Bodily Harm by Margaret Atwood
"You got the time?" says Lora.
"They took my watch," says Rennie. "It's probably about eleven."
"That all?" says Lora.
"We should get some sleep, I guess," Rennie says. "I wish they'd turn out the lights."
"Okay," says Lora. "You sleepy?"
"No," says Rennie.
They're scraping the bottom of the barrel. Rennie thinks of it as the bottom of the barrel, Lora thinks of it as the story of her life. This is even what she calls it. "The story of my life," she says, morosely, proudly, "you could put it in a book." But it's one way not to panic. If they can only keep talking, thinks Rennie, they will be all right.
Lora takes out her cigarettes, lights one, blows the smoke out through her nose. "You want a cigarette? I've got two left. Oh, I forgot, you don't smoke." She pauses, waiting for Rennie to contribute something. So far most of the contributing has been done by Lora. Rennie is having a hard time thinking up anything about her life that Lora might find interesting. Right now, her life seems like a book Jocasta once lent her, very nouveau wave, it was called Death By Washing Machine although there were no washing machines in the book. The main character fell off a cliff on page sixty-three and the rest of the pages were blank.
Rennie tells Lora about the man with the rope. She's certain that Lora will be able to produce something much heavier, a multiple axe murder at the least.
"Sick," Lora says. "They shouldn't even put those guys away, they should just hang a few cement blocks around their legs and drop them in the harbour, you know? Let them out in twenty years and they just do it again. I once knew this guy who wanted to tie me to the bedpost. No way, I said. You want to tie somebody up, I've got a few suggestions, but you're not starting with me. Try a sheep and a pair of rubber boots and work your way up. He come back?"
"No," says Rennie.
"I'd rather be plain old raped," says Lora, "as long as there's nothing violent."
Rennie feels there's been a communications breakdown. Then she realizes that Lora is talking about something that has actually happened to her. Without any warning at all.
"God," she says, "what did you do?"
"Do?" says Lora. "He had a knife. I was just lucky he didn't mess anything up, including me. I could of kicked myself for not having a better lock on the window."
Rennie sees that Lora is pleased to have shocked her. She's enjoying the reaction; it's as if she's displaying something, an attribute somewhere between a skill and a deformity, like double-jointedness; or a mark of courage, a war wound or a duelling scar. The pride of the survivor.
Rennie knows what she's supposed to feel: first horror, then sympathy. But she can't manage it. Instead she's dejected by her own failure to entertain. Lora has better stories.
Rennie watches Lora's mouth open and close, studies the nicotine stains on her once perfect teeth, it's a movie with the sound gone. She's thinking that she doesn't really like Lora very much; she never has liked her very much; in fact she dislikes her. They have nothing in common except that they're in here. There's nobody here to look at but Lora, nobody to listen to but Lora. Rennie is going to like her a whole lot less by the time they get out.
"But, Jesus, will you listen to me," says Lora. "Here we are, just sitting around on our asses talking about men, fucking men, pardon my French, like at high school only then it was boys."
"What else do you suggest we do?" says Rennie, with sarcasm; after all, it's Lora's fault they're in here. But it's lost on Lora.
"If it was two guys in here," she says, "you think they'd be talking about women? They'd be digging a tunnel or strangling the guards from behind, you know? Like at the movies." She stands up, stretches. "I need to pee," she says. "At least we don't have to do it on the floor, though ten to one somebody already has, it smells like it." She slips off her underpants, spreads her purple skirt over the red bucket like a tent, squats down. Rennie stares at the wall, listening to the patter of liquid against plastic. She doesn't want to know what Lora will wipe herself with; there are only two choices, hands or clothing.
Rennie has her knees drawn up, she's cold. If they lie down they'll be wet, so they're still sitting, backs against the wall. The light comes through the door, endlessly, it's impossible to sleep. She puts her forehead on her knees and closes her eyes.
"I bet you could see out the window," says Lora, "if I gave you a leg up."
