Most people have a completely wrong idea of life in a prison too.
That’s true, she says. And that she will miss her visits to the prison once I am living with them. And no, she doesn’t intend to choose another prisoner to take pity on. God sent her to me.
She talks as if it is all sewn up: my release, my move to the convent, my welcome by the sisters. She has even already made my bed up. And no, it is not as narrow as the one I have to sleep in here. That is more of a camp bed than a conventional bed.
‘Hope is poison,’ I say.
‘Despair is poison,’ she corrects me.
‘What is the first thing you want to do when they let you out?’ Or: ‘What would you do now, at this moment, if you were free?’
Most women answer: go shopping. If they answer. Or: have a bath with lots of bath foam or oil. Because here we can only shower. And a new towel every day, because here we have to dry ourselves for a week with the same one. And then they start talking about brands and smells and colours, and about a bath in the shape of a heart or a shell or a square bath, or a bath with a jacuzzi, and that goes on until you have the feeling you’ve had a bath. No kidding.
Or they say: lying in bed all day with my man. With a man, it doesn’t matter who. Renting a gigolo, spreading jam on my nipples and all over my sex and making him lick it up. Not jam but honey, or chocolate paste.
And then there’s always one who pretends she has heard ‘all over my legs’. ‘What? Jam all over your legs?’
‘Sex!’
And she says they can start practising, as you don’t need a man for that.
Don’t hear that smut. Don’t think of the hours in bed with M and a girlfriend of his. He called her Sasha, because in the skating rink she wore a white fur hat, and a fur muff. Real chinchilla. She claimed. Stolen from her godmother’s wardrobe. Sometimes she put the hat on in bed. And she stroked my back with the muff. So soft! And M was jealous because I sucked her nipples, but we couldn’t both suck his penis, could we? I had to leave his nipples alone. He couldn’t stand me touching them, so I sucked her nipples. Or bit them gently. What else was I supposed to do? Stare at the ceiling?
And later, while the two of them were at it, I got out of bed and danced bare-arsed with the muff as my only item of clothing. I fluttered through the room, I sang and leapt about, and those two stopped to look at me. I swear it’s true! They preferred looking at me to going on fucking, I was so beautiful. Beautiful and elegant and attractive, and strong, really strong.
He’ll get up and come to me, I thought. He’ll want to stick his prick in me. And he got up. His prick was gleaming with the moisture from her cunt. He bore down on me like a knight with his lance, and she got out of bed too, they both wanted to be with me. I went on dancing and dancing, while they grabbed me and kissed me and licked me. I, Odette, was their queen. Their mighty queen, their Salome.
I know what some women here do with each other, but I don’t join in, ever. Not even if I want to terribly. It would be a trap. The next day it would be all over the papers. I would be called the instigator, the violator. The things I’ve experienced here! Indescribable. And the worst ones are those who come on friendly.
This is my greatest fear: that Sister Virginie is setting a trap for me. That she is making me believe that I can go and live in the convent, only to pull out at the last moment and make fun of me. You fell for it! Then she tears the crucifix from her neck, and spits on it. Who says that she’s really a nun? What if the devil has sent her?
‘You don’t have to trust me, my child. Trust in God.’
But perhaps I’m the gullible sod.
She mustn’t think that I’m going to pray with her every day in that convent. Or that I’m always going to watch the news with them. And she definitely mustn’t think… but no, they’re too old for that, and too chaste.
You never know these things of course.
‘In that area a mother doesn’t know her own daughter.’ My mother said.
But later she said: ‘I always knew.’
And she said: ‘Rotten to the core.’
She had said to me about her sex life: ‘I always let your father have his way. If he wanted sex while I was having my period, we had sex while I was having my period. If he wanted to lick me while I was having my period, I let him lick me while I was having my period. That’s the best thing a woman can do. If she wants to keep her man, if she’s serious about him.’
Of course it’s the best thing.
My father thought that women were infertile during menstruation, said my mother. That’s how it began. And when he knew better, he went on doing it.
Each to his own.
My mother lost far more blood than I did. And for longer, for seven or eight days at a time. I always knew when she had her period, because the sheets were dirty. ‘My blood’s too thin,’ she said. ‘It gushes out.’
We left the sheets as they were until after her menstruation. There was no point in putting clean sheets on since the next morning they were dirty again.
My father had damaged something inside. She didn’t want to admit it, but it was true. He was a saint for her. He was a man. They could do whatever they liked. They wrote the rules themselves.
I never want a man again.
Never. Again.
‘They all want the same thing, Odette. There’s not one you can rely on. Except for the gays, but they’re not men.’
And I wanted it too. I wanted it too.
I felt it in my stomach, in my cunt, in my throat.
Oh yes. Now. Please, please, please. Don’t stop. There, yes. More. And hoping you won’t have to beg. That he won’t stop before it comes. And that he won’t notice how badly I want it.
But I don’t want it any more now. I don’t want to want it anymore.
‘You must pray, my child.’
‘Yes, sister. I shall pray.
I pray.
Even after I’m released I shall pray. I shall pray in the chapel, and I shall pray in my room, and in the kitchen and the dining room and in the garden. I shall pray the whole time, everywhere. I shall even pray in the bathroom. Lead me not into temptation, lead me not into temptation. And thank you for this chance, and forgive me, forgive me. I shall be like the Hare Krishnas we sometimes saw in Charleroi, Hooray Krishnas, M called them, but without a tambourine or pink and ochre robes, and I won’t shave my head either, and of course I won’t sing Hare Krishna but Hail Mary full of Grace the Lord be with you the Lord be with you the Lord be with you. They should lock those maniacs up, said M. Christ, a person could no longer do his shopping at his leisure in his own town. Yes, M, of course, M, it’s a disgrace, M. I would have liked to walk with them, think of nothing, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, pray for us poor sinners and blessed is Jesus, the fruit of your womb, le fruit de vos entrailles, priez pour nous, pauvres
