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Overview
A former child prodigy and rich-girl, eighteen-year-old Ester is incarcerated after her kleptomania gets way out of hand. There, she is given the very gentile name Carleen (for her own protection) and for two decades, time is the enemy. When finally let loose onto the streets of New York, Carleen finds a job as a dog walker in Manhattan’s most elite neighborhoods. But despite her remarkable gift for canine communication, Carleen is determined to finally prove that she is a real person. To this end, she tries to reconnect with her estranged—and ferociously Orthodox—daughter.
Amid the strained brunch dates, unsent letters, and the continuing trauma of prison, Carleen begins a slow and halting process of self-discovery. Strikingly funny and self-aware, this belated coming-of-age novel asks the question: How do you restart after crashing your first chance at life?
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781558619227 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Feminist Press at CUNY, The |
| Publication date: | 12/06/2018 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 392 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
THE EARLY DAYS OF FREEDOM
A few days ago I fell down a full flight of stairs inside a loft building on Wooster Street. I was yanked by three Yorkies, each one no bigger than a spare rib: Larry, Moe, and Curly, after the Three Stooges (though Curly is a girl). Their owner, Mr. Arthur, was an overweight, slightly alcoholic lawyer on the verge of losing his job due to downsizing. He had the judgmental snideness of the mean category of drunk. He'd recently separated from his wife, and they had joint custody of the three hairbrush-like dogs. My job was to deliver them from the lawyer's loft to his wife's apartment above Taste of India on Bleecker Street and vice versa. This was because the two weren't speaking to each other. Whenever they had something to communicate, they'd tuck a note under one of the dogs' collars. One note said, I'm not renewing the fucking fire insurance. (Of course I read them.) My favorite missive so far: If you can get your dick out of your assistant's vagina, your son might appreciate a call. One day I may write a note of my own and fold it under Larry or Moe's collar. Something like, I've planted a bomb under the bonsai tree and it's going to blow now. Just to see what it might do. Normally this was an easy twice-a-week job, not like dragging Doorbell, the giant bullmastiff, around a long block. But when I took the fall I was a bit shaken. I couldn't stop. I couldn't go into bandaging or a cast. It brought on the horrors. What if I'd broken a limb? There'd be no one to sit with me in the ER while I waited for the X-ray. The complexities of freedom were continually being revealed to me. Every day I discovered another way in which I had to catch up.
CLAYTON
I got this job at PetPals through the warden at Clayton Correctional. She was a five-foot cowgirl named Jen Lee. Her voice was a cross between Huddie Ledbetter and Tom Waits. Her chopped gray hair made her seem very butch, though everyone knew she had a husband at one time, and a couple of grown kids could be seen driving in and out of the warden's house when they visited. Jen Lee tried to come off like the new progressive style of warden. She'd have a regular game of dominoes with a group of guards and walk the grounds unarmed. She'd take her strolls up the hill to the ivy-covered houses where the honor prisoners lived (the ones with years of no demerits and plenty of school credits). Then she'd turn toward the big gravel hill and follow the path toward the main facilities. She'd stop at the flat, one-floor "special detention" house for the girls who were just too mean to live with anyone else. Jen Lee liked to spend time with those snakes. She didn't take their shit.
Anyway, back in 2008, she called me into her office. She sat in her long upholstered chair, her toes barely touching the floor. "I got a letter from one of our graduates," she said. (She calls the ones who get out "graduates.") She rolled back and forth and sideways in her dark chair, enjoying the ride. "Yeah, one of our girls, Lucinda — you don't know her — is starting a dog walking service with her useless junkie of a boyfriend. She's a bit of a nutcase, but so are you. And maybe her business has a chance in this bloodsucking economy. She's looking for girls from the Dogs for the Blind program. If you get parole, I'll get you her number!"
I didn't answer her.
I wasn't prepared to dive into a real skilled job. But I didn't challenge authority for no reason. I'd learned the technique from my dogs. Seeming obedience, but instant readiness. "You wanna get outta here, don't you?" Jen Lee asked. She could see the bargaining going on in my brain. "Aren't you doing the good girl thing now? Sewing up your prom dress?" She was suspicious. She grabbed a swizzle stick from a round container of them on her desk and started chewing. She started spitting plastic shards into the air. "I'm going to recommend you to Lucinda," she said, "regardless." This was a typical way of her demonstrating her compassionate and liberal sadism. She knew I had PTSD and a pocketbook full of other troubles that could end me up, like so many others, back in the slammer less than a year after parole.
