We Are Water

  But yeah, I do feel guilty sometimes. Hate myself, even, once the rush is over, especially when they cry. This one guy I knew in prison? Eamon? He killed a kid who wouldn’t stop crying. His girlfriend’s little boy; he flung him headfirst into a wall. Now there’s a monster for you. And I’m lumped in the same category as that sociopath? Uh-uh. No way. The day I picked up the paper and read that Lawanda had been murdered by her mother’s meth head boyfriend, I felt so bad about it that I cried like a baby.

  This woman Michelle I met when I lived in Stamford was a bit of a cow, but she was also a widow, so there was no ex-husband to contend with. (The exes can be tricky if they’re still invested in their kids’ lives, or if it wasn’t them who wanted the divorce.) Her daughter Lily was a beautiful kid—ten years old, sweet and innocent, with frizzy red hair and tiny pink nipples. Out of all the little girls I’ve done, Lily came the closest to Annie.

  I moved in with them during summertime. The setup was perfect because Michelle played on a softball team. She was their pitcher, and from what I could see, the main reason why her team was leading the league. We’d go to her games in two separate cars. Lily and I would sit in the bleachers and watch for maybe three or four innings. Then I’d take her home and get her ready for bed. Michelle usually went out to a bar with her teammates after their game, so she wouldn’t get home until after ten most of the time, and by then I’d have gotten what I wanted and Lily would be asleep.

  But I got careless one night. Got a little too rough with Lily, and I was so focused on getting the kid to stop crying about the bleeding that I didn’t even realize it had started raining heavily. That the game had been called. I didn’t hear Michelle’s car pull into the driveway. Didn’t hear her enter the house or walk down the hall toward Lily’s room. When I looked up, there she was in the doorway, sopping wet, still in her uniform. It got ugly. Lily was screaming, Michelle was screaming and throwing whatever she could grab at me as I hurried toward the door, dressing myself and trying to find my friggin’ car keys. She nailed me with these heavy brass bookends. One of them clipped me on the shoulder, the other landed hard against the small of my back. I mean, shit, she was their star pitcher. Trust me, that bitch had an arm on her, and her aim was accurate.

  Gunning it back to my place, I made an emergency escape plan. I’d go back to my apartment, throw a few things in a bag, and drive to Providence where Mitch lived. Disappear there for a while. My crucial mistake was stopping at the ATM for cash on the way to my place. I was backing my car out of the driveway when a cruiser pulled in front of it, blocking my way. That was it, and I knew it. The jig was finally up.

  I wrote Michelle an impassioned letter, promising that I’d get help and begging her to forgive me, a.k.a. to drop the charges. It came back a week later, unopened. My lawyer told me we should plea-bargain. “The mom’s out for blood and they’ve got the girl’s testimony on video. And if I know Judge Dwyer, he’ll rule that that kiddie porn prior of yours is admissible. The deck’s stacked against you, Kent. Take the deal.”

  The deal was a ten-year sentence, suspended after seven. I left the courtroom courtesy of DOC and was processed into the society of scumbags at Enfield Correctional. My new peers were rapists, skinheads, arsonists, contract murderers. And trust me, when you enter the hell that’s an American prison with a pedophile conviction—when word gets around that a new “short-eyes” has arrived on the compound—you’re in for special treatment. At Enfield, I got shanked in the med line, had my food spat on by the servers as I went through the chow line, got beaten up and raped by the tattooed muscleheads who spend their days lifting weights and their shower time meting out a justice system of their own, often with a thumbs-up from the COs, who have it in for us short-eyes, too. “So what the hell do you want me to do about it?” one CO asked me when I showed him the turds that some goon had shat onto my mattress. I told him I needed to be moved to a different unit. Two weeks’ worth of torment later, a different CO opened my cell door. “Let’s go, Kelly,” he said. “You’re moving.”

  Finally, I thought. “Where to?”

  “Solitary. The deputy warden’s issued you a ticket.”

  “For what?”

  “For licking your lips and making goo goo eyes at someone’s little girl in the visiting room.”

