SHE SAYS IT TO ME AT LEAST ONCE A WEEK THESE DAYS.
I’m scared.
Through the bars and putrid space in between our cells, through the apathetic watch guards who wish they were working with the Greyhounds or drug lords, through the darkened hours that have no identity to separate them from the daylight, through the throngs of a morning sun shifting into my cell, I hear Patsmith trembling.
I’m scared.
I know she’s not speaking just to me. I know she’s not speaking to anyone in particular, but I feel like maybe I can help her become less paranoid or petrified, at the very least, if I answer her once in a while. I mean, she’s not alone. Not alone-alone, as long as I’ve been here. That much I know.
Last week, just after her hourly triumvirate of, “Pat, I love you, Pat! I need you, Pat! I miss you, Pat!” she spoke directly to me for only the third time in the nearly five years we’ve resided next to each other.
“Are you awake, P?” she asked at precisely twenty-one past some hour in the middle of the day.
“Yeah,” I said. My voice cracked from dormancy when I tried to answer her.
Footsteps snaked around the corner like columns of black smoke. I was sure it was Nancy Rae. A different Nancy Rae. The behind-the-scenes Nancy Rae who didn’t feel the need to unroll her eyes and flip up her gums when lawyers and parents were in the visitor’s booth.
“Do you think that lawyer of yours will take on my case?” she asked.
Her voice slipped into my cell like a nightlight under the crack of a door.
“I don’t know. I can’t imagine Marlene Dixon is taking on any new clients.”
As much as I wanted to give Patsmith a few final months of possibility, Marlene Dixon didn’t care about human rights. Not really. Her longstanding heart, to which she finally claimed she’s grown into, was clearly targeted at me. Selective advocacy, preferred pro bono, self-righteous rationalization—whatever you want to call it.
“Don’t you already have a lawyer?” I asked. “Don’t you have like five? You’re always out in the visitor’s booth.”
“Yeah,” she said. The word just sort of dribbled out in multiple syllables. “But not for lawyers. Just visitors.”
“That’s got to be nice, though,” I said, and it shocked me that not even one word was sputtered acrimoniously. “My lawyers only visit about once a month. And before Ollie, other than journalists, I can’t remember the last person who even came to see me.”
“Ollie is the young one?” she said, sort of half-inquisitive, half-declarative. “The boy? Always parts his hair. Looks like he went to college.”
I smiled. “I would hope he at least went to college.”
“Yeah, him,” she said. “Think he’ll take my case?”
Footsteps filled the nearby cell. I didn’t know what to say. I spent years doing or saying the wrong thing on instinct. I didn’t want to do that to someone who has only a few weeks left. Days, even. No matter what she did, she deserves at least a little bit of honesty at this point.
“I lost my last appeal,” she finally said. Years of age seemed to congeal around her voice, as if in the course of a ten-second conversation, she jumped from forty to eighty. “I have two weeks. I don’t have enough time left to see my daughter. I need a lawyer to get me time with my daughter.”
My head dropped to my chest. Nancy Rae walked through the cells, spearing us with her gaze.
“How old is she?”
“Thirteen,” she said, laughing nervously. “She was only one when I was arrested.”
I waited again before responding. It takes time and quite a bit of practice to learn how to hold your tongue. Even here.
“She’s only thirteen,” Patsmith said again. “Thirteen. Almost fourteen.”
“I’m sorry,” I finally said. “I’m really sorry.”
If Marlene were here, she’d hardly recognize me.
But I didn’t put Patsmith in here. She did. She may not understand it now, but at some point, she’ll realize that she’s here for a reason. She did something wrong. She needs to be here. She’ll realize it. She will realize it.
Still, I just wanted to hold her hand.
And I wasn’t lying to her.
“Her father refuses to acknowledge me,” she said, “but my daughter wanted to know me about eight years ago. Someone in her class told her it would be important. Her stepmother, who she calls ‘Mom,’ also thought it would be good. They said it would heal her or something like that.”
