by Angela Pisel
I asked myself over and over throughout my years in here . . . Was I a good mom? Did we bake enough cookies?
I wasn’t able to teach you everything you needed to know to make it in this unpredictable world. I don’t even know if you can balance a checkbook or have proper table manners, but as I go over the “good mom” checklist in my mind, I realize only a few things really matter. Are you loved, and do you love others well?
As I looked back over my life, I realized my purpose was to give you yours. To show you the way, to tell you the truth, and to give you everything I had to give.
Slow down and enjoy. Fish sticks and macaroni and cheese always taste better at a happy table.
I can’t believe my grandchild is growing inside you.
SOPHIE
“I’m doing everything I can think of,” Ben said.
Sophie had waited until Thomas left for work to call him. The execution date was two weeks away and her impatience was growing as fast as her stomach was. While they spoke, she cut tags off of the new elastic-waist pants she’d ordered online.
“Why haven’t we heard anything?” Deep down she knew he didn’t have an answer, but she couldn’t stop herself from questioning him every time they talked. He’d explained to her and Thomas, in depth, the death row appeals process. This new information could be heard only if the governor’s office would listen.
“The governor’s office has assured me they have received the petition, but that’s all they will tell me. I have no idea when a decision will be made.”
Sophie felt like she was pulling a rug with an enormous armoire on top of it. “I’m starting to lose hope. I feel like no one in the whole world cares my innocent mother is rotting in jail but you, me, and Thomas.” She hurled her scissors onto the middle of the bed.
“We knew this would be a long shot,” Ben said.
The Internet searches she repeated late at night when her mind refused to shut down told her Ben was probably right. History wasn’t on her mother’s side. A South Carolina governor hadn’t stopped any of the forty-three executions since the death penalty had been reinstated more than thirty years ago.
“I don’t know what they’ll do,” Ben finally said.
“We can’t give up.”
“I’ll never give up on your mom, but we have to prepare ourselves.” He paused, then exhaled.
“For what, Ben? Prepare ourselves for an innocent woman who has already spent over a third of her life in prison to die there?” She bent over the best she could and started picking lint off her bedroom floor.
“This new information may have come too late.” Ben stated what Sophie knew. I waited too long to help my mom. She’s going to die because of me. Sophie picked up a broken gold tube of Elizabeth Arden’s Beautiful Color Maximum Volume Mascara that had fallen off her dresser and chucked it at the wall.
“Well, you can do that, Ben. You can prepare yourself, but I’m not going to. My mom is coming home, and I won’t let anyone tell me otherwise.” She hesitated for a minute, but then her words erupted while her shame turned to anger: “Maybe you’re not the one for this job.”
Ben didn’t respond to her threat. “I know you’re frustrated. I am, too.” When she didn’t reply, he said, “How are you feeling? How’s the baby?”
She knew he was trying to change the subject to get her to calm down. The truth was, she could never fire Ben. He’d become her family and the only connection she had to her mother. His concern reminded her of that.
“The baby’s doing fine. My doctor said I can do limited activities—go to the grocery store and get my hair cut. She won’t clear me to travel yet.”
“I know your mom understands,” Ben reassured her. “She’s not allowed visitors right now, anyway.”
“Why? Did she get in some kind of trouble?” Sophie fixated her gaze on the newly black stain she’d created on her wall.
“I received a fax earlier this morning,” he said reluctantly. “Two weeks prior to the scheduled execution, the inmate is moved off of death row and to a death-watch cell for observation.”
GRACE
This part of my story gets difficult to read. I’m compelled to write the end of my story, but please don’t feel obligated to read it. (Forgive the plain white paper; I’ll explain in a minute.)
Before the morning sunlight had a chance to slip into my cell, I was awakened by the sound of officers shuffling their feet. Several of them (whose voices I did not recognize) congregated outside my door.
Six hours before, I’d overheard a similar noise and had gotten out of bed to see what the commotion was about. Officer Mackey had been pushing a wheelchair down the row. Its crooked front wheels clinked on the concrete, refusing to roll straight. At first I thought we might be getting a new occupant, but when he moved closer, I could see it was Roni.
She held her head down and cocked to the side. Her back was secured to the back of the chair with a thick white belt. I wanted to shout, “Welcome home. I’m glad you’re back,” but she didn’t look like she was awake enough to hear. And would that be the greeting she’d want to receive?
I wanted to tell her in person I was sorry for what I did, for what other people had done, and that if she’d give me another chance, I’d never let her down. I knew she didn’t really want to die, to take her own life as she’d tried to do, but that she just didn’t want to go on living THIS life. There was a difference, and I made a promise to myself to help her feel better.
From outside my door, I heard someone yell, “Prisoner 44607—Grace Bradshaw.” The chaos, this time, was for me.
I immediately jumped out of my bed and stood facing my door. I bit the inside corner of my lip, but the rest of me stood completely still.
My cell door opened and before me stood five officers. Three of them had protective shields over their faces. Two others carried long sticks.
