Punishment: A Love Story

March 2016

Washington, D.C.

Pull Yourself Together

1

Halfway Home

Desiree Schulman stepped down from the bus a few blocks from the Anacostia metro, into the arms of the late March night. The bus door closed and suddenly she was alone with the quiet. Natural shadows and open space: no buzzing yellow lights or shivering white lights flecked with black, no announcements, no rules posted, no walls, no yelling and no tense silence. Not the isolation of solitary and not the unbearable intimacy of a four-bunk cell. For the first time in four years she felt open sky and privacy. Neither chaos nor order, but peace.

Engines roared behind her and four werewolves came howling down the street, rearing up on the back wheels of their motorbikes.

They were young kids, late teens or maybe early twenties, with not just Halloween wolf heads but also tufty gray fur on gauntlets up their arms. And furry gloves with thick black plastic claws, curling around the bike handles like acrylic nails. The roaring bikes had green and golden flame decals along the sides.

The werewolves were howling at the moon—no, they were howling at Des. Just a quick friendly howl of male mammals to a female mammal; they howled and then they were gone.

She had jumped when they roared onto the scene—she was keyed-up, all edgy energy, she hadn’t slept in days, and so she couldn't control it, she jumped at everything. But when they disappeared, she eased up. Welcome home, she said to herself, grinning. Catcalled by werewolves: the ultimate multiculturalism.

And then, sighing a little, Welcome halfway home. She settled the clear plastic bag with her belongings over her shoulder and headed down the dark street.

The open darkness was disorienting, and she kept darting glances around as if she was trying to find the wall. She was glad that this area was low-lying, all the streets rising from where she stood. It made her feel a little less like she was about to fly off the face of the earth. When she crossed a street the cars seemed to come too fast and stop too close. After four years in federal prison in West Virginia she wasn't used to where things were supposed to be in a city.

This world used to belong to her. It was hard to believe.

Soft night noises. Burrs from a sweetgum tree scattered along the sidewalk. A weeping willow with long curved branches, little white blossoms clustering along the branches' ends, like a cornrowed head with beads along the braids. Sirens in the distance, shouting, the drifting smells of fried food and marijuana, the scrape of a faraway gate and the clash of its latch swinging shut, footsteps behind her like hard rain. And before she'd even noticed how she'd tensed up—somebody slamming into her from behind.

Get out the way, bitch! This ain't a standing area!

Des spun and choked. Her vision seemed to crack and she couldn't orient herself in the dark street. She stumbled and her heart was hammering, and the plastic bag fell and split open as she braced for violence, her body taut and terrorized and anticipating its suffering.

But in a fraction of a second her instincts rearranged themselves. She heard that hometown accent, that D.C. accent that sounds best in a moan or a purr. A way of talking made for flirtation and lament, complaint and self-defense, for all the ways human nature asserts itself but doesn't expect you to listen to or respect: a foot jammed against a closing door. This ain't a standin urr-ea. Des, still gasping, her heart still racing, turned with a grin all the way across her face.

Sorry, she offered. She bent to pick up her things; the smaller bag from the Walgreens in Union Station hadn't burst, so she could stuff her extra release clothing and the scraps of plastic in beside the freshly-purchased toiletries.

The girl who had slammed into her was short and stocky, with a cheeky round imp-face. In camo pants and a faded black t-shirt, cornrows snaking down her neck. A summer anger, intense and already passing. She was cute and muscular, looked like she could twist your arm. Twist my arm.

I'm gonna miss my curfew! the girl yelled, not really at Des. She pounded her fist against her thigh and ran further up the street.

Oh shit, me too, Des said, also not to anyone in particular. She walked in the way the girl had gone—just walking, not running, but faster, making an effort.

There were storefronts along this quick stretch of sidewalk: Creation Laundry; Early Bird Liquors; a uniform store called Pull Yourself Together, next to The Last Shall Be First Secondhand Clothing; a takeout window offering Neighborly Chicken and Check Cashing. A wheatpasted poster on a streetlamp said, U.S. OUT OF ANACOSTIA. A police car rolled by slow. Des tried not to notice if she was nervous. Then more houses.

Des reached the house she was looking for: three stories of weathered white clapboard, and a porch swing next to a giant fake hibiscus plant in a giant fake Grecian urn. There were daffodils and crocuses in the yard, and somebody's bikini-cut red and yellow striped underwear. A sign shaped like a house said, in purple hand-painted lettering,

LOVE'S LABORS LOFT

Your Almost Home.

