Chapter 28: Failure to Reconcile

28. Failure to Reconcile

The plan to stay in my room forever didn’t last very long. I managed to hide out through breakfast, group and the morning classes, but before lunch Slanick was knocking gently on my door. Ignoring that didn’t work either. In less than a minute she had turned the knob, slipped into my room shutting the door behind her and was sitting on the bed.

I pulled my head out from under the covers to study her for a moment. Her Holshue House polo looked more unkempt than usual, with one side tucked into the belted waist of her mom jeans and the other hanging out. Her hair clearly showed where it was growing out from some previous auburn dye job. Her eyeliner was crooked and it didn’t look like she had bothered with any other make-up. My impression was that she had become more worn-down by the job of managing Holshue House. It even occurred to me to ask her sometime if she knew about the ghosts.

But I also knew that wasn’t what she had come to talk about. The news of my fight with Erica had undoubtedly spread throughout the house and all the way up to the top of the staff.

“Allison,” she began, speaking softly and laying a hand on my blanket-covered hip. “I heard what happened in the showers last night.”

My first thought was that I wished she could tell me what had happened, why Erica had attacked me like that and where the hell that power came from when I had slammed her across the room. But instead I fell back on the old stand-by and whispered, “It wasn’t my fault.”

She released a heavy breath, “Maybe it wasn’t, but maybe it was. It takes two to tangle, so I am not going to get into the middle of all of that. Trying to affix blame. The important thing is what do we do from here.”

“I stay away from Erica?” Suddenly I was afraid that suggestion might lead her to suggest moving me to a different floor.

Again there was that heavy exhale. “That is not so easy to do here where we all must share some very limited space.” A pause as she chose her words, “Allison, being the newest resident does come with certain … challenges. You have risen well to them in building friendships with Phyla and with Michele, but maybe that is not enough. Perhaps it is time that you branch out some in your friendships, give the other girls a chance to get to know you. I am sure that you have much you can offer.”

I nodded my consent because I really had no idea what else I should be doing. I certainly had no input to offer.

“Do you understand what I’m saying?”

I nodded again. “Yes, ma’am.” I forced a little smile, still hoping that none of this led to me being re-located to another floor.

She patted my knee though the covers that were still covering my naked lower half. “There is not reason to think that you cannot become a well-adjusted member of our household here at Holshue House.” She smiled in the sweet, motherly way.

I found myself thinking that of a couple of very good reasons right off the top: one, the duality of my person, Allison/Gesama and two, my experience of living as a spider under the microwave only a few months before. Spiders are naturally very shy, solitary creatures. “Yes, ma’am,” I finally muttered after what I hope was not an overly long pause.

“Good. Now get yourself dressed. You are not going to use that eye as an excuse to miss your classes today, even though you have already missed breakfast.” Her smile really did seem genuinely sweet, and she hadn’t said anything about the fight, as if it were all already forgotten.

Oh yeah, and I did I forget to include the fact that I’m gay in that little list of reasons? I wanted to say, but instead I waited for her to leave, leaning forward to let her know that I really intended to get dressed as soon as she was out the door. And I did, pulling on a pair of half-dirty jeans and a funky blue t-shirt that said something about World Peace.

Phyla met me at the door of group with something soft and slightly warm wrapped in a napkin. I opened it immediately to discover that it was a hastily made egg sandwich, fabricated with scrambled eggs, a piece of cheese and a some salsa on a English muffin. I took the nearest seat and began to wolf it down. It hurt to open my jaw, but I forced it down knowing that it was the only food I would get until lunch.

After a couple of bites I felt the eerie silence my presence had brought to the room, with every eye examining my eyes and the bruises on my face. I looked back. We sat in the obligatory circle, but I noticed the subtlety of spacing between the chairs. The way Erica sat flanked my her two friends with spaces on either side of the friends, and the way Phyla had similarly taken up flanking positions around me, but not so close, and Phyla had positioned herself on the other side of Sierra. She wanted me to understand that we were still on the outs, even if she had made me a sandwich.

Judy bustled in ten minutes late, wearing her tie-dyed Grateful Dead t-shirt and a pleated skirt. After wishing us good morning she began with, “Erika and Allison, I understand there was an altercation in the showers the last night. Would you like to tell the group what led to this disagreement?”

My hastily re-wrapped, half-eaten sandwich I shoved under my chair as I shook my head. Erika simply glared at me, determined to have the upper hand in this confrontation. Her battle scars were not as evident, since she had hit the wall with her back, and the other bruises, the ones that weren’t my fault, were well hidden under her clothes. I was suddenly painfully aware that I was carrying her secrets, and yet somehow knew it would not be wise to go spewing them in this situation.

“This type of behavior,” Judy continued, “is unacceptable in this environment. Here where the most essential lesson is that we must all learn somehow to get along.”

From the corner of my eye I spied that Erica was doing the same thing as I was, and not looking at Judy while also deliberately looking away from me. She wasn’t ready for any of this huggy feel-good stuff either.

Judy let out a long sigh of frustration. “I had anticipated this might be the case, and knowing how strong-willed you both are I don’t think isolation or the suspension of privileges will help.” Again, she waited, as if we might have something to say against this vague threat. 

“I don’t know that it’s necessary that we take up the time of the whole group trying to force you to reconcile, so I have decided that the two of you must work it out between you. Come with me, both of you.”

She stood and moved out of the circle to the door, swishing her ass back and forth angrily to let us know that we were given no choice but to follow.

The three of us walked through the hallway and the common room, with me directly behind Judy and Erika bringing up the rear. I thought of the possibility of her attacking form behind, but knew that even she would not be that bold. At the door out to the side veranda, our therapist swiped her badge and led us out onto the lawn, to a wooden picnic table that had weathered to a cracked and grey sorry state. At her hand gesture we sat down on benches on opposite sides of the table.

