Attic by Katherine Dunn
She prints her name at the bottom with Xs. Mac is Dorothy’s man—her common-law husband—McInrick. He is in D tank two inches away through the steel.
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Today Dorothy went to court. She washed her hair and combed every corkscrew around her fingers and drew on eyebrows arching and then down beside her eyes to the outside cheekbone. She put on red lipstick but when she relaxes her mouth the lips cave in and it doesn’t show. Mrs. Eliot brought in the clothes she was arrested in. Striped wool slacks—brown and tan and dark orange running down over her belly—a brown sweater tucked in at the waist. Her breasts come all the way down to the waist of the pants—no one told her to leave the sweater waist out to cover it—loafers—from behind she looks like a small child with her broad flat butt and the long curls. She is excited about seeing Mac again even in court. She is afraid. Does she look all right? Jean combs her hair. Rose irons the slacks. Joyce loans her nail polish.
She has no coat. It is seven degrees Fahrenheit outside. The court is across the plaza in the building that matches this one. She may catch cold. The marshals come to take her. Everyone wants to touch her around the door the arms reaching toward her. They all nod and show their teeth and say good luck. When she is gone they sit silent on the bunks.
Marge tells how her man drinks—how she wrote checks for a stereo and a dining room set and a play-pen and winter clothes for the baby. She laughs at how easy it was. Her soft yellow hair flies into her mouth and she spits and picks at it laughing.
Suzie is twenty-six and looks sixteen—freckles, childishly crooked teeth—little girl hands and feet with high small breasts and tiny waist. Her hair is short and curly. Her man is in the state farm she went to see him behind the fence when she got back the welfare check hadn’t come she put the baby in the new blanket and walked along the street to where the mail stuck out of the door and took another welfare check. She spreads sweet smelling lotion on her legs from a round plastic squeeze bottle—rubbing carefully at the heels and knees. She likes the food here.
“All for that fuckin skunk coat—that old mother did it but I was on parole for that when Sherman got this job and we were roaring down the road with the bottles in back and me in that old skunk coat she claimed it was mink but it wasn’t worth twenty cents to the skunk they took it off and to her own daughter-in-law she put her own daughter-in-law in jail for a fuckin coat but I was out on parole and they never did find that coat that old motherfucker had a broom up her ass all her life Sherman always hated her. Before that out in California she tried to get me put away said I was insane all because I liked to wear men’s shorts instead of panties but I like men’s shorts you know they’re soft and they don’t bind. But we crossed the state line and Sherman blew a tire with all the bottles so they put him in Seagullville and got me on parole violation. My little boy’s deaf out in California he’s twelve now and smart! hmm! When I want to do something I just don’t take my pills that day then look out!”
She laughs with her hoarse blue voice from the delicate jaws the perfect teeth all the way back and the slim pink tongue. Her long lashes falling beside the aristocratic nose—Rose the beautiful—the terrible with her belly swelling above the shadowed knees—high arches in the stony leather puts a glass of milk next to Blendina’s bunk every night—sends ice cream bowls the whole length of the bull pen at Glad-Ass’s fat face and cuddles Joyce when she cries in her sleep.
“Motherfuckin Commie! I’m a good goddamned American.” Goldie pronounces everything in the front of her mouth. I hate her she’s ugly and long ponytail and bangs. I am in the bull pen john just squatting afraid somebody will come and she comes. “Hey little girl—you know we’re all ’sposed to shower every day cause with thirty girls in here we couldn’t live with the smell otherwise did you take a shower today? I ain’t seen ya.” While you were all at dinner I did. I didn’t, not today or yesterday but the day before. I won’t say it she’s ugly and stupid. “You sure you did? ’Cause when we was all sitting in the bull pen there was sure an awful smell coming from your end of the table and we know we all took showers regular!” What about that cheese they brought up—you left it open and I smelled that. “No it wasn’t no cheese I know an’ you just better make sure you shower regular ’cause we can tell.” Maybe they’re right. Two days and I sweat a lot—but on the pot! how could she while I was sitting on the pot with my pants down and the thigh-links grinding in me and my skirt pulled far down over my knees how could I argue—my face is hot—I’m not coming out. It’s almost time for the gates to roll. People will be coming back here. There are only two girls in the bull pen. They are sitting on the floor together—Joyce and Goldie—they look at me I walk by stiffly not looking—feel hot hate them hate them—Goldie is whispering, giggling…“It was the cheese after all!”
