Southern Lady Code

by Helen Ellis

  These wounds—along with the cuts on her face, neck, and chest—are superficial. “Superficial” is Doctor Code for didn’t damage muscle or hit bone. The wounds the jury sees next are dramatic. Here’s how another witness described what he saw: “She looked like she’d exploded. Everything that was supposed to be inside was out.”

  The judge says, “We’re going to take a short recess.”

  I’ve had my eyes in my lap for hours, now I look up.

  The jury files out, but Juror #7 does not. She’s slumped, motionless, and her skin is a waxy gray. The court officer shakes her by the shoulder and says her name. No response. She shakes her harder and says her name three more times. No response.

  “Clear the audience!” says the judge.

  We stand in the hallway. Family, press, and baby D.A.s (straight-out-of-law-school newbies who clutch their smartphones like pacifiers) don’t intermingle. I stand alone.

  Paramedics arrive. We wait for an hour.

  Meredith and her co-counsel emerge and are led into a neighboring courtroom. My friend looks distraught. Her face is red and her eyes are raw. Has she been crying? The only time I’ve seen her cry was at her father’s funeral. I want to go to her now, like I went to her then, but I know that’s out of bounds.

  A reporter nudges me and asks, “Who are you with?”

  At last I’m noticed. I don’t belong. But I’m staying.

  I say, “Special interest.”

  “Are you here for the defendant? I’m looking for her family.”

  I turn into Forrest Gump when asked by Lieutenant Dan if he and Bubba are twins. I say, “We are not relation.”

  The judge calls us back into the courtroom and announces that Juror #7 fainted and has been excused from the jury. She’ll be replaced with an alternate. The trial will continue, but we’ll adjourn for the day.

  That night, Meredith tells me that the juror really shook her up. The woman was completely unresponsive for a minute and thirty seconds. They’d thought she’d had a heart attack from the shock of the autopsy photos and was dead.

  The medical examiner went to her aid, roused her, and later whispered to Meredith, “It’s the first time in years I’ve felt for a pulse.”

  Meredith asks me, “By the way, what did you think of the medical examiner?”

  I say, “I want you to seduce him and bring him into our circle of friends.”

  Meredith and I are part of a close group. She and I play poker with the men and read books for book club with the women. All together, we have supper and see movies. We celebrate promotions and clean bills of health. We’ve rung in the New Year. And birthdays are big. The best gift Meredith has ever given me was surprising me dressed as a 1950s housewife for a party. Outside the courtroom, she’s always in jeans and T-shirts. Like I said, she is serious. But for me, she was silly. We are good friends but during the trial have fallen into a new and more intimate routine. Every night we speak. And I know this is my chance to be serious for her.

  The defendant is a good witness. She’s been in jail for two years and is on two kinds of medications: an antipsychotic and an antidepressant. She speaks softly. Her nails are filed and her hands are delicate. She wears eyeglasses and lifts them to wipe her tears. Her story is that the victim came to her apartment and verbally attacked her.

  The defendant says: “Words are weapons.”

  The defendant says: “I felt cornered.”

  She snapped. The knife she grabbed was meant to peel apples. It’s small, so it doesn’t reason that she’d wanted to kill her. But she did.

  The defendant says: “I felt like a monster.”

  But then she saved the baby.

  The defendant says: “I felt happy.”

  The defendant says: “I still believe I did something wrong, but I also believe that God forgives.”

  The judge nudges a tissue box toward her. Maybe she did snap.

  In my notepad I write: Could we lose?

  But then Meredith cross-examines her. And Meredith is not deterred by her tears or soft lies. She gently but persistently hammers the young woman with questions like she’s tapping a picture hook into a wall. Tap, tap, tap. The picture starts to change. Tap, tap, tap. Like a trick of the eye in a haunted house, the defendant’s portrait morphs from meek to maniacal.

  An audience member, who as far as I know has seen ten minutes out of ten days of trial, gets up, steps over my knees, and says under her breath: “I think I heard enough. THIS IS SOME BULLSHIT!”

  On break, I text this to our book club and it becomes our war cry. “This is some bullshit!”

  The jury thinks so too. After closing arguments, it takes them less than five hours to find the defendant guilty of all charges. Meredith wins.

  A month later, we are back for sentencing.

  As usual, I arrive fifteen minutes before the courtroom doors are unlocked to make sure I get a good seat. The media are already here. And now it’s not just city paper reporters; the TV people are here. NBC and CBS. They wear pancake makeup, and one woman wears thigh-high boots and a Band-Aid-tight dress in blood red. Court officers pen them in with three barricades. When the doors open, I walk right past.

  No one stops me because now I know I belong.

  The serious women in the serious room have softened. The judge has dyed her hair chestnut. The defense attorney is tan from a trip to Bermuda. When Meredith speaks on behalf of the family, her voice quivers, but it is clear.

  Meredith says, “We have so little we can do or change, but we can offer justice for this horrific and unspeakable act that destroyed so many lives.” She says she spoke to the victim’s mother about sentencing, and here is what the silent religious woman told her: “The defendant can ask God for forgiveness. And if he forgives her, she can go to heaven. From prison.”

  Meredith says, “She is more forgiving than me.”

  Meredith asks the judge for the strongest maximum sentence: twenty-five to life for murder, twenty-five to life for felony murder, and twenty-five years for kidnapping.

  The defense attorney asks for sentencing with compassion.

  The defendant sobs and says she’s sorry.

  The judge says to the defendant: “Your young age doesn’t matter.”

  The judge says to the defendant: “Your abuse doesn’t matter.”

  The judge says to the defendant: “These were not impulsive cuts.”

  The judge says to the defendant: “You are a monster.”

