She pulled me down to sit next to her at the picnic table, whispered to me, 'Don't cry. We're not like that. We're the Vikings, remember?'
I nodded, but my tears dripped on the orange vinyl table. Lois, someone had scratched into it. 18th Street. Cunt.
One of the women in the concrete courtyard behind the visitors covered area whistled and shouted out, something about my mother or me. My mother looked up and the woman caught her gaze full in the face like a punch. It stopped her cold. She turned away quickly, like it wasn't she who'd said it.
'You're so beautiful,' I said, touching her hair, her collar, her cheek. Not pliable at all.
'Prison agrees with me,' she said. 'There's no hypocrisy here. Kill or be killed, and everybody knows it.'
'I missed you so much,' I whispered.
She put her arm around me, her head right next to mine. She pressed my forehead with her hand, her lips against my temple. 'I won't be here forever. It'll take more than this to keep me behind bars. I promise you. I will get out, one way or another. One day you'll look out your window and I'll be there.'
I looked into her determined face, cheekbones like razors, her eyes making me believe. 'I was afraid you'd be mad at me.'
She stretched me out at arm's length to look at me, her hands gripping my shoulders. 'Why would you think that?'
Because I couldn't lie well enough. But I couldn't say it. She hugged me again. Those arms around me made me want to stay there forever. I'd rob a bank and get convicted so we could always be together. I wanted to curl up in her lap, I wanted to disappear into her body, I wanted to be one of her eyelashes, or a blood vessel in her thigh, a mole on her neck. 'Is it terrible here? Do they hurt you?' 'Not as much as I hurt them,' she said, and I knew she was smiling, though all I could see was the denim of her sleeve and her arm, still lightly tanned. I had to pull away a little to see her. Yes, she was smiling, her half-smile, the little comma-shaped curve at the corner of her mouth. I touched her mouth. She kissed my fingers.
'They assigned me to office work. I told them I'd rather clean toilets than type their bureaucratic vomit. Oh, they don't much care for me. I'm on grounds crew. I sweep, pull weeds, though of course only inside the wire. I'm considered a poor security risk. Imagine. I won't tutor their illiterates, teach writing classes, or otherwise feed the machine. / will not serve.' She stuck her nose in my hair, she was smelling me. 'Your hair smells of bread. Clover and nutmeg. I want to remember you just like this, in that sadly hopeful pink dress, and those bridesmaid, promise-of-prom-night pumps. Your foster mother's, no doubt. Pink being the ultimate cliche.'
I told her about Starr and Uncle Ray, the other kids, dirt bikes and paloverde and ironwood, the colors of the boulders in the wash, the mountain and the hawks. I told her about the sin virus. I loved the sound of her laughter.
'You must send me drawings,' she said. 'You always drew better than you wrote. I can't think of any other reason you haven't written.'
I could write? 'You never did.'
'You haven't been getting my letters?' she said. And her smile was gone, her face deflated, masklike, like the women behind the fence. 'Give me your address. I'll write you directly. And you write to me, don't go through your social worker. My mistake. Oh, we'll learn.' And the vigor returned to her eyes. 'We're smarter than they are, ma petite.'
I didn't know my address, but she told me hers, had me repeat it over and over so I would remember. My mind rebelled against my mother's address. Ingrid Magnussen, Inmate W99235, California Institution for Women, Corona-Frontera.
'Wherever you go, write to me. Write at least once a week. Or send drawings, God knows the visual stimulation in this place leaves something to be desired. I especially want to see the ex-topless dancer and Uncle Ernie, the clumsy carpenter.'
It hurt my feelings. Uncle Ray had been there when I needed him. She didn't even know him. 'It's Ray, and he's nice.'
'Oh,' she said. 'You stay away from Uncle Ray, especially if he's oh so nice.'
But she was in here, and I was out there. I had a friend. She wasn't going to take him away from me.
'I think of you all the time,' she said. 'Especially at night. I imagine where you are. When the prison's still and everyone's asleep, I imagine I can see you. I try to contact you. Have you ever heard me calling, felt my presence in your room?' She stroked a strand of my hair between her fingers, stretched it to see how long it was against my arm. It came to my elbow.
I had felt her, I had. I'd heard her call. Astrid? Are you awake? 'Late at night. You never could sleep.'
She kissed the top of my head, right in the part. 'Neither could you. Now, tell me more about yourself. I want to know everything about you.'
It was a strange idea. She never wanted to know about me before. But the long days of sameness had led her back to me, to remembering she had a daughter tied up somewhere. The sun was starting to come out and the ground fog glowed like a paper lantern.
6
THE NEXT SUNDAY, I slept too late. If only I hadn't been dreaming about my mother. It was a sweet dream. We were in Aries, walking down the allee of dark cypress trees, past tombs and wildflowers. She had escaped from prison — she was pushing a lawnmower in front of the building and just walked away. Aries was deep shade and sunshine like honey, Roman ruins and our little pension. If I had not been hungry for that dream, for the sunflowers of Aries, I would have got up when the boys ran off into the wash.
But now I was sitting in the front seat of the Torino. Carolee groaned in the back, she had a hangover from doing drugs all night with her friends. Starr had caught her sleeping too. Amy Grant played on the radio, and Starr sang along, wearing her hair in a sort of messy French twist like Brigitte Bardot, and long dangling earrings. She looked like she was going to a cocktail lounge, and not to the Truth Assembly of Christ.
'I hate this,' my foster sister said in my ear as we followed her mother into church. 'I'd kill for some
