“Oh my God. I think I’m gonna lose my lunch,” Daffy said.
“I shot him there, then I shot him in the heart and then I shot him in the head. He was dead when I was done with him.”
Viola picked up her fork and took another bite.
Neither Daffy nor I could move a muscle. Finally, Daffy asked, “What did old girl do?”
“What do you think? She jumped out of the bed screaming and wet herself. I turned around and went outside. I walked down to the bus stop and waited for the bus, but the police got there first. I didn’t mind going to jail. But I thought . . . I thought I’d at least get my sanity back. Instead I’m being haunted by a dead man.”
**
Later that day Daffy said to me, “Child, that woman is insane.”
I shrugged. I was reserving judgment, as my daddy used to say until I had some more information. I got it by surprise the following Tuesday night.
I was in the bathroom, washing up for the night. I could hear water running in the showers, so I knew someone was in there. Just as I finished drying my face I heard this terrible screaming. I froze for a second and then ran to the shower to see what was wrong.
Viola had jumped out of the shower and she was trembling and shaking and crying holding the puny towel up to her front side.
“I’m burned,” she cried. “He burned me.” I looked and saw blistering welts on her shoulders and back. Steam was foaming out of the shower stall. I turned and ran for the C.O. who came charging back into the bathroom with me, ordering the crowd of busybodies out. While the C.O. looked at Viola’s burns, I tried to reach into the shower to turn off the water. I had to slide my arm around the scalding streams of water with a towel over my skin. I reached the faucet knobs and turned. The cold water was nearly full on but the hot water knob was just barely turned.
“What were you thinking, turning the water on that hot?” the C.O. scolded Viola.
“Excuse me, but that hot water was barely on,” I told her.
That changed her tune. I could see she was worrying about a lawsuit. She started treating Viola a little better, and ordered someone to get some ice. They sent Viola to the infirmary for the night but before she left, Viola looked me in the eyes and said, “See? He makes my life a living hell. Still.”
Monday June 12
Lolly’s eyes opened wide and she raised herself up from the bed long enough to look at the blue digital numbers of her alarm clock: 2:57. Her heart was thudding as she lay back down. This didn’t happen very often, but there was a reason now. A reason she had ignored for about a week now. The lump. There it was, and she knew as she lay there watching the moonlight send shadows across her wall that the lump was a piece of cancer. She was 30 years old, would be 31 in October. And that meant the cancer had been waiting inside her body for sixteen years. What was it doing all that time, she wondered. Sleeping, gathering strength, or just waiting, waiting until it decided that now, right now, was the perfect time to spring into action.
Damn it, she whispered. Why hadn’t she called the doctor right away? Why wait? She didn’t even know if her old cancer doctor was still around. Probably not. She’d have to check with her insurance first thing in the morning. Probably would have to get a god damn referral from her primary care physician. She hated the medical establishment. Hated the damn HMOs, the whole crazy system. And she hated cancer. She did not want to die. She wanted to marry and have children. She wanted to quit her job at the Department of Education and work fulltime developing arts programs for inmates, for at-risk juveniles, for anyone who needed a way to cry out. Art is not therapy, Jen always said. Art is art. That was true, but if it didn’t feel good, if it didn’t somehow cauterize the wounds, why did anyone do it? Not for money. Lolly herself wrote poetry, painted pictures and made things out of wire and plaster. And it wasn’t so anybody else could say, “Isn’t that nice?” or “Hey, let’s give you a thousand dollars for that poem.” She did it because, well, just fucking because. Jen was the same way with her acting and various theater projects. It was a way to make sense of life, and life had seemed pretty nonsensical to both of them. Jen thought they were so different, but were they? No, Lolly hadn’t gone the bad girl route the way Jen had. That brief dance with death when she was fourteen had been enough of a walk on the wild side for her. But things seemed to hurt her deeper. Like injustice and the amazing lack of compassion that most people displayed. When she said she worked in a women’s prison, most people giggled. They seemed to think that the women were having some great orgy in there. They didn’t think of the tears those women shed, tears of rage at the men in their lives, at the system, at themselves. They didn’t know how it hurt those women to be away from their children, to be denied the simple joy of a loving touch, and to live with the idea that you just weren’t good enough, smart enough or rich enough to find a place in this society.
These thoughts churned in Lolly’s head, an angry discordant throng of voices. But underneath was the one lone syllable of fear. The cancer was awake. She was awake. She and the cancer were awake together. And this time she did not have her mother to help her through it. All she really had was her selfish and self-centered sister, Jennifer Louise Johanssen.
On the way back from the prison she had told Jen that the improv was based in reality. “It’s probably nothing,” Jen had said casually. But Lolly knew with certainty that it wasn’t nothing. She had a dryness in her throat as if she already felt the ashes her body would become.
Lolly pushed the covers off her, rolled over and turned on the light. Her bedroom was small, decorated with an antique dresser and a cabinet with glass doors where she kept excess clothes. It was an orderly room, cozy with rose-colored walls and a braided rug over the hard wood floor. Beside her big four-poster bed was a table covered with photos. She reached instinctively for her mother’s photo and held it in her lap, looking into her mother’s laughing eyes. She had written a poem about this photo once during a workshop with the inmates. It was an exercise that began “In this photo you are . . .” and had a set of instructions, including alliteration, similes and metaphors. You had to include a piece of clothing, a wish, a color, an animal on various lines.
Lolly began to recite what she remembered of the poem to herself: “In this poem you are young, your face framed by auburn curls that look black in this black and white photo of you. Behind you is the house where you lived with your granma and six sisters after your parents died in a factory fire. You were the blue-eyed bouncing baby. You were always dreaming. Like a peddler, you sold integers to sullen students. Your auburn curls turned silver like moonlight. I wish you could come back to life as a queen. I would polish your crown and place it on your head, gentle as a kiss.”
She smiled, thinking about the poem. It was just an exercise, nothing she would send out to a literary journal, but it gave her a momentary sense of peace. She replaced the photo and turned off the light.
**
Lolly woke up the next morning feeling groggy from her nocturnal battles. She remembered that she had to call the doctor’s office. Had to call them today. ASAP. At work she began putting together a report on distance learning initiatives for her supervisor. She made the call to the doctor during her break while Sue went out for coffee. The woman on the other end of the line said, “There’s an appointment available in late June.”
Lolly grimaced. “I could be dead by then. I need to see the doctor today. I need a referral to an oncologist immediately.”
“Honey, it could take months to get into an oncologist. There’s only four of them in town,” the woman said.
Lolly shut her eyes.
“I am not going to wait months,” Lolly said simply. “Now please get me into see my physician today.”
“You know what? His assistant can