--CONGRATULATIONS. YOU REALLY HURT ME.
Another one’s set to die today and as usual my stomach’s a swamp of
nausea. I forget I’ve poured a bowl of cereal,
staring out the window at a wall of gray rain, hypnotized by nothing and
everything, the way it feels when you’re in a broken marriage, and now my
spoonful of Wheaties tastes like wet newsprint.
“You could get another job,” my husband says, reading my mind again which I
hate because there are plenty of things I’d rather not have him knowing. “It doesn’t pay squat anyway.”
So he says. He always says.
We’ve got bills, a car loan, his big ass truck loan, can barely pay the
minimum on our credit cards, with interest piling up every month, constantly gnawing
at me like some hideous flesh-eating disease.
Well, if Texas wants to kill again, someone’s got to be there to record it,
and I’m their gal.
Far as I know we’re the only state that chronicles a condemned criminal’s
last words. It feels wrong, perverted,
like watching your sibling undress, yet it’s legal and actually required. I write down their final statement word for
word and enter it into a computer where it sits in the Texas Department of Criminal
Justice data base, free for anyone to see, though why on earth would they want
to?
A lot of times the inmate thanks the Warden, which I don’t get. He’s the one organizing your execution, and
he’s looking the other way as he does it, which again is like being in a bad
marriage where you know your spouse is cheating but you’re just too tired to
fight, or too frail to run.
The other thing most of them do is say goodbye to friends and family, which
is what you’d expect. Sometimes they
confess a secret sin they’ve been harboring and the relief on their face as
they confess is the opposite of the death they’re facing, as if they’ve escaped
from prison after all.
We’ve been married going on twelve years.
I suspect Darold’s philandering started about year seven which I know
they say is when couples get the itch. I
never got that, though Darold did once give me the crabs. Said it was from a toilet seat. I looked it up on the internet and it’s a
possibility, though slim as winning Powerball.
My
sister, Arlene, doesn’t understand why I stay with him but she’s got a good man
who still buys her yellow roses and gave her the one-of-kind nickname Renny,
which I think is downright adorable, especially when he says it while fluffing
up her mop of orange hair. Darold’s
called me Bitch more times than my own name, Tammy. He’s come close, but he’s never hit me, so
there’s that.
The
thing Arlene doesn’t understand is how different we are, even though she and I
are twins. It’s like that line in the
movie, “The Way We Were” where the teacher reads a winning story that Barbra
Streisand is sure will be hers only it’s not, it’s Bob Redford’s with the
opening line: “In a way he was like the country he lived in; everything came
too easily to him.” That’s Arlene to a
t, though she don’t know it. I’m not
spiteful, but I’m not deaf, dumb and blind either. Nearly every day, fruit falls into my
sister’s lap, most of it golden apples.
It’s
a bold risk, Darold telling me to quit my job since I know he lost his last
week. I didn’t even need to probe, since
word flies around these parts like the wind.
Still Darold’s going to pretend for some reason. He’s got his overalls on and I’ve packed his
lunch pail and he’s out the door, saying “See ya tonight,” without mentioning
what I’ve got to go through today or how hard it’s going to be.
Jackass. I married a jackass. I guess that makes me one, too.
I
sit at the table, knowing I’ve got to get going while some of the inmates’ most
recent entries flutter through my head like shutters banging in a storm.
“I’m ready to go home.”
“To
the victim’s family, I want you to know that I hope you let go of all the hate
because of all my actions. I came in as
a lion and I go out as a peaceful lamb.”
“Tell them I finished strong. I love y’all.
Richie, Brad and John. I love you
Auntie. God is good and I’m done.”
Most
of them find God before they die. Grace
is such a meal ticket, a life raft tossed overboard when you’re about to choke
to death on saltwater. It makes
sense. But I wonder if they mean it, if
they really love God all the way down to their toes, the way a woman should
love her man, and vice-versa. If they
don’t, God’ll be able to tell. If he
knows the number of hairs on your head, well, shit, he’s knows everything then.
I
volunteer at our church twice a week when MOPs is going on--MOPs being Mothers
of Preschoolers. Moms set up tables and
meet in the service area, mostly gossiping, but it’s a break away from their
rug rats for a while, and they’re usually grateful for the respite. The kids can get cranky, but I like being buried
in the squalling noise and chaos. I like
how curious the kids are about everything and how respectful they sound when
they look up call me Miss Tammy. Sometimes
I even take one as my own, in my imagination I do, and I picture myself making
the little boy or girl waffles for breakfast, taking them shopping for clothes
or roaming the food store aisle with them in my cart.
