by Elle Johnson
Up ahead of us I saw my father slow just long enough to pat Uncle Charles on the shoulder. Uncle Charles’s eyes were cast down, head shaking, lips moving as he mumbled to himself. My father disappeared into Karen’s house, leaving my mother and me behind to deal with the awful pleasantries of grief.
“Uncle Charles,” my mother said. He grabbed her hand, squeezed it hard. “If I could’ve taken her place I would’ve. It should have been me. I wish it hadda been me.”
I walked into the house behind my mother. The living room was full of people I didn’t recognize, though startled recognition flashed across a few faces who thought for a second that I was Karen. My mother soon disappeared, swallowed up by the mourners.
Left alone, I lingered at the front of the room, where a small group of women sat listening to a dark-skinned girl curled up on the couch. I didn’t catch the whole story. It sounded like she had been there when Karen was shot and sprinkled by shrapnel from the shotgun blast. I thought maybe Karen’s body had fallen on top of her. The women consoled her for coming so close to death. For having witnessed Karen’s murder. They rubbed her back and arms. Her lap was littered with discarded tissues, her body sank farther into the couch cushions. I wanted to be petted and protected and pitied for my pain. I was Karen’s closest girl cousin in age and likeness and experience. I was jealous of the attention this other girl was getting. And ashamed for feeling jealousy. I had the uncomfortable feeling that I didn’t belong, that I somehow hadn’t earned the right to mourn because I hadn’t suffered. My skin and muscles felt uncomfortable. An unctuous taste coated the back of my throat. I couldn’t sit still.
I walked toward the back of the house. Aunt Maisie caught me in her arms. She was light-skinned, like my grandmother. She favored floral-print housedresses in paisley colors, with square pockets patched onto the front. Aunt Maisie’s hair was fine and wispy white as a painted cloud, curled and bobby-pinned into rosettes. She wore black-framed glasses and had black hairs on her upper lip. Her mustache felt soft against my cheek when she kissed me hello.
Like her daughter, my aunt Barbara, Aunt Maisie was one of the most even-keeled women I knew. Her face didn’t betray any sadness. Etched into her features was the same bottomless love and concern she held for everyone she met. “Come on. Go get yourself some food.” She led me to the kitchen door, ushered me inside.
The kitchen was close and warm with oven heat and food smells. Casseroles were everywhere. The table and counter were full of steamy Pyrex dishes of fried chicken, spareribs, mac and cheese, pork greens—comfort food. Aunt Barbara was making space in the fridge for what seemed like several weeks’ worth of donated meals for the family. Her sister-in-law, my aunt Lorin, looked down at the floor, tracing the linoleum pattern with each step, phone at her ear, talking long-distance to the relatives in Bermuda, my father’s side of the family. “We don’t know about the funeral yet. The coroner has to do an autopsy on the body first . . . Oh, I’m sorry. No, that’s okay, don’t apologize . . . I know this is hard for everyone. Listen, I need to make some more calls . . .” Lorin pressed the phone hook down, consulted an address book on the edge of the sink, then dialed another long-distance number.
Barbara and Lorin attended to the mourning tasks at hand with an impenetrable, unnerving calm. They disappeared into the familiar pattern of hosting company. Taking care of others, that’s what mothers always do. By tending to other people’s mourning, they delayed their own. Each casserole dish represented an awkward exchange for Aunt Barbara. A gracious nod, a grateful smile, then listening to empty platitudes about better places, time healing wounds, and God recalling his angels. Ending with the casserole-giving guest dissolving into tears and Aunt Barbara comforting him or her.
Aunt Barbara wasn’t crying. Or staring off into space. She had the same slight smile on her lips as always as she cleared space in the fridge. She was making room. Even in motion there was a stillness to her.
I felt like I had to say something.
“Aunt Barbara—”
“You want something to eat?” She cut me off. “We have plenty. As you can see.” She pointed to the spread, then chuckled. “What am I supposed to do with all this food?”
“Eat it.” Lorin picked up a piece of mac and cheese with her fingers. She pointed a greasy finger at me. “Let me fix you a plate.”
I didn’t feel like eating. But Aunt Lorin was already spooning up servings onto a paper plate.
A white man in a blue police uniform stepped into the kitchen. He took his hat off and kissed Aunt Barbara on the cheek. He opened a door tucked into the corner and disappeared down into the basement. He pulled the door closed, but it didn’t catch. I watched as the door inched open. After a moment I slid off the stool and wandered over to the breach.
I could smell the basement. Cold cinder blocks, detergent, and moldy wetness with a whiff of cigarette smoke tickled my nose. I heard voices, male voices, and strained to make out what they were saying. The words weren’t clear, but the tone was dark and angry. I slipped onto the other side of the door, tiptoed onto the landing, and pulled the door closed behind me until the latch clicked.
Careful not to squeak the wooden stairs, I sat on the top step and leaned over onto my thighs to listen. I looked down through the exposed pipes and wooden beams and saw Uncle Warren and a room full of men, white and Black, some in police uniforms.
They were talking about the robbers, the boys who killed Karen. Trying to figure out who they could be, how to find them, and then what to do.