  “That’s bull,” I said. “It didn’t happen.” It didn’t!

  “Were you in the visiting room Friday afternoon?” I told him I was—that I’d had a legal visit. “Well, then. Come on. Move it.” I was innocent, but it was futile to object.

  I was in seg for the next ten days. Nothing to do, nothing to read. I was going stir-crazy, thinking about everything from the day I’d flushed those baby gerbils down the crapper to the night of the flood. When they put me back in gen pop, the beat-down I took was so vicious that I lost my left eye. After I got out of the infirmary, I wrote the warden a letter, telling him I was thinking of suing the state and him personally. That was when they transferred me to Gardner, a medium-security facility that houses more drug dealers and white-collar crooks than killers. But there were goons in Gardner, too. “Cyclops,” they nicknamed me. Nice, huh? I went along with my counselor’s suggestion for survival: pass the word around that I was doing a bid for check-kiting. Whatever prison you’re in, you have an easier ride if your fellow felons think you’re something other than a child molester. At Gardner, I applied for the nurse’s aide program. Waited until I was ten months away from the end of my sentence before I got in.

  Annie’s a big deal in the art world now; the only time I’ve seen her since that day they took her away was in a magazine photo. It was back when I was doing time at Gardner, maybe four or five years ago. I’d gone to the prison library to get myself something to read and, by chance, had picked up a dog-eared Newsweek from the “help yourself” pile of old magazines. And there she was, in a story about some fancy pants New York art show. It was the name that made me stop turning the pages: Annie Oh. Annie O’Day. . . . I kept staring at the picture of the middle-aged woman posed in front of these “assemblage” things she makes. Different person, I figured. But the more I stared at the woman’s face, the more I realized it was her—that this was who she’d turned into. What had I expected? That she’d look the same as she had when she was six or seven? I read the article two or three times before I could wrap my head around what, by chance, I had discovered.

  Or was it just by chance? Maybe it was a message from that Higher Power everyone was always talking about in the Twelve Steps meetings I went to whenever I needed to get the fuck away from the tier for a while, or when the ridicule about my missing eye got to be too much for me to take. I kept looking at the artwork in back of her which, to me, looked more like a bunch of stuff from the dump than high-priced art that had gotten fuckin’ Newsweek’s attention. But what did I know about that whole world? I tore out the page, took it back to my cell, and taped it to the wall. From that day until the morning I got released, Annie’s face was the first thing I saw in the morning and the last thing I saw before lights-out. I have that picture still—keep it folded up inside my wallet so I can look at it when I want to. Sometimes, still, I’ll sit down in front of a piece of paper and, pen in hand, write her name over and over: Annie, Annie, Annie

  The night I tried to kill myself? I’d gotten out of Gardner and was finishing the rest of my sentence at a halfway house for guys who, like me, are listed on the sexual predator Web site—the kind of home that the Welcome Wagon lady never bothers to go to. I’d been struggling for weeks to resist a new little girl I’d been scoping out. You ever watch those nature shows on cable? Where they show you, say, the way a cheetah will sit and wait, undetected by the herd of deer he’s scoping out? And then he’ll start focusing on just one of them? Hyperfocusing until, in his mind, it’s just him and the one he’s decided he wants? And then, when the time’s just right, he goes for it. Runs at it, pounces. That’s what it’s like for me. It’s just nature, you know? My nature, anyway. Except the
difference between me and that cheetah is that he’s going to walk away licking his bloody chops and looking for a soft place to lie down and take a nap, and I may be looking at the walls of an eight-by-ten prison cell. . . . It would have been easy in this particular case, too; the kid’s mom was a coworker on the janitorial staff down at the mall, and from what I could see, she was asleep at the wheel, parenting-wise. But if I went for it and got caught, they’d send me back to that hellhole or another one just like it for a lot longer than I’d been there the first time, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to handle that. So it was like a war going on inside of me: my wanting to have this kid and my fear of having to go back if I got caught. And sharking that kid was driving me crazy. Exhausting me. All the shrinks I’d been to over the years, all the meds they’d put me on, and the truth was that I wasn’t fixable. And because I wasn’t, I was universally hated. The only person in the world who had really ever loved me was my dead mother. And Aunt Sunny. That’s the worst thing in the world: not to have anyone who loves you. And it wasn’t even my fault, really. It wasn’t like I had chosen this life; it was more like it had chosen me. So I started thinking, fuck it. Why bother? I just didn’t want to take it anymore. That was when I hit on what I thought would be a permanent solution. I walked down to CVS and bought a pack of single-edge razor blades. In the Twelve Step program I was in at the group home, they kept talking about making amends. My sponsor was a former priest and fellow deviant. He liked little boys. I sat down and wrote two letters, one to him and one to all the girls I’d ever “trespassed against.” I put both letters on my bed where they’d find them. Then I picked up one of those blades and sliced the veins in both my arms. I cut them vertically instead of across because I’d heard somewhere that that was the way to do it if you were really serious about making the lights go out. But sitting there and watching myself bleed out started scaring me. If there was a hell, I was headed there sure as shit after everything I’d done, and maybe it would be worse than prison. And so before I passed out, I picked up the phone and called Father Joe. Sobbed into the receiver that I was scared to die. I guess when push came to shove, I preferred the hell of living inside my skin to the hell of what might come once I slipped out of it.