“Here you are out of earshot of everyone. And I am going to leave you here all day until you start talking. I have asked Roy,” she pointed to the fat old outdoor security guard who was sitting in a chair up on the veranda, watching all of this, “to make sure that you do not leave the table until you talk this out and are ready to come back in as peaceful members of the Holshue House society. If you have to pee you’ll just have to go in your pants. I don’t give a shit.” She smiled at this last thing, proud that she could be badass with us, instead of the nurturing presence that she always strived for in group.

Erika and I sat on opposite benches at one end of the table. We nodded, knowing it was required before Judy marched back into the house and left us there. Simply because she had mentioned it I did feel like I kind of had to pee, and I wondered if Judy had known that it would have that effect.

Of course, we had nothing to say to each other. We sat there in silence for several minutes. Finally Erika said, “Well, we could talk about the fucking weather and maybe that would be enough for the bitch.”

“You got that much to say about the weather?”

She didn’t say anything.

“They won’t buy it.” I said, and then let it slip back into the awkward silence.

There was a chill in the air, a first hint of fall coming to the South, and of course we hadn’t worn jackets. I wasn’t even sure that any of us prisoners even owned jackets any more. I could see the muddy bank of the river and I heard a frog commenting on the day from somewhere down that direction.

I decided to play the game Judy’s way, with some empathy, although it didn’t feel at all genuine. “I know he’s beating you up, and you shouldn’t tolerate it …” I began. I didn’t want to tell her that I had seen her fucking in the basement, or had seen her actual boyfriend, but she already knew that I seen her bruises.

“It’s none of your fucking business.” She answered, still looking away from me.

“Well, if you’re going to beat the shit out of me for just walking in on you, maybe it is my business.”

“Maybe I tried to beat the shit out of you because you’re fucking dyke, and more and more of the girls know about it. And to make it worse, you’re a nigger-lovin’ dyke.”

That shut down the attempt at empathy pretty fast.

She added, “And you were the one who beat the shit out of me, with whatever weird witchcraft thing you can do with your hands. I ought to kill you right now and make the world a safer place.”

I didn’t have anything to say about the trick I did where I was able to push her away the way I had, largely because I didn’t understand it myself. “So why? Why do you want to hate all people of color? They never did anything to you.”

“They did plenty to me, or to my family. My father told me all about it, and I don’t need any politically correct crap from you, telling me to go around being some kind of fuckin’ Goodie-Two-Shoes.”

“And what did your father tell you about? Uh? That you should just hate people because they weren’t like you.”

“No. I hate them because of what they did to my family. We were once a rich family, with a big house and everything, and fucking servants that said, ‘Yes, sir and No, sir.’ But them niggers they took it all away with their uppity ways – my father told me. And they left him with nothing. But it’s going to change, when the race war starts in this country it’s all going to change. And we’ll put them back in their place.”

“Where do you get that shit?” I look nervously at Roy to see if he is getting keyed up about the tone of this little “reconciliation talk,” but he’s cleaning his fingernails with a pocket knife. The knife briefly reminded about the razor, but I’m certainly not going to ask anything about her pubic area with the way this conversation was going.

“My father goes to meetings. He says there’s a whole bunch of people who know the truth and how they’re going to be ready when the war starts. That’s why he had me do all that training, when I was young – he says I gotta be tough and I gotta be ready. That some day some black man might try to … you know, and I gotta be ready to fight him off.”

“Training? What kind of training?”

“You know, karate, jujitsu some, but mostly kick-boxing. I like slamming my foot into someone’s gut and watching them double over with pain.” She was now making full-on eye contact with me and grinning, determined now to intimidate me, or perhaps to get me to swing at her when Roy was watching so she could frame me for the whole thing.

“Does you dad do that stuff too? The martial arts stuff?”

“No. But he can already hit really hard, particularly when he’s been … I mean when I don’t … He can take care of himself, and he taught me that getting bruised up some ain’t nothing. It’s what makes you tough. You know anything about being tough, you negro-loving hairy dyke?” She let her eyes flick down to my thighs, reminding me that she had seen me down there that night in the showers.

I really just wanted to get away from her and her ugly mouth, but I felt that Judy would expect me to try to stay with it. “And where is your mother with all of this?”

“She died.” Something changed in her tone when she said it, almost as if she was going to soften and become wistful.

“I’m sorry to hear that. Did you …”

“She fell down the stairs. I was still pretty little.”

“That’s too bad.”

Erika shrugged and I saw the hardness coming back to her eyes. “My Dad says she was a snowflake, acting like she just loved everyone all the time. He said she even let some nigger fuck her, and that she was nothing but trash anyway. So I don’t really care what happened to her.”

For a little bit I had nothing to say. I knew that Allison’s father had berated her and accused her of being a pervert, but it was obvious that Erika had grown up in an environment saturated with violence. I tried to come back to her mother, because mothers always matter. “Maybe she wouldn’t have wanted you to hate other people so much.”

“And maybe I don’t give a shit what she would have wanted. I can hate damn well anyone I want to hate, including you. And at least I don’t hate myself.” And with that she jumped to her feet and stormed back to the house.

My thought was that she did – hate herself. But I wasn’t going to be the one to convince her of that. Judy’s little experiment had not worked, but at least I knew something more of my enemy.

When she got onto the veranda Roy got up from his chair with his badge in hand to let her in past the alarm. He looked at me to indicate that he wanted me to go ahead and go in as well. I did. I wondered if I would be late for American History. Ms. Dickinson was starting in on Reconstruction, but I had the feeling that it wasn’t going to be successful.