Des went up the steps and rang the bell. The door opened—and there was the girl who had slammed into her on the street.

The girl looked at her like she was the answer to prayer. "Miss Imani! This her, this the lady. Tell her, and this, directed at Des, in tones of deep menace, I bumped into you. That's why I was late for curfew."

A woman appeared behind the girl. She was tall and wiry, ebony, dressed in lavender scrubs, with thick multicolored braids looping around her head. She seemed wry and somehow futuristic—those hair-loops, maybe, or the silver stud just above her upper lip, with a green jewel that looked like it might shoot lasers. She had the cagey, intelligent look of someone used to sizing up situations and people, and then making decisions about them. There was something unexpected about her, something not quite uniform; but it wasn't something Des was inclined to trust.

"You bumped into her?," this woman said, with meaning.

The impfaced girl made another D.C. noise: a low coo of disappointment and reproach. "Miss Imani, she said. I don't think I owe this person an amends. I was coming down the street minding my business. She was just standing there staring with her face out, looking for Elvis!"

You aren't very late, anyway, Miss Imani said. She held out her hand to Des. I'm Imani Rollins.

Desiree Schulman, she said, shifting her small bundle of personal effects so she could shake hands. The impfaced girl moaned somewhere in the background.

Imani Rollins’s hand felt confident and trained. Des was pretty sure her own hand felt clammy.

Welcome, Miss Imani said. And then, turning to the impface girl, I’m going to take our new guest into the office. Ms. Schulman, please follow me. And please meet Ranae Goins, and here Miss Imani couldn’t help but grin a little, your mentor.

Ray Ray, the girl clarified. Des wondered if she should hold out her hand, but Miss Imani was already walking down the hall so Des figured it was best to follow.

Down the short front hallway and through the dining room, through a door framed in Christmas lights. A tiny cottage with rose bushes was painted on the white porcelain doorknob.

Miss Imani’s office was narrow and crowded with papers. There was only one chair, so Des stood while Miss Imani explained the seven forms she’d have to fill out: standard intake, client service agreement, release of information form so she could tell everybody Des’s business, house rules, grievance procedure form, job readiness form, wellness form.

Oh good, Des thought, I’ve been wondering if I’m well.

Des tried to read as little of each form as possible before signing. There was a line on the intake form that just said Current problems: ____________ and she considered and rejected answering with an infinity sign, or her full legal name. Then she squinted and saw the tiny writing underneath the line: THIS PORTION TO BE FILLED OUT BY INTAKE ADMINISTRATOR.

She hesitated for a long time, trying to think of some alternative, before sighing and putting her parents as her emergency contacts.

The form asked, Describe your relationship to your emergency contact person. Des misunderstood the question and wrote, Fraught, before realizing and crossing it out to write, Parents.

The wellness assessment asked how long she had spent in a controlled environment and Des said, Uh… I had a really good childhood?

Miss Imani explained that the form meant how long she’d been in prison. Apparently people thought prison was controlled.

It also asked, What are your strengths? _________________ and Des looked for the tiny print, but they expected her to fill that part out herself.

Miss Imani read the rules to her out loud and so Des had to pay attention. It felt worse than she’d expected—she’d loved the luxury of distraction, there on the Anacostia sidewalk where she’d been looking for Elvis. Now she had to hand over the keys to her attention again. The rules hinted at hidden stories: I will not remove, tamper with, or disable the toilet seat. I will not use any of the furnishings of the halfway house, including the doorknobs, for sexual pleasure.

She had to put her initials beside each rule as Imani Rollins read it out. After every fifth rule Imani read, Failure to adhere to any of these rules may result in a violation of your conditions of release, which would cause you to return to prison. Des respected the way she made her voice sound just as urgent the tenth time as the first.

That’s all of it, Imani said at last. Initials here and then you’re done.

Des said, Yes—okay. She still wasn't sure if Yes, ma'am was what was appropriate here.

Done turned out to be an optimistic interpretation. They still had to do fingerprinting, and a urine test in the locked bathroom attached to the office, and then an unusually polite search of her belongings, clothes, and person. Then she dressed again and Miss Imani led her out to the kitchen to get to know her new life.

Ranae, or Ray Ray, was waiting for them in the kitchen. She gave Miss Imani an anxious, ingratiating smile. Was I for real late, she said.

Des said, She, uh, I really was just kind of standing in the middle of the sidewalk. Ma’am.

I can use the time on the kitchen clock when I choose to, Miss Imani said in amusement, and pointed at the clock on the microwave. By the kitchen clock you got in right at ten p.m.

