“Was that when you volunteered to take the lie detector test?” Nora asked Silvia.
“Yes. I thought that as soon as they knew I was telling the truth, they’d stop suspecting me.”
Silvia gave another mournful head shake.
“But it didn’t go like I thought it would. The examiner asked if I’d started the fire. I said I hadn’t. He told me the polygraph machine indicated I was lying.”
Nora growled.
She’d learned from Silvia’s lawyer that the polygraph had shown no sign of deceit.
The examiner had misled Silvia. He’d hoped to trick her into admitting guilt.
Nora rephrased Silvia’s last remark. “He said he thought you weren’t being honest?”
Silvia nodded. “That rattled me. When he asked why I started the fire, I said I couldn’t remember starting it.”
Nora was furious.
Silvia’s statement had been elicited by a questionable interrogation technique.
Based on that meager hint of a confession, the cops decided they’d caught their arsonist.
“Somehow,” Silvia continued, “my answer got into a newspaper story. People who knew me started believing I’d set the fire.”
Nora heard a thickening in Silvia’s voice. Her client’s eyes were filling with tears.
She and Silvia both needed a break.
“Let’s back up a little,” she said to Silvia. “Tell me your life story up until that night.”
“How far back should I go?” Silvia asked.
“We have plenty of time,” Nora aid. “Start from where and when you were born.”
“I was born in 1990 in Yakima.”
Nora interrupted. “In your letter, you said you’re a Chicana. Did your parents move from Mexico to Yakima?”
Silvia laughed. “Both my parents grew up on the Texas side of the Rio Grande. Their ancestors were living there before Texas was a state. My heritage is Mexican. But as far back as I can go, everyone in my family was born in what’s become the US.”
“You sound like a Washington native to me. And you also speak Spanish?”
“My folks moved to Yakima three years before I was born. They left a lot of Spanish-speaking relatives behind in Texas. My parents wanted me to be fluent in Spanish so I could talk to the rest of the family.”
“Why did your parents move to Yakima?”
Silvia laughed. “To grow apples. They bought a small orchard and were trying to make a go of it commercially.”
Smiling, she added, “They were very busy but they managed to give me two beautiful little sisters. I loved my home, my family, my school. But when I was twelve, all that ended.”
Nora took notes as she listened to the sad story.
An underfinanced agricultural effort.
A bad harvest.
Money trouble.
Divorce.
Silvia added more unhappy details. Her father returned to Texas.
Her mother moved to Parma and got a job with a cousin who owned a house cleaning service.
Her mother was distracted by work, preoccupied with finding a new husband.
Silvia looked after her sisters. They were the only bright spot in her changed world.
She hated her new school and she dropped out during ninth grade.
Her sisters were eleven and thirteen. They didn’t need her to babysit any longer.
She found other amusements. Her sisters did, too.
Silvia’s mother didn’t care that her three daughters were running wild.
At age seventeen, Silvia was the first to get pregnant.
“I was glad,” she said. “I wanted a child. But I worried I might not know enough to be a good mother. My doctor said that worrying I’d be a bad mother meant I’d be a good one.”
Silvia smiled as if revisiting a fond memory. “The doctor gave me heart. I decided to become the best mother I could be.”
She didn’t want the baby’s father in her child’s life. He didn’t object.
The birth of her daughter galvanized Silvia and she doubled her efforts.
With help from a state-funded program for single mothers, she earned her GED and enrolled in a community college course.
“I wanted to get into nursing. Become an aide or a practical nurse. So I could help people.”
Nora looked up from her note taking.
“At the time of the fire, you were raising your daughter Gloria and going to college?”
“I was in my last quarter that June. Summer school. I was studying for a quiz.”
A tremor shook Silvia.
She took a deep breath and added, “Gloria. My home. My schoolwork. Like my whole life had gone up in flames.”
The list overwhelmed Nora. She didn’t know how to console her client.
Instead, she made a sympathetic noise and focused on the one thing that wasn’t lost.
“Do you still have those college credits you earned?” she asked Silvia.
“I do. And I earned more. My counselor arranged for me to finish my last quarter by correspondence.”
Silvia sat up straighter, as if she was proud of herself.
“When the new warden came on board,” she continued, “I had my associate degree. The warden picked me for a pilot program she started.”
Lifting her chin, Silvia named a small private university in Tacoma.
“Last week, they awarded me my bachelor of arts.”
“Not a bachelor of science?” Nora registered Silvia’s nod. “You aren’t a registered nurse?”
“I lost interest in nursing after I was locked up.”
Silvia’s eyes crinkled at the corners. She was smiling like she’d heard a joke.
“Now, my goal is helping other women who got screwed by the so-called justice system. I majored in pre-law.”
She leaned toward Nora. “You’re my role model. That’s why I wrote to you for help. I want to be an appeals attorney like you.”
Nora laughed. “I guess you didn’t need my little tutorial on appeals.”
Silvia grinned. “I was happy to hear we were on the same page. What you described is what I want to do. Prove my innocence. Get out. Get my life back.”