After the lunch, I followed Grace to her cell. She kept some sleeping pills there, in a tiny hole in the wall, along with other stuff. She blew on the oval grey pills in her hand, three of them, and handed them to me. I'd never seen them before. The surfaces were sort of gluey, with some particles of dust stuck to them.
They reminded me of Sweethearts candies Wendy once gave me for Valentine's Day. It was right after we'd moved in together in the beginning of 1960. Of course, that led to some cheesy stuff you only wish to see in the films. But both of us being not so sweet-toothed, the candies went forgotten in a pantry of our kitchen for almost three weeks. Although they were not as melty as chocolate, the heat from the stove had snuck into the pack and, by the time I remembered their existence, softened them. Some pieces melted together and became rather big chunks.
"How old are these?" I asked Grace.
She threw a glance at my hand, and at me. "Why?"
"They look gross."
"So?" she said. "Do you prefer fresher ones to poison her with?"
I didn't give her an answer.
She let out a heavy breath. "That's all I got. They are the strongest they have." She sunk into the bed with a thud, a leg dangling. "It should be dry on the inside, anyway. It's not going to be a problem once they're powered."
"And what's the right dose?"
The pills that they gave me every night—and that I dumped in the filth bucket every night—were of a different kind. They were white, more round, perhaps smaller. And they gave me usually two.
"Why do you care?" she said.
It was a familiar tone. I heard it before, in the old females' ward, when she asked me why I liked Mary. I did not like how challenging she had sounded back then. I did not like it now, either.
"I'd like to not accidentally overdose and kill her," I said.
Then her lip curled in a tiny sneer. Her fingers found a loose thread in her sock, and she pulled at it, twisting it around her index finger. There was a quiet snapping sound, as she wrenched it off.
"Grace."
"It's two or three." She shrugged. "I don't know."
"Which is it?" I said. Her rather careless, obsessive attitude grated on my nerves.
She did not raise her face, but looked at me through her messy bangs. She just shrugged.
"Goddamn it, Grace. I get it! You hate her. You want to destroy her!"
I made a fist with the pills in my palm and pressed against my thigh. My patience was wearing off, and I thought, if I didn't do so, I might throw them against the wall on the spur of the moment.
"Honestly, it's none of my fucking business you want to solve problems with the use of violence," I said. "Go ahead. You want to use an axe on her, too? Fine! Keep on hating her. I hate her, too. But—"
"Do you?"
I hesitated for a brief moment. "Yes," I said, because it was the truth.
"But you don't cry or scream."
Tantrum. She was throwing a tantrum right here.
"For fuck's sake— So is that how you expect me to act?" I said, and got closer to her. The edge of the bed dug into my thigh. "Too bad I don't meet your expectations of whatever you think I am. But I got better things to do than wasting my tears on her! I hate her, Grace, okay? I do. I fucking loathe her. She can rot with this godless place, and it'll be none of my business. But being hysteric like you isn't my option. I'm not going to kill her, and carry the label of a murderer and the weight of it for the rest of my life."
When I finished speaking, my throat ached from the angry whispering. My stomach felt tense from keeping myself from screaming. Grace's eyes were wide. From consternation or panic, I didn't care to identify. I felt dizzy. I coughed a few times. And after that, I straightened my back and stared down at Grace.
"Two or three?" I asked again.
Her lips tightened. "Two," she said. She continued to fiddle with the frazzled rim of the sock.
"And how long does it take until they take effect?"
"15 to 30 minutes."
"Good," I said, as I opened the door. "Stay awake tonight. Tell Kit the same."
I went back to my cell, and as soon as the door clicked shut, I opened my hand. My palm felt sticky with sweat. The pills had absorbed the heat and moisture. They stuck to my skin, so much they didn't fall off when I turned my palm downward. I walked to the bed and grabbed one of letters from Alex out of the mattress.
-The moon is exquisitely beautiful tonight. It seems as though it is bigger and closer, but could that be?
I don't have any happy memories of Christmas. This season makes my loneliness even more tangible—but I have you now, don't I? Tell me, what is the best Christmas gift your parents have ever given you?-
It was from the earlier stage of our friendship. About two weeks after the first exchange, I'd say, because I remember shivering at the faint chill as I sat on the library floor. The hopeful tone of their words had offered me solace then, and now pained me with guilt.
I powered the pills. With the nail of my thumb, I scraped and collected them on the piece of paper. But it turned out to be harder than I'd imagined, as the surface was smooth and rocky. I dug my nail into it, but it would simply slide and could not seem to make the first incision. My nail was too smooth on the edge for this—or at least I thought with my desperate mind—so I rubbed it against the concrete wall, until the edge was coarse like sand paper. It became rather easy, I suppose, after destroying the first layer of the pill. I scraped so there'd be a line in the middle, and made a mirror twin of line on the other side. And then, when the incisions were deep enough, I snapped the pill in half. I found that it was more efficient to rub the two pieces against each other than using my nail. That way, I didn't need to dab the particles off my fingertip every so often, either.
Even then, I couldn't go faster enough. Whenever there were footsteps, or the sound of the corridor door creak open, my hand had to stop. I'd stop my breathing with it, waiting for the disruption to pass. And if someone walked closer to my cell, I'd hide the entire set in the mattress.
As my hands moved, I thought about Grace and how she'd acted earlier, and the words that'd come out of my own mouth. Did I mean everything I said, or was it just something to get her mouth shut?—My introspection didn't give me an answer. It was still true that my feelings toward Mary had changed in a negative way. And perhaps she really did deserve to rot with Briarcliff. Still, did I wish her dead like Grace did? If Grace really did use an axe on Mary, would I ever let her?
