This Side of Providence Read Online Free PDF Page B

average. About time I excelled at something.
    I ain’t gonna lie—I done some pretty bad shit. But who hasn’t? If you got any imagination and you live long enough, you’re bound to break a rule or two. Everybody lies to someone—their doctor, their kids, their priest—and some of us lie to all three. But I never been very good at lying. I’m really good at screwing up, but not very good at covering up. I guess we all have our weak spots.
    My first night at the ACI isn’t like I expected. It’s quiet, and the building feels abandoned, like everybody just ran outside for a fire alarm. The guards don’t say much, and neither do the other ladies, and I’m grateful for the silence. In prison movies you always see the inmates fucking with the new guy, but maybe that’s only for the men ’cause nobody fucks with me the first night. Like they don’t want to mess with you till they know how crazy you are. Pretty soon they’ll see I’m crazy no matter what. Crazy clean. Crazy high. Crazy locked up. Crazy free.
    They must know it, too, ’cause they send me to the sick ward first thing. A nurse twice my size walks me there when I’m still in my street clothes. She don’t say anything and she don’t look me in the eyes. When we go through a set of locked doors, she holds my shoulder like I’m an old lady and she’s helping me cross the street. She rubs an old burn scar on my wrist and asks if it still hurts.
    â€œI can’t feel anything,” I tell her.
    The room they give me is small and cold like they got the AC running. There’s nothing on the walls, and the only furniture in the room is a bed on a metal frame. It’s close to the ground, like a child’s bed, and the mattress is covered in a thick plastic that squeaks when I sit down. The toilet is in the corner, behind a half wall. It’s metal, and the toilet seat is missing, and all of a sudden it hits me—I’m locked up. Seeing that toilet finally makes it real.
    â€œYou’re lucky,” the nurse says. “Most people don’t get their own toilet.”
    I look at her. I want to say something, but my head hurts too much to speak.
    â€œThey must think you’re going to need it.”
    I look out the window, which got no curtains. It’s tiny, but it lets in enough light to keep me from sleeping. I can see the edge of a parking lot and a sign that says STAFF . The cars look like toys my son used to line up and forget about. The sun is rising in a gray sky and I watch the trees blow silently in the wind. I wish there weren’t any windows, so I could block out everything from the outside.
    The nurse finally leaves. I sit on the floor and hug myknees to my chest. I can feel my last fix wearing off, so I hold my breath and wait for the buzzing to start. My hands twitch. I look at the walls to steady myself. They are the color of my skin, a pale and washed-out gold. My head pulses as I feel them start to close in on me. They must be soundproof, ’cause when I scream, nobody comes.
    By lunchtime I think I’m dying. The pain is so big it’s like my head can’t stretch around it. I’m cold, but I’m also sweating, and when the sheets get all wet it’s like lying naked on a frozen lake. But then it switches and all of a sudden I’m hot and thirsty and the covers are like a blanket of sand that suffocates me. My sweat starts to burn my skin like fire ants are crawling out of my hair. I try to scratch them all out but they won’t die—it’s like they’re feeding off my sweat—and even when I pull them out one by one and flush them down the toilet, they keep coming.
    There’s a bucket for me to puke in, and when it’s full someone dumps it out and brings it back to me empty. It’s rinsed, but it still smells like death. I sit on the toilet for what seems like hours. I hear songs in my head from