matron gives me permission, and the dressmaking shears, to cut out a new winter cloak for one of the Warden’s daughters. Then she leaves to instruct the other inmates, who are divided into knitting and tailoring workshops in the rooms down the hall.

  It’s dreamy stuff, this emerald melton wool. I drape it over the cutting table, petting it like a cat as I smooth out every fold and crease. The finished cloak will be lined with satin and trimmed with fur. What would it feel like to be so insulated from the cold, to drape myself in vivid color, to snuggle my chin into rabbit fur? And what might it be like to take such luxury for granted? It’s a fantasy that entices even as it enrages. I should stop myself from thinking it.

  I can’t.

  The door clicks open, and I jump with guilt. But instead of Matron Palmer, it’s that damned rat-catcher again. You’d think the entire rat population of Ontario would be extinct by now. He oozes into the room, far too pleased with himself, his usual cudgel and a burlap sack slung over his shoulder. The women draw into a tighter circle, and while none of us look straight at him, we know better than to take our eyes off the man. He leers, as though we’ve paid him a compliment.

  A series of piercing shrieks startles us all. They come from the corridor, alien and hysterical, raising gooseflesh on my arms. If we were in our cells, I’d know the noise was from Bollard, but she’s locked in upstairs, as always, and the din is closer than that.

  Another long moment of paralysis, and then I sprint for the door, close behind Goderre, the others treading on my heels. Despite the confusion, a fierce kind of glee spears me as I move. I haven’t run since I was nine. I never expected to run again. It’s bizarre, ungainly; it hurts my knees and ankles. I adore it.

  We follow the screams down the dim hall and into the tailoring room, where we nearly collide with a swarm of bodies in blue and white stripes. Gendreau topples in last, jackknifes into another coughing fit.

  It’s a curious thing: Now that we’re here, I don’t see alarm in their faces. If anything, there’s a bit of a holiday atmosphere in the room, with women chatting or even laughing, and their attention is mostly focused on a common point, like an audience at a play. Johns turns and acknowledges us with a wink.

  “What the hell’s going on?” demands Washington. She’s breathless, her face near-unrecognizable. I can’t read the emotions on it, only that there are plenty.

  Ahern tilts her chin toward the far end of the room, where a stranger dressed in brown staggers and gibbers. Is she drunk? Mad? She’s no prisoner, that’s certain—none of us could get our hands on a wool gown like that. How on earth did she come to be here? And then, quite suddenly, my heart lurches. It’s not a madwoman, not an inmate at all. It’s Matron Palmer, transformed.

  Bonnet askew, face scarlet, she opens her mouth again and screams and points at the floor, and when I follow her accusing finger, there’s a smear of red on the stone flags, overlaid by a vivid kind of writhing.

  I push into the crowd, right to its heart. All around me, women whisper, giggle. Washington crosses her arms, settles in to watch. Rochon does an impression of Matron, a good one; I might enjoy it if I knew what the hell was wrong. Is she having an apoplectic fit?

  Finally, I’m at the front of the scrum. The high, barred windows admit a white glare that obscures details on the floor below. Even so, I make out a twitching, low to the ground. A squeak of terror that I only now realize isn’t human at all. A flash of brown fur, a knot of muscle. A small black eye, bright with panic. It’s been maimed in some way, and with each thrashing movement, it smears more blood across the stone flags.

  Still, it’s not the rat that turns my stomach; it’s Matron’s response. Her screams echo off the limestone walls, making my ears buzz. You’d think she’d never seen a rat before. And I know that can’t be true. She likely had a better start in life than the rest of us—after all, she doesn’t sleep in a cell—but it’s stupid of her to carry on like a fine lady, as if she’s one of the Warden’s circle. Standing there in a throng of women, I feel an acidic spurt of anger.

  Matron is still screaming for somebody to help her, to do something. Once again, she really does believe what she’s saying. She thinks she can’t deal with a dying rat, when all any of us needs is a stick and half a minute’s nerve. What else does she think lives in the walls? Where does she imagine she belongs?

  Her eye catches mine for a moment, and her mouth goes slack with surprise. Out of habit, I drop my gaze. Be invisible, 9207. I turn and push my way through the crowd and out the door.

  * * *

  The corridor is quiet on my return to the sewing room, which means that the guards haven’t heard yet. I wonder how long it will take them to notice the hubbub. Not that it matters to me.