Imani Rollins took her on a tour of the downstairs of the halfway house. It looked about a million times nicer than Des had expected. It was clean, for one thing—there were chore charts on the refrigerator, next to the glow-in-the-dark green Mr. Yuk magnet from the poison control center and the Safeway ad for win-a-free-Cuisinart and a heart-shaped promotional magnet from the makers of Suboxone. There was a coffeemaker labeled COMMUNITY, which, Imani explained, whoever had kitchen duty was responsible for filling each evening. On top of one cabinet there perched a huge stuffed red lobster in a pot, its claws spilling out to brush the sides of the wooden cabinet. There was a small white security camera, like an egg dipped in ink, just at the upper right-hand corner of the back door.

The knobs of all the kitchen cabinets matched the doorknob to Miss Imani’s office: white porcelain, painted with bright little cottages. Painted ivy twined from the cottages along the knobs to the cabinets themselves. By the front door there was an umbrella bucket and a coatrack and an American flag. In the front hallway there was a family photograph.

This is all of us, Imani said when she saw Des looking at it. My parents, two grim pioneers with their hard-won family, then us oldest to youngest.

Her finger moved along the line of children (the oldest was at that time only a teenager, in a red track suit with high natural hair), not quite touching the glass front of the photo. Reginald, Hope, Imani, Nzinga, Cinque, Fidel, Industrialization.

Des looked at her.

My parents, and the dark red amusement that seemed to ripple through her voice pulsed stronger, moved left over the course of the '70s.

Desiree nodded and smiled and thought, They can name their next child Complicity.

The past four years had trained her in these silent conversational contributions. She looked and maybe nodded and whatever thing she'd thought of remained behind her eyes to bring her pleasure instead of humiliation. Learning to shut up seemed like it should have made her modest, but in fact there was something sour in this private savoring of unspoken cleverness.

Imani continued, They don't approve of my work here. I'm part of the ‘treatment-industrial complex.’ I tell them they live in the Gaithersburg-industrial complex.

Desiree was well-acquainted with both familial disapproval and familial leftism. Her paternal grandmother had been called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (of New Jersey), and had denounced them for "turning the Bill of Rights into a shmatte. And then Des's paternal grandfather hadn't spoken to his wife for a week, until at last, disconsolately picking at the breakfast fish, he'd exclaimed, You're waving around the U.S. Constitution now? What's the Soviet constitution—chopped liver?"

This was the closest encounter anyone in her family had ever had with the business end of the criminal-justice system. Until quite recently.

Next to the photograph of Imani Rollins's family there was an oval mirror, its frame decorated with cake-frosting roses in white plaster. Des glanced at it—she couldn't stop herself—but even in the shadowed hallway and the dust-streaked glass, she could see how bad she looked. Hollow-eyed and lumpy, eyes worn out, like a sick person. She looked like she'd been dragged up out of a grave.

Ray Ray spoke up helpfully: By the way, Miss Imani, them wolfmans is back.

Yes, so I heard. Keep in mind that it wouldn't be a good idea for you to talk to them, given your release conditions.

Yes, ma'am, Ray Ray said, which gave Des the answer to one question, at least.

Imani showed Des the dining room, where the chairs were grouped in two clusters at the corners of the table so that no one would have to sit with her back to a door. The dining table had a plastic tablecloth over a real tablecloth. Then the parlor—which really was a parlor, with a piano covered in doilies, a plaster bust of what looked like Marian Anderson but was maybe one of Imani's less-Communist forebears, and a stiff-cushioned fainting couch with a back like a breaking wave. Everything in the parlor was done in lilting shades of rose and gold. The heavy rose velvet curtains had gold tasseled cords. Just above and to the right of the fainting couch a laminated poster gave the signs of and treatment for narcotics overdose.

Coming out of the parlor they reached the front hall again, and a small round table at the base of the staircase. On the table a circle of burnt-down tea lights, flanked by two black plaster angels, surrounded a thick scrapbook bulging with photos. The embroidered front cover read, in rainbow colors, The Homegoers.

A white paper scroll taped to the side of the staircase, above the little altar, read, 'The goal of this place is to make sure people miss you when you die.' —Diamond Dawkins, LLL Graduate November 2011.

All right, Imani said, I have to go to work now. You’ll be sharing a room with your mentor—Ranae, if you could show our new guest up to her room. She slipped out and left them alone.