Rennie opens her eyes. She fails to see the point, but it's something to do. Lora bends and cups her hands, Rennie puts her right foot into them and Lora hoists, and Rennie manages to reach up and grab the bars. She pulls herself up, she can raise her head to the opening.
It's a courtyard of sorts, with a wall around it and another building on the other side. Her eyes are almost at ground level; it's overgrown with weeds, a white jungle in the moonlight. The gallows platform rises out of the weeds, a derelict tower. Rennie knows where they are. On three sides of the courtyard it's a sheer drop to the sea, and the building they're in is the fourth side. There's a faint smell of pigs. No one is out there.
"There's nothing to see," she says when she's back down.
Lora rubs her hands together. "You're heavier than I thought," she says.
They sit down again. After five minutes or half an hour there's a sound above them, outside the window. A scuttling, a squeak.
"Rats," says Lora. "Around here they call them coconut rodents. Mostly they just eat coconuts."
Rennie decides to concentrate on something else. She closes her eyes: she knows that there are some things she must avoid thinking about. Her own lack of power, for instance; what could be done to her.
She can feel Lora's arm against her own, it's comforting. She thinks about refrigerators, cool and white, stocked with the usual things: bottles, cartons of milk, packets, coffee beans in fragrant paper bags, eggs lined up quietly in their shells. Vacuum cleaners, chromium plated taps, bathtubs, a whole store full of bathtubs, soap in pastel wrappers, the names of English herbs, the small routines.
Lora's still talking. But Rennie can't concentrate, she's getting hungrier and hungrier. She wonders when it will be morning. Surely they will bring something to eat, they'll have to, her stomach is cramping and she hopes it's only the hunger.
Her eyes feel gritty, she's irritated because she hasn't slept more, it's Lora's fault, she needs more sleep and she's thirsty too. It's like the time she was trapped all night in a bus station, by a blizzard, on her way home for Christmas, some town halfway there, the snack bar isn't open and the toilets don't work, there's a bad smell and no prospect of a bus out until dawn, maybe not even then, they have to wait for the wind to go down before they can plough the roads, people yawning and dozing, a few grumpy children, the coffee machine out of order. But it would be tolerable if only the woman packed beside her on the bench would quit talking, in a maroon coat and curlers, no such luck, it goes on and on, triplets, polio, car crashes, operations for dropsy, for burst appendixes, sudden death, men leaving their wives, aunts, cousins, sisters, crippling accidents, a web of blood relationships no one could possibly untangle, a litany at the same time mournful and filled with curious energy, glee almost, as if the woman is childishly delighted with herself for being able to endure and remember so much pointless disaster. True Confessions. Rennie tunes out, studies the outfit on the woman asleep on the bench across from them, her head sideways: the corsage with the Christmas bells and silver balls and the tiny plastic Santa Claus held captive on her large woollen breast.
"You aren't listening," says Lora accusingly.
"Sorry," says Rennie. "I'm really tired."
"Maybe I should shut up for a while," says Lora. She sounds hurt.
"No, go on," says Rennie. "It's really interesting." Maybe soon they will come to question her, isn't that what happens? And then she can explain everything, she can tell them why it's a mistake, why she should not be here. All she has to do is hang on; sooner or later, something is bound to happen.
Rennie
Her mother and her grandmother are with her. It's Sunday, they've been to church. It's fall, the leaves have turned, yellow, orange, red, a few drift down on them as they walk along. The air is cool, cold almost, she's so glad to be back, she feels safe. But nobody's paying any attention to her. Her hands are cold, she lifts them up to look at them, but they elude her. Something's missing.
Here we go, says her mother. Here are the steps. Easy, now.
I don't want to die, says her grandmother. I want to live forever.
The sky has darkened, there's a wind, the leaves are falling down, red on her grandmother's white hat, they're wet.