But before I could reach to a conclusion, there came a time when the two pills became a complete pile of powder. It started to get dark outside. I carefully folded the paper, hid it back, and decided to take a nap until dinner.
My heart raced for the night to come, and—if luck decided to side with us—for the freedom to come.
Nothing about this plan was difficult. But I had to admit that we were relying on luck more than a group of asylum-breakers should. If there was no wine, we'd have to make changes in the plan. If Mary didn't come to my cell at all, we could go nowhere.—The second was what I feared most. I didn't tell Kit and Grace, but Mary might not come tonight or tomorrow. I'd stood her up two days in a row. Perhaps she would give up on me, on us, and choose to spend the night in her warm bed, alone. Or, perhaps she'd be in town running errands for Arden.
###
Despite all the worries and fears that preoccupied me the entire day, though, Mary did come. She came, but not alone or in the middle of the night. It was with Jude, for a room search.
Their arrival shook the ward like a violent earthquake that gave no forewarning. The guards banged on the cell doors, as the keys jiggled from their belt, sometimes dragging inmates out of their cells if they were not quick enough. Some obeyed in silence, some shrieked, some cried. The shouts of the guards drowned out all the chaotic noises. And in the center of them all, Jude walked. Her gait was the definition of confidence, each step big and slow, that keeps you anxious with inexplicable dread.
She stopped in front of me, and smiled. "Good evening, Miss Winters," she said. "Excited for this?"
Her favorite guard, Frank—the same one that found my notes in the pillowcase—walked into my cell.
"Look anywhere, you won't find a thing," I said to him, and looked at Jude. "I have nothing to hide."
"Quite confident, are we?"
Frank looked under the bed, lifted the mattress, and stuck his hand in the pillowcase. My heart remained calm. The hole in the mattress was on the other side of him, and it would've been too dark for his old eyes to spot such a small slit.
"Found anything, Frank?" Jude asked.
"Nope, looks pretty clean to me." He dusted his hands as if to say job done, before patting on his thighs.
Jude waved her clipboard, gesturing towards the bed. "Check inside the pillowcase."
"Already did. As clean as a whistle."
It was an answer she clearly didn't like. She drew small circles in the air with her pen, as she pointed it at my sweater.
"Let's see what's inside your pockets, shall we?" she said. She held out the clipboard, face-up.
I dug into my pockets and stacked everything on it—a match box, a crumpled pack of Marlboro, and a piece of bread, which had fossilized over the weeks of residency in there, in oblivion. When I said I'd throw it at Spivey, it was only wishful thinking.—Now it really seemed capable of doing a great deal of harm, only if utilized with something apt, say, like a slingshot. Then I would feed the blood-stained bread to a duck afterwards, or just throw it in water. The evidence of the crime would disappear for good. It'd make a great crime novel.
Jude picked it up, with a combination of curiosity, disgust, and bafflement curling up her lip.
"What is that?" Frank seemed just as troubled.
"It's hard bread," she said, unamused. A few crumbs spread across the clipboard as the big chunk landed. "Now, tell me, Miss Winters. What exactly were you going to do with this? Were you so torn apart by your friend's betrayal that you decided to associate yourself with rats?"
Her eyes narrowed, in a way that a renowned journalist might do in an interview with a petty criminal. Answers did not matter, as much as the show they put on for the world to see.
I did not answer.
"Do rats like cucumbers, Sister Jude?" Shelly said. Her hand slithered along the doorframe, as she wriggled her hips. "Because I have one in my cell right now."
Jude smirked. "Don't excite yourself too much, Shelly." Then she gestured towards my pockets once again. "Anything else?"
"Crumbs," I said. "You want them, too?"
Then for the first time that night, the hubris at the corner of her mouth faltered. Not at the boldness of my response, but at the realization that there was nothing, nothing satisfactory, she could punish me for. Although having food in the cell could be punishable if she decided so, I knew it wouldn't quench her thirst. The show was over. She wanted a gotcha-moment, and I gave her a piece of bread. Her black eyes glared, as she scribbled something down.
"Is this the calm before the storm, Miss Winters," she said, almost puncturing the paper as she wrote a period. "—or have you finally understood the importance of obedience?"
"The latter."
"I sincerely do hope so." She waved at Frank to signal him to go to the next cell. She began to follow him, took a step or two, but stopped. "But never forget you're being watched. Eyes are everywhere, even when you think you're perfectly safe."
And then, her thin, black figure disappeared in Shelly's cell. I heard Frank do the same in there, patting down the mattress and searching under it.
Grace cleared her throat on the other side of the hall. I looked at her. Her gaze didn't linger on me, as she glanced aside, with enough intention that made me followed it. There, three cell doors down from me, stood Mary with Pepper.
I thought that I was ready, until that moment, that I had the strength in me to remain unruffled by the sight of her. I thought my hatred was—though not the purest—strong. But she glowed. More than ever. I tried to remind myself of the things she'd done, tried to repeat Olga's name inside my head—because, there was no other way to bare this.
There was something in the air about her. I struggled to understand what was happening, or what I was seeing. It was not the Mary Eunice I knew. Her smile, her gait, her aura. While we'd been apart for a couple of days, something must have happened and changed her. Something had transformed her from a child to a woman. At least that was what I thought, and I couldn't bare it. So I tried to imagine the face of Olga I'd never seen, and hoped it'd make Mary ugly.
After hugging Pepper goodnight, she walked up the hall, closer to me. Our eyes met under the dim lights, and I swore her air grew brighter. Her smile grew, and she bit her lip to hide it. She clutched a clipboard to her chest, and ducked her head ever so slightly.
When she looked at me again, I mimicked her smile—but the stiffness of my lips kept it from being a big one. It was convincing anyways, I told myself. It relieved me to have the other people around us. If we'd been alone, there would be no explanation I could offer her.
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