The room just off the third floor landing was small and intimidatingly neat, with two twin beds. The wall beside one bed was decorated with many, many colorful drawings of the same black woman: dancing, sitting on a stoop smoking a blunt, looking over her shoulder with a fingertip pressed delicately to her lips, as a mermaid swimming amid seashells, flying. Always posed so you could see both the breasts and the butt. The detailing on the scales of the mermaid's ass—Des had never bothered to wonder whether a mermaid would have a booty—was especially impressive.

Ray Ray sat cross-legged on her bed, and then toppled over dramatically. She reached a romantic arm across to one of the pictures, a pencil sketch, and tapped it with her knuckles. This my wifey, she said, and rolled over to look hard at Des.

Not bad, Des said, emptying the Walgreens bag onto her bed. And not bad, either: huge soft doe eyes, eyebrows lifted, full lips making a heart, everything soft and feminine and just slightly concerned about you. This was a face that would ask you where you were last night.

Ray Ray nodded. She tried to look tough but it fell apart; she grinned as her knuckles stroked the edge of the sketch. Bae got a body like Wild World, she boasted. "You ride that ride you take your life in your hands! They say my girl reckless—I say she reck more than most!"

She sighed, her face shifting from pride to reverie, and tapped the picture again. "This my pleasure," she said, with all the soft sincerity of a real butch in love.

And then her mouth turned down and a furrow went between her brows as she said, And she difficult as fuck, too. I don’t listen to nobody who say pleasure is just fun and games.

What's her name?

Ty'heaven, Ray Ray said tenderly. She the prettiest piece a bait I ever knew.

Des put her few possessions in the empty bottom drawer of the bureau. She messed with the pillows on her bed and wished she had her eyemask.

Ray Ray rolled onto her stomach, sprawled with her arms and legs hanging over the sides of the bed and the side of her face mashed against the top blanket, and said, Say your name again?

Desiree.

Pretty, Ray Ray conceded. I knew a Desiree one time who said it like that. I thought it was Des-a-ree at first.

And Des remembered a conversation from her first year in prison. A woman named Emeraldcity, in her early fifties but incarcerated since she was twenty-two, offering a theory of etymology: "I'm 'bout to be a parolee. All these words that end in eeee, she shook her head, always mean something's gonna get done to you. It's like a root word. Like how J-U-D means the law, judge, judicial, adjudicated, E-E means things being done to a person. Evacuee, refugee, amputee. Employee."

Desiree, Des had said. And when the other woman had looked at her she'd explained, It isn't spelled the way it sounds.

That had been one of the only things she said that year; and it had confirmed her decision to talk as little as possible, since everybody made fun of her for it. Desireeeee! they'd call after her, and exaggerate a TV white girl accent to say, "It isn't spelled the way it sounds. Or, Actually, which she hadn't even said, it isn't spelled quite the way it sounds." Sometimes it seemed like prison was basically the seventh grade in whatever school district covered Hell.

She hadn't said much to Ray Ray or Imani Rollins. But she felt looser than she’d expected. Maybe it was just the hometown accents again. The scent of spring in the trees, and the go-go music—they loosened tongues, lifted hearts.

2

Cavity Searches

On her first full day after prison Des woke up with a start. She lay in the bed curled on her side. Her heart pounded. The sheets were soft and the blankets thick above her; her hair felt clean. She could smell her sweat mingled with the smell of laundry detergent and cheap soap. Golden sunlight poured into the room from two big windows, and a chilly, rain-scented breeze stirred the air; she was alone, and her heart hurt, because this was a dream.

Then memory started to silt back in. She sat up. Scratched herself, which she didn't think she would bother to do in a dream. She turned over onto all fours and stretched like a cat, her ass in the air and her knuckles pressed against the headboard, in the hopes that a theatrical gesture would make the scene feel more real. She stood up and walked over to the open windows. A strip of masking tape along the top frame of the right one said, in thick black printing, DON'T OPEN ME OR I WILL JAM. Under that in thin red cursive it said, Sorry.

Des sniffed the clean air and listened to the shouts and jackhammering outside—far away. She spent a minute or so flicking the lights on and off, chuckling, and then gathered some clothes. She was going to choose her own clothes—from a sharply limited selection, but still. Then she would go down to the bathroom alone and pee in privacy, and take a bath, her second bath in two days (and also her second bath in four years), and use women's fucking deodorant, and floss, which she hadn't done before she went to prison but she was sure as hell going to start now, and she would do all of this behind a door she'd locked herself, to keep other people out.