The window above them gets brighter and brighter, now it's a square of heat. Rennie thinks she can see mist rising from the floor and walls and from the red bucket. The lights in the corridor are still on. Lora's asleep, her head thrown back into the corner where she's propped, her mouth is open a little, she's snoring. Rennie has found out she talks in her sleep, nothing intelligible.
Finally there's a shuffle in the corridor, the clink of metal. A policeman is here, unlocking the door; in two-tone blue and a shoulder holster. Rennie shakes Lora's arm to wake her up. She wonders if they're supposed to stand at attention, as they used to in public school when the teacher came in.
There's another man with the policeman, dressed in shoddy grey. He's carrying a bucket, red, identical to the one that's fermenting by the door, and two tin plates stacked one on the other and two tin cups. He comes in and sets the bucket and the plates and cups down on the floor beside the first bucket. The policeman stays outside in the corridor.
"Hi there, Stanley," Lora says, rubbing her eyes.
The man grins at her, shyly, he's frightened, he backs out. The policeman with him locks the door again, acting as if he hasn't heard.
On each of the plates there's a slice of bread, thinly buttered. Rennie looks into the bucket. The bottom is covered with a brownish liquid that she hopes is tea.
She scoops some out in a tin cup, takes that and a plate over to Lora.
"Thanks," says Lora. "What's this?" She's scratching her legs, which have red dots on them, bites of some kind.
"Morning tea," says Rennie. It's the English tradition, still.
Lora tastes it. "You could've fooled me," she says. "You sure you got the right bucket?" She spits the tea out onto the floor.
The tea is salty. They've made a mistake, Rennie thinks they've put salt in it instead of sugar. She pours the tea back into the bucket and chews the bread slowly.
The cell heats up. Rennie begins to sweat. The stench from the bucket is overpowering now. Rennie wonders when she'll stop noticing it. You can get used to almost anything.
She's wondering when someone in authority will arrive, someone she can talk to, someone she can inform of her presence. If they only realize she's here, who she is, they'll get her out. The policeman did not look like someone in authority. She's convinced of her right to be released, but she knows that not everyone will see it exactly that way.
About midmorning, judging by the sun, two other policemen arrive outside the door. One is black, one brownish pink. They seem friendlier than the first one, they grin as they unlock the door.
"Take the bucket and come with us," says the pink one. Rennie thinks they're talking to her. She comes forward.
"I wonder if I could see the supervisor," she says.
"We not talking to you," the black one says rudely. "She the one."
"Hi there, Sammy," Lora says. "Hold your horses." She goes out with them, carrying the bucket of piss.
Lora is gone a long time. When she comes back she has a clean bucket. Rennie, who's been imagining atrocities, says, "What happened?"
"Nothing to it," says Lora. "You just empty out the bucket. There's a hole in the ground out there. I saw some of the others, they were doing the same thing." She sets the bucket down in its old place and comes over to the dry corner to sit down.
"Prince is on the floor above us," she says. "They're fixing it up for me to see him, maybe in a couple of days." She's happy about this, she's excited. Rennie's envious. She would like to feel like that.
"Guess what?" says Lora. "They got Marsdon."
"Oh," says Rennie. "Is he in here?"
"I mean he's dead," says Lora. "Somebody shot him."
"The men on Ste. Agathe?" says Rennie. She thinks of Marsdon running through the scrub, up the hill in his slippery leather boots, nine or ten men after him, while the police boat comes into the harbour, they'd want to get him while they still had time.
"No," says Lora. "The story is it was the cops. Ellis."
"I thought he was working for the CIA," says Rennie. "I thought he was an agent."
"There's a lot of stories," says Lora. "The CIA, Ellis, what's the difference? Anyway Ellis didn't want him talking about how he set it up, Ellis wants everyone to believe it was real. Nothing like a revolution to make the States piss money, and they've done it already, Canada just gave a great big lump of cash to Ellis, they told me, it said on the radio. Foreign aid. He can use it to finance his dope trade." She pauses, keeping an eye on Rennie. "Some of them are saying that Paul shot Minnow," she says.
"You don't believe that," says Rennie.