The anthill under the steps swarms in the summer so tiny they worry me even with glasses how to keep from stepping on them and tiptoe always on the concrete until that one perfect day when nothing happened and the hours slide backward into themselves in the afternoon a particular green in the young tree against that particular blue in the sky and only minutes later a perfect pink cloud in the sky still blue and that green and that pink against the same blue are never to be seen again though looked for on a thousand summer days and those colors in their light—in the innocence are all that is once seen and never seen again and the ants are swarming on the steps and in and out of the cracks in the sidewalk and thick and busy I stomp them and grind them—they screaming—I can see them screaming and somehow never worry about killing them again.
The men don’t go down to the kitchen to eat. The food comes up on wagons and the plates pass through a slot in the door. Trusties work in the kitchen—in the booking offices below—as janitors. When I came here from Independence we stood in line behind bars—there were people everywhere in dungarees and white tee shirts—in the pale green halls with buckets and mops like women’s hair and he was tall and black—his biceps had purple veins across the cut—he took my hand and I leaned to him but he shoved it flat fingered on the ink pad and rolled it on paper and turned away—no eyes no teeth.
There are no blue uniforms here. The Sheriff wears tan cavalry twill and a brown tie and rich brown leather holster and cream-color stetson with a brown leather band—stars not shields—boots not shoes—and his great gut hangs all the way over his belt in front—little arrows sewn into the seams of his shirt. When he stands with his back to us he is as wide as three men and his ass is flat all the way to his neck and his trousers tailored with a brown stripe down each leg. One old spade deputy—the token on duty in the kitchen where all the trusties are spades they don’t get pale here. Johnsoninthekitchen is his name. He stands near Rose at mealtimes with his brown skull shining through a fringe of gray wool, his kind old face spilling around a spatula nose. Cigarettes and candy because he thinks it’s his baby or she’s pretty or his wife died three years ago or all the uglies and others. She laughs at him upstairs smoking Camels.
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Dorothy is back. The door opens and she walks in. Her head is down. Her hair hides her face. She has a handkerchief in both hands and the hands are flat against her face. She steps in—one step—two steps—the door closes—then fast to 3 cell where she falls into a bunk and shakes with the handkerchief flat under her hands across her face. The lines of her body are all round—round arms above the round belly—and legs curled tight and round in front of her—the knuckles of her hands are red. The bone at her ankle is red. The wet drips from the soles of her shoes onto the brown wool blanket. Everyone except Blendina goes into 3 cell or stands in front of it looking in. Rose and Jean sit down on the bunk on either side of Dorothy. They put their arms around her and stroke her softly. Kathy crouches on the floor in front of her. “What happened honey? What did those mothers do to you? How’s Mac?”
“Mac? Mac he he…he…” Dorothy shakes harder all over—the hard edges of her shoes click against each other. “The old man said I st
I can see it—in the courtroom. He’s probably not much, Dorothy’s man Mac. Dorothy’s not much but she can’t afford to be anything but kind.
Joyce is making yarn octopi. Lavender and yellow, they lie on her bunk braided and tied. She says she’s seventeen and has a baby boy and was living with two guys at once and turning tricks and her old man is a rich Mexican oil man and he sends her letters begging her to come back to him and her mother fucks the judge so she’s going to get released in the custody of her husband and she’s here for bad checks she brought me the Sheriff’s card and afterward when the white A was on my face she said they had had to knock some sense into her too her face is fat and round as a putty moon with dark brown pinpoint freckles. My freckles are dark gold with soft spreading edges.
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It was the Greenbriar that day. All across the country if we saw another we’d say “Hsst on a Greenbriar” and the first to say it won. It had rained all night and the cold was deep in the wind. We drove across the bridge and out to Leavenworth dropping people on the way. I was the last. The highway went through a cut in the hills. The north hill was green with a red and white buffed colonial private girls’ school on top—St. Mary’s. The south hill had a blank-walled prison or factory. Between in the valley, on the south side of the highway was the settlement. All black houses in tall dead trees. A mud road turned off the highway and went down. The first house was on the left. There were two boards on bricks in front of the door but the top board was about two feet below the door sill. There was a round neon sign in the window neon red—CARLING. The tar paper peeled around gray tacks. The mud lay even from the road to beyond the house so you couldn’t tell where the road stopped and the yard began. The kind of very wet gray mud that swallows footprints into rain pocks so you can’t tell whether crowds have been passing or nobody. There were no lights anywhere. There were no people in sight up and down the road or by the houses.