Our
pastor’s a burly man with a handle bar moustache who reminds me of a redheaded
Teddy Roosevelt. In last week’s sermon
he shared how his wife, LouAnne, came down with a deadly disease way back when
they were missionaries overseas and LouAnne was pregnant. A doctor said it was more than likely the
unborn baby would suffer sever fetal damage and he recommended an
abortion. Pastor Reevus told us how he
prayed as if he was in a fever himself, asking God over and over to tell him
the correct course of action. “And you
know what happened?” Pastor Reevus asked the congregation. We knew but didn’t say, and after a pause he
slammed his palm on the pulpit. “God
answered clear as day.” Then Pastor
Reevus called his daughter up to the podium.
She was a skinny scarecrow of a girl, shy and nervous, which made her
all the more endearing. “This,” Pastor
Reevus said with wet eyes as he put an arm around his daughter, “is our
miracle. This is why I believe.”
I
believe too, but my faith is shaky and I know I’m not as strong as Pastor
Reevus, not even as strong as most of the condemned inmates.
“There are no endings, only beginnings. Love y’all.
See you soon.”
“I didn’t get my SphagettiOs. I want the press to know that.”
“Let’s ride!”
On
the drive Arlene calls and I put her on speaker. She bubbling over excited. Mason bought her twin lab pups. It’s their anniversary, seven years. I’ve forgotten, though I fake it, feeling plastic
for lying to my sis who, as far as I know, has never been anything but truthful
with me through these many years.
When
she tells me, “I want to name one of the puppies after you,” I get flustered
and emotional, tears splashing right away without warning like those menopause
commercials they show on TV, but my way of responding to her sweet gesture is
to say, “He bought you bitches?”
I
don’t know where it came from. I guess I
just like being the one to say bitch instead of Darold. I guess, not so far deep down, I am jealous
of Arlene after all.
“Female
pups,” Arlene says, almost a question.
“And
you want to name a dog after me?”
“Well,
I thought it was a kind gesture.”
“Why
not a gerbil or a piglet? Why not
something really filthy?”
“Hey
now.”
“Hey
now yourself,” I say, clicking off, feeling a tangle of rage and guilt, knowing
Arlene meant well, knowing too that she always does everything the right way
while I hardly ever do.
At
the prison everything is as quiet as a library, a cemetery, a moment at the
front door of a trailer when a husband comes home from a bar smelling like the
sharp tang of vagina.
I
go through screening and down the hall looking straight ahead, the way they
tell you to do if you’re up high somewhere when you’re afraid of heights.
A
couple of times somebody says, “Hey, Tammy,” and I try to nod but my neck has
become a tree stump, as if severed from my head, and I’m unable to do anything
other than stride ahead.
The
halls are narrow, and seem more tapered every time I walk them. I know I’m getting bigger, fatter than I’ve
ever been, but it’s a claustrophobic feeling, like the time Arlene and I snuck
through Old Man Miller’s drainage pipe and I got stuck after she’d made it to
the other side. I was there for hours,
until she summoned Dad and then later I was given the belt on my backside--thirteen
lashes, one for every year I was old at the time.
The
interesting thing, the thing nobody mentions, is that most people Texas
executes are Hispanics. Look it up,
you’ll see. I’ve only known Mexicans to
be friendly, family-first type of folk.
I can’t even imagine one getting stirred up enough to kill somebody, not
to mention his wife and daughter as Enrique Vasquez is reported to have done.
For
some reason, I always expect the inmates to be thin rails, but they never
are. These are men getting ready to die
and that’s why they show up with bodies like Rocky Balboa’s.
Same
with Enrique Vasquez. Even with his
prison uni on it’s easy to see he’s got a body builder’s physique. Ordinarily condemned men enter this room
looking resigned or sheepish, like a dog that’s been beat for peeing on the rug,
but not Enrique. His big brown eyes are
bumblebees trapped in a jar, bumping up against glass time and time again,
hitting one side of the jar then the other, then the lid, trying to pop it
open.
He
has two visible tattoos. On his right
forearm it says Maria with the last “a” trailing off into a stem that then
forms a rose. On his other forearms it
says Choco, with a wispy loop off the “o” turned into a stem that forms an
identical rose matching Maria’s. Choco
was his daughter, a nickname he gave her because she so loved chocolate.
Before
I even do preliminaries Enrique jumps in.
“I didn’t do what they say. I
told the lawyer, the judge, the jury, I told everyone, but they wouldn’t
believe.”
His
eyes have turned black now, not menacing, but rather charcoal smudges, like the
kind Darold would have on his hands after working at the shop back when he
still had a job.
Usually
inmates look around the room, at the guards, but Enrique has only looked at me
and he won’t stop staring.
