Read Online Cargo of Orchids by Susan Musgrave - Free Book Online
Authors: Susan Musgrave
Tags: General Fiction
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counsellor here at HV says I have the wrong attitude: I’ve always believed that’s the only kind to have. Mrs. Dykstra says I am glib; I don’t take life seriously. How can she expect a person who is told she is going to be executed on such-and-such a day at such-and-such a time to take
anything
seriously, least of all life?
When you arrive on the Row, you are given your clothing issue: 3 Jumpsuits; 5 Pairs of Socks, useful for padding your 3 Brassieres (White), which look like the mailbags they’re always busy making back in the general population; 1 Jacket; 7 Pairs of Underpants (Coloured); 5 T-shirts; 1 Pair of Shoes (no laces). The same intake officer who hands you those Extra-Large Jumpsuits will give you underpants too extra-tiny for a kid going through toilet-training. You wear a different coloured pair of underwear for each day of the week (i.e., Red Monday, Blue Tuesday, Yellow Wednesday and so on). It took me a few weeks to figure out the colour code is their way of making sure you put on clean underwear every day, in case you are “differently motivated.”
If a guard catches you wearing yellow underwear on Monday or red on Thursday, it is considered an infraction of prison rules and you are subject to disciplinary action. My red underwear fell into some bleach by accident (Rainy was sterilizing her needle) and became orange, and I tried to explain this to Officer Gluckman (the only guard who bothers to check). My excuse wasn’t good enough for her. She said there would be no exceptions to the rule that all Death Clinic inmates were to wear red on Monday, and as a result of my failure to comply with prison regulations, I would be forced to relinquish my television-viewing privileges until she had conducted a further investigation.
As well as new clothing, you are also given your own television, and the freedom to watch whichever religious or educational programs they choose, at any hour of the day or night. When my counsellor asked me what I liked to watch, I made a mistake by saying I preferred
not
to watch television. Mrs. Dykstra said my failure to take advantage of my viewing privileges demonstrated that I had a negative attitude, to which she hoped I would make a positive adjustment, so she could write a more favourable psychological report.
Officer Gluckman must have conducted her investigation by reading Mrs. Dykstra’s files, because one morning my punishment changed. After that, I was unable to turn my television
off
, and when I tried to cover it with my towel, they cranked the volume up. It was, for me, a no-win situation. If they turned the volume down, I said, I promised I would watch the television. I always have to pretend I’m watching it when Officer Gluckman’s on shift.
——
My mother, while waiting to board her ship for the Caribbean island, had to spend the night at a Miami Beach motel. The motel had been recommended by her travel agent, and it turned out to be the choice of the local prostitutes also. All night long, men kept banging on my mother’s door, imploring “Fuckface” to “open up.” My mother, who was “out of her element,” spent the whole night searching for a place to hide her watch. The “rude men” at her door, the rasp of the palm fronds against the window all night—it was a holiday made in hell, she told me; she wished she’d never left home.
But, she says, East Oyster, the town thirty miles north of Vancouver where I was born and raised, is almost as foreign to her these days. She no longer recognizes faces on the street. A sign on the outskirts of town is a constant irritation to her. East Oyster. Population 276, and Still Growing.
That’s one thing about Heaven—I recognize everybody’s mug. Some faces get
too
familiar, sometimes. Over the past ten years the population has declined, though at the moment it has stabilized and there are just three of us. After reading my mother’s letter and birthday card (I turned forty-seven on March 12,
anything
seriously, least of all life?
When you arrive on the Row, you are given your clothing issue: 3 Jumpsuits; 5 Pairs of Socks, useful for padding your 3 Brassieres (White), which look like the mailbags they’re always busy making back in the general population; 1 Jacket; 7 Pairs of Underpants (Coloured); 5 T-shirts; 1 Pair of Shoes (no laces). The same intake officer who hands you those Extra-Large Jumpsuits will give you underpants too extra-tiny for a kid going through toilet-training. You wear a different coloured pair of underwear for each day of the week (i.e., Red Monday, Blue Tuesday, Yellow Wednesday and so on). It took me a few weeks to figure out the colour code is their way of making sure you put on clean underwear every day, in case you are “differently motivated.”
If a guard catches you wearing yellow underwear on Monday or red on Thursday, it is considered an infraction of prison rules and you are subject to disciplinary action. My red underwear fell into some bleach by accident (Rainy was sterilizing her needle) and became orange, and I tried to explain this to Officer Gluckman (the only guard who bothers to check). My excuse wasn’t good enough for her. She said there would be no exceptions to the rule that all Death Clinic inmates were to wear red on Monday, and as a result of my failure to comply with prison regulations, I would be forced to relinquish my television-viewing privileges until she had conducted a further investigation.
As well as new clothing, you are also given your own television, and the freedom to watch whichever religious or educational programs they choose, at any hour of the day or night. When my counsellor asked me what I liked to watch, I made a mistake by saying I preferred
not
to watch television. Mrs. Dykstra said my failure to take advantage of my viewing privileges demonstrated that I had a negative attitude, to which she hoped I would make a positive adjustment, so she could write a more favourable psychological report.
Officer Gluckman must have conducted her investigation by reading Mrs. Dykstra’s files, because one morning my punishment changed. After that, I was unable to turn my television
off
, and when I tried to cover it with my towel, they cranked the volume up. It was, for me, a no-win situation. If they turned the volume down, I said, I promised I would watch the television. I always have to pretend I’m watching it when Officer Gluckman’s on shift.
——
My mother, while waiting to board her ship for the Caribbean island, had to spend the night at a Miami Beach motel. The motel had been recommended by her travel agent, and it turned out to be the choice of the local prostitutes also. All night long, men kept banging on my mother’s door, imploring “Fuckface” to “open up.” My mother, who was “out of her element,” spent the whole night searching for a place to hide her watch. The “rude men” at her door, the rasp of the palm fronds against the window all night—it was a holiday made in hell, she told me; she wished she’d never left home.
But, she says, East Oyster, the town thirty miles north of Vancouver where I was born and raised, is almost as foreign to her these days. She no longer recognizes faces on the street. A sign on the outskirts of town is a constant irritation to her. East Oyster. Population 276, and Still Growing.
That’s one thing about Heaven—I recognize everybody’s mug. Some faces get
too
familiar, sometimes. Over the past ten years the population has declined, though at the moment it has stabilized and there are just three of us. After reading my mother’s letter and birthday card (I turned forty-seven on March 12,
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