“Only one thing to do.” I recognized my father’s voice. “Kill them. Find them and kill them.”
Chapter Five
It took me a full day to respond to Warren’s email. I wrote back that I would get in touch with the New York State Board of Parole. But when I looked more closely at the information Warren had sent me, I noticed that the date to submit letters against the release of Karen’s killer had already passed. I was relieved. I wasn’t looking forward to delving back into those painful memories. Now I wouldn’t have to contact the parole board and bare my soul to some faceless bureaucrat at the end of a phone line, who probably couldn’t help me anyway. I realized what might help me was to finally tell Warren what Karen, and her murder, had meant to me. I wrote back:
We’ve never spoken about Karen’s murder and we were so very young when it happened. I can only imagine what losing her was like for you and your mom and dad and little Geoffrey. I can tell you that for me Karen’s murder was a pivotal event in my life. I consider it a loss of innocence that shaped me as a person. I remember hearing the news like it was yesterday. And I have never, ever forgotten Karen, she’s always in my thoughts.
Four days later, Warren responded.
It’s difficult to talk about this subject even after all these years. Our lives were changed forever.
He added that the parole board had extended the deadline for accepting letters about the killer’s parole. My stomach tightened. Suddenly I wished I hadn’t said I would contact the parole board. I didn’t know why I was so uncomfortable. I suspected it was more than just fear of revisiting the past. But I wasn’t willing to examine these feelings more closely to consider what my discomfort might reveal about me.
I procrastinated.
It took me a week to email the parole board asking for more information about the process and the letter I was supposed to send.
They responded immediately. Offered to speak with me on the phone. They explained that I could submit a written statement that would be shared with the parole board but not the killer, even though it would become part of his confidential file.
I did nothing.
They followed up with a phone call, and I watched my cell ring until it went to voice mail. When I finally returned the call, a man with a New York accent, heavy with the outer boroughs, answered the phone: “Victim Assistance.” I was taken aback. I hadn’t thought of myself as a victim of Karen’s murder or in need of assistance. But both were true.<
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My tongue felt thick inside my mouth. My gums and cheeks went dry. I couldn’t find the words to explain who I was or what had happened to Karen. I had the urge to tell the whole story from the beginning, from the script I was used to repeating. When I was sixteen, my sixteen-year-old cousin . . . But my throat tightened and trapped the words in my mouth. I swallowed hard and used Warren’s email as my guide.
“I’m calling about case number 82A2130. Santiago Ramirez.” Saying the killer’s name out loud felt like I was betraying Karen.
“Yes,” the man said. “What can I do for you?”
“I’m the cousin,” I said.
“Of Mr. Ramirez?”
“No, no. Of the young girl he killed.”
“I’m so sorry for your loss.”
I barely got out “Thank you” as tears clogged the back of my throat.
“You take your time, dear.” He waited.
“I’m Karen’s cousin. Karen Marsh, that was her name, the girl who was killed. I . . . I’m trying to . . . I want to write a letter, but I want to know about . . .” I hesitated, unsure how to refer to the man who had killed my cousin. “Santiago” seemed too familiar. “Mr. Ramirez,” too deferential. “Killer,” too confrontational. I settled on what he was: “the prisoner.”
“Okay. Sure. What do you want to know?”
Everything, I thought. I knew nothing about who this man was. What he was like. I wondered if he had earned time off for good behavior. Was he eligible for furlough? I knew a little about the prison system from all the cop shows I’d written. I’d even been inside death row at the state penitentiary in McAlester, Oklahoma. I knew that good behavior meant more privileges and freedom on the inside. Had Santiago Ramirez been a good prisoner? What had he been doing in prison for the last thirty-three years? I pictured an old Hispanic man, stooped over with a shock of white hair, a swarthy complexion, and time marked by the creases in his face. Though he would have been only a few years older than me.
“Well . . . what has he been doing?” I asked.
“In prison,” he replied, stating the obvious as if that answered my question.
“Yes. I guess I mean, what can you tell me about him?”
“Let me see what’s in his file.”
I heard typing and made a mental note that the files were computerized.
“Okay, Ramirez, Santiago. Sentenced twenty-two years to life. Means he was eligible for parole after serving twenty-two years. And he cannot get out until parole lets him out.” He emphasized each word as if to reassure me. “If that happens, he’ll be on lifetime parole. That’s supervision on the outside for the rest of his natural life. Says here he was first eligible in April 2003. But he was denied.”
I nodded, feeling reassured. The parole board must have had a good reason for not letting him out.
“Do you know why?”
“Doesn’t say. Just that parole was denied. Been denied every time.”
That surprised me. “How many times has he come before the board?”
“Well, since 2003 he’s been eligible every twenty-four months, so quite a few times now.”
I didn’t realize this had been going on for so long. And I was stricken by the thought that this process would continue for as long as he was alive. Or until he was set free.
“What has he been doing? I mean, is he taking classes or getting his GED? What kind of prisoner is he?”
“Let’s see, he’s housed in a medium-security facility. And he’s completed nine programs.”
“What does that mean?”
“Every inmate, when he comes in, he has his needs assessed. Santiago Ramirez was assessed nine programs and he completed nine programs.”