"Who knows?" says Lora.
"Why would he do that?" says Rennie.
"CIA," says Lora. "He was the one bringing in the guns for Marsdon, eh?"
"Come on," says Rennie.
Lora laughs. "You believed it once," she says. "I'm just telling you what they're saying. Guess what else?"
"What?" says Rennie, not wanting to.
"They think you're a spy," says Lora. She chuckles, a little insultingly.
"Who does?" says Rennie. "The police?"
"Everyone," says Lora, grinning. "Just, they haven't figured out who for yet."
"How did you hear all this?" Rennie says. "It's ridiculous."
Lora looks at her and smiles. From the pocket of her skirt she takes out a fresh package of cigarettes, Benson and Hedges, and a box of Swedish matches. "Same place I got these," she says. "I told you I had my ass covered."
Rennie's tired of guessing games. "How?" she says.
"I'm a dealer, remember?" says Lora. "So I made a deal."
"Who on earth with?" says Rennie, who can't imagine it.
"Those two cops, the ones who came just now?" says Lora. "Morton and Sammy. I knew they'd be here sooner or later; it took them a while to work it out but now they're in charge of us. They don't want us in with the others. They were selling for me on St. Antoine, they were my protection. Nobody knew except Paul. They sure as hell don't want anyone else around here finding out about that." She lights one of her new cigarettes, tosses the match onto the damp floor. "They were in on the shipments. They knew what was coming in and when, they knew the guns were coming up from Colombia along with the grass, they knew what was in Elva's boxes, they didn't know all about it but they knew enough, and they didn't tell, how could they without blowing their own act wide open? Ellis wouldn't like that. He'd think that was treachery. A little dealing he could understand but not that. Dealing they'd just get canned. That, they'd get offed. So I've got them by the nuts."
"Can they get us out?" Rennie says.
"I don't want to push it," says Lora. "I don't want to make them jumpy, they're jumpy enough already. Anyway they want me here, they can keep an eye on me better. They don't want anyone else to get hold of me and start squeezing; who knows, the first hot cigarette on the foot and everything might come squirting out. They'll take good care of me though, they know I won't go down alone, I told them that. If I go I take somebody with me."
"What's to stop them from just burying you quietly in the back
"Nothing at all," says Lora. She finds this funny. "Pure bluff. I told them I had someone on the outside who's checking up on me."
"Do you?" says Rennie.
"Well," says Lora, "there's always Paul. Wherever he is."
Neither of them wants to talk about that.
They're eating, lunch, cold rice and chicken backs, boiled, Rennie thinks, but not enough. Pink juice runs out. Lora gnaws with relish, licking her fingers. Rennie doesn't feel too well.
"You can have the rest of mine," she says.
"Why waste it?" says Lora.
"Maybe we could ask them to cook it more," says Rennie.
"Ask who?" says Lora.
Rennie hasn't thought about it. Surely there must be someone to ask.
"It could be a lot worse, is what I always say," says Lora. "Where there's life there's hope. It's better than a lot of the people get at home, think of it that way."
Rennie tries to but without much success. Lora is eating the rest of Rennie's chicken back now. She aims a bone at the bucket, misses, wipes her hands on her skirt. The nails are grey, the skin around them nibbled. Rennie looks away. Now they will have stale chicken to smell, as well as everything else.
"We could ask them about the tea," says Rennie.
"What?" says Lora, her mouth full.
"The salt in the tea," says Rennie. "You could tell them they made a mistake."
"Hell, no," says Lora. "That wasn't a mistake, that was orders. They're doing it on purpose."
"Why would they do that?" says Rennie. The poor food she can understand, but this seems gratuitous. Malicious.
Lora shrugs. "Because they can," she says.
It's dusk. They've had supper, a piece of bread, the salty tea, water which tastes like rancid butter, a cupful each. The mosquitoes are here. Outside the grated window they can hear the pigs, up there in the yard; as Rennie watches, a curious snout pokes through.