That was her first real disappointment. Last night, during her first bath in four years, it had seemed like the bathroom door lock worked just fine. But now, with the small slot-shaped bathroom window open, the wind made the door rattle in a way that made it obvious that it was barely on the latch. Des stood there naked and messing with it, and it kept half-opening, until she pounded her fist on the edge of the sink and yelled, "Fuck! Can't they give us some fucking privacy here?"

Somebody knocked on the door—which also almost opened it—and said, in a low hungover-sounding voice, Are you almost done in there? I gotta get to work.

Ten minutes!

I gotta get to work. Stand behind the curtain and let me get my shit.

So Des, cursing, went and stood behind the shower curtain. And then realized that the door had locked, somehow, so she had to go and open it and then go back. A tall Asian girl with a thick curtain of hair falling over her face, wearing a light blue men's shirt and probably underpants and nothing else, padded in and grabbed some toiletries off of one of the shelves. She turned to go.

Hey.

Oh, sorry, the girl said. Her voice still had a growl in it, but a sincere, well-meaning growl. I'm Fang.

My name is Des, but that isn't what I was going to ask you. I wanted to know how to make the door lock.

Oh. Sure. It locks if you don't want it to.

With that she turned and went out. The door clicked shut behind her, and Des stood in the bathtub and moaned, Well fuuuuuuuuck.

She tried to take a long hot bath, but her conscience bothered her, now that she knew she'd already cheated one housemate out of that pleasure. She toweled off after ten minutes and tried to enjoy being a good person as much as she would have enjoyed an hour-long bath.

After she brushed and spat toothpaste into the toilet (and flossed; it hurt) she assessed her new surroundings. The bathroom was small and shockingly, poignantly clean. The walls were painted a soft periwinkle. Everyone had a shelf for toiletries, and on two of the shelves there were little abstract sculptures made of seashells.

On the wall between the sink and the shower-bath there was a painting, in crisp black outline, of a little girl with Afro puffs blowing out a dandelion clock. Underneath, in cursive script inside a ribbon, it said, Counting Days. Levanna Newsome, LLL Graduate May 2008.

In the shower the grout was eggshell-white, without a hint of schmutz. On the tiled wall there were four black plastic hooks in a row, the kind that stick when you press them into place. On three of the hooks hung bath objects: an orange puff; a sort of soft complex green dodecahedron; and a rock, of all the things. These dangled from loops of different lengths, just like modern art. They were mismatched and yet seemed designed and ordered by some whimsical, benevolent intelligence.

The shower head was a huge heavy thing like a steel sunflower, on a thick silver neck. Des guessed the women here must be pretty low-drama since they probably wouldn't be allowed to keep the shower head if somebody had been beaten to death with it.

With that thought, she was ready to put her bathroom inspection aside. She liked it—she liked this place—but it wasn't as if anything would change if she didn't.

There were three main tasks for her that day and none of them were going to be pleasant. She got a cup of community coffee and sat out on the porch swing, took a breath, and called her old employers.

"Agony and Irony, how may I direct your call?"

Hey, does Jon Joylegs still work here? If not, can you get me editorial? And then, just in case, If you don't have editorial anymore can you get me marketing?

But Joylegs picked up. A light, considering voice; a voice with a well-trimmed beard, you couldn't help but feel.

Hey, it's Desiree Schulman, she said. Her voice sounded rougher than she'd like. It was the kind of voice where you can't tell if the person is unreliable because they're broke or broke because they're unreliable. She didn't sound like she expected the call to go well.

You're back! Congratulations! We've been waiting for you ever since your earliest projected release date.

Oh, I shouldn't've told you guys that date. Uh, sorry. You know me, I don't know what you expected.

We expect only the best for you, he said warmly.

So, I need a favor.

If it's money I'd need to go to the ATM. I can't cut you a check yet.

The morning sunlight was making her nose and cheeks very hot. It isn't money. It's my job description. I talked to my—the officer that’s supervising my release, which was not a thing she enjoyed saying to an editor ten years younger than her, and she said 'Contributing Editor' isn't on the approved list for rehabilitative employment in my program.

Whoa, really?

Yeah, she says it has to be a job that somebody knows what it is.

Long pause. Whoa. I don't know if we have any.

Des scratched at the arm of the porch swing. Yeah, she suggested I could ask if you had something open in custodial. Or if you can get the name of the cleaning service at your building and, I don't know, put in a good word for me.

"Oh! Sure, you want to do a service job! That makes so much sense. Do you know Custodian of Souls, by Jabez Pruitt?"

No. Do you know 'Janitor of Lunacy,' by Nico?

"We can mail you the Pruitt. I loved it, you'll love it. You can review it for