“I see.”
“Says now he’s in a specialized program, a labor-intensive industrial program that offers a job-skills certificate upon completion.”
I assumed that must have been a good thing for the prisoner, though I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. Or how I was supposed to feel. Should I be happy that the man who killed Karen was doing well in prison? Would I have felt better if he hadn’t adjusted to life behind bars? If he was suffering? Was I supposed to root for his suffering? And was his suffering supposed to ease mine? I was confused and frustrated, overwhelmed by all the unknowns and unanswered questions swirling around in my head. I still had no sense of who this man was. Or even who he had been thirty-three years ago when he shot and killed my cousin. What I really wanted to know was if he was sorry for what he had done.
I was certain he was sorry to be incarcerated, locked up for the rest of his life. He would likely say anything to get free. I didn’t know if he felt remorse. Real remorse, not just regret over the bad outcome of his poor decision. His file revealed nothing. I wanted to look this man in the eyes, to see for myself.
“Can I go to his hearing?” The words came out before I even realized what I was asking to do.
“Oh, no, miss, members of the public aren’t allowed.”
Being told I couldn’t attend left me feeling like I didn’t know how I would decide what kind of letter I wanted to write. That’s when I realized what I was avoiding: a decision. My apprehension over talking to the parole board was starting to make sense. I was ashamed to admit I was conflicted, but I wasn’t sure why. Perhaps I didn’t want the responsibility of keeping a man locked up. Even Karen’s killer. I asked, “Can you send me a copy of his file?”
“No, I’m sorry, that’s confidential. But I can send you a transcript of the parole hearing.”
When I hung up the phone, my ears were ringing, my skin tingled, I couldn’t stand still. I walked around the house, trying to work off a nervous energy that had me more apprehensive than before. I couldn’t do what Warren was asking. Not yet. I had reservations, and I wanted more information. I was afraid that I was headed down a path that would put me at odds with the rest of my family. I was surprised to realize that I was looking for a reason to let the killer go free.
Chapter Six
April 4, 1981
We left the Bronx before nightfall. The car had become chilled from the day’s lengthening shadows, and I felt the coolness of the back seat on my thighs through my pants. I sat up, watching the back of my father’s head, waiting for him to turn or catch my eye in the rearview mirror. I wanted him to acknowledge what I had overheard. His eyes darted past mine, and he offered no admission as he changed lanes and weaved through stop-and-go traffic. He sped out of the residential neighborhood, under the el, onto the wide-open fast lane of 295 and the Throgs Neck Bridge. My mother fell asleep in the front seat. I looked out the window at the icy white city lights dotting the darkness like grounded stars.
Maybe I was mistaken.
I wondered if I had heard it right. I didn’t want to believe that my father was plotting with my uncle and a basement full of off-duty NYPD officers to kill the boys who had killed Karen. How could my father justify another killing?
Doubt and denial conspired to protect me from the unspeakable. I wanted it not to be true. But I knew my father was capable of unpredictable acts, violence as punishment or in the guise of protection.
I remembered when I was five years old, my sister and I were walking with my father, each of us holding one of his hands. On the sidewalk across from the fast-food restaurants, the subway, and the mom-and-pop shops lining Hillside Avenue was a crazy white man punching the air, yelling, “Nigger! Niggers go home! I hate niggers!” at the top of his lungs.
My father dropped our hands and looked down at us with a scowl that I assumed meant I had done something wrong. “Don’t move,” he said.
I froze in place and watched him stride across six lanes of oncoming traffic. He stopped cars and buses with only a look and the palm of his hand. He walked over to the crazy old white man and punched him in the head. The old white man stumbled over into a trash can, then fell onto his knees, bewildered. My father hoisted him up by his elbow and dragged him over to a squad car where two police officers were sit
ting, doing nothing at all. My father leaned down to give the officers a tongue-lashing. They jumped out of their car, bent the old white man over the trunk, and cuffed him.
Fists clenched at his sides, my father marched to the crosswalk and waited for the signal before rejoining us on the sidewalk. “You don’t ever let anyone talk about us like that, especially not in your own damn neighborhood,” he said.
Then he took our hands and we continued walking. My little heart pounded, then swelled as fear turned into pride. My father did things other people wouldn’t dare.
But I wasn’t feeling proud in the back seat on the way home from Karen’s. I had a queasy feeling and was reminded of when our house had been broken into.
That night, six years earlier, we’d come home from a family dinner to find the stereo stolen, the color TV gone. Thieves had used a ladder left out in the yard to climb through an unlocked second-story window at the back of the house. My father willingly admitted his stupidity in leaving the ladder out. He didn’t stomp, didn’t shout, didn’t argue about it at all with my mother. Even when he discovered that the $2,000 cash she had withdrawn from the bank that morning and left in her dresser was gone. He was certain: “The insurance will cover it.”
I was afraid my back-facing bedroom window would be the next target. My father took great pains to reassure me that nothing else would happen. But the damage was done. I felt violated.
Weeks later, the police recovered the stereo and the TV, but not the money. One of my father’s friends on the force brought back the appliances when he was off duty.
