What’s wrong with me today? Why am I worrying about all these things that probably don’t even matter? I walk around the apartment, wandering aimlessly from room to room. Passing the guest bathroom, I look in at Minnie. She’s down on the floor, wearing her knee pads, scouring the grout between the floor tiles. Viveca’s a stickler about clean grout; she has Minnie use some bleaching agent to get it white. I walk past my poster, annie oh: a shock to the system! February 1–March 31 at viveca c gallery. She went all out for that show: ads in the Times, the New Yorker, and New York. Hired that publicist who got me those TV interviews that I was such a nervous wreck about. . . . Back in the kitchen, I grab the remote and change the channel. On the Today show, that Dr. Nancy lady is cautioning Ann Curry about some new medical thing we all have to worry about. I channel-surf past Cookie Monster, cartoons, cake decorating. On CNBC, they’re talking about the global economy—the looming debt crisis in Greece that the Germans may or may not rescue them from. Viveca’s mentioned the possibility of Greece defaulting, too, and how, for some reason I didn’t understand, it could be good for her business if the euro is devalued. It’s funny: she identifies so strongly with her Greek heritage. You would think she’d be more concerned about the country’s balance sheet than her own. . . . The old movie channel’s showing Mildred Pierce. There’s Joan Crawford with her shoulder pads and severe eyebrows, talking to her maid, who I recognize. Whom I recognize? It’s that little actress from Gone With the Wind—the slave with the squeaky voice who didn’t “know nothin’ bout birthing babies.” Slaves, maids: it wasn’t as if the studios were going to hire that actress to play anything else. At least Viveca doesn’t expect Minnie to show up at the apartment in one of those old-fashioned uniforms with the little hat and frilly apron. Minnie wears the same clothes most days: her beige Sean John sweat suit and her plaid canvas sneakers. Marissa tells me that Sean John is that rap guy, Diddy or P. Diddy or whatever he calls himself. One time when she was here, she complimented Minnie on her taste. Told her she liked Sean John clothes, too. And Minnie had smiled her toothless smile and told her she picked it up “for cheap” at a street fair in Newark. . . . On the Chris tian channel, the pompadoured host is chatting about Jesus’s love with a plump old lady in a pastel party dress and bright red lipstick. I suddenly realize it’s Dale Evans. She died, didn’t she? This must be a rerun. My foster mother, the first one, used to send me to school every day with an American cheese and mustard sandwich and an apple inside a rusty Roy Rogers and Dale Evans lunch box. (No Thermos like the other kids; I had to drink from the fountain.) Roy and Dale were passé by then, and I was jealous of the cool lunch boxes some of the other girls in my class carried: Dr. Kildare, The Beverly Hillbillies, and then that crème de la crème of lunch boxes, Meet the Beatles. . . .

  Carrying Viveca’s package down the hall to our bedroom, I glance in again at Minnie. She’s seated on the edge of our soaking tub, taking a break from her grout cleaning. She’s got her knee pads on, her legs spread so far apart that she could be giving birth. I wave; she waves back. When I enter the bedroom, they startle me again: those dresses. The brides.

  All three of the Vera Wangs are beautiful, but none is me. What is me is the dress I’d already bought off the rack at that vintage dress shop I like in Tribeca: a basket-weave shift, bright yellow with bold diagonal turquoise stripes—two hundred dollars marked down to $129.99. I like those funky stripes, its above-the-knee length. The label says Mary Quant. I looked her up. Wikipedia says she was a mod British designer, popular during the 1960s. Cool, I thought, but when I tried it on and showed it to Viveca, she said, “Sweetheart, it’s cute and it looks adorable on you, but to me it says sundress, not wedding dress. It’s . . . youthful. On our special day, I’d love to see you in something a little more elegant and celebratory. Just think of all the lesbians over the years who couldn’t be brides. We’re honoring them, too. In another era, we would have had to pass as spinsters who couldn’t find men to marry them.” She’d laughed when she said “spinsters,” it’s so far out of the realm of who she is, who she thinks we are.

