Cargo of Orchids (27 page)

Nidia worried that if I didn’t eat, my milk would dry up, but Angel seemed happy enough as long as I didn’t try to take my nipple away. I know I wasn’t producing
enough
milk, but nothing else I did, other than nursing him, seemed to satisfy him. We played “This Little Piggie Went to Market” on the bed, and even then he cried until his face was red. We took baths (the first time Nidia showed me how to bathe him, I thought, I’ll
never
get the hang of that!), and even after I stopped being afraid that I’d drop him and he’d drown, he still screamed. He was my life—it sounds strange, but I would have given up anything at that time just to make him smile. I would have given my own life, even then.

His crying was the only thing wrong with my life, other than the fact that I had no appetite and my hair hadn’t grown back. That’s how deluded I had become: I thought if Angel would only stop crying, my life would be … close to perfect.

One evening not long after I had arrived, Consuelo came with a gift: the emerald-encrusted coke spoon I’d seen in the window of the
joyería
in the City of Orchids. She said she wanted me to have it as a reminder of the night I’d given birth, but when I held it in my hand, all I could think of was the shoeshine boy eating thin soup with his fingers and the rich man throwing money in my face and the doctor’s warm hand—the first warmth I’d felt in such a long time, before the morgue: God Sends Nothing We Can’t Bear.

Consuelo fastened the spoon around my neck on a gold chain; it was the most garish piece of jewellery I’d ever worn next to my skin. She also gave me an envelope containing a hundred-dollar bill, an X-acto knife blade and a flap of paper. When I opened the paper (one hand was always busy holding Angel’s head or wiping the sick away from his mouth, but I had got quite good at doing everything one-handed), a lot of the cocaine spilled into his hair.

I was horrified—I picked the larger flakes, the pure mother-of-pearl shale, out of his hair and blew the rest off his scalp. I felt I had contaminated something pure, someone innocent. When Consuelo left, I chopped up one of the larger flakes and snorted it through the rolled-up bill; I could smell his baby-scalp smell mixed in with the smell of money and drugs, and it made me feel afraid. Up until that moment, I had believed nothing could have been stronger than my new love for my child.

I stashed the flap of paper in a drawer, but I should have known from the days when Vernal and I had coke in the house: once you know it’s there, you can never forget about it. When I couldn’t get to sleep that night, I decided I’d cut myself another bump. Just a taste, a small one.

I don’t know if anyone would have acted differently had they been in my place. It has been more than ten years since I’ve used cocaine, but even today, or whenever I think about it, my mouth waters and my palms start to sweat. Somewhere deep in my old brain there must be a memory stored from the first time I did a line and cocaine became my fate, my sweet annihilating angel. But you never understand the nature of the drug—you only understand the nature of the sorrow.

They say one line is too many, a kilo isn’t enough; I took another whiff and, an hour later, one more, and then a couple of pick-me-ups when I began to come down. Angel was more restless than usual that night; when I nursed him, I thought I could hear his heart racing. I worried that the cocaine I’d snorted had passed into my milk, so I stopped feeding him, but that made him fuss all the more. In the end, I let him nurse until he fell asleep with his lips locked on my nipple.

Each day Consuelo brought another flap of paper, and I kept getting high; one night she cooked up some cocaine and handed me a glass pipe, and I had my first taste of
basuco.
Each time I inhaled, I rode a bicycle into the stars—then coasted in a paralytic state, plotting the exact coordinates of eternity, wondering where, along the way, I’d left my mind.

Somewhere in that universe of exploding stars and bicycle parts, I found my friend Daisy. She said she was from
Colombia (she said it like a warning), pronounced her name “Day-see,” and wore cobra stilettos, which made her seem taller than she was, a red T-shirt and sprayed-on jeans. Daisy wanted to model my lingerie, and took off all her clothes, but even afterwards, when we were naked together, she kept those cobra heels strapped on.