Unlike most of the women at Clayton, I hadn't lived each hour waiting for the morning I'd get out. I guess I'd become somewhat Zen. Or passive. Or suicidal. They said that when you got out of the hospital after a long sickness, the first day you're home pictures, scenes, and faces from the entire stay would flash before your eyes. I didn't know what would happen when my body hit air. Would I fly or incinerate? Jen Lee just watched my brain negotiate between stay or go. "Everyone's afraid," she said. It's a hell of a thing to contemplate life starting all over at the age of forty-three. After over twenty-five years of being locked up, how do I untie the strings of knots my life got tied into? Jen Lee dripped her chewed-up swizzle stick into the trash, dug out another, and chewed.
"It's like being born," she told me. "Only you're aware of it. All that life coming at you. When you've been in a dark room, one blast of light can blind you."
Jen Lee started searching through her desk. It was covered with dog-eared files, Post-its, and memos. There were key chains and handwritten letters and drawings from different prisoners' kids. She dug down deep in a file drawer and pulled out a pair of ugly, bright- yellow wraparound sunglasses.
"Here," she said.
I winced, lowered my eyes, and shifted uncomfortably. The color was aggressively phony and the shapes of each eye minutely different enough from the other to distort the wearer's face into a glaring inquisitor.
"These'll make the sun less bright for a few months." Then she turned back to stern lady warden. "But you gotta keep up with all your therapies, Carleen. The world can't adjust its colors and shapes for a loony tune. You're gonna have to live in all those waiting rooms when you leave here."
"Absolutely," I lied. What was she talking about? I carried a life sentence. I wasn't getting parole.
LADIES WHO LUNCH
Sarabeth's was one of those brunch places for ladies who were the opposite of an ex-con. It looked as if Laura Ashley had designed it for the interior of a dollhouse. There were lace embroideries around every quilted, flowered pillow. You could catch a waft at different times of brown sugar, ginger, cinnamon, or molasses. I felt like I forgot my bonnet. My daughter had chosen this place ostensibly because it was near where she resided with her father, stepsiblings, and stepmother in their town house — yes, town house. I'd never seen this proof of Leonard's success because I was considered unhealthy, perhaps contagious, to the family unit. And despite my nature, I'd cooled it with the stalking. Anything I did got me in twice the trouble of anyone else. Convict karma. My daughter had two stepbrothers, aged eight and six. I'd never known their names.
Her name used to be Pony. I named her that in the prison hospital with the hopes that she'd gallop through life, mane in the wind, unobstructed by fences, halters, bridles, and saddles. Last year, the year I got out, I received an anonymous note saying she had changed her name to Batya Shulamit. Batya was the princess who rescued Moses from the bulrushes. She explained this to me in impeccable square penmanship on graph paper: I hope I will be able to act as bravely and selflessly as Batya did toward her fellow man. "Fellow." "Man." She didn't seem to be a feminist, at least linguistically. This was her only direct communication with me since she'd been born. I knew that Leonard, her father, had moved toward a new bond with his Jewish past. Perhaps it coincided with his thinning hair or soft belly. I didn't know. To be fair, perhaps it had helped him recover the belief in humanity that I'd destroyed. The new family belonged to a synagogue where the rabbi was called by his first name and where, during Shabbat, the congregants would dance and sing in the aisles as if participating in The Pirates of Penzance. I could never visualize Batya dipping and bobbing in any aisles. Apart from strict ballet lessons, my savior of Moses didn't seem to possess the free dancing spirit of the Hasidim on Purim. Perhaps the loss of me weighted down her feet. I knew all this because, as I said, I stalked her from time to time. Never for dangerous reasons. I didn't even know if I was curious. By the way, in her note, she'd informed me that she would not explain the second name, "Shulamit," until she decided I deserved the honor. I liked that. Judge Judy of the Upper East Side.
I'd arrived fifteen minutes early to Sarabeth's to observe her entrance. This was the first time in the four months I'd been out that she'd agreed to meet me. I'd taken the luxury of showing up first. On her first and only visit to see me inside Clayton Prison, she had to wait for me in the dim and dark "family" room with its card tables and folding chairs. Neither of us benefited from my arrival in coveralls and shackles at the feet, waist, and ankles. Perhaps that was why she only came once, looked at me, turned around, screamed at the top of her lungs, and left. She was four at the time and already prissy as hell. She never wrote me or sent me bad drawings.