  The judge sentences the defendant so that she will never be free.

  As I’m walking out of the courthouse, I am chased down the sidewalk by a reporter who says, “I never found out who you’re with.”

  I say what I said to her before. “Special interest.”

  She says, “Right, right, but what are you doing, writing a book?”

  I keep walking. And I think, if she or any of the reporters had stayed in the courtroom, she would have seen me wait in my seat until everyone except the attorneys had exited; then as Meredith passed, she would have seen me take her hand and say, “Good job.”

  I was there for Meredith. That’s friendship. I’m serious.

  THAT KIND OF WOMAN

  I am the kind of woman who gay men call Auntie; who passes along compliments and saves news to tell you in person; who gifts the most useless item on a wedding registry and sings “Happy Birthday” into your voice mail; who looks like she’s photobombing her own photos; who does not have children, but says, “Mama like!”

  I am the kind of woman who brings plants into her home and then—with only the best intentions—murders those plants; who empties her dryer lint trap and finds three pennies and a googly eye; who has a lazy Susan for sprinkles and keeps Coke cans in her vegetable crisper; who writes something on her to-do list after she’s done it.

  I
am the kind of woman who spends more money on a bottle of shampoo than a bottle of wine; who adds three capfuls when the instructions read one; who writes self-affirmations in shower steam; who blow-dries her hair an inch from a wall instead of untangling the cord; who looks at a sunscreen display like other women look at a Tiffany’s window—and then applies that sunscreen like a meringue pie to the face.

  I am the kind of woman who enjoys the mystery of a manila envelope; who has bouquets of pens instead of flowers and never runs out of stamps; who uses a piggy bank and index cards; who is polite to wrong numbers and flips through a Vermont Country Store catalog like it’s from Sotheby’s; who buys diaries but doesn’t write in those diaries.

  I am the kind of woman who giggles when she writes the word erect on a crossword; who listens to the radio and listens for the mail; who watches the National Spelling Bee and enjoys sitcom plots about bowling; who likes reruns about four ladies talking on a couch, followed by reruns of four older ladies talking on a couch; who still misses Oprah at four p.m.

  I am the kind of woman who walks through TSA like a bride; who strangers warn not to go into certain neighborhoods; who points out subway rats to children; who buys postcards and sends them when she gets back from vacation.

  I am the kind of woman who hangs her head out a window to see what the heck is going on out there; who will give you a look instead of giving the person who is annoying her a look; who is more interesting because of what she doesn’t do; who does not appreciate being told what kind of woman she is.

  · ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ·

  Mama said: “Helen Michelle, I’ve always told you: if you worry about what your mama will think, you’ll never be a writer.”

  She also said: “If you ever want to write about a dead body, I’ll drive you to a funeral home, crawl inside an open casket, and hold my breath.”

  Thank you to Mama and Papa, who will do anything to support me.

  Thank you to my writing wives, Ann and Hannah, who pushed me to share secrets that they already knew.

  Thank you to my friends, the cast of characters in this book, who inspired me and approved the use of their real names: Bernard, Carmine, Martin, Jason, Carolyn, Terri, Patti, Megan, Elizabeth, Stefan, Katy Belle, Vicki, Laura, Laurie, Ellen, Liz, Karen, Nicho, Erica, and Meredith. And a special thanks to Dani, who texted: “My life is yours to write.”

  Thank you to my friends and family who don’t appear in these pages but are a constant presence in my life. Classic Trashy Book Clubbers: Michelle, Lori, and Kay. Bridge Ladies: Jean and Val. The Virtual Porch: J.T., Ariel, Laura, Paige, and Amy. The Game Night Group: Jeremy, Jon, Kevin, Scott, and Tal. Southern Lady Kathleen and Gentleman Bryant. Heather from PCB18, Camille from Puzzle Posse, Koula from Chanel, Doug from Team Tito, and Ellis from Team Lawrence.

  Thank you to those who encouraged me to write true stories. About tidying: Emmy and Susanna from Spine Out, Kate from Vintage/Anchor, Dan from The New York Times, and Courtney, my mentor. About partying: Shaun from EatingWell. About guesting: Elizabeth, formerly of Simon & Schuster UK, and Neil, from Financial Times. About being happily married: Alyssa from Paper Darts. And about being thankful: Amanda from Garden & Gun. I’m especially thankful for her editorial note: “Just let it rip.”

  Thank you to Bill, Suzanne, and the entire Doubleday and Vintage/Anchor teams and sales force who make a publishing house a home. To Jenny, my stellar editor who has a unique way of enforcing a deadline. To John, who makes my books beautiful. To Julianna, who makes me sound good. To Nora, who catches my mistakes (like when I misspell two of my favorite things: Pet Semetary and Froot Loops). To Victoria, a superstar who’s now a shooting star. To Zakiya, who holds down the fort. To Judy! Judy! Judy!, who puts me in the best light and my work in the best hands. And to Todd, who sends me out into the world but keeps me grounded. You are the Charlene to my Julia. MWAH!

  Thank you to my friend, champion, and agent Brettne, who speaks fluent Southern Lady Code. I’m proud to be part of The Book Group, which is entirely woman run.

  Thank you to the New York Society Library, where I wrote most of this book in the stacks. And thank you to the librarians who greeted me every day with: “Good morning, Mrs. Haris!”

  And last but certainly not least: thank you to Mr. Haris—my husband, Lex—who reads me David Sedaris in bed. You are my Hugh. My every essay is a love letter, and I’m in love with you.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Helen Ellis is the author of American Housewife and Eating the Cheshire Cat. Raised in Alabama, she lives with her husband in New York City. You can find her on Twitter @WhatIDoAllDay and Instagram @AmericanHousewife.

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