It only happened once: I lay naked, except for the coke spoon around my neck, on the bed with Daisy, and Consuelo took photographs. Daisy could be sweet and rough, and I liked her touching me the way I needed to be touched. I didn’t think anything of it until the prosecutor produced the photographs to show what kind of a mother I really was. A lesbian, crack-addicted one. All you could see of Angel was one arm, his little hand knotted into a fist, poking out of his cot. It is the only photograph of him I possess, and you can’t even see his face, can’t see whether he was crying. But he
wasn’t
crying, I remember, because I wouldn’t have been ignoring him if he’d needed my milk. Just for the record. Somehow, writing about it now, I sound defensive, but with Daisy back then, it wasn’t anything warped or perverted, only a sort of tenderness and, I suppose, the drugs. When you smoke
basuco
, all you want to do is have your nipples and clit sucked. Well, that’s not true. You
want
sex, but first you’d rather have one more toke. I
did
worry that the drug would contaminate my milk, not like the prosecutor said: she said I never gave it a thought.

My baby was not a drug addict. He was not neglected. As a mother, you know it at the time. You know if you are neglecting your child.

Death Clinic, Heaven Valley State Facility for Women

After they failed to hang Frenchy, Rainy spent her days trying to make her
gain
weight: she wanted Frenchy to get so fat, she said, she wouldn’t fit in the Chair. If she survives a third attempt on her life, Rainy is certain they will grant her a stay of execution. I wouldn’t be so sure if I were Rainy. The state
is pretty mad at Frenchy for not dying the first two times.

I tell my counsellor Frenchy deserves a break. Why does anyone have the right to put her through the ordeal all over again? Mrs. Dykstra just sucks in her cheeks, purses her lips and taps her finger on the
Inmate Information Handbook.
“One, it’s in the book, that’s why; and two, we follow the book, that’s why.” She looks at me, as if to say everything I need to know is in the book in front of me. In black. On white.

She glances at the clock. My time is up. I don’t make a move to go. “And three,” she says, beginning to sound exasperated, “because.”

I sit there, staring at the Velcro fasteners on my shoes, thinking how long it’s been—more than ten years, at least—since I’ve owned a pair of laces.

“Do I have to spell it for you?” she asks. “Because. B-E-C-O …” I leave before she has a chance to embarrass herself any further.

“I’ll spell
because
for you,” says Frenchy when I get back to my house. “B-E-C-A-U-S-E. Bitch Eats Candy Apple Until She Explodes.”

Frenchy’s chosen the Chair because she’s running out of options. Her only other choices are lethal injection or the gas chamber. She says she picked the Chair because it’s yellow, and yellow is the one colour that makes her feel alive. Rainy’s seen the Chair and says it’s not yellow any more—it’s brown like a Teflon frying pan when the grease has been burned into it.

But Frenchy wants to fry, and once she’s made up her mind, she shuts Rainy and me out every time we try to get
close to her on the subject. Still, Rainy buys her zuzus and wham whams at the commissary, and Coke Classic; she hoards her dessert every night, her bread, cookies, Twinkies, whatever else she can scrounge, and saves it for her friend.

Frenchy started gaining weight, slowly at first, and then noticeably. She went from 110 pounds to 133 in less than three weeks. I didn’t tell Rainy Frenchy’d have to weigh 250 for low before she’d be too fat for the Chair. Trying to make Frenchy gain back all the weight she’d lost trying to get so thin they wouldn’t be able to hang her gave Rainy a goal, something to look forward to. She’d watch Frenchy step on the scales every day after her shower, a smile cutting her face in two when Frenchy stepped off again.

Rainy and I both saved our doughnuts for Frenchy. Frenchy is addicted to doughnuts; I’ve often heard her say she would kill for one. Then Rainy tells her to shut up, because they write down everything we say and it will go on her record. It won’t look good for her in the future.

When Officer Gluckman chains me up to take me back to my house, and after a trusty has finished her search for drugs, I ask her a riddle. “How did the little moron break out of jail?”

Officer Gluckman says that if I expect a serious answer, I’ve got something else coming.

“He broke a doughnut in half. Two halves make a whole, and he crawled out the hole,” I say anyway.

Officer Gluckman is probably still trying to figure out how I plan to escape through a doughnut hole. Apart from coming up with new ways to make my life miserable, she doesn’t have a whole lot to think about.

I ask Rainy the same riddle. “What’s a moron?” she says.