A female officer threw in an orange jumpsuit and ordered me to change. My body stiffened at first. I tried to shuffle through reasonable explanations for this early-morning intrusion.
“Hurry up,” she said, after I didn’t make any attempts to undress.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
A male officer carrying a clipboard made his way into my cell. “You’re being transported to another part of the prison.”
“What for?” My execution was still a couple weeks away.
“To begin preparations.” His reply sounded as matter-of-fact as a flight attendant reviewing safety instructions before takeoff. “Get undressed.”
I did as I was told. I turned so my back faced the officers and I braced my arm on the bed while I bent to pull my pant legs off.
While the female officer examined me, I fixed my eyes on the pictures hanging on the wall above my bed. Paul and you. You and William. Me and Paul.
“Am I coming back?” I asked as she finished her final sweep across my bare chest. She didn’t answer.
Two of the officers were reading over paperwork on a clipboard, while the other three watched my every move. I attempted a polite smile to let them know I wasn’t planning to give them any trouble.
I started to peel the pictures off my wall, but one of the officers stopped me. “No personal belongings allowed.”
“What will happen to . . . ?” I patted the top of my blanket to feel for your journal.
Two of the officers rushed over to my side. I put my hands where they could see.
“Can I take anything?” I felt as though I couldn’t get any air. “My Bible?”
I was leaving forever and I couldn’t take a thing.
Officer Jones pushed her way through the wall of officers blocking the cell. “For God’s sake, let her take her Bible.”
The officer with the clipboard shifted his feet, then nodded. “Bible, but nothing more.”
Officer Jones stood to the right of me while I bent down and g
rabbed my Bible off my table.
“Sophie’s journal?” I said quietly to her.
“I’ll make sure she gets it.”
I found it under the covers at the end of the bed. There was so much more I needed to tell you.
I kissed the top of the unfinished worn brown leather journal and handed it to Officer Jones.
“Don’t give up,” she said to me. “Don’t give up.”
The officers shackled my hands and feet as I took one last look at the pictures hanging on the wall. The photos that documented my life and had kept my heart beating for the past seventeen years.
As I walked out of my room I heard one of the officers say, “Throw this stuff into a box and label it for her next of kin.”
SOPHIE
Sophie couldn’t wait any longer. She contemplated asking Thomas what he thought, or if he would be mad, but didn’t. When she picked up the phone to dial, she prayed Thomas would have a smidgen of understanding still left inside of him.
“May I speak to Carter Logan, please?” Sophie said with the sweetest southern tone she could muster.
“Mr. Logan is unavailable at the moment. Would you like to leave a voicemail?”
“Yes, please.”
After an extended period of silence, Sophie heard Carter’s recorded message: “You have reached the voicemail of Carter Logan, the District Attorney for Charleston County. I am grateful for the opportunity to serve the people of my community and welcome your phone call. Please leave me a message and I will get back to you.”
Sophie took a deep breath before she began. “Carter, this is Sophie. I didn’t want to call you at home. I didn’t want Vivianne to hear. I know you’re aware of what is happening with my mom. If there is any way you could help her, and help me, I’d appreciate it.”
After she hung up the phone a small part of her felt empowered, but other, larger portions of her felt desperate—raw and exposed, like a homeless person begging for food at the corner of a busy intersection or an already thin model being told she needed to lose more weight before a photo shoot.
If the truth be known, she’d walk naked through the streets of West Lake if it meant her mom would be free. But would she in front of Thomas’s family?
Sophie checked the pregnancy-tracker app on her phone. Seventeen weeks and four days into her pregnancy and still no acknowledgment from Thomas’s side of the family that she was going to have a baby. Not to her, anyway. She knew Thomas had talked to them. She could hear him whispering in the study in a serious voice, not the kind of exchange one would expect when you were talking about happy events, such as the impending birth of a new grandchild.
Still, she had no one to blame for their abandonment except herself. Relationships built on dishonesty were sure to come tumbling down at some point. Welcome to some point, she told herself, flipping through the various daytime talk shows, trying to fill another day with productive activities while sitting on the sofa.
She’d started to doze off when her telephone rang.
“Sophie, it’s Mindy. You have a minute?”
“I’m trying to decide whether to watch reruns of The Price Is Right or take a nap. So I’d say you caught me at a bad time.”
Mindy laughed. “Well, not to interrupt your busy day, but I thought you’d like to know.”
“Know what?”
“Max’s mom has cleared all the hurdles with social services and she plans to take him home.”
“What? When?” Sophie tossed the remote on the couch beside her. “Can I see him?”
“She’s planning on taking him home this evening. If you want to see him, you better hurry.”
GRACE
“Can I tell them good-bye?” I asked the officers escorting me. Two of them are in front of me, two of them are flanking me, and the other two are trailing behind me.
Carmen’s and Jada’s faces stared at me through their narrow windows.
“This is as good as it gets,” one told me.