  I expect the workshop to be empty, but Corrigan is standing there. Alone. Or so it seems at first. She’s heaving deep breaths, clenching and unclenching her fists. It’s such a change from her usual icy immobility that, for a long moment, I can only stare at her.

  After a bit, I realize there’s something large crumpled at her feet: black-and-white uniform, prison-made shoes, a sizeable pool of blood. I wonder who it is and how he got in here, and then I notice the empty burlap sack, the cudgel under the table. Ah.

  I stare at Corrigan again, and this time she meets my gaze. There’s a dark smear on her cheek, but she looks—well, satisfied is not too strong a word. The gleam in her eyes locks up my joints, freezes my muscles.

  “Sorry about your scissors,” she says with a Northern Irish lilt, and nobody could sound less penitent.

  Her voice compels me. I walk into the room, my feet once more taking me where I have no business. When I reach the rat-catcher’s body, I finally understand. The dressmaking shears—a pair of oiled steel blades, nine inches long—are sheathed deep in his left eye. His upper lip is curled back, exposing yellowed incisors.

  This isn’t my first corpse. As a tot, I saw my granny laid out on the kitchen table. When I was six or eight, I found a drunk frozen to death in the street on an early January morning. But this—this is different. The rat-catcher was a repulsive, predatory prick, to be sure, but he was breathing and talking and leering not ten minutes ago. It’s contrast that makes me recoil.

  By what accident or oversight are any of us still alive?

  I should turn around and go. Return to the tailoring workshop, wait with the others until the guards find us. Matron Palmer will come back to her senses. The guards will confine us to our cells while they sort out what happened. We’ll all be on bread and water for weeks, as it is. I needn’t—mustn’t—know anything about this additional mess. Corrigan will have to face the consequences of this desperate thing she’s done. I don’t doubt for a minute why she did it.

  We stare at the body. Corrigan rubs at a splash of blood on her right cuff. “Don’t,” I say automatically. “You’ll only grind it in.”

  She grins, humorless. “Think I can launder away the proof?” There’s a tiny gap between her front teeth.

  Suddenly, I’m shaking with … I don’t know. Energy. Fear. Panic. It’s too much, I can’t swim against this fast-rising tide of emotion, can’t beat it back or drain it or freeze it or any of the things I’ve taught myself to do over the past six years, in order to survive. Tears burn the backs of my eyes. “They’ll hang you.”

  She makes a puffing noise that I realize is a gasp of laughter. “They’ll have to find me first.”

  Is she mad? Not obviously, in the way that Bollard and Wabuck are. But she doesn’t seem to understand how confined we are. We have no privacy, no rights. Only the thoughts in our h
eads are ours alone. “What are you talking about?”

  She takes a long step toward me. I recoil. She smiles again, all sharp, crowded teeth, and while she’s still beautiful, she doesn’t look quite human. More like an archangel. More like a wild animal. “You know how this place works,” she says. “Six years, the matron said?”

  I nod.

  “What’s the best way out?”

  I gape at her. “Out of … the penitentiary?”

  She snorts, and it’s reassuringly earthy and normal. “Aye. And the hell away from it.”

  “You won’t make it.”

  “I’d rather die trying.”

  It’s the kind of thing people say from time to time, trying to sound dramatic or fierce. But one look at Corrigan’s face and I absolutely believe her. Still … “Why do you trust me? Why shouldn’t I betray you?”

  “I saw you when the matron was talking.” She pauses. “You act like her little lapdog, but you’re just biding your time, too.”

  It’s like crashing through ice into frigid waters. The shock is comprehensive, prolonged. As I thrash, fighting toward the surface, my heart seizes. How does she know? How can she read that so easily on my face, when nobody else ever does? How dare she strip me of my secrets?

  “We do what we must,” says Corrigan. “I did.” She gestures toward the rat-catcher’s body, but her gaze remains fixed on me, keen and alien.

  The injustice—of the situation, of the world—ignites something within me. “Matron and the guards, they have everything,” I say, my voice shaking. “They have jobs and educations and they think they’re above us, they think we’re sinful and stupid and weak and lazy, but they’ve no idea what we do just to stay alive. I got seven years for stealing some beef and a pound of raisins. My sister and my mother lift their skirts for soldiers against alley walls, and my father drinks everything they earn.” When did I acquire strong feelings? When did I learn ideals? I can’t afford any of these things.