  I spent nine days in the psych hospital. I was depressed, they said. After the new meds kicked in and they released me to the outpatient program, they assigned me to this shrink named Dr. Ronni Banks. There was a motorcycle helmet on her desk and a Honda Gold Wing out in the hospital parking lot. You can never tell about biker chicks. Some of them are dykes and some of them aren’t. I wasn’t sure which way the wind blew with Dr. Ronni, but I knew halfway through our first session that I didn’t like her. I was in the middle of telling her about my fucked-up childhood: how my father had bailed when I was a kid, how Irma Cake’s daughter had “emotionally disregulated” me down in their basement, and that that was the reason I was the way I was. “Wow,” she said. “You can really talk the talk, can’t you? But let’s focus on the future rather than the past, shall we? Let’s work on how you can manage your compulsion out in the community. Agreed?”

  “Agreed,” I said. After I left her office, I asked around about her and found out that she played on the all-girls team.

  During our next appointment, she said, “So help me understand then, Kent. First you tell me your actions are impulsive and involuntary. Then you describe a modus operandi that relies on patience and premeditation. So which is it? Can you control these urges or can’t you?”

  Now that I knew that neither flirting nor playing the sympathy card about my traumatic childhood was going to work on her, I decided to play the fear card instead. “Jeeze, I don’t know, Doc,” I said. “I guess I’m like that snake in the Garden of Eden.”

  She cocked her head. “How so?”

  “Well, I’ll see some innocent little girl waiting for the school bus, or sitting by herself in the food court at the mall, wearing short shorts and one of those little midriff blouses. And I may start slithering her way. But I know I’ve got to play her first. Convince her how sweet that apple’s going to taste before I can claim my prize.”

  The skin between her eyebrows buckled with professional concern. “So you’re saying that you think of your victim as some sort of . . . reward?”

  “Sure. You can relate, can’t you? When you rumble up to some lesbo bar on that hog of yours, walk in, and scope out some chick you want to—”

  She held up her hand like a traffic cop, but I kept going.

  “I mean, ’fess up, Ronni. Are you thinking of her as some fellow human being you can have tea and conversation with, or as that night’s lick job?” I pulled my shirtsleeve up to my shoulder so she could see my cobra tattoo. Stuck out my tongue and flicked it up and down at her like a fucking snake.

  Dr. Ronni managed to maintain her professional demeanor, but her blinking gave her away: once, twice, three times, four. “We’re not discussing me, Kent. We’re discussing you,” she said. I nodded, smiled. Flicked my tongue at her some more. She glanced at her clock and told me we’d have to continue this discussion next time because our time was up. “No, it isn’t,” I said. “According to my calculations, we have another seven minutes.” Which we did. She stood up anyway, walked to her door, and opened it. I walked out laughing.

