Facing It
By
Garr Parks
They stare across the space
at
me reclining on my bunk; the two of them playing tricks with my mind, hiding
inside the granite, jamming my muse. Their faces fade, like smoke, holding inside
the stone wall. I know their dark eyes, they know mine. They eye me like birds
of prey. At one time I loved them, I love them still. They are stone, I am
flesh.
Tears moisten
my eyes, as letters in large block print spell out P.A.T.R.I.C.I.A. inside the
gray cell wall. The letters are fuzzy, sooty, as the monkey on my back. Her
chocolate body steps out of the wall and walks toward me mouthing words that I
can hardly make out.
Patricia, my
ex-girlfriend’s 13-year-old daughter, in her shorty pajamas with her chest
jiggling like two jellyfish. I hear her say, “Mom-Mom-Mom.”
Something
like that, clouded reflections hurting my eyes.
I hold my palms out before
me,
wanting to push Patricia’s image back into the wall, but she continues forward
ignoring my remorse. I try to scream for forgiveness, but I can’t move my body
or my mouth.
Silence.
I pray and contemplate
the familiar funk I’m plunged into. Will the Parole Board finally grant me
clemency?
A blanket of heat wraps
around
me, hot enough to melt veins, and then vanishes.
Michelle, my
leggy ex-girlfriend with her slender frame and olive brown skin. I see her observing
Patricia approach me. There is a tension in her Western-Asian-like eyes that I
have never seen before. Her lips are compressed as though she can’t speak. She
is wearing cut-off shorts and a white hoodie. Her deep auburn hair pulled back
in a ponytail, the color of sunshine through a glass of red wine. I was in
love.
“Can you
hear me, Victor?” Michelle says. Her voice is far away. Her words crank inside
my head, wrenching open rusty dreams.
Of
course, I can. You’re just not listening to me.
Edges
of darkness play on the
cell wall in shale blue shadows spewing from Patricia as she continues toward
me. Get me out of here, I want to say, get me out of this conviction. Make
sense out of this despair.
Michelle reaches her arm out of the wall, past
Patricia, and waves her hand before my face; it is a hand with many trails, one
escorting the other.
“Face it, Victor,”
Michelle says. “Your final appeal was denied. Put your hands down.”
Hands down?
Final appeal denied? A meddling pressure seesaws in my head but I feel
no pain, only the pendulum sensation swinging at intervals of its free will.
“Get a cup
of ice,” Michelle says to Patricia.
I notice
Patricia veer slowly away and morph into sand-like particles sustaining its form
of long legs on narrow hips, like Michelle.
“Open and
close your fingers, Victor.”
I can’t. My
muse unjams and I’m in Michelle’s living room sitting on the edge of the sofa
staring at a blank television screen. Where had I slept? If I could only
speak, if I could only explain that my brain wants to compartmentalize little
boxes of despair to isolate them from all that is hopeful. I didn’t mean for
it to happen that way.
Patricia
returns with a cup. A
white cup. Tears pool in her eyes. The shadows soften.
Michelle
turns up my right palm, takes a blurry cube of ice from the cup and places it
in my hand. The cube shimmers. I feel nothing. She puts the cube in my left
hand and a stab of violent cold tears into my palm and I drop the cube.
“Well,
something’s working,” Michelle says. Then to Patricia, “Why are you crying?”
Patricia
stands there, glaring at me in her pajama shorts, trembling. “He did it, mom.
He touched me.”
Michelle
shrieks. “He did what?”
Patricia’s crying
worries me. She had promised to keep it between us, not say a word. Our secret.
“He made me do it, mom.”
Why are
my arms raised at shoulder level? Why is my forefinger pointed at the blank television?
Michelle and Patricia disappear deeper into the stone, hiding, only to return at
their choosing.
I
want to turn on the
television, to the morning news. Or is it time for the late-night news? I try
to stand and turn on the damn black box. Nothing. A lot of something isn’t
working right with my body. I can’t move my eyes left, right, up or down. Just
stare straight ahead. Awareness skips back and forth in choppy fragments.
Anxiety grips my throat like wrestling a heavy suitcase. My breathing staggers:
I puff and puff as though starting a campfire. I try to stand again but I
can’t. Can’t wiggle my toes or flex my fingers. My forefinger points straight
ahead locked in place and I see its reflection in the black box as if somehow
pointing at myself.
The
television screen pops on and lights up in a snowy haze and a man’s raspy voice
cracks: “Guilty,” is all he says, and the television screen continues to snow.
The thought
of dying alone in shame clogs in my throat as a snap-flashing moment of killing
Patricia scatters through me like glass splintering and tearing me inside out.
I didn’t mean for it to happen that way.
All those
years I survived inside the prison, all those days that I feared could have
been my last, all those days and nights that I rotted in the silence of death
row, and now I am condemned to die, a witness to my own undoing; executed by the
electric chair. Yes, I killed Patricia, yes, I was intoxicated and upset that
Michelle ditched me, and so I put a homemade bomb on the porch not intended for
Patricia to pick up. She died instantly. I didn’t mean for it to happen that
way. My lawyer filed for an emergency stay of execution, but it is too
late, too late to cleanse myself of guilt. I want my life to be mine one day,
but it is too late. After the cumbersome weight of nineteen years, God Savior
says, “Judgement will be served.”
I am afraid.
The guard
says, as if rehearsed from a script: “Can I get you some water? Can I get you a
coffee? Can I get you a stamp to mail your last letter?” Every question flickers
like a candle burning out.
Where was
all the caring I never had in the first fifteen years of my life? Where were
they when my father deserted my mother and me when I was three? Where were they
when my mother died when I was eight? Where were they when I was in my fifth
foster home and using drugs when I was twelve? Where were they when I was a
young man returning from the war suffering PTSD and drug addicted?
Those
spotlight questions beam inside the walls of my mind as a grim-faced guard
comes in and shaves the hair off my body to prepare me for execution.
The pain that
I have caused makes me feel that I could have done better. I hunger for joy,
yet old dreams torment me like phantom limbs.
In one hour,
two guards will step forward and strap me down on the gurney with belts that
cross my chest, groin, legs, and arms. They will place a sponge moistened in
salt water onto my bald scalp. Next will come the leather cranial cap lined
with copper mesh that will cover my head and forehead. Then a narrow power
cable will be attached to the headpiece. Finally, an electrode, moistened with
conductive jelly, will be attached to my leg, and then I will be blindfolded.
“Do you have
any final words?” the warden will ask.
“I do,” I
will say. “I didn’t mean for it to happen this way.”