“So she was only one when,” I stalled again, looking for the right words. I wish they told you that upon admission to prison, you’d lose vocabulary as quickly as you lost friends. “She was only one when—”
“—when I did my crime?” she said, finishing the sentence for me. “Less.”
“I see,” I said to her. I didn’t know what else to say. I’d only so much as looked at Patsmith from a distance, through bars or glass or a school of big-boned prison guards with necks as thick as goalposts. And again, “I’m sorry.”
She didn’t respond at first. I’ve garnered from the nightly ritual of blessing the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit that her priest probably told her she’d be going straight to hell if executed. (He probably should have told her that upon execution of her crime, but that’s another story altogether.) No wonder she lived in fear.
“You know,” I told her, “there’s nothing to be afraid of. When it happens, it happens. We all go at some point. Might as well make it mean something. You killed someone. An eye for an eye, right?”
“One of my lawyers tried to get me to convince my judge that I was crazy,” she said. “That I didn’t know what I was doing. That it was some sort of postpartum defense, but it didn’t take.”
“It’s not going to ever take,” I said, rather jumpy.
I didn’t mean for it to come across harsh or anything. Again, that’s another chapter that should be put in a “Welcome to Prison” pamphlet. Your not-so-subtle subtleties rise up out of your vocal cadence like punches on at least each occasion you’re allowed to interact with another. I cleared my throat.
“I just don’t think it’ll work. It didn’t work already, right?”
“I know,” she sighed. “I know that. It’s just … I want to see my daughter one more time.”
“Nothing’s gonna happen in two weeks’ time that hasn’t already been cleared up. You aren’t crazy. You know that. And even if you were—”
“I didn’t realize what I was doing in that convenience store, P. You gotta believe me. I didn’t know.”
Again, I smiled, as if she could see through the walls. I didn’t mean it in a condescending lilt. I meant it in a solid embrace of solidarity. I felt pity for her. Like she still believed something happened to her instead of the other way around.
I don’t know.
Maybe in retrospect, it was really envy. She still believed in herself, at least.
“Listen,” I said to her. “Did you know that some guy from Arkansas decided to shoot a couple of people in three days on a killing spree? He turned himself in and then, in the process, tried to shoot the cop arresting him. Idiot shot himself in the head, essentially self-lobotomizing whatever brain was there in the first place. You see what I’m saying. Clearly this guy was crazy or incompetent or whatever they want to call it, but from the point he shot himself, he certainly was an idiot. Couldn’t tie his shoes or tell anyone his birth date. And still, he was given a death sentence. They didn’t allow the insanity defense at all and allowed him to be executed.”
She was quiet. Or asleep. Or praying.
“He was given his last meal and asked his last words. Know what they were?” I continued. “ ‘I’m saving the dessert for later.’ ”
“I wonder if they saved it,” she said, after contemplating this far too long.
Visions of Patsmith slinked through our shared wall in a prism of sugary desserts.
“Why don’t you try to focus on all the visitors you have coming to see you before you go,” I said, changing the subject. “Think about it. Imagine if you knew when you were going to die on the outside, how amazing it would be to see how people felt before. When it actually counts, you know? It looks like you’ve got that already. That’s actually pretty nice.”
She didn’t know.
“So, who are all the people visiting you?”
“My family,” she said. “My pastor. My parents.”
Nancy Rae next stopped at my cell. I looked up to her just as she opened her mouth. Her bottom lip was filled with congealed tobacco. Little specs of blackened hairs seemed to crawl into the pink wedges between her teeth, holding tight in their new home.
“That’s really great,” I finally said. “Try to think about that.”
Nancy Rae fumbled around with her keys, looking for the one to my cell. When she finally found it, a smudge of pasty tobacco slipped out of her mouth and splattered on the floor.
“Singleton, you’ve got a visitor.”