“It’s what I do with the tomato sauce on my noodles,” I go. “Put more on.”

Every Wednesday we get spaghetti for lunch. I like lots (
lots
) of sauce on my noodles. Rainy puts the noodles in one section of her metal tray, sauce in another. She spoons on sauce, eats a couple of spoonfuls, puts more sauce on, eats a couple more spoonfuls, spoons more on.…

She says that’s the right way to eat spaghetti. I say, “Well, I like a lot of sauce covering my noodles.” She says, “But that’s not the way to eat it.” I say, “You eat your spaghetti the way you want, and I’ll eat mine the way I want.”

In the chow hall it seems Rainy and I always get into these life-or-death issues. Rainy argues that although she is accused of killing her twins, they were born joined, and as far as she is concerned, that is only killing one person.

The whole point is, she says, no one understands what she went through. To have these joined-together twins who screamed all the time because she couldn’t afford to have them separated, to decide to put an end to their misery— did the jury think that was an
easy
thing for any mother to do? And then to walk away?

“What was I supposed to do?” she says. It’s already been done, I tell her.

I think Rainy expected a medal at least, and her mug shot on the cover of
Parent and Child.
Instead, she got twin death sentences.

Rainy says she has profound feelings of love for me, and for Frenchy. But she never loved anyone else in her life,
except for her twins, and she hates every one of the guards, right down to the squeak of their rubber-soled shoes. When Jesus said love thy neighbour, I don’t think he was talking about people it is easy to love, I tell her. This must have hurt Rainy’s feelings, because she never expressed her love for me again until the day Frenchy received her third date certain. Rainy says only one thing is certain: it’ll be the hottest date Frenchy’s ever going to go out on.

The announcement of Frenchy’s impending death came, as it had done both times before, after her death warrant had been signed by the state governor. She greeted the news with a shrug. She was positive she was going to “get hers” this time—it would be third time lucky—and she had even written her own headline. She hoped it would be in every newspaper across the country.

She asked us to tell the reporters this: “Le Ethel Opaline Lafitte, Frenchy to those who give a shit, said goodbye to this cruel world, and to Laverne, whom she never stops missing, aged thirty-five years old, on April 1, 1998.” She wanted this information to be published in the Obituaries section of her hometown paper. I say they probably won’t print “shit” in a family newspaper.

“Then fuck them and the train they rode in on,” Frenchy says.

I tell her, if she
is
turned off this time, she’ll be frontpage news, or at least front-page news in the Living section. She won’t get stuck like the rest of the world in Classified Ads, Births and Deaths, or worse, in the Entertainment section, where I’ve seen a lot of celebrities end up. If I were a
famous person, I’d be choked to find my death announcement next to an ad for a wet T-shirt contest at the cross-dressing hangwoman’s roadhouse.

A death warrant is a single-page document bordered in black. Very final and official-looking, written in legalese so when you read it you won’t understand a word of what is about to happen to you. They write it this way on purpose, because obscurity makes no emotional impact. Pile, Jr. can, in good conscience, have me sign a statement saying, “I hereby give and convey to you, all and singular, my estate and interest, right, title, claim and advantage of and in my life, together with all its blood, flesh, organs and parts hitherto undisclosed and all rights and advantages therein with full power to electrocute and otherwise to terminate the same by hanging, gassing, shooting or lethally injecting the same away with or without removal of said organs, anything hereinbefore or hereinafter,” when what he is really saying is, “The state is going to kill you.”

Frenchy has kept her previous death warrants as mementos. She sticks them on her wall with spitballs. Each bears the state seal and has been signed by the governor, whose signature is in turn witnessed by an official whose John Henry has become a straight line trailing off into a wisp from having to sign so many death warrants, day after day. He (or she) probably didn’t even read any further than the first
whereas
, let alone the name of the person who had been sentenced to die. He was probably thinking about the lamb chop he was going to have for lunch. “WHEREAS Le
Ethel Opaline Lafitte, Frenchy to those who give a shit, did on the eighteenth day of September, 1982, murder Huey Troy Earl; WHEREAS
Le Ethel Opaline Lafitte
was found guilty of murder in the first degree and was sentenced to death on the eleventh day of March, 1984 …”