I went to the two boards—stood on the second and rapped on the door very sprightly. After a while it opened. There was a tall man with his shoulders hanging in front of him. His belt was high in back and low in front and his belly pressed at it. Gray, all gray but his black face smooth and thick—like a politician’s hiding bones—the bandanna gray on his head like my mother’s when she scrubbed floors or Aunt Jemima. I remember her on the radio when I sat under the table with the long cloth like a pale tent all around.
Hi! I just came over to see ya for a while!
“Come in”—so slow and tired his voice and so slow and low his head when I climbed up into the room. You see I’m in a contest where we get points for having people vote for us my teeth showing all the time we have to get fifty thousand votes and I’ve been working night and day and today’s the last day and I only need twenty more points to win and if I do I get (show the card with the jet on it) a trip to Paris, London or Rome. The house is one room. On the opposite side from the door is a very old cracked dried-up bar. There is a round wood table in the middle of the room. Two backless kitchen chairs are near the table. There are boards nailed to the walls behind the bar for shelves but there is nothing on them. One unopened bottle of Budweiser sits on the shelf. A bulb hangs on a wire from the ceiling everything is gray dusty or muddy. The tar paper on the outside is wrinkling in between the two-by-fours. He bends slowly and places one of the broken-backed chairs up to the table for me. He walks all the way around the table and sits on the other chair and leans forward clasping his hands and resting his arms on the table all the way up to the elbow. Standing at the bar is someone else but his face is too black to see.
The man at the table looks at me gently, listening. And all you have to do to vote for me is look at this list of magazines and pick out your favorites hand him the card. He takes out an old steel wire spectacle frame with the top half of one lens still in place. He stretches the temples delicately over each ear with both hands and lowers the bridge until his left eye is looking through the piece of glass. He lifts the card with the list in huge heavy hands like my second stepfather’s with the nails pink and flat and black at the ends and his hands are black on top and pink at the palms and all the way to the tips of the finger bellies. He holds the card close up to the left eye and closes his right eye and looks at it for a long time. Then he clears his throat, slowly and uncomfortably and says “I like this here huntin magazine.” I have the order blank all ready how do you spell your last name sir? What’s the address here? “L-U-K-E just Mogul Flats just me Mogul Flats.” And would you like the six-year subscription or the eight-year subscription? His breath comes up slow from far away and he looks down through the empty frames at his hands. “Do I got to take a sascription to vote for you Miss?” That’s the way you vote for me Mister Luke and gee look here by choosing Hunting you’ve given me three whole points and I only have seventeen more to go and I win that trip to Paris ’cause that’s where I’m choosin to go Mister Luke, Paris, France. Isn’t it exciting Mister Luke? The long breath comes again as though all the air would come out and not go in again any more. “How much do this sascription cost?” Why it figures out Mister Luke to just twelve cents an issue and you know that’s much cheaper than you could buy it at a newsstand this is a special offer just for this contest and I sure thank you Mister Luke sir for your help in this would it be all right if I sent you a postcard from Paris, France, Mister Luke? Would you sign your name right here Mister Luke? He takes the pen and writes very carefully L-U-K-E. Now for the six-year subscription that’s twelve dollars Mister Luke but I just take six of it with me now and you send the rest in later. “Girl, Girl, Girl, I only got two dollars.” Oh I see Mister Luke well for the two-year subscription it’s only four dollars now and I just take two with me now to show you voted for me and you send the other two whenever it’s convenient and I send in your order and the first two dollars so you don’t have to bother with that and I want to thank you again Mister Luke for helping me out this way It’s something I’ve been working for for a long time Mister Luke You’re sure it would be all right if I sent you that postcard from Paris, France, Mister Luke. He pulls himself slowly to his feet using all his hands and arms on the table and moves to the bar. He lifts the unopened bottle of Budweiser and picks up two paper bills folded neatly in half. They are almost black and patched together with dry yellowed tape. He brings them to me on his open hand with the fingers and thumb flat like when a horse eats from your hand. I take it and oh thank you Mister Luke here’s your receipt and you send this form in with the second payment and then your magazines will start coming in the mail goodbye now Mister Luke and thanks again I’m out the door and prancing through the mud very proud and excited I made a sale.
No lights. No people, only the tar shacks on their knees in the mud. The road is maybe half a mile long ending at the beginning of the south hill. The blank quick stone walls look down on the low sheds. Behind some trees nearly at the end of the road a green concrete block house pale and low set into the mud the tar roof dripping. We used to pick up chunks of cold tar like obsidian where the boilers sat for