  When I went to my next appointment, I learned that I’d been reassigned to a male therapist whose name I don’t even remember. He was a queer, too—you’d be surprised how many of these jokers in the “helping professions” are—so I was back to flirting. Running my fingers through my hair while we chatted, stroking the insides of my thighs while I played true confessions. At the end of our first meeting, while we were shaking hands, I stroked his knuckles with my fingertips. Just for a second or two. Just enough to stoke his fantasy. With any of these shrinks, you’ve got to locate the chink in their professional armor so that you can take back some of the power they’ve got over you. Because if you don’t, some of them will go for the jugular. And the next thing you know, instead of telling them a sob story, you’re sitting there sobbing for real. And believe me, when that happens, they’ll take your vulnerability and run with it.

  When I do those girls? It’s not that I want to fuck with their heads. It’s just that, when it comes over me, I want what I want when I want it. And it’s not as if they don’t get over it—not as if I’ve ruined their whole lives. Look at Annie. She sure as hell bounced back. That Newsweek article said she was married, living in Connecticut with her husband and kids, and that her work’s in demand with art collectors around the country. Which, I assume, means that she must be rolling in the dough by now.

  One of the conditions of my parole is that I stay away from the Internet, and you can probably guess why. But not long after I got out of Gardner, I walked from the halfway house to the library downtown, and there it was: an open computer station, far enough away from the front desk for anyone to see what I was looking at. I sat down, my heart racing, and typed in the names of some of the kiddie porn sites I liked. But this filtering software came popping up. It figured: they’d blocked them. Next, on a whim, I Googled “Annie Oh,” and all kinds of shit about her art career came up—notices about openings, reviews of shows. I kept clicking on stuff, and eventually I found her street address and phone number. Took her picture out of my wallet, unfolded it, and wrote them down on that old Newsweek article.

  The first time I called her, I lost my nerve and hung up as soon as it started ringing. The next several times I tried, a man answered—the husband, I figured. That was when I started thinking that maybe, instead of calling and talking to her on the phone, what I might do was hitch a ride over there to Three Rivers and show up at her door. As far as Parole was concerned, I was being a good little boy: staying put, going to work every day, making my curfew. So they took off my ankle bracelet, which more or less gave me the idea. So much had happened since we were kids. I figured she might be glad to reconnect with her long-lost cousin—may have forgiven an
d forgotten by now. Because, yeah, she was pretty young back then, but hey, I was just a kid myself. Didn’t know my ass from my elbow. Plus, I had saved her life that night. And I never did tell anyone who was really responsible for Gracie’s death; I’ve kept our secret all these years. I’d like to think those two things count for something.

  But another part of me was afraid that, as soon as she answered the door, she’d slam it in my face. And I couldn’t take that. Because out of all the little girls I’ve done, the only one I ever really loved was Annie. And yeah, the sex was part of it, but so was the closeness we’d shared. To this day, my body remembers what it felt like that night to pull her out of the water and up onto that roof, and then when the two of us were up in the tree, to zip her up inside my jacket to warm her body against mine. And what it felt like to wake up in the hospital the next morning and feel her sleeping against me for safety’s sake.

  So I decided to risk it. Because I had her address, and hey, she might not close the door on me. She might open it and tell me to come in. Make us some coffee and tell me she’s glad I came—that she’s missed me, too.

  I’ve been there four different times. I go on my day off from the nursing home—Mondays, most of the time, but the last time I went was on a Tuesday. I’ve got the routine down at this point. I get off at the bus stop downtown, then hoof it out to their neighborhood. Trudge up that big hill where they live, get to the house, and ring the bell. Each time it’s been the same: no cars in the driveway, no lights on inside. So I sit on the front steps and wait for a while, an hour or two. Then I give up, walk back down their hill and back to the bus stop. Catch the two o’clock bus back to the group home.

  And then? Yesterday? I expected to hear what I’d heard so often when I’ve called her number—the four rings until the machine kicked in. Instead, someone picked up the phone. Not the husband this time. A female. She has daughters—teenagers, they must be by now—but this was a woman’s voice, not a kid’s. Annie’s voice; it had to be. She was there.