I turned my head to Carmen’s door. Her eyes met mine and neither one of us broke eye contact for several seconds. I raised my hands as high as I could to say good-bye. She gave me the thumbs-up sign.
Jada’s face blended in with the ashen paint color on her door. She wiped something out of her eye before she disappeared.
Roni’s window was empty.
I started to walk over, but the officer grabbed my arm and turned me around.
“Time to go.”
I bowed my head and said a prayer for Roni. I pictured her lying helpless in her bed with the wheelchair across the room.
“Wait a sec,” Officer Jones said. “Somebody wants to say good-bye.”
I opened my eyes and saw Officer Jones pointing to Roni’s window. Half of Roni’s face appeared. Through the other part of the window, I saw the ornament I’d given her. She held it flat against the window. I could read the word FAMILY.
SOPHIE
At 6 p.m. on the button Sophie walked faster than she should have through the doors of the hospital carrying a JCPenney bag. Thomas, who she promised she’d wait until he returned home so he could at least drive, trailed behind.
“Slow down. You’re supposed to be on bed rest,” he shouted.
She waved her hand in the air and kept moving, praying Max was still in the room when she walked in there.
“Max?” she said, when she finally arrived.
His bed had been stripped of sheets and his old monitors taken from the room.
“I’ve missed him.” No evidence was left of any circus puzzles with happy elephants or a single character from Toy Story. “He’s gone.”
Thomas walked into the room just as Sophie sat down in the mauve recliner that had held her and Max so many times. She’d never see her little man again.
“I’m so sorry you missed him,” Thomas said. “Let me go see if I can find Mindy. I’ll see if we can get an address or phone number for him.”
Sophie tried hard to remain calm. Stress is not good for the baby, she heard Thomas say in her mind. But losing Max is in no way good for me, she rebutted.
“Someone wants to tell you good-bye,” Thomas said, pushing the door open.
Max, dressed in a navy blue winter coat, threw his arms out to greet Sophie. “Sosie, where you been?”
Sophie bent down and scooped him up in her arms. “Missing you.”
Max’s mom walked into the room behind Thomas. “Tell her good-bye. We need to get you to your new home.” A John Deere hunter-green stocking cap covered most of her hair. Her gaunt cheeks were covered with peach blush and she smelled like cigarette smoke mixed with an evergreen car freshener.
“Do you mind?” Sophie asked, pointing to the bag beside her on the floor.
Max’s mom reached down and tightened the gold nylon shoelaces on her steel-toed work boots. “Sure, I guess we have a minute.”
With Max still on her lap, Sophie opened the bag and pulled out a pastel blue-and-pink-and-yellow crocheted blanket. As she wrapped it over Max she said, “This was my baby brother’s. He was very special to me, just like you are. I want you to have this.”
GRACE
“Everything okay in there?”
I had no idea where I was or who was yelling at my door. My orange top was twisted around me. It stuck to the skin on my back. This place was dark and hot.
“Bradshaw, you okay in there?”
I blinked, but nothing looked familiar. Where am I?
The door opened and in walked the person calling my name. I tried to adjust to the light that had followed her.
“You okay, Bradshaw? You seem to be having quite the nightmare.”
A blue uniform stood over me.
Death-watch cell. I’ve been moved to a death-watch cell.
“What time is it?” I asked the slightly built female officer. Her spiked hair adde
d an inch to her short frame.
“Several hours before you need to be up.” She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand.
I rolled over and tried to untwist my shirt and untangle my thoughts. My head and neck felt fixed, like someone had taken plastic wrap and coiled it around me, winding and winding until my cells were no longer mobile.
“Take some deep breaths.” The officer watched me squirm. “Try to breathe. It’ll help calm you.” Her words stayed soft and steady as her stance widened. She took a few steps back before glancing out the door for backup.
“This is not unusual. It happens to everyone on their first night here.” She put her hand up and signaled to someone that she had the situation under control.
I fought my urge to stand and run, knowing full well any sudden unauthorized movements I made would be met with a swift and severe response. I searched the room for a focal point and tried to remember the relaxation exercises Ms. Liz had taught me. At the end of my metal bed frame, where the top met the sides, the paint was chipped. The exposed metal formed sharp, jagged lines.
I stared at them and counted to ten. Visualize, Grace, I could hear Ms. Liz whisper into my ears. I tried to remember what Paul smelled like after he splashed on his cologne, or how Sophie’s long arms felt wrapped around my aproned waist as I stood washing the dishes. Nothing would come to me.
The sharp lines began to grow, moving up and down, forward and back. I put my head in my hands and started to weep.
The officer walked over and gently put her hand on my damp back. “Deep breaths,” she repeated.
I inhaled again and counted to five before exhaling slowly. This time changing my focal point to the shiny handcuffs dangling down from her belt.
One, two, three . . . The name on her laminated name tag read I. Kollins. Ida? Irene?
“Guess it would be a stupid question to ask you what you were dreaming about.”
I finished exhaling and started my count again before I could answer.