That day at Sarabeth's she was wearing lilac overalls. Her white blouse had a round collar and the buttons were plastic yellow flowers. Her innocent apparel made me nervous. She had waist-length, straight red hair — the color of strawberries and red oranges. Her cheeks were chubby, but a lean young girl was emerging from the square awkwardness. Her brown eyes looked down. I always looked down or to the side, too. She was unabashedly shy, my biblical geisha girl. Her hair was held back in a headband. It was shiny and lit with a rainbow of cheap colors. For some reason, this accentuated my anxiety. She was Alice in Wonderland without the pursed lips or the flirtatious petulance. Her skin was pale and clear except for the tremendous blushing which rose onto her neck when the hostess noticed her. She had an overbite and a train track of braces. She tried to cover the hardware with her upper lip. This made her look like she was constantly thinking. She'd just turned eleven and was only on the verge of puberty. She carried her unhappy body along as if it were a second person. She didn't know why she'd made the decision to meet me. She'd already given back the one gift I'd tried to present her, a notebook with a horse sketched on the cover. I'd heard she loved to write. She was clear with me: "You don't deserve to give me presents."
My red-haired Alice, my gentile-looking Batya Shulamit, delicately dipped into the bentwood chair directly across from me. Her taste in clothes worried me. Already somewhat grandmotherly. And so proper. Her posture was severe and upright. Maybe she was trying to hold herself together. "I mustn't stay long," she said with a formality that made me want to bash Leonard's teeth in. Didn't he ever tickle her?
"Of course," I said with the instant agreeableness of one who's up shit creek already, just trying to hold on and get her to see me again.
"I have a tutorial for my bat mitzvah."
The waiter, an anorexic out-of-work actor, interrupted my impassioned exchange with this creature who happened to be my daughter. We both ordered tea and miniature pumpkin muffins. I couldn't stand either. At least tea took time to boil. That should buy me a few extra minutes with her.
"You have a tutor?" I asked dumbly.
"Yes," she said, bored with me and the conversation. "We study Aramaic and Torah. She is helping me prepare my portion and my Haftorah."
"You like her?" I asked, obviously the stupidest choice of questions when I could've inquired after Aramaic, Torah portions, or Haftorah. But alas. Batya Shulamit leaned her squarish little chest forward a bit.
"I love her," she said, with no small amount of venom toward the nontutor across from her.
"She looks like an ancient Moroccan Berber queen and she's been to Israel and she sings and has written a musical about Rachel and Leah. She is also in the Folksbiene Yiddish Theater Company and leads a spin class on the Upper West Side where Chelsea Clinton has been known to go."
"Why is that important?" I asked. I genuinely wanted to know and hoped it would open up many roads of conversation.
Batya took her pink backpack off her chair, folded her napkin, and tapped her lips. I'd desecrated the teachings of the twelve fathers.
"What has that got to do with anything?" Her face was flushed. Could a preteen have a stroke? She was clearly pissed.
"I didn't mean to offend you," I replied.
She stood up with great purpose.
"This isn't working out," she said.
"I'm sorry. I wasn't making fun." I was shocked at how I was begging the little snit. "Let me try again."
"Perhaps," she said. "But not at this moment." She deftly took a five-dollar bill from her backpack and dropped it on the table.
"That should be approximately half," she said. "I'm leaving. Elisheva will be at the house."
Elisheva? Had I busted out of the pen and landed in Ancient Egypt?
"Please," I said.
"Another time, perhaps." My daughter was a step from the table. "There will be no goodbye handshakes or kisses." I watched her leave. She walked quickly through the restaurant as if she were Audrey Hepburn and had just been slapped.
"Steal a fucking teddy bear," I said under my breath.
BEYONCÉ AND ARETHA
The keys hung off the loop of my jeans and pulled the frayed-denim waist down. I liked the weight of the metal even though it reminded me of all those guards at Clayton and how you'd immediately tense up when you heard the jinglejangle. Transformers: Those cars that'd turn into angular robot monsters. Those Japanese warriors that'd turn into humanoid steel gargoyles with superpowered weapons and glowing eyes. A somewhat appropriate description of a guard if you were left alone with him.
I hadn't bought a chain to put the keys around my neck, nor had I bought one of those little Velcro dyke packs to snap around my waist. It felt appropriate to have my jeans falling down. The heavier the weight, the greater measure of my success. It meant they're giving me more dogs. My fat-faced junkie boss said the clients were "in affirmation with your style. Don't fuck up." Then he nodded out. His woman Lucinda, who was locked up for being his mule, seemed to be staying clean, but she was snotty to me because I was requested by more dog owners than she was. I guess it was because I took the time to play with each dog and, in some cases, I did training. I wasn't required to do this. We were supposed to just do the walk, dump, and pee patrol, but New York dogs ... they have such weird lives. Everyone should have two dogs, not just one. The potential isolation of eight hours alone while the owner's at work gave me an ache. I would've liked to keep them with me all day, to hold them and protect their innocence.