  Lesbians: that’s what I am now. Right? I’m marrying a woman, aren’t I? And I’ve slept with another woman—Priscilla, the wiry tomboy I used to waitress with at Friendly’s. But I don’t see our marrying as something that necessarily balances the scales of justice or honors the dykes of yesteryear. . . . Spinsters who couldn’t find men to marry them: why had she said that? We’ve both been married to men. Viveca says I should pack the dress and bring it along on our wedding trip—that I can wear it when we shop or go out for lunch. She’s also suggested I go with her the next time she gets a bikini wax. “There’s more nudity than not on the beaches in Mykonos and hairless pussies are de rigueur,” she said. Viveca gets a massage and a wax every other week. Her pubic patch is a fashionably thin vertical line that stops just above her labia. I might go topless at those beaches when we’re over there, but I am not going bottomless. And anyway, I don’t even like the beach that much. It’s different for Viveca. She’s Greek. Her given name is Vasiliki, not Viveca. She’s anglicized the name for commercial reasons. She tans so effortlessly. But with my red hair and Irish complexion, I have to be careful. I could burn to a crisp.

  I look over toward the bureau, and there’s that index card I scrawled on yesterday. I pick it up and read what I’d written down. After Chaos arose broad-breasted Gaia, the primordial goddess of the Earth. . . . Among their children were the Cyclopes, the Hundred-Handed giants. Monsters, like the monsters that are being birthed in the poster hanging in the hallway, the hundred-handed monster in my life—the shark who swims in the waters of my memory. Whose voice I both dread and entertain because it drives my art. . . . I’m hit by a pang of missing Viveca: the sound of her voice, the warm safety of her body next to mine. I approach the Gaia dress. Touch it, run the beautiful green silk between my fingers. After Chaos arose broad-breasted Gaia. I sit on our bed and open the Neiman Marcus box. Unscrew the top of Viveca’s perfume bottle and inhale her scent: orange blossoms, vanilla. I love her. Miss her the way Diane Sawyer misses Mike Nichols when he’s away and she puts on his shirt. . . .

  I read the index card over and over, and as I do, I begin to feel the agitation, familiar and strange. Gaia . . . Gaia. Am I on the verge of something? Is it coming?

  Maybe not. Maybe my comfortable life here has begun to snuff out my creativity. Maybe I’ve peaked and it’s all downhill from here.

  I shake my head. Shake off my self-doubt. My brain is spinning. My fingers are flexing, making invisible art. It’s exciting and scary when it comes, like watching an approaching cyclone and standing defiantly in its path. Maybe before this day is out, the weather inside my brain will set me spinning. Maybe I’ll find myself in my studio, facing my need to scream out. Fight back against the monster. Make art.

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  Copyright

  WE ARE WATER. Copyright © 2013 by Wally Lamb. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  An excerpt from “Girl Skipping Rope” was previously published in Ploughshares, Winter 2011-2012, Issue 37.4.

  “Ghost of a Chance.” Copyright © 1993, 1967, 1963 by Adrienne Rich, from Collected Early Poems: 1950-1970 by Adrienne Rich. Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

  FIRST EDITION

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

  ISBN: 978-0-06-194102-3 (Hardcover)

  ISBN: 978-0-06-228716-8 (Signed Edition)

  13 14 15 16 17 OV/RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Contributors

  Kelly Donnelly, a native of Boston’s South Shore, was born in 1962. She has worked extensively as a bartender and a floral designer. Donnelly’s hobbies include gardening and photography. Convicted of negligent assault in 2004, she is serving an eleven-year sentence. At York, Kelly Donnelly has worked as a recreational aide and a librarian’s assistant. She has participated in the Prison Arts Program, the Poetry Project, the Avodah Dance Ensemble, Alternatives to Violence, and an art-appreciation course taught through Three Rivers Community College. Of her writing, Donnelly says, “I started keeping a journal many years ago to record my feelings. I use this as a form of therapy. Recently I’ve begun writing poetry and enjoy that very much.”