“I
did not do it. I don’t care about dying
but I don’t want to be known for killing my wife and daughter. I would never harm them. They were everything to me.”
His
hands and ankles are cuffed, but he kneels down in front of me and just as he
does one of the guards grabs the back of his uni and the fabric rips, so the
guard then yanks Enrique by his hair and heaves him back into the chair.
Enrique
doesn’t seem to be bothered by this in the slightest. His eyes have never left mine, and while it’s
a cheater’s way out, I wish I was blind right now. The strained agony in Enrique’s face is a
portrait of death itself.
“I
didn’t do it,” he says, his voice a hoarse whisper now. “I didn’t.”
“Please,
sir,” I say, my drawl thicker than ever, as it always is when I’m nervous. “I just need your last words.”
“I
said I didn’t do it. I would never, ever
hurt them.”
“Anything
else?”
“You
have to believe me. You have to help.”
Help
has got to be the biggest word in the English language, even if it’s just four
simple letters. I never liked that
Beatles song, but I never change the station when it comes on. Help. I
need somebody. Yeah, we all do. I do.
Enrique does right now. But it’s
too late. Too late for him and me and
every other sonofabitch that’s been screwed over.
“Sir,”
I say, “do you want those to be your last words?”
“What?”
I
look down at my notepad which is bouncing between my quivering thighs. “Your last words: are they You have to help?”
“Yes! Please.
I loved my wife and child. What
man does not?”
“Sir,
one last time. What will you say as your
last words?”
Enrique,
for the first time, looks away from me, his head flapping backward, eyes raised
upward at the bald white ceiling, his neck craned so far back that it seems his
head might snap off.
“Sir,”
I say, a trickle of piss escaping, wetting my groin area.
Enrique’s
head comes swinging down. He leans
forward, too close, and so, Buck, the largest of the guards, hits Enrique on
the knee with his club and Enrique’s leg responds reflexively, leaping out and
kicking my ankle.
“Hey,
asshole, knock that shit off,” Buck says, bringing his stubby club across
Enrique’s throat and squeezing while Enrique flails.
“Buck. Buck!” I say.
“It’s okay. Let him be.”
Buck
keeps his choke hold a beat longer, but finally eases up, removing his club.
“It’s
all right,” I say to Enrique, though it’s not, though nothing is. “I just need your last words.”
And then we’re done. You’re done.
It’s finished.
Enrique
looks at me square in the eye, jaw flexed, lips thin and pursed and I feel
guilty for some reason, as if I convicted him myself.
I
look down at the floor where there’s a red smear in the shape of an oversized
comma. “Sir, I’ll only ask this one last
time. What are your last words?”
He
takes a sharp breath through his nose, nostrils flaring like a stallion, stands
and nods to the guards. When Buck takes
his elbow and leads Enrique away, I write in my notepad: Last Statement: I
didn’t do it.
On
the drive home I think about death, about murder and what kind of person would
be capable of killing a woman and child.
A jury convicted Enrique, but DNA evidence has been known to clear lots
of criminals after they’ve been convicted.
Only God and Enrique know the honest truth about his case.
It’s
hard not to feel hypocritical, as I often do, remembering the three abortions
I’ve had since being married to Darold, all without him knowing. Abortion is a woman’s choice and not murder,
I know that, but still it’s a weight I carry around like all these extra pounds
I’ve put on.
At
home I take a bubble bath for the first time in years. I light candles that I’ve placed around the
tub, get in and read Sylvia Plath’s “Ariel,” not understanding much of the
poems, but liking the music in her words.
She was thirty years old, same as I am now, when she stuck her head in
an oven while her kids were in the next room.
She stuffed rags in the bottom seams of the doors so that none of the
poisonous fumes would get out. That
woman must have really been suffering.
If
Darold follows through with his charade of pretending to still be employed
he’ll be home in an hour, so I get out, dry myself, dress, and fill two
suitcases full of clothes and shoes. I
want to tell him face to face that I’m leaving, that I’m finally strong enough
to do what I should’ve done a long time ago.
When
Darold’s not home by eight o’clock, I rip a page from my notebook meaning to
write him a note, but nothing comes to mind and so I leave the blank paper on
the kitchen table, grab my bags and walk out without looking back, without a
solitary regret.
In
the car, I drive in silence, hearing myself breathing. It reminds me of the last breath I saw
Enrique take.
He
said he didn’t kill his wife and child, and jury or not, I decide I’m going to
take his word for it that he’s innocent.
He’s dead now, so it might not matter to anyone else, but it does to
me.
Outside
the night is as black as it’s ever been, and just as soothing. As I scan for the moon, one Last Statement
comes to mind: Let’s ride!
