Empathy

I remember dreaming at night. It wasn’t black and all,  or edgy on the corners, and it didn’t last half a day but boy, did I dream. Five minutes and wham! I was flyin’.

It’s not funny, but it’s funny what sticks. Like I remember worrying over my baseball soaring, crashing through the glass of the old-man-next-door’s window. Heck, it doesn’t matter now. I don’t even remember what the old goon said after he caught me. I didn’t run. Not that time anyway. The old goon, I remember how he yapped and what his angry wrinkled face looked like with the corners of his lips drooping off his face like a bulldog, but I don’t remember a damn thing he said. I guess, if he wants to, he can remind me now. Funny, huh?

I know the hours are tickin’ but I don’t know if them hours are going fast or slow. On the other side of the bars is my last best friend in the world. The world. I don’t know his name but I’m sure he knows mine. I’m even sure he’ll remember my face, remember this last night in oh, twenty years or so when he’s talkin’ about the way I pet the concrete wall to get the feelin’ of touch in my head, pouring over my silence to his just-making-it therapist, and I feel sorry for him that he’s gonna suffer because of me and his stinkin’ job, but it’s all the same. One day, it won’t matter to him, neither.

It’s funny but it’s not funny, how I can wonder what my ex boyfriends are thinkin’ when they hear my name on the TV, or what the popular kids are doing with their lives, and at the same time I’m rememberin’ Mama say that I had to learn to express myself “a little less.” I heard she wasn’t comin’ tomorrow. I guess that’s for the best.

You know what else I heard? It hurts. No, not the IV part. I mean, them poor guards with the future therapists don’t even know who’s doin’ the killin’. The first shot, that’s the sodium thiopental. I forgot what the old man yelled about me, and who my friends were in gradeschool, and what was in my closet – but I know I’m never forgetting those two words. Not that it matters. People around here call it “barbiturate” or “anesthesia” or “sleep drug,” and some people call it “humane” or “peaceful,” but I know what it really is – it’s sodium thiopental, and like a dog, it’s gonna put me to sleep. I’m not one of those smart people callin’ the shots around here – I mean, not anymore – but I guess they must know what they’re doin’ if they’re set on killin’ me. I don’t blame ‘em. And I do. Funny, huh?

That was the first step. You know, after the case got its verdict and I got no more reasons for appeals and my attorney man is shakin’ my hand sayin’ “it’s been real good” all hopeful and like, you know, when I really know I’m going to die,but those times don’t matter because everyone is going to die one time or another - but that step numero uno, that’s not like the rest. Death isn’t polishing the scythe – he’s draping it across my neck. The first step.

It’s funny, but it’s not really funny, how there’s any steps after that. They give me 5 grams and that outta kill me, but not quick enough, I guess. That’s fine, if that’s what the steps are. I don’t get a say anyway. I’m not a man anymore, or a woman if we ain’t talkin’ law, cause I don’t got my rights anymore, but the second step is the one that scares me. They call is pancuronium bromide (try saying that five times fast), or “pavulon,” or “paralyze,” and in some states it’s tubocurarine chloride, and in others it’s succinylcholine chloride, and that worries me that the men killin’ me aren’t so sure how best to do it, but it’s better than the electric chair, I guess. It’s funny, but not really, how I ain’t scared of the word “lethal,” or “death,” or even “final,” but when I hear pancuronium bromide, or paralyzing agent? My blood goes cold.

That’s the point, I guess.

But, I guess, at least it’s not potassium chloride, because I ain’t so sure cardiac arrest is any better. In the end, I guess it doesn’t matter.

For a second I remember the girl – how I hated her. Really, hated her. She deserved death, she deserved misery, she deserved the hole in the Arizona desert she got, and hell no she didn’t deserve my man, my house, my dog. But then I think that’s why I’m in this mess, that in the end, she put me here. That killin’ her just dirtied my own hands, and that’s what I’m supposed to think, I guess, but in the end it doesn’t matter what I think because soon enough I won’t be thinkin’ nothin’. And I try to feel bad for her, I do. I realize I didn’t know her middle name, or where she was born. I realize that maybe her soul thinks a stranger killed her, since I didn’t know her intimately, you know? But on the other hand, people die and get killed, every day in every way, and she had it comin’. That’s bad, I guess. I didn’t think so. Mama says I got to learn to control my emotions, but I guess that doesn’t matter anymore, in the end.

I heard the truth was that it hurts. Not the injection part, even if it’s scary. Even if getting strapped down to a gurney and having an IV tube put in while I wait for death sounds scary enough, even if I can watch one by one my executioners play Russian roulette with needles in my arm so the prison won’t pay their inevitable therapy fees in ten, twenty, thirty years, even if I knew I was going to die from the second I was born – I know it’ll hurt to let go.

To take death’s hand was not my choice, but we’re already shackled together. I know it’ll hurt. I hear it in my heart, and it’s crying out in memories that (if we’re calling this a deathbed) being honest on my death bed means that I know what’s coming, really, I do. But I don’t want to give up the opportunity to walk on a boardwalk and kick litter and dodge the shoulders of crowds so I can hurry up and get under the shade. And I don’t want to give up walking into Staples and giving that great big breath because damn, it sure smells good in there. And I’m already missing walking on uneven pavement and a squirrel climbin’ up stops and stares at me like “what’s she gonna do?” and I stop and stare at it. For a second, we get to admire each other. I know it’s one of many and heck, he probably knows the same. I’m probably not gonna see it ever again, but I still try and memorize every bristle on that bushy tail, and those beady eyes and that too-still nose before it darts away. It’s the little things, you know? I can’t start over with the people in life, but maybe I can –

And then I stop right there, because there ain’t no use dreaming about it.

I scrape my nails along the concrete wall, feeling the unease grow within me. The waiting. The prison guard, he’s tapping his foot, observing me, but he’s not on death row so I should be the one tappin’. But I can’t stand. I want to feel pricks and needles in my sleeping feet and shake them awake with an annoyance so common to young children. I want the feeling of dirt and sand and rough wall make my fingers numb, like waiting on the playroom courtyard for the game to start, only I ain’t pickin’ blades of grass.

I remember first grade – eerie, isn’t it? The only thing I can remember about first grade, really. We were sitting at our desks, and watching the clock. Two minutes of just sitting there, watching the time tick by on that big white school clock on the wall, this was the challenge. No, not the game of life – the waiting game. No squirming, moving, talking, nada. Waiting for those two minutes to pass. They were the longest in my life. Watching the black second hand rotate ever so slowly, taking years, decades even to ease onto the next second and if only for a brief instant I might feel time is moving before the second is gone and the waiting begins again. And then it was gone, like that. Those two minutes. I felt like I needed to stretch, move my legs a bit. Think about anything but time. I hear the “lethal injection” process takes all of two minutes to kill me, really kill me to the point the EKG says my heart says my brain says I’m dead. Dead! Just like that. Two minutes.

That’s life, I guess, but I guess it doesn’t matter what I think anyway, in the end.