There was this very tall, somewhat Finnish or Danish, fashionable chick named Tess who ran the Foundation for Zambo Sneakers. An oxymoron. Zambo made over-the-top running shoes, and their profits could've run a third world country. Of course, they used children in Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam to make the sneakers for two cents an hour in sweatshops that'd make the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory sound like a luxury corporate office building. Tess traveled the world planning rock concerts with Bono and the like to raise money to feed the kids her corporation starved. She had no concept of the paradox. She was home three weeks or so out of every month, and Edward, her handy man and lover, would sleep there when she was gone. I'd walk Beyoncé and Aretha, her Afghan hounds, two times a day — sometimes three if she was "really stuck" at one of those openings at a Soho gallery for painters who specialized in squares or dots. Zambo made sneakers that would go with evening gowns and could cost up to $1,800 a pair. Tess's Afghan hounds were as beautiful and superficial as Zambo sneakers. So was Tess. She truly loved her "poo poos," and paid me thirty dollars extra under the table to brush the shit out of them once a week. They were spectacular looking — a combination of couture runway models and George Lucas planetary hookers — but I don't know what category of brains they were made with. After a month of bribing them with steak tartar, they started to delicately bounce to me when I called. But sitting or lying down was so beyond them one would compare it to a dyslexic child taking a math SAT. If I commanded "sit," they'd cock their coiffed heads. "What?" Never mind.
I eventually figured out how to reach them. They now walked absolutely by my side as if I were a pimp. They did the same for Tess which, when she wore her knee-length Humphrey Bogart leather trench coat, high-heeled matching boots, and Burberry subtle but multicolored woven scarf, made her look like a casual full-page shot in an expensive Italian fashion magazine. Pedestrians slowed down when they saw the the combination, as if she was famous but they couldn't place her. Tess had no desire to be famous. When we occasionally crossed paths, she'd talk about a Prada boutique that was miraculously opening in Croatia or the banquet they'd held at the Intercontinental Hotel in Abu Dhabi for the new roller coaster they were building there. Then she'd switch to the horror of clitoridectomies and tell me that Zambo would hold a benefit fashion show to send doctors to those barbaric countries that cut off "labias" so the doctors could restore sexual pleasure. In the midst of all this, Beyoncé and Aretha lay, bored as teenage girls, on Tess's giant shabby-chic couches as she downed a half bottle of Vitamin Water Zero and rushed out.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Walking the Dog"
by .
Copyright © 2016 Elizabeth Swados.
Excerpted by permission of Feminist Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
COVER,
TITLE PAGE,
COPYRIGHT,
DEDICATION,
CONTENTS,
THE EARLY DAYS OF FREEDOM,
CLAYTON,
LADIES WHO LUNCH,
BEYONCÉ AND ARETHA,
TIKKUN OLAM,
SERVING TIME,
DOORBELL,
TRYING NOT TO GO BACKWARD,
POOKIE THE TERROR,
A LETTER TO BATYA SHULAMIT,
THE HELL OF POWELL,
PRISON WIFE,
A LIFE OF LISTS,
HALFWAY HOUSE,
A PARTY WITH POOKIE,
ANOTHER LETTER TO MADAME BATYA,
THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS,
EARNING COURAGE,
BOMBAST,
THE ART OF TORTURE AT POWELL,
THE ASSIGNMENT,
LARRY, MOE, CURLY, AND DAVID,
THE LAST DAYS OF POWELL,
MY CRIMES,
MY TESTIMONY FOR PONY,
THE EARLY YEARS OF CLAYTON,
CAUGHT,
CHESTER,
A VISITOR,
CELLO AND RASPUTIN,
A MEETING IS PLANNED,
TAKING ON CHARLIE TIMMS,
PREGNANT AND IN PRISON,
PONY,
THE STARBUCKS SHOWDOWN,
MEETINGS,
A LETTER FROM BATYA SHULAMIT,
POSTPARTUM,
POOKIE IN CRISIS,
SAM,
JUDAICA,
THE MURAL,
CUSTODY REVISITED,
THE HONORS COTTAGES,
PHYLLIS,
BAT MITZVAH TALK: ANOTHER LETTER TO BATYA SHULAMIT,
APARTMENT HUNTING,
WALKING THE DOG,
ANDROCLES,
A MYRIAD OF TEMPTATIONS,
WHAT IS NORMAL?,
MAURICE,
AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR,
THE SAVIOR'S ARM,
AFTERWORD,
ABOUT THE AUTHOR,
ALSO BY FEMINIST PRESS,
ABOUT FEMINIST PRESS,
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