  Born in 1947, Bonnie Jean Foreshaw was raised in south Florida. She was convicted of first-degree homicide in 1986 and sentenced to a forty-five-year term at the Niantic Prison. At the time, this was the lengthiest sentence ever given an inmate at the women’s facility. Foreshaw has been imprisoned longer than any other woman serving time at York CI.

  Legal experts familiar with Bonnie Foreshaw’s case maintain that her public defender failed to meet the minimum standard of competency provided by the Constitution and that, given the circumstances surrounding her case, she should have been charged with manslaughter, not first-degree homicide. Attorney Mary Werblin, who has done extensive pro bono legal work to get this case reexamined, contends that Bonnie Foreshaw’s trial exposes the court’s gender and class bias.

  Bonnie Foreshaw has four children and four grandchildren. Prior to her arrest, she was a Bloomfield, Connecticut, resident who worked as a machinist and served as a union steward. She has also been an Avon cosmetics representative and a Jaycees president. At York, she has served for many years as a “big sister,” surrogate mom, and mentor to younger inmates, particularly youthful offenders. Active in Literacy Volunteers, she has helped others attain their general equivalency diplomas and acquire computer skills. She was one of the first graduates of York CI’s hospice program, and as a hospice volunteer has comforted terminally ill inmates in their last days and hours.

  Bonnie Foreshaw’s personal essay, “Faith, Power and Pants,” was published in the anthology Couldn’t Keep It to Myself. Excerpts from “Florida Memories,” the essay published here, were featured in the Judy Dworin Performance Ensemble’s production, Time In.

  An articulate and respected leader of the writing workshop, Bonnie Foreshaw is one of its charter members. “I write to ease stress,” she says, “and to purge myself of dreadful memories of the physical violence I’ve endured. I write what, for many years, I could not even verbalize and this helps me to heal and move on.”

  One of the writing group’s most diligent participants, Lynne Friend, born in 1959, entered York CI in 1998. She is serving a twenty-five-year sentence for manslaughter. Before her incarceration, Friend was a restaurant manager who enjoyed tennis, reading, music, and movies. At York, she works for DataCon Data Entry Services, a prison employment program. Her pastimes include writing, reading, crossword puzzles, increasing her vocabulary, and participating in a book-discussion group. Excerpts from her essay “The Marionette,” printed here, were incorporated into the script of the Judy Dworin Performance Ensemble’s production of Time In. Popular with her fellow inmates, Lynne Friend says she prefers solitude to engagement with the daily dramas that life in prison brings.

  “I write nonfiction as a way of exploring and making sense of the traumas that have charted the course of my life,” Lynne Friend says. “I have written humorous stories, too, and these provide a welcome respite from the dark times I remember and write about out of necessity.”

  Convicted of larceny and conspiracy, Lynda Gardner was born in 1948. A mother and grandmother, she entered York Prison in 2005 and is serving a fifteen-year sentence, to be suspended after six years. She is in recovery from alcohol, drug, and gambling addictions. At York, Gardner is employed by DataCon Data Entry Services and enjoys sketching, reading, dancing, and “learning, learning, learning.” She was a featured performer in York CI’s production of the Judy Dworin Performance Ensemble’s Time In, an exploration of female inmates’ lives.

  “I write to begin the process of forgiving myself and others,” Lynda Gardner comments. After years of “drugging myself to a numb state” to escape the pain of her childhood, Gardner says she tries to honor the miracle of having survived by sharing her story of recovery.

  In February of 1996, fourteen-year-old Robin Ledbetter, an alternative-to-detention program runaway whose drug-addicted parents had been unable to raise her, conspired with a fifteen-year-old male acquaintance to rob a Hartford cab driver. When the driver resisted, he was stabbed and later died of his wounds. Ledbetter contends that her co-conspirator stabbed the victim, a claim which state of Connecticut prosecutors refute. The year before Ledbetter’s arrest, Connecticut’s General Assembly had passed a law allowing juveniles who faced serious felony charges to be tried as adults. A jury convicted Robin Ledbetter of robbery, conspiracy to commit robbery, and felony murder. During her sentencing hearing, her judge spoke of the community’s need to rescue “this great wash of children who are being lost to us” because of parents ill-equipped to raise them. He then sentenced the fourteen-year-old to a prison term of fifty years. Robin Ledbetter, born in 1981, became one of the first juveniles incarcerated at the maximum-security York Prison.

  In an October 16, 2005, article titled “Sentence Wasting Another Life,” Hartford Courant columnist Helen Ubiñas wrote of Ledbetter’s trial and sentencing: “The juvenile justice pendulum that is continually swinging from merciful to merciless was on the punishment end of the arc. She took part in a killing at a time when Americans were sick of children with guns getting away with murder, when politicians and pundits throughout the country told Americans to brace themselves for a generation of ‘super-predators.’ When states embraced criminal justice policies for children without stopping to consider whether they would work.” Of the judge’s comments and his subsequent sentencing of the defendant, Ubiñas commented, “Do you get that logic? I don’t. Save the child from her parents’ fatal flaws by throwing the child away?”

  In May 2005, the Juvenile Law Center of Philadelphia filed an amicus petition in the case of Robin Ledbetter vs. Commissioner of Correction, arguing that, at the time she confessed to her involvement in a felony murder, Ledbetter did not understand that she could be prosecuted as an adult defender. The petition presented research that confirmed that children are developmentally different from adults in their cognitive capacity, and that adolescence is a period of major neurobiological development, including the ability for abstract thought, cognitive abilities, and decision-making skills. Because of these factors, the petition further argues that juveniles require greater protections than adults to ensure that a confession is voluntary. The justices hearing Ledbetter’s appeal affirmed the decisions of the trial court, concluding that justice had been served.

  Twenty-six-year-old Robin Ledbetter, whose hobbies include drawing and crocheting, says she writes for rehabilitation and release. “But I struggle against giving up on myself when I focus on the length of my sentence.” Having entered York Correctional Institution in 1996, she is not scheduled to be released until 2046. She has made two attempts to end her life. Ledbetter asked Helen Ubiñas, “How do you restart a life at 64 when you never started it in the first place?”

  Christina MacNaughton has studied theater at home and abroad and was a featured performer in York CI’s production of the Judy Dworin Performance Ensemble’s Time In, an exploration of women prisoners’ lives in song, word, and movement. In recovery from drug addiction, MacNaughton is serving an eight-year sentence and was recently released to a halfway house. At York, she was active in Alternatives to Violence, the Prison Pup Partnership, and Project RAP. She also served as a teacher’s aide and a hospice volunteer. “I write because I’ve always wanted to live a million different lives and experience a million different things,” Christina MacNaughton has said. “Writing has been a best friend, a lover, and even an enemy—my constant companion.”

  Born in 1975 and incarcerated in 1993, Brendalis Medina is one of the charter members of the writing workshop. Her essay “Hell and How I Got Here” was published in Couldn’t Keep It to Myself and has been read and studied by middle school and high school students around the country. Medina is serving a twenty-five-year sentence without parole for a gang-related killing at which she was present. Ordered with three of her fellow gang members to accomplish a “beat-down” of a fourth woman, Medina contends that she was taken by surprise when one of her “sisters” stabbed and killed the victim during the fight. Each of the four teens was charged and later convicted of first-degree homicide. Medina maintains that she participated in the violence but is innocent of felony murder.

  At York, Brenda Medina obtained her high school general equivalency diploma and had earned thirty-six credits toward an associate’s degree before the state of Connecticut discontinued college-level courses for inmates. She has served as a janitor and a food-service worker. A bilingual tutor registered with Literacy Volunteers of America, Medina has also taught incarcerated Latinas to read, speak, and write English. In addition, Medina has served as reporter, photographer, and editor for the York Voice, an inmate newspaper. In 2002, Brenda Medina designed, organized, and implemented York